 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Tuesday, well it's already night here, it's 8 p.m. I don't know where you guys are all over the United States I guess, maybe a few brave souls in Europe or in Israel where it is very, very late, but yeah, here it's 8 p.m. Atlantic time. All right, so I watched the video, an interview that Barry Weiss did and was released a couple of days ago on The Free Press, Barry Weiss' publication. It was recommended to me by a friend, Luca, who sent it to me via I think Twitter and I watched it and it is really, really good, moving, interesting and I thought it would be definitely worthwhile figuring out a way to show it to you and to get you to watch it. Now I can't show the whole interview because it's an hour long and we only have a limited time here so I'm not going to show the whole interview, but I'd like to show you some bits of it and talk a little bit about it and talk about it in the context of a positive. This is I think an interview that suggests the path to the solution, the path to peace, to real peace, lasting peace. It is an interview, although there's no discussion of that, but it suggests in its content, it suggests in its approach that this is the way out of whatever mess of the mess that exists in the Middle East today. The interview is not with an objectivist, not everything she says is true, not everything she says is right, it's formulated right. The things that need to be emphasized maybe are not emphasized completely, but you get from what she says and from an attitude saying it, you get I think all the context that you really need in order to appreciate what is going on here. So the interview is with Lucy Aharish, Lucy Aharish who is a Muslim woman born and raised in Israel and you'll see the interview and a few things here to note. One is her attitude towards Israel and her attitude you will get to answer she gives about whether Israel is an apartheid state, which I think is very good. She's also not blind, she's also not ignoring the weaknesses of Israel, the significant flaws of Israel. So she's not some rah-rah blind patriot who does not see what is actually going on in the state of Israel and who's who in Israel. So I think she's quite reasonable, I probably don't agree with her on a lot of her politics if we sat down and actually drilled down on the particular issues, I'm not sure how much we'd agree on, that's not the point. The point is the approach, the point is the big picture, the point is what she has to say about Israel. Now let me give you a little bit of context here. Before we, I'll show you the first bit, the first bit which I think is interesting. She was born, and in this context I want to talk about the solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not the military solution but the solution, the actual solution, and what does peace ultimately actually require in every situation and if it's going to last. So we'll talk about that. So she was born and raised in actually a Jewish city, town, Dimona, in the south of Israel. She was born to Muslim parents. They for some reason moved to Dimona. I think it was a small town when she lived there and basically there was only Muslim family in this Jewish town. She went to school in the 19, I think she was trying to figure out when she was born. She was born in the very early 80s, so probably 80, 81. So she went to school in Dimona in a Jewish school with Jewish kids, right? Jewish kids all around her. And during the time she was, I think this is right, I'm trying to figure out the dates but I think that's right. I think she said she was 5 and 87 but she would have been, some of the timeline doesn't quite match but that's okay. Anyway, she was at, she went to this Jewish school and all the kids in the class were Jewish and she was Muslim and Arab and she had friends. But she was regularly bullied. She was regularly made fun of. She was regularly blamed for whatever was going on in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was a period when she was going to school where there was a lot of terrorism in Israel. Buses were blowing up, cafes were blowing up, kids were being slaughtered. And kids would, kids would attack her. Kids would say things like, all Arabs should die, all Palestinians should be killed in there. The nicer ones would turn around to her and say, well, not you, but everybody else. And so she was a victim, a victim, right? She experienced, put it this way, experienced a real racism, real the attribution of what people who, I don't know, share a history with her, an ethnic group with her, whatever the hell that means, she was accused of their sins. She was blamed for what they were doing. And you know, she lived with us and her father told her, if I ever catch you turning around to them and saying, get to all the Jews kind of out of spite, I might hit you. I've never hit you, but I might hit you. You cannot do that. He said, never sink down to their level. Never sink down to the level of racism. Never sink down to the level of irrational hatred. It sounds like she had great parents. Anyway, Barry Weiss is interviewing here. In this segment, Barry Weiss asks about victimhood, right? I mean, Barry Weiss is bringing an American perspective to this. So I'm going to play the scene. And in the states, you could say we live in a culture of grievances where people sort of hoard their victimhood and hit you. But I will do that if I will hear you saying to someone filthy Jew, say that I skip to where I was before. But that's not what I wanted. Why don't you think of yourself that way, because I'm not in the states, you could say we live in a culture of grievances where people sort of hoard their victimhood. You have said many times, many interviews, that you don't think of yourself as a victim. Most people would hear these stories and be like, this is the ultimate victim. Listen to what she's describing. Why don't you think of yourself that way? Because I'm not a victim and I'm not willing to be a victim of racism. I am not a victim of a racist government. I'm not a victim of, at a certain time, when the Prime Minister is going and saying on elections in 2015 that the Arabs are going on buses to vote and this is a danger to the rule of the right. This is a danger to Israel. Me being a citizen of the State of Israel, I am not a visitor in the State of Israel. I'm a citizen of the State of Israel. The State of Israel, in 1948, decided that it's giving citizenship to the 150,000 Arabs that were living here. Once you decided that you're giving me the citizenship of this state, you need to treat me like anyone else. I'm not your slave. You're not doing me any favor. It's so complicated what is happening here because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is directly affecting the Israeli-Arab relationship. It's strengthening it. I mean, there was a poll before the war asking Israeli Arabs if they felt a part of Israel. I think 48% said yes and then post-war, same poll, it's something like 75%, 77%. I think that's representative. I think that it's representative because for the first time, October 7th proved that we share the same destiny here. Arabs and Jews were living in Israel. Citizens of the State of Israel share the same destiny. And you had a living proof for it, a living proof provided by Hamas, Tehran. So she's not going to accept this idea of victimhood. She's not going to accept that she is a victim. Yes, there's racism. Yes, the Prime Minister and the government of Israel sometimes do and say racist things. Yes, people have mistreated her because she is an Arab and because she's a Muslim. She's not going to accept the role of a victim. What I like about her is she's a fighter. She stands up in the face of the racism. She stands up in the face of political harassment. This is what I've been saying about much of cancer culture. Much of cancer culture goes away if people have the courage to stand up against it, if people have the courage to actually fight it, to not give in to it, to not accept that they're just victims of the mob and the poor mob is destroying their life. No, screw the mob. Screw the racists. I'm going to fight for my rights. I'm going to expect those rights to be respected. And if they're not, I'm going to fight for them. So I like her approach of rejecting the whole idea of victimhood, which is so now a part of, particularly in the US, so a part of kind of the whole left's agenda. Now she is a television commentator on Israeli television. She is the first, I don't know if only, but she is the first Arab Muslim news presenter on mainstream Hebrew language Israeli television. She presents in Hebrew and she views herself as an Israeli citizen with all the rights that she has as an individual, as an individual. And he is the key. This is a woman who is an individual who is breaking away from the tribal notions of the culture from which he comes from. And it's challenging the tribal notions of many Israeli Jews, particularly those on the far right, particularly those on the