 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Thursday. I guess it's evening here. It's afternoon where Elon is. I am happy to have Elon back. He was here last week and we had a great conversation. But today we're going to look at, well, we're not going to look at it, we're going to talk about, luckily for you, we're not going to look at it, but we're going to talk about the debate that Lex Friedman hosted on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it was held a week ago, really a day before, two days before, Elon was on the show before. And we were planning to talk about that if we had enough time, but it was just, it came out too close to the time of the show. So we decided to do it this week. Talk about this debate that Lex Friedman put on. It's, to give you a sense of this, it's been watched now, last time I looked, by 2.3 million people. This is a five-hour debate. Now, 2.3 million people, I'm guessing most of them didn't watch the whole five hours. That is quite a task to watch the whole thing. But just to give you a sense of the influence this has. It also had some pretty influential people in the debate. That is people who are regularly in the media and regularly discussing these issues and debating them in different formats, Norm Finkelstein, I think his name is. And Rubini represented the co-Palestinian side. And Destiny and Betty Morris represented the Israel side. We'll talk about each one of them, I think, both in terms of how they did in the debate and everything else. But first, hi, Lon, I forgot to say hello. Hi. It's good to have you back. I'm glad to be back, but I have to say, I regret agreeing to watch that whole thing. I didn't know it was going to be five hours, or if I did, I didn't realize how bad it would be to watch it. But there's a lot to talk about here. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, there really is. And yes, I mean, I listened to it. I started on one and a half times speed, but some of them talk so fast. I think Benny Morris and Destiny talk really fast. At Norm Finkelstein, you can actually put it up to 2X, and it's fine because he's talk so slowly. It drives me, it drove me nuts. But so I landed up on 1.25 speed. It still was like four hours. And I mean, it wasn't the length. It was just a terrible debate. I mean, you made the comment before we came on. You kind of said, was it even a debate? Like say something about what in terms of kind of a big picture. Yeah, my bottom line of this is, for people really trying to understand the issue, this is not a good guide. It's actually counterproductive. And unfortunately, I don't know a lot about Lex Friedman. I know you've been on his show a couple of times. And I like the fact that he looks for interesting people. I think he didn't seem very satisfied with it, and I can understand why. It was just not a good exchange. So why was it not a debate? Typically, a debate, there's some concrete question or specific question or position that you'd say, OK, you're taking this side. I think that side. Or we challenge the question. We disagree that this is a valid proposition. And then you go at it. But this didn't have any of that. It was much more of a facilitated discussion that in practice became a shouting match and a pretty vitriolic to add hominem level attack in many places. And I was embarrassed for the people involved. I was embarrassed for Lex Friedman. I don't know if this is typical for his podcast. I don't understand a few episodes of his. No, I mean, it's not anything I've seen. It's not at all typical. But my response was a little different in the sense that I think I would be more vitriolic, maybe less hominem, because I don't know these people. But I think there was way too much letting people say stuff that was completely nuts, completely moral and completely insane and never calling them on it or not calling them on with the kind of moral firmness that they that the comments deserve. There was way too much destiny. He kept asking the other side questions and he thought he was being smart by asking these questions. And I think he played right into their hand. It was no. I want to put a few things on the table because I think it'd be useful because it's it's just a really sprawling conversation. Because the topic is difficult and it's a lot of it was very history focused. A couple of things just as over. So my view is it's not very valuable to people to understand the issues. I agree. It's just pointing another observation. So you're I think this is part of what you're bringing up. The points on which they really argued vehemently were not the most important points. So there was a lot of back and forth on the historical questions and the claims and counterclaims. And what did Benny Morris write on this page? And what did he say 10 years later? And how did he change his mind? And and how do you end the biggest moral issues just snaked by? And then as you put it, it was really apt, which is some of the craziest, most irrational, most I would have walked out kind of statements. I really I was talking to my son on the drive home just a little while ago. I told like if I were in the room, I wouldn't dignify that I wouldn't continue because he took to give people a flavor of that. The so so the moral issues were not what they were arguing about. And they were arguing about often minutiae. The second issue, big issue for me is. Insofar as there was a moral tone to this, it was Rubani and Finkelstein taking the moral high ground from the beginning and the other side, whether they thought of trying to challenge it, it's not clear. They didn't do anything that would have dislodged that. And the the upshot is if you asked about if you really took this as a debate and you asked who won, it's so obviously the side that sort of the Palestinian side and in a particular way. So you said Rubani comes across. I can't remember if this was you've already said this or is it before we went live, but Rubani comes across as professorial, legalistic, detailed, rational. He's the sort of person you would go if he were a lawyer, you'd say, yeah, I want this guy representing me in court. Like he's going to knock the socks off the of the jury. And he comes across as just the most sensible of the four and the two historians in the room. So he comes across as sensible. And what he says is just completely nuts. He says he says at one point he says we saw that it took dismantling the Khmer Rouge to get peace in Southeast Asia. We saw that dismantling the white supremacist regime in South Africa required was required to get civilization in South Africa. There's no future peace in the Middle East unless Israel is dismantled. And then he gets some sort of hair splitting argument about what that really means. And then he launches into the standard position, which is Israel is an apartheid state. It's a genocidal state. It's irrational. And it just comes across as, well, this guy is the only one who seems credible. And this is what he's saying. And he's so you want to take a stand and is in a sense radical, right? He's consistent. He doesn't waver. He's he knows exactly what his points are. And he knows exactly what he's after and he's not going to compromise. And the pro-Israel side was just. I think Christine is like a historian who is nitpicking and, in a sense, disguising his true agenda, which is completely in agreement with Abobini. But he's not going to actually say it because he's too much of a historian. And the Israeli side just comes across the pro-Israeli side comes across as, yeah, it was kind of flawed and there were problems with it. But the Palestinians are kind of worse and they had opportunities to have peace, but they never took them. So it's really their fault, but let's not be too harsh on them. And it's just it was. Yeah, I mean, the pro-Palestinian side clearly won. I think the debate to the extent that there's a winner here. But I agree with you. It's not worth watching for anybody who wants to learn about this. This is not the debate to watch. There are many, many better sources and probably better debates than this one. I thought this was very weak. And it's partially just the people you put together. Just to drive home the point of sort of the impact that what I think this debate will have is I think the effect of Finkelstein and Roubani is that they are the effect of their statements and the way they conducted them. Most of the time they end up whitewashing the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian movement, which I wish we should talk about because there might be people listening don't already know our views. And they they sanitize what happened. So at one point and this is near the end, one point Finkelstein says, it's no surprise October 7th happened. These people had no other choice, which is the standard desperation argument about why the Palestinians have a right to to arm struggle. And Roubani makes the point about arm struggle, which we should talk about as well, this is under international law and how could you it's obvious to me? How could it's incontrovertible? And that's the that's one of the biggest issues. And that that just slides by. And what Benny Morris and Destiny or what I don't remember his real name is what they what they I think there are points at which they're trying to make important claims, but none of it lands. And I think the listener is just going to be completely unimpressed by that. If they're just trying to weigh it, they don't really have a context. And so the I don't know what Lex's goal was, but the upshot of this thing is the way I have is it's it's going to make the the it white washes the Palestinian movement. It sanitizes Hamas and it gives the high ground. It sort of builds the high ground even higher. Like it makes their position even more strong than it was before October 7th. Yeah, I agree completely. And it gives legitimacy to I mean, I find it amazing. The first hour, I think an hour and 10 minutes basically were all about some quote that something Benny Morris had written in the past where it was in Fikrstein was quoting. And then Benny Masters revised and expanded and Fikrstein was quoting. And they were for an hour basically arguing about these quotes and what Benny Morris actually meant by them or not without even considering the idea, which I would have raised if I was in the room. The Benny Morris is a lousy historian who, you know, so. So I have I have this book. I don't know if you I'm sure you're familiar with it. Yeah, right. Koresh's book, right? Fabricating Israeli history, the new historians. And you should read what I mean, you know, but people out there you should read what the prime Koresh has to say about Benny Morris as an historian. So Benny Masters, it is best defending Israel is still unbelievably weak because he has written lies about the history of Israel that are going to be used against him because they support the Palestinian cause. And yet he's an Israeli and he's the historian that everybody's quoting and everybody's citing these days. Nobody critiques the actual stuff that he says. And the poor Palestinian side just eats it up. And so but now on 10 they talked about transfer. They talked about whether the Israelis or the Zionists intended to kick out the Palestinians from a Palestine once they established a Jewish state. That that was our 10. They talked about that. And it's pretty clear from the historical evidence that while there were certain people within the Zionist movement who did who wanted to kick the Arabs out, Ben-Gurion and the leadership of the Zionist movement basically said, we can establish a liberal democracy where people have equal rights no matter what their religion and everything is. And that point was never really made in this debate. It was kind of Benny Mars said it a few but without the kind of force that was required. Yeah, I agree. I mean, they even quoted Herzl out of context. And Herzl in his whole vision for Jewish state is kind of a liberal. He's kind of pro-capitalist. I mean, he's not a capitalist, but he's he's pro-liberal democracy kind of on the on the on the more free market side of it for Jews and Christians and Muslims and everybody living in this new city. And they presented him as if he was some kind of fascist. Yeah, there's a number of things that come up here. So I just want to put on the table. The issue that I think at the beginning needed to come up is that sort of just I think it's useful to questions as we go through is what do they actually say? And what would you have said if you were approaching this differently? And I think our perspective or the perspective I would bring is you're talking about expulsion, you're talking about trying to make the Zionist movement into this imperialist organ or puppet of the Western powers, which you should talk about. The real question here is what's the purpose of their their movement? What are they trying to do? And is it justified? So this whole issue of self determination just goes unquestioned. So the Palestinians had a quote homeland and the Jews had a quote homeland and then they fight over it. What's the homeland for Christ's sake? What is a homeland that's not a clear term? And I think one of the things you would have to do is think deeply about does living somewhere give you claim over the land? Now, not a property rights claim, a political claim, where and it's it's under the rule of an empire, the Ottoman Empire, and then it's under the rule of the British, under mandators, all of these things. And what was the purpose of Zionism? Was it to solve a problem that was a real problem? And what was the reaction to that? And they go back and forth. And one of the points we I've made and you've made this in many times is that when you're thinking about this philosophical issue of what's the purpose of a state, what justifies a state, what justifies any group of people in claiming self determination, and is that always valid, which is the conventional view? And I think the answer is it's not always valid. And it's a very specific context in which you would justify it morally. It's the context in which you're trying to build a freer society or a free society. So it depends on where you start and depends on where you're heading. And the idea of a homeland is a inherently collectivist view, which is one of the things I criticize about the Zionist movement and the Palestinian movement is not something you have to take. And both sides just swallow this, right? And so then they get into this, whose homeland really is it? So that just there's a philosophical issue, there's a moral issue. It's not addressed. And I think that's an important gap. And to the issue of the sort of the history that they're going into. And I've given a number of talks since October 7th. And one of the things I've tried to impress upon people when it comes up is Herzl was so much more an enlightenment figure. Like he wanted atheists to be as free as Jews in this country. And one of the biggest criticisms Herzl faced from other Zionists was you want a Jewish state, where's the Jewish in it? And that was a big problem for them because there were factions of Zionists who said, well, it has to be really Jewish and it has to be religiously Jewish. And he wasn't keen on that. And one of the one of the anecdotes I share with people is in in his book, Herzl talks about, well, he wanted he was a lover of industry. He wanted this place to be a dynamo of economic progress. He wanted it to be progressive in the 19th century sense, not in the 20th century, 21st century. So and one of the things he said was he's sort of musing. What should the flag look like? And we know this really flag now is the star of David, which is a religious symbol. But at some point, he was sort of sitting around thinking, wouldn't it be cool if we had seven or eight? I come in with seven stars to symbolize the seven hours of productive labor in the day. And you could just see how this would rankle with a bunch of Zionists. Some of them are socialist communists. Some of them are hyper religious. And there's Herzl coming along and telling them, you know, it's all about production and free society and intellectual freedom. Now, he wanted a welfare state. And so in that sense, he's much more of a social Democrat if you had to classify him by contemporary terms. But the idea that you would take Herzl and you would say, yeah, he's an organ of Western powers. And he is he was all about kicking out this other racial minority or this ethnic group. It's just not true to the history that I've read. Just it's no, it's not true. It is is, you know, you wrote a journal and there's one little passage in the journal where he contemplates the possible need to to to move the other population out. But it's such an insignificant portion. And it's just a contemplation, you know, and they take it out of context and they make it be a deal of it. But Herzl's life is interesting. I mean, here's a guy who was born, you know, was born in Austria and he lived in Vienna, completely assimilated Jews. So he barely considered himself Jewish, right? He he he wanted to become an Austrian. He wanted to be a European. He wanted to be he had no desire to be Jewish or to be to be anything. And but he he, you know, and he faced some anti-Semitism, but he didn't think it was that big of a deal until as a journalist, he went to he he covered the Dreyfus trial in in France. And he saw what they did to Dreyfus and the extent of ritual. And this is France. France