DEBATE: Iran & Zionism w/ James Delmore & Adar Weinreb

James Delmore & Adar discuss the US-Iran War, Zionism and more. 

James Delmore is a cryptocurrency and blockchain analyst, former Fox News researcher and currently an independent writer and commentator on all things crypto and individual rights.

Get in touch with James: https://x.com/JamesDelmore1

Want more than just watching?
Connect with Israelis, Palestinians, and global voices having real conversations every day -  https://discord.com/invite/MSTfuhnj8S


Socials: 
https://linktr.ee/adarw

Support the Show: 
Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/sulha
PayPal: https://paypal.me/AdarW?locale.x=en_US

Socials: 
https://linktr.ee/adarw

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:25

And we're live. What's up, everybody? Welcome. We're here today with James Delmore. James Delmore is a cryptocurrency and blockchain analyst, former Fox News researcher, and currently an independent writer and commentator on all things crypto and individual rights. James recently reached out to me uh asking if I'd like to debate. Of course, I said yes. Seems like a nice guy with interesting views, so I'm excited to uh explore these topics. We're gonna talk about the Iran War, we're gonna talk about Zionism, we'll see how much ground we can cover. We'll also maybe try to do a QA if we have time, so feel free to submit questions. Uh you may notice a new setup uh in honor of James. We uh got a new setup going. Wow. I'm yeah, I don't know if I'll miss it every time, but uh but occasionally, I occasionally we'll have this setup going. Um all right, cheers to that. James, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Thank you, thank you. Good to be here, Adar. Like you said, uh you said I seem like a nice guy, likewise to you, by the way. You seem I could tell you're a man of peace. So uh I like your whole style, and I was like, you know, I want to reach out to this guy, see if he'd have a conversation with me, and quickly responded, and I'm excited to uh chat with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Awesome, awesome. So let's get into it. I'd love to hear uh the case for why you think the Iran war was a good idea and why we should continue it if I believe I believe that's your position, correct?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

It is, it is. I had an article published uh with Walter Bloch. He's a pretty famous economist and uh libertarian thinker and philosopher and everything and writer, he's written many, many books. Um, and the case we made, uh look, I know it's a controversial one and uh it's a tough position to defend. I'm not a pro-war person. I'm very I'm for defensive war, but I'm not for offensive war. But the case I'm making in uh he and I made in uh the case of the Iran war is that if you basically I'll if if you don't mind, I'll break it down from how what our premise is. And the premise is that you and I, all your viewers, everybody around the world, all 7 billion of us, are free, sovereign individuals. It doesn't matter what country we're in, but we have rights that we have just by being humans. And we make the argument that the legitimacy of a government is only legitimate insofar it's protecting our natural rights. So that's the premise we're operating from. So we argue that Iran has no legitimacy at this point, it has no legitimate sovereignty over individual people for the actions it's done. Uh, most recently, what happened in January when there were protests going on in Iran, and we don't know how many people died, but it's in the thousands for sure. And certainly since the war broke out, they've been cracking down, there's been lots of executions, they turned off the internet. Um, those are all just total violations of human sovereignty, of human rights. And therefore, they have Iran has no sovereignty at this point. And the goal should be to protect the rights of individual Iranians. We make the case the UN can't do it or hasn't done it, or you know, is unwilling to do it, and the rest of the international community hasn't stepped in. Sanctions aren't working, they're not changing their behavior with sanctions or whatever other policies that have been put in place. And at minimum, this war is a check on their power or even a punishment of them for their violation for the violations they've done against the Iranian people. So that's the basic premise. Um, and it's the the war we see as a protection of the Iranian Iranian people's rights and um a check on the power of the Iranian government as a first basis. So I'll throw it back to you if you have any questions on that, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yeah, okay, cool. I I actually think that there'll we'll be able to find some common ground here because I try to base my worldview on first principles and uh human rights as well. And uh I so I think there's a fair bit of agreement there. The question is let's say we decide that Iran loses its legitimacy. Uh it's not, it doesn't mean that the best option is uh is war for a few reasons. War is not always likely to succeed, and the act of war is a violation of human rights as well, because there's some level of collateral damage. So you're essentially saying collateral damage are individuals who got their inalienable right to life taken from them. So I think we need to be very careful and cautious when we're about to violate that right of another individual. And essentially that's what war does. It it violates the rights of tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals, and often without achieving the results we want to achieve. So I think that we should always look uh for the most peaceful path first and foremost, and then resort to violence as an absolute last resort. And I think one of our failures uh uh as a species today is how quickly we we resort to violence. And another uh bad idea I think we hold as a species is that uh this idea that organizations and institutions that we don't like uh cannot change without violence. Uh but we have thousands of years of data showing us that pretty much every organization that's ever existed has changed over time. So I think we should focus on setting the right incentives, pressures, and environmental conditions to allow Iran to evolve in such a way where it could better protect the rights of its people. And it's not like we haven't seen any progress in that regard. I Iran, uh as brutal as their suppression of their people has been, uh, we have seen some evolution. So, for example, they they no longer um enforce the hijab rule in Tehran. Why? Because the people are secular, they're not wearing hijabs, the the police just said, you know what, we're just gonna let it slide. We see that the most conservative hardline clerics, they're older and they're dying, and the younger are a little bit more liberal. We have seen Iran willing to negotiate with the US and other Western powers, and we've even seen them warm up to the UAE in recent years, who's an ally of uh the US and even of Israel. So given the trajectory we've seen, to me, it seems like a grave mistake to wage war, which seems to just kill people and uh strengthen the hard line. We should work with the current trajectory and try to find a peaceful resolution to this and help Iran get to the place where they're not a repressive uh government.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

And those are good points. And uh yeah, starting again, I'm also with you. I am not for war. Um I didn't say support the Iraq war, for example, um, or most wars actually probably am against. Um, this one I I put particular to this case. So at first it's great that they're making progress, like you said, uh, but you know, I guess not enough progress because of the, I would first say because of what happened in January and what's been going on this year. Um the so the action the so part of the action that was taken was both in response to that as what and like supporting kind of the protesters and if there really is some upheaval to remove this regime, because I'm of someone that I like, yes, I'm glad they have made these the progress that you made where they're just kind of allowing people not to wear a hijab and the other ones you mentioned. But especially under the former Ayatollah, and we don't know about this current Ayatollah. Uh, some say he's more hardline, some say he's not even alive. I don't know if you've heard that, but some are saying yeah, I don't know if he's alive or anything.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

This week is his father's funeral, and it doesn't seem like he's making an appearance. So that's pretty telling that that either he's not alive or he's in very bad condition, or he's just terrified of assassination, right? It's unclear. But yeah, he he may not be alive.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and like the circumstances that I am supporting this war are also very limited civilian casualties. Because, like you mentioned, yes, war leads to many uh uh non-combatant deaths, civilians, um, and they have been relatively low. Uh, the numbers I'm seeing are like 1500. I think that includes civilians and the um the military as well, like the IRGC or their military. So I don't know exactly what the civilian combat ratio is, uh, which is horrible though. I mean, I don't want any civilians to die. But insofar as civilian deaths are kept low and US military deaths and Israeli military deaths are kept low as well. Uh, right now, only 15 U.S. soldiers have died that I'm aware of. And a lot of them were from accidents and weren't even really from the combat in Iran. Um, so as long as those conditions are in place, and it's again a limited intervention. I am not for boots on the ground. So, no way in the article I mentioned did we make that case. Uh, it's for a limited removal of the current regime as best as possible, which we already removed the Ayatollah. It's unknown if the the new one will moderate or if he's dead, then whoever comes in after that, whether it's an IRGC, who knows? Um, but I think one thing is unfortunately in the world we live in, as you mentioned, it's still we resort to a lot of violence. And I think part of it is you know, a lot of these powerful regimes, they only really know violence. They're not really going to make any changes unless there's violence used against them. I know that's a controversial point, but I think as long as the violence is very contained and minimal, as minimal as possible, just make sending a message, knock off what you're doing, stop taking away their rights. Uh just to not to sidetrack it, but remember in uh January, he arrested, the US arrested the uh dictator of Venezuela. And they went in, and I don't think there were any civilian casualties, maybe there were a couple that I'm uh that I'm unaware of, but they literally arrested a guy, brought him back, and now he's gonna stand trial for the crimes he committed in Venezuela. To me, that could be a huge paradigm shift is if that's the way we handle some of these dictators. I know it's not ideal. Um, we don't live in an ideal world yet. I don't like all of this in general, but uh I think under the circumstances, I think these are the best, I would argue these are the best way to go.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Right. I mean, but you point to uh the limited toll it's taken. And I do agree so far it has had a a relatively limited toll on civilian life and uh soldier life, but we're very far from regime change, right? So the question, the question is what it would actually entail to uh change their government entirely, and uh there's no vision for how to do that without boots on the ground, unless you know, people unless you want to nuke them, right? But let's just rule that out as a as a non-option. So so we we could point to the fact that there's been limited casualties, but we're very far from changing their government. So if if we're gonna make the decision that we want to change their government, we need to honestly assess what what it would actually entail. Now, uh another thing.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Can I jump in there? Do you mind if I jump in on that point? Oh, yeah, I was just gonna say if you look at Venezuela, for example, and I know they're totally different Venezuela and Iran, but the Venezuelan government has moderated on a lot of things. There, they freed a bunch of their political prisoners, they um are selling oil, shipping oil to the US now. They've done a bunch of things to free up their economy under this, and it's a very similar regime. It's only just you know a different president. I'm not saying that could be the case in Iran, but that could be a possibility.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

So let's say Trump believed that that was what what was gonna happen, right? Because that that is the theory. Uh, why why would Trump do this when advisors for years, right? They've done war games with Iran, uh, um where where they assess what may happen if war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hermuz was very predictable. The the inability to open it was predictable. The toll that would have on the global economy, this was all predictable. So, what was Trump thinking, really, doing this? So many speculate that he thought it would be Venezuela 2.0, uh, or he thought that the people would rise up, the regime was just much um less stable than they actually are. But now, given the fact that we see that's not the case, what are our possible options? Do we continue to escalate indefinitely until we until they collapse, or do we actually try to now work with them and have them moderate over time through cooperation and negotiation?

SPEAKER_00 12:23

So it's a good that's a good question. Um I I do have some uh Iranian friends. Some live in Turkey, some live here, um, and they still have family over there and they're communicating with them. Um some told me this is back in April. I haven't, and in May actually more. Um I I don't know updates on that, but she told me several of them told me that they're waiting to make their move, I guess, to do another uprising, potentially, um, like they did back in January, once the US and Israel totally finished things. But I was also reading, you know, the the Iranian economy was doing really, really bad uh up until not too long ago, up until like when they were signing that MOU. They were having trouble even like getting the salaries to the IRGC, basically. Like it was quite bad. They were gonna have to make some concessions. Um so you know, I don't know. And I also, by the way, I also don't know if this MOU is gonna continue. But in terms of regime change, I think it at minimum if it moderates, that's a success, I would argue. So let's say we don't get the regime change, but at a minimum moderates, there's more freedom for Iranians. I think we've made progress. It not in the best way. Like, I don't like the war, but at least progress was made.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

So again, we it it we we will know in time if if we've made progress, but we also killed a lot of the moderates, right? Like Ali Laranjani was uh was a moderate who was assassinated by Israel. Uh even even Khomeini was uh more moderate than a lot of the IRGC hardliners who now seem to have a stronger opinion on things. In fact, it was uh Khomeini was explicitly against nuclear weapons on Islamic grounds. It does seem like some members of the IRGC uh would would have liked to pursue nuclear weapons. We'll see now what happens with that, that Khomeini's out of the picture. Uh but it's we we need to think of waging war to maybe potentially have them moderate a little bit. I I think we need to elevate our thinking about this. And again, like that should be a last resort. Can we have achieved similar, if not better, outcomes just through more negotiation? If we didn't rip up the JCPOA and continue negotiation and continued building ties with them, could we not have achieved better results that way? And also, you know, if we do care about the people of Iran, I think we also need to look at how uh Israeli and U.S. intelligence are playing into the uprising. So I I do uh I do appreciate that you were honest about the death toll in Iran, because we do have people throwing out the 40,000 number, which is just ridiculous, but thousands were killed. Uh, but in the thousands killed, you know, a few hundred uh Iranian uh military and police personnel were killed. There were actually battles in the streets of Iran, uh heavily armed uh resistance fighters who armed them, likely Western intelligence. So how much how much of this is in uh a natural grassroots uprising of Iranians? How much of this is foreign influence? And if all of a sudden you have people with guns shooting at um shooting at uh military personnel, they're gonna shoot back, civilians get caught in the crossfires. If we actually care about the civilians, uh is that the right thing to do? So I'm not saying you don't care about the civilians, but the the but Israel and the US who kind of use this this uh the this care of civilian life, they don't really care. And and one of the best ways to to I I it's a thought experiment, but if you would give most supporters of Israel the option, uh Iran stays the same um exactly as they are, or they become much more repressive towards their people but become pro-Israel. What would that what would most people choose? Most people would choose, most supporters of Israel would choose that the regime becomes more repressive towards their own people only for them to become an ally of Israel. So often we hear care about civilian life, but those who are making the decisions, those who are dropping the bombs, don't really care about the civilians. For them, it's a greater geopolitical consideration to bring them into the U.S. sphere of influence, uh, for Israel to defeat what they perceive as a threat. Uh so I don't doubt that you care about the people, but those making the decisions, that's not where it's coming from. They they really don't care about the people. And I think that should give us even greater caution with trusting, trusting those who don't care about the people making such decisions over their lives.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a fair point. And one, like the bigger concern, I think I guess we agree on this point, if there is an uprising, we'll say, by the Iranian people, and say it's in combination with Mossad and the US intelligence sending people in to help build the uprising and whatever, and they're fighting with the police and everything, the death toll is gonna be much higher. It's gonna be so much higher. It's gonna be, I don't know how many it could be, but it could be hundreds of thousands for all I know. If they're literally fighting to the death to get rid of the Iranian regime, an actual uprising regime change would be hundreds of thousands for sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

