Welcome to making cents podcast. This is Sam Harris little housekeeping here a couple of recent events that have converged on the topic of free speech which I should probably say something about we had those University presidents test testifying before Congress about whether calling for a genocide of the Jews violated their school policies.
And then we had the continuing Saga of Elon Musk and what he imagines to be his own efforts to protect the Free Speech rights of Earth on his private platform x, what are these two things have in common?
Well, they both appear to have provoked a fair amount of outrage and confusion mostly from the right and left respectively people don't even seem to know the principles. They want to defend here and the truth is both of these cases have almost nothing to do with free speech despite what everyone claims the real problem with both Ilan in the University presidents is that everyone involved has been displaying extraordinary levels of
Percy and moral confusion I guess I'll start with Ilan now the problem with what Elon is doing that X is not that he is a so-called free speech absolutist. He's nothing of the kind I the problem is that his behavior is impulsive and unprincipled and narrowly self-serving while being colossally self-destructive. I mean, how is this for free speech absolutist mm threatening to sue advertisers.
Hours for declining to advertise on X. In fact referring to them not giving him money as blackmail calling for CEOs like Bob Iger to be fired immediately for not wanting the brand damage or the brain damage that comes with being associated with all the chaos that Ilan has created on x
I mean, how's this for principles here is a free-market billionaire raging against people for not buying his defective product literally threatening them with reputational and material destruction if they fail to give him money, I mean who in their right mind would advertise on X at this point and how does their declining to amount to censorship?
Much less blackmail. They're deciding where to advertise is their own freedom of speech and practice. Right? So elon's tirade at the New York Times deal book conference was fairly Bonkers, at least on this topic not to mention that the actual policy of X with respect to free speech globally is to abject Lee comply with the demands of every theocracy and dictatorship that actually wants to stifle free speech on its own version of
So X is a safe space for tyrants. There is no free speech absolutist them here at all. What Ilan has become is not a courageous defender of Free Speech but a conspiracist and a provocateur and a thoroughly trumpian attention monster. He's at the center of a personality cult and the experience is clearly harming him. It has certainly broken his ethical compass.
Reinstating Alex Jones on the platform as Elon did this week wasn't a principled stand on anything, right? It was the quintessence of audience capture Ilan literally put the decision to a vote on x and he let his dumb fans most of whom now live in conspiracies Dan simply tell him what to do. And then he welcomes Jones back in a Twitter spaces along with Andrew Tate and Jack Paar sobiech of pizza gate Fame.
Miss the guy who openly collaborates with neo-nazis and there was Vivek ramaswamy and Matt gaetz. I mean it was an absolute clown car. And then you have alternative media people who can't seem to understand how perverse all this is. It's all just about freedom and resisting Global tyranny and becoming a spacefaring civilization. No, it's not. It's about the absolute nullification.
Of every sane ethical intellectual or journalistic standard that we can rely upon to form our view of the world. I'm reasonably sure that if Elon pulled his fans on X asking whether he should kick the Jews off the platform he would get an impressively positive signal it might even be a majority that would say go for it. Not even sure how I would interpret such a result. It might not be all or even most
Lee anti-Semitism right? He's being followed by millions of people who just want to see shitbreak. It's like that show Jackass but rather than being rolled down a dangerous Hill and a trash can or drinking a gallon of hot sauce. Elon is just fucking around with the levers of democracy. Of course, he can do whatever he wants with X, but it's the hypocrisy and incoherence and recklessness and grandiosity that are so appalling it.
The pretensions of self-sacrifice all the while Desperately Seeking self-aggrandizement. It's the contradictions that are sickening and the total lack of self-awareness. He claims to be saving the world when he is just spinning out of control. He's using his immense reach to promote people like Alex Jones along with random trolls and lunatics who no one would know about but for his influence, he is laundering the reputations of psychopaths.
And he just doesn't care are you apparently has all the Time in the World to do this, but he can't take a moment to figure out whether he's raising the profile of a professional anti-semite or some imbecile who became famous for promoting Pizza gate. So the problem with Elon is not that he is overly committed to free speech is that he's apparently happy to function like a megaphone for people who want to make the world safe for Vladimir Putin and render American society ungovernable. And this is how he imagines. He's improving our information landscape.
Escape okay. It's the lack of ethical principles. That is so disturbing his fondness for Tucker. Carlson is actually diagnostic here Tucker is a person who boosted Trump for years. He probably aired 500 episodes of his show stoking the fires of trumpism and yet now we know from his private texts surfaced in that Dominion lawsuit that he considered trumpet quote demonic force and despaired of his influence on American politics that
Level of hypocrisy and dishonesty and disregard for the consequences of one's actions is evil Tucker is not a person to collaborate with I have no idea what Ilan or the people around him. Can't see that or seen it don't care.
And speaking of failures of ethical coherence. We have the president of Harvard and pain and MIT demonstrating all that is wrong with the diversity equity and inclusion apparatus that has been so carefully calibrated all these years by one grievance entrepreneur after the next move got people like Eber Mex candy and Tallahassee coats making sure that the tiniest gears responsive to the least defenses are well oil than free to spin.