religious right, particularly those who are part of the government today, sadly. And who place a Judaism above everything else. She's standing as confrontation to that. She's standing in opposition to that as an individual with rights. I'm going to skip ahead to a section where she's going to talk about getting married. She's married to an Israeli Jew, not just any Israeli Jew. She's married to one of the lead actors in Fauda. If you haven't seen Fauda, you should see Fauda. It's a great show. But Fauda is basically an action drama of an Israeli special unit in the Palestinian authority in the West Bank. There's a whole season where they are in Gaza last season. They were in Lebanon or Germany, Lebanon and in Lebanon. So this is a guy who acts in television as an Israeli special forces fighter. But it's more than that. In his actual military service, this is a guy who was in the real life Fauda. This is a guy who was actually in that special forces unit that Fauda describes. And more than that, this is a guy whose father was a fairly senior guy in the Mossad, in the Israeli equivalent of the CIA. And she's marrying this guy. She's an Arab Muslim. And this is, of course, a challenge both in her society, in the Arab society from which she comes. But this is also a challenge for Jewish society to accept it. So here she says a few things about it, and then I'm going to skip ahead to something else that I think is related to this that is pretty cool. Because it was personal. And I saw the evil in the terrorist eyes. So she's talking about the evil in the terrorist eyes here. I skipped that part, but when she was a young girl, when she was a young girl, and she was five, five and a half, she was in Gaza with her family. In those days, this is 1987, you could go to Gaza and do shopping. I'm pretty sure in the early 80s or late 70s I was in Gaza. You could go to Gaza. You could do shopping and come out as a Jew or an Arab Israeli. And she was there. And her family was the victim of a terrorist attack in the street of Gaza, because the terrorist had assumed that they were Jewish and had attacked them. They had Israeli license plate, the relatively light skin, I guess, whatever. They assumed that they were Israeli. Of course, Israelis, often in terms of color skin, look exactly like all Middle Eastern, Middle Easterners. But I think her father, she said, had blonde hair and blue eyes. And as some Palestinians do and some Israeli Arabs do. And they were attacked. And she literally saw the terrorist's approach. And she says she saw the evil in his eyes. So this is just a section on that. I saw him looking directly into my eyes before even like when he saw a five-year-old and a three-year-old. And he saw a pair of parents sitting in a car. And he knew that he's going to burn them alive. He knew. And he did it without even thinking. So this evil that we saw on October 7th, it's not something new. It's not just, wow, happened on October 7th. No. It was there. Now, there are a lot of things that got in throughout the years. But it was there. Now, that's a great identification that October 7th was not an aberration, was not something new out of nowhere, had been there, the roots of it. And that phenomena had been there for a long time. The response of your family, which I'm curious about, too. Wow. So this is about the marriage. So this is the question about the marriage. Go back a little bit. Jen, tell me about why that caused such a stir in this country. And maybe the distinction between the public response to it and the response of your family, which I'm curious about, too. Wow, the response of my family. Well, we were really, really worried about the response of our families. It wasn't only my family. It was our families. Tachi is also divorced with a teenager back then. Now he is 20 years old. And we were worried about, you know, we know where we live. It's not that common that there is an Arab Muslim woman marrying a Jewish guy. And when they are both very well known, it's a high-profile relationship. So for a long time, we decided that we were keeping it a secret. It was a secret for around four and a half years. It's an odd thing to have a closeted straight relationship in the mid-2010s. And I will tell you that, first of all, it's a small country. So to keep it like a small country, small media, and yet we were able to save it like for four and a half years. I remember that when we got married, it was like the media knew. All the journalists knew. And we always got phone calls saying, oh, we know about your relationship. So we're here. And I tried to explain to them to tell them, listen, this is not a normal relationship. There is a teenager in the midst of it, our families. They don't know. It's like it was a secret. It was like a huge blast in Israel because it was a secret until the day of the wedding. Like, I mean, this is this is the sad state in the state of Israel that they would have to keep it a secret. The reality is that both Jews and Arabs view a marriage like this in a very negative light. Particularly the more, I mean, I think the secular Jews, not so much. Although, you know, when I was, I think, I don't know, when I was 12, I think, out of the blue, I was 12, this is 70s. I told my parents one day, you know, if I fall in love with an Arab woman, I'm going to marry her. And my Jews, my Jews, my parents, secular Jews, pretty left liberals, they were pretty shocked. They were upset. They were not happy about that fact. They couldn't really argue against it. They had no terminology. They had no context to argue against it. Because, I mean, it would offend their own liberal leftist views to argue against it. But they were not happy. My uncles, both my uncles on my mother's side, both married non-Jewish women in Europe, one married a Portuguese, one married a Brit. And their father, my grandfather, didn't speak to them for years, for years because of that. So there was a real prohibition among Jews not to marry outside, particularly among more religious Jews. And it's about the tribe. It's about keeping the tribe together. And Jewishness, according to Judaism, passes through the mother. So, you know, when a man marries a non-Jewish woman, the children are not Jews. And that breaks the line, in a sense, right? So there was a lot of suspicion, a lot of resentment around us. And she got a lot of flack, and he got a lot of flack for this marriage. And then, of course, on the Arab side, it's just as bad if not worse, actually much worse. So logic then again, Jews are the enemy. Islam, you're supposed to marry within Islam. You're not supposed to marry outside of Islam. And, you know, again, this is a real prohibition against this. So on both sides, this is tricky. Now, there are quite a few marriages of Muslims and Jews within Israel. But it is not easy for any of them. And it is something that I think is more common today than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. And hopefully, as I'll mention later on, it will become more and more common as we move into the future. I want to skip here to another segment where she talks about her husband. I think this is about right. Let's see where this is. These are approximate timestamps, right? But everything here is interesting, so I'm not too worried about it. And yet this is my reality. But, you know, all these titles that people are giving, he's like this and he's like that. And his father is like this and I fell in love with Zachi. I fell in love with a man. I love that. I love that, right? Again, the context is tribalism. The context is you evaluate everybody based on what tribe they belong to. She fell in love with a man. She fell in love with Zachi. Jewish, Israeli, she's Arab, Muslim, didn't matter. She fell in love with him. This is a, you know, such a strong expression of individualism. This is not philosophical, it's not philosophy, but it is I. I fell in love with a man. It's all about the individual, my values, and incredibly powerful, incredibly powerful. I'm always saying that if I was right now living in the United States, I would be a non-issue. Really. All right. Let me skip a little bit. I mean, this is what I love about this interview, is that she's expressing in day-to-day language essentially what individualism is all about. Let's see. Vented the money from Megiddo, decided not to pay Megiddo, because they... Oh wait, this is too early, sorry, sorry, sorry. You know back then, some people, people were a little bit ashamed with their racism. Now, no shame whatsoever. So Lucy, there are people, as you know, all over the world who look at Israel and say, it is a racist, colonialist, apartheid state. It is no better than the Jim Crow South in America before the civil rights movement. And the kind of thing that just happened to you is proof of that. Yes. Now, she described a case where the government refused to pay her for something or refused to pay the entity that paid her but was supposed to get reimbursed by the government, by the minister of education. And they didn't pay her because