is the land of the Enlightenment, right? This is France, the tolerance, you know, tolerance, say religious toleration, everything. And what they did to Dreyfus really drove home to him the idea that the Europeans will never tolerate Jews. And that. So for him, Zionism. It didn't come from his Jew. It didn't come from him viewing himself as Jewish as much as it came from the realization that the world would view him Jewish, whether he liked it or not. Dreyfus, by the way, was a French general or French colonel who was a completely assimilated Jew, not religious, completely French in every regard. And he was accused of spying for the Germans. And it was clear that he wasn't spying for the Germans, but that he was a scapegoat and they and the anti-semitism during the trial. People, you know, people all over the world commented on it and it created a whole stir in France. But it's what a woken hurdle to the realization that the Jews need to figure out how to protect themselves. And that's really the positive essence of Zionism, right? I mean, I agree with you, Zionism is collectivistic and tribalistic to some extent. And it's negative in those respects, but as a movement for self-defense, it's probably an historical necessity. Yeah, I just want to stress an important point that I've become more attuned to over the last few years, and it's partly talking to colleagues, but talking to other people. It thinking about intellectual movements is really difficult. And it's one of the things that is not done well generally. So you think about Zionism as I'm stressing that it's a package of different motivations, different kinds of intellectual trends. It's still possible. This is where people fall down. It's still possible to identify an essence to a movement if it has some unity to it. I think Zionism does have that. And I think that the way that I think of it is. In terms of Iran's approach, it's kind of like a package deal, right? It's got different elements. They don't they're not essentially belong together. But what are they all a response to? What is the unity? I think the unity is there was a real political moral issue that was faced in Europe at this time, late 19th century, early 20th century, which was as you described it. So I think Herzl is an avatar for this, which is even being fully assimilated as a Jew, you couldn't escape the reality that the whole population would still view you in this category and would have prejudice against you and maybe even worse than prejudice. If you think of if you just go eastward to the pale of settlement and what they sort of the way the Russian Empire dealt with them, they they pushed them into a certain area because that's the only place you were allowed to live and in other places, Jews were only allowed to have certain job. So there was just systematic ways in which they were. And you were right in the sense that France was the one of the first places to grant them civil rights in a much more part of society. And then that emphasizes the problem, right? So if you go to a place where Jews are most welcome politically and then you get a Dreyfus, because Dreyfus was to the 19 1905, 1910, I forget exactly the whole span of time. It was to that period what the OJ trial was in the 1990s. If you think about it as a cultural issue, Emile Zola, the novelist, wrote this screen called Jacques, which is I'm he was really outraged by this whole thing. And it's famous and now people use this phrase when they're making a statement. So it was just a really critical thing. So when you think of Zionism, it's if you understand it as essentially a response to this political problem and an attempt to find a solution to it and not all the solutions were right. But the essence of it is the is a valid goal, which is to live in greater freedom. And I think when you see Israel, it reflects all the problems of Zionism, too. It reflects the essence of the solution, which is a freer society, but also a lot of the vestiges, the religion, the collectivism, the mixed economy and socialism, which is a big part of it. So in that sense, it's important to think of it as that. But I think it's the same kinds of thinking about the Palestinian movement needs to be done. And they're the same thing. Similar things are true. It's not exactly the same because there's much greater unity of purpose. There's much and it's not a reaction to an actual problem in the same sense in which wanting to be free of prejudice is a reaction to a real problem. And I think that's the crux of this issue. Well, there's a sense in which it's worse because I think that the Palestinians achieve unity to a large extent by killing the people who are not part of the unity. So, you know, anybody even going back to the 20s and 30s, 1920s and 30s, even people who anybody who suggested they might be a war for the Jews to play in some future Palestine or there might be two states or anything like that. You know, it was was marginalized and often killed. You know, the 1936 to 39 revolts of the of the Arabs against the British. The Arabs killed more Arabs than they killed Jews or they killed or they killed British and they killed basically their political opponents. And this is Hussaini, who the what he called Jerusalem, the Mufti, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who later became, you know, if associated with the Nazis, you know, he basically took power. I mean, it was built from the beginning on authoritarian principles and on force and coercion. And there was never striving for any kind of liberal democracy or conception of liberal democracy. The initial conception, I mean, the idea of a Palestinian state is a late idea. You know, the original intent, even of the Mufti of Jerusalem, was to Palestine to become part of the greater Arab, you know, for the present with Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Palestine being one empire under under the Hashemites. You know, the Palestinian Palestinian self-determination was a very late conception. And it was really, I think, put together because of the failure of Arab nationalism, brought out of a pan Arab nationalism more than because of any desire for a particular Palestinian state. Yeah, one of whoops, you froze there. Ilan, you there? Yeah, he's frozen. You guys still there? Did I lose you or did Ilan lose us? Tell me in the chat. Somebody in the chat, give me a yep. Yep, doesn't yes, doesn't answer my question. Yes, you are here. Good, you're here. So it's just Ilan who has who has disappeared. All right. Ilan's frozen. I'm not. All right, that's good. Ilan, if you're listening, maybe maybe you should log off and log back on. All right, he did that. He just logged off. All right, you I'm here and you are here and we are here. So all three of those are true. And guitar hero says he's frozen. I'm not sure why you're frozen. Maybe he's in Siberia or something like that. Ilan will get back on in any second now, I assume. So. Yeah, you know, the whole the whole approach of this particular debate, the whole way it was framed, the whole approach of the debaters to it, I think was all wrong because there was none of this starting with, OK, there's this land, there's an empire crumbling. What do you do with this land? What happens on this land? Who has, if you will, a right to this land? If you're going to form a state on it, what is that state? What would a legitimate state look like? And I don't think at the time there was a discussion about that. Unfortunately, the Jews and the Zionists didn't frame the issue in terms of, you know, what are the moral reasons or what are the legitimate reasons to form a new state? It was it was framed in terms of the Jews coming back to their ancient home and it was framed in terms of the Palestinians. They've always been there and therefore they should they should have self self determination. But. There was no. Real thinking, real debate, real discussion about when is it legitimate to form a state? As as Elon said, and what makes it just because you lived on the land, does that mean you should be the one forming the state? This idea of self determination because of geographic proximity is just wrong and it's led to all these authoritarian countries all over the place. I mean, let me see where. Let me just see where I mean. Oh, there he is. No, you made it back. Sorry. Yeah, you froze and then and then kicked you off. I'm sorry. So what did you what did we lose really at the beginning? So just as you were starting to speak, it froze. OK, I was just one of the points I wanted to make in reaction to this issue of how Zionism is portrayed and what the purpose of the Palestinian movement is. You were saying, which is something I agree with it, it was founded on authoritarian goals from the beginning. It's colored by that and just gets worse over time. So it goes from being traditionally monarchical type strong man authoritarianism. It goes to the PLO version and then it goes to Hamas version over time. That's sort of the arc of it. It's an issue I deal about in what justice demands that important aspect that didn't come up and in fact is purposely whitewashed in this debate that Lex hosted is that none of that comes up. There's not a single discussion of what were the PLO goals? What is Hamas about? And his hair splitting about, oh, you're talking about how many people did Hamas shoot or how many people did Islamic Jihad shoot or how many people did Palestinian shoot or and then there's a whole conspiracy theory about the IDF. The Israeli Defense Force came in and they were the ones responsible for it. And what you do get. So there's no real facing of, well, who are these people? What would it look like if Yasser Arafat of the PLO or the Hamas leadership? What would it look like if they got their way politically? That's just completely evaded. And what you do, you do get, and this is Robani's success in this in this debate. And I hope I'm saying his name right. I'm sorry. He's saying. This was the way he characterizes the Palestinian movement and its purpose is divorced from any ideological context. The way he says it is you come into my house and you take over my house and then you want to debate with me about how much of my house I'm going to get back. Well, how would you react to that? Well, no sane person is going to tell you, yeah, of course, come into my house, take it over and steal from me. But that's not what happened. That's just not historically true of how the settlement of Israel happened historically. And it is not. It is just mischaracterizing what the actual reaction was of ordinary Palestinians. The Palestinian sort of aristocracy, if you will, the people with a lot of money and then the political people, very different reactions along that sequence. And it's important what those were and how they changed over time. None of that is taken into account. It's just they came in, they took over the homeland, they have a right to resist. What do you expect? And it's so this is another version of how he and Finkelstein take over the moral high ground and in a way that's really credible to the audience who doesn't know the background. And here I'm sitting across from him. Benny Morris, who spent I don't know how many decades sitting in archives or claims to have sat in all these archives and translate or miscoach people. Yeah. And then destiny, who I don't know his background, but this is not a response, a response to you took over my house and now you want to debate how much I get back and they have a right to arm resistance. That is just you can't leave that unanswered because it's so false and unjust. I did find it interesting. The Finkelstein early on did acknowledge that the Jews that came in the early part of the 20th century bought up, bought the land and didn't kick out the Palestinians. So it was interesting that they kind of, in a sense, said, OK, the problem was 47, 48, it wasn't before that. And Benny Mars and destiny didn't bring up all the violence that occurred against Jews in the period from starting really probably first attacks on 1920, maybe even as late as the 19th, early as the 19th century. But certainly 21, 29, my grandfather was injured in Hebron. In the in the Arab massacre in Hebron, he was he was one of the students there at a school where many of his classmates were killed. But they don't mention 29, 21, 36. I mean, all of that, that history is irrelevant to them. And of course, put aside everything else. But if you're if you're founding in Israeli state and the Arabs are being trying to kill you for decades, yeah, you're worried about keeping all these Arabs in in in your state. It's a real concern. It's an objective concern. So you can't understand what happens in 47 or 48 without understanding the historical context of kind of what had happened before that. And and Morrison, Destiny, just don't bring that up. Yeah. Or not with the kind of power to kind of mention stuff, but but not with any emphasis. Yeah, I mean, there's a real lack of moral fire on the part of Benny Morris and Destiny. And Benny Morris is an embarrassing figure for other reasons, but he sits there. What he and just to give people a flavor of this. So again, this is not a recommendation to go watch it. But if you really want to suffer through it, just dip in at various places. But here's what he does. Finkelstein speaking or Robani speaking, and he's sort of peppering them with little refutational comments here and there. I don't know. It was 62 and there's no is 42. And I don't know that this was irrelevant. You're making and he comes across as a nitpicky appeaser, that's my takeaway from here. It's like and he's he's just not incredible voice on this topic. And I don't think Lex picked him because of that. I think Lex picked him because he got a reputation. He's very widely published and respected and considered very pro-Israel, even though early in his career, he was considered very anti-Israel. So early his career, he wrote books that what I said before, if I'm harsh, criticizes and claims he misquotes and misinterprets and everything. But came across as part of these new historians, as people who made up stuff to make Israel look bad. And Benny Mars was one of them. And then later on, after Second Intifada kind of came to the realization that maybe there's something more going on here because of how brutal the Palestinians were during the Second Intifada and in a sense, he changed his stripes, but never went back and in a sense, rewrote his book. So never went back and questioned his own scholarship, but just kind of reframed his old scholarship as if, oh, no, no, that's all right. But I'm actually very pro-Israel. And I think that's what Finkelstein was poking holes in. And I think it's justifiably so. I think I think the scholarship is flawed and you can't have it both ways. You see the pro-Israel is anti-Israel. You can't do you can't dance both, you know, pretend that both are coming at the same time. But yeah, I agree with you in characterizing how he was. He made some good points. But because some of the good points that he made were made without either any moral fire or without any kind of. Rubini didn't have more fire, but he had the steady, calm perspective. He spoke in complete sentences. He knew exactly where he was going. And Mars came across as a as a little bit of a kind of. What a confused professor. And without without the certainty that Rubini had Rubini said stuff without moral fire, but it was all certain. Yeah, there was a question about it. Yeah, not condemn Hamas Mawli. And the reason he wouldn't condemn Hamas Mawli, he said, is because Israelis never asked to condemn Israel Mawli. Why should he be asked to condemn Hamas Mawli, which is a slippery, disgusting way to get out of answering the question? But he got away with it. Nobody called him on it at the end of the day. Nobody called him on it. Yeah, let me let me amend what I said. So moral fiber is one heightened expression of having moral certainty. And that's what Rubini had. But whereas I think Benny Mars did not have any sort of clearly did not have. So one of the thought I wanted to raise about the way. So this whole section, the first hour and a half or so, I can't remember how much was the expulsion and the 48 and this whole history that was just it got to the point. It was very legalistic and a lot of it was Finkelstein poking holes in Betty Morris and just Finkelstein trying to impress everyone with his reading. And just this just as a sidebar on this, it's embarrassing how much he has to prove his expertise, how much he's trying to impress you that he's read everything. And I expect you to read everything. You're a scholar. That's your job. Don't tell me you've read every page or thing. But the point that Rubani makes that goes by and I think will will resonate with many people who watch this video because it's part of the new way of understanding the more recent way of understanding the conflict is that at a couple of places, he brings in how first he tries to characterize Herzl as a kind of puppet of Western power. So this is to put to fit Israel back into this story that we're hearing on college campuses today, that Israel is a settler colonial project. It's the puppet of the British is the puppet of these colonial powers. It's it's it's sin is just an expression of the wider global sin of colonialism. That's one thing he does. And I want to say something about how to understand Herzl's relationship with those powers, because it's a best a half truth, right? So there's