 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Sunday, October 8th. As you can see, those of you watching my video, I am not at home. I am traveling. I am in California at a hotel. Actually, the same hotel, same room, probably, that I did the episode on January 6th, 2021. So it seems like every time I'm here, something dramatic and horrific happens in the world. All right, thank you all for joining me. I really appreciate it, and thank you for all of you who have asked about my family and sent good wishes. I really, really appreciate that. Also, thanks for sharing the show and yesterday's show and getting it out there. I think we got a lot of people. A lot of people got to see the show. It's one of the most watched shows I've ever done. It's just the speed at which we've done. So I really appreciate you sharing it and getting it and getting it out there. So yesterday, I did a show as the news was breaking out of Israel and it was on the way to the airport and rushed. And I was pretty shaken up yesterday from everything I was hearing that was going on. It was quite a shock and a surprise and disappointment and fear of what's next. We're now, what are we, 30 hours after that show. And I have to say, the sense of shock is probably more intense now. We have a lot more details about what actually happened. The horror of it, the sheer evil of what Hamas did is beyond shocking. It's horrific. And while my family was not affected directly, everybody in my family knows people who were affected directly, people who are missing, people who are dead. And Israel, remember, Israel is a very small country. I think the equivalent in terms of deaths of what happened is equal to something like 10 plus 9-11s. So think instead of 33,000 people dying in 9-11, imagine if 30,000 to 40,000 people had died in 9-11. And it's more than that. It's this is much more, there's a sense in which this is even more, the nihilism of this is even more disturbing, the violence, the way in which people were killed, the, you know, this is medieval rape and pillage. I mean, this is really the worst of humanity, the worst of humanity. I don't know if you've seen the images and the pictures. You can spare yourself. I mean, it's on Twitter all over the place. It's on Telegram. I don't think the mainstream media is showing much, but even when they do show, one of the areas in which some of the worst murdering happened was a festival, a music festival where hundreds of young Israelis were partying out in the desert. It was a big outdoor music festival. And out of nowhere, they partied all night. And they were there, hundreds of them. And the Palestinians showed up and just started shooting them. And 200, and we're talking about teenagers. We're talking about young men and women in their teens and in their 20s. 260 of them are dead. Who knows how many? It's not clear how many have been kidnapped and are now sitting in a basement somewhere in the Gaza Strip waiting to see what happened to them. Yeah, but beyond that, it's the horror, the barbarism. It really is, in many respects, overwhelming. So I'm still in shock, and I'll try to explain why during the show. I also want to do today is give you a little bit of history. We didn't do that yesterday. What is the Gaza Strip? Where is it? What are the conditions in the Gaza Strip? How did it get to be what it is? I think it's important that you get kind of an historical, political context for the Gaza Strip and how, in a sense, what Israel experienced yesterday is the consequence of a long, long chain of weakness, of compromise, of appeasement. I did try to pull up a timeline kind of of the history of what has happened. So I've got a New York Times timeline. I can do a whole series of shows just on the New York Times timeline and how distorted, perverted, disgusting, horrific the way they have set out the timeline and the way they talk about it. But I won't today, but just as an indication that if you're reading mainstream media and if you're watching CNN or whoever, you're not getting reality. You're not going to talk about reality and display reality, even when they interview Israelis. God, I mean, the evasions continue and it's sickening. So why am I still in shock? Why am I so much shock? Why has this affected me so much? Well, first Israel's a country I grew up in. So I know the place. I know the people. Obviously, family is potentially affected. Now, somebody asked me if my family is safe. Nobody in Israel right now is safe. And this is part of the shock. What this illustrates is literally nobody right now in Israel is safe. Yes, this was primarily focused on the border area around the Gaza Strip. And again, I'll show you a map and a little bit of Gaza. But tomorrow, this could be in the north with Hezbollah. And Israel now has exposed a weakness that if these people just rush the border and just cross over it, naturally Israel can cope by just mowing them down. There are lots of settlements very close to the border with Lebanon where Hezbollah is. There could be overrun. Hamas has thousands of missiles. And you've seen some of them in video on TV, these projectiles being fired. Hezbollah in the north has 140,000, 140,000 missiles. On top of that, it has probably several tens of thousands of guided missiles, so much more sophisticated missiles that should actually be guided to particular targets. They are a much more organized, much more ruthless military force. Many Hezbollah fighters have now been fighting in Syria for a decade. They are trained, not so much trained, but they are experienced combat fighters. They are ruthless and they are unbelievably dangerous. And they set a 30-minute drive from Haifa where much of my family lives. And the missiles, of course, Haifa is very easy for them to get to it. So one is just, part of the shock is just the closeness to it. This is my world. The second is just the barbarism of it. Now, we've seen barbarism in Russia and we've seen barbarism elsewhere. And maybe this here has hit home for two reasons. One is because, again, this is a place I know and this is a place I grew up in, including in the south of Israel, but it's also that Israel is a super civilized country. Like, you know, this is the West and very much the West. And this being overrun by the barbarians in the way that has happened is just truly shocking. And then, you know, the weakness, right? The very fact that with all the security forces and all the intelligence and everything that Israel has going forward, the fences, the walls, you guys like walls, the walls, Israel had the most sophisticated fencing system in the world, the most sophisticated surveillance equipment in the world. I mean, this is surveillance equipment that actually could look into the ground and make sure there were no tunnels under the fence, could identify tunnels, and yet it was completely overrun. It didn't matter one iota. It didn't help warn anybody. The troops were caught asleep in their underwear. Everybody was caught by surprise. There was nothing, nobody, nobody, not even five minutes of a prep time. Police were caught in the police station eating lunch with no weapons on them. We just were massacred. It's just the level of, I have to say, incompetence on the part of Israelis is just, I mean, I've seen incompetence. And when I was in the Israeli army, we experienced the incompetence of the military. We experienced friendly fire. You know, I know our friendly fire, you know, killed people and destroyed, but nothing on the level of this. Basically so here, an invasion of amateurs. It wasn't an armed, you know, but done well and yet they did well, but I think they were even surprised if there was success, but anyway, and nothing stopped them. And then those of you who are big on gun rights, yeah, gun rights, they will protect us from the evil state. Israelis are the most armed people anyway. Super armed. Didn't help them. Didn't help them. They had security in the music festival. All these kibbutzim and all these settlements, these villages and places in those border towns, they all have, all the households have weapons and they're all armed and it didn't help them. They were mowed down and slaughtered. Somebody's committed to murder. Somebody's committed to killing. You can live under the delusion that your gun in your basement is gonna help you. When civilization crumbles, when civilization ends around you, you know, it's gonna be very, very difficult for you to survive, very, very difficult to survive, even with a gun. So the scale, the devastation, the incompetence, their ability to get away with it. They're still in Israel. They're still Palestinian Hamas terrorists roaming around parts of Southern Israel, killing people, which is just unbelievable. This is almost two days after the event and they're still there. Israeli security forces, so just the sheer incompetence of this is just so shocking. I served in the Israeli army. I served in military intelligence. I served during a war. You know, I was part of, in a minor way I'd say, part of the planning of the potential invasion of Beirut, the Western part of Beirut where the Palestinians were. So fighting in a city, tunnels, all of that. Part of all of that. And this is just such an intelligence failure. I can't imagine what people that were doing my job, my wife's job today, what they were doing, what they were doing over the last week to have not seen this coming and have not. Now, it's gonna be interesting to find out, was this an intelligence failure? That is that they just not see it. It just wasn't there. Or was it that they did see it? They told the politicians and nothing was done about it. And that's gonna be one of the big, big questions that are gonna be asked out there. All right, so I just wanted to clarify that. Let's talk a little bit about the Gaza Strip. So what I wanna do is talk a little bit about Gaza, the history of it and the geography of it because I think the history of geography are important and it's gonna be very, very important as the news comes out in the days to come of any Israeli operations that you kind of have some kind of understanding of what's going on and where things are happening and why they're happening. I know they show that on TV, but generally encourage you not to watch TV news. But I wanna give you my sense of what is happening and why I think, why I'm fairly convinced that Israel is not gonna do what's necessary. Not gonna do what's necessary. And that's another part of kind of the shock is they're not doing it and they're not going to and it's just bewildering to me how even this will not shake, will not shake them out of the altruism, shaking them out of the fear, shake them out of the, I don't know. They can't think strategically, they can't think. So I wanna talk about Gaza and they don't wanna talk about where I think this is going, a big, big issue here which we'll talk about is Iran. There's more and more evidence to suggest Iran is behind this. We're seriously involved in the preparations for this. There's a washi journal article that came out like 15 minutes ago that basically identifies a particular meeting in Beirut in Lebanon a week ago between Hamas, Hezbollah, Hezbollah's military political wings and the Iranians where the final decision guided by Iran was made to go ahead. And if Iran's involved that means it's almost certain that Hezbollah will get involved which it makes it almost certain or highly likely that Iran will get involved out of Syria. And then the big question is gonna be what are the Arabs in the West Bank do? And what is Israeli Arabs, the more extreme radicalized, Islamist elements within Israel do? And then I also wanna talk about which I didn't talk about yesterday is, we have to tie this to religion, right? This is a religious movement. And let's not forget it, this is the same movement. And I wanna tie it here to what I said after 9-11. These Islamic totalitarians, these are jihadis. There's no difference between al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Islamic jihad, Hezbollah, they're all the same thing. And a big deal was made at the time of Shiite versus Sunnis and the Sunnis attack 9-11 and the Shiites, Sunnis when it comes to hating on the West, they all agree they have no real disagreements there. So Hamas is ISIS, it is al-Qaeda. They might disagree between each other on certain particular aspects but from our perspective, they are all the enemy. And if 9-11, if we had done the right thing during 9-11, the world would be a different and far better place today. Anyway, but that's, let me get to that. Let's do this, I'm gonna, let's take us to, let's go to, and I know we've got a lot of questions coming in, I appreciate that. Again, questions should be on topic, please. I try to make them $20 plus questions. I don't know how long we'll have today. But in any case, keep them coming, I appreciate that. And I appreciate the support you guys have shown over the last few days. Let me, let me pull up a couple of maps. The first map is just I wanna give you a map of Israel. Because I think, I mean, I hear people saying nuke Gaza and I just wanna give you a sense of what we're talking about. And the size, right? So this is the state of Israel. This is Israel. And I wanna give you a little bit of sense. And on the lower left corner, you have Egypt. So that is the border with Egypt. So blue is Israel called proper with the exception of the blue in the upper right-hand corner. The blue in the upper right-hand corner is the Golan Heights captured by Israel in 1967. So blue is pre-1967 borders with the exception of the Golan