she was married to a Jew. And by marrying a Jew, she was somehow causing, you know, this assimilation, this elimination of Jewish identity, right, because her kids, her kids, his kids, he's Jewish. His kids would not be Jewish. So the ministry of education refused to pay this contractually obligated amount. So basically they were racist against her. So in this context, Barry's asking her about Israel as an apartheid state, and I love her answer. What do you say to that? Oh, look at your countries. Look at what is happening in your countries right now. What I'm going through right now is pure racism, definitely. So she acknowledges this racism in Israel. There is this racism in a lot of places. Apartheid? No. No apartheid. Look at me. It cannot work. I'm not, like, I'm a presenter on a mainstream TV channel in Israel. It's like, no, my sister is working in one of the big banks, in one of the major banks in Israel. My other sister is the general manager of a big hotel in Eilat. This is not an apartheid country, yes, but there is a lot of racism towards Arabs. Like, every country is dealing with racism, and racism should be fought. I should fight it, and I'm going to fight it. My child won't study in the education ministry of the state of Israel when this education ministry is basically telling me, you don't have a place here, and we're telling you this. It won't happen. If I need to sue the ministry of education of Israel, I will do it. You're going to do that? Yes. Yes. Because for me, this is the red line. You could also. So there's racism here, but it's not apartheid, and this is absolutely right. Sure. There's racism in Israel. Israel is far from a perfect country. There are a lot of problems in Israel. A lot of problems. There's racism towards Arabs. There's being in the history of Israel racism between Jews, Europeans, Jews, looking down at Jews who came from Middle Eastern countries. All of that existed, but that does not deny the essential nature of Israel in which a woman of talent, a woman of ability can rise up and be successful and host a prominent television show. Her sister can be a senior person at a bank and other sister can run a hotel. As I've told you many times in the north of Israel, many of the doctors, in some cases most of the doctors in some hospitals are Arabs, even though it might be the case that 75% or 80% of their patients are Jews. You didn't get that in apartheid South Africa. Blacks went to black hospitals. Whites went to white hospitals. Black doctors treated blacks. White doctors treated whites. That's the way it was in Jim Crow South. In Israel, in spite the problems that exist, and it's important to acknowledge that the problems exist, apartheid. Anybody claiming apartheid either doesn't know what apartheid is or doesn't know anything about Israel. So it's great. It's great to hear her expressing exactly that. All right. This is about, can Israel be both a Jewish state and a democratic state? This brings up, it raises a lot of interesting issues which I think are worthwhile to think about. So look at what just happened to you and say encapsulated in that story is the fundamental tension of the identity of the state itself. It is a Jewish state and it is a democratic state. And many people look at that as a paradox at best. Other people look at that and say those things are on a collision course and they can never be reconciled. What's your view of it? And I will tell you something like that. This country has to be Jewish and democratic. Why? Because the Jewish people have no other option than to be democratic because of their history. Because they were persecuted. Because they went through the Holocaust. Because six million of them were murdered because they were Jewish. Because all the persecution, because of anti-Semitism. As a Jewish man or woman, you cannot allow yourself to be something else than democratic. Now here democratic does not mean the technical term of majority rule vote, although that's a piece of it. It really means a respect for the rights, broadly speaking, not again, not rights in the sense of the founding fathers, but generally respect for the freedoms of people. Somebody says most is really Arab support Hamas. That's just not true. As Barry Weiss indicated in a recent poll, 77% of Arab Israelis supported Israel against Hamas. For me, this state, it's a natural thing that it will be Jewish and democratic. And if there are some certain parts or extremists in Israel that use democracy, use the Israeli democracy to hurt the Israeli democracy and to make it some kind of a messianic, I don't know what. I'm going to fight them. I love that. You know, she doesn't take anything for granted. At every point, if they're going to do something bad, I'm going to fight them. If there's going to be racism, I'm going to fight it. If the minister of education does horrible things, I'm going to fight it. I'm going to sue them. I'm going to challenge them. She is not a victim. She is not going to accept victim or she's not going to accept whatever injustices exist within Israeli societies lying down. She is a fighter. And you got to respect that. Again, that individualistic spirit, I'm not going to accept things as they are. I want to make them better. I demand to make them better. Also her understanding of the historical context that makes Israel a Jewish state. Without anti-Semitism, there is no Jewish state. But the Holocaust there is no Jewish state. The Jewish state, Israel is a Jewish state for only one reason. As an escape valve, as an escape place for Jews given global anti-Semitism, which has not gone away as we've seen over the last period. So it is so many people misunderstand what Israel is, what it stands for, why it exists. It exists as a relatively free state in which people are treated as equals. People have rights, whether they're Arabs or they're Jews. Israel which allows Jews all over the world to escape to just in case. And Israel has in a sense open immigration for Jews. If you're Jewish, you can come. And again, that's the escape valve. Escape valve that is a result of that history. And to ignore that history to pretend it doesn't exist is to evade reality. All right, let's, I want to skip forward to 44.25. Let's see, this is kind of a call. Okay, 44.20, we'll see what happens if I got the timing right. Of course. We, Ehud Barak said once about Israel that it's a villa in the jungle. So Ehud Barak is the former Israeli Prime Minister. He is former Israeli general, special forces. But he was the former Prime Minister of the kind of center left. But Israel is a villa within the jungle, a villa within the jungle. Now he got into a lot of trouble for saying that because he's implying that the Arab world, that Arabs around is the jungle. And Israel is a villa, i.e. civilization within a world of barbarism. I remember that and it was enormously controversial when you said it. It is. Whether we like it or not, it is. Look what is happening in the Middle East. Look what is happening. Like, you know, I covered the Syrian refugee. Ah, crisis. I, I was twice in Greece once I did a documentary on the Syrian refugee crisis. And the second time I went and volunteered for 10 days in a school that was built by Israelis for the refugees. I heard their horrible stories. I saw the children, you know, coming. And I was like cutting an apple. And you know, I, I, I, whatever was left from it, I, I, I close it to the guard. I, I dropped it into the garbage and I, and I saw children coming to the garbage and taking it from there. And I remember going back home and I said to myself, this can't happen in 2020. How come this is happening in 2018 or 2017? I don't understand it. It's like the world is so, you know, it's 2017 in the name of God. It's 2018 in the name of God. It's, it's how come people, just their lives changed like that? How do you explain? I mean, right now they're right. So let's see. I want to go to, I mean, she recognizes Israel is a bastion of civilization within this, within this craziness, insanity, evil that is going on all around. All right, let's go to, you've got a few more segments. We're almost done. 47 is good enough. Between Western civilization and Islam. And what do you say to that? Because you are Muslim. You know, I see what these fundamentalists are doing in the name of Islam. I see what they're doing in the name of religion. In every religion, you, I think Christianity or Judaism or Islam, if you want to do something extreme you will find the right excuse for it. I think that we are giving up on education. We gave up on education. When I see people in the United States like this, like young people, the young generation going to elite universities saying like from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. They never been to Palestine. They never been to Israel. They don't understand what a Palestinian is feeling. And by the way, the United Emirates, you know, Dubai, all these like countries, they understood the danger of this fundamentalist Islamist movement. And they fight