some glimmer of something there to say. The other one that he brings in on the same agenda, which is to present Israel as a settler colonial venture that's inherently immoral, is they have this debate about whether population transfer was inherent in Zionism. This goes to the point, I think, before we got disconnected of this paragraph or something in Herzl's diaries is the paragraph and somebody else's diaries. There's some statements after a lot of fighting. And there's a question about and as I said earlier, it's hard to think about intellectual movement and it's it's it's very easy to get it wrong. But what he does here is I think this is part of what makes him come across as more effective is he starts to make the case that transfer of populations is inherent to Western nations and colonial powers. That's the overall point. And then Israel just fits under that ergo. It was inherent in Zionism ergo. It's part of Israel. Therefore, Israel is an apartheid, genocide and the whole litany of things that he says. So he's he's working to fit this conflict into the more recent way of understanding it, which is not about populations, it's about settler colonialism. That's that's the and that I think is part of why it's so destructive that he won't answer it in those terms because anyone who knows the history will tell you when this comes up, but they don't integrate it. The British actually, Betty Morris says this, but it doesn't land. The British were there's the Balfour Declaration, which is the British saying, yeah, we're in favor and principle of Jewish homeland. The story of how they get that is crazy. Like they have to. It's not like the British were willing to. It was a very reluctant admission, the Balfour Declaration. OK, put that aside. Then the British go from being slightly warm towards this idea to they're running the mandate and they realize this is crazy. This is we don't know what we're doing. And they just they ruin their own position in the great problems from that. I think they realize that they really interests. I mean, interests in quotes, right? Real politic lies with the Arabs. Yeah, one who appease the Saudis, they want to appease the Iraqis and the Jordanians. And promising a Jewish state is interfering with their ability to carve up the Middle East and hand it out to their allies and sustain their influence in the Middle East forever. And this is this is this is part of what needs to come out and part of what Morris says, but it just it just falls to the ground because nobody responds. And he doesn't make it effectively, which is the British turn. And they this is the historical thing that shocks people. The British turned ships away from Israel from during World War Two. And in the run up to it, refugees coming to escaping the Nazis were turned away. Some of them were sent into camps in Cyprus and other places. And the the the Yeshua, which was the pre-state of sort of political entity that became Israel, they were fighting against the Jews. Sorry, they were fighting against the British, partly because they weren't letting people off the boats and they were it was already clear by that point that the British were so aligned with the Arabs that they were likely to betray the promises they had already made in the Balfour and other commitments. So so this is this is not about getting to the history. And I don't want to get into the history. It's relevant for thinking about the claim that Israel is a colonial settler project, that it's hand in glove with colonial powers, that everything you say about colonialism, which is a big floating abstraction to people that applies. Israel was fighting against the British at the time. And the British did not want anything to do with it. That's why they sent it to the UN to decide the partition they gave up. There's a number of white papers they wrote that none of them worked. And when you send it to the UN and they don't even vote on the resolution, right, this is part of what OK. They refused to vote either for or against the resolution. But yeah, I mean, everything has to fit into a certain language now, a certain philosophical, I don't know if it's even philosophy, but ideological framework and this post anti colonialism is a big, big part of the left's agenda on university campuses. Everything now is framed in terms of colonialism and, you know, America is condemned and they hate America condemned as colonialists because of because the Native Americans. Britain, of course, is horrifically condemned. And I found it interesting. He tried to create a connection between Herzog and Cesar Rhodes, who, you know, they brought that up. It's like, yeah, they probably communicated because Cesar Rhodes was an important official in the British Empire. But the idea that there was some relation between not the British were doing in South Africa and what the British were doing in Israel is in Palestine is was so ridiculous. But it wasn't refuted. Again, it's it's left there. Oh, Cesar Rhodes, he's the guy that the pulling statues down in Cambridge off because of his role in South Africa, part hide Israel. OK, that all makes sense, right? They connected all and no refutation, no real refutation of that. Although again, Benny Mars tried. But he wasn't insistent enough and he didn't have enough enough fire and these people could just drop these. They could just drop this historical stuff and and walk away from it. And it left a residue and it has to have left a residue and people to listen to it. I want to say one quick thing on Herzog, because it irked me when I I mean, a lot of things are listening to this. So the idea I mentioned earlier, which is trying to associate him with colonial powers. So and I said it's the best to have to. So what did Herzog actually do? So Herzog went on this campaign. So he was convinced that we need we need to start a state, which is if you think of it, it's just incredibly ambitious. And in many cases, people who try to do that are either crazy or it's bound to fail or both. So he goes on this quest and how does he try to do it? Well, the whole area is run by empires, right? The Ottomans and then the so what do you do when you have a regime? So he goes to talk to the Ottomans. He goes to talk to different people in power and he tries to say, well, what's some of money would we need to give you to get a piece of land and some political autonomy? And he goes through all these negotiations. In the end, he's rebuffed like all the commitments he gets, like he gets to he gets to the anti room. He's waiting for a meeting and then he's told I'm not interested in talking to you today. It's like he's like he's shopping a startup, right? And he keeps getting turned down by the VCs. And OK, well, that's important. That means that they weren't interested in what he was doing. And they did not want to make any commitments to him. And in fact, the fact that he's turned down tells you something about the openness to this whole project. So it's relevant for thinking about this this framework that's being pushed all the time is that the guy who's most closely associated with this project can't convince any of the sort of imperial powers and nor the British, like the whole Balfour thing is an interesting episode to talk about. That's really significant and you have to be able to integrate that. But that's that's what it would look like to think about this issue and form of view, but it's not. It's guilt by association. Oh, he was like Rhodes. He was like he was handing over the British. We know about them already. Their statues come down. Therefore, we know about Herzl. OK, there's a kind of conspiratorial mentality about that, which which is just not reality oriented at all. So so one of the things that I found also amazing about the debate, the Israeli side never really made the case of the initiation of who initiated force. It was never really brought out. It was just assumed that people knew that it was the Palestinians that attacked right after the partition resolution. I think will be me would say, well, they had every right because they're taking half their land and Arab nations attacked as of May 14th when Israel, the Israeli state, was declared that September that October 7th was Hamas attacking, but that was one in like a million attacks that have happened. That the idea of initiation of force. They really didn't talk about it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. It wasn't and it wasn't. It was not only not talked about in so far as it sort of hovered around. There wasn't the. So you have it as a category that there's an initiator and then there's the person so retaliating about it didn't come up. It was really I wonder if it was purposeful on the Finkelstein-Rubani side. You don't want to talk about that because that gets murky. Well, Rubani is very much on the legalistic side of what is an international law when you have a right to resist and they're taking your home, so it's OK to say he would say I think he was the clearest about this, which is what's amazing about it. Right? He was clear. It's the pro-Israel side that didn't make this a big deal and didn't elevate this and didn't push the Finkelstein-Rubani side on it, which is surprising because you think that would be an essential piece of this. You know, destiny tried to say things like they rejected peace agreements, they kept rejecting peace agreements. Which is all true. But Rubini came back and said, well, yeah, because these raised an offer and what they offered was ridiculous. And therefore, you can't accept these kind of deals. Why compromise? So again, he came across as the more principled party, principled for evil, maybe. But that's how he came across. Yeah, a couple of other things that I wanted to bring up and I'm interested in your perspective. And then we have a ton of questions. So OK, so maybe it'll be the end and then we'll see what the questions are. So one is the insistence, the way in which international law, the UN, International Court of Justice, international organizations, how they operate in the argument. That's one issue I'm interested in your perspective on that. And the other one is in it's this insistence that came through mostly in the last hour and a half, two hours where Rubani and Finkelstein. This is where they they get into it's sort of an inside baseball analysis of all the different negotiations, which negotiation, how many, what percentage was offered to whom and and the point in which they were firm and did not budge in the pro-Israel side really failed at this, which was the Palestinians were asked to recognize Israel. They didn't in 1988, they didn't in 1993, didn't make any difference. So why do you keep asking for this? So the Palestinians live up to this expectation and the Israelis did not. And I want to say something about this idea of the Palestinian movement recognizing Israel, which is it's obscene that that is something that is seen as a concession the Palestinians have to make. It shouldn't be a question. And it just shows you the way in which this debate has unfolded over decades, which is the Palestinians make it a big concession. We're coming down from the high ground and we'll let you. Here's a few words in your direction that will acknowledge that you have a right to exist and it's completely the opposite. It's Israel has done and we talked about this last week. If you think about what is the basis for a society? What is the what is a moral society? It's one that protects individual freedom. And that's the standard. The more you live up to that standard, the more fully you live up to that standard, the more moral that society is. And that's the standard I apply to Israel, to the US and every country in the world. And what is it that you apply that to the Palestinian movement? It's exactly the opposite. It's not that they're failing to live up to it fully. It's they're not interested in protecting freedom. They're interested in destroying freedom. And so the whole idea that it's a big concession for them to allow Israel to have recognition by a bunch of thugs and murderers. OK, that's perverse. The other perverse element of it is the anti-intellectual sort of legalistic aspect of it, which is he keeps throwing out, well, they did it in 1988 and then 1993, all these agreements. I can say to you, your honor, I I can say anything I want in words. But if I don't live up to it, it's BS, right? And we know that in real life and it doesn't change in politics. It's even more obvious in politics. If the Palestinians say. We know we recognize Israel, they cough through it, they cough through it, and they put in a piece of paper and then they don't live. And then they start killing you even more. What does that really tell you, right? And an idea that Rabbani then spins that as well as the Israelis didn't love up to it. And it's that's one of the most perverse aspects of it. And it wasn't wrapped up in all the anger, right? But this should be in the point at which there was anger. Like you can't have if you view that as a concession, you've already lost. And the idea that they lived up to it, it's just it's the most obscene falsehood that you could say about this whole dynamic, which is there is no reality to saying they lived up to it. It's just it's fantasy. No, absolutely. I mean, at every turn, negotiations compromised by the Israelis led to more violence, not the other way round. So the Palestinians always responded to any compromise with more violence, more we want more from you. We want to take on more. And the only time you get any kind of peaceful peace is when Israel gets very, very tough and sad, but true. But again, none of that was really brought out by the pro-Israel side. And one, sorry, one more thing about I raised this issue and I'm interested in your reactions to it. So the UN, international law, all these international institutions, they come up a lot in the in the five hours and it's painful because it I mean, it's one of the many reasons it was hard to listen to. But I forget if it was a conversation with you or the on car, but at some point in the past, I heard you say or I kind of kind of took away from the conversation. So I'm not going to attribute it to either of you in case I get it wrong. But there's there's a way in which the kind of progressive left view of the world. It's self-consciously secular, right? That's officially what it is. And it's rooted in sort of the leftist perspective that we're Marxist or whatever it is they think of themselves as self-consciously secular in most cases. And yet the way in which the UN or international law stands in their mind, it's essentially like the Pope said, X, how could you challenge that? Right? It's what the Pope is the Catholics. There is it's like you notice the way they talk about it. Well, international court of justice, 15 judges approve this. You think they're all stupid? What's wrong with you? It's the international court of justice. And I look at that and I think, have you seen what courts can be? What do you think? And then the UN as an arbiter for anything, like when it's really to their advantage, that's how they couch it. And it's interesting because of course, they don't view the UN as important when it came to 1947, then the UN was no good. And why wasn't the UN no good? Rubini actually says this. He says the UN was no good because Africa and Latin America and Asia weren't represented, but the UN in 1947 was mostly free countries, although Soviet Union was there, but it was mostly kind of civilized countries. And that doesn't count, right? He says, and he's actually right. If the UN had a vote on that today with all the countries that I vote, they would turn down the partition plan. And so there's this veneration of some form of democracy. But it's worse than that because it's it's it's not just majoritarian rule. It's the veneration of the primitive, the backward, the the semi barbaric. And they should get double votes and the civilized, they shouldn't count at all. That's what they really want. And the whole courts and all that, it's all a facade because they'll only admire that as long as it rules in their favor. And and as soon as it doesn't claim it's a it's an instrument of colonial powers and of Western, whatever, right? Yeah, so the UN has two faces. If it's doing the wrong thing, it's America pulling strings. If it's doing the right thing, it's unimpeachable because it's the voice of the international collective, it's unimpeachable. And that's in that sense. The thing that really animates them, the thing that drives them is their anti Western civilization. And that's what is really in a sense this is all about. Israel is hated because it represents Western civilization. The Arabs are admired because they represent the antithesis of Western civilization. And and the UN is good when it is good when it supports the anti West and it's bad when it supports the West. And it really is about philosophy in that sense. This is this is all about the Enlightenment. It's all about a rejection of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment bringing light to the people is being rejected by the Arab world and being rejected by these countries that would vote against Israel. But that is elevated to I compare it to reminds you of Husser, right? Husser claimed the civilization was destructive to the human soul. It was bad for human being. It created crime and made people horrible. And what we really needed to do is go back to being noble savages. You know, and I think