Heights. Green, the little green sliver right there on the lower left. That is the Gaza Strip. The blue over there is the Mediterranean. Of course, the red is the West Bank. Partially controlled by Israel, partially controlled by the Palestinian Authority. But generally under Israeli jurisdiction. On the right, you've got Jordan. On the very lower right, you've got Saudi Arabia. On the upper right, you've got Syria. And on the straight-up right, you've got Lebanon. So when I talk about Lebanon and the Hezbollah, that's where they are. They're right there on the upper right, in the top right. And you can see a river right at the top there. You can see kind of a river going through, a line going through. Between that river and the Israeli border, that is Hezbollah land. That is where they're based. That's where the missiles are. That's where the troops are. They have armored vehicles there. They're UN troops, they're supposedly to keep the peace. But the UN troops have already withdrawn and already cowering away in their bases. They don't want to get involved. They don't want to have anything to do with this. In Syria, on the upper right-hand corner, that is where Iran has significant troops and in military bases. Of course, Russia controls that area together with the Syrian government, Russia. And of course, a bunch of different elements fighting the Syrian government. But that is potentially very volatile. Unlikely that you see any action out of Egypt. Unlikely that you see any action out of Jordan. I think they're out of this and they're gonna stay put. They both have peace agreements with Israel. They're not particularly friendly, but they're peace agreements. They're not gonna intervene. They have no, they're gonna stay out of this. If anything, I think Egyptian intelligence is probably assisting the Israelis right now. All right, so this is kind of a big picture. You can see how tiny Gaza is. Now, oh, just to give you one more sense. If you take the most northern tip of Israel, right there, right next to Golan Heights, right at the top there, close to Lebanon and Syria. And if you had a highway that went from there all the way to the southern tip, the southern tip is called, there's a town there called Elat. I actually spent some of my very early years in Elat. I have very, very fond memories of that. Anyway, that's the Red Sea and that's Elat. If you build a highway from that all the way down straight, that's a five and a half, six hour drive. That's it. Across, if you go from Jordan to the Mediterranean, depending on where, right, it's anyway from 40 minutes to an hour drive. Just gives you a sense, Israel total with the West Bank and Gaza is smaller than New Jersey, right? So just to give you a sense of how small this place is, the Gaza Strip is not that far from Tel Aviv. The Israeli towns all around the Gaza Strip. So you can nuke the Gaza Strip. I mean, that's absurd. The radiation would impact most of Israel. All right, let's zoom in to the Gaza Strip. So this is a zoomed in Gaza Strip. Again, to the left, you've got the Mediterranean. On the bottom left, you've got Egypt. All the rest here is Israel with the Gaza Strip there. All these, you've got this dotted line that defines the border of Gaza. Everything outside that border line is Israel, except for the bottom left. And all these names, you know, from the lower left near Yitzchak, Yesha, Magan, Ain, Habzor, Baeri, Kfar Maimon, Shokada, all of these places are not as CNN and others describe it as really sediments, which gives you the implication of like West Bank settlements. No, this is what, this is territory that's been Israel's since the beginning of Israel. So these are Israeli towns. These are Israeli villages. Sderot, which is at the top right, relative top right, is the largest city, Israeli town city in this area. And they're still fighting, as we speak right now, in Sderot, there's still Palestine, Hamas, terrorists in the town of Sderot, and they're trying to get them rid of. All right, everything within the dotted line is the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is one, in a sense, one big metropolitan area. At the top, you've got Gaza, which is Gaza City, and at the bottom, you've got Rafa, which is part of this. You've got refugee camps, or what are called refugee camps in between. But you know, and you can see that some of them are named something camp. But basically, this is a densely populated, heavily, heavily, heavily populated area. I didn't look this up, but let's see, population, Gaza Strip, it's, yeah, I was gonna say two to three millions. Two million people live in this tiny little, in this tiny little strip of land, heavily very dense. A lot of this on narrow roads, narrow streets. If you wanna get a sense of this, watch season three of Fauda, season three of Fauda. And you can see the claustrophobia, how narrow this is, heavily, heavily populated, two million people in a tiny little strip of land. And Hamas basically has tunnels, basements, throughout this, they have had years to entrench themselves, to build this up, to booby trap it, to place ammunition or weapons in different locations, anti-tank weaponry, and every other kind of weaponry all along this, and it's not just Hamas. You've got Islamic jihad in here. You've got elements of ISIS and al-Qaeda. You've got, of course, the PLO. You've got every Islamist, militant group represented here, and they're all working together right now to fortify this, and the longer Israel waits, the harder this is going to be. I mean, it's shocking that they haven't already either flattened the place, which they're not gonna do. They're not gonna flatten it, just a reality. They should, but they're not going to. But they haven't answered this yet. And they're prepping, they're making plans, and they're getting their latest intelligence. But the longer they wait, the more time the Hamas and everybody else has to prepare. So this is incredibly dense. I wanna give you the sense, incredibly dense. This is gonna be street, house to house fighting, window to window fighting, high rises. I mean, this'll be, if Israel enters this by ground, this'll be some of the most brutal fighting you have ever seen. Anyway, this'll make the U.S. fighting in Batta City in Baghdad seem like child's play. This is gonna be so much worse. And again, they've had a long time to prepare for this. Israel, in order to mitigate that, is gonna probably start at the north. North of Gaza City, Beit Lahia, you can see it up there. This is slightly lower density, and not as high rise. They've already told the people in this area to evacuate south, to leave their homes, and that's typical Israeli, get people out so that when you bomb the place, you're killing nobody. You can't win wars without killing people. Israel is going to try to flatten this area as much as possible from the air, and then move troops into it. And as they move, they're gonna move section by section by section. They're gonna move slowly. Every section, they're gonna demand, they're gonna tell people evacuate, move to X. This is a safe location. And they're gonna flatten it, and then they're gonna move the tanks in. And they're gonna do this systematically. Now, where are the hostages? Hamas has anywhere between 50 to several hundreds hostages. We don't know exactly. Again, the Israeli government has been unbelievably disoriented and disorganized. But they've got hostages. They're not gonna keep going in one place. They're gonna keep them in 100 places. They're gonna keep them all over the Gaza Strip in basements and tunnels and places. But they're gonna put them also in places which Israel is gonna have to destroy in order to actually get to Hamas, which means you're likely to see Israeli bombs killing Israeli citizens. As tragic and as horrific as that is, that is the cost of war. There is no way around it. Israel should not hesitate. It cannot hesitate. If it could put special forces in and free some of the hostages, they should do it. But the likelihood of that succeeding is very, very, very low. As it is, there are special forces troops right now, as we speak, on the ground in Gaza. If you watch Fowder, that Fowder unit in that TV series exists, it's a real unit. It is in Gaza Strip, doing whatever it can right now to either find hostages, relieve them. But also, one of the things the special forces are doing is they're trying to locate senior Hamas officials and they're kidnapping them. You're going to see the kidnapping of as many senior Hamas officials as Israel can with an attempt to swap them later. And then kill them, I, you know, I, yeah. Anyway, they're gonna try to do everything they can to get the citizens out and we'll see how that works. Egypt will facilitate some of the intermediary and the United States is going to be a middleman in trying to negotiate a prisoner release. What, Hamas has zero motivation to do this. You know, one of the dangers is Hamas is gonna try to get these prisoners out and over to Iran and then, you know, they could get six billion dollars for prisoner from the Biden administration. All right, so that is the map. You know, my point of doing, of showing you this is primarily just to give you a sense of just the size, the complexity, the difficulty, the danger. And here I want to say something. I want to say something which I just, I personally want to say, you can, you know, take it for what it is. You know, over the next few days, and I've said this about the Ukrainian war, but I was a soldier in the Israeli army, so I feel this more personally than I do with regard to Ukraine and Russia, that it applies to any war, in particularly any war where there are clear good guys and here there's unequivocally good guys and bad guys. And I'll do another show. Well, I'll talk about good guys and bad guys in the Israeli-Palestinian issue. If you can't see it already, I'll have to explain it and break it down for you. And some of it will come across when I do the history of Gaza in a minute. But let me say this. Thousands of young Israeli, primarily men, are going to be sent into Gaza in tanks, in infantry units, in special forces units. Many of them are conscripted, but the reality, many of them are conscripted, many of them are going to be reserves, older, and one could argue, volunteer if you're a reserve and you don't really want to serve, you're not going to. And the reality is, it doesn't just have a conscription, but the reality for Israel is that most of these people would be volunteering anyway. We're going to have thousands of young men putting their life at risk, going into some of the most horrific conditions to engage in battle possible in any war. With the political leadership, and it horrifies me to say this, but it is true, a political leadership that cares more about seeming to be humane and fighting the war under the rules of so-called just war theory and caring about what the international community thinks of it more than they do about the lives of these kids. And these kids are going to go in there and be asked to do the toughest job possible, the toughest physical job possible. Oops, what am I doing? Sorry, I didn't mean to do that. Toughest job possible in unknown conditions. They're not really trained for house-to-house fighting, they're not trained for urban fighting. Somebody who's trained on tanks in the Israeli army, you're trained for desert fighting or the Golan Heights open terrain fighting, it's almost impossible to train somebody for house-to-house urban fighting. I mean, if you think about anybody, I mean, think about these kids and think about what they're going to have to go through and think about how many of them are not coming back. Are not coming back. I mean, the casualties are going to be significant. And yes, it's horrible when Hamas kills civilians and everybody makes a big deal out of killing civilians and it truly is horrific and barbaric. It's still horrific and barbaric when young men have to die when they shouldn't. The 18, 19, 20 year olds, I mean, they'll be older as well, the reserves, but they shouldn't have to be doing this. They shouldn't have to be, this is all on Hamas' hands. This is all, the blood is all on them. I mean, it's on their pieces, on Israel's hands as well, but the essential is the evil he has, not just the killing of civilians, the evil is every death of an Israeli from now until the end of this war. And to the extent that there are innocent Palestinians, and they are, they're Palestinians who hate Hamas, they're Palestinians who resent everything about Hamas, to the extent that they're innocent Palestinians, every death of those innocent Palestinians is on the hands of Hamas. Don't forget that. Don't let anybody convince you otherwise. The responsibility for all the deaths that are gonna come from now on, and that have occurred on the hands of Hamas, we can settle with you philosophically with these really politicians and everybody else later on, but it is their evil that is the cause of the tragedies that are coming. Let me see. What else did I wanna say about that? Yeah, I was gonna say this later, but I wanna tell you the story quickly. God, time is passing. I wanna tell you the story quickly, just to give you a sense, when I said they were innocent Palestinians and they are, I got an Uber ride a couple of hours ago for my hotel to go rent a car, renting a car. And I'm riding an Uber and my wife calls me, so I talk to my wife on the phone, and the driver turns to me and says, are you Israeli? And I say, yeah, because you heard the Hebrew, you heard us talking Hebrew. And I said, yes. And