it. Ask yourself why Abdel Fattah Sisi doesn't want anything to do with the Palestinian. He wants to be the, you know, moderate. I'm willing to have, ah, but I don't want this problem in my country. Why Jordan has like, you know, a love and hate feeling with the Palestinians? Why? They don't want this problem. Let's explain the problem, though, because, you know, pre-October 7th, even after the Intifada, even after all the rockets on stay road, even after, after, after all of these things, broadly on the Israeli left and certainly in the United States on the left, there was a consensus view. And that consensus view was there's two people and the conflict is fundamentally about splitting up the land. It seems to me that that is fundamentally shifted, that idea. Because what happened on October 7th got nothing to do with the occupation. Because when you hear right now, wow, I mean, think about that. She just said, you know, what happened in October has nothing to do with the occupation. That's pretty brave Khaled Mashal. Being interviewed. One of the heads of Hamas. Yes, one of the heads of Hamas. Being interviewed in a podcast, I'm going to say it again, Khaled Mashal was interviewed two weeks ago in a podcast. I love that. She's outraged that a monster like Khaled Mashal would be interviewed in a podcast. She's outraged by that. She's like, she says, let me repeat that. He was interviewed in a podcast. I don't think most people are saying, okay, so he's interviewed. I mean, what she's suggesting by the way she's saying it is, this guy's a monster. Who interviews a monster in a podcast? Maybe, maybe, maybe she should have a word with Tucker Carlson, but okay, that's, yeah. Okay. He was like sitting in one of the, you know, prestigious hotels doing a podcast while his people are starving or, you know, going through Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip. And he's being interviewed for a podcast and saying in that podcast, we're not talking about two state solution. No, no, no. There's only one state from the river to the sea, which means we're eliminating the state of Israel. So when Hamas is asking to stop the war, it's very funny. You are declaring the, to erase, you're saying that state of Israel is like you're not going to just be okay with the Gaza Strip or the Palestinian territories. You're saying that you are going to be okay with all Israel. So when you're asking to stop the war in the same sentence, it's a little bit funny. And at the same time, another leader of Hamas is they're basically laughing in the face of the international community. They're looking at these young people marching on the streets, shouting in the name of a terror organization and they're laughing. So when you teach people, when you educate people to speak in a soundbite and not give and not read, you know, I remember the guy that I fell on his like the day of the terror attack. There was a very old man that I fell next to him when I fell on the ground, my face hit the ground. There was a guy that sold like small, like shoes and he looked at everything that happened and he told them, you're welcome in Allah. Where will you escape from God? These are innocent people. Where will you escape from God? I think that these fundamentalists, these extremists, don't want us to ask the right questions, don't want us to question things that are said, that are done. It's easier to have a villain in religion, everything is very clear, the good guy, the bad guy, we are the last ones, we know. You said earlier to me. So I mean, think about them all coverage, standing up to Hamas leaders, calling it like it is, saying exactly what they're after, identifying their true evil, identifying their motives. I mean, you know, she is standing up and addressing them directly and not holding back at all. I mean, it takes a lot of courage to do that. And you know, she is, as we said, she belongs to the other tribe. You don't expect this, right? All right. Two last segments I'm going to show you, two last segments, a little bit of context here, which I skipped, but on October 7th, she was in Tel Aviv with her husband and a son. And 6.30 a.m., the Airways Shelter, Symons went off. They went to the safe room. At 8.30, the husband basically put on his uniform and said, I have to go. He's 48 years old. He does not have to serve in those herbs. He volunteered to go and he left. So he is in Gaza right now. He is in Gaza fighting right now. This is the actor from Fauda, who is a husband. This is a guy who, in his actual service, was in Special Forces. Act, you know, is an actor who acts in a show about Special Forces. That's her husband. Anyway, he's away. This is what she has to say about how this war plays out. And he was able to do it, a lot of Israelis. And you know what? On a certain level, they're right. They don't want to even listen about the misery of the people in the Gaza Strip. They don't want to have compassion towards the people in the Gaza Strip. Because they say to themselves, they didn't have any compassion when they came and burned us alive. Why should we have compassion to them? And I understand that. But then I say to myself, we lost that day. And they want us to lose this war. I'm not willing to give them the benefit of them looking and seeing that we lost our humanity. We are not Hamas. Israel is not Hamas. And this is why in the last few days, in the last few weeks, I started watching what is happening in the Gaza Strip. It's horrible. It's not easy seeing the images coming out from the Gaza Strip. And I feel sorry and painful for babies, for children, for men and women who are being killed in this war. No one should experience this. No one in this world should experience not what we experienced and what the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip are experiencing. The next generation of the people living in the Gaza Strip in 20 years, if we want them, if we want to start looking for forgiveness between Israelis and Palestinians, we need also to be part of the solution. So this is in the context of who saying, Israel has to win this. There's really no alternative to Israel winning this. I want to skip to the final section I want to play for you. This is kind of a post-interview thing that I think she talks about her son. And I found this to be the most touching of the entire interview. And the strongest expression of what I think this all kind of adds up to, if you will, is kind of what she says here. If in what she's become, they're really proud. This is about her parents. They're amazing. Really, they paid a huge sum. I cannot be grateful enough for them. And you know, them accepting Tzahi as they are the day that Tzahi, like on October 7th, when my mom knew that he's going to the battlefield and he's going, she cried her eyes out. He's like her son. I mean, that is acceptance beyond tribalism of an individual. He's like a son because he married their daughter. And the fact that he's Jewish, that's not relevant. That's not relevant in this context. Got nothing to do with the fact that she's Muslim or he's Jewish or we have a child. His name is Adam. We have, you know, I don't want to put this, like, burden on him, but he's the future. He's our future. Like, Adam is Adam. He's, you know, an empty blank slate, paper, white. He's a human being. Nobody is going to judge him and nobody's going. He's the future. He's this and that. He's Muslim and he's Jewish. And for me, this is my everything that I'm doing in my life right now is for him. I want him to have a better future. I want him to be in a country where he can be proud to be Jewish and to be Muslim. And I am not willing to, to sit aside while some people are trying to push him and tell him you're not part of this country. His father is patriotic. As a 48-year-old man that is not supposed to do reserves is, and he is, he's a human being. I love that. She repeats that twice. I mean, we'll end here, but she repeats that twice, right, her son, he's a human being. He's an individual. Yeah, he's got a Muslim mother and a Jewish father, but he's a human being. He's an individual. I mean, this is a great interview. I think Barry, Barry does a good job with her. She's in, you know, she's wiping away tears after the interview. I recommend watching the entire thing. I think you'll gain a lot of context about Israel, about what's going on there, about the people there. I mean, this is a, this is an extraordinary story. It's not a typical story, but it's an extraordinary story. It is a story about the fact that people can get along, live together in peace. And they do in Israel, in spite of all the stories you hear, in spite of the crazies on the Israeli side, on the Jewish side, on the Arab side, Israel functions as a country with both Arabs and Jews. In my class at engineering school, my class in engineering school, half the students, half the students were Arabs. This is at the top technical institute in Israel, one of the top in the world. And many of the Arabs, interestingly enough, were women. And they were