That's why that's one point I made we make in the article is that actually this probably is gonna result in less deaths if it's just an air one. We did not, we know, we don't advocate for a gram campaign, uh, but at least we've taken out the uh the Air Force and the Navy um to put it in a like basically if you weaken it so much, you weaken them so much, they are gonna be more in a position of you know being taken over, or at least uh acquiescing to more of the demands of the uprising, if you will. So one argument we're making is yes, if there is a regular uprising, it's gonna the death toll is gonna be dramatically higher. And there were mistakes, you know. I know there was a school shot, and there was some other something else that happened when this attack was going on back in uh February and and March. Um, and yeah, that's again, that's horrible. And I want those to be investigated, especially the the the one at the school. I know there was like 500 children killed. Um, but yeah, again, I are I think this is a safer method than an uprising. I would say in terms of civilian deaths.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah, yeah. If we if we could find it to be effective, what what we often see in such situations is that when countries are attacked, the people um rally around the flag. So I I guess time will tell, but we did not see any uprising. We didn't see protests. In fact, we saw pro-government protesters take to the streets um uh as these attacks were happening. So I don't think the result is gonna be in any way positive. We have the the death toll, which is clear. We have the economic damage in Iran, which will primarily harm civilians, we have economic global economic damage, which I guess we'll see what happens with that. But it's for the most part, um, seems to have been a massive failure.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

And I I want to maybe just one quick real quick on the um, I think overall the campaign, the the attack was overall positive, at least from the Iranians I speak to, and they tell me the family they speak to. They were they supported the US and Israeli campaign to the extent that even some people in uh Iran were calling um Netanyahu Uncle BB. Seriously, that's what I this anecdotal, but that's what they said. Um as and they supported it again, as long as civilian deaths were low and low damage to civilian infrastructure. Um because I the IR uh the uh you know Persia is like largely uh secular. Even the Shia Muslims there are largely secular. So the the the mulahs or whatever, the Islamic regime does not have a lot of popularity. I've heard as low as 10%. I think it's higher, probably 20, 30 percent. Who knows? We don't know. I mean, it's best estimates at this point, but it's low. The majority of people do not support it, I would say uh the Iranian regime and a good amount of the Iranian civilians, and certainly in the diaspora. I'm sure you spoke to a lot of Iranians who aren't living there anymore that were very supportive of this campaign.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Yeah, yeah. I I have uh I have an Iranian friend who lives in LA who was excited of the prospect of uh of a new government, um, for sure. But, you know, and and you can understand why, and I and I wish the people of Iran would live under a secular democracy. And I think they, and but here's the thing, I think they could actually achieve that without massive bloodshed. And I think it's really a failure of our imagination, a failure of our institutions, that we're just driven to believe that that we need to continue to bomb in order to achieve that. Um how familiar are you with the with the history of the US-Iran relationship?

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Oh, I know it's been bad. I I don't know everything about it. Um, I do know there was a coup in 53. That, you know, what I'm hearing now, there's a post I could send you, it's by a guy named Bruce Gilly. Um he's claiming that yes, the CIA tried to overthrow Mossadeth in 53, but actually failed. And actually, he was overthrown in a different coup d'etat by like, I don't know, the military inside or something. But it doesn't matter. The U.S. still tried to overthrow him. Uh yeah, it's not, it hasn't been a good relationship, and the US had the alliance with the Shah and let him come move there after the 79 revolution. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Yeah, yeah. It it's you know, if we if we look at the history and how the US has actually been bullying Iran, it it it it's this interesting dynamic that when you look at Iran, Iranian government against the people, our intuition should tell us to to root for the people. Uh, you know, the the people should should be able to get their way. But when you look at Iran against the US and what the US has been doing to them, it's really hard to root for the US because the US has been bullying them. And I think that contributes to uh their their repression and their high hardline stance. So as you said, there was a coup attempt that was funded by the CIA uh and the British intelligence. And the reason the the reason we wanted to take out Mohammed Mustade was because he wanted to nationalize oil. Uh we didn't want that, right? We w we wanted to get our hands on Iranian oil. So we we supported a coup. Uh it was successful. So I never heard what you said that it wasn't successful. And then it was uh but but I heard this recently.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

It's uh I read it. I could send you the link after this in chat, I'll send it to you. It's very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

But we did back, we did back the the coup. Um to put put in a pro-west, uh uh a pro-west leader who was also very repressive. The Shah was repressive as well. You know, the sha the Shah had a police, you know, the police arrest people and torture people. So it's not like they they were running some liberal democracy themselves. The reason the U.S. wanted that is not because they were good to the people, but because they were good to them. And that's really what this is all about. And then the the Iranian revolution was it was inherently, there was something Islamic in its nature, but it was also inherently anti-Western imperialism. So a lot of the way we need to look at Iran's foreign policy is not really through the lens of Islamism, it's through the lens of anti-anti-imperialism. And their anti-imperialism does take it a form of imperialism of itself, but I think it helps to understand their actions when we look at it this way. So then they take power shortly after Saddam Hussein invades Iran because he thought they were weak. Um turns out they weren't as weak as he thought. Uh uh Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons on them. They refused, they refused to use chemical weapons in return, citing Islamic um Islamic doc doctrine that it's indiscriminate and they won't use it. Uh and the US was supporting and funding uh Saddam Hussein while he was gassing Iran. Uh and also from from day one of them being in power, there have been crippling sanctions on their government. So uh g given this history, given that they supported the coup in order to have a pro-West leadership, given the fact that they supported uh Saddam Hussein as he was gassing them, given the fact that the the West have been sanctioning them since day one, how can we expect them in any way, shape, or form to want any alliance with us? Uh you know, it's it's like we're we're behaving in such a way where uh the it seems the seemingly virtuous thing to do is for them to continue to resist us. And it's why the world, many, many in the West, I think this is the first war the US has been involved in that a significant portion of Americans aren't even rooting for the U.S. because they see they see this for what it is. They see the U.S. as a bully trying to bully Iran into submission, uh, and they see Iran as this uh virtual, virtuous anti-imperialist force that's just fighting this big imperialist bully. Now, again, this doesn't mean Iran is without criticism, but alert understanding the history, you could see why many people are just not supporting the U.S. in their operation. And I I I think the U.S. needs to I I'm okay with the U.S. having global influence. I'm not okay that they achieve it through violence, through bullying. I think they should achieve it through uh economic ties, through investing in infrastructure around the world. They should actually take a um a page out of China's playbook. But again, China's also has no shortage of criticism, but they've they're achieving global dominance without killing anybody. That's like a sophisticated that they're they're engaging in a much more sophisticated uh form of imperialism than the U.S. that just does it with brute force and death and destruction. There should be something to learn from that.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

No, and those are very good points. And the US government has done some pretty barbaric things over the past. Um so one thing I do try to focus on, and one thing I live by, is separating the government from the people. So the war specifically was a war on the Iranian government in no way was it on the on the people that in any way that I was supporting it. Um, but yes, the US government in the past was doing uh did many things, did stuff in South America, all over the Middle East, um, Asia, wherever the US government was yeah, trying to put in regimes that they wanted aligned with them or whatever. Uh yeah, that you know, I don't know all of them, uh, but I know a lot of them might they should be condemned for doing that. Um in this case, though, I uh like in terms of yeah, Iran. That was like the US government of the past was doing that. The US government now is is different, I would argue. We could differ on it, but I think you Trump's foreign policy has been a bit restrained, I would argue, at least in terms of during his first term, there were no new wars. Uh he was trying to pull the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Um, and there was an intervention briefly in Syria, but it was very brief. It was like a day or two, and it was in response to that gas attack or whatever in Syria, if you recall that in 2017. And then in this term, yeah, there's been the Venezuela, there's been the two strikes on Iran, um, you know, maybe some sanctions on Russia or something. There just hasn't been as much. Like in the past, when the US was doing this, there was a lot less checks, I think, on US power. Now, with the world we live in, with mass communication and everything, there's far more checks on the US power, in my opinion. And also, you have the ability to vote out of US government. Um, governments change at least at maximum eight years. Um, but but they have changed. And I would argue on foreign policy, the US has somewhat moderated, with Iraq and Afghanistan being, you know, the exceptions, I would say. Um, on that front. But in terms of Trump, I'd say so far has been relatively restrained in his foreign policy. We can we can, if you want to respond to that.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah, I mean, I I think he's smart enough to not get caught up into these quagmires and it's why he capitulated with MOU, right? You know, I I will very rarely give Trump credit, but I think that he did a uh cost-benefit analysis, either either taint the global economy or uh surrender. And I think he did something that was truly humiliating, which will stain his legacy because he understood that the alternative is even worse. So I think he does deserve credit. I think he did make the the right decision, uh, weighing out all the options. Um but at the end of the day, he's he's still using the you know, he's still using U.S. power to to kill uh rather than negotiate. He didn't need to rip up right let's just look at the JCPOA. There's no reason to rip that up and start start fresh. He didn't need to kill Suleimani, who is greatly revered in Iran. Uh that that was unnecessary. He could have taken the JCPOA and continued to build on it and continue to work with Iran. Uh it could have what is gonna be one of the greatest blunders in his presidency could have been one of the greatest wins had he just approached this uh more diplomatically and not with with force. But I do agree that he understands that he understands he doesn't want to get stuck in a multi-year quagmire. I I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Yeah, yeah. And I I don't want to, and the American people don't. One of the reasons I wrote, by the way, the article was I just saw how unpopular it was, and I wanted to make the, you know, it's a bit of a contrarian one, but I actually genuinely believe what I was what I say. So keep keep in mind I'm believing everything I say. Um on the oh, I almost forgot the point I was just gonna make. Oh, on the JCPOA, was part of the agreement Iran would agree, the Iranian government would agree to stop funding, say, Hezbollah or the Houthis?

SPEAKER_01 29:12

No, there's nothing about uh proxies.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Oh, okay, fair enough. So then that'd be one reason I would I would oppose the JCPOA if they didn't I would want that in the agreement.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

You can build on that, right? You can say, okay, we have the JCPOA in place, and let's uh and there was I think it was a 15-year agreement, so you could already start negotiating the extent, the extension and what that entails, and it could entail something regarding proxies uh for economic for sanction relief, right? You you could always build upon an agreement, you don't need to destroy it, kill one of their most revered leaders, and start from scratch. That, in my opinion, was just an ego move. It was because Obama uh accomplished it. He didn't want Obama to have any, like he just saw it as part of his legacy, so he just tore it up. And it I I I think it'll be remembered as uh as one of the greatest mistakes in his presidency. And now we're in a situation where he agreed to something far more, far worse, in at least in the perspective of the West, far worse than the JCPOA. You know, the JCPOA was a great deal compared to what the the US currently has with Iran.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Um I would challenge you on the Soleimani. Was he revered by like the Iranian government? Uh, was he really revered by the people?

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Oh, no, no, no. So he's he's not going to be review revered by the anti-government um population without without a doubt. He was very much revered by by the leadership and revered by the pro-Iranian people. But again, the government is who you need to continue negotiating with. So, right, you kick you kill one of their most revered leaders and then you bring them to the negotiating table, they're gonna be a little bit salty about it. Uh, and the Iranian have, if if nothing else, they've proven themselves to be excellent negotiators. Uh, we we've seen that time and time again.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Uh yeah, I mean, well, in this case, if this goes through, you could argue they were. I mean, uh well, as far as the if I'm understanding the MOU correctly, this memorandum of understanding, there has to be a lot of benchmarks that are on reach the Iranian government reaches in order for them to say, get unfrozen assets, for assets to be unfrozen, and for that 300 billion, that development fund to even begin. And it all comes over a period of time of just okay, you reach this benchmark, okay, we can release a little bit of this. And also the same thing goes with like US troops. The US is claiming they know that uh they're only going to remove their troops from the Iranian border once certain conditions of the MOU and the future agreement are met.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

So, you know, it's a little bit we so it it's not only that, you know, we already know that Qatar and I think the UAE released a bunch of funds. It was just not the US, it was you know, it was not the US, but it was it was just that's a way for them to get funds without the US needing to say it was them. And they're also now able to sell oil, which is sanction relief that and again, I'm I'm not salty about that because I don't think that our approach with them has ever been good. I don't think we should be bullying them. Uh, but in if you believe that we need to, you know, continue to bully them until they change, then this has just been uh a failure. Uh if if if you want, maybe say the final thoughts on Iran and then we can move over to Zionism.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Uh sure, yeah, yeah. You know, uh I liked the conversation we had. We disagreed, but we agreed about some things. Um, yeah, my main point is just, you know, the Iranian people deserve freedom. How best to do it? Um, I argue this is one step. We'll see what happens. We don't know, you know, the total outcome. Uh there may be another uprising, who knows? Um, but yeah, the the my main argument in terms of for the war for Iran is the Iranian people protecting the rights of the Iranians, uh, giving them freedom, hopefully one day, and checking the power and holding responsible the Iranian government who committed those atrocities back in January. That's a summary, and feel free to you can even respond to it again, by the way. My summary if you object to it.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

No, no. I, you know, I I think uh I think we gave the viewers a good back and forth, and uh, you know, I I have nothing else to add.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

So all right, good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Regarding Zionism, so I'm actually intrigued by this because your reason for thinking that we should topple the regime in Iran, the fact that they do not protect the rights of the people or they violate the rights of the people is one of the reasons why I'm very critical of my own government, the Israeli government, because currently the Israeli government controls all the land between the river and the sea and is violating the rights of at least half the people it governs. Right? You have uh four million Palestinians living in the West Bank that are not free, they're not sovereign, they're not equal, they live under oppression. This has been an oppression that has only gotten more extreme in the past 50 years. We have there's zero political will to do anything about it. Uh, and we've just accepted that as an indefinite status quo. By your logic, doesn't this mean that Israel loses its legitimacy as a governing body?