he said, I am really sorry for what's happened, the Palestinians, the Iranians, it's just horrible. And he had a really heavy accent, and this goes to some of the nonsense being said about immigration on the chat. And I said, where are you from? And he literally got teary-eyed. I mean, he got emotional. And he said, I'm from Iran. And I'm sorry. I mean, God. I mean, that was a powerful moment for me anyway. And this is just 2000. He gets it. He left Iran. He knows why he left Iran. He knows the barbarism of the regime that he left. He's now an American. I wished him good luck being an American as I left. He was embarrassed, ashamed, of what people were doing in the name of his people. And the Iranians like that, and the Palestinians like that, I've seen images from Iran of the regime trying to fly the Palestinian flag during a football game recently, or today, I think, and the crowd booing it and demanding that it be put down. There's a big, in a campus in Tehran. Now, I don't know if this video is from now or from a month ago or five years ago. Who knows? But I saw a photo, a video of, they had the Israeli and American flag drawn on the street for everybody to trample on. And the Iranian students were purposefully walking on the sides and trying not to step on the flag. In other words, showing respect. Again, defiance, defiance of the evil regime. I mean, first of all, it takes courage you have to respect that, but also it gives you a sense that, for those of you, they're gonna be innocent people on the other side who die. And it's sad when innocent people die. It's inevitable, and it's on Hamas' hands, but there will be people who die and there are people who are innocent. And it's not, you should never take a collectivistic approach, even when you realize that a lot of people are going to die who are innocent. All right. Yes, quickly let's do a little bit of Gaza's history. So Gaza, when Israel was founded in 1948, what did I do? Sorry. When Israel was founded in 1948, in 1949, it was invaded by all these Arab countries. And in 1949, there was a ceasefire, a truce agreement signed. A part of that agreement, Gaza, that green bit that you saw before was part of Egypt. So that was deemed a part of Egypt and was under Egypt control. Israel occupied Gaza when it took the Sinai desert 1956 as part of the Sinai operation, coordinated with the French and the British around the Suez Canal. Israel had a reason to invade the Sinai and to invade Gaza in those days because there were terrorist attacks. Sound familiar? Coming out of that region. And they went in and they cleaned up and they got rid of the terrorists. And then when the US forced Israel and Britain and France to retreat, Israel retreated and again left the Gaza Strip in the hands of the Egyptians. In 1967 and the Six Day War again, and in a final thing, Israel gained control of the Gaza Strip in the Sinai desert. And in the 1970s and the 1980s, there was pretty much what you would call an open border between Gaza and Israel. In those days, Gazans would work in Israel. They, a million Palestinians every night slept in Israel. They would come in, they would work, they would go home for the weekends. Palestinians were primarily engaged in productive activity and trying to make their lives and their families' lives better. This is before Yesor Al-Fah came back. This is before they became Islam-asized. The Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were some of the most secular Arabs in the Middle East. This was, I think, a blown opportunity for Israel and for the Palestinians to actually come to a settlement and come to some agreement around what the long-term solution was. Because once you get into the 1980s and certainly the 1990s, what you see is constant radicalization of the Islamists, becoming more religious, but also becoming more nationalist. And once Yesor Al-Fah comes to the West Bank in 1994, it really is all over. But just to give you more on Gaza, in 1979 Israel and Egypt reached a peace agreement. A part of that peace agreement, Israel withdrew us from the Sinai Desert and returns the Sinai Desert to Egypt. This is the part of Egypt that Israel captured during the 1967 war. But the Egyptians do not want the Gaza Strip. It's too complicated for them. They're not interested in ruling over it. It's too densely populated and basically they agree to leave it in the hands of Israel, let Israel handle this problem. They see it already that this is gonna be too much to handle. This is gonna be too big of a problem for them. As I said, during the 1980s, basically the border was open. There was free flow of people in and out of Gaza. Israelis used to go to Gaza. People, Gaza came out. Periodically, there would be violence. I don't know much of this history, but during the 1970s at some point, there was kind of an uprising in Gaza. Aria-Sharon was sent in and shut it down again. And for the most part, it was fairly peaceful during this period. In 1987, it's the beginning of the end of that relatively peaceful period. In 1987, Palestinians living in the West Bank in Gaza started what is called the First Ittifada against Israel. And this is the same time that Hamas was founded in this mid to late 1980s. The Hamas is basically a spinoff from the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Brotherhood. I have a course on the Muslim Brotherhood. If you look at my course on Islamism. Horrifically enough, but true, therefore we need to deal with it. Israel was instrumental in the founding of Hamas. Israel viewed the Muslim Brotherhood as a potential counter force to the PLO and to Yasser Al-Fat. They viewed the Muslim Brotherhood as religious and therefore probably peaceful as compared to the nationalist terrorism of Yasser Al-Fat and their more secular Palestinians. Big mistake. So Israel was to some extent responsible for the founding even though it repudiated that very quickly. In 1983, you get peace between Al-Fat and Israel peace in quotes because there was never any intention of peace. Hamas opposed this deal, launched a series of suicide bombings in Israel. Indeed, throughout the 1990s, the more Israel negotiated with the Palestinians about settlement, the more terrorist attacks they were. It was a horrible period. In 2000, there were negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians again at Camp David. And the Palestinians were basically offered 90 to 95% of everything they wanted. Yasser Al-Fat said no. And when he got back to his headquarters, he launched the second Intifada which was unbelievably brutal and bloody and horrific, some of you might remember, buses blowing up, restaurants blowing up, suicide bombings left and right. It was truly a disaster. Both, and this was in Gaza and the West Bank but in Israel proper, in Israel proper. In September, during the second Intifada, Ali Sharon, Ali Sharon was the prime minister. And in 2005, he decided that there was no point in staying in Gaza. Gaza was too dangerous, there was no way to control it or would be too costly for Israel to control. Basically, he announced a withdrawal, a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. Now, this wasn't just troops. During the 1970s and 80s and 90s, towns would be built inside the Gaza Strip. Towns, Jewish population, these towns were thriving. They had brought kind of their knowledge of agriculture, of planting in the desert, of building industry and these settlements or towns were thriving in the Gaza Strip, in among all the Arabs, they were thriving. And but the Israeli government decided that to protect those towns from the growing menace that was the Palestinians, from the growing threat of violence was too expensive, was too difficult, was too risky. And they basically, by the use of force, courage, they basically went in there and dragged people away from their homes, people did not want to leave. They dragged them away from their homes, they put them on buses, they put them in handcuffs, and they drove them out. And the entire Israeli military withdrew from Gaza, established the lines of defense, and said, okay, it's yours Palestinians, do with it as you will. Now, a couple of things here that are important. And Christian, if you're listening to this, turn this historical section into a video on its own. Whoops, what did I just do? One second, sorry, I just closed the window, I didn't mean to close. A few things that are important here to note about this. At the time, I was outraged, many people were outraged, but I was outraged, complained about this, and this is what people told me. This is what the excuse was. Look, now it's clean. We've given them in a sense their own country. Now if they attack us, nobody will be able to complain if we go in there and just crush them. Because before we were occupying them, so we couldn't crush them. People, everybody in the world would complain. But now, they're separate, they're in their own country, we can crush them. So anytime, if they do anything, believe me, we will go in there and crush them. How naive, how ignorant people are. So what is it, 18 years later, it still hasn't happened, and we'll see if it happens this time. Still hasn't happened in spite of all the terrorist attacks, the rocket launchers, everything else, crushing has not happened. And so that's the first thing. What was the second thing I was gonna say about the overthrow? Yes, 2005 is an important period of time. This is a period where the neo-conservatives, Bush, are driving the, we can turn the Middle East into a democratic place. Bring democracy to the Middle East. Forward strategy for freedom, it was called technically. And if you're interested, I have a whole talk and it turned into an essay that is available online, written with, I think this one was written with Ilan Giorno. Forward strategy for freedom, which I gave at the time, and criticizing the Bush strategy, criticizing the neo-conservatives, nevermind today I'm called a neo-conservative constantly, criticizing the neo-conservatives, and this whole idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Anyway, and you could find it, so look it up online, forward strategy for freedom, you're on broke and you'll find it. As part of that strategy, the Bush administration insisted before Israel would, was it before, after Israel would drew the troops around the same time Israel would do its troops in 2005 that the Palestinians have elections. Israel said, okay, we'll allow the Palestinians have election, because this was gonna westernize them because you know, you know, that the essence of Western civilization is voting. Voting is what makes you Western. This both the left and the right in America, at least some people in the right believe. And this is what the Bush administration believed. They brought it to Iraq, they brought it everywhere. If you vote, you're civilized. So they held an election. Now Hamas said, okay, you're gonna have an election, we're gonna run. And Israel said, oh wait a minute, we're not gonna allow Hamas to run, they might win. They can't run. This is, you can't have a democratic election where one party literally says in its founding documents and every document says that they're dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel. We're not gonna allow that. And the Bush administration said, no, no, no, no. If you're gonna have democracy, you have to have democracy. You have to allow everybody to vote. You know, and any party can run. You can't limit the, you have to allow Hamas to run. And the Bush administration said, don't worry, the Palestinians are never gonna vote for Hamas. Hamas, they're crazy. They're extremists, they're Islamists. Like al-Qaeda, nobody's gonna vote for them. Imagine allowing al-Qaeda to run for election. And making a big deal out of it. In the name of democracy. I mean, I got it. I mean, I was outraged then and I've kind of forgotten about that. But I'm now, you know, all my hatred of the Bush administration is coming back to me because you could see the origins of all this right there in the response to 9-11 and then the stupid strategy that emboldened Hamas. They ran the election. Guess who won? Hamas won. Hamas won. Bush administration was shocked. Israel was shocked. And the consequence of that election was like in all civilized Western countries. It was a civil war. Because the PLO, you know, was not gonna let Hamas war and Hamas was not gonna give in. They wanted to be the dominant political party. So basically the result of that civil war was Hamas took over Gaza. In Gaza they got an overwhelming majority. It wasn't even close. And the PLO took over the West Bank even though PLO would lose the West Bank vote for Hamas. Today, if there was an action, the PLO manages to not have more elections. No elections since 2005, right? Because you only have an election if you know who's gonna win. You don't have an election where the people you don't like win. That's the Bush administration for you. That's Republicans. That's Neoconservatism. Placing darkrocy above right and wrong. And that's why Hamas was Gaza. So Hamas is the ruling party of Gaza. Now let's talk a little bit about who Hamas is. You know, Hamas is the, yeah, it turns out the election where after Israel left the Gaza Strip. So the election were in January 2006. And Hamas won the parliamentary elections. And but the PLO wouldn't give it to them. So they had the civil war and Hamas won and seized control in Gaza. They lost basically control in the rest of the West Bank. Hamas, what is Hamas? Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. It is an Islamic organization. It is an organization dedicated to Sharia law. It is al-Qaeda all over again. There's no real difference. Remember, after 9-11, my view was, identify the enemy's Islamic totalitarianism. Then make a list of all Islamic totalitarian organizations and regimes and eliminate them. That should have been the policy of the Bush administration. Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, those are all enemies of the United States because they're all the declared enemy in 9-11. They were all part of al-Qaeda in one way or another. It's certainly ideological. So I encourage you at the time, the American administration should have unleashed Israel on Hamas and Hezbollah, dismantled them, destroyed them, shredded them. Of course, none of that. They couldn't even say they were Islamists after 9-11. The massive betrayal of the American people by the Bush administration. All right. Anyway, since then, they've been on enough, on a gun, on again, many wars in the Gaza Strip where they launch rockets, Israel retaliates, Israel actually puts in troops on the ground, then withdraws, and it's just been a disaster because Israel refuses to commit itself to victory, refuses to commit itself to re-establish the authority over the Gaza Strip to re-establish its rule over the Gaza Strip. Israel does not want 2 million Palestinians under its rule. It refuses to dismantle and destroy and eliminate Hamas once and for all. They'll kill Hamas leaders, but if you're Hamas leader that's killed, then you want to rise as like, all of you Trump lovers who thought that when Trump killed Soleimani, this was the greatest thing ever. There's a new Soleimani right now who is the guy who met with them in Beirut to authorize this attack yesterday. You cannot win by chopping off the head of the snake. This is a snake that can grow new heads all the time. There's no end to how many new snakes you can grow. You've got to kill the entire snake, not just its head. So Israel's killed its leaders, interestingly enough, but not too surprising. Israel refuses to kill, and has refused to kill, it's, let me just fix something, this is not working. Israel refuses to kill Hamas's, oh, because it's not plugged in, what am I doing? All right, never plugged that in. Okay, that's all right. Israel refuses to kill the political leadership of Hamas. They only killed the militant. Another huge mistake, and the political leaders live outside of the Gaza Strip. They should be found, they should be assassinated now, today, tomorrow, whatever means necessary. Now Israel will not do that, because many of them in these countries that we have Abraham accords with, and supposedly there's peace with them. If there was peace, then these countries would actually hand Hamas operatives over. Now most of the main Qatar, which Israel does not have peace with, fine, tell Qatar that wherever they're living is gonna be bombed unless they hand them over. Should be no peace with Qatar. I mean, there's no peace with Qatar, but there's no, Qatar's at war with Israel, fine, let's be at war with Qatar. Go after those people, kill them. Every single one of them should be killed. And if that means, you know, taking down a building, a hotel, an apartment building at Qatar, so be it. If you are hosting my enemy, God help you. Now in this case, in this case Israel will not do that, unfortunately. All right, so, you know, again, there being war after war after, you know, not war, it has been attack after attack after attack, Israel has done nothing, done nothing to Hamas, nothing to the Palestinian Gaza. And that's what, that's how we got, that's what we got, what we got. All right, what else do I wanna say about what's happening? I wanna say something about military strategy and I wanna say something about libertarians. So let me first say something about military strategy. Let me just say that we got a lot of people watching right now, if you gain value from the show, if you find it interesting, if you gain any kind of value for it, I'd appreciate your support, financial support, you can do that, of course, you should like the show, there's a like button there, that would be great, just like that helps with the algorithm and so on. Share this show, that is huge, we wanna get as much viewership of these shows as possible, we wanna get my views out there. And three, if you can financially support the show, you can use the super chat button underneath to ask a question, if you don't wanna ask a question, that's fine, you can use it to do a sticker and just support the show and immensely appreciate it. We've almost got 400 people watching live, it would be great if a certain percentage of you, those of you who value what I'm doing, actually expressed your support through a contribution. All right, let me say something about military strategy and in this military geopolitical strategy, the longer Israel waits, the harder this will be, not only because of what the Hamas is doing in Gaza and preparing, but also because of international pressure, the world is not gonna tolerate Israel going all out against Gaza. But right now, the world's in shock. Right now, the world is willing to give Israel some breathing room. It's willing to give, in the next few days, what Israel does in the Gaza Strip, the world will just accept. The more time goes past, the more the European Union, the US administration, the left in the United States, which has already sent messages, if you've seen some of the leftist congressmen, already model equivalents between Israel and Hamas. Israel needs to act quickly while it still has the attention of the world, while everybody's still in shock and it needs to act quickly, swiftly and devastatingly. It can't think of this campaign as a month-long campaign. It cannot think of this campaign as slowly taking over territory and being methodological. It cannot do that. It needs to bring overwhelming force to bear as quickly as possible, every minute they wait. And it's so, to me right now, it's so disappointing to see that nothing has happened today. I mean, there's some airstrikes, significant airstrikes. They're prepping the ground. But they're prepping a ground to what looks to me like a prolonged, systematic, slow movement. Now, I know they're worried about casualties and they have to be and they should be. They're worried about the hostages. They should stop worrying. For all intents and purposes, the hostages are dead. The Israeli government can do nothing for them at this point. All Israel needs to do now is make sure that this never happens again. At the same time, particularly given Iran's involvement, there's no question that the Northern border is going to light up soon. That Hezbollah is going to get involved as soon as Israel enters Gaza. Why wait? Pre-empt. There's already some shooting at the border this morning. But what are you waiting for? Israel has the air force, the capacity, what it should tell, what it should announce now. If it doesn't want to kill, if it's worried about civilians, it should announce today that anybody living to the south of the Litany River should evacuate north. Any civilian living south of the Litany River should get in their car and go north. They have 24 hours to evacuate. After that, Israel will feel free to bomb, to destroy everything and anything south of Litany River. That's the Litany River and the Israeli border, that area. They have to do it. They're gonna do it anyway. It's gonna have to be done. So do it preemptively. Do it now. Don't wait and give them the initiative. And then you can tell the Russians and tell the Syrians that if they get involved, Israel will take care of them. So keep that, Syrians, Russians, keep the Iranians out of this because you will suffer if the Iranians get involved. Israel has, in my view, the most, I mean, God after today, who knows, but potentially the most competent, most technologically advanced military force, probably in planet Earth. Maybe second to the United States, but I'm not even sure it's second to the United States. The United States has obviously overwhelming numbers and in certain technology departments, much, much better. But generally, Israel has, compared to anybody else in the Middle East, clearly Israel is a dominant military force. It needs to use that fact. And it needs to crush its enemies and it needs to do it now. And again, right now, the world is gonna give it space. The world is gonna give it space. Even the Arab world might give it some space. That won't last very long. It's gonna last hours, maybe days, it will not last weeks. So I'm hoping, I'm hoping that Israel's getting ready for this. I'm hoping that by sometime tomorrow morning in Israel, there will be a national unity government that the two opposition parties gets and I forget his name. We'll join the existing government and they will together have the courage to basically start this war and start it big and fast. And it's not gonna be a six hour war. It might not even be a six day war. But God help us, there's no God, but help us if this becomes a six week war. It's not gonna go well if it's a six war. And this is horrifying. Z, racist says it's horrifying. It truly is horrifying. And the kind of war this is gonna be is horrifying. So be prepared. This is gonna be large casualties on Israel's side, certainly on the Palestinian side. There's just no way around it. All right, yeah, lastly, I wanna say something about God. So yesterday I was on Twitter. Some of you might have noticed that. I wrote up a lot of my thoughts on what was going on on Twitter. I wrote up, as you know, my views and my positions. And part of that was looking to see what was going on on Twitter. And what you find on Twitter, not surprising at all. Not surprising at all, completely consistent with everything else and certainly consistent with what we saw with the Ukraine war. Is the number of libertarians. Now the new right has a problem because the new right has to be pro-Israel because the evangelicals are pro-Israel. So they're torn. On the one hand, many of them anti-Semites and they hate Israel, but they can't piss off the evangelicals too much. So the new right is generally even JD Vance and those kind of people are kind of hesitantly for Israel, right? But the libertarians don't give a shit. They're against everybody. Indeed, the libertarians are calling out the new right saying, wait a minute, we thought you were part of our anti-war group. How come you're supporting Israel? We thought you got it on Ukraine. Anyway, Dave Smith, who is the, what is it, the chairman of the Libertarian Party now, the presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, came out with a post basically making moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel. He was then defended by hundreds of libertarians. I called him and everybody else, all these libertarians out on it. I called them names as was appropriate, but the ugliness that came out as a consequence, some anti-Semitism, but mainly just, and this is the anarcho-capitalist. This is the, this part of the, I think they're, I hate to say this, but like the blind capitalist of the world, I think, better, but these are the people who hate the state above all. And Hamas is a non-state actor. Israel is a state. Israel must be worse. Complete moral equivalency between the two. I'm a collectivist because I want to defend myself and I'm not gonna actually go through a questionnaire to see who's my, who's innocent and who's not in defending myself. I'm actually gonna go out there and defend myself. And that requires killing and that requires killing of civilians and innocent as well. The moral relativism, which again should be no surprise, but again, I'm saying it here because I know many of you are sympathetic libertarians. Many of you wanna be tent with libertarians and with the new right. It is so disgusting. After the images and the pictures and what happened yesterday to draw moral equivalency, not to be able to see it. I mean, to their credit, I had people in Poland, libertarians come up to me in Poland recently, come and say, you know, after the Russian invasion in Poland, I'm no longer on ANCAP. After the Russian invasion in Poland, I repudiated Mario Rockbaard and all of that because they got it. Reality slapped them in the face. But Dave Smith and his ilk among libertarians, reality doesn't matter to them. All that drives them is hatred. All that drives them is a hatred, hatred of quote, the state, hatred of government, hatred of civilization, hatred of progress, hatred of the good for being the good. What do they hate Israel? What do they gotta get Israel? It's a good, it's decent place. Decent place to live, good place to live. People thrive there. That's why they hate it. Don't let them fool you. It's not because Israel has high taxes, right? Taxes, right? People are being butchered, raped, tortured, but taxes are high, so Israel's not a good country. So if Hamas does it to Israelis, eh, they have high taxes. They regulate. You know, and then of course, oh, they occupy, they oppress, which is a historical, ignorant nonsense. So, you know, my opinion of libertarians, particularly of that ilk, von Mises Center ilk, von Mises Institute ilk, has been about as low as one could have, and it got lower. So really disgusting, really horrific. Oh, Scott, Scott Houghton, which is their farm policy expert, expert, completely ignorant. Oh, it's all Israel's fault anyway. All of this was Israel's fault. I mean, just, and complaining about all the right wingers on the stream, you know, defending Israel. These are monsters. The imam, to share a tent with