students like everybody else. So Israel very much has this in them. And what do I mean by that? At the end of the day, what brings about peace? Peace never survives tribal identifications. Peace never survives collectivism. And the ideology that the group is more important than the individual always leads to violence and leads to war. It is not a strategy for thriving. It is a strategy for disaster. Tribalism, collectivism, they lead to war. If you don't, you know, a great, great essay on the causes of war is Iron Man, is Iron Man's essay. In I think it's in capitalism, I think it's a capitalism not known ideal, on the causes of war. And war is the result of placing some kind of collectivist, some kind of collective identity above the value of individual, the value of his life to himself and the value of other individuals to me as an individual, as a trader, people who live as individuals don't initiate force. They far prefer trading. Individualistic countries are countries less likely to engage in war in the initiation of warfare. The Middle East will be peaceful when the people of the Middle East stop thinking of themselves as Arabs, Jews, as, you know, Jews and Arab Christians and all these self-identifications. But instead when Israelis consider themselves Israelis, whether they are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Jews or whatever. When the Palestinians stop thinking of themselves as Palestinians but think of themselves as individuals, they will look and they will see, huh, I could go to Jordan, I could go to Egypt maybe, I could live in Gaza, I could live in the West Bank, but really, if I want to pursue my own life, if I want to have the best damn life I can as an individual, then the best way to do that is to be a part of Israel. Huh, I just tried, I just tried to link that I posted to the Barry Weiss interview and it doesn't work. It says that the video has been taken off of YouTube, so I'm not sure why that is. But it was there just before I started the show. It was there because I copied, pasted it, you know, a few minutes before the show started. So not sure what's going on, but you can probably find the video. It was on Twitter earlier. You know, I'm playing it to you from here. You know, if I do a re-thing, yeah, it's still there. When I came and started working on it, yeah, it's still there. So maybe that link, I don't know what, that's the same link. I'm still getting it. So let me put it in the chat, see if you guys can access the interview from the chat. See if that works. All right, anyway, when the Palestinians realize that as individuals, they're better off in Israel than in any Palestinian state. When the Palestinians realize that they're actually better off in Israel than they're on any other Arab state. And the Palestinians realize that what is really important to them should be important to them is their ability to live their lives on their own terms free of tribal loyalties. That's when you get peace. And by the way, what I just said is absolutely still true of the Jews. It's just much more common among the Palestinians to be tribal in that sense. But they are Jews who think the same way. And if you really to achieve peace in Israel, what individuals are going to have to do, individuals I emphasize is abandon their tribal loyalties, abandon their tribal biases, racist notions, preconceptions and embrace themselves and the people they deal with as individuals. If there's value to work with somebody, work with them. If there's not, don't. If you fall in love with somebody, marry them. Assuming they fell in love with you too. If you don't, don't. But Israel will be a massive success when there are more couples like Lucy and her husband. And it's not a big deal where nobody cares. And there are more children like Adam who can't categorize themselves, so they don't. They're just Adam. What did she say? He's just a human being. We're just human beings as individuals. It's not a just, it is we're human beings. We're individuals with individual values, individual loves, individual minds. That's what real peace is about. I mean, we can talk about war and defeats and short-term solutions, but even in one of the important components, I think, even in Japan and in Germany after World War II, was that basically a political system that was established there were individualistic political systems. And the show in the show description is missing part of the link. So I will try to fix that so that you can find it in the show description as well as in the chat. But anyway, hopefully that'll get actually captured and saved and you can actually, somebody go to the show description and access it from there and see if you can get it to it. All right, I hope you enjoyed the interview and an analysis. As I said, the interview is good, but you don't, again, don't have to agree with everything she said, but you have to, I admire at least, her fighting spirit, her unwillingness to be a victim, her willingness to achieve even in a society where there are significant elements that are racist towards her, to stand up for herself, to achieve. She's very successful in Israel in what she does. And to be able to see what is going on, to see the nature of Hamas for what it really is without kind of all the, again, tribal excuses, tribal and historic excuses that so many people provide, so many people provide. All right, Noel just said for a hundred Canadian dollars. Thank you, Noel. I'm on a budget working on a project this year, but here's some cash. I was touched by this great show. That's great. Great to hear. I'm glad. It seems like a number of you on the chat were really touched by the interview. I think that's a good sign. I wasn't sure if to show the interview or not, I wasn't sure if this was of interest enough to people to want to watch it, but I'm glad to see your response to it and fine. So I just placed a link below. This should work. I'm clicking on it now. Yep, it works now. So yeah, watch the whole interview, enjoy, see if you can hold back the tears. It's quite emotional and very revealing. All right, we are way off from a support target, super chat target. So please consider asking questions. Please consider supporting the show, even if it's 199, 299. Gene, thank you. Gene Jonathan, thank you. Alan Shelby, thank you. Stephen Hopper, thank you. Gail, thank you. These are all Robert, thank you. Nesa, these are all stickers, just for a few dollars. But if you like the show, if you enjoyed the show, value for value, just express it. One way to express it is here. If you're new to the show, please consider subscribing. Please like the show before you leave and please find a way to support the show whether it's on a monthly basis with Patreon or here using the super chat. All right, let's jump in with some of the questions. And feel free to ask about the interview or comment about the interview or ask questions about anything. It doesn't have to be about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It could be about any issue that is interesting to you. James said, isn't it appropriate to label Muslims as primitive savages? I would say yes. This is him. It demonstrates the more weakness of the West that we have not been able to impose enlightenment values unless of old people. You know, there are a few things in your question that I would challenge. So I would not call Muslims primitive savages. I know a lot of Muslims, people consider themselves Muslims who are far from primitive savages. I think Islamists, fundamentalist Muslims, political Islamists, jihadis, there are lots of different ways in which you could frame this. People who take Islam really seriously, yes, they are clearly primitive savages. But they're enough, you know, not enough, they're few, way too few. People who generally practice Islam, believe in a religion, but lead secular lives and who, you know, she calls herself a Muslim. Is she a primitive savage? Far from it. So I don't like that kind of generalization. If you believe in Islamism, the idea that we should impose sharia law in the entire world, yeah, you are a primitive savage. If you believe violence is the way in which to bring people through the sword to Islam and it's okay to kill whomever in order to bring them Islam, then yes, you are a primitive savage. If you are marching in the streets shouting river to the sea whether you're Muslim or not, you're a primitive savage. And it is true that many Arabs, Muslims in the Middle East have never elevated themselves above the level of primitive savages, or primitive at least, savage it depends, partially because they never experienced the alignment, partially because they haven't chosen to accept kind of the values that are right there in front of them staring in their face in the very essence of Israel, in the very essence of Europe, in the very essence of America. We might complain about America and Europe constantly, but hey, in spite of what the libertarians tell you, Israel, Europe, America far better than most alternatives, certainly far better than