there's a sense in which the entire left that's their view, right? Anything that is post civilization is bad. Anything that's pro you know, savage, noble savages is good. So environmentalism, which destroys industrialization and destroys civilization pro with the environment is good. I mean, you can go over all these things and in Israel is really evil because it's brought. Enlightenment values to the Middle East. How dare they? So I'm sure we could spend another five hours. Oh, yeah, easily, do you want to take some questions? Yeah, we've got a lot of them. All right, let's start with Clark, who's put up 50 bucks. Why is it why is it not a single commentator ever claimed Ukraine or Russia are committing genocide? It is only when Jews don't allow themselves to be genocide dead that they are guilty of genocide. Is this not textbook Orwellian doublespeak? I don't know if it's doublespeak. I think it's definitely double standard or an inconsistent application of what genocide means. I looked at some of the other cases that on the docket of the International Court of Justice, when that case came up in December, it doesn't come up that often, but it has come up. I mean, the most and they talk about this in the debate that one of the most big significant genocide cases was in in the Balkans in the 1990s. And I so I think there is something to the question is point, which is how is it that Israel is being seen as genocidal and this isn't coming up in another country. Why isn't Russia being accused of the same thing, right? Which is the way you would actually apply it. And I think it's just I don't think people have to connect it to the point you just made. I think a lot of what animates this is just an animosity to the to valuable countries, the Western oriented free societies, which Russia isn't. And as many of the sort of new lights would like to pretend it is, it's not it's a it's a retrogression to a kind of imperial power. And it's about tribal Russian identity. So I think there is something to that for sure. Yeah. And I think that if the United States or Western Europe were involved in a war and a lot of civilians died, they would be easily accused of genocide. I double standard, you know, certainly everything's heightened when you talk about Jews because there is anti-Semitism out there and anti-Semitism drives a lot of this. But I think much more than anti-Semitism, it's anti again, anti-West. So the bad guys can do anything. They can kill anybody, they can they can do it in any way they want. And yeah, well, it's a bad guys and people don't. But if the good guys do something, then it's immediately labeled as genocide or it's immediately elevated to some kind of condemnation of everything that's good about the so-called good guys. So yeah, Israel's Israel's rich, advanced, strong. It's going to be associated with genocide, almost no matter what the Palestinians do, they'll never be accused of genocide. And this was another point that came out in the debate that Benny Morrison and Destiny tried to argue. But again, weekly that Hamas committed genocide or its intention was genocidal in on October 7th. And Fikustin and Rini were having none of it. And again, I think did a fairly good job at kind of not bouncing those ideas away, is deflecting them is the better word. Deflecting. I want to voice an unpopular opinion. Maybe I don't think any of my opinions are popular. But I haven't done enough reading on this, but I'm dubious about this idea of genocide. I mean, there is such a thing. And we know in World War Two, the Nazis were about eliminating groups of people. So there's something out there to identify and conceptualize. But if if you can point to a country defending itself and emasculate them and tie their hands by the threat or the reality of a threat or a court case, that you're genocidal, how are you ever going to win any war? Yep. So it's just it seems like it's a very dubious way of thinking. First of all, it brings in the idea that well, so suppose let's take an example of World War Two. So why is it that retaliating against the Nazis was not genocidal? Yeah. Well, some people claim it is now, right? So there is an argument. There is an argument out there. It says that what the US did to the Germans and what they did to the Japanese was genocidal, but it makes the concept mean nothing, right? Because clearly the Americans weren't trying to wipe out the German people. They weren't trying to wipe out the Japanese people. Germans were trying to wipe out the Jewish people. No question about that. And in Rwanda, I can't remember who it was. The Houdis did it to the Tutsis, the Houdis. But one of them was trying to wipe out the other one. No question about that. And that was, I think, a genocide. And you could argue that in the Balkans, the Serbs were trying to wipe out the Muslim population or at least certain parts of it, so maybe that's genocide. But you can't, you're not committing genocide by by fighting a self-defense and civilians dying, particularly when those civilians are held as human shields purposefully. I mean, it's dishonest and absurd to make that argument. And again, it's it's how Rubini could say that and not and the other side. You know, I wish it was a yelling match at that point. I wish they would have yelled him down and said that that's absurd. That's ridiculous. It's evil. That is the epitome of evil. To accuse the victim, to blame the victim for what is going on, to blame the victim for genocide. All right, more, more questions are rolling in, which is good. All right, Justin. Wonderful to meet you in Amsterdam. You're on. Thanks, Justin. Next conference would love to see you learn to where you got to come to Ocon. Ocon in June, Ilan will be there. We'll all be there. You'll be able to meet a bunch of objectivist intellectuals that will be phenomenal. So Anaheim right across the street from Disneyland. All right, James says, OK, she's got a two part question. Part one, Mark Pellegrino made a good observation about the discussion where Norma Finkestein asserted anti-Semitism is a part of the human condition, implying you can't blame Palestinians for harboring anti-Semitic views. This invalidates their position that Israel shouldn't exist. By this logic, Israel should exist so Jews can defend themselves from the perpetual deterministic genocidal Jew hatred. I don't remember that comment from Finkelstein, but it wouldn't surprise me. I saw that I saw it today and he did make that point. There's something about anti-Semitism. Well, everybody's an anti-Semite anti-Semitism is everywhere. And two, he is one, I think. But but it's it's I think I think that's an absolutely true point in a sense that I don't think anti-Semitism is the two monistic and maybe focused Finkelstein believes that, although I doubt it if you really pushed it. But it's prevalent. It's everywhere. It's, you know, two thousand years of it. You know, the more I read about history, the more it's in every era really. And it starts with the Christians and the Christians have an agenda and it spreads to the Romans and it spreads to the rest of Europe. And there's always excuses for it and reasons for it that they provide. But it is the hatred of the Jews is something that is part of the West's culture going back two thousand years. And the only two solutions to it, I think one is to change the culture and get rid of it. And the only solution to it is individualism. And we were heading in that direction. But that got that got stopped. And the other is the Jews to. You know, establish a self-defense pact and start their own free country and tell the world to go to hell. But but that those are the only two alternatives. There's unless you're suicidal, which many Jews turns out were and just are willing to accept the anti-Semitism. But this and it's the tragic part of it is that the enlightenment got halted. That is the enlightenment was even though some of the enlightenment members were anti-Semites, by emphasizing individualism, they would have ultimately gotten rid of anti-Semitism. Yeah, I think it would be so it would become so marginalized that you would look at anti-Semites the way you look at people who are in the Klan. Yeah, they exist. They but they're not as I mean nowadays. I mean, it was different 50 years ago. But I think that's something that is really within reach if you had a better culture. I just want to say it. Well, I think that was true in the United States for for significant portions of the country, parts of the country and then in for certain years and certainly post World War Two, I think anti-Semitism in the United States for the most part disappeared, at least explicitly. I think it was still held by people in some regions of the country. I experienced it when I hitchhiked across the United States in a long time ago. But but it was it was it was gone from the culture. It might be experienced by individuals who was gone from the culture. And it's come back now. Big time. I have a follow up for you. Just I'm curious, because I've been thinking about this and ever since October 7th, I've become more sensitive to the fact that people are going to see me as a Jew, even if I don't care. And I'm not a Jew. I don't think myself as a Jew. That whole issue is never real to me until as real as it has been since then. And one of the things I've thought about occasionally is looking back at experiences that I I just took as rude or just conventionally or generically hostile and sort of reprocessing them and asking myself, was that just because the person was a jerk? Or was there some deep or was there a subtext to it? And I'm thinking back to school days and things like that. Not that I spend a lot of time on this, but just a few things came up. I'm wondering if you've had anything like that sort of rethinking how you understood certain experiences in the past. Yeah, I mean, I think to some extent always being sensitive to it a little bit. So I've noticed it around and I notice it when I travel, people would just come up with these crazy questions. Like, you know, why, you know, how come Jews make so much money? You know, how come Jews are so rich? And it's like, are you really asking me this? And you know, I'll answer them because I assume I try to give them the benefit of the doubt of the innocence and they really are asking out of particularly in a foreign country. But it's always, I mean, when I wasn't hired, so I had a this is not the time to tell the story, but I had a whole process of almost not getting hired by Santa Clara University when they ultimately hired me. And at some point, the chairman of the department called me up and he said, you know why they're not pulling the trigger on hiring you? They don't want another Jew in the finance department. And these were Jesuits. It's a Catholic university is a Jesuit. And he said, you know, sue them if they don't hire you, you sue them for discrimination because that's exactly what's going on. They don't want another Jew. The two Jews in the finance department and they don't want a third. And OK, and I was like, what? This is America. What are we talking about here? But so it's it's there. It's often subtle. But I think I am probably more sensitive than you are just because of when I came when I left Israel and when I came here and and and all of that. But it's definitely there, although in America, it's subtle because they're careful about it. And but now, of course, when you see what they're saying in the streets of New York, not so subtle anymore. It's pretty explicit and pretty nasty. And just moves her so. Wow. I mean, what he said 100 years ago, 120 years ago is being so prophetic. I mean, he didn't quite forecast the Holocaust, but almost. I mean, he wrote about the potential for mass killing of Jews. And and just his understanding that this was so deeply entrenched in Western culture for whatever reason that it would be very difficult to go away was absolutely right. All right, let me thank some people's stickers. Jonathan, thank you. Mary Eileen, thank you. Tom, thank you. Let's see. John Falguni. Hope I'm pronouncing that right. Fendt Hopper, Mary Eileen again. Thank you, Mary Eileen and Wes with a hundred dollars. So thank you, Wes. All right, Michael asks the Jewish population was assaulted when they were just striving to live. This doesn't require a five hour debate. The participants were using mental gymnastics to rationalize altruism and moral equivalence, moral, moral equivocations. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. Yeah, I mean, there's. Mental gymnastics is that I don't know if I would put it that way. I would make a stronger claim. I would say that Finkelstein and Rubani were were we're making claims that can pass for half truths because they sort of shredded history to it or some real history that they can reprocess in their own terms, but huge evasions and evasions. I don't think of that as a mental gymnastics. It's the opposite. It's the I don't want this to be true. I don't want to know this. I'm going to it's a purposeful non-awareness. And the some of the things we've talked about are I think evidence in that direction when they were challenged, Rubani was challenged about what do you think of? Do you support Hamas? Do you sort of challenging them on the crimes? And just the weaseling out of things. And I mean, he's very good at that. So he doesn't go into the weaseling out of it. But it's that and the kind of issues that Finkelstein fixates on. Now, there's something wrong with the way he's thinking. Generally, I think he's just a little crazy, in my view. But the there's something wrong with you if you if you think that. Morally wrong, I should say that you're not asking the right questions often, which is what Finkelstein is doing. So he's trying to skewer his opponents. He's trying to push. So remember, Finkelstein is the one who at the end says not near the end, says you should not have been surprised by October 7th. They had no other option. And that is just a gross evasion. That's not true. And who's they are you talking about the people who are you could isolate them and say, yeah, these are actually hostile to Hamas. They would have escaped if they could have truly innocent people you'd want to live with in your neighborhood. Why are you talking about Hamas? And to think of Hamas is they had no other option. They've been campaigning for decades to destroy a free society. And how does that not process in your mind as something evil? Something good. So, yes, there's a real moral inversion to speak to the question. And I think it is. I think Finkelstein, one of the things I took away from this, having I read a bit of his work in the past, but listening to him, he is there's he's a good example of someone who has internalized altruistic ideas in a deep way. And it manifests in his hostility towards Israel, because I think altruism is a stepping stone toward nihilism, and there's no way around that. And that's definitely what you see in his work. Yeah. And it might go right in the sense that. You know, one of the things that one of the reasons they got away with it, Finkelstein and Rubini, is because the Israeli side didn't hold Israel, so I didn't. Didn't go after them on this issue. Fundamentally, the Jews who came to Palestine in the late 19th century and the 20th century were there to peacefully form, create settlements and ultimately create a free nation where Jews, Christians and Muslims would live and they were constantly attacked. And that that shouldn't come across. That has to come across. That that point has to be made explicit and and forcefully because it is the key. It's an issue, again, of initiation of force. It's an issue of property rights. It's an issue of of of what is a legitimate state, a free state versus what isn't. And they just defaulted on that. They just didn't get that issue across. And that's why it turned into a five hour debate, where in the end, very little was said of meaning because they never dealt with the fundamental ideas. All right, Justin said, says he visit. I visited the Hotel Memorial in Vienna the other day. As annoyingly progressive as the Viennese are, they do seem to hold the line on the legitimacy of the Judenstadt. If this support just a result of the German-Austrian guilt. I think, unfortunately, it probably is. I think Germany is relatively strong support for Israel during this crisis, even though it's a leftist government. First of all, I think the left in Europe is less corrupt than the left in America. It's less nutty. It hasn't gone in the colonial, nonsensical direction, the intersectionality direction. But I also think guilt has a lot to play with it to do with it. Yeah, my impression of Germany. I don't know a lot about Austria, but my impression of Germany is there's a lot of unprocessed guilt and history. There's a really interesting book on that that I read a while back by someone who grew up as a Jew in Germany in the 1980s. And his experience was not anti-Semitism, but just this over compensation, sort of Philo-Semitism, like it was weird to him. And it was really interesting to see it sort of the inside of a society that hasn't fully dealt with aspects of the Holocaust. But yeah, I don't know about Austria. The history of Germany after World War Two is fascinating because for a long time the Holocaust was just unmentionable. And a lot of the younger Germans who had been children during the Holocaust in the 1950s didn't know there was a Holocaust. There's a fantastic movie about the