You pick the wrong Halloween costume or use the wrong pronoun in this Machinery whirls into action and in scribes the Judgment against you on the fucking foundations of the world and yet somehow in the aftermath of the most seismic atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust the whole apparatus seizes up and becomes this useless pile of pseudo-intellectual junk and we all watched it happen.
in real time before Congress
Almost everyone has commented on this on the ghastly performance of these college presidents and I don't think I have much to say that is new. I would just reiterate that is not the policies but the inconsistency again the hypocrisy that got under everyone's skin Harvard can have any policy around offensive speech that It Wants What It can't have is a policy that punishes microagressions that gets people fired or D platformed for
leaving that there are only two genders or that meritocracy is worth defending while simultaneously allowing angry crowds to call for the murder of Jews. Okay. It was the obvious inconsistency that drove everyone crazy.
And then we watch this hair-splitting testimony in defense of the time-honored freedom of calling for the eradication of the Jews while absolutely knowing that had those students been calling for the murder of black people or trans people Harvard and pain and MIT would have immediately reacted to prevent that speech and the offending students would have been expelled from those institutions without apology. It's the hypocrisy I'll tell you what I think
These colleges should do they should be extremely tolerant of controversial. Speech. Okay, whether you're a student or a professor or a visiting scholar, I think should be able to explore literally any ideas in a civil way, right? You should be able to play Devil's Advocate about absolutely anything and you should be able to invite the Devil Himself to speak on campus if you want to but these institutions should be very controlling of protests. You don't have the right to mob.
You don't have the right to physically intimidate them. You don't have the right to block their movements. You don't have the right to pound on their doors. You shouldn't have the right to stop an event from proceeding as scheduled. Okay, that's where these institutions should hold the line and I think we should all get out of the business of commenting upon everything that happens in the world the problem with what they didn't say in response to the atrocities of October 7th. Was it their silence and their subsequent
Ian evasions were deafening by comparison to all that they had so effortlessly said the absolute Vesuvius of howling sanctimony. They produced over far more ethically ambiguous events in the past when the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests being the clearest example, I think every University should take this opportunity when we are safely between catastrophes to say we're not issuing any more Proclamation.
That events that all decent human beings should agree about whenever innocent people are killed in horrible ways. You can rest assured that we objected to that and now we're going to go back to the job of educating people who have paid us a lot of money to do so.
Okay. Well today I'm doing something a little different. This could be a one-off or I might do this occasionally. This is not a replacement for my own podcast. But something I'm adding to the feed here. I recently discovered another podcast that I think is great and want to promote and that podcast is call me back whose host is dancing or Dan is a co-author of the new book The Genius of Israel, which is a New York Times bestseller.
He also wrote start-up Nation the story of Israel's economic Miracle, which has been translated into more than 30 languages previously Dan served in various foreign policy positions in the US government including in Iraq for over a year during the Bush Administration. Anyway since October 7th, his podcast has been I think entirely focused on conversations with Israeli journalists and officials and other experts and he recently had my friend Douglas Murray.
You on the show and that's the episode. I want to bring you now Douglas has been on my podcast several times. He is an associate editor of The Spectator and written several books including the strange death of Europe The Madness of crowds and the war on the west. I wrote a blurb for The Madness of crowds back in 2019. I'll remind you of that. This is what I wrote. We live at a time when many of the luckiest people on Earth declare themselves among them.
Depressed while seeking to oppress others in the service of a paradoxical New Faith and no one is so beloved or Immaculate that he or she can't be dragged before the altars of this cult and offered up as a fresh sacrifice in The Madness of crowds Douglas Murray shows how the apparent virtues of social justice intersectionality and identity politics have begun to stifle honest thinking on nearly every topic in the process. He displays more courage and wit and basic decency.
See than can be found anywhere among the woke. The book is simply brilliant reading it to the end. I felt as though I had just drawn my first full breath in years at a moment of collective Madness. There's nothing more refreshing or indeed provocative than sanity.
And I stand by those words Douglas is always a breath of fresh air and basic sanity. There might be some daylight between us on certain political questions. I don't know. I should have him back on the podcast at some point soon to explore that but on the issue of Israel and Hamas and related matters there really is none. And so I now bring you Douglas Murray talking to dancing or about
the war in Gaza
I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time my longtime friend best-selling author columnist and public commentator Douglas Murray who I normally speak to her see in the UK but has been in Israel for the last four weeks or so doing some extraordinary work and joins us today from Israel Douglas. Thanks for being here. It's great pleasure to be with you and your listeners. Thank you for being in Israel. I know it's been difficult, but your observations and Analysis.