any alternatives in the Middle East, but also far better than Russia, China, North Korea, and so on. So yes, Islam never went through an enlightenment, but many Muslims have enlightened themselves. Not enough, not enough. And some of the blame for the fact that not enough is on the West, because when they come to the West, they're told, oh, your culture is as good as ours. When they come to the West, they're told, oh no, you're not primitive, you're just the same as us. All cultures are equal. It even has a nastier history when Arabs in the Middle East wanted to embrace Western values in the late 19th century, early 20th century. And the wealthy would send their kids to Europe to study so they could back Western values to a Middle East that desperately needed them. They went to Europe, and what did they study at their universities? They studied socialism, and fascism, and statism in all its forms. And they brought back, that's what they brought back to the Middle East. And if you look at the Barth Party in Syria and in Iraq modeled after Mussolini's Fascist Party, if you look at many of the secularists, whether it was Nasser in Egypt or others in other parts of the Middle East, they brought Western values, nationalism, for example, Arab nationalism. They embraced the West. They embraced what was the West. I mean, that's a great tragedy of history. And many Arabs then say, we don't need the West if what the West brings us is a Nasser. We don't need the West if what the West brings us is a Hussein, a Saddam Hussein of the Barth Party or the Syrian Barth Party. New religion was better. What is lacking in the West for the sake of the West, what is lacking in the West for the sake of the rest of the world is what we had, I think, for a brief period of time right after World War II, a confidence, America had it at least, a confidence in our own values, and a sense of justified cultural superiority, not racial superiority, cultural superiority. The idea that our culture, our culture is better, that confidence, assertiveness, determination to integrate people into our culture, that's what's lacking. I mean, think of American culture today, cowering and afraid of immigrants because they'll change our culture. We're so weak because we can't defend our own culture, because we can't defend our own way of life. Really, pathetic, pathetic. All right, Doran says great interview. Hopefully it makes it rounds on social media and get some good press. I hope so. I hope so. You guys can help. If you watch the interview, share it. It's on X. You can share it directly on Twitter, but it's on YouTube. You can share it on your Facebook page. Get, I mean, this is the kind of interview that everybody should see. And it's non-quote ideological in the sense that it's not, doesn't expose you as an objectivist. But everybody should see it. And if you don't share it, who will? It's kind of the, if you don't take it in yourself to bring these kind of ideas and this kind of courage and this kind of individualism to the world, then who will? So I'm counting on you guys. I'm counting on you guys to help. Adam says, you once mentioned a Korean Western-style TV series taking place in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation. Could you repeat the name of the series where it streamed? Yes, the series is called Song of the Bandits. Song of the Bandits. It streamed on Netflix. It very much left it open for another season. I don't know if there's going to be another season, but it definitely leaves it open for that. You'll see that part of the sets it uses are the same sets that they used in Mr. Sunshine. And there are certain thematic similarities between it and Mr. Sunshine. What else do I want to say about it? I think it's very good. It's quite violent. It's just a warning to you. It's very violent, more violent than the other Korean TV dramas that I've seen. So this one is extremely violent. But in spite of that, very good. Very good. Highly recommended. Thank you, Adam. All right. All right, one last reminder. This show is made possible from contributions and support from you guys, the listeners, the people who are on here. And you can support the show really easily right now because you're live using the Super Chat feature. You can do a sticker or a Super Chat and you can ask a question. You cannot support the show on a monthly basis. Youonbookshow.com slash membership or Patreon, a Patreon Youonbook show. Please consider doing that. This is what makes it possible for me to do the show. This is how I make a living. But this is a listener supported program. It doesn't exist without you. So thank you. And we've got 115 people watching right now. It'd be great to have some new people do some Super Chats. Don't forget to subscribe, like the show, do all the things you do. Yeah, our likes should be over 100. So please consider liking. All right, Andrew, thank you. A great change to see someone given the opportunity to claim oppression. Actually have a basis to complain, yes, and reject it outright. Maura, she rejected it intelligently based on a certain her individual right, asserting her individual rights and her commitment to fighting for those rights. Absolutely Bravo. Thank you, Andrew. Liam says, is this all likely to invade Lebanon to push Hezbollah back across that line? The line is the Lytani River, which is the line that's supposed to be behind based on whatever UN resolution, something or other. And the UN troops, they're supposedly enforcing that. You completely, completely, utterly useless. And you can drive along the Lebanese border as I have. And you can see Hezbollah flag flying right next to the UN flag. Not that far from the border. They're not anywhere near the Lytani River on the other side of the Lytani River. Is it likely to invade? I don't know. I don't. It's so hard to handicap Israeli politics. I think they should. But I don't know if they will. I also think they're worried about the US about upsetting the Biden administration, and it's not like they're getting a huge amount of support from Republicans. It's not like Trump is on the trail, banging the podium in support of Israel. He's not. He doesn't like Netanyahu, and he's made that clear. So, you know, I don't know if they're going to go into Lebanon and push Hezbollah out. The Hezbollah does not want to turn this into a full-fledged war. So they are treading a fine line in their attacks against Israel, not to overdo it and cause Israel to respond in that way. Now, again, I think they should have done it weeks ago, months ago. It might be that Israel will use a ceasefire in Gaza to execute a war in Lebanon not wanting to have two fronts, not wanting to fight in two fronts. But again, I'm not sure how the Americans would view that. So I'm skeptical, but look, Israel's fought a much tougher war, a much more aggressive war in Gaza than I expected. It's not as aggressive as I would have liked. Much slower, you know, a lot more caution around civilian casualties than I would have liked. But still, they did, you know, if you look at Gaza and you look at how much they've leveled of it, which is, of course, everybody's accusing them of the horrors of it, how much of Gaza they've leveled. Yeah, they've done a good job in Gaza. There's still more to do. They'd be tougher than I expected. I don't expect them to go to Lebanon, but they could positively surprise me and do it anyway. Hop a Campbell. Even if we lay, by the way, let me just say, if Israel goes into Lebanon, I just want to give you a sense of how this works. If Israel goes into Lebanon, there will be rockets basically flying towards where my parents and where my sister and where my brother live. I mean, they are all in the line of fire from Lebanon. The Hezbollah has not used its slightly longer-range weapons. It's used only very short-term stuff, anti-tank missiles, things like that. They haven't really, they've got 150,000 missiles. They can overwhelm Israel's missile defenses. And basically, my parents' home is facing Lebanon. I don't know how many miles away would that be. It's, I don't know, 50, 60 miles, maybe 70 miles away from the Lebanese border, maybe less, probably less. That's not far for the missiles to go. So, you know, I have a strong incentive for this not to happen in a sense of a personal incentive, but I think it's what Israel needs to do. What? What does Apollo want? Hop a, even if we lay, only passes 20% of what he wants through legislature, will there be enough to make a huge difference? I don't know. It depends on which 20%. And right now, it's all off the table for now. You know, he will keep fighting. He will keep pushing. But right now, Congress has basically shelved the whole plan. He's done what he can through executive order. There's probably more that he can do through executive order. But even there, part of that was shelved by the courts. So he's going to keep fighting. He's going to keep trying. As I told you, I will be in Argentina in what? Less than two months. And I hope to come back with a lot of kind of firsthand