guy who is doing some research. And he comes across the archives that of the concentration camps. And he has no idea of what Auschwitz was and he has no idea of this stuff. And he brings it to light. Right. And the older Germans want to suppress this. They don't want him to say anything. They want to they want to kill it. And he courageously goes against them and he brings it to light. And it's I didn't I didn't know that history at all. And it turns out that this was it wasn't in the textbooks. It wasn't school children learn about it. And it only in the mid 1950s of 10 years after the war, did it did it did they really have a reckoning with it? They didn't really internalize the Nuremberg trials or anything like that. It was much later before they actually did it had a reckoning with it. And and guilt really played a big role after that. But for a while, they just tried to suppress it. They tried to do that movie, Iran. I wish I could. I can't remember. If I find it, I'll send you a link. It's very it's a German movie. It was made by Germans and in German and it's it was very well made. I'm fascinated by that because one of the things I discovered in the last 10, 15 years is something similar to what you're describing. It's just the the non-awareness in Germany of what happened. And it was to the point where there were people who worked in the Nazi government who were just reelected under the the Western German. And it was sort of hushed up and they still had trials. But the way they talked about the way they dealt with the trials were very perfunctory and it was I think it was a generational change. I remember correctly as you're describing it. But I think there's a second wave of that, which was even younger people coming back. And then now today, which is a real turning point, it's the opposite. It's why you keep badgering us with this Holocaust stuff, which is sort of the the turn in Germany towards the so-called new tribalist right, which is really worrying. Anyway, we're kind of getting off track, but I'd love to know more about that movie. Yeah. Let's see, by the way, I just want to mention we got a lot of people watching this on Twitter, I guess we got a room in Twitter. So if any of you are on Twitter right now, let's get more people. So please share it and and see if you can generate even more right now. We have one thousand five hundred fifty seven views. I don't know if I mean, I assume that's just anybody who's watched even five minutes, five seconds of it, but it's still a big number. So let's see if we can get drive that up. And the way to drive that up is for you guys to share it, to like it, to share it, to get it out there. I don't know how you do that. I don't I don't see a share feature on my thing. But anyway, the YouTube feed is there. I guess it's a room. It's live on X and your own book is hosting. So yeah, find a way to share it and get get even more people to come. All right, let's see. Andrew, your honest stated that he doesn't think I and her see a Lee necessarily believes in God, despite converting to Christianity. What value does she think she's getting from accepting religion without a real belief in God? Well, I mean, she says it. She she says she she gets two values out of it. One is meaning or I would I would put it as morality. I think she gets a coat of values that she can pretend is objective. She can pretend is real and and she doesn't really care. It comes to God of people just over 2000 years have figured this out. And, you know, these are smart people. So why not follow it? And remember, there is odd gap. The idea that you cannot derive religion from reality from reality. Everybody believes that. So so that's one. And the second, which I think is more powerful is community is community. I think people people desire community, particularly people who brought up religious or who I mean, all of us desire community to some extent. I mean, it's there is a there's great value in other human beings. And I think community is a recognition of that. And religious has done a good job, right? In creating community opportunities, opportunities for people to join communities. Right. They have they go to church on Sunday. They have, I don't know, I don't know what they do. But but they do a lot of events, right? They do a lot of stuff. And there's value to that, right? It's it's if you come to Ocon, you can change in a objectives community. It's it's a real value. So I think she gains both of those things. And in a sense of history, I think, I think that's also valuable to people for better for us. They want to feel like they come. Their ideas are grounded in some historical context. Turns out, good or bad. Do you want to say anything about that, Ilan? No, I think you agree with with that. There's an interesting analysis that we did on our podcast, New Idea Live. That people can take a look at where I think on car Gata and Ben Bayer analyzed her article, which came out announcing her conversion to Christianity. And I have to say, I I I was not a hundred percent surprised because I heard her speak in 2007 at an event. And she was she said something that stuck with me. I didn't know what to do with it. But it's it's in the back of my mind for for years. She was talking about the identity crisis of Europeans. And she had just left Europe. She was living on a police guard in the US. I think it was just a couple of years since she left. And she was articulating the problem well and saying the Europeans don't know what they stand for. There are a lot of people coming in. The Muslim minority is very assertive about its identity and the Europeans are not religious anymore. And then she says. And here's something the Pope said that I think really makes a lot of sense. I don't remember what she said, but she and she was an atheist at the time. She was one of the well known as an atheist. She was targeted because of her apostasy from Islam. And I thought. That's all that's really strange. Why do you think how do you take the Pope seriously? All the people you could listen to. Why the Pope? I know there's an argument for why you can take the Pope seriously in some context or to understanding what the Pope and the Catholic Church stand for. But just that was really resonant for me. And then the other thing that I noticed over the years was her. I also thought she was independent minded, but I was sort of questioning that as she sort of the last decade or so, she she seemed to move more towards conservative positions and I wasn't sure if that was because there was an agreement on some of the problems. Like she's pointing to the Islamic problem in Europe and the issue of immigration and and the tribalism, which was pretty good off initially. And it's a so-called cancel culture. She was she was a victim of it in some sense early on, if you think about how she was disinvited. So she was pointing to things that a lot of conservatives talk. I thought maybe there's just an overlap. I wasn't sure is this. But then I realized and then she made this explicit that, OK, this is really part of a transition for her. An intellectual or sort of cognitive change or collapse, maybe, is a better term for it. So I'm not claiming I saw this coming. That's not my point. My point is just that there were things along the way that I thought was worrying signs and then it sort of gelled. And I'm sad because I admire her more in the past. And me, too. Yeah, I mean, you know, she married now, Ferguson. That could have helped. Neil and I'll how do you say that? I think it's now now now, now, Ferguson. And then she also. I talked to her once. I mean, I've had a couple of a few conversations with her, a couple of conversations with her. We almost did an event together. But we were we had a pay for the security. And the security costs so much money that we need. This is in the 2000s. I think we were trying to arrange an event. But she told me, basically, she'd read Ayn Rand and she told me, basically, that she'd been she was really influenced by by Hume, you know, by skepticism, by Papa, by. So she was very much on the on the Papa Hayek and even and then the conservative, even though Hayek says he's not a conservative, the elements in Hayek that are very conservative tracks. So she is intellectually, even before I think she she married now, she was already moving towards that intellectually at that that was an appeal. And she she'd read Ayn Rand, so she had the option. But but she never and she liked it. She she didn't say anything negative about it. But it wasn't it wasn't what got her. All right. So the movie is called Labrinth of Lies, Labyrinth of Lies and what's stunning about it. I didn't I forgot this, but it's about 1963 and 1960. I was already alive and it's it's about in 1963. The movie shows that if you asked a man on the street in Germany about millions of Jews exterminated in concentration camps, they would have told you what was the conspiracy to perpetrated by the Allies. And it's about this trial of people in Auschwitz from Auschwitz and how this researcher discovers what really happened and how the powers to be want to suppress it and how he brings it to the forward. So it's definitely worth watching. It's I really enjoyed it. It's fictionalized, but I think it's based on a true story. Labrinth of Lies, what year was it made? I think it's 2015, 2014, 2015. All right. All right. James asked, how would you have handled it if Norman got nasty with you like he did? Destiny, you seem to be good at diffusing aggressive people. I am. So. Like I don't. You know, I don't know that destiny was nasty towards Finkelstein and part of it on all the wrong things. And I think the best way to diffuse somebody is somebody like that is basically to call them on the bullshit. It's to call them on the content. It's not to get caught up in any personality thing, but to call them on the fact that they're lying or to call them on the fact that they're distorting and perverting the facts. And I don't think Destiny actually did that. I think he went after Finkelstein rather than going after what Finkelstein was saying. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't think he did very well responding to Finkelstein. And I thought Finkelstein was embarrassing for an adult. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's one thing to say. So I think his main criticism and repeated often of destiny is you. All you know is what you got on Wikipedia. So why are you standing? Why are you talking? Why are you talking to me? I'm an expert and I don't know if that's true. Maybe it's true. It's not relevant if he's making a point you haven't answered because people can learn things and they don't have the experts to make points that you have to think about. So you have to take the point on its merits. Not because the guy you can dismiss him based on like his level of knowledge. What is he saying? You have to think about that and just be objective about it. And he it's at the point where he's calling him an imbecile and just telling him to shut up and he's stupid. And that's not I mean, that's part of what I found difficult to watch and embarrassing and I was surprised that Lex didn't step in more about that. It's just how are you hosting this? I don't know. And I don't have experience doing conversations like that. But I mean, it it's I've never been called an imbecile on a stage at it baby. And I think there's there's probably reasons to that. I think there's something about the way destiny handled himself that opened him up to Fingalstein going after him like that. Yeah. I think the ultimate insult to Fingalstein is that with all his reading and all his knowledge, he is so ignorant and evasive. Right. So and that's what's stunning about him. He knows. Yeah, a lot. He's read a lot of books and yet he knows nothing. Andrew Andrew asked, can Elon expand on his point that the Palestinians were raised to be to were raised to a higher moral ground by the pro-Israel debaters? Did they make weaker false arguments or ignore moral arguments entirely? Yeah, let me let me make my point another time. Maybe it'll be clearer and then I can expand on it. So my takeaway is the pro-Palestinian side took the moral high ground from the beginning, never let it go. We're not really challenged. And as a result of that and the way they kind of points they made that were not challenged, they came across as firm and principled in their position. So if you came in thinking, I don't already know, you would come away thinking, yeah, they've got a really strong position. And I think in that sense, it sort of solidified their view. And I and that's why I can't and it's not a helpful metaphor to say they got even higher on the high ground, maybe I remember he stated differently. So my view is that they they won the debate. They came across as much more morally confident and certain of their position than is ready pro-Israeli side. Despite Finkelstein, I say not because despite him in the sense that he made them seem hooliganish. And I think in that sense, if you I'm thinking of the audience from the perspective, they don't know a lot about this issue. They're interested. So the 2.4 whatever million views, I imagine a lot of those people are just coming in to try to understand their followers of blacks and they're just interested in this issue. What would they take away from it? My my view is they would take away if they had any sympathy for the Palestinians, they would have even more sympathy for them and unjustified sympathy. And in that sense, that's that's what I mean by the moral position was strengthened on that side, and it's that's part of what makes this such a horrible outcome. Yep. All right, friend Hopper, there was a school built by Canadian military near where I was deployed in Afghanistan. It was abandoned when the Canadians left the area due to Taliban attacking it so nobody could use it. Anti-enlightenment indeed. Yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, yes, the Taliban would rather destroy a school than then then accepted because it was built by Canadians, because it was built by Westerners and the best in the context of Israeli-Palestinian issue. I mean, one of the best stories about that. I mean, it's not a story, it's reality. It was in 2005 when Israel when Israel decided to vacate Gaza, to leave Gaza and to indeed evacuate its own people from Gaza by force, by coercion, they were dragged into trucks, right? And these they left these relatively thriving, I mean, not relatively thriving villages that Jews had built, Israelis had built in the Gaza Strip. And they were they were shoved onto trucks and forced out of there. And they left behind them. They left factories and greenhouses and all this infrastructure that you'd think this new Palestinian state in Gaza would celebrate and embrace and want to use and get rich and be successful. And why not take the capital that the Jews left behind? Nope. They immediately destroyed them. I mean, that they literally ripped them to shreds. The factories were torn apart. The equipment was was was taken apart. The greenhouses were destroyed. They did not they do not want values. They do not want the good. What what they want is the destruction. And if it's if an Israeli touched it, it must be destroyed. So I think that's the equivalent of the school in Afghanistan or maybe even Sharpa. All right. Monotropic. What do you make of the argument that Israel prevented Palestinian economic development after the Oslo agreements by restricting the area under Palestinian control to isolated enclaves? What point in the development? Because there's a long stretch of time and I don't think it started out that way. So I think it there was a progression of diminishing freedom for the Palestinians economically. So I think they started out a year ago. Two thousand ninety ninety four. Here's a provisional state. Let's see what happens. And then over time, you get the barrier wall is erected and you get restrictions and checkpoints because they can't come in and out. So I'm not sure why the question is asking. Is he just asking for the kind of the post Oslo. I'd say nineties post ninety four. Yeah, I can believe that they did it. But I think the primary was not to cripple it economically. The primary was security concerns. Yeah, I think the exact opposite is true. Israel invested money, its own money in economic development among the Palestinians during this period, I think they encouraged the international community to give money to help the economic development. In those days, there were no checkpoints. There was no fence. There was no wall. Palestinians entered Israel freely. You know, in the 1980s. I remember I would drive through the West Bank. Just without thinking, I mean, I remember almost killing myself, driving too fast along the road in the in the in the God, the Valley, the Jordan Valley, the Jordan Valley. We would go to Chevron. We would go to Schem. We would hike in the in Mibah Yuda, the Judea desert. Just teenagers. No guns, nothing. Just just went hiking and Palestinians went into Israel. I mean, when I was a construction manager in 1986, 86, 87, most of my contractors were Arab, Israeli Arabs, and most of their workers were Palestinians and they would come in from the West Bank or from Gaza and they would work during the day and sleep somewhere who knows where. And they would go back to Gaza, the West Bank for the weekend and then come back to work and they would go to workers and they worked hard. They were trying to make