them? I wouldn't share anything with them. I wouldn't share pencil with them. So, no, I mean, and I got some emails. I have to say after that rant, I did on, what do you call it, on Twitter, Twitter, I got a private message from somebody at Kato, not to be able to mention his name, but somebody at Kato saying, thank you, Yvonne. Thank you for taking these bastards on. I got somebody who's affiliated with the Atlas Network, the Atlas Network saying, what happened, Yvonne? Why, what's the rant? And I told him and he said, yeah, I mean, those guys are just horrible evil. So again, there are better libertarians, but why they share the same name with these people, with these ugly, horrible human beings? I have no idea, no idea. So yes, I think Dave Smith has gone down, in my opinion, dramatically, wasn't very high to begin with, but very low in my opinion, and Haunted, who again has been, it's like a mouthpiece of the Iranian regime. It's like this guy has written books and articles and give talks, excusing anything the Iranians do. I wonder what he thinks about, or what he's said about the women who would like not to have their faces covered. But Scott Haunted, yeah, I have new appreciation of how low these people really are. They are not our friends. They are not our allies. They do not work for the same cause as us. They are not pro-liberty. They would no liberty if it slapped them in the face. They are not pro-freedom. They don't care about freedom. Anybody who's even moderately, Hamas, Israel, no big deal, difference is not pro-freedom. They have no conception of what freedom is. They have no understanding what freedom is. Indeed, I think at the essence, at the core of the Nalco-Capitalist project is a complete disregard for what freedom is. So anyway, for those of you who still want a big tent, you could go, please leave enjoying that tent. Don't bother me with that nonsense. All right, let's see. You would think libertarians should be against unprovoked, but they think it's a cycle of violence. They say they sound exactly like the extreme left. They sound exactly like the wacky left. There's no difference between them when it comes to these kind of issues. They're just as bad, just as bad. All right, great. We have 400 people watching. Let me just remind everybody to like the show before you leave, please. It doesn't cost you anything. Just press that like button. It helps a lot, helps with the algorithms. It helps the show. It helps get this to a wider audience. Those of you who wanted to get to a wider audience, please consider doing that. Please, those of you who would like to support the show financially, please, you can use the super chat. You can use the sticker feature just to make a contribution to the show, to make a contribution to what I do and to have me keep doing this and having shows on a regular basis and special shows when events tragic, in this case, events like this happen. All right, let's see. See, yeah, 400 people watching. That's great. It's sad that it has to come to these kind of events to bring everybody together. Let me see. Yeah, good. All right, so I think yesterday's show and today's show, today I think I gave a little bit more context on Gaza. A little bit more educational context for everybody, but I think this needs to be matched by yesterday's shows kind of, you know, moral outrage, which has. But, you know, Israeli politicians, the ones who've compromised since 2005 and even before that, I wish they will pay the price. I fear that they will not. Netanyahu being first among them, he needs to pay the price. I mean, I don't think he can resign in the middle of this, but first thing, this is resolved one way or another. He needs to resign and never, never, never be involved in politics again. He has betrayed Israel and deceived Israelis and stabbed the country in the back and just betrayed, just betrayed everything and he should be out and, yeah, anyway. And I'd be, by the way, right, my view of Netanyahu hasn't really changed in 20 years. And I know a lot of Americans who never understood why I was so anti-Netanyahu because I listened to him in Hebrew and you guys only listen to him in English and English is very good. Hebrew is terrible and in reality. Okay, a couple of other things I want you to do. If you're interested in Israel, if you're interested in what's going on, if you're interested in the conflict and how it's evolved and who's the good guys and who's the bad guys, the one book you should read, the one book you should read is Ilan Jona's book What Justice Demands, is that the name of the book? Yes, What Justice Demands. So please go to Amazon right now. Let's get this book up on the Amazon scale. Buy the book, read the book, right, get engaged. The other book edited by, that one is Ilan wrote. The other one edited by Ilan Jona, which I think many of you have, but if you don't have, you should have. God, what was it? I'm so out of everything today that I can't remember the most basic stuff. But this one is the 9-11, right? The book of edited essays of Ilan's on 9-11, winning the unwinnable war. If you really want to understand what's going on, wow, it's that expensive on Kindle. That's ridiculous, it's $37 on Kindle. You can get a paperback for 20 bucks, get a hard copy, you can get it used, but you know, Kindle is great. You know, so get a copy, winning the unwinnable war. It has three essays by me, one of them I think with me and Alex Epstein, two with me and Ilan Jono. It has a bunch of other essays, they're excellent. You'll get a sense. Oh, I didn't talk about Iran's role in this or what Israel needs to do. But if you think my view of what Israel should do to Qatar, look, if the United States will not do anything about Iran and clearly the United States will not, Israel needs to figure out what to do about Iran. And again, do it and do it devastatingly. Maximex asks in a question from yesterday that I didn't get to answer, but I'll answer now. What's your opinion on Israel supporting Azerbaijan in the war in Armenia? I do not have much of a position about the war in Armenia between Armenia and Azerbaijan. I just don't know, I haven't studied the history. I don't know who started it. I don't know who's at fault. I don't know who the good guys and who the bad guys are. I suspect that on a scale, the Armenians are better than Azerbaijanis just because Armenia is a freer country. At least it's a democratic country as Azerbaijan is now. But both the secular Azerbaijan, in spite of being Muslim, is not a religious country. And I don't know, they're all tribal. It's a very tribal area. I don't know if they even are anybody who's right or wrong and whether the ethnic cleansing that is going on there is justified or not justified or any of that. I don't really have a position on Azerbaijan versus Armenia. It's likely the Armenians are right in those areas or not, but I'm not convinced of that. But look, Israel is in a tricky position. Israel is a tiny country, a strong military, but a tiny country with no allies, no real allies in the entire region. Turkey, eh, not an ally. Egypt and Jordan, which Israel has peace with, not allies. The only ally Israel really has is the United States and maybe some European countries. And generally those allies like to be hands up. Azerbaijan is a country that is willing to ally itself with Israel. And it has direct flights, it has economic ties, but it also has significant military ties. Now this is really important for Israel from a geopolitical perspective. Because Azerbaijan sits to the north of Iran. It has a border with Iran in the north. It makes, to the extent that Israel can use Azeri territory to go into Iran. It is super strategic for Israel. And I think that's the sense in which Israel supporting Azerbaijan makes a lot of sense. Israel, my view is, and I have no intelligence about this, but my view is that Israel has a significant presence of drones in Azerbaijan ready to attack various facilities in Iran from the north, from an unexpected location. There was at some point rumors that Israel literally had planes on the ground in Azerbaijan, ready to attack nuclear facilities in Iran, which would be a short trip. It's hard for me to believe that the Azeris would actually allow that and place themselves at risk of being invaded by Iran, but maybe they're convinced that they can defend themselves. But look, Azerbaijan is a key strategic ally of Israel. And from Israel's context, and I can understand it, to hell with Armenians, we need to survive. And if survival means allowing ourselves with the Azeris in the short run, so be it. Azeris not a long-term threat to Israel. So that's the context in which I view Israel's support for Azerbaijan. And I think right now Israel better be ramping up whatever assets it has in the Iranian region. I wouldn't be surprised if Israel has a submarine or two in the Persian Gulf. I wouldn't be surprised if Israel has other Navy units in the Persian Gulf ready to go into Iran. I wouldn't be surprised if the drones in Azerbaijan and drones elsewhere in the Middle East ready to attack Iran. Again, I am all for preemptive. Don't wait. Go out there and do what is necessary. And exactly what Israel can do with Iran, it can't do all out war with Iran. It's too far away. But it can cripple its missiles. It can cripple its nuclear facilities. It can destroy its leadership. And it can destroy elements of the Iranian national guard. So, and I believe Israel should do it. You know, again, it's all out war. It's big. It's scary. But you gotta get it over with. You gotta do it. You gotta take him out. It would be nice if the U.S. helped because the U.S. is involved one way or the other. All right, let's go through these questions. Glenn says, your voice is important and needs to be heard. Thank you, Glenn. Really appreciate that for $50. Harper Campbell, also $50. This is a good case for the Second Amendment. In an, if an organization like Hamas tried this in the middle of America, they would be viscerated by law-abiding gun owners. Citizens wouldn't be sitting ducks waiting for the military to arrive to save them. How can I say this nicely, Harper? You know, I respect your opinion. I respect what you wrote there, but I disagree with it completely. You can own a gun in middle of America and you can pretend that you know how to use it and when the time comes, you will defend your family and it will all defend. Believe me, everybody in Israel felt the same way. In every one of those homes, there is a gun, or almost every one of them. All of the men in these towns have served in the Israeli military. Every one of them knows how to use a gun and has used a gun. If you think middle Americans are tougher than Israelis or better at using a gun than Israelis, then you've got something coming. It's just not true. And yet, when you're overrun by barbarians, when your family, your kids, and your wife are right there, when it's a complete surprise and you're unprepared, the reality is that very few people effectively defend themselves. And I think that would be true in Central America. In mid-America, I think that would be true anyway. I think everybody, and I've said this before about the Second Amendment, everybody is confident and brave and sure of their own ability and their own ability to function under stress and to function in face of an attack. Everybody is convinced of that before they actually face it. But when you actually face it, most people freeze. Most people panic. Most people don't know what to do with their gun and most people get overwhelmed. Not everybody. And one of the things that are really surprising about what happened in Israel is where were all those military trained Israelis who have guns in their homes? Where were they? Now you should want the gun, you should wanna have it to defend yourself, but just be realistic. Having a government, a police force, and a military, this is again, maybe to many of you libertarians, you have no appreciation for how much easier that makes your life. And how much your life, your life depends on it. Because when you actually face a situation where you have to defend your life with a gun or no gun, in face of barbarians, my money's on the barbarians, sadly. And what keeps us from the barbarians, what holds the barbarians at bay are not your guns. It's the police and the military. So thank you to all of you out there who serve in the police and in the military and who contribute to our safety. I know not a popular view, certainly not among libertarians, but not a popular guy necessarily. The real Mr. Meatball. Thank you, real Mr. Meatball for the $100. He says, just tuned in. I work with Elbit. Elbit is an Israeli tech company. I am I refered, my brother works with refered. It's a weapons manufacturer in Israel. And I have many friends and family in Israel hoping a very serious example is made of Hamas and their supporters. So do I. Allow me to be a little negative and skeptical about whether it will actually happen. But let's hope. Tzvika, thank you, really appreciate the support. Keyfax, thank you, really appreciate the support. Thank you guys. Let's see. Mark says, I'm a slight high. Thank you, Mark. Thanks for the support. Jeremy, thank you, really appreciate it. Thanks for the support. Okay, let's get to the questions. Clark, the killing kidnapping people and uploading it on social media, that's the sense of evil and nihilism. They want the world to see how barbaric they are. All within the first few hours of the attack. And people say another Holocaust couldn't happen because of the existence of social