And you're responding to some rather inane questions from the media for all of us to watch and Marvel at has been a real Public Service before I get into the specific topics and subtopics. I want to hit with you today. Can you just give us a snapshot of your in Israel during this traumatic time? And then just when you think it couldn't be more of an emotional roller coaster you're there for the return of these hostages, which you've been covering quite closely. What's the mood? How does it feel to you? I'd
say the mood in general is apprehensive. The hostage deal is as all hostage deals involving Israel are wildly traumatic and unfair and unequal and filled with mixed emotions. All Israelis want the hostages back. I spend a lot of time with the families and indeed the whole nation knows about the families now every billboard every illuminated sign that would have
An advert beer or something in the past or new type of washing powder has the photos of the hostages and we've had weeks of hearing from the families hitting from the parents in particular of the missing children and abduct his children the stolen children. And so everybody wants some home and there's enormous trepidation, of course and a great fear about the state that some of them are indeed if all 240 hostages,
Has how many of them are alive which is a sort of conversation people have in private, but don't like having in public and then there's the whole issue of yes if I want some home, but look at the price. The price for instance is three terrorists criminals from Israeli. Jailed released for every Jewish child not the worst deal. The Israelis have ever done in terms of person-to-person swapping, but but there's one other thing I should you know stress is placed.
Which is that there's an awful lot of added trepidation because in perhaps the most unequal swap of all time the garage she'll eat swap more than a decade ago more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners inside Israel were swapped for of course one Israeli soldier gilad Shalit and one of the people swapped out was sin. Wha yeah, who is the Hamas leader in the Gaza now who planned the October?
The seventh Massacre so it's not like the Israelis are releasing from prison, you know shoplifters or something. Yeah, they're releasing the people who could be the next in war and this is just yeah, it's a horrible mixture of emotions. As you mention. I was at the I'm have been around many of the kibbutzim in the massacre sites since I've been here and I know personally some of the families and I know their stories and as I say we all do
But you know when when I was at the Children's Hospital on Friday night for the first children to be helicoptered in from the swap in the south of gars and then he Egypt with her in front and Israeli base and from there to the hospital, you know, the whole of central Tel Aviv shut down all the streets around the children's hospital and people just got out of their cars on the streets and started singing and just showing support for the children as they came came back home.
And it's extremely hard. I think for most Israelis as it is. I mean, it's a little it's hard to just for somebody to watch it but the mixture of emotions because it's this yes, everyone of these lives is priceless that Israel is getting back, but they know the price is going to be huge. Is there a sense? I mean some Israeli journalists in officials. I've spoken to believe that yes, the price is potentially huge on the one hand and the other
Hand because of the strength of the Israeli response since October 7th. It's because of that that they've been able to get these hostages back that's in war-- had to really start negotiating because of the pressure Hamas was under this is not how I moss would have wanted to get a pause implemented from the IDF might being Unleashed. I don't know about that. I mean, there's one that's a positive spin on it or more negative view might be will
of course is exactly what's in my master expected. He must expect it off the scale of the battalion-sized attack on Israel on October the 7th. He must have known the Israelis would respond. I actually think there's a among many problems. I don't be an
armchair analyst about this but I mean
the aim of Israel is expressed by Benjamin Netanyahu is to destroy Hamas simultaneously, they have to negotiate with Hamas. I see these two aims as being obviously at
Levels contradictory, why would Hamas give back all the hostages if they know that the hostages are their golden tickets to survive. I mean, why would Israel not go in even harder the the point of clearing the north of Gaza making sure that civilians all moved South instructing civilians to move South was to have the fights with Hamas and that happened but the Hamas leadership moved South and the hostages are clearly moved South
So the war continues South and I think most people also where the term as is playing not just the Israelis but the international media and international opinion, they seek out these offerings of you know, now maybe 15 people a day. They didn't abide by the agreement yesterday on the day was speaking they delayed look that they might delay again tonight. They haven't but they haven't stuck to their side of the bargain there were children there meant release with their mothers and they haven't done that.
The deliberately splitting up families and making sure the hostages who come back have a family member still in captivity in order to ensure the hostages can't speak once freed with any kind of Freedom or at least we'll probably almost certainly feel they can't speak negatively about their captors. There's a lot of things going on and a lot of concern that Hamas is controlling the thing.
Yeah, there is this sense that sin warand Dave the The Architects of October 7th seem to have gotten at least some control of not total control back of the clock the you know before the yeah that they the idea of had control the clock. And now if they can dribble out hostage releases against them some some control of the clock. Yeah, and at this rate they could keep extending the ceasefire for weeks if not months.
Yeah, unless the idea of says I mean not not to digress down this topic, but it sounds to me like the cabinet meeting when the security leadership was briefing the cabinet the war council the security cabinet in the full cabinet the other night they argued that a 45-day pause or even maybe even a few days longer won't really set the military effort back that much which was persuasive to most members of the cabinet. The question is is there a limit to which the security apparatus could make that argument. Is there a limit where?
I say look, you know five six seven days is one thing but many weeks is an entirely different thing. There were just wouldn't hold up. That's not undermining the overall effort to eradicate him us will see I mean as I say the the it feels already like the momentum of the operation is being lost. But okay you write a lot about history you've covered events in this region and specifically Israel for a long time and you have been sparring with many members of the mainstream media particularly from your home country from the UK over the last
Of weeks and I want to go through with you as I mentioned a few mentioned to you before we recorded this a few of the most common canards out there about how we got into this mess and basically what I see, you know, the kind of the list of Lies is what I call them. Okay? So the first one that I hear all the time is the war against Israel by Hamas is the inevitable response to colonization that Israel is part of an
one of the Jews in Israel are part of an extension of colonization. And what on Earth do you expect the Palestinians to do in response? Yeah, that is of course just the laying over of a form of social justice theory that has infected the minds of many Americans most of whom I'm afraid to say know nothing about history in general let alone history of this region who simply have this interpretation, which is colonized colonizers oppressed. Oppressor indigenous peoples interloper.