SPEAKER_00 33:53

It's a good question. Um, I'll just restate my premise, though, again, it's just, you know, we're all free people around the world, including everybody in Gaza, everybody in the West Bank, everybody in Israel, everybody around the world. We're all individual freedom. And the legitimacy of a government, yeah, is completely dependent on the protection of our rights. So, by that logic or by that reasoning, I first I would argue that Hamas, for example, the government of Gaza has no legitimacy just because of what's going on. Uh, you know, I think the PA may have a little bit more, although they're not a free government either. There's no free speech, there's no freedom of religion, there's no freedom of the press. Um, they're not I'm glad to see they're voting again. I saw that there's going to be a vote in uh the West Bank. I don't know when it is, it's sometime this year, no? But you know, Abbas is in the 20th year of a five-year term. What's that?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Well, the the past few times they call elections, they've canceled them, partially because they don't they they know Hamas will win and Israel pressures them to cancel elections. So I actually didn't get it.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

In the West Bank? Hamas will win in the West Bank.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Uh polling shows that Hamas is likely to win. Uh Israel normally pressures the PA to cancel elections. Um interesting. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:59

But I'm happy to talk.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

Um I'm um I agree that the situation in Gaza is different. If we talk about Gaza, it would more so I would like to talk about the fact I think Hamas is a is a horrible government for the Palestinian people, right? I think as bad as you think Iran is for their people, Hamas is worse. I would like to see Palestinians live under better leadership. Um so um like I think we could agree with that. If we talk about Gaza, though, I I want to talk about Israel's actions in Gaza because I think what what we did there is morally indefensible. But maybe for the sake of this conversation, a more interesting conversation is your conduct in the West Bank because it it actually tells you more about a government, how they deal with moderates than how they deal with extremists. So, for example, you you can know a lot more about the U.S. under Jim Crow for their attitude towards MLK than their attitudes towards Malcolm X. Their attitudes towards moderates are actually going to tell you a lot more about their intention and who they are. And the PA is a relatively moderate uh body that Israel has had an opportunity to negotiate with and build peace with and has done the exact opposite. Um, so how does Israel have legitimacy if if they're ruling five five five or so million people without any rights? Sorry, sorry, sure. Uh three and a half, three and a half, four million people without their rights. I just don't want to get the numbers wrong.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Yeah, sure, sure. Uh, do you do you mind if also we go, do I want to uh make my case for why Zionism in general is legitimate, or we want to just go right into the current situation?

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Um we yeah, if you want to take a step back and and go there and then we get to the West Bank on the show.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Yeah, then jump to the West Bank. Yeah, I'll do it very quickly. Yeah, the reason why I think Zionism is uh I consider myself a Zionist and it's a you know a very positive force in the world. Uh one is I think you know, us as free people, you or I or anybody in Gaza or the West Bank or around the world, Iranians, we should be allowed to get together, move to the location we want to, buy property, not steal it, but buy it, and uh start our own country. I think the more countries there are, the better off the world is. There's a lot more countries there were since like the 1900s, and there's even more. I was looking up all the ones that have been created since 48, a lot of new countries. And the more we create, I think it's good. It's decentralizing power, it's a constant check on power. So, in terms of Zionism, yeah, I think it was it was a great idea, and people moved there and they built a new country. We can talk about there's I separate Zionism and as an ideology or philosophy compared with how it was enacted. Um, of course, life is messy, it's going to be acted enacted brutally. I mean, go into all those, but just in general, this is how I see Zionism as a positive force in the world. And I feel like it gave us a roadmap, us humans for the future, to how to create new societies or like create new states or new countries. Um, how Israel was created, again, not perfectly, but how they did it. Um, so that's just a general view of how I positively see Zionism. I know I skipped over a lot of controversial things, but that's just wanted to give you a premise of where I operate from.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

So I'm I'm certainly for people's right to self-determination, uh, without a doubt. I think all people deserve that right. Although I wouldn't say that's what Zionism is. I know people say that's all Zionism means. I I don't think in reality that's what Zionism is. I think it's more than just Jewish self-determination. I think it's a specific form of self-determination. Um, but there's a difference between a people's right to self-determination and uh engaging in settler colonialism, which is essentially what Zionism is, um, which is population moving the land in mass, uh, land that is inhabited by another population and trying to displace or replace them and establish their homeland on land that is already inhabited. I think this is a fundamentally problematic concept that we have hundreds of data points throughout history. Every time this has happened, uh the local population has resisted this violently, uh, and understandably so. So I'm for people's right to self-determination. I'm not pe I'm not for people moving to land en masse and trying to establish their own homeland there. Uh, and I'll tell you this this is consistent. I'll tell you my seemingly most right-wing position is that I support Europeans' right to limit immigration into Europe. Um, and you know, all countries should be able to limit immigration. And I think if people want to move there and try to establish their own uh homeland in land that's already inhabited, I don't think they should have that right. I think the people who live there should have the right over those who are who are moving in. So the same reason, the same reason I think Europeans should have the right to limit immigration into Europe is the same reason why I think there's an inherent flaw in Zionism.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Fair point. Fair point. Um, if you go back though to Zionism, like when Zionism started in 1882, the population of what is now Israel was only about, it was quite small, it's only around 200,000 in that region of Ottoman, of modern-day Israel, not counting the West Bank and Gaza. So it was a quite a small population. Um but you know, so here's where I would disagree with you is so in terms of the migration issue, okay, I think it I think of that as a little different in terms of them just coming in. Uh one is it's like they're coming in so quickly, and especially in Europe, like all these migrants are coming in and they're not really getting jobs, they're going on welfare or whatever they're doing. Uh, some of the in some cases I'm hearing they're not allowed to even get jobs. Um, but I'm I'm of the belief if somebody wants to come and work in the United States, they should be allowed to. It doesn't matter what country they're from, if they're from Colombia or they're from Greece or they're from Thailand or they're from Palestine, they can come work in the United States, buy a house, live there, whatever. I'm a believer in that. Not necessarily I'm not saying open borders, but there should be there should be some formality where you become a citizen of the Let me let me ask you something.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Let's say that Muslims were moving into the U.S. en masse, and they were all very hardworking, but they were very clear in their intention to establish a Muslim, Muslim enclaves with Sharia law inside the United States where Islamic law can govern. Would you support that?

SPEAKER_00 41:09

So it's interesting. We almost have a real case of this going on in Dearborn, Michigan in the U.S. I don't know if you followed that. They're kind of putting in, it's not full-blown Sharia law, but they are putting in some form of, I don't know. There's like a lot, because there's some towns there that are all they're 100% Muslim, or at least like you know, 90% or whatever. People are complaining about this. My personal opinion, if it's combined to like that area, that Michigan, I have no problem with it. If they want to build an Islamic city or an Islamic town in the United States, in some ways I think it'll be good because then we can compare it to you know the rest, and they have their own, like if they want their own like area. This I have a controversial opinion on this. I I'm not against states even seceding from the United States. Like if the United States becomes some crazy totalitarian dictatorship, which I hope it doesn't, uh, but if it does, then I totally support Florida or Texas seceding and becoming their own countries. So if that's the case also in Michigan, let's say a bunch of Muslims move there. By the way, I'm sure if someone from Michigan was you're talking from there, they probably would be against it. I don't live in Michigan and whatever. Um, but yeah, I I'm a believer, they become the majority. Um, they build up, they build businesses, whatever, and they're peaceful, they're protecting their own rights. I'm not necessarily against it. If there's lots of human rights violations going on, then I would probably object to it. But I haven't heard of any really going on over there.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

So I could almost agree if they're doing it on a piece of land that is uh where they where they are the only ones living there. I I imagine you would also agree that you would be less sympathetic to Muslim enclaves that had some significant non-Muslim population living there, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:50

Uh Muslim enclaves with a are you talking about like in the Middle East?

SPEAKER_01 42:53

Well, no, let's say uh they wanted to turn they had this intention to turn some geographical area in Michigan to be a some Muslim Muslim mini-state, but 30% of the people living there were not Muslim.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

So those people, yeah. Here's okay, this is an interesting. I I know what you're saying is uh what do minorities do in a case where the demographic switch or whatever? It happens a lot throughout history. You know, in the US, I will answer this question by the way. I'll just show you other examples. You know that Harlem, New York used to have the largest Jewish population pretty much in the world? It was definitely the biggest in the United States. Now I think the Jewish population of Harlem is like a thousand, you know, it's tiny. They all moved out, they went to different neighborhoods, they went to the suburbs. Um you know, this is a topic in the U.S. talked a lot. They call it gentrification or you know, white flight if all the white people move out or whatever. I don't know. You know, I tend to believe so. I'm a guy who's kind of nomadic. Like I got up and I left my home state. I lived a lot in New York, I went to school at another place. I lived in Israel, I lived in Europe, I've lived in the last several years. Man, I've lived a lot in South America. I really love what's happening there. I think it's on the rise. I think a place like Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro or even Medellin, Colombia, could be like the next Rome. There's like a renaissance going on down there, man. I highly encourage you to come. And if you come, we'll hang out there. I'll take you out for a beer or something. Um it's it's I think it's I think I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing, in my opinion. If look, okay, you buy a house, you live there your whole life, and then abruptly the demographics change, and then the laws start to change. I empathize with that opinion. I'm a believer, though, in that we as humans need to okay, there are towns like that that exist, say, in the United States, that kind of block immigrants that prevent that from happening, I would say. Like they either make it very unwelcome for outsiders, but I'm I tend to believe in being welcoming to outsiders. The issue with like the Islamic thing is I just don't want like radical Islam coming in and things like that. Like, that's where I would probably put up a line. But if you know, if some of my good friends are Muslims and they're very good people. Um, you know, and yeah, okay. So going back to your hypothetical, the 30%, yeah, they're in a tough spot. Like they either have to move or they're gonna be in a minority in that that city, state, or new enclave. Um I'm neutral on it.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Yeah, do you think that the 30% before they became a minority should have had the right to decide who gets to move into their uh town? They do.

SPEAKER_00 45:21

Yes, okay. So I will give them that. Yes, but I it's hard for me to be like, you know, if somebody wants to come in and move to their town and buy a house and they're just gonna say, no, you can't come in because you're a Muslim, or for any reason, could be could be something like that. I personally would object to it. They have a right to do that. I disagree with them. That's what I would say.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

Okay, so this is actually it's interesting. You're taking you have a more liberal position on this than me, because I think that communities should be able to decide. Uh I think it's okay for communities to maintain the culture of their community uh and have a say who gets to move in. I think it's it should be part of a collective right that communities have.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Uh I could I jump back in for a second. Sorry. I just want to make my position clear. I'm not against it. I think I think we need both in this world. I think we need both communities where they're like, we want to preserve what we have and you know keep it strong. But I also like to say communities are like, no, anybody can come, come on in, let's make the world a better place.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

It could be the right to choose which which option they want. And you have you have thousands of communities, you're gonna see, you know, you're a blockchain guy, so you're into decentralization. Yeah, I am as well. I I think the decentralization uh is cool, and we should let communities decide, but inevitably and understandably so, a lot of communities are gonna decide to be able to not want mass immigration of a population that's fundamentally different from them moving in, changing the the this the social fabric of that community. I think communities should have that, right? Um, and it's not for no reason that people innately have a very uh strong reaction to this happening. You know, when people feel like they're being replaced, they often see it as something existential and violence generally ensues. It's why you see a lot of you see a lot of the grievance white people have today is the feel that the the this feeling that they're being replaced. Uh it's the same reason why Palestinians had such a strong grievance for Jews moving there en masse. And it's one of the reasons why uh Jews are terrified of right of return, right? We're we're all kind of responding to the same thing here.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

Yeah, I think it it uh it it's more frequent in uh in the Middle East where this happens, the the kind of the violent blowback against it. I agree with you. Americans are also kind of reacting that way of just oh, the immigrants have invaded. Look, I'm not also for just open borders. I I I know it sounds like I am, I'm not. I do think there should be some vetting. Um, but if you go to like Asia, like you know, Singapore used to be a colonial of Britain for many years and then joined Malaysia, then Malaysia kicked it out, and then it became its own country, and now it's like one of the greatest countries in the world. I don't know if you've ever been to Malaysia. Highly recommend you go.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

Singapore, I had a oh sorry, I meant Singapore.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

Singapore, yeah. Singapore is a great. I don't know if you've been there.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

It's yeah, yeah. It's uh it's an example of a benevolent dictatorship.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Okay, I agree. It has horrible draconian drug laws, but it does have like economic freedom, like for sure.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

It's like it's it's by default a dictatorship, but the dictator actually cares about the people and is trying to do like it's it's not a democracy. There's there's one guy who's in charge, but he's actually trying to he actually cares about the well-being of the people. So uh but benevolent dictatorships are highly effective. It's just what happens when that dictator dies and it's they're replaced by somebody who might not be benevolent, right? That's uh that's been no fair point.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

And you live in you live by the sword, you die by the sword. I'll go back to the the Israel example. So Israel, the Jews are moving in, and we'll say the 1800s. I know the population before 1945, it was over a million, correct? I mean, it was it got grew pretty big.