money for the families. And so there were no barriers. There was no. So this idea of enclaves did not come about this idea of roadblocks, fences, restrictions of movements, restrictions of movement of goods. All of that did check. It did not come about until after the Second Intifada or during the Second Intifada and you have to understand what the Second Intifada was. I mean, October 7th is devastating and horrific in a very unique, concentrated way. But yeah, but the Second Intifada was in many respects very similar. Every week, every couple of weeks, some Palestinians would walk into a wedding and blow himself up, killing dozens or a restaurant or a bus. And there was no area in Israel that was there was free of this. You know, I grew up in Haifa where there were almost never terrorist attacks in the old days and they joined the Second Intifada, some buses, buses. I had been on when I was a kid, blew up, right? And they just go on and they blow themselves up. Now, if that's happening, do you think you become suspicious of Palestinians? If that happens, do you want to say Palestinians over there? I don't want them over here. Do you want to set up roadblocks? You want to make sure that they're not wearing suicide vests before they cross into Israel? Maybe you don't let them into Israel at all. And, you know, so it's completely understandable what Israel did. I mean, it's not from another perspective. They needed a win and they need to defeat the Palestinians. But that never happened. But they chose to separate. And that's why they left Gaza. They separated from Gaza in a sense. Wall that are awful, walled Israel away from it. But but that was a consequence of this. Immense, unbelievable violence against civilians all across Israel, committed by unprovoked by Palestinians. And. So no, I mean, Shimon Peres, who was I don't think he ever was Prime Minister, but he's president of Israel for a while. Somebody politician I never really liked. But Shimon Peres talked a lot and wrote a lot about the fact, I think, false, that what Israel needs to do is is encourage economic development among the Palestinians. He was a very influential politician and we need to invest heavily because if they become wealthy, then they won't hate us. Right. And so I think the opposite was done right after Oslo. It's only once Oslo blew up in Israel's face. It blew up in Israel's face almost a day after, but it really blew up with the second interfahta. And and by that point, Israel was not having any of it. And ultimately segregated created the kind of segregation that exists in this West Bank today. All right, Richard. Oops. My stepson claims that Israelis intentionally kill Palestinian civilians and kill and the US media whitewashes it. What is the best of source of facts to refute that argument? Well, I don't know. It's hard to refute an arbitrary argument, right? The real question is what is the source of what he is saying? And then you can look at you can look at actual incidents and check them out. There's a famous video, famous video shot by a French French photographer of an Israeli shooting a Palestinian child. Do you remember the scene done? Palestinian child was half-fied and upset and everybody went apoplectic. And years after it was discovered, there was a video was basically fabricated. The video was made up and there's a lot of that. So if the if the media is doing anything, the media is elevating the the civilian casualties among the Palestinians, not the other way round. Yeah, I want I want to amplify everything you said and add a bit to it. So point one, it's important to be able to detect arbitrary claims. Now, I'm not sure this is an arbitrary claim. You'd have to ask your steps on what's his basis for it. So I think the first question is what's the evidence that this is happening? Second point is that the US media is whitewashing Israeli behavior doesn't doesn't integrate. It just does not make any sense. So that on its own should be suspicious. And then the third point I would make in support of what you're saying, Iran, is it's well documented that. Journalists working in the Palestinian territories before October 7th, so we're not talking about since this happened, but before this, they were in effect operating in the way that journalists operate under a police state. They don't get to write what they want to write. They have to go with fixers were reporting to the authorities. This is not new. It's not unique to Hamas, which are under Arafat. There's a really great article, a couple of articles about this by a journalist in Israel, is his Maddie Friedman. He wrote one of them for the Atlantic, one of them for tablet. And you should read these articles because he was working for the AP. He was a Canadian and moved to Israel. And he said, I know what my colleagues did. I know I was an editor. I was a journalist myself. I have to tell you it is not like you're any you're not reporting in a free society. So you have to think about what journalists are reporting out of those places as filtered by and governed by the incentives of not upsetting the people giving you access. So if anything, if there's any kind of media bias here, the my assumption is it's overly sympathetic to the Palestinian movement, meaning the Hamas regime and then the PLO regime. And that's just based on evidence of people who work there. And then the final point is you mentioned the fabricated video. Yeah, this this was a if I remember the one you're referring to. I think I don't remember this with certainty, but I think there was an injured child, but he was injured by Palestinian crossfire. And that and then what the way it was reported, the video was edited in such a way that it's all the Israelis shot this kid and how awful Israelis are. And in fact, it was the opposite. And so there's real concern about how this information is reported and what conditions journalists are operating. And then there's actually there are intentionally fabricated news reports. And one of the things you can see on Twitter, if you find the right people, there's one so-called journalist Hamas who one day shows up in a bed as an injured person in a news photograph. The next day he's alive and well, and he's driving an ambulance. And the next day he's a journalist with a micro you probably see in this guy. And the question you have to ask yourself is, how what else am I seeing that has this quality to it? It's either inaccurate or deliberately misleading. So I think ask the question, put the burden of proof on those who assert a claim, be suspicious and then know a bit about the context to be able to say, what can you actually know about what the journalists are saying? And here's the full story of this, kids, I looked it up. So this is September 30th, 2000. It's the second day of the interfahta, the second interfahta. The Palestinians, a number of Palestinian policemen and other Palestinians attack an IDF, I post near Gaza. And this father and son are caught in the crossfire. And a past any child, Muhammad El Dura, he's become famous, it was 12, was hit by a gunfire and killed. France, France, two TV station releases the footage the next day that seems to show the boy being killed and Israel is accused of killing him. The IDF accepts responsibility for the boy's death. And yet subsequent investigations reveal that probably not that he was killed by fire from Palestinians. Now, note, the IDF accepted responsibility, right? When does the Palestinians ever do anything like that? And only afterwards when there was investigations that they say, well, turns out we didn't do it. There's probably a Palestinian policeman that shot and killed the child. The if you read on this investigation was later confirmed by an investigation by a German television television network, which says that the footage of El Dura's death was censored by the Palestinians. The look as if he had been killed by Israeli fire when, in fact, his death was caused by Palestinian gunfire. So, you know, you've got. Any time you look at these cases, it's stuff like this. It's not to say Israelis don't commit atrocities once in a while. They do once in a while. Some of these crazy settlers, these religious fanatics will kill Palestinians or burn their homes or do horrible things. But this is the difference. They're almost always condemned by Israeli society. Or, you know, in general, and they're tried and sentenced and sent to jail, just like you would do in the United States when somebody does something horrible, if a soldier kills a civilian gratuitously, they are court martial, they are sent to jail, they are dealt with. That does not happen on the site quite the opposite. If a Palestinian goes on to a bus and blows themselves up, he's considered a Shahid, a martyr who is celebrated. Schoolchildren learn about his wonderful sacrifice. You know, streets are likely to be named after him and he's celebrated. That is a very. And again, this never comes up and didn't come up in the debate. The fundamental cultural difference. And they can't just explain that cultural difference because the Palestinians are occupied in the Israelis or not. The Jews were never like this. Even when they were, I don't know, under the British mandate or whatever. They never stooped to this kind of cultural nihilism. And yet this is exactly what. And if you understand Islam, particularly the Islamists, the Islamic to the Talitarians, this is completely consistent with their ideology and to ignore their ideology. Is anti intellectual, which, unfortunately, this debate was to a large extent. I just want to add one historical point, which I mentioned this in my book because when I when I read about this and I read it in a number of places, if I remember it right, I felt I had to include this because this is such a telling piece of such a factual point. You said that the Palestinian movement or cause never take claims responsibility. They don't claim responsibility for cases like this. What they what they did at a certain point is they would issue, communicate or press releases announcing their their responsibility for terrorist attacks, and they would be competing press releases, claiming the same attack. And and sometimes fake claims. Like so it wasn't even the group that was saying we did this. And they would inflate the number of casualties of what they inflicted. So think about what that means about the role of murder, mass murder, in a culture where it's you're glorifying your position by saying you killed more people than you than actually you did, and that you might even not have been the one responsible in your time trying to take credit for it. So there's something deeply corrupt about that. And that is not a new feature that was pre suicide bombings. That was sort of at the beginning of the first phase of terrorism, the Palestinians pioneer, and then you get suicide bombings, which is even more corrupt if you could imagine something like that. And then it becomes and there have been celebrations of terrorists all the way back from hijackers to mass murderers to suicide. It's it's a it's a persistent cultural theme that you can't talk about this conflict and pretend that it's not there. You really can't do that. And that's part of why we said at the beginning that the moral high ground was captured by the pro-Palestinian side and never challenged. And this is one of the ways in which it was never brought up. How can you think about this movement as having any kind of moral standing? If what they do is lionized murderers, celebrate them and tell their children to emulate this. There's something completely morally perverse about that. And you're telling me this is justified arm resistance because the UN has a law somewhere in a dusty book in an attic that says, oh, yeah, arm resistance. OK, you really are not thinking morally, if that's your perspective. It's it's worse. All right, Jay Dogg, I won't be able to catch the slide, but my gratitude and the answer to the discussion of bringing clear moral perspective to this conversation. He says, wasn't familiar with Finkelstein before the debate, but after hearing him speak, I'm drawing parallels to Tui from the fountainhead. There's something sinister and manipulative about his demeanor. I think that's absolutely right. Mind span wellness. Norman claimed everybody has a little bit of anti-Semitism in them. What is your analysis of that? And wouldn't it make the case for Zionism stronger? Wasn't didn't we have a question exactly like this? I think we did something very similar. My my response to that is that often when people make claims that are all people X or everyone has this, you have to ask yourself if it is if it's a confession of their own psyche or if it's really a claim about all human beings. And in my experience, it's often the first and not the second because it's it's very few things are true of all people unless it's a metaphysical fact. And and I don't know Finkelstein well enough to say, but I wouldn't be surprised if his view just is that. And and I don't think it is true. Sorry. He's a Jew, hating Jew. And he uses, you know, if you attack him, I've seen him do this. You attack him. He'll he used the fact that his parents are Holocaust survivors to to oh, no, you know, to try to capture a moral high ground of victimhood. All right. Michael, this is a war between a medieval culture and a modern democratic state and the two cannot coexist with each other. The two states solution is a lie. And if you want to comment on that, I. I would say it is not a solution and it is closer to the truth that it's a lie. It's a moral corruption. It's it's really wrong. It's not anything to be hopeful. And I say that not because I think there's I'm against solutions. I think that you should have a solution. I think there are solutions to this conflict, but the two state solution in every format is taken is a concession by a better freer movement or society or country, a concession or an appeasement of an aggressive militant and barbaric movement. So it's the concession to the initiator of force. It's a fundamental appeasement and it would create. In fact, it did create new terrorist states. So when George W. Bush insisted that the Palestinians have elections in 2006, whatever it was, George W. Bush, who was on a campaign to global war on terrorism, created a new terrorist state and that's not a flaw in the system. It's not a flaw in this two states. It's exactly what you would expect the two state solution to lead to. And it was just much more obvious when it happened in 2006 than it was in 1993 when Arafat was the leader. It was still true. It became a terrorist regime or a militant, a dictatorial regime. So I one of the most disgusting things to me in the last six months or so since October 7th has been the revival of the two state solution as something that, oh, we just have to get back a few days before October 7th when that was still a thing. It was never a good idea and it should have died long ago. And I anyway, that's what I want to say about that. So we can talk more if you have any ideas to to reward them for October 7th by giving them sovereignty. It's just despicable and disgusting. Right, Liam. Neomox's conflict narratives and anti-colonial indoctrination of why so many young people think Finkelstein is a brilliant mind. Yeah, I mean, you know, what exactly Neomox's means, you know, in this context, I'm not sure, but it's certainly postmodernist and the anti-colonial indoctrination that we've talked about and the framing, the identitarian politics. I mean, the whole identitarian movement on the left is very much aligned with the Palestinian cause because the Palestinians are oppressed, suffering or weak and they don't have a state of their own. And it just lines up with with the with the intersectionality and with the with the whole identitarian perspective. The Jews are bad because the Jews are strong. The Palestinians are good because the Palestinians are weak. And they're a self-described ethnic group. So there's a kind of racial dimension that adds to that framework and that was something the Palestinian movement cultivated for a long, many years, and this is not a conversation about ethnicity or race. But I think it's it's it's another example of why that concept is not helpful intellectually, cognitively. It's just not it can it's not. There are Palestinians who are whiter than you are. Why do they think in the sense of like, if you look at them, they don't look Arab and I'm not here to count people's DNA. It's not what I'm interested in. But it's it's another example of how it's not reality oriented way of looking at it. But they are seen as a as a racial group or ethnic group. And that just elevates them even more. Yeah. OK. Mark asks, how would you grade Israel's response to October 7th up until now? He says, I give it a C minus and that's being generous. I don't know. I'd be more generous than you are because my expectations were so low. So they actually, in some sense, have surprised me in the positive. They've done more than expected them to do. So I would give it probably a C or B minus or C plus some in that range in terms of what they did. But a lot of it also depends on what they're going to do now. Right. Whether they go to Rafa, they don't go to Rafa. Will they finish what they started or will they end it? So half a job, it could it could become an F. Very quickly. Yeah. My answer to that is this is not something you can give a midterm on. You need to see the final. This is just because