And it did I mean they've got everything upside down even if it was a useful Paradigm which to look at everything in the world, which it isn't of course. There's no colonization in Gaza other than by Hamas. All of Gaza was given over by the Israelis and 2005 are speaking to a commander in the idea. If I said to him, have you been here before? He said yes. I said when we were last here, he said in 2005 tearing out family friends from their homes so that there wouldn't be any Jews in Gaza and
We could hand it over to the Palestinians and 18 years later here. I am back. So it's true that God has been colonized was colonized by Hamas admittedly. They were voted in by the Palestinians. And so to that extent of course Palestinians in Gaza do have some responsibility for Hamas. But no the the idea that says were colonization only really works and the people who use that terminology really mean all of Israel and if you
Leave that all of Israel is colonized by these user pin Jews who weirdly have colonized a land of people whose religion was invented several Millennia after Judaism came about then, you know, you sort of haven't got any history, right? But plenty of people talk that language and to something it doesn't fit here the whole idea of colonizer colonized. I mean, well, what about that point?
Oh that Israel leave guys out of it that Israel is a colonized state is was created by colonizers. We are I mean to believe that you'd basically have to agree that everything in the world is colonized. I mean it by the way if people want to care about indigenous peoples me, first of all, the Jews of the oldest continuous group of people who lived in these lands, the Palestinians is a people weren't even mentioned until some decades ago. They're sort of recent invention as a people if you went back,
Over
the years and said Palestinian. Nobody know what you're talking about particularly, where as if it said Jewish they certainly would and by the way, you can tell the recentness of it because if you ask people name of the famous Palestinian including Palestinians, they can usually come up with Yasser Arafat and then they draw a blank that's not the case for judicial notice that you can name an awful lot of Jews in history. And so the Palestinian claims are pretty thin if people do want to do the whole indigenous peoples thing.
Thing right then at least don't be selective about it talk about the indigenous rights of the British or the friend Clark. Let me go on try it, you know, if you want to play that game play at everywhere. Don't play it in selective places. Well when the UN was formed when the UN Charter 1945 there were I think something like 50 to 52 countries 30 years later. They were 170 countries today 192 193 countries, so presumably the majority of those
Is after 1945 were just made out of thin air. I mean they were just like appreciate it. And I mean, I'm just sort of this interesting that everyone's focused on Israel. Well, I also think that in general the idea that Israel lacks legitimacy despite coming about by a vote at the United Nations the idea that we're is that anyone is still having this debate seems to me to be like having a debate about the most basic mathematical theorems.
Pakistan was created within the same year as Israel and not even the most fervent Indian nationalist says Pakistan should be abolished or the peoples of Pakistan's you just be moved out because they have no right to be there because their colonial construct which by the way Pakistan was and and Pakistan has territorial disputes in Pakistan is accused of Oppression. I mean has all these frames that are applied to Israel yet. No one's super you can do it on any country and it's a I mean
When you and I were growing up if you wanted a signal some kind of virtue in the international Arena. You would do free to bed. Does anyone remember free Tibet Tibet remains doggedly I'm free because it turns out the Chinese Communist party doesn't give much of a damn about a sandal. We're in Brooklyn trying to Signal decency. But unfortunately when you're dealing with the world's democracies like Israel, they do actually listen to International opinion and international pressure and and they don't like being misrepresented. So yeah, but I'm the colonizer colonized thing is I'm afraid an invention of
Of a particularly stupid form of American pseudo Academia from the last few decades which is mainly done by people who do sort of social studies. Everything has studies after it which of course means. It's not a study of any kind the next lie or Canard goes the October 7th attack was a response to genocide. Mmm. Well, of course if there was a genocide in Gaza, it would be the only genocide in history in which the population massively bloomed. I mean most genocides in
An attempt to eradicate it a race of people and the population of Gaza has boomed in the last 18 years. So if you say there has been a genocide either you've got to say there has been an attempted genocide and the Jews are no good at committing genocide. There are would be genocide assists but they just really bad at the job or more likely you're trying to wound the Jews and that's all that's happening notice that all of the accusations against Israel the most vicious accusations.