knowledge of what is going on there and having talked to people on the ground and give you a better read on what's happening. Plus two months, it will have passed. But so far, you know, I'm worried. But I think, I expect he knows what he's doing. And I expect there's still a significant amount that can be done. And that they are now strategizing on how to get it through Congress. And hopefully, the people who voted for Millet will start coming out and clearly supporting him and make the politicians aware of their need to change direction. Clark says, are you still working on doing a talk defending Israel at Columbia? That would be incredible, definitely with the investment. I am. I mean, touch with a faculty member at Columbia. He is in touch with a group of academics and a student group. I haven't heard anything. We communicated over the weekend this week. I assume he is trying to communicate with them. I don't know how it's going to go. Somebody is going to want to do it and organize it and then the administration is going to have to be willing to do it. So I'll give you an example. I've got a student at a law school in Cleveland, Ohio, who wants to invite me to come and give the talk on Israel at the school. He wants the Jewish Law School Association or something, Law Association at the Law School. And he would like me to come. But the administration has basically said, wait a minute. This means trouble. They're going to be demonstrations. They're going to be built against this. This might offend people. So he's meeting with the dean, I think tomorrow maybe, or any day sometime this week. And we will find out if he's going to allow me to come for that. So Columbia will be even more difficult, I think. But I've got somebody working on it. And yeah, if they do it, I'm sure it'll be great. They'll be security. And everything will be good. But it is a challenge. It's a challenge to get it approved, I think, more than anything else. And to find somebody who's willing to take it on. Nick Froze says, political scientists hesitate to call Iran a totalitarian regime. What is the best evidence to classify Iran as totalitarian instead of authoritarian? Well, I mean, I think the best evidence is that they dictate what women will wear in public. I mean, almost no regime has done that. Even really totalitarian ones. They ban playing music. And they arrested a guy for dancing to music. That's pretty totalitarian. It's engaging in the regulation and control of individual behavior that's non-political. It's one thing to science political speech. But you can't even, you're not allowed to play music. So yeah, I think it's definitely totalitarian. Is it totalitarian to the extent of 1984? No. No regime ever has been. Is it totalitarian to the extent of the Soviet Union? Yes, in the realm of thought. Maybe no in the realm of economics. So it's not totalitarian in economics. There's some people have stores. There is a semblance of private property. There are markets. People have businesses. You can make money. You can build a business. So it's less authoritarian business-wide, but very authoritarian when it comes to the mind. So I would still classify it as totalitarian, even though it doesn't cover the economic realm in quite the same way. China, on the other hand, is more authoritarian. But it's moving towards totalitarianism with its social score and all the monitoring devices and the way they monitor people. But Iran is more totalitarian than China. Robert, her citing Gaza and tragedies is powerful and important. When some of us claim there's no innocence in Gaza, we're wrong. And we are giving Hamas a pass for what their war is doing to their people. Yes, I mean, there are innocence. And at the very minimum, the innocence are the children. You know, children are innocent. You can't argue that three-year-olds are to blame. You can say Hamas is responsible for their death, absolutely. But you can't say the child is to blame and therefore guilty and therefore should be killed. I mean, that's not reality. There are innocent people dying in Gaza. And it's tragic the children are dying in Gaza. I mean, among the adults, there are fewer innocence. Among the adults, there are fewer innocence. But children generally are innocent. And some adults are innocent. So yeah, I agree completely that there are innocence in Gaza and it's important for us to recognize that. And it's very important for us to be able to say, it's horrible. It's tragic. It's necessary. And it's all on Hamas. There were innocence in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were innocent people in Dresden. No question. Primarily the children. Most adults, not so innocent. Apollo, artists with darkest themes. I mean, monk, you know, the scream, it's a pretty dark theme. Some of Mahler's music, there's a whole thing about talk about death of children. But on the death of children, a kind of a song, symphony song type, I'm not sure how you would categorize it musically. Pretty dark. Pretty dark. God, I think there's certain dantes and phono and certain depictions of that. Pretty very dark. Yeah, I mean, that is those are some, but there was a lot. A lot of, you know, I don't know, there's some, certainly a lot of Pink Floyd, which I like, is dark. So there were a lot of dark themes. I don't know who has the darkest. Oh, Dostoevsky. Whoa. Sorry. Dostoevsky, probably the darkest. Thomas says, hey, Iran, I bought your investment seminar at ARI site and I watched your personal investment video. You mentioned on the video that you would change 20% of the seminar. What 20% would you change? God, well, I probably have to listen to it again. But so I would say I think markets have become certainly over the last three years I've seen this less efficient than I thought they were back then, much easier to manipulate than I thought they were back then. If you look at what they did to GameStop and how long it sustained itself and, you know, the amount of money people lost who were right about GameStop and yet the mob, the manipulators managed to overrun them. And I think all of this is I can't actually, I can't yet show the exact path. But all of this is a consequence of regulations and controls and more regulation of the financial markets and all kinds of things that they've done even to the mechanism by which we trade, that have distorted one of the things being the ability to trade for zero cost, which doesn't make any sense. And I don't think it would exist in a free market. But because of the egalitarian regulations and because of the fact that the SEC has its goal to allow everybody to trade, I don't think everybody should trade. I don't think there should be that goal. Most people shouldn't trade. I don't think they should be banned from trading. But I think in a rational market there would be a cost to trading. And that cost would provide a disincentive for people to do the kind of nonsensical craziness that they did. For example, the game stock that they do to stocks on a periodic basis. Even when I did that seminar, I was already thinking this because I think I talked about during that seminar, the dot-com bubble, because we were in the midst of it. This was the late 90s. But I think something has changed in the mechanics of the stock market that has made it less efficient. By allowing, funnily enough, more people to trade, and therefore, more stupidity to enter the markets. It has made it more difficult for the smart marginal investor who actually has information to deploy in trading, they are less influential. And I could speculate on what those mechanisms are, but I really have to study it and make sure they're right. So that would be one big thing. That would be one major thing. I think I still believe in diversification. I still believe you shouldn't day trade. I still believe that you should be widely diversified. I don't believe you should buy the dip. I think that the only time you should invest in particular companies is when you have some kind of an edge or some kind of a value involved, but basically you should be well diversified. And yeah, you can tilt towards tech a little bit, although I don't know if now is the time to do it, given how expensive tech is. But you can tilt towards, in a sense, the future. It depends on your horizon. Depends on how much risk you want to take. Joseph says, Marla's second symphony, thank you, Thomas, is part about death and a fuel on how life is meaningless. I mean, generally, Marla is pretty down. But I love his second symphony. It's quite beautiful in spite of that. And a lot of sad, depressing, dark music is beautiful. Dave Dean, thank you for the sticker for $10. Really appreciate that. I mean, if we have people who have not done a sticker, now is a good time to do a sticker. It's a way to support the show. 124 people watching. Please like the show before you leave. I know some of you come and leave. But if you like the show, please like it, because that helps with the algorithm enormously, really, really a lot. I had a one-on-one with somebody at YouTube. I