it's not about the interim. It's about are they going to do what they did before, which is degrade Hamas to five people and they become 500 in a year's time, or do they bring Hamas to zero and something that is completely discredited? And that to me is the standard. And I think it's too soon to say. Yeah, I would say militarily too slow and and and not enough, not enough, you know, use of air power because because of fear for civilian casualties. So and too slow. They took the too long before they entered Gaza because I think I think they were worried. And I also think maybe they they didn't have a plan, which would shock me. But it's quite possible they didn't have a plan. But how Israel would not have a plan to take over Gaza sitting, waiting to be implemented, it would mean I've been in the military, so I can believe in anything about them, but it would still surprise me. All right, Hoppe Campbell during the debate, Finkelstein made the bizarre point that Hamas didn't know there was a music festival taking place, so the extra slaughter that they happened to engage in was just on the accidental. I mean, I'm laughing, but it's not a laughing issue. It's true that they didn't know until that morning that there was a music festival. They didn't know it in advance. I think I've read the same thing. So I think that's right. But what is this accidental? I mean, so they discovered a music festival and they said, you know, let's go hang out. I mean, no, they said here's a concentration of Israelis. Let's go and kill them all and rape the women and slaughter them and butcher them. I mean, how is that an excuse for anything? I just don't. It's just stunning that that you would say something that Finkelstein would say something like this. I mean, it just shows how perverse this human being is. So extra slaughter. Whoops. Sorry. I didn't realize there were going to be people here. So I committed extra slaughter because I didn't think they would because they they happen to be in my way. It's just it's unthinkable that a human mind functions that way, thinks that way. Truly disgusting. Mind span, wellness. Can you steal man? OK, can you still man the argument? The designers fundamentally promote ethnic cleansing and apartheid and then critique it? I mean, yeah, I don't want to term steel man because it suggests that the argument on its own isn't strong enough. And I just don't like that way of thinking. So if the ask if what's being asked is what's the best argument for that position and how do you critique it? That I can we can talk about that. But yeah, I think that's sort of what the question is. Yeah. So what's the best argument for Israel being a country that promotes ethnic cleansing and apartheid? Yeah, I think what you would have to do is selectively read out of context some of the statements and actions that were that happened in 48 in the 48 war. And you would say, here's a massacre they did in Dariusine. OK, and here's here's what they said to try to scare people away. And then you'd have to talk about some of the elements of the Zionist movement that were more focused on ethnic identity of the Jews. And the and the the need for that to dominate in the conception of the state. And then you would get somewhere that would get you closer to the position that it's about ethnic cleansing. What was the second part? Is the colonial apartheid? Say it again apartheid. So yeah, so what you would need to do is bring evidence. And I think in order to do it, you have to be very selective in context dropping that there that it's essentially a racial movement with designs on with designs for dominance. And I say that as context dropping and selected because there are people like that and you can find them. And that's what Finkelstein's career seems to have been about. But that's not the essential story. That's not the the driving fundamental pause behind Zionism. And so what you would have to do in the present. So that's sort of backward looking what you have to do in the present is look at the way in which there are real. There are some real problems in the way Israel treats some of its Arab citizens. Now, notice what I said, not the Palestinians, because there's another population, some of whom think of themselves as Palestinian, but they're Arab citizens of Israel. And some of these problems have to do with the ability to buy land and their major law law cases that were settled around this issue, where communities would not sell land to some Arab citizens because they didn't want them part of their community. And so that's a there's a discrimination issue and that's private discrimination. Sometimes it's government discrimination because it's agencies that are selling land. But and I write some about some of this in my book, what justice demands and I encourage people to take a look at that, because there are real problems in that. But but notice where we are. It's a community of people who have almost all the same civil rights, like they can vote, they be in government, they serve in the police. They face some private discrimination and some state discrimination. And you have to recognize that where state discrimination, it's completely wrong and indefensible. Private discrimination is completely wrong, but it's private discrimination. It's not state action. You have to keep those apart. Then if you have that piece of it, you can go into, well, there are areas where Israel set up a lot of security blocks and their roads, the Palestinians can't drive down. They have certain curfews and then you would build a case that makes it look like they don't have the same freedoms. OK, so what you had to do to get to this argument, to make it look like it's an apartheid state, it's it's racial supremacist, is you have to drop a lot of context for why there are these curfews, why there are these security restrictions. And then you'd have to explain where those came from, because on its own, that's not enough. So just to sum it up in two points. If you want to make a historical claim about it, you have to sort of extract it from the non-essential features of the state and elevate them to the essential, which I don't think is valid. And if you're making the claim about the presence of the apartheid side of it, you have to pick people who are facing a combination of kinds of discrimination that you have to sort through and evaluate, but who are essentially citizens. And so it's similar to the kind of problems we have in the United States, where there are minority groups who who face discrimination. Some of it is state initiated, some of it is private, and it's wrong. And you have to oppose it. That is an apartheid. The edges, the cases that people point to are in the cases where there's security concerns like checkpoints and roads and closures and but those are driven fundamentally. And this is the context wrong. They're fundamentally the result of security problems. So what you mentioned earlier in the conversation about how you worked with Palestinians and Arabs who came in and they commuted. And the same is true for my parents. And when I was living in Israel, it was just the norm that Palestinians come. They would have jobs all over the place. And it was it was something encouraged, the idea that they would come and work and they were valued and they wanted to do it. And one of the biggest things that happened to elevate Gaza and all the occupied areas, this was under military rule, elevated their standard of living. It was exactly the fact that they were encouraged and welcome to come and work in Israel and their standard of living went up so much. They rivaled some of the Gulf states that are Petro states, right? So it became one of the best developed societies within Israel. So just think about that for a moment. So that so if you want to make a strong case for it being apartheid and you want to make a case that it's racial, you would have to be very selective and you have to drop a lot of the relevant moral context for why this situation is the way it is. Now, there are things that you would have to identify as real problems and criticize them, which I think we've done and there's more to say about that. But it doesn't rise to the to the level of apartheid. And I would say for anyone who's spent five minutes reading about apartheid, to to put Israel in that category is to demean the actual suffering of people in South Africa, it really is. In apartheid South Africa, a black man and a black and a white woman or a white man or a black woman could not be married. They could not legally have children. It's it's really crazy. And so you have to think about what actually is being said. And the apartheid claim is just such a slippery one that you it counts on ignorance and it counts on a kind of context dropping anti-moral perspective. So anyway, I feel like I'm. I visited South Africa during apartheid a couple of times. And it was disgusting. I mean, it was you know, a little bit like Jim Crow South, but worse, right? Black beaches, white beaches. No blacks allowed in lots of places, lots of restaurants, lots of facilities. No blacks allowed in certain neighborhoods. Water fountains, black water fountains, white water fountains. And of course, no mixed marriages. And if you were, then your children would treat you pretty badly. And if you go to Israel. Yeah, there's some discrimination. Nobody doubts that. I mean, exactly what Elon said, there's private discrimination. There's some government discrimination. But when there is government discrimination, the Arabs have access to the court system and the courts will often side with the Arabs and undo the government discrimination because it goes against the will of law in Israel. You know, and the courts are not perfect, but for the most part, that happens. And you know, over and over and over again. And there's no there's no problem with mixed marriages. I mean, again, people are going to look at you funny, maybe, and people privately will discriminate. But there's no law against it. If you look at if you look at beaches, fountains, I mean, I like to say, you know, my my father used to be a chief medicine at a hospital, big hospital in Haifa, the biggest hospital in Haifa, Rambam and a head of a department head of an internal medicine department at Rambam. Today, the head of that same department is an Arab. Indeed, a significant number, I'd say 30 percent of all the doctors at Rambam today are Arabs. In Naharia, another Jewish town in northern Israel, it's more like 60, 70 percent of the doctors are Arabs. They're treating Jews, they're treating Arabs. Just like Jewish doctors treat Jews, they treat Arabs. And in a part, high death South Africa, there were hospitals for whites and hospitals for blacks. So it's just ignorance all around, but it's more than ignorance because this is not hard information to discover. This is pure evasion. This is pure evasion. And that and that's a model. The essence of moral sin in objectivism. So and people are guilty of it all over the place. It's really horrific. All right, let's see. That doodle bunny. Does Dr. Finkelstein believe Hitler should have finished the job? I don't think so. I don't think he could hold that. But, you know, maybe the implications of what he does is that. But I don't think he holds that. Doodle Bunny also asks why are people saying Norma Finkelstein won the debate? The man is clearly psychotic because the other side is weak. Now, the side is weak. I just want to add to that. So you I think you said it really well just now at the other side was weak. And one of the things that is dispiriting about this debate and then more broadly, the issue of Israel and Palestine and how it's understood is. And you've made this point years ago to me. And I remember vividly, and I think it's only gotten more true, is that. In my assessment, Israel is in the right, fundamentally, as many flaws as it has and many wrongs that it has done and the criticism that I would make of it in other contexts and I've written about this. It's not I'm not just a hand waving toward this is real issues to talk about. Fundamentally, it's a free society. It's in the right morally in this conflict and the Palestinians are not. They're on the wrong side of this issue. They're it's a corrupt moral. It's a corrupt movement intellectually and politically. And to me, having done a lot of the thinking that one has to do for a book like this and just to get the clarity to me, it's just clear. It's just my day. I know not everyone listening has that clarity, but I get that. And I'm not I don't want to pretend like everyone understands this point. It's it's not self evidence to say that. But this is the thing that's dispiriting. What has been true for decades is that the good is being a peasing, weak and ineffectual and the evil has been assertive, dominant in the on a moral high ground and unapologetic. And I think this is the part that's really disgusting is that we we sat through five hours of this stuff and I'm actually is part of what made me so angry. And I didn't I was trying to I'm not angry at you. I'm angry at the fact that I sat through this whole thing. What's so anchoring about this is you sit through five hours and there's a bit of haggling about how many people Hamas killed versus Islamic Jihad killed versus IDF on October 7th. Why is that the question? Why isn't the question how can you sit in front of me as a proponent of the Palestinian goals and not be apologizing to the people whose whose families have been destroyed? How do you how do you have the audacity to sit here and tell me there's a right of armed resistance because somebody stole somebody's land, which is not true. It's a falsehood. How do you sit there? And that's and it happened for five hours with prominent intellectual historian on one side and a prominent intellectual on the other side. And that's what we're given. And to me, that's just that it's the quintessence of this problem, which is Israel is constantly telling people, trying to convince. Look how many text messages we sent to the Palestinians. Look how much we're doing not to be indiscriminate about harming the civilians. And it's yes, I understand their motivation, but that's not what they should be doing. They should be defending the lives of their own citizens as every state has a responsibility to do. And the same is true on the international stage. The whole fiasco of the International Court of Justice, this whole idea of Israel being taken to court over just it is not worth dignifying as an accusation, let alone going to court and having a big ceremonial. Here's our dream team that are going into the ICJ hearings and look how good we've got the experts on international law. That's just it's the wrong orientations that you're already on the on the back foot. You're apologetic and appeasing from the beginning. So it's that the the spectacle of a week of a good that's weak and an evil that's self confident that this is something I ran was really powerful and illustrating and recognizing as a problem. And to me, that's what we saw in this debate. And that's what I see on at a macroscopic level in the debate around this issue. Absolutely. All right, Michael, fifty dollars. Thank you. Thank you both for the work and enlightenment. I just appreciate it. Do the bunny. I saw someone leave no normal five hundred dollar super chat on a live stream. We must be approaching end times. I think we're always approaching end times. Liam, this is more of a dinner party argument than a debate. Too difficult, frustrating to watch productively. I think that's right. I think I think Lex should have been more engaged and more involved because it did turn into just an argument rather than an organized structured debate. Michael, Destiny should have called him Twinkle, Steen, when he kept misstating his name in order to become descending and dismissive, I'm sure that works, you know, become descending and dismissive back. Michael also says, I have to give Destiny a lot of credit for keeping his composure when Fickle, Steen, got so aggressive and disgusting towards him. I may have I may have gotten violent. Yeah, I yeah. You can get violent, but you you know, and you have to stay calm and you have to you have to dish it back. But you have to dish it back at a different level, not at that hominem level, but at the ideas level. Liam says, I've seen I've not seen a single Palestinian starve since the war began. According to the media, they're always on the verge of starving allegedly. Yeah, I mean, this is part of this Israel kill civilians, nonstop propaganda. I mean, the last few days, headlines everywhere about Gaza on the brink of starvation, on the brink of famine, on the brink of this. And it's it's it's all propaganda to try to justify more and more and more aid. This is altruism in action. Clark, you haven't been on Lex in a while. You've got to get on with Ben Shapiro to discover to discuss Israel. I need to get on with the line, not with man to discuss it. We'll see. I mean, as I think I told you guys, Lex was in the audience when I gave my talk on Israel at the University of Texas in Austin. What a month ago, two months ago, this is just before we decided who would be on the debate. And I think it's why my name was listed, even though it's clear I was never going to be on it. So so Lex knows, he knows my position. He knows where I stand. I think he thinks I'm too. I don't know, but I think he thinks I'm too. Too morally certain, too morally confident. And it's interesting who he