Involve attempts to draw a parallel between the behavior of the Israelis and the behavior of Nazi Germany genocide concentration camp ghetto like the Warsaw Ghetto like the concentration camps, etc. Etc Hitler like Behavior. Now, there are several ways. You can interpret this you could say well that's a response of having a public culture in America and the wider West that knows nothing of history in general and only knows one bad thing from history. And that's the Nazis and so therefore whenever you reach
For any historical analogy you will re always reach the Nazi analogy. Where is plenty of analogies? Historically could be much more relevant. You could say that actually I think it's worse than that. I think this a deliberate attempt to wound and hurt choose but moving on from that when people talk in this language about genocide and ghettos and concentration camps that the guards was a concentration camp by the unlike concentration camps from Nazi Germany. You'll notice that there are
Shopping malls in Gaza beaches, you know relative Freedom removing too much water and Office Buildings billions of dollars being sent in from the Sunni Gulf. Yeah. I don't remember the the Jews in Auschwitz being given billions of dollars in Aid by the International Community to do with what they will and then deciding just to enrich themselves and then go to the beach. So it's again only the product of people who either a fantastically ignorant or just want to wound Jews and as for the sort of ghetto
To claim that the 7th of October Massacre was as well as a result of Intolerable Warsaw Ghetto light conditions within Gaza. You would have to first of all fit not know that the Egyptians have a border with Gaza as well and have kept it doggedly closed so that for just for our listeners. So that's the the border on the other side of Gaza. So there's the Israel Gaza border and then there's the Gaza Egyptian border that no one ever really talks about I mean the kibbutzim around God
Arzo were of course hiring and there was meant to be an increase in the hiring of and the movement of passage of Palestinian workers from Gaza into Israel until the 7th October Massacre. When we discovered that many of the gardens who are working inside the cupboard. We're actually feeding back the information of door-to-door of how to kill Who and the people from Hamas who were found dead and alive had maps on their bodies which showed that the that the guards and workers who these mainly peacenik left-wing Israelis were employing were actually acting as spies who led to the direct murder and
the curve the people who are trying to help them but let's put that aside again for a moment and just restate the feather again, if it was a ghetto like condition in Gaza, you would have to live under the impression if you had this as a justification in your head, but the Warsaw Ghetto was filled with Jews who are oppressed and who when they broke out just immediately help themselves to some rape and beheading does anyone know that that happened or think that happened or
Imagine that happened, of course not what a Sinister and sick argument. That is the Palestinians couldn't help themselves. They broke out and immediately inevitably went to a music party of young people where they gunned people down raped women and shot them in the head and continued raping them. It's how all oppressed people behave the population size just to put a sharper point on it when Israel took over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank there were something like 1 million.
Palestinians today there are over 5 million Palestinians. So to your point if it was a genocide it was at least effective genocide in history rightmost bungled genocide in history. Why I mean, I want to say on this point for moment because this speed with which October 7th happens and there was maybe a day. I'll give it a day at most two days before there was this blowback in all these major cities not all these many major cities in Europe and the United States certainly on college campuses.
Going right for genocide. The outrage wasn't being directed at at Hamas. The outrage was being directed at Jews for objecting to being slaughtered Yes. Again, the outrages against directed at Jews who objected to genocide this
speed with which so many
people hmm in our most elite institutions in our most Cosmopolitan geographies in the world. Geographic centers in the world went right to Israeli General. Yes, Israeli genocide. I mean you wrote All About
A lot about this in your last
book but sometimes these things are so
in excess that we become numb to them. Yeah, me too. I'm like just used to Jews being accused of genocide on October 8th, October 9th as opposed to like staying. Whoa. Well, no, Toby 850, you know, I live in New York or in America most of the time on October 8th. I went down to Times Square to the Palestinian protest there. Why were they protesting on October the 8th Israel hadn't done anything yet hadn't retaliated. Well, some of them were simply there to celebrate the
her there was a woman in a hijab waving a placard celebrating the massacre of 24 hours earlier then x square. So Americans who think this is someone else's problem should first of all realize that the people who heart the rape Massacre beheading and burning of Jews. All right in your midst in America and have no fear at all from the authorities or anyone else of showing themselves up in public like that straight away the
Point that needs to be made is I've seen this before as you did. I remember very much that when they were still trying to identify bodies in the rubble of the Twin Towers in 2001. There were people like the sickly academic in the UK Mary beard who wrote in the London review of books that it was impossible to keep out of one's mind the fact that some extent she said to some extent we all feel the same thing, which is that America had this coming now,
How many Americans want to be talked to in that way how many Americans within days if not hours of a massacre of 3,000 Americans want to hear people telling you you had it coming I wouldn't like to be talked about or to in that tone of voice.
but the Israelis are expected to put up with it it you've got to understand the context as if there's a context to going to a music festival and gunning down lots of people in their twenties and tying the women to trees and raping them and putting live babies and others if there's a context to going into Berry and near our house and kibbutz after kibbutz of left-wing peaceniks in the main,
And as I've seen myself door after door ruined house after ruined House people in their shelters bomb shelters because they were used to bomb shelters because they have to be used to the bombs because they come over so used so often but they didn't know that people would come door-to-door 4,000 people from Gaza with kalashnikovs and RPGs and much more door to door. So the safe rooms,
Don't lock I spoke to one man whose grandsons were in their house on their own because their mother was out when the Hamas death squads came and he was on the phone trying to tell the boys. I think they were 13 and 15 how to hold the safe room door shut when the grown men of Hamas on the other side were pushing it to open the door the other way and they were abducted they were stolen they were kidnapped because they couldn't hold out not again.
Grown men and you see the safe room doors in these kibbutz, you know the ones where it was an even worse ending because you see the bullet holes all around the handles because that was a faster way in for Hamas. Now if anyone wants to tell me that this is a legitimate answer to oppression. I say you are sick in the head beyond comprehension.