SPEAKER_01 48:54

Yeah, yeah. There's met mass migration. Uh there was also exploding Palestinian population, both from just uh childbirth as well as some as well as migration into the land.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

Yeah, yeah. It was getting better, like it was being improved throughout that whole period, especially. It went through uh, you know, there's a lot of productivity and a lot of uh technological advancement during that time. So yeah, a lot moved in, and you're right, birth rates were high. Um, so I agree. They're you know, understandably, they had to push back. They're like, I don't want, we don't want the demographics to change. You know, it's kind of tribal. You kind of say, I want my tribe as my government, and I understand that sympathy. Um, on my dad's side, by the way, I'm Irish, and you know, the Irish had a long history of wars and whatever, trying to get the British out of there. The only thing is, though, okay, you get the British out and you go, All right, now we get a government of my tribe, the Irish tribe. They basically like put in the same government. And actually, in some cases, it was even worse than the British government. So, not a great example of it, but just kind of see how these things happen over, you know, in human history. But yeah, in the case of Israel, you know, there was a, they were trying to divide it. Like the partition plan was ultimately, hey, this portion will just be the Jewish part, and then this other part. And you could argue that it wasn't fair or it wasn't enough, but there was an attempt to at least say, okay, we're not gonna disrupt the demographics for all these parts, the parts where the Jewish majority is will, that'll be that state. So it wasn't, uh yeah, go ahead and respond to that if you want.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

Um no, and I I don't I don't really have all too much to respond. I just think we need to be we we need to be aware that if you're gonna if there's gonna be mass migration in a land, there's inevitable consequences. Uh we can't expect humans to not have a very human reaction. And every time we've seen this throughout history, the local population uh reject it. I am sympathetic towards the early Zionists and their attempt to establish a homeland where they could be safe and where they could determine their destiny. You know, the the Jews in Europe are some of the most oppressed people in the history of the world. Uh they faced unimaginable horrors even before the Holocaust. So Zionism was an attempt for them to free themselves from such oppression. Now uh that being said, there's ways it could have happened that probably would have worked out better. And I uh maybe it's hard to have high expectations of such an oppressed people like the Jews who came here were, but for example, my family moved to Ottoman Palestine in 1812, right? We were part of a religious Zionist movement prior to Heritz's that was not about establishing a homeland, it was simply about living on the land of our our ancestors. My family moved to uh Safet Tzvat in 1812 and then to Havron in 1814 to help build the community, the Jewish community there. And we lived very well with our Palestinian neighbors. They didn't see us as a threat. We weren't, you know, we we were integrating well, we didn't have this aspiration to build a Jewish homeland on land that has non-Jews, uh, and we were generally accepted. Heritzl Zionism was fundamentally different. A, the numbers were just much larger, right? So you had a very uh fast uh demographic change. Uh the people coming were not kind to the local population, they were quite patronizing towards them, and they were clear in their aspiration to build a Jewish homeland. There's no reason to believe that this is going to be just accepted by the local population, right? These are actions that are every time we've seen something similar, this is met with violence.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

I would I would agree with you. I think Zionism would have been better implemented if it happened over a longer period of time. I think the impetus came in after, you know, post-World War II and the Holocaust. But if it had gone over a longer period of time, meaning just more Jews kept moving in over time, and whether Arabs moved out or whatever just became a smaller population, um, it would have been easier to just start a new state, be like, okay, we're the clear overwhelming majority. We own all the land. This is gonna be our country now. But there was an impetus, you know, after World War II. And yeah, there of course I I understand that there's gonna be a blowback. Um, you know, it's then at that point, if there's if you're gonna blow, okay, so it goes both ways though. If you're gonna blow back, you'll have to deal with the consequences of your blowback against it. And in the case of the Palestinians, unfortunately, they lost the war, and you know, we have where we're at now. Um, like there's two, there's two sides to a coin. I get it, you know. Even me, I'll I'll give you even my life. I live in I've got nothing but positive vibes in South America when I've been there and also Asia. But I had an interesting conversation with somebody when I was in Bangkok. She's from Israel, but lives full-time in Bangkok. And she was saying, Yeah, I'll never be accepted in Thailand as a as one of them. You can't. It really, it's like, I don't know if it's possible to become a Thai citizen. I think you can, but you're never gonna, even if you become a citizen, you'll never be accepted into society. You're never gonna be like one of them or anything like that. But what there is is I don't know if you've been to Bangkok lately, there's a whole new society.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

I'm actually there for the first time a month ago.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

So oh wow. So you were oh yeah, so you saw all the Westerners there, and it's that's the society is like there's an expat or nomad or whatever you want to call it, society that has its own culture, that has its own kind of like informal rules and that sort of thing and their lifestyle within a country of its own. There's no, like you're right. You're not they're not trying to force in a government. I do wonder though, if things get tough, like maybe some violence happens or something, you know, some of these expats might want some representation in the Thai government. But the Thai government, I think right now sees them as so important, like to, you know, the economy, that they're kind of going along with what the Americans want. I don't know if you are not Americans, but just all expats. They just cut liquor taxes because they want, because all the Americans, like the expats are buying the liquor. So they're like, oh no, let's, you know, we want the expats to keep buying our liquor. So it's just an interesting dichotomy. You're right. Zionism was implemented in a way where they're like, yeah, we want a government. Because Zionism, here's how I define it, by the way. I didn't give you my definition. It is a government that exists to protect the rights of the Jew, the Jewish citizens or the Jewish people. I would argue not only the Jewish people, as you know, modern-day Israel has 2 million or 3 million or whatever it is, non-Jews. Um, and yes, I agree with you. That is an imperfect, perfect form of government, but actually, compared to most of the earth, it's actually quite good. And it does a pretty good job uh defending the rights of again. I'm talking about in Israel. We've talked about Gaza. I know we were gonna go into it, we will get to it. Um I'm loving this chat, by the way. Um you've energized me. It's early morning here. I'm good to go for another half hour, however long you want. Um, but yeah, it's I would argue that the Arabs, the minorities of Israel, modern-day Israel, are pretty well set as a minority.

SPEAKER_01 55:34

Yeah, uh the the 20% Palestinian citizens of Israel, uh, their material conditions are greater than that of most other people in the region, not not excluding Gulf states, who are able to achieve a very high standard of living for their citizens because of oil money. But right, their conditions are are are good. There's the psychological conditions are questionable because being a minority in a country that is Jewish, uh dealing with racism, not quite feeling part of the state, that the Israeli Arabs or Palestinian citizens of Israel, however you want to call them, they do have some level of grievance with with their current with the current system. They don't feel part of society, they're not entirely happy. So it's it's uh certainly what percent?

SPEAKER_00 56:25

Can I jump in? What percent, you know, just based on your observation, what percent of I mean, I guess just a rough ballpark or something. I saw you had a chat by the way with uh Corey Gilschuster once. I watch his videos and I see he's always interviewing them, and I'm seeing like a more moderate tone from that, at least Arab or non, you know, Palestinian, you know, Palestinians in Israel, you know, pretty, you know, hey, things are pretty good here, kind of feeling I'm getting. What percent would you say feel really aggrieved? And what percent would you say are like, I kind of like it, or at least like don't mind it?

SPEAKER_01 56:58

I I don't know if I could put it in percentages. I would say the majority, they they have a little bit of a hybrid where they have come to accept their lives as it is, but it if you ask them what they would change in the state, they're gonna give you a long list of things. Uh, they they don't feel included, they deal with racism, uh, they don't feel like the government actually looks out for them. So the majority do have some some grievance with the current situation. Now, I I will say though, it's fundamentally better than the West Bank in Gaza. Uh, and we are seeing many examples of coexistence in Israel proper. I live I'm living now in the Galilee, which is 50% Arab, 50% Jewish, and uh pretty harmonious, you know. And we we have we have a similar thing that you know you can't I can't move into an Arab town, whether it's Christian or Muslim, I can't move into a Druze town. They won't let me. Some towns are but most are like it's either Christian, Arab, Druze, or Jewish. Uh and but it works because we can travel freely into their towns, we can go shopping in their stores, eat at their restaurants, they come in here and there's just this harmony. We see it work, and it's it uh it's an example of what can be between the river and the sea. Uh, but I uh I I I don't I think this is a less interesting conversation because the I think the West Bank is is quite telling. Uh currently, uh as much as we want to say that Palestinian citizens of Israel are living relatively well despite the grievance they have, uh Palestinians, the West Bank, do not have rights. So, for example, they don't have freedom of movement, they need to wait at checkpoints to get to work or to visit relatives. Sometimes at these checkpoints, they face harassment, sometimes even violence. There's nothing they can do about it. Nothing. Uh we're seeing increased settler violence. If they fight back, they're arrested or killed. So they need to accept violence, and then there's nothing they can do about it. Imagine how humiliating and radicalizing experiencing that is. Um if they can't choose their government, so they had there haven't been elections in decades. This is partially because the PA doesn't want to hold elections and partially because Israel uh continuously asks them to cancel them. But let's and that's not entirely that's not entirely Israel's fault, right? So it's possible had Israel not intervened, the PA would not hold elections regardless. It's possible. So what can the people do? They can rise up against the PA. But rising up against the PA is essentially rising up against Israel. The PA is an ally of Israel, they have security cooperation. Israel will not let a popular uprising topple the PA. Why would they want to replace the PA when the PA is essentially uh the their proxy? Uh they they close security cooperation, the PA can't exist without Israel. Uh they have they essentially have a partner. So the people can't rise up against the the PA. That's essentially rising up against Israel. So they don't have self-determination, they don't have freedom of movement, they're subject to violence with no accountability whatsoever. Israel, this is the status quo. There's zero political will to change it, and it's been like this for 50 years and just getting worse. How does Israel continue to have legitimacy as a state if they if they govern so many people whose rights are denied?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:21

Well, one starting with well, I so there's A, B, and C. I know Israel has total control over area C and the West Bank. B it has security control, but not over um, like I don't know, whatever political control. What is it? There's security control.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:37

I don't know what the other control is, but the so area B is dual control. What is dual control? Yeah. They uh there's somebody give me a shorthand. One is like A is Arab, B is both, and C is uh I don't remember what they said C for, but that's like what what I described was the reality primarily in area A. Right, yeah, which is where the yeah but that's not they're they're not sovereign, right? So it's it would be the equivalent to the fact that in South apartheid South Africa Bantu stands, which they had there was local governance in these Bantu stands, but they you know they were enclosed in a certain area, they could not leave the Bantu stands without needing to deal with uh South African governance. So it's not the PA is not a sovereign, it is not is not fully sovereign. They don't control their borders, they don't have full control of their economy, uh, they they can't have a military, uh, they cannot if a soldier, if a s if a settler attacks uh Palestinian, the PA can't intervene. The PA can't arrest Jews, they're not allowed to do that. So you you you you have a two-tiered system. Uh it's it's morally indistinguishable from apartheid, and in some ways it's worse because at least in apartheid, they weren't dealing with near-daily settler violence like they currently do in the West Bank. And it is the status quo that the majority of Israelis have accepted as perfectly okay and normal. And just based on how the your philosophy for why Iran has lost its legitimacy, I don't see why Israel would maintain legitimacy given these conditions.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:09

Yeah, and fair question. So, first, Israel's obligation is to protect the rights of Israeli citizens. So it I, you know, in this way, it's uh I assume, I make an assumption that the Israeli government sees this as, oh, we're protecting the rights of Israelis by doing this. Uh, but you know, look, I I I am for from my understanding about the Oslo Accords, it would have in let's say Area A, they would have continued to get more autonomy, correct? Or more like political control over their over the if the Oslo Accords had basically continued. I know they were basically thrown out at some point um when the intifada started basically, or even after Rabin was killed. Am I correct on that? The the plan was to give them more sovereign control, just as even the Trump plan from even his first term. I know he had a discussion with the PAPA about giving them more, say, sovereign control over area A. My understanding, is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

Well, the the idea was that they're fully they're meant to be fully sovereign over area A and that area C is meant to be negotiated in the future. But I don't think I don't think Oslo should inform anything because Oslo's been dead for 20 years, right? According to also I was using that fair point, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:19