media. Yeah. And the reality is that in spite of them loading it up to social media, there are people out there chewing on Palestinians, people in the Arab world, there are also people on the American left, there are people out there chewing on moral equivalency, your common garden variety libertarian. Social media is just bringing out how many, you know, just horrible people they are in the world. Sadly. Will says, help me understand the poor Palestinian gatherings in cities like New York City and Chicago. How on earth after all Hamas is not only done but bragged about? Well, I mean, you know, what is their argument? Their argument is that Israel has been oppressing these people for decades, that Israel kills Palestinian kids. I wouldn't be surprised if they claim they drink their blood. You know, all this blood mythology around Jews, it's all there, certainly in the Arab world, but even on the left, you know, they'd be killing Palestinians with no consequence. Nobody ever cares when Israelis kill Palestinians. Nobody ever does anything. Finally, the Palestinians are standing up for themselves. Yes, it's brutal. Yes, it's ugly. But that's sometimes the nature of justice. And you're seeing it. New York City and Chicago. You see it in London. You see it in Paris. You see it in Germany. You're seeing celebrations of what Hamas did by Arabs, but not only by Arabs, but also people from the left and people from the nihilist, nihilist left and the nihilist libertarians. So there's plenty of this real ugliness, real ugliness to go around in terms of, and it's stunning. But yes, now, you know, you often scratch your head and say, how could the Nazis, how could it happen? How could it, how could something like that happen? How could Germans go along with it? Yeah. And how could civilized people and look civilized people, supposedly going out into the streets, celebrating something like this. Well, you remember they celebrated all over the world. Those celebrations around 9-11. It's the anti-west, anti-civilization left together with the Arab and Islamic world, together with some on the libertarian nihilistic side. Ryan says, what is the goal of ground invasion of Gaza? I cannot conceive an explicit goal that neutralizes the threat other than the complete absorption of the territory into Israel. Well, I think that's necessary to do whether they acknowledge that and whether they're accepting that in Israel or not is not clear to me. I think they're terrified of that prospect. But what the goal should be is to basically kill everybody who's affiliated with Hamas. And this means from the kill or capture, I guess, from the top senior command to the foot soldiers. Everybody, and to the extent that they have camera footage from these attacks and they can identify the specific people who attack, they need to be captured or killed and treated as the monsters that they are. So, but the entire command structure, everything, every weapon that exists in, I mean, they will ultimately need to go house to house to house and take away every weapon that exists there. Every chemical, everything that can be used to manufacture missiles, they just need to wipe out the weapons building, weapons and the entire infrastructure that Hamas has. And since they rule out carpet bombing and they're ruling out just flattening the place and inflicting tens if not hundreds of thousands of casualties, then the only alternative they have is the ground operation that goes house by house by house. And look, they're gonna have to go house by house because to the extent that they just take territory and just hold it and they leave the territory with all the weapons systems and if with the infrastructure and with the people hiding in the basement, they're not gonna be successful. They have to find the basements, they have to find the tunnels, they have to go into those tunnels, go into those basements and they have to kill a lot of people. Anybody affiliated associate with Hamas, I mean, I would even take photographs, I'd take satellite images of everything, of all those celebrations in the Gaza Strip, all those people who were celebrating the capture of these, I would identify as many of them as possible and arrest every single one of them. So large holding pens, I mean, look, this is not gonna be pretty, but fighting evil is never pretty. Fighting monsters is not pretty. And this is not like Germany where you could chop up the Nazis and you could crush them and defeat them. And then the population will ultimately kind of drift back to being kind of Western because there's nothing to drift back for the Palestinians. So this is the challenge. What do you do with the two million Palestinians who are there? Let's say, after you get rid of the Hamas, what do you do with them? Because they're all susceptible to this. Not easy, not easy solutions. I mean, ideally for Israel would be to open up the border with Egypt and send them all to Egypt. But Egypt will not allow that. Egypt doesn't want them. Egypt does not want them. Never has one of them. But right now, we can deal with what I do with the Palestinians afterwards. Right now, the challenge has to be the eviscerate, I mean, a lesson learned, just the taking apart and evisceration of Hamas. And by the way, if Iran doesn't let that happen, you've got to do the same thing with Hezbollah, which means number one on the target list right now for Israel, when it comes to the Hezbollah has to be Nazrallah. It has to be the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. It has to be that there's nobody who is not a target. I don't care if you're a religious figure. I don't care who you are. You are going to die. You are, what do you call it, inciting violence? You are leading a violence, a violent army against us. You must die. And that means special forces or airplanes taking out certain places within West Beirut, Southwest Beirut, well Beirut, where Hezbollah is stationed. I mean, this is big. This is a big scope operation. And this is going to be multi fronts and this is going to be bloody and it's going to be horrific. And the world will have very little patience for it. So come on Israel, get it over with already. Michael says, rather than undermining Netanyahu's government I think these events will push the Israeli population more towards nationalism, tribalism and fascism and will get more concentrated power and support. I don't think that's the case. The reality is Netanyahu and his right wing government failed and the Israelis know he failed. This is the reality in Israel, which I've told you before. There is no real left wing in Israel. There is nobody weak on national defense in Israel. Like Gantz, who is the opposition figure, is a former commanding chief of the Israeli military. Lapid is no, he's not a, tomorrow I want to go, you know, give Palestinians a state. There is no left, the left, the left, the left that says let's give them a state, let's give them everything we want. It's all Israel's fault, Israel original sin, anti-Israel leftism, like you have anti-American leftism. That has been crushed in the polls that really as a significant political force does not exist in Israel. Israel is a right of center country and on national defense it is significantly right of center. So you don't have to vote for people with yarmulkes on their head in order to get tough national security figures. You don't have to vote for Netanyahu to be tough on national security. And indeed this has, if anything, this has shown that Netanyahu is never tough on national security. If this is what nationalism is, who the hell needs nationalism? If this is what strength is, I mean, this is the weakest Israel has been in since 1948 under a nationalist government. So the nationalist are weak. That's the conclusion Israel is gonna come to. They're gonna want, wouldn't be surprised if they're gonna want a general in charge. This will be good for Gantz, Gantz, Gantz, or maybe a new general who'll come about and rise to political democratically to power. But no, Netanyahu's finished politically. And if he's not finished politically, then Israel is finished. If Israel doesn't have the self-esteem to eliminate Netanyahu, to get rid of Netanyahu, then Israel's finished. Will says, how about another state of the Union, Iran, or some special address to the nation regarding this conflict from an ideal president? Yeah, I mean, it's not a bad idea. I might do that, maybe redraw it. You know, there's this, there's Ukraine, there's Iran, there's 9-11 still to be settled with. You still have American troops in Syria, by the way. We still have American troops in Syria and in Iraq. Yeah, I mean, there's kind of a foreign policy address that needs to be made, maybe even dealing with China. I'll think about that, good idea. Ryan, comments from Western leaders about avoiding a conflagration in the region are disgusting, absolutely. How can justice mean de-escalation? The morality of the West is lost. Will it ever be found again? I mean, what's interesting about comments from the West, a lot of them are saying, we understand Israel's needs of self-defense and it's gonna be reacting. This is what I say, there's a small wind of opportunity. But then later on, we don't want to escalate, please don't escalate, you know, and so on. So the West is weak, unbelievably weak. Again, remember what happened after 9-11? America is weak, America let this happen to it and didn't have the appropriate response. Now this is 10 9-11s, this is 10 9-11s. Will Israel do anything? Will Israel actually act? I mean, it will do something, but will it act in an appropriate way? It's really, really hard to believe that they will. Assuming by what you described, Iran, the terrorists in the hang gliders made in a pizza-style attack, it may sound unrealistic, but do you think there's a possibility of a schism between Hamas and Palestine? No, I mean, I don't understand who Palestine is other than Hamas, maybe of the Palestinian Authority, what was the PLO? Yeah, I mean, there already is a schism, they hate each other, they fight each other constantly, they shoot at each other constantly. There already is a schism, but the reality is that Hamas is much more beloved by the Palestinians than is the Palestinian Authority, because Hamas is more principled. They both agree that Hamas is more principled. They're willing to go out and they're viewed as heroes. So if anybody's, this is why they won the election and this is why they would win even a bigger landslide today. And this is why they have to be thoroughly destroyed. And by the way, destroyed doesn't just mean Gaza. Gaza's the beginning, but then they have to go into the West Bank and any element of Hamas that needs to be destroyed, arrested or shot. And then you gotta kill them in Qatar or wherever they happen to be. And ultimately Israel has to deal with Iran. So no, I mean, they're incredibly popular. Not leaning to a schism, it's exact opposite. Michael says, does all the hate and viciousness in the YouTube comments section and the internet in general worry you? Is this just a vocal minority? I think there's a lot of hatred and disregarded for human life out there, which makes no sense. I mean, they accuse me of disregard for human life because I'm saying kill this and kill it. No, absolutely worries me. It terrifies me. I mean, this is the world that we live in. These are neighbors. And again, some of these are people who claim to be friendly to objectivism. Some of them may even claim to be objectivists. Many of them claim to be libertarians. Some of them claim to be new right. And these are the people that people like Scott wants me to have a big tent with and to be kumbaya with around the bonfire. As they plan on slaughtering me and my friends. It scares the bejesus out of me in that sense. It scares me in terms of the future of this country. And what scares me too is the fact that so few people seem to have the ability to differentiate good versus evil. So I've been accused by the religionists. How can I talk about good versus evil? I'm an atheist. Only religionists could talk about good versus evil. There also came out during the Twitter nightmare. You know, the amount of anti-semitism. I mean, I think that's, I mean, it's always been there. And it's not dominant, but it's certainly there as well. The certainly elements of the anti-semitism in people that follow me and in people who interact with me in place like Twitter and even here, it's a scary world out there. And, you know, and I'm the optimist. I think there's a huge amount of good in this world. And I think the fact that so many people are rallying on the side of Israel, the fact that so many people recognize Israel's righteousness, the fact that even Europe, even the European Union is taking a strong stand pro-Israel on this issue, that is heartening. You know, they're not where they need to be, but that would shock me if they were. Again, they weren't when Europe was attacked by terrorists. They weren't when America was attacked by Islamists. Why would they be when Israel is attacked by Islamists? But those fringe that might not be that fringe are scary. And they're on my comment section on YouTube and they're in my, particularly in my Twitter feed. And again, it really, really, really should make you think about who you want to be allies with, who you want to be friends with, who's neighborhood you want to live in. Jacob, I'm a teacher whose class you visited in Santa Ana. Oh, wow, hi, Jacob. I loved that class, the students were so authentic and so, yeah, that was very, that was very, that was great. Anyway, I