And you should not presume that the Palestinian people's are all necessarily and must be for all time as sick as you think they are. It seems that lots of critics of Israel's response argue that Israel has a right to self-defense the ones that are not as Extreme as the ones we're seeing marching in major American cities in European cities and college campuses the ones that aren't is Extreme, but still critical of Israel. They argue look Israel.
As a right to self-defense, but must be more mindful more thoughtful in terms of how it wages. It's War when Israel's when people say Israel has the right to self-defense. It's always followed by a Bart. I don't know why I don't know any other people who's always a but but there's a reason for that which is the people who say that what they really mean is Israel is allowed to do something rather tokenistic and then it must settle for a draw. I believe that one of the reasons why there's been an ongoing War for so long
Ben Israel and the Palestinian is precisely because the International Community and others keep on making Israel fight to a draw never is Israel allowed to win what would winning be winning would be in this case for instance with Hamas destroying him as and making sure that no Hamas fake organization exists in the Gaza again that no rocket ever again fires out of Gaza into Israel. That would be winning. Everything else is a draw and I have
very little Sympathy for the putative supporters of the Palestinian people who first of all think that Hamas is the necessary spokes group of the Palestinian people's when they completely ignore that when Hamas was voted in they promptly made sure there was never another election and killed or their fat and other Palestinian opponent. And by the way, the people who doubt that sure even look at very anti-israel organizations like Amnesty International who nine years ago in 2014 said that the shifa hospital in Gaza was the Hamas
Quarters and what's more was the main place where Hamas brought Palestinian prisoners and tortured them and killed them. It was known as the interrogation Center and torture chamber of Hamas in Gaza. This is what Hamas do this is what they're like, but if you want to pretend that the Palestinians should live under that then be my guest. There is no reason why the Israelis should continue to have to live beside a place where
are endlessly Rockets will be fired to the extent that every house is used to them to the extent that every house has to have a bomb shelter. I mean it it to say that Israel has to learn to live without bread is to say Israel rates. It's existential. Okay guys weekend is endless people who are refugees from these towns of Ashkelon and places like that has been to a family earlier lovely young couple bombed out of their apartment. They were in the safe room in Ashkelon with their three young children and the Missile hit the
Apartment and thank God they were okay, but the apartment is destroyed. How can they move back if you're within missile and to be Claire Ashkelon is not even one of this town's that's right on the border with Gaza. I mean, I just ask on your already long-winded much closer to the epicenter of Israel. But the main thing about this thing of Israel's not Israelis not being allowed to win is that I think that's intolerable and I think it makes for Perpetual conflict. I think conflicts mainly finish when one side wins and one side loses and the side.
I'd that loses knows that it's lost. But I find this perverse idea that the Israelis, you know, it isn't just with this conflict. But in almost every conflict involving the Arabs and Israel in Israel, in fact every conflict from 1948 up till now what always happens is the Israelis are hit or invaded and they are told by the entire screaming to you can do something in response, but you mustn't win. You must answer a question. I mean, I think the Palestinian question
Effectively an insoluble question at this point there is going to be no Palestinian State partly because fatah PA in the West Bank celebrates the October 7th massacres and we saw a couple of days ago with the lynching of two Palestinians by a crowd or thing by the way recording of their mobile phone. So these are the peaceful people of the West Bank as well. There's going to be no Palestinian State because the Palestinians have made sure yet again, there's just no chance but I don't see why this insoluble problem of the Palestinians has to be a problem for the Israelis giving somebody an insoluble problem and telling them.
To solve it seems to me to be a kind of unfair and cruel thing to do give it to somebody else to solve give it a Gyptian to solve give it to the qataris or the UAE or the jordanians give it to somebody else to solve. Why should it be Israel's insoluble problem. But of course what happens is effectively that and it's happening at the moment with Hamas Hamas is behaving in the way that the thing that's most similar to it would be if you and I were standing at a bus stop and I punched you in the face for no reason.
For reason I could say went back to some inherited feeling of Oppression and then you turned out to be a jiu jitsu master and informed me of this fact, and I said, oh, can we just go back to the moment before I hit you would you mind? That's the situation Israel is in with Hamas Hamas wants to go back to October the 6th. Most of the International Community wants to go back to October the 6th. There was a ceasefire of a Kind Hamas broke.
Kitt Hamas has to pay the price the argument of proportionality. Now, there are two versions of proportionality one is under international law when you take out a military Target according to international law not weighing in all the various interpretations. But at least according to Matthew Waxman who we had on this podcast who's a who's a professor of international law at Columbia Law School is that that the collateral damage in going after a target has to be proportional to the military gain, right? Then there's this sort of media interpretation.
Portion ality, which is actually not based on the international rules of War. It's a different kind of proportionality. It's like Israel was hit and Israel is now hitting back quote-unquote harder and that's not proportional as though it's a math game. First of all, I mean, you should hit back harder if you want to win when we want wanted to win Wars in America and Britain. We always hit back harder. Why would you hit back softer? What's the point in that? You have to hit back harder if you want to destroy an opponent you hit them as hard.