Yeah, fair point. Sorry to interrupt. I was gonna say fair point. I didn't mean it as, oh, let's follow the Oslo. I meant just as like uh what they were negotiating back then kind of was we'll grow sovereign control. Look, I would love to see it where like the PA has more control. I think a big part right now is security control. What the fact that you mentioned even those in the West Bank want to vote in Hamas, I think it's a huge security concern. Seriously, uh, if because God forbid what happened in Gaza happens in the West Bank. Yeah, I mean that's a huge concern. We I I don't know. How do you prevent something like that from happening? I guess just not calling elections and just keep whatever checkpoints. I don't know how many checkpoints there are. Look, I I look forward to a world where there are no checkpoints. Uh, and again, no system is perfect. I don't I don't disagree that Israel's not implementing full rights in even many ways, like criticize the Israeli government for not having a more free economy or other free laws in Israel for sure. Um, but I would, you know, in this case, it's I I think Israel is in a in a rock and a hard place in this. They they if they give up control and then violence breaks out, you know, say the current government would, in theory, be voted out. I would assume Nemyahu would be voted out, or whoever is in power at that point that was giving them more power or like reducing security control and that sort of thing. What's your response to that?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

Wait, sorry. I I missed the last part of your of your question.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:43

Oh, you're good. I kind of abruptly stopped because I wanted you to respond to it because I didn't want to like filibuster. But yeah, my main point was I think Israel's in a rock and a hard place. Um, I think overall they do a good job implementing like rights to everybody. I agree that uh restricting travel and things like that does restrict the average Palestinian who isn't a terrorist and who isn't gonna, you know, attack Israel, they just want to go to work. I agree that does restrict their rights. I'm just trying to think through how Israel can implement that right now in this day and age with you know fears of violence and Hamas breaking out. Am I just the all right, we have to do it, see what happens. Okay, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:17

Well, so yeah, so we just need to accept that the the status quo is uh is is oppressive, it's radicalizing, it's unsustainable and immoral, and we need to do everything in our power to change it. So when we when we conquered the West Bank in 67, we did so on the grounds of security. We were scared we were going to be invaded by Jordan. We wanted a buffer zone. I can be sympathetic towards that security concern, though uh would I have supported it had I been alive at the time, I'm not sure. But uh let's say we took it for security reasons. We then started uh incentivizing our citizens to move into the West Bank. So you now have a population in the West. Bank, who has still not forgiven us of for 1948. Um, they still have a major grievance with us, the the mass displacement of their people. Many of them are now living in the West Bank. And instead of trying now that we hold the West Bank, trying to work with the Palestinians to help them build institutions so we could have a stable neighbor, stable and peaceful neighbor, what we did is we move our population amongst an enemy population. Obviously, that's going to require security. Well, that security is going to be inherently oppressive. So we should not have moved uh hundreds of thousands of our own amongst an enemy population, which requires an inherently oppressive security apparatus. Now, now they're already there. Uprooting them is politically unfeasible and very well may lead to civil war. What is our best option? Well, there's a lot we can do to change the reality on the ground. So right now, the IDF is seen as a protector to Jews, but an oppressor to Palestinians. The IDF should be taken out of the West Bank and should be replaced by an Israeli-Palestinian security force that all people living there see as a protector and no one sees as an oppressor. So suddenly you now have a shared institution that pays good salaries to Palestinians, that Palestinians can trust. And then that's that is a great good faith step towards starting to build peace and trust between both sides. That's one thing. Second thing you can do is uh just crack down on settler, no more settler violence. If you're violent towards a Palestinian, you're arrested and charged. The same way if a Palestinian is violent towards a Jew, we catch them 100% of the time. When a Jew is violent towards a Palestinian, we very rarely catch them. Well, we need an equal, equal system across the board. Um, we need to uh give pal, we need to decide, are we going towards two states and actually build a feasible roadmap towards two states so Palestinians actually see uh have have hope for a better future. When you have hope for a better future, that's deradicalizing. When you live in despair, it's radicalizing. Uh or we decide not to go through two states, but find a way to include all Palestinians in the state and give them equality under the law. It needs to be one or the other. It can't we can't have a population that's neither sovereign nor equal. Uh, they need one or the other, uh, because if they have neither, they will continue to resist for eternity. Um, so so one, change the security apparatus there to be non-oppressive, end settler violence, and start working towards uh a better future for all people. Um and also we have a moderate, a relatively moderate governance there. The PA recognized Israel's right to exist in '93. We have security cooperations with them since the early 2000s. They've gotten nothing in return for their moderation. What Palestinians see, they see uh when that what this showed them is when you work with Israel and you compromise, you don't get anything in return. But when you resist, maybe you'll get them to withdraw. So essentially they saw Hamas resisted violently, we withdrew from Gaza. The PA cooperated, and we just expand settlements. All we did was reinforce the minds of Palestinians that violence is the only way. We need to show them that compromise and negotiation actually leads to improved not only material conditions, but uh achieving their political rights. Uh, so so this is how we need to approach uh the West Bank, and none of this is being done. There's no conversation about it, no political will, um, very little condemnation of the people that this is actually happening. And it's um, you know, so we we we will never be safe as long as this is the status quo.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:40

Got it. Yeah. So here's what I would push back on you is I don't think the whole the burden is all on Israel. And I think I think if you're a people and you want a state for the first time, I really think the burden is on you to make the case why. And there is actually a project going on in Palestine or in West the West Bank, specifically it's called Rawabi. It's one of the rich, rich families of oh, you've heard of that?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:06

I've been there, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:07

Oh, you have, yeah. Like to me, this is this this should be the strategy. Okay, you've done the vibe like intifadas, whatever violent resistance by Hamas. How about go a strategy of hey, let's make let's make the West Bank a great place to live? Make everybody, every investor on earth, every company, every person just wants to come here because it's fun. We can build a big business, we can build a great company, we can innovate, we can create. I I just don't other than that, I don't, I mean, I think there is some of that. Um, but if you do that, then people are gonna be, there's gonna be way more pressure on Israel to make a deal with them or to be much more peaceful or much more reasonable to them, especially if a business is investing millions or billions of dollars in the West Bank because they want to grow, be innovative and everything. They're gonna say, yeah, the Israeli government can't do that. You know, you're upsetting the business. And they're doing trade, say, with the Israeli or the Israel, and they're gonna want, you know, it's gonna build up the Israeli economy as well. And it could be a mutually beneficial. My biggest issue with the Palestinians and why, you know, Israelis need to trust them more. Because even I have I have trust issues with the Palestinians of are they really gonna do that? Or is it they're gonna get their state and they're gonna just start fighting Israel and start bombing Israel? I told that there's two sides to the trauma, I would say. I get that they have trauma, but so does the other side. And there's a total lack of trust that they would do these honest things. But I think if they changed their behavior and said, let's go this route, let's give up the violence, and let's just create an amazing place that the entire world wants to come to. I mean, here's your thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:35

Yeah, go ahead. When you say they need to do that, who are you talking about? The government or the people?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:40

The people and the government, but i I don't think the government's gonna do it. So it'd have to be the people. Like the wealthy, you'd have to start with the wealthy of Palace of West Bank.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:48

I I I I take uh I take issue with any solution that requires a people to fundamentally change, because that's just like dream works. You can't peep people don't change because you want them to change. People are fundamentally products of their environment. So if you if you grow up in the West Bank, you have certain environmental conditions that are inevitably radicalizing, and no solution should say they will be oppressed until they fundamentally change and can elevate themselves from their oppression. That's not how we should we should look at change, uh, just because it's not feasible. If we want people to change, we need to look at who controls the environment, and you change the environment, and that's how you change the people. So, right now, the those who control the environment is Israel and the PA, primarily Israel. Um so all all efforts, if if you want to change the Palestinian people, their culture, how they see things, you could tell them they need to change, but that's not going to do anything. If you actually want them to change, you need to change environmental conditions, and only Israel and the PA can do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:50

Well, do you think Rawabis, you were there, what did you see when you were there? Do you think that's beneficial?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:55

I I was in Rawabi in the in the early days and it was still not functioning and had a very low population and they were struggling. I don't know if it's taken off since then. Uh, but it's very hard to have like a thriving economy when you're under occupation, when you don't control your borders, you don't you you can't import things freely. Uh when when it takes hours to travel relatively small distances, that has an impact in the economy. Um so it it's it's not just you know this idea that they can in their in their current conditions just have this revolutionary change of culture and start to build these institutions and cities. It's like, yeah, if they did that, maybe that would change the situation. But that's not that's not realistic, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:40

But do you think now with in the age of mass media, they have access now? I I hear that don't they have some relative uh internet access there? They can get exposed to new ideas and new paths of just don't go down this route, don't go down this violent route, go down another route.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:55

That violent route, I mean, what you know, again, the the PA is literally a they they help arrest Palestinians that are gonna engage in acts of terror, you know. So it's the the the we're not seeing mass violence in the West Bank. Uh we there are attempts at violence because they're they're they're an oppressed people, but the this idea that the Palestinian, the West Bank Palestinians have just are have gone down the the route of violence, it's just not true, you know. Again, the have you heard of oh sorry, I was gonna mention I was just gonna say the PA has recognized Israel's right to exist and has security cooperations with Israel. If if the criteria is that you need zero percent violence, again, that that'll never happen, you know. You'll never have zero violence. So, and if you have just one violent incident every so often, that is enough for Israel to justify an oppressive security apparatus. You'll never have zero violence ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:48

Do you know who Fadi El Salameen is? Have you heard of this guy? No, you should look him up. I'll, you know, I can send you his info. He's um he's from the West Bank, but he lives, I believe, in DC. Now he works at the think tank. He's done some interviews. He even did an interview on Bitcoin and how Bitcoin could help Palestine. He's um a very moderate voice. You know, I don't disagree, I don't agree with him on certain things when he talks about the West Bank, but at least he's trying to also forge a different path. He's had several uh assassination attempts on him by the PA. It's F-A-D-I, and then space, then El Salamides, E-L-S, uh, A-L-E-E-M, I think, something like that. And he's really trying to forge a new path. He's advocating for, you know, nonviolence. Let's build a, you know, a positive government, a positive place that we can create a positive, like, you know, Palestinian culture, positive Palestinian economy for everybody to inspire to be, you know, that sort of thing. I don't agree with everything he says, especially, you know, I'm pro-Israel, he's pro his side, but he's at least like a guy giving a different perspective. And he has he's doing this at a risk to his life. Uh, especially I don't know. He when he goes back and visits the West Bank, he has to do it uh anonymously because he knows that the PA will try and kill him or arrest him or something. Um, if you could get in touch with him, by the way, he'd be a great person to talk to. I think you'd have an interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:06

It sounds like similar to Summer Sinjalawi, who I've had on the channel, who also preaches something similar. Uh but but again, do you do you think it's feasible to say we will continue to oppress the Palestinians until they build a massive grassroots nonviolent uh movement that topples their own government? It's like that that just can't be how we how we look at things. We can't say we will oppress you indefinitely until you fundamentally change. Uh, it's very hard to expect an oppressed people to to be these thriving, peaceful people. Uh oppression has a certain impact on you. Uh, we we fundamentally are products of our environment, and that they're living in a very tough environment to achieve what you you want them to achieve.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:45

Yeah, this is where the crux of your of our disagreement would come, is just I see the Palestinian Authority as the the one that's really holding Palestinians back uh in terms of you know their ability to flourish more than the Israeli government.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:58

But so why doesn't you know why so why doesn't Israel pressure the PA to change then? Pressure the PA to change like yeah, if if if if the PA could have actually taken steps, uh feasible steps that would get Israel to give them a state, um, why doesn't it it's hard to describe how much leverage Israel has over the PA? The PA cannot exist without Israel. They have massive leverage over them. And so so whatever you think the PA needs to do, we need to ask ourselves, why aren't they doing it? And if it's very important and would actually uh lead to positive results, why isn't Israel pressuring them to do that?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:39

So, well, okay, here's what would be my pushback. Does the PA not have like a free press because of Israel? Israel's telling them not to have a free press, or the PA doesn't want a free press? What?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:48

Uh well what one of the ways to try to understand how the PA would look without Israeli control is to just look at neighboring countries. So we could expect the free press to maybe be similar to Jordan's.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:00

Um Jordan's, it's not very good, is it? I can't imagine it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:04

Exactly. That's why I obviously not everything can be blamed on Israel. So if if if there's certain cultural and societal features and gov features of governance that you see in the surrounding areas, uh those are not things that you should attribute to Israel. Those are things you should just be able to attribute to uh Arab and Muslim culture.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:25

Yeah. So I one problem, I think a big problem in is in in the West Bank, Palestine, if you will, is they're not getting access to the best information, I'm assuming. You know, certainly not with a free press and not with free speech. Free there's definitely no free speech in the West Bank. So that I think is causing a big part of the problem. If there was free speech and a free press, they could exchange new ideas too they could and openly, and so people get to be exposed to these new ideas, knowing there's a new path and everything. I assume though there is relatively open internet access, I assume they still block certain websites.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:00

Yeah, they do have open internet, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:02

Which is good. So I assume, you know, I do believe there probably are a lot of Palestinians that are silent that are for that. They're just, you know, they're afraid to speak out, or you know, they're fo they're keeping their head down, you know, like even a lot of people in the Western world do. If they disagree with something, are they necessarily speaking out? No, they're putting their head down and just working. I'm sure. Same thing with the West Bank people in the West Bank. They're probably just, eh, I don't want to cause the trouble. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:27