visited in Santa Ana a few years ago. Tomorrow in my human geography class, we will be focusing on Israel. Anything you think I need to make sure American kids understand. Well, I think demonstrating just the size is, you know, it's good about geography, just a sense of scale. Because everybody thinks every way in the world is America in terms of scale. I think it's really, really important for them to see that scale. I think a brief history and an extent to which Israel, the Jews in Israel have pursued peace really from day one and how the Palestinians and the Arabs have thwarted those efforts and every opportunity rejected, denied. So in that sense, yeah, I mean, if you look at Gaza and you look at the West Bank, you say, oh, they're being treated terribly, yeah. But they ask for it, this is what happens when you are violent, when you're vicious, when you refuse to be civilized, when you refuse to reject violence as a way of settled disputes. And this is the great lesson that I think kids can learn from this. Violence never works. The initiation of force is not a way to settle disputes. And, you know, there is a right and there's a wrong, there's a right party and a wrong party, but giving them some kind of outline of the history that's not tainted the way all of these histories are. I mean, the New York Times article that I was just reading was so bad. It was wrong factually and just so bad on it was skewed against Israel so badly. The story of Israel is a story of, and you know, it's a little bit of oversimplification, but it's fundamentally true, of the people trying to live in peace and people surrounding them refusing to let them do so and insisting on trying to take their land, kill their kids and dry them to the sea. And that's been the story. And a few Arab countries have settled with the existence of Israel, not because they like it because they figure they can't push them into the sea and others have not and the Palestinians have not and they will continue to suffer and they will continue to be, to, you know, live in these horrible conditions as long as they are committed to using force to settle the dispute. Palestinians can come to the table, kind of deal with Israel anytime. They refuse to do so. Ike, since how many IDF soldiers have been killed or captured and will they just be used as bargaining chips? I don't know. I think the death toll overall in Israel is going to approach a thousand. The last number I saw was 700 and I still think they're counting. So I think it's going to approach a thousand. I don't know how many have been captured and these are not IDF soldiers. This is just everybody. Most of them are civilians. I don't know how many of those are soldiers. And then in terms of captured, I don't know how many soldiers are captured. I don't know how many civilians are captured. I think at least 50, potentially several hundred. It's that horrific and that bad and there's so much fog of war that we don't really know. We just don't know. And the Israelis don't know. That's the horrific thing that the authorities don't know. You think, but this is so blew them away, so surprised them. Hellwolf, one should be judicious in recognizing good for what they are, but one must not hesitate to condemn evil for they are blatant Hamas or terrorists. And I don't quite agree with you. It is much more important much more important in life to live a healthy life and to support a healthy community and civilization. Much more important to recognize the good and to go out of your way to recognizing the good. And to recognize that good doesn't mean perfect. The good in certain areas. So I recognize good businessmen even if politically I don't like them. I recognize that America is a good country even though I'm a huge critic of America. I recognize the fundamentally the structure of American government and the American government is a good government even though I'm a massive critic of all politicians who are American. The same thing is true of Israel. Israel is a good country. It's massively flawed. I'm a massive critic of it, but I can criticize them because I know they're good fundamentally and I know what good means. I know the context. I know how to evaluate. I don't think these crazy libertarians have any right to talk about Israel being good about. They have no criteria. They have no basis. They have no knowledge. And this standard of anarchy as the ultimate good disqualifies them for making any statements about good or evil. Because this standard is an evil system. This standard is an evil outcome. And indeed the better government is, the more evil it is because it repudiates their standard. So even when somebody is flawed but they exhibit good characteristics one should reward and identify those good characteristics. Now, when you see evil, evil, yes, you need to point it out. You need to recognize it. And to the extent that you can, you need to fight it. You need to fight it. And this is why, for example, the libertarians, again, these libertarians, they can't be anti-Russia. They can't be pro-Ukraine. Again, moral equivalency. But it's not really moral equivalency. These libertarians really support Hamas and these libertarians really do support Russia. It's not just, oh, it's not America's war. It's much deeper than that. Anybody who says this is not America's war, who cares? Who's talking about sending American troops or anything? Who's the good guys or the bad guys? Make them, take them all stand. They can't because they support the bad guys. And they won't maybe even admit it to themselves, but they support the bad guys. And that's downright evil. And this is why, this is why, you know, anyway, I don't know why this is why what, but. All right, Liam says, what we're learning from Israeli military failures that walls without eyes are false sense of security? Well, but Israel had eyes. They had troops there. They had every type of advanced sophisticated electronic sensor you could have. They had tanks on the border. They had military units on the border. I've told you many, many times walls don't matter. Walls don't stop the barbarians. You should have learned that from the lesson of Rome. Indeed, walls, when you start building walls, it's when you're in decline as a civilization, soft civilizations, civilizations with no self-esteem, civilizations with no confidence and their own ability to protect themselves. They build walls. America should never build a wall. Israel should have never built a wall. It should never put itself in a position with needed one. Nonims use, I hope you and your family and friends are safe, thank you. I am not in Israel. I'm California. Is this Israel's 9-11? Looks like Israel's preparing a ground invasion of Gaza. Will Hezbollah invade from the North? I think Hezbollah will try to do something from the North, exactly what hard to tell. Yeah, I mean, this is Israel's 9-11 on steroids. This is 10X, 9-11, 10X. Hoppe Campbell, what is the best case scenario for Hamas in doing this? This is a nihilistic war of spending death. They viewed Israel as weak. They want chaos. They want death. They want destruction. They think that, think about it. If Israel invades the Gaza and gets mad in a ground war and the Gaza strip and is not doing what it's necessary to win and at the same time, Hezbollah both invades and starts lobbing missiles in the North and at the same time, the Iranians invade over the Golan Heights. And at the same time, Israeli Arabs within Israel rise up against the Israeli authorities. And at the same time, the Palestinians in the West Bank rise up against Israel and then maybe Iran sends troops and the Taliban has volunteered to send troops from Afghanistan. You could see Israel being destroyed. It's not, particularly for a religious nutcase, it's not that far-fetched. For a mystic barbarian like those who run Hamas. That's what's in it for them, destruction. And okay. Jacob said, thank you for your fierce support of Israel, a safety to your family. We'd love to hear more details about the proper response if you were Prime Minister. How is it possible this intelligence failure? Don't know how the intelligence failure is possible. It boggles my mind. It's boggling everybody's mind. It's beyond unimaginable. Again, I was in military intelligence in Israel, in 1980 to 82. So being there, done that, I don't get it. I don't get it. And that was the days where we didn't have anywhere near the kind of tools that they have today. Maybe they rely too much on the tools and too little on the human factor. My detailed proper response, I think, was yesterday. My show yesterday provided it. I would bomb ruthlessly. I would flatten whole sections of Gaza. I would bring in ground troops only after they were fairly safe. I would not worry about how many people were being killed. I would reoccupy Gaza. I would pacify it. I would destroy and dismantle every aspect of Hamas. And that is just in the South, but I would do basically the same thing. As I said, I would give, I don't know why I'm being so generous, but let's say I'd give the Lebanese, the Lebanese 25 hours to evacuate South Lebanon, south of Liditani, and I would basically turn South Lebanon into a parking lot. And that's it. And South Lebanon's always been a thorn in Israel's side. Israel has to occupy it for many years to keep it quiet. If it has to do it again, so be it. Or maybe this time just flatten it and make it so costly. To chizbalah or to whoever, that they will never try anything like this again. An honor to use it. Is Iran behind some of this? Yes, I think there's very little question, very little question. And Israel needs to do something about Iran. Michael says, Israelis are filming from their balcony Hamas desquads just roaming around the streets. Yes, but where are these guys with weapons? Where are those Israelis with weapons going down there and fighting these guys? I don't know. I mean, the story of what happened yesterday and today. I'm curious when we get all the information what actually happened. Michael says, did Israel only engage in preemptive war in 1967 because it was closer to the Holocaust and a stench of altruists who were still in everyone's nose than the altruism took over? Yeah, there's an aspect of that. There's also an aspect of a certain naivete. I don't think Israel quite realized how offended the world would be. But Europe was outraged. There was arms embargo by the French and the Germans and the British, maybe not the British, but French and the Germans, maybe the British as well. I don't know. Only America stood by Israel's side in the post-67 world. And then because of that, Israel was completely 100% dependent on America by 1973. And therefore basically did what Nixon told them to do. But yes, I think both the world's attitude towards Israel was different pre-1967 because of the Holocaust and altruism and post-1967 completely different. All right, let's see. James Taylor, is it proper to let hostages die in the name of never negotiating with evil? Yes. The hostages, any deaths in a situation like that are always on the hands of those who started it. You should do what you can. Everything you can within reason to save the hostages but not give up other lives for it and not give up victory for it. Victory is what you need to achieve. Do they love death more than the West loves life? Yes, this is the essence of Islamism. This is the essence of the Islamic ideology. It's a love of death. It's a love of destruction. It's the 70 virgins waiting for them on the other side. I mean, what you saw yesterday and today, this is nihilism. This is what nihilism looks like. This is what religious fanaticism looks like. Think about all those Middle-Eval Protestants killing Catholics, Catholics killing Protestants, Muslims killing Christians, Christians killing Muslims all in the name of God, a just God. Times Square is currently filled with pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Is this real life? Leftism really is a mental disorder. Yes, this is real life. These are your neighbors. These are people you associate with. And they're not all Arabs. Some of them are Arabs. They're not all Arabs. It's disgusting. It's despicable. And it's primarily driven by the lack of absolute moral clarity from our leaders, intellectual, political, philosophical. What the world needs is moral clarity, the kind of moral clarity you got from yesterday. That's what the world needs. That's what this country needs. Like I said, Israeli civilians are nowhere near as armed as American civilians. You can't just walk in a gun store and buy weapons in Israel. There's a long permitting and approval process. Yeah, but everybody's a reserve. And we had in our house, we had an Uzi. We had a rifle. Because if you're called up to a reserve, you have to grab your rifle and go. So I just don't think that's true. Maybe if you've never served in the military, if you're not in a reserve, but almost every male under the age of 75, 45, some cases 55, is in the reserves. By the way, I saw this picture yesterday. Just worth mentioning, Naftali Bennett, the previous prime minister of Israel, who I think was basically a good guy, entrepreneur, made a lot of money yesterday. And I don't know how old he is. Must be in his late 40s, maybe 50s. Maybe mid 40s to mid 50s. I don't know, somewhere in that range. Yesterday, volunteered, went to his combat unit, joined up with his fellow combat troops in the reserves, put on a uniform, and will be part of the fighting force in Gaza. This is a politician, an Israeli politician, was prime minister until what, a year ago? And now is in uniform, going to be on the front line and going to be fighting. Now that is leadership. That is leadership. That is an understanding what's at stake. That is an understanding that this war is a war to survive. It's a war for your life. This is not, it's not sacrificial. It's not altruistic. This is him understanding the value of freedom and liberty for him, for the people he loves. And the willingness of a political leader. Again, prime minister, just a year ago. Now in uniform, getting ready to enter Gaza, good for him. I mean, that is admirable. I hope he gets rewarded by the voters. I hope he comes back into politics. I think he was one of Israel's better politicians. Hated BB, by the way. When you were in Israeli military intelligence, did you find your superiors wouldn't listen to you when you had better ideas? Often, often. But during the war in 1982, they basically let me run the shop. I mean, it was pretty amazing. They realized this was an emergency. They realized I was more competent than they were. They realized I knew what I was doing. And they basically took, it was amazing to see. They took a step back. People were dramatically more senior to me. Let me run the operation of our little unit with regard to the Lebanon war. Every time the war would take a lull, they would take it out on me. They would reassert their authority. But for a while there, they just let me run shop. But I'll just give you one story. So we identified, at some point in the war, we identified a Syrian that the Syrians were digging in into a site of a mountain, a hill, where Israeli tank battalion was going to pass through there. And they were clearly digging in to ambush the tank battalion. And it was going to happen the next day. And I literally took up plans, took all the evidence we had, the photographs, we had all the photographs, we had an analysis of it, that we had prepared. And I got in my jeep with another guy and we drove to the northern command where they were running operations inside Lebanon. And I went to the northern command and I said, look, it was going to be an ambush tomorrow of the tank battalion. Here's the info. And the guy says, who are you? Leave it here. Don't worry. Well, yeah, well, look, we can't see it. Basically, it wasn't intelligence they had produced. They had produced. It was intelligence coming to them from a different unit. They didn't want to have anything to do with it. But guess what happened the next morning? They didn't radio to the tank commanders. They didn't stop the battalion. The battalion went into the valley and they got ambushed. And I don't know how many kids died as a consequence. This is the best military in the world in my view. And that shit happens. And that I know because I was there. I'll just give you a substory out of that. On the way home, driving home until late at night, I don't know, two in the morning or something, we're driving home. We're going to drive by Haifa where my parents live. I figure I'm dead tired. I'm dropping. I have to drive in the middle of the night. I figure we'll stop at my parents' house. I'll grab some coffee. Not really thinking about it. And my brother at the time was also serving in the Israeli army. He was inside Lebanon. So we go to my parents' house and I knock on the door. And obviously, I wake them up. And they come to the door, the two of them, in their pajamas. And they are white. They are white. They're convinced somebody is there. They look through the people. They don't see me. They're two guys in uniform. They think somebody's there to tell them their son has been killed. And my parents will, I don't think to this day, have forgiven me for doing that to them. But that gives you a sense of what life is like, right? Those are the kind of thoughts that you are living with constantly, right? When you're in Israel. So completely white. And anyway. That's a true story, by the way, about the ambush. And to this day, I mean, it's known that ambush is part of the history of that war. Whether the fact that we had the intelligence to stop the ambush is known a lot. I don't know. I don't know if Israel did a lessons learnt. Probably not. Michael says, what do you think about the fact that no government officials have appeared on TV addressing the issues? You mean in Israel or the U.S.? In Israel they have. And they're saying all their quote, right things. Yeah, bullshit. But in the U.S., not surprised. Most Americans don't care. Most Americans are not involved. What's Biden gonna say? I mean, he's been pumping money into the Palestinian authorities since he got into there. He just paid ransom, $6 billion to the Iranians to free a few Americans. I mean, what is the Biden administration gonna say? We support Israel. They've said that. Are they gonna call the Palestinians who did this, the barbarians? And the people who support it, cheered it? Are they gonna call them barbarians? No, they didn't do that in 9-11. Why would they do that now? Sivan, can the U.S. prevent Israel from carrying out destruction by withholding ammunition or weapons? Thank you for your, yes. Again, unlikely they do that early on, but they can. Israel will at some point need ammunition, resupplies from the United States. A lot of the weapons are U.S. weapons and they will need supplies. You know, some of the supplies that were being held in Israel, Israel agreed to have the U.S. send them to Ukraine. So the warehouse is depleted, but they could withhold. Israel could probably do it even without the U.S. I don't think they can literally prevent it. Israel has the capacity to do it themselves, but it would be a lot tougher. Yeah, I mean, U.S. has a real, this is why they gotta act quickly before the elements within the Democratic Party, the elements within the European Union who are anti-Israel start to voice their opinion and put pressure on the administrations to change their mind. Enric says, yes, Netanyahu said this was gonna be a long war. Of course, his administration is now focused on what needs to be done immediately. Yes, I mean, this is George Bush saying, this is why the book is called The Unwinnable War, Winning the Unwinnable War, because George Bush called it an unwinnable war. It was gonna be a long war against terrorism. We still got all the TSA and the anti-privacy laws and all of that on the books because it's a long war, never ending one. Frank, what the fate of Christian tourists in Israel now, I don't know if there is a fate. Many of them are probably trying to go home, probably succeeding. Mary Eileen says, no substitute for victory. Thank you, Mary Eileen. Mary Eileen also, unless you really know what you're doing with the gun, it can easily be taken away from you in a crisis. Why? I don't own one. Yes. And people underestimate how vulnerable they are. It also gives you a cocky sense of self-confidence. You shouldn't have it. What do you make of the Biden seemingly giving Israel unequivocal caught blanche in a speech and Twitter messages yesterday? For now, for now, he's under pressure to do that. It won't last. Again, another reason why Israel needs to do quick and devastating. The longer it takes, the more the Biden administration will change its mind. Look, I know you guys hate Biden. I hate Biden. I know you gave money to the Palestinians absolutely. Give Iran $6 billion, absolutely. But the reality is that Biden is no different than any other president of the United States. He's actually been fairly tough on foreign policy. He's been stronger in China than Trump ever was. In many ways, he's been tougher on foreign policy than certainly on Ukraine. He's been much better than Trump would ever have been. He's not terrible on foreign policy. He's not good. And he's terrible on certain elements of foreign policy, downright evil. But he's just standard US policy. This is what American presidents do. They tell Israel, yeah, defend yourselves. And then they reign them in. They reign them in. Don, excellent show. Thank you, Don. Michael, did you find there's some nihilism even in the objective's movement? Yeah, if you consider the movement broad, covering all kinds of types, people who are really not objective as to really libertarians, absolutely. Tajikin, I mean, one of the accusations I got yesterday was that I was, how they are, that I was betraying Ayn Rand's legacy. Tajikin, one wonders why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of the cities. No, it's pretty clear why the jungle is creeping back into the edge of the cities. The combination of religion and environmentalism. I mean, we have no respect for the cities. And we adore the jungles these days. Daniel says religion poison everything. That's a quote from Hitchens, absolutely. Religion, all religion. Z-Resa, white and south, north and south attack simultaneously. I don't know, I mean, who knows? It's hard to tell. I think partially they wanted to see how it went and I don't think they envisioned being as successful as they were. I think they're completely and utterly stunned by their success. Similar thing happened in the Yom Kippur War. Syrians didn't believe they were as successful as they were. Michael says, is Germany an ally of Israel or just on paper out of guilt? I think they are an ally of Israel. I don't think it's just paper and guilt. I think they are, Germany is part of, quote, the West. In quotes, so I think they are. Jakovic stabs. To what extent are average Palestinian civilians culpable for these Hamas attacks? What's the value in appealing to them rather than just writing them off as bad people? I think they're very culpable. They voted for Hamas in. They have not risen up against Hamas. Hamas is incredibly popular among the Palestinians. If there were elections, they Hamas would win by a landslide, I think. They support Hamas, therefore they're culpable for it. They voted them in. Remember, they voted them in in 2005. Hamas was not imposed on them. And Hamas is very popular among, now not everybody, as I said. They are innocent Palestinians. I hope they stay safe. But that should not be a consideration when defending yourself. Germany says, welcome back to California, Iran. Sorry, it tends to be an interesting time when you do. Yeah, I know, kind of funny. Daniel says, then a peak office being saying things similar to Iran about Iran though. Yeah, for years, for years. Michael, how do you feel about less lethal weapons for home defense, like the binoconetic hot plastic rounds or rubber bullets as a way to avoid the legal troubles of shooting someone? I like that. I think tasers even, I like things that are not lethal, but look lethal and scare people and are likely to avoid violence. The challenge is, of course, that once you shoot somebody with a rubber bullet, they might shoot you back with a real bullet. So you've got to have optionality. Good to have one gun of each, I guess. I don't, yeah, anyway. All right, Ryan, what do you think U.S. walls should be so far in Israel war? How do you think that could evolve into a larger war soon that you would support and what would be required for a proper larger U.S. war? I mean, my view is, and if I was given that state of the union that somebody asked me to, I would say, look, we've got unfinished business from 9-11. We blew it on 9-11. We're sorry that Israel is partially a victim of the fact that we blew it on 9-11. It's time to get things right. Israel, you have complete carte blanche to deal with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Syrians or anybody else who threatens you right now. We will not be stopping you if you need weapons, ammunition, stuff like that from us. Feel free and let us assure you that we will now take on our responsibility vis-a-vis 9-11. And that means that the regime in Iran is history. Not gonna tell you exactly how I'm gonna do it, but the leadership in Iran, you guys are dead. You don't know it yet, but you are dead. And I would take them out. And the challenge of that is, is I think that wouldn't get support of the American people. I don't think the American people would be behind it. I think, again, the windows of opportunity, after 9-11, there was a window of opportunity. The American people were willing to defuncate as important. So the American people would not support me as president on anything, really, but including this. But that's the right thing to do. The right thing to do right now is for the US to take care of Iran and for the U.S. to take care of Iran. And let Israel take care of the rest. And that, by the way, in Iran, probably doesn't even require putting troops on the ground, putting troops on the ground. I doubt that it requires that. Maybe special forces, but not tanks on the ground. Hiram, cocky sense of self-confidence, yes. Like the Khalidi guy waving the handgun. That's probably why electronic fobs were disabled at a synagogue I go to. People make mistakes, things can go wrong. Yeah, big mistakes. Really, really big mistakes. Thanks, Hiram. All right, I know I didn't catch all the people who gave stickers. You guys will be very generous today. Thank you for being generous from Harry Benz wearing a show on and yesterday and everything. So really, really appreciate it. Thanks for the support. I'm not gonna make every Iran book show on this, but as long as this is in the news, we will definitely be covering it and covering it extensively. So stay tuned. I'm sure I'll have a show tomorrow covering this and other items from the news. We'll do a news roundup, but in the meantime, thanks everybody. Stay safe if you're in Israel. Stay safe wherever you are, but don't stop living. Capital L, living. Bye, everybody.