Hard as you can now of course as is often pointed out and I've seen it with my own eyes. So I know it's not just an Israeli talking point the Israelis do everything they can to minimize civilian casualties are their civilian casualties. Yes, and it's terrible. I think they're all the responsibility of Hamas for starting a war but when hammers spends billions of dollars of international aid from your American taxpayer and from your British taxpayer and great use of our tax dollars that was and
Funnel money to the authorities the Hamas you you would think they might build bunkers for their people if they think they're going to start a war. But of course know they have built bunkers for the Hamas leadership in the Hamas leadership has said that themselves on Plenty of occasions the bunkers the tunnels there for us the Israelis, of course do it the other way round the Israelis use the idea of the other security agencies to protect the Israeli people Hamas wanted to kill as many civilians as possible on October 7th. That's
Why they chose the softest imaginable targets like a music festival like small kibbutz and so on they deliberately Target civilians and the Israelis accidentally hit civilians and there's every difference in the world with that. But the proportionality argument is let me first of all, there's an argument and made quite early on in this conflict which was if you do actually believe in this thing of proportionality, which I really only hear about involving Wars in Israel. I've covered plenty of Wars. I was in Ukraine last year. I hear nobody saying that the
Is have to have proportionate response to the annexation of major parts of their country their just everyone hopes that they can take those parts back but it's always the Israelis you have the discussion of proportionality with and if they said if you actually want to follow that through then proportionality would mean that the Israelis to the extent they have the right to respond to Hamas as massacres, October 7th should find precisely the same number of women in Gaza as Hamas found in rape them. They should find precisely the same number of babies at home as killed on October 7th.
And behead and kill them and stop only when they've killed exactly the same number of people as him as killed on October 7th. Now some people might say well the population of Garza is about a quarter of the size of the population of Israel. So actually if we properly proportionate you would only rape a quarter of the women that Hamas raped and you'd only kill a call to the babies. And is that okay? Come on, this is a wildly perverted thinking wildly perverted thinking it's not even thinking and by the way,
I mean just look at what the US did to Isis. Yes in raqqa and mosul. I mean the idea of proportionality is but and I supported what we did against Isis it was the idea that we would talk about proportionality was Preposterous. We flatten these places and when France bombed the Côte D ivoire in 2003 or for their International if you didn't say don't, you know, don't do this don't be you know, you've got to be proportionate defense just did whatever they want was the French always do it's only Israel people care about and that's because most people don't
Want Israel to win I'm as far as I can. See I'm saying most people I'm a lot of people are decent in the world, but most critics most critics. They just don't want Israel to win and so they come up with his BS about proportionality Hamas is an idea some say in no matter what Israel does here it cannot bomb away and idea many critics argue and that, you know your analogy about in this hostage exchange. There may be a future seen war--
Some critics argue well and some of the bombed-out civilian areas in North Gaza. There are sin wires in the making who otherwise may go another way. They then get radicalized because of Israel's quote-unquote indiscriminate bombing and you will never defeat an idea that will be so attractive to a vulnerable victim of Israeli Warfare that becomes radicalized. There's a result. What is it very strange argument, isn't it? Because we've destroyed ideas all the time.
We destroyed fascism, right? So so and Nazism was much more robust. Both financially infrastructurally. And numerically. Then Hamas is Hamas is a pushover compared to Nazism. We destroyed communism. I mean is true that it still thrives in Berkeley and various American college campuses. But otherwise communism is a is a pretty defunct ideology. Even the CCP sort of steps away from some of it. Now Japanese imperialism was a very strong idea and
Japanese were almost as dedicated as Hamas and Isis to dying for that idea, but we so destroyed Japan's infrastructure and Leadership and indeed cities and there is no there is no talk these days. No serious talk. I mean there's some discussion about indoctrination in Japanese schools. Sometimes it comes up about the nationalism that some people feel is always sort of nodded to than Japan school, but I don't think as a serious movement that in Japan that is because
We were treated like this. We're going to go back to Japanese imperialism. And that's because we bombed the hell out of them and defeated them because otherwise they would have defeated us and it's a very good thing to again. I get back to this point. You have to lose you have to lose your enemy has to lose and we won't necessarily get unconditional surrender. Israel will not necessarily get unconditional surrender from Hamas, but it could get unequivocal defeat of Hamas. I would like unconditional surrender, but we'll see ya.
Douglas you wrote this book the war in the west which Reserve New York Times bestseller. Very provocative book long before published long before October 7th. Where does October 7th fit into your thesis the wall? The West is about the anti-western ism of our time, whereby every single Western countries treated by this bizarre standard where we're all meant to have original sins and we must atone for them. And of course, no other country in the world has the same thing. Our history is being Rewritten in America and Britain and elsewhere as one
terrible oppression and saw looked at through this lens of negativity and evil and wrong doing and I mean put a vac long and scholarly book into simplistic terms. I would say is it's about well, it's very strange that this only happens to the world's Western democracies, and it doesn't get done anywhere else. So, you know one going to Uganda and saying what's their original sin? Most Ugandan would look at you with some confusion. If you raise the issue, I don't see people going to Jordan and saying what's
Original sin and by the way, guys, you've never done anything good. It's all been horrible. And in fact, there are countries in the world that are much more deserving of such interpretation. But yes Israel obviously suffers from this as well this idiot American idea of colonization First Peoples of press or oppressed and so on. This has been transplanted onto Israel as it's been transplanted onto every other Western Country, Canada or Australia. We've all got versions of the same virus.
and yeah, the response to October the 7th in America in particular parts of American particular is an indication of the fact that this horrible horrible mind virus has wrecked the minds of young people in particular to the extent that they don't realize that they are being the Nazis if they got their wish and I hope to God they never do for themselves apart from anything else if
Got their wish of the river whose name. They don't know to the see who they couldn't point to on a map being entirely yudin Rhine, which is of course the desire not just of Hamas. But of the Palestinian Authority her meant to be the putative next failed Arab stayed they would be Hitler what they're chanting for is the final dream of Hitler so they should know that and wish to God that they never get there.