No, no. I mean, can can the PA give them a greater degree of free press? Yeah. Would that fundamentally change the situation? I high highly doubtful. At the end of the day, um there's uh a limited range of how people act in certain situations. And very, very rarely, the people who are in situations with that that the Palestinians are in are somehow able to free themselves from their oppression simply through building um better cities. Like we we have not really seen that work. Oppression generally ends either through enough violent resistance or enough nonviolent resistance to put pressure on the oppressor to change, not through just building better cities or having a higher degree of free press. Like we do have a lot of data on this, and that's generally not how oppression ends, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:22

Well, certainly, yeah, not back in the day. But I I would argue, you know, times have changed. Look at um, I don't know, it's not totally comparable with Taiwan. It's quite successful. A lot of countries don't even recognize it as a country. No, because China has a massive embargo.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:36

Yeah, but Taiwan's very different, right? Taiwan used to be part of China and then was colonized by uh England.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:44

People that escaped. No, the Taiwanese escape. I think they might have been an England colony, but they the Chinese population, the Taiwan population now escaped China after the civil war in 49, and then the communists came to power, and then the the Chinese population that wasn't communist, they're all now in Taiwan.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:01

Right. Um, so you're saying it's not the same.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:04

I'm not saying it's the same, yeah, but I am saying that they are a country that's under pressure. Um, China literally has all their weapons pointed at them. They want many people have thought they'd invade by now. And yeah, it's it's got a booming economy. One of the best in the entire world is in Taiwan.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:21

Despite the no country has like they they have they they have freedom to run their economy, they have a much higher degree of freedom. They have an airport, they have that's true. That's true. You know, they're they they currently function as a fully sovereign uh nation, even though they don't have full recognition, they're able to function as a sovereign nation. Um, also I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:46

I don't know how deep I want to get into this because it's I could go all day, but I know your Shabbat is in 30 minutes, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:53

Uh yeah, something like that. I I do want to take QA. There's something that when we finish the live stream, I I want to I'll share something with you that I don't want to say on a live stream because it's sure it's a lot to unpack and we would need to spend the next 30 minutes unpacking that. Um, but I do want to take QA. I think we had a great back and forth. Uh anything else?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:12

It's it was a pleasure. Well, yeah, I'll add this. It was a real pleasure doing this with you, and I hope we do it again. I'd love to come back anytime. And yeah. There's a lot of other things to talk about, too, by the way. There's many things we could chat about. Uh, we didn't even get into like Trump's proposal for the uh Gaza.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:28

Yeah, yeah. We I'm happy to do uh a round two for sure. Uh we'll take questions, we'll prioritize Discord and super chats. Uh if anyone gives a super chat, you know. Uh James said if we ever meet in Medin, he'll get me a beer, but the super chat will go to funding uh whatever James and I do when we decide to meet. Oh, beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:48

Could it be Medine, could it be Rio, could it even be in Israel?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:50

So I've been to I've been actually been to Rio twice. I spent some time in Mexico and Guatemala and Costa Rica, but I haven't done more of South America than Rio and uh Florinapolis, which is also in Brazil. So I haven't been to Hispanic Brazil, uh Hispanic South America.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:07

Yeah, yeah, you would like Colombia and Argentina for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:11

Yeah, yeah, I imagine so. Uh Medin's high on my list. So let's see. Uh so Yuri, you said Denton. You said PA can't arrest settlers because there are no settlers there, so how would they arrest them? Well, first of all, some some small amount of settler violence does take place in area A, but the majority is in area C. But you see, Israel has freedom to operate in area A if they choose. If if Israel needs to go into Area A to arrest somebody, they can do that. The PA can't go into area C to arrest people. So you you have an inherent imbalance between the two, where um the PA cannot protect their people, even when Israel refuses to uh protect them. So it's an inherent imbalance. Now, in terms of what you're saying, uh, Yuri about the elections, I I don't even think it's a super important point. Uh Israel continuously pressures uh the PA to cancel elections, but I have no problem acknowledging even if there was no pressure from Israel whatsoever, it very well may be the case that the PA would not hold elections regardless. Um I I think that's uh there's a very strong case to be uh case to be made that that is the case. But uh it's almost besides the point. The more important point is uh they there's no way they can topple the PA because the PA has the protection of Israel. So the the people in the West Bank can't really do all too much to change their situation. There's very little an individual can actually do. And that's why I am against uh demonizing people or putting pressure on populations. I think generally we need to put pressure on institutions. It's this it's the surest way to have change. Institutions hold the power, so the pressure should be on them. You change the institution, you change the the people. Now, I am seeing somebody said the person you talked about was Ahmed Fahud al-Khatib. So I I do know him. I've had him on as well. I I didn't recognize the name when he said it. Uh he had the organization realigned for Palestine. I yeah, I I I like a lot of his message. I think his message, and this is feedback that a lot of Palestinians, I think most Palestinians would uh reaffirm is that they don't like him. They feel like he's just a moderate form of Zionism. And I think he's in a challenging situation that it's impossible to speak one message that will compel both Israelis and Palestinians. So it's either he'll be popular amongst some number of Zionists or he'll be number popular amongst some number of Palestinians, but it's very, very hard to be popular amongst both. Uh it's you need different language, different messages. And he has chosen the messaging that makes him popular amongst uh some amount of, let's say, liberal Zionists, but close to no Palestinians uh support him. So will he ultimately be effective? I am not convinced simply by the fact that you know Palestinians just really don't like him. Um but I don't think there's an easy solution, right? I don't I I don't know what the message is where you can somehow get convinced both people that your ideas are good. Okay, let's see what we have. So somebody, so do is giving you feedback, and I'll just read this to you and I'll let you respond. Do says that you put zero blame on Israel, that you want up here as a moderate, but you have never that they've not seen you acknowledging anything anti-Israel. So, what do you think about that feedback?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:52

I mean, I I would say that the criticisms I have for Israel are what I'd have with most governments around the world, like Western governments. I I have a lot of criticism. I've many in one sense I have a lot of criticisms. But one of the reasons I'm supporting Israel so strongly is that I think they're unfairly being attacked. And so I take a strong pro-Israel position. But I'm not saying that Israel has no blame for sure. Israel has, you know, has made a lot of mistakes, and yeah, happy to uh I would happy to go into them sometime with the DAR even on a on a full call.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:24

Cool. Is there any critic? So is there any criticism of Israel you'd like to give here in response to the feedback?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:31

Oh well, that's a good question. Let me just think here about some of the policies I don't like they're doing. Um we didn't talk about the Gaza War. Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:44

Do you think their conduct in the West Bank is morally defensible, like to just maintain an oppressive status quo indefinitely and allow set settler violence and no accountability for soldiers who abuse their power? Like, do you think that's an in expensive?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:56

I mean, yeah, I I I think that I think that it's it's a good question. You're putting me on the spot. I think that no government is perfect, obviously. Um I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure many mistakes have been made. And obviously, I think in a in a situation where they're let's say there's two sides going at it, the Israeli side and the Palestinian side are going at it, they're gonna err on the side of Israel. They're gonna, in every case, even if you know the side on Israel actually might be wrong in that situation. So not denying that. And yeah, again, I the criticisms I have for them wouldn't be just so like they'd be probably similar to criticisms I have for other like Western European countries or something like that. That I also would object to their policies as well. Yeah, and in the West Bank, um, yeah, there are things I'm sure I disagree with. Specifically, I like it'd be hard for me to go into right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:53

Okay. Um you you mentioned that maybe you also want to say something about the death toll. Have you seen my work on it? And do you have any disagreement there? Because right now, right now, pretty much it's been disagreements on it's just different moral outworks, uh, moral outlooks, um, things that come down to you know, principles, who we put the onus on, stuff like that. Death toll is less, much less opinion-based and much more interpretation of data. And the pro-Israel camp has been, I don't think most people are intentionally lying. I think most people actually believe what they're saying, but there's been a few people who produce these analyses, they are intentionally lying, people like Eisenberg and Andrew Fox and John Spencer. And because the pro-Israel camp doesn't know who to believe, they believe them as trustworthy figures, so they spread misinformation. But this isn't even a matter of perspective. This is actually just a matter of a fact. But if you want to touch on that quickly, I'm happy to get into well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:53

Part of mine would just be I don't know the death toll, and I don't know the civilian to uh combat ratio. I would just question of what is their methodology, for example, and also I also don't know how many just natural deaths, how many people died of cancer in Gaza? How many Gazans died of cancer from uh whenever the word in October 2023 to whatever earlier last year? I don't know. Like and where do those cross the lines? In the US, we had this issue with COVID where a guy would fall off a ladder, but it turned out he had asymptomatic COVID, they'd put it down as a COVID death. Which of these were marked as, yeah, like so he was driving a car and then a bomb blew up and he crashed his car, and they go, that's because of Israel, you know, something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:35

Yeah. So I'm actually having I'll get into that briefly. Uh there's a good answer to all of these, and you'll actually, you know, you being somebody who's open-minded and intellect intellectually honest, you're gonna see how intellectually dishonest the counter narrative is.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:48

So the method, I am sorry, I was just gonna say, I am listening. I need to, uh, but I'm gonna just turn my camera off. But I am listening, and yeah, yeah, and I'll respond too. Okay. But keep going.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:58

So the the Gaza Ministry of Health, their methodology is when somebody comes to hospital uh with the and they were killed by the IDF, uh, they add them to a list. This list includes their name, their ID number, uh, it includes their date of birth and um their gender. Now, you could say, okay, well, this could be fraudulent data. How do we know it's real? So we actually have an unprecedented precedented situation in Gaza that Israel has full control of the Palestinian population registry. So all the names and ID numbers they release, Israel can check that they're real name and ID numbers in the database. Uh, it's why these analyses, these debunkings, are not coming from Israel. Israel has unprecedented means to debunk this data had there had it been fraudulent, and they have a major incentive to do so. Yet we're not seeing any debunkings coming from Israel because they review the data and they see that it's generally good. Now, the way we so first of all, the the these pseudo-analyses that that people are putting out, they refuse to acknowledge that Israel can verify the data because it's inconvenient. And then they're working backwards. They're saying we want to prove that there's a 1.5 to 1 civilian to combat ratio. So, like, how do we get to that number? So they say, okay, Israel said 25,000 combatant deaths. They're not critical at all of Israel's number, even though they should be. You know, Israel's not giving any verification that that's true. Uh, we also know that we have reason to believe that Israel inflates the number. Uh, we've heard from a few whistleblowers that when uh people are civilians are shot in no-go zones, uh, they're listed as combatants. We also know that members of Hamas political bureau were targeted. If you're intentionally targeting politicians, why would you not add them to the list? So we have reason to believe that the Israel's not not the list, the count of how many combatants have been killed. So they're taking Israel's number completely uncritically, uh, which if they were intellectually honest, they should have some questions about that. And then they're saying we also are gonna say, so right, they're they're trying to get to that 1.5 to 1. That's the magic number that they want to get to. They're saying, okay, how many more do we need to reduce to get to this 1.5 to 1? And then they're saying 15,000 natural deaths. Well, the reason we can know that there's not 15,000 natural deaths is because we have the demographics of those killed, those killed. Natural deaths are overwhelmingly very young children, ages zero to one, and very old, 70 plus. So if natural deaths, if a large number of natural deaths were included in the data, you would see unusual spikes in the data in the very young and the very old. These spikes don't exist. Plausibly, there's some number of natural deaths, 1,000, 2,000. Um, whether this is intentional, intentional or not, we don't know. But it shouldn't be surprising if we're going to find some number of natural deaths. It's just if most were included, it would be very, very obvious by the the breakdown of the data. Um, and then another claim here, and this is just so silly, they say 15,000 were killed by Hamas in the PIJ. They don't explain this methodology at all. They're just trying to get to that magic 1.5 to 1 number. Uh, and how do they say they say executions and failed rockets? Well, whenever there's somebody executed, there's actually media reports. So we can assess more or less how many people have been executed by Hamas because people talk about it. There's uh enough anti-Hamas Gazans who talk about it on social media. You've had a few dozen in the past few years. Uh so I don't know how anyone can claim it's in the thousands. So maybe they want to claim failed rockets have killed 10,000 plus people, but there's no reason to believe that's true either. We don't have great data on this, but we do have an Israeli report from 2021, if this if we do want to believe Israel's word, uh, they spoke about how many Gazans were killed from failed rockets. If you do the math and scale up for how many rockets were shot since October 7th, you're looking at a few hundred killed from failed rockets. The fact that they are claiming 15,000 with no evidence is completely ridiculous. Um now, so so the claims just make absolutely no sense. And then when you look at the 25,000 combatant number, there's no way there's 25,000 combatants included in the data as well. There's simply not enough excess male deaths. It's possible, it's possible 25,000 combatants were were killed, but many of them are not added on the list. But they're trying to say 72,000 killed minus 25,000. Impossible, you just can't do that. They'll never produce a population pyramid of this of um of all those killed minus 25,000, because it would look it that population pyramid would look in such a way where you'd know that the claim makes no sense. So they again, they're saying 72,000 killed based on Hamas, reduce 25,000, reduce 15,000 natural deaths, reduce 15,000 uh killed by Hamas and PIJ, and you get 1.5 to 1. It's bullshit. It makes no sense. It's it's it's not just a misinterpretation of data, it's an intentionally uh misrepresenting data, it's a form of atrocity denial, and it actually pains me that that it's a narrative that uh has been so widespread because it's based on absolutely nothing. There's no merit to it. Um, it's just it's fraudulent.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:18