chose for the Israel site. He chose people who are not that. And he could have he could have gone with Douglas Mawry, right, prominent, big shot, very morally clear. I mean, I've got issues with Douglas Mawry and other things, but in Israel, he's been excellent. He's just being clear and sharp and uniquely in Israel. And I give him a lot of credit for going there and reporting from there and doing all that. But yeah, so what I mean, Lex has to do what Lex has to do. It's his show he can invite anybody. And but hopefully he will invite me. We've got I think we have a good relationship with I haven't talked to him in a long time. And as I said, he did come to my talk. So that is good. And he heard my position so he knows what it is. Gail, I am stunned by how many Palestinians were the aggressors and extremely extreme brutality and that strong self-defense is absolutely right and good. But that's the impact of altruism has on a culture. Even if the culture is not explicitly, constantly self-sacrificial, it cannot defend the side that is self-assertive, self-confident. So altruism is a sneaky sneaky in the way it, you know, you're not just going to see everybody don't need money, giving money to whoever wants it. That's not altruism. Altruism works to undermine the self. It works to undermine confidence in the self and works to undermine confidence in anybody out there suiting their own interests. So it makes complete sense that they would condemn strong self-defense. Mindspan, should we remove the settlements in the West Bank as they are creating more violence between the religious fanatics there and Palestinians while protecting, protected by the IDF and the settlers able to vote. But not the Palestinians there. Any thoughts on the settlements? Yeah, I think there are problems with the settlements, but I don't regard them as critical to solving the conflict. So the problems to me are about rule of law and property rights, essentially. And it's really I think the question put it Jewish religious fanatics often, not only but often putting a bunch of caravans together, calling it a settlement, a couple of tents and shacks. Sometimes it's more than that and then insisting on police protection because you can imagine that they both are often squatting or trespassing on land that does not belong to them, but they taught the Bible says it belongs to them. And there are Palestinians or Arab citizens whose land that actually is by deed and title and whether the state should be protecting. And to me, that's the essential problem with some of these settlements. Now, I just want to just flag this and not get into it. But the concept of a settlement is another example of a package deal where it's used deliberately to obscure a range of different things, some of which are defensible morally and legally and some which are not. So if you go and trespass on someone's land and insist that you're now creating a city on his farm against his wishes and without his consent, you're violating his property rights and that's a settlement. But if you have land that came into your possession as a result of a war of self-defense and you've now had legal title to it and you build a housing block on it, that's also called a settlement. And I don't think those are the same thing morally or legally. And I think that's what's obscured by the issue of settlement. The settlement as it as it the settlements as they occur in the debate or the way that people fight over this issue outside of the conflict zone. It's as if the settlements are an engine of conflict and I don't think that's right. I think there are a conflict between the Jewish fanatics and the Palestinians who live there and whose land is in whose farms are being torched and so on and who are assaulted, physically assaulted. So they have this so-called price tag attacks. And if you've heard about this, those are all problems. And those are they have to be dealt with under rule of law. And I think there's an inconsistency about how well they're dealt with. But at least you have that as an option. And that's what it that's the path to solving it. They're treated as a the other way in which they're treated as a critical lever is if there are so many settlements, there won't be a possibility of Palestinian state. And that's that's the argument that look at this map. There's no more space for the Palestinians. If your concern is they can't be an ethnically pure Palestinian state because the Jews are part of it, you've got a problem. Because if that's really your standard, then you have a racist perspective on it. If your view is there's some legal sense in which the settlements don't belong here. OK, there's a long argument to talk about in terms of international law and what it counts and who has rights of a land after war happens. But that's not the issue. And this is this is the point I wanted. So there's a lot of context people need to understand this issue. But this is the critical part that I want to leave you with. The Palestinian movement arose before settlements. Unless you think of Israel as a whole as a settlement, which it's not. But if if your view is seventy five years of Israel's history and the hundred years of its existence pre-state plus, right, 120 years now or so, if you view that whole period of their all settlements, then you what you're saying is there is no scrap of land on which there could be a legitimate state called Israel. And I just don't I don't think that's a credible position. I don't think it's a moral position. But if that's your view and that's the way the settlements are an obstacle to peace, then what you're saying is Israel is an obstacle to peace. Its existence is the problem. So it's really important to get the Palestinian movement went to war against Israel before 67, before the settlements in 67, before all the other things that you're hearing about now that when when when Biden was vice president and he went to Israel and tried to shame Israel because of the settlements. There was a big falling out under Obama because of the settlements. And now that they're talking about the settlements again, that's all bullshit in effect, that it's a distraction from the essential issues. It's an issue with respect to rule of law and property rights. And that I grant you, it's not the crux of Israeli Palestinian conflict. And if if you're led down that path, you need to rethink what led you there, because that's not true. Yeah. All right. Frank, why are the Irish being pro-Palestinian? Is it because they identify as underdogs and the troubles against the British? Is Hamas sort of like the IRA? I've seen a lot of courage on this. I don't have a definite view. I think my impression level view is I think it speaks to their religiosity and the idea that it's I mean, there might be some resonance with them being sort of fighting against the British, but I think it has to do with why a lot of people are supportive of the Palestinians, which is that the Palestinians are seen as the ultimate victims, the ultimate weak, have not suffering oppressed group in the world. And what more would you want in order to signal that you're a virtuous person than decide with them? And that's often a reason people do it. Morgan, I read Elon's book and really got a lot of from it. What books would he suggest reading to improve my understanding of the conflict? Oh, goodness, I should I should have been prepared for this. And I think you asked me for the books as well. I guess I one one thing I have to think about it, one thing I would say is if there's a particular area of the conflict that interests you, just look through the end notes because I cite a lot of books that I think are worth reading, not everything I cite is worth reading or in the sense of reading from start to finish, but that's one lead I would give you. I would say the literature is very wide and deep, so it would be helpful. You can email me if you're interested. It's easy to find my address. Just ask me about a particular area that interested and I can give you more concrete guidance than I can here. Yes, I I asked for a list for this weekend. Marialine, I really wish the US would withdraw from the UN and stop hosting it, let them have their meetings in a third world country. I think we all agree on that. When spending wellness ADL says fifty fifty five point eight of students surveyed, said they had previous completed the training, but only eighteen point one of those said they had completed any training modules specific to anti-Jewish prejudice. I mean, the whole thing of anti-whatever prejudice modules, the whole thing is crap. I mean, it's it's you know, it's what are they teaching in DEI? What are they teaching anti-Jewish prejudice modules of since I don't know whatever training what you need to teach is respect for individuals. And that's it. There's there's there's no more than that. I mean, you need to teach history and the history of discrimination, the history of racism. I think everybody should know about that. But there's no that the only positive behavior that is involved here is treat people like individuals. That's it. And it's not what they teach in these modules. Yeah, I was going to say that the whole atmosphere of what I understand and what I've seen is by the time young people reach college, they've been marinating in exactly the opposite view. And then in college, they're given the more theoretical, more impressive versions of that that solidifies the kind of collectivist mentality and reinforces the wrong perspective. And so if your concern is to offset it, there's a lot of work to do. I don't I wouldn't say it's it's you have to do it the last mile when they get to college, I think it needs it's a lifetime perspective of you have to value individuals and judge them by their by their actions and their words. So mind span, wouldn't denying the Palestinians a state after Hamas isn't isn't in power and maybe with the help of other states, a form of collective punishment. No, I don't know what denying a state is. I mean, this goes back to why what should form a state and what context is a state appropriate. Hamas has to own a state in this in a Hamas can own a state. The Palestinians have to own a state. And they own a state by exhibiting the desire for individual freedom, not for not for state, but for individual lives lived under freedom. That is in pursuit of of pro-life values in in rejection of coercion, rejection of force and the Palestinians have to earn that. And you know, at that point, I would say two state solution, one state solution, three state solutions, who cares, right? If everybody respects individual rights and everybody is about freedom and liberty, then it doesn't matter how you divvy it all up. But we're a long way from there. We're a long way from the Palestinians showing that kind of respect for individual freedom and liberty. If you took if Hamas is eliminated and what are the Palestinians going to do, you think the Palestinians now liberal Democrats or the Palestinians now pocapolis, have they discovered reason? Are they entering a phase in the Enlightenment? I mean, they're the same people who voted for Hamas, supported Hamas, elected Hamas and, you know, cheered when Israelis were being murdered and slaughtered. It's the same people. So something fundamental has to change within Palestinian culture over a significant period of time for them to claim any kind of any kind of state or any kind of political entity or political identity. Yeah, and I just want to add to what you said that it's often brought in in respect of Israel's retaliation or Israel's policy that's collective punishment. There is such a thing as collective punishment, but you have to be careful about when you think it's happening and when you think when it's not happening. So if if you're retaliating against the essentially a state on your southern border that's been firing rockets at you since 2006 and that initiated a murderous attack that killed 1,200 plus people, that's retaliation. Don't tell me that's collective punishment. War is about defeating an enemy and making them unable to fight you and giving up their cause. It's not collective punishment. So I think it's important for people to just differentiate between that idea and what's actually happening. And I think there's no there's no issue of denying anyone a state. As you put it, it's about you have to judge the way I put it sometimes is. The standard you have to meet to justify a state is way, way higher than people realize. And unfortunately, in the 20th century, a lot of states arose and they they they collapsed in blood and and in slaughter because they were not good states and they should not have arisen. And what you end up with is there aren't the intellectual foundations for a state and that leads to just massacres. And so you have to think about what, how would you meet that standard and what work would you have to do to demonstrate that? There's nothing like that that's been done. And it will take a long time, as you put it, to get to that level. Yes, unfortunately, that is true with regard to the Palestinians. OK, mind span, should we balance trying to create peace between Israelis and Palestinians and pursuing justice through a war with the risk of escalating conflict and further division? I don't God escalating conflict, isn't the conflict pretty escalated? Isn't October 7th suggest that we're in an escalated environment? What worse? How worse can it become? And indeed, I think that what history has shown us in history of this conflict, in particular, history, more broadly, if you study history, is that appeasement is what creates escalation. Appeasement is what division. The lack of justice is what emboldens evil. It would emboldens the bad guys. So no, I think the other way around, if you focus on pursuing justice through war and through any other means possible, if you focus on proper self-defense, then you don't get escalation anymore. You know, you don't have a lot of Japanese trying to kill Americans for what happened in World War Two, and you never had that even in the 50s and 60s right after the war. You don't get Germans hating Americans because they because they or hating the British because they flattened Dresden. You get the opposite. You get an acceptance of the evil of the regime that led the British to have to do that and therefore contrition and therefore change. And that's what happened with Germany and Japan. And that's what needs to happen with the Palestinians. They have to be contrite. And that's they're not. They're not not not, you know, because they haven't. Justice is not being pursued against them. All right. Last question to Dr. Giorno. I got I just want to clarify. I don't have a PhD. I have a I did go to graduate school, but I don't want to claim. Yeah, no, that's not a doctor. But yeah, are there any ARI events you plan to be in at? Any ARI events you plan to be at in 2024? Would you would like to reach out regarding institute activity in USA and elsewhere? What's the best way to do so? Yeah, I'd love to connect, Mark and everybody else watching today where, as you mentioned earlier, we're hosting our annual conference. Ocon Objectivist Conference 2024 in Anaheim, California. That's begins June 13, I believe I'll be there. And I hope a lot of you listeners and people watching will join us. You're all going to be speaking. I'll be I'll be doing some events. And we're doing a panel and a form policy right? That's right. Yeah, that's also true. So I'll be speaking with you on a panel and looking forward to that. I forgot a lot of fun. So I would encourage people to look it up. It's INRAN dot org slash Ocon or events dot INRAN dot org. I forget exactly, but we'll put the link in the show notes, as they say. And Google Ocon 2024. And it's the first link that pops up. So it's right there. And you can also go to INRAN dot org slash start here, which is the page for the INRAN book show. And there's a link there to the Ocon page. But yeah, come to Ocon. It's it's five hundred people. Most you'll show your values and you might not like all of them, but I'm sure you'll like some of them and you'll have a blast. So it's it's a lot of fun and very intellectually stimulating. And you get to meet all of us and we look forward to it every single year. So yeah, I hope to meet all of you guys there. I'll probably see you Elon next at Ocon, I think that's right. So thank you. I think we've done we've covered a lot more content and half the time that they did in the debate, two and a half hours. So it's still significant. Thanks. Thank you for joining me and doing this. Hopefully next time when you're on the show, you don't have to watch a torturous five hour debate before you come on. Thank you guys. Thanks to the superchatters. Thanks for all the questions. Really, really appreciate the support and all the intellectual ammunition that's in the questions. I really appreciate that. And let me see. I will see you guys in the morning, not in the morning, in the early afternoon tomorrow for a I'm doing a debate tomorrow. So it'll be it's it's being live streamed. I don't know if you follow me on Twitter, put the link there. The link will be on Twitter, but I'm doing a debate with somebody on the welfare state. So it'll be live, it'll be streamed. So you guys can watch it should be fun, I think. And so join join me for that. And my show is also tomorrow. Yeah, I'll see you guys tomorrow. Thanks, Yilan. Have a great night. Having me. Good night. Bye, everybody.