Chant fulfilled. Yeah, you wrote in the New York Post you go back to the 2014 Boca ROM hostage-taking of Christian schoolgirls in Nigeria wrote here. And I'm quoting my mind keeps going back 10 years ago to Nigeria in 2014 is some readers will remember on the night of April 14th, 2014. 276. Mainly Christian School girls were abducted by terrorists from the Boko Haram group.
Happened at a school in a town called. She booked in Borno State in some ways. It is obvious why there was such International outrage at the incident after all this was 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by an Islamic terrorist group, even a world that has seen the bezel in school Siege in 2004 and was starting to see the workings of Isis still had capacity to be shocked. So you take this very important snapshot and let's just every celebrity would hold up these, you know signs hashtag bringbackourgirls.
Those including the first lady including Michelle Obama. So this was widespread again. I I'm sort of numb to the reaction now post October 7th. But like when I read you lay it out like that. It's like what is going on?
It was hip it was Chic it was it was in Vogue to
demand children be returned. Yeah. It's like sweet. It was like free to bed, right? Yeah. It was a caused your again. It did no good. By the way. I covered the conflict in Northern Nigeria.
Recent years and was in Borno State. I've been to the places that you bought school girls were taken from I've covered the massacres of Christians there by Fulani Malaysia and others and know that conflict pretty well. Yeah. It was a cool thing to be on the side of just say bring back our girls and I don't doubt it when you say it had no effect when you say it had no effect meaning. Well, I mean the Nigerian go Quran could care less. Yeah. Well the first of all Poke around couldn't care.
Les and I will all like the Chinese Communist party not vulnerable to International pressure. It turned out that a hashtag couldn't stop Boko Haram who knew and secondly though, of course the school goes largely. I mean some were returned in drips and drabs of returnees the Nigerian military military and government was so incompetent again, I saw this with my own eyes. One of the chibok schoolgirls was only returned in April this year. So the internet
Campaign was as often noisy and largely ineffective, but it did put some pressure on the Nigerian government not needs to pay PR agencies to try to cover up the fact of their own inadequacies, but that's another story. Yeah, I spend a lot of time with the families of the abducted
hostages from October the 7th and
I try not to say to them what is always on my mind like this which is where is the International outcry and I'm afraid you can only come
Um to the conclusion as we see with the people particularly women, it's noticeable for interesting psychological reasons. We can't get into but who ripped down posters of kidnapped Israeli children one can only come to the conclusion that either internationally people don't care that much about Jews or actively dislike them or they think that the stealing of Jewish children and the likely death of some of them is just one of the eggs that needs
To be broken in order to make the terrific armlet of the Palestinian State. I think probably most during that second camp and all I would say to those people is what George Orwell said to the stalinist you ride with in the 1940s who eventually admitted that okay the show Trials of 37 may have happened. Okay, the gulag maybe the okay political be okay. There might be no remember but and eventually all well heard him say that fatal phrase. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.
And George Orwell said where's your omelette and I would say to the people who say effectively you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You can't make the Palestinian state or get the gardens free without breaking heads and having not only seen the unedited Massacre footage of October the 7th, but having spent too much time in the massacre sites and indeed in the morgues and the places where the bodies are still being identified.
The mortuaries I would say go to those places tell me this was worth anything then point your bloody omelet Douglas. We will we'll leave it there very powerful. If you'd won an impression from your time in Israel that you would like to break through to people listening to this podcast and others that you feel just people don't get after having spent a month with the Israelis during this.
Horrific traumatic nightmare, but would it be one of the most powerful are too many powerful things to list but one of the most powerful conversations I had in recent weeks was that one of the trauma hospitals where a father who had lost who would it being in the safe room with his wife daughter and son and they were there for hours. They were smoked out they burnt down the house. They were all suffering from smoke inhalation and then the fight the terrorists of him as found the window and threw grenade after
In and shot and shot into this small room father lost both his legs. His wife was killed in front of him died in front of the children and then his boy who been shot in both sides of his chest bled out in front of his sister and father and his father said to me I've been a left is the all my life all my life. I want nothing but potato fields from here to the Sea.
I'm afraid that is the feeling a vast number of Israelis. Now Hamas killed the possibility of Peace people in Israel know that the wider World should know that Douglas. Thank you. Stay safe. Keep doing what you're doing. Hope to get you back on. But until then though, I'll be I think like many folks listening following your reporting and commentary. Thank you very
much.