Right. So a couple questions for you. Uh well, also one, by the way, I don't, you know, I assume that a lot of these Hamas soldiers or PIJ soldiers are uh, I don't know, 18 years old. And even when one of those, those then get killed, it's it's sad, you know. Probably an 18-year-old who had no chance in life. He was probably brought up, brainwashed, and it's all right, go die for the cause. Even that death I feel horrible for. I mean, that is a life just gone and wasted, in my opinion, and died in vain. So, you know, here's where I have a big question for the numbers. So not only do I not know the methodology in terms of I I get what you're saying about Israel knows like who they are and stuff, but do we exactly know how they died? Like, again, was one driving a car, a bomb goes off, he crashes his car. That's one. And then another one is how are we determining who's not a combatant when you know, I saw this stuff about the journalists, and a lot of these journalists I would see are clearly like Hamas members or whatever. They're not like they're they're clearly trying to help the Hamas cause get involved in everything. So I, you know, a lot of this, I don't know who's this combatant who's a civilian. I don't know. And so, you know, Israel might have some of these.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:28

I I think that's fair, but that doesn't um that doesn't support these analyses in any way because uh again, the way they're doing the analysis, they're just saying there's 25,000 combatants on the list, but the data very clearly does not allow for 25,000 combatants. Let me pull up a chart, and this is all publicly available data, right? And anybody can review this and analyze it. Um it's why it's it's a live historic proportion that never should have gotten any any traction, but it did. Uh here we go.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:59

Okay. Keep in mind I'm on my phone. I might not be able to see it very well.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:03

Oh, yeah, all good. So this is just a chart I had somebody made based on available data. Anybody can do this if they want. Um where is it? Okay, cool. Right, so here so here's these are all the the women killed, females, males. Um this circle is simply to just so we're not seeing spikes in babies, we're not seeing spikes in elderly. We shouldn't assume there's many natural deaths here. Here, we see a large spike in military-age men, but you actually see excess males of all ages, right? Five-year-olds are five-year-old boys are being killed higher rate than five-year-old girls, seven-year-old uh elderly are being elderly men are being killed at a higher rate than elderly women. So we can't, there's no reason to assume that all excess male deaths are combatants because males of all ages die at a higher rate. This is consistent in all violent conflict because men are more likely to take risks like getting food, water, aid, they're more likely to work in dangerous positions like first responders. Um, they're more likely to be looking for dead under under rubble, and they're much more likely to be confused to being combatants and being killed. Uh, so we can't assume all excess deaths are uh are combatants.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:25

Sorry, just jump in just to the question. So this is excess deaths over that period from like October 2023 till like early 2025, basically.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:34

This is the milk ministry of health fatality list that they released. These are all the names and ID numbers. If you put them on a population pyramid, this is what it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:41

This is from Gaza or from Israel? Who put this out?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:44

This is Ministry of Health data, but these all explain. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:49

Okay. But well, I'm looking at it and it does, it shows like the majority of deaths are the young males in the demographic of who would be a Hamas fighter.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:56

No, no. The majority of deaths, the majority of deaths are civilians, very clearly. There's like look, everything everything in the light blue is is under the age of 15, over the age of 45. You have negligible combatants in these age demographics. You're talking about the very bottom, you're talking about well, the the light blue here and the light blue on top, all of these should be presumed civilians. All of these are women. Okay. And then the assumption should never be that more women are dying than men. It's always more civilian men die than civilian women in war. So everything below the red line, that's the baseline. That's assuming males and men and women are dying at the same rate. So all these should be assumed to be civilians, but all these should also be assumed to be civilians. Why? Because males of all ages are dying at a higher rate. So this yellow line is essentially correcting for the fact that excess some number of excess male deaths are going to be civilians. What is plausibly plausibly combatants is what's above the yellow line, which is around 17 to 18 percent of all the data. So the civilian combatant, and again, this doesn't give a complete picture because it's possible you have 10,000 combatants that are not included in this data. So we can't really know the civilian to combat ratio. But based on the dark, yeah, dark.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:18

Can I just jump in for a second? Sorry, just because I'm not understanding. So in the middle section where you see like five all the way up to 100 plus, that's age, right? That's the ages. But then on the and then on the left side, or on my left, and and then on the right side is the women, left side is the men, right? Yeah, but it shows even like 15 to 45, the numbers are much wider and longer. Uh, like that would be the age range, right? Of combatants, correct? What am I missing?

SPEAKER_01 1:41:44

Yeah, yeah. So everything that's in darker blue is gonna be the combatant age. So this is plausible combatants, but if, for example, if let's say 10,000 women aged 15 to 45 were killed, you should assume at least 10,000 civilian men ages 15 to 45 were killed. Why would more civilian women be killed than civilian men?

unknown 1:42:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:09

So that's some well, it's just not there's there's literally there's no violent conflict in history where civilian women are killed at a higher rate, unless for rare instances where women are specifically targeted. But if you look at Syria, like it if you compare this to Syria, Syria was like 70% civilian men. Here it's far less, right? So the the numbers, the the data here is far worse than in Syria. So everything under the red line is simply correcting uh uh male to female. Everything above the red line is excess male. So some want to say, okay, all excess males in this age group are combatants, but why should we assume all excess males are combatants when we see excess males ages 80, 75, 65, 55? We see excess boys ages 10, excess boys five. So you can't say all excess males are combatants, some number of the excess are going to be civilians. So you're not left with you're not left with once you account for excess males, you you look at what's over the yellow line, and then you're like 17, 18 percent of all of all deaths that we have for. So again, one can claim that there's some number of combatants that are not including the data. So the ratio is really not uh like it's really not 83 percent uh civilian, but people who are looking at the data and saying the data shows us 1.5 to 1, it's just complete bullshit. It's not based on anything. The data on this is so abundantly clear uh that it's it's really it's pathetic that this is a lie that's been able to maintain itself for so long. It's just really based on nothing. The data here, there's no room for 1.5 to 1, no matter how you uh got it.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:49

Yeah, I'm not so I'll admit I'm I'm coming from this from a non-statistician point of view. I can only look at it from rational, reasonable, and you know, my perspective. I, you know, first off, Gaza is a very small, it's a much smaller place than say Syria. It is, it's a smaller lay area. And again, talking about you know the rights of a state, as I laid out earlier, the per like the the extent that a state is legitimate is that it's protecting the rights of its citizens. And first, it's on the obligation as Hamas has to protect them in some way. And they didn't build like any say missile defense technology or everything or anything like that. But I also do agree that Israel does have uh you know an obligation to to avoid civilian casualties at all costs. Um the problem with that is, and I listened to uh the guy, the uh former head of human rights watch, Kenneth Roth. I'm sure, I'm sure you're well aware of him. And he was explaining that when he said, if Israel just targets a base that they know is Hamas and there's no civilians in area and they blow it up, great, keep doing that. But oh, if there's a base below a hospital or ballast over here, nope, Israel's not allowed to do it, and that will be a war crime. And I just think, you know, right then and there, you're that gives Hamas every incentive to just operate out of below a hospital or something. So these deaths, I I put them on Hamas. That's my ultimate response. But assuming they're all true, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:06

I I take your word for it, but I yeah, I again I want to diff these are two separate conversations, right? There's a there's a legitimate debate over who is responsible for the exceptionally high civilian death toll in Gaza. Uh, that's one conversation, but but the other is what the numbers actually show. Currently, there is there's a concerted effort to lie about the actual numbers. So, what I'm simply presenting is the fact that people aren't being honest about the numbers. If we can if we can start to be honest about the numbers, it's much easier to have a debate over why they're so high. So, what the numbers currently show us, and it's harder to know civilian to combat ratio because we don't know how many who's missing from the list. But if you look at the number of women and children killed on a per capita basis, it's the highest rate of of violent fatalities of women and children in the 21st century. Right? So there's no world in which you have a historically low civilian to combat ratio. It makes no sense. It's never made any sense. It's again, it's a lie of historic proportion based on absolutely nothing. Now, we could get into the moral implications. Uh you it's true that uh Hamas has built a tunnel city under Gaza. Their infrastructure, it's not true that their infrastructure is embedded within civilian infrastructure as much as it's embedded underneath. And there's there's a very logical reason it's going to be underneath. It's safer underneath. Uh, putting putting as much infrastructure underneath Gaza is the is the safest place to put it. You put it above ground, it's very easy for Israel to bomb it. So they're putting as much infrastructure as possible under Gaza. This poses a serious challenge for Israel that either uh that they can't hit Hamas infrastructure without causing massive uh damage to civilians, or they need to deal with a very costly ground operation and very slowly and carefully deal with these tunnels and the infrastructure that's underground. Now, if you want to say Hamas is is uh complicit in the mass killing of Gaza civilians, I'd say, okay, I would agree with that. But say they're solely responsible, absolutely not. If you if you're dropping a bomb on a family home and wiping that family off the face of the earth, you are responsible for killing them. Uh that, you know, I consider that to be murder, even during war. What could Israel have done differently? Well, first of all, mass evacuations. You have a very densely populated city. Uh you're conducting record levels of uh airstrikes per capita, and you have not conducted proper evacuations. Gazans were not allowed to leave. Uh second. I thought they were.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:32

I thought didn't they evacuate the whole north and send them south?

SPEAKER_01 1:47:36

They they they did do evacuations, but the the safe zone is only eight square kilometers. So it's not that's not there were 200,000 people in the safe zone living in absolute squalor. There's not infrastructure to sustain life, and it can't hold more than 10% of the entire population.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:51

So that's not sorry, I was just gonna say that the question would be how many people were killed in, say, the safe zone? Do we have those numbers? Uh one thing I would say about the data, we we don't know a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:00

Yeah, no, no, the safe zone had some were killed in the safe zone, but actually relatively little. But if the safe zone can only hold 10% of the population, that's not sufficient.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:10

Is that the only safe zone? We're by the way, mm-hmm, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:14

That was the only zone that was truly safe. And by truly safe, it's not truly safe, it's safe most of the time. All other areas, some were safer, but they they were they they were getting hit as well. Um, so no, they're there were not proper vaccinations.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:29

There were neighborhoods totally unhit in Gaza, no? There were that Israel did not even touch, correct? Over the course of the two and a half year war?

SPEAKER_01 1:48:36

Yeah, yeah. You have some neighborhoods that that were not touched, but it's not like that these were neighborhoods that can that can hold two million people. At the end of the day, this is the the first instance of urban warfare, at least that I've been able to find, that there was not an ability for people to leave. And some people want to blame Egypt, and I agree that Egypt could have let them in. But you know, Israel could have built a massive refugee camp in the Negev. You could have built a camp in in Area A, two-thirds of Gazans are women, children, and elderly. You could let them out with relatively little security threat. And you we killed 20,000 children, we killed 2% of the child population. We didn't have to. That was a choice, not a necessity, and that's a barbaric choice. That amounts to mass murder. And I do think that if you kill that many civilians when you don't have to, you uh that we should consider that to be murder and more than defense.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:26

The though the from my understanding, a lot of the Palestinian leadership and even Palestinians themselves didn't necessarily want to evacuate because they were going to call it ethnic cleansing if they did, that they wouldn't be able to go back. Wasn't there some there's something going on with that? To my understanding, that's why a lot of them didn't evacuate.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:41

Uh no. So again, first of all, so so there it it exists to some extent that uh many didn't want to evacuate in order to just defy Israel. They're like, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna leave my home so you can destroy it. Why would I let my home be destroyed? Um that that is part of it, but at the end of the day, and and Hamas didn't People keep saying Hamas didn't let people leave. There was no mass systemic effort of Hamas to stop people from leaving. There was a there was requests to stay in place, right? So Hamas does find it effective when people don't leave their homes. So there were requests to stay in place. But you can't 30,000 militants cannot stop two million people from leaving. It's impossible. At the end of the day, it's that they didn't have any place to go. Imagine if and here here's something that I think many in the pro-Palestinian camp wouldn't even it's the suggestion they wouldn't like. But imagine if on October 8th, Israel said even on October 7th, nothing enters Gaza, no food, water, and aid. Israel did say that. But what they didn't say is, but anyone can leave. We are going to give safe passage to civilians. We're going to give you a better life. And you know, we always say how they get all this hateful education. Cool, bring the international community, let them get a better education, give them a good life, you know, build, take time, build this refugee camp. Now, the worst conditions in Gaza get because nothing can be let in, no food, water, aid, uh fuel, but anyone can leave. People eventually will get out, go to a better life. You you you remove you separate the people from Hamas, and then you could deal with Hamas militarily. This is had we, if we're going down a military route. I think there's other non-military paths we could take, but if if we're adamant about destroying Hamas, well then you need to separate the civilian population. And we did not do that. Uh we did a very bad, we we did it on some small scale. Uh ultimately, it did result in the highest rate of women and children being killed in the 21st century.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:33

So would so you would have been fine with them evacuating all of Gaza into like the Sinai then?