now have a person at YouTube that I talked to about how to grow the channel. And I meet her every two weeks. And pretty cool that YouTube is offering that. I think it's because of your super chats, YouTube respects this channel. It respects this channel because of that. But she said, look, the algorithm is biased towards interaction. And interaction could be lots of chat. It could be a lot of comments. But like, subscribe, share, all interactions. And they bias the algorithm towards that. So to the extent that you want to help the show surface for people as they're watching it, then do the simple thing. Like just click that like button. And if you're not subscribed, please subscribe. And if you'd like to support the show, use the super chat to do it. Richard said, I think Lucy Harish interview exemplifies high self-esteem. What do you think? I agree completely. She is a strong woman. She has her views. She stands up. And she stood up since she was a child to racism. She has confidence in the justice of what she advocates for. She wants to be treated as individual. She believes she has rights. And she has earned a place on this planet to live a good life. That's self-esteem, that kind of confidence to live. That kind of understanding that you have the capabilities to live a good life on this planet in this world. So yeah, I completely think she's a woman of self-esteem. Andrew, how would you answer the appeal of emotion, of the suffering of God's hands, being basis to decide political policy? It seems to be essential element of leftist position. Well, it's an essential element of altruism. Somebody else's suffering is a claim against you. And you need to do something. You need to act if they are suffering. And their suffering is a sign in some sense of their virtue. And the fact that you're not suffering or even worse if you are the cause of their suffering, then you are evil. And this is the whole basis for the view of Israel is bad, Palestinians good, oppressor oppressed, intersectionality, the whole thing is right there. So it has to be completely and utterly rejected. Suffering is not a basis for anything. It might be a basis in the right context for compassion. Certainly the suffering of innocence is a basis for compassion. But that's about it. Then you do what you need to do in order to defend yourself and to thrive and to survive. All right, almost done with the questions. If you want to ask a question, now's the time to do it. Fun question, why don't all of the free market capitalists organize a migration to a small country or state? Get rid of the status laws and create a next great economy? I mean, people have tried that. People have talked about that partially because we can't all agree where to go move to. They're not enough of us. We don't even agree on what a free market actually will be. There is the Free State Project, which is trying to do that in New Hampshire. There are a variety of private cities being built, I think in Honduras, trying to establish that. So it's an idea that people are playing around with, that people are trying, that people would like to try. But it's not going to work. There's just not enough numbers. And no state is going to let you run it over with these ideas of liberty and freedom without putting up a fight. So you better be ready for a fight. Christian, what do you think about the idea? Ukraine and NATO are declaring unilateral, current front lines, the new borders of Ukraine now becoming a NATO member. Russia has one territory, but it's a very victory. Not a bad idea. You don't even have to recognize the borders. You could just declare Ukraine a member of NATO. The problem with it is that I don't think NATO would stop the Russians at this point. And I'm not sure what NATO then would do. Is NATO then going to invade Russia? If I'm Finland and Poland, and Poland doesn't have a border with Russia, well, it does have a small border with Russia. Does America send troops to Ukraine and start fighting the Russians? That's the challenge. The challenge is, is NATO willing to actually fight? And I don't think it is. And I don't think they're willing to fight and risk that it turned into a nuclear confrontation. I think they think that if they supply Ukraine with weapons, they isolate the conflict to Ukraine versus Russia, then Russia never feels the need to use nukes because it doesn't feel like it's in grand world war against NATO in the United States. In spite of the rhetoric where the Russians claim they are, they're not, and as a consequence, they don't use it. So I think that what's stopping that from happening is primarily NATO fear of actually engaging in warfare with Russia, which could lead to a nuclear confrontation. Justin is asking whom I guest this this week. I don't have a guest this week. And that reminds me that we have to, I'm changing the schedule a little bit this week. I'm wondering how I should change it here. I'm debating. I could do the show tomorrow night. I could do a show tomorrow night. But tomorrow night is Valentine's Day. And I fear that many of you, I hope, are celebrating Valentine's Day. I'm not. And the reason I'm not is that we never really celebrate Valentine's Day because our wedding anniversary is three days after Valentine's Day. So we celebrate our wedding anniversary. And we've actually got a Valentine's Day dinner as well. But the restaurant that we want to eat at Valentine's Day was full on the day itself. So we booked them on the 15th, which is Thursday. That's why I can't do the show Thursday. It's an amazing restaurant. And he does this. He did this last year. He does a Valentine's dinner. It's a prefix menu every time. He only serves 12 people. You sit at a bar, 12 people. He cooks all the food in front of you. And the theme of the meal is chocolate. He has chocolate in every dish. Chocolate in every dish. And all the parts of the cocoa bean. So it's just an amazing meal. So we're doing that on Thursday. So he can't do a show Thursday. But I'm thinking maybe I should do the show on Friday because I'm probably not going to do a show on Saturday. Instead, I'll probably do a show on Sunday because Saturday is my wedding anniversary. So I probably won't do a show then. I'll do it instead on Sunday. All right, so this is a schedule for this week. News roundups, as usual, probably 1 PM East Coast time, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Evening show, next one will be on Friday. And as a consequence of this, no interview this week, next week, the interview is with, oh, there is no interview next week because I'm traveling next week. I'm actually in Florida next week. I'll let you know about the schedule for next week. But I'm traveling next week. And then following week, the 29th of February, I've got Elan Juno coming in. And then we'll see what happens after that. I'm traveling again. I'm traveling to Europe. So we'll see. But I've got a long list of people. And Angela is trying to connect with them and trying to set it all up. And there will be, in March, April, May, June, a lot of interviews. Oh, Jeremy Morton twice. Thank you for the stickers. Really appreciate it. 50 in a 10. Thank you. And then Jeremy Snavely. Thank you, Jeremy, for the support. Really appreciate it. Thank you, guys. That is great. Let's see. Daniel says, remember that Trump doesn't like Netanyahu because he congratulated Biden after the election. He's such a narcissist loser. Yeah, I mean, exactly. For really good reasons, he doesn't like Netanyahu. But he also, he's blamed Netanyahu for not achieving peace. He ultimately said that it turned out that the Israelis were the ones that held up the negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis during the Trump administration. Trump was pushing for two-state solution. And he now complains that it was the Israelis fault. We didn't get it. But he's Trump. So you can't believe a word he actually says. All right, guys. That is all the Super Chat questions we have. If you want to sneak one in quickly right now, I'll take it. But other than that, I will plan to see you tomorrow at 1 p.m. East Coast time. Expect that to be the time, same on Thursday, same on Friday. No evening shows until Friday. And after that, there'll be a show. I'm doing a show in Hebrew. Well, anyway, on Saturday the 17th. And then our regular show will be on Sunday at 3 p.m. All right, it's thank you to all the Super Chatters. Thank you for joining me today. Thanks for the support. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. It's still true that we should have over 100 likes. So please make sure to do that little bit to support the show. Go watch the video. Go watch the video. Share it. Get it out there. We're at 98 likes, by the way. So we're really close to 100. So just a couple of you doing it would get us to 100. Don't forget to, and by the way, if you're watching this on YouTube after the fact, you can also like the show. It doesn't have to be live. Don't forget to share the video. So I will see you all tomorrow. Have a great night. Bye, everybody.