SPEAKER_01 1:51:39

Uh I would have preferred it be in the Negiven area A, because if they would have gone into Sinai, Israel would never let them return. Israel, Israel did want them to go into Sinai uh to ethnically cleanse them. Uh Sinai, Egypt didn't agree, understandably. They they don't want, A, they don't want two million permanent refugees, B, they don't want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing. So if Israel can't negotiate that with Egypt, then Israel should take responsibility and build the camp with the help of the international community, build a camp in the Negev, uh, which is there's a lot of empty space in the Negev. You have Area A, which already has security in place, yeah, you yeah, we could have we could have evacuated. Whatever logistical challenge that would have been to evacuate Gazans is is not nearly as bad as killing two percent of all children in Gaza. Right, like that's just an unimaginable horror that we didn't need to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:29

Right. So that okay, so that yeah, that was kind of my question. If you were given those options, which that was probably what because Israel's not gonna let them in to the Negev, because you know, you're bringing in a population that could they could run away from the Negev, you know, whatever refugee place you put in.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:44

Two-thirds are women, children, and elderly, right? You have you literally have around 70% of Gazans that you could let in with relatively little security risk. Uh the negative is also very large. It it can, you know, it I I I don't accept that you couldn't have removed women and children and elderly out of harm's way. And then let's say you're dealt with primarily men who you don't quite know who you can trust. Well, then the the safe zones in the south, it's much easier because you have a much lower population. You can say, okay, whoever's not part of Hamas, whoever doesn't want to be involved, please move to the south. We have a safe zone there. Uh, or you start to conduct background checks and and reunite fathers and grant fathers with their families. Um, it the the the idea that you need to start leveling high-rises day one after the attack, it's just that's a choice. It's not a necessity. The the Hamas does not pose an existential threat to Israel. October 7th was horrific, but that the they're on their most successful day in history, they killed 1,200 Israelis, uh, less if you account for those killed from uh hellfire missile, but let's say 1,200 Israelis. That's them on their most successful day in history, which required Israel to really be caught with their pants down. It was a massive failure on our part that it was successful. And again, that's not an existential threat. On the next day, we secured our border, we had endless options for how to deal with it, and we decided to engage in mass death and destruction. Um, we killed our some of our own hostages, we destroyed our standing in the international community, and we killed again 2% of all children in Gaza are now dead.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:23

I hear what you're saying. I do. Um, in terms of like, you know, what happened, by the way, I don't know how long we're gonna go. It's getting close to Shabbat there now, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:32

I could we could talk you know for another two hours. I you got me going. I'm I'm ready to go. But um, I don't know if you want to go down that rabbit hole right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:40

Yeah, we'll we'll do another, we can do like another 15.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:45

Okay, yeah. All right. So then just quickly on um like Gaza and everything. So just Israel's perspective, its obligation is to protect its citizens. It had a failure on on October 7th, 1,200 people died, and it's you know, Israel's always had a response, or at least since I've known, at least for the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years, of it's going to disproportionately respond. It's going to bomb you and say, don't ever do that again kind of method. Like, especially like I remember they have a policy of if a terrorist conducts an act of terrorism in Israel and he's from the West Bank, they're gonna go bulldoze not just his house, but his whole family's house, or something like that. They've always had a policy of don't mess with us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:26

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. That that's their policy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:29

Yeah, it's still their policy, yeah, yeah. So Hamas did this knowing that's the policy, and knowing that Israel's gonna have a massive response to a violent act of killing their own, killing their people. Um, and they did it in a way where, yeah, the rockets couldn't be intercepted by they they broke out and they killed people at, you know, whatever. Yeah, I so so that so that's on Hamas, and you know, Hamas put its own people in danger. Should Israel have been more careful? Yeah, I I in many ways, yes. And I think in a lot of ways, Israel was pretty careful. They did, in some ways, they handed out leaflets still, too. They said, hey, your place is gonna be bombed. They didn't necessarily evacuate, but they did tell them this is about to be bombed, correct? Like there was that going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:09

There were evacuations from neighborhoods. Um, yes, to to some degree. Not always, because sometimes if you don't want to lose the element of surprise, right? So, for example, there would be times when there was intel that there might be some Hamas commander in a tunnel. It's very hard to pinpoint exactly where they are in the tunnel. So they'd literally just level a full city block and they're not gonna give warning, then whoever's in the tunnel will evacuate. You know, Israel was doing this. This is very unprecedented.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:38

Yeah. So and also on top of that, like in terms of the people themselves that are there, I'm sure there's a lot of people there that were, like you said, they're like, I'm not leaving. Israel's telling me to leave or evacuate, I'm not gonna evacuate. And then Israel, they're like, I'd rather die, or I guess to a degree they made that determination. I'd rather die than leave. And kind of that's what that's what happened. And it's hard for me to blame Israel for that. That's kind of their choice. They'd rather be dead than leave their own home. I see that, you know, that happens when there's like a hurricane sometimes in the US.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:06

Yeah, I think what you're saying is only relevant if there's if there's a sufficient evacuation solution. If you have where to evacuate and you give sufficient time to evacuate, then you can, then I would agree with your claim to a greater degree, but not not without they're essentially saying there's there's this beach that's overcrowded, there's no infrastructure for life, it's at full capacity. If you didn't make it there, then you'll die. No, give people an absolute place to evacuate, give them time to evacuate. Um, you you you don't we we we need to as we continue to make moral progress as a species, the idea of dropping a bomb on a human being when you don't have to, the the idea of of shredding the flesh of children, women, and other civilians just because you can't think of a better way to deal with it, like we need to recognize this as barbarism and we need to evolve beyond this. And you know, every generation we have some fight for moral progress. We have this with slavery, we have this with colonialism, we have this with women's suffrage and Jim Crow and apartheid. And this is the moral, this is the moral bat, one of the great moral battles of the day, that there's still this idea that what we call as urban warfare or modern warfare, this idea of dropping bombs on civilians is normal. It's not. If we really respect humans' inalienable right to life, we can't just be so cold and callous with this category of dead people we call collateral damage. Collateral damage is people who got their inalienable right taken from them. And you are somebody who believes in in these rights. So I think that the we we shouldn't just be giving excuse for Israel and how many how many people's inalienable right to life they they violently took. Yeah, and look, yeah, one more thing, and what I strongly believe the same way we now look at slavery and colonialism, and we don't see any justification for it. We I think we're just a few decades away from uh something similar in Gaza, where uh or how we conduct warfare now, where we're gonna look back on it and we're gonna be like, yeah, this is utter barbarism, it's indefensible, uh, this should not have been done. How can people support this? That's where we're headed, and I think I think it's good that we're headed in that way. I think as uh AI starts to take over and our weapons become more powerful, part of the way we can increase our chance of survival as a species is to increase our care for civilian lives and find greater ways to protect the rights of individuals.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:36

Absolutely. And by the way, I I don't know if in my article, what some of the research I did uh about the Iran war is US weapons have become so precise, they actually really do limit collateral damage. Like they've built new technology where when the rocket, some missile hits, the explosion is targeted just enough to kill the its target and a little bit in the surrounding area, but not not not have like a big explosion effect. They're very precision missiles that we're creating now. Again, we're not fully there. Look, I don't want to live in a world where there's any war. I want there to be a constant, I want there to be peace on earth. And that's gonna, that's gonna be our ultimate goal. We're gonna have to work through it para-para, as you say, uh one step at a time. Um, you know, we're just not there yet. We're not living in a world where there's peace. Even if there isn't bombs dropping, you know, there's still mad dictators that feel like they have the right to hold their citizens hostage, like North Korea, for example, or I would argue in Iran. We might disagree on that. And, you know, to a degree, I think, you know, that's the case. Hamas is doing that. They're pretty much holding their people hostage. And I get that it's a difficult situation of, okay, let's say the only way to get them out, full evacuation is send them into the Sinai. And then there's the fear of, you know, ethnic cleansing that they're going to be allowed back. Especially in light of, you know, talking about the Trump D like idea for Gaza, I actually do support it, which is kind of like it becomes almost like an international hub. UAE can invest there, Saudis can invest there, Israelis can, everybody, the whole world can invest, and anybody can move there. It's a it's a place for everybody, including the Gazans and everybody else. I think it will get expensive. It's gonna, and that'll bring a lot of peace there and a lot of security and everything, but it's gonna get expensive. So I understand they would argue almost, I'm I'm assuming people are gonna argue that's a soft that's either colonialism or a soft form of um ethnic cleansing or whatever, because if things get so expensive there, the Gazans, you know, might not even be able to afford to live there if it gets so nice. Like, I yeah, it's there's no situation that's good right now. It's it's gotten into a bad, bad situation. And especially in Gaza, to me, there's no other option than to get rid of Hamas. And if Israel has to do it by force, I think they have to with the least amount of civilian casualties as possible. And Israel should be as careful as it possibly can in order to get rid of Hamas. That's my that's my overall opinion on it. And in terms of, I'm sure there were times where Israel was not careful enough during the Gaza war when you know they were seeing read, they're pissed at what just happened on October 7th, and they're like, I'm gonna respond. And that was kind of natural, by the way. I don't know what your initial reaction was, but when I saw this, I was in Singapore by the time when it happened, and my friend and I we watched the news all day long, and I was like, this is unforgivable. Like at this point, fuck him. I just didn't mean to drop the F-bomb. I just, you know, like worded that out.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:11

I don't know if that'll no, no, you could you could respond to the channel.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:13

Oh, okay. But I obviously retracted. I said, okay, I've calmed down now, you know, whatever. And I'm sure there was that in the aftermath. A lot of people felt that, but you know, we're all human beings, and to me, in a lot of ways, Israel has done a relatively good job. I think there's I don't know what the death count is in like Ukraine, but I can tell you I I almost highly doubt that Russia is being as like even handing out a leaflet or even cares if a bunch of civilians die.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:40

I mean someplace. I mean, the death toll in Ukraine is significantly higher, but it's almost entirely uh soldiers.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:47

But do we know that for sure? I don't even I don't know if I've seen the data.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the there's a relatively like if you look at ratio wise, it's it's worlds apart. You're overwhelmingly soldiers have been killed. It's a very different uh type of warfare. Um it's a very different type of warfare, so you can't compare it, but it's been all overwhelmingly soldiers have been killed in in Ukraine.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:10

Well, Fernando, it's also bigger. I'm assuming, you know, I don't know how the evacuation works, and maybe I should do some more research into it. There is, you know, I hope people do who know more about this than I do, who are statisticians or people who understand combat to civilian race, we do have a debate with you on this because they can answer your questions more than I could. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:27

You know, it's interesting. Um, although I don't I don't really have many questions on the ratio, just because the data on it is pretty damn clear at this point. And I I don't even I don't have a background in data analysis, it's just easy enough to figure out it. It's like you don't need to be an expert. Yeah, I guess you need to be pretty good with numbers and have a good analytical mind, but you don't need to be an expert to look at the data, understand the demographic breakdown, and reach these conclusions. And I will say, you know, I've been doing live streams on and off for years now. I've had debates on so many issues, people reach out to me to debate. Uh, the only topic I have never found somebody willing is the death toll. And the reason is simple. If you don't review the data, you're not comfortable debating it. That's understandable. The second you review the data, you understand there's nothing to debate. All the people putting out these these analyses, they all blocked me. They block other people who disagree. They don't they don't respond to criticism, they just ignore I put out many debunkings of this work. They refuse to acknowledge with any of the points, they just block and pretend it doesn't exist. Um, so I'd love I'd love to talk to one of these people about the death toll, but nothing that they they've never agreed, and I don't think they will because it's just not it's there's there's no reach out to Abraham Weiner.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:44

Abraham Weiner wrote uh I think it works he's a professor somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:47

Yeah, yeah. That was a crap. That that was that was bullshit. He did stuff there that was so intellectually dishonest. I emailed him, he responded, but he did stuff and that was that was so intellectually dishonest that you could tell that he's uh he's uh um he he he didn't make an effort to do it honestly. But his the the major flaw in his thing, one of them was he just presented in a graph in a way that is gonna skew how it looks. So it's like the visual representation was just not how you should visually represent data unless you're trying to portray a certain image. But the the main one was he was looking at how uh uh uh he was saying uh some days there's only women and children updated in the data, and some days that there's men, women and children, something along those lines. Uh but that's he's like, and it's impossible that some days no men are added or are killed. Uh but that just means that it's something about their updating methodology that you could question. That doesn't mean that the data itself isn't legitimate, and he doesn't, he just doesn't acknowledge the fact that these are names and ID numbers that are verifiable by Israel. And most importantly, initially the UN made a big mistake doing this, but the UN was relying on Gaza Media Office GMO data, which is not verifiable and should be taken with a grain of salt. MOH data is verifiable and should be generally relied on. So the UN was using GMO data. Eventually they understood it's bad data and reverted to MOH data. And then the world, including Weiner and many others, said, ah, you see, the UN changed their methodology, that means it's all bullshit. No, the the UN just uh reverted to uh uh just a more legitimate data set, and people made a whole uh a whole thing out of it.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:36

I here's where I would say, let's say I grant you, I I look, I don't trust, I still don't trust the Gaza Health Metry. I know they say, oh, some of their data has been reliable in the past, but I still don't. God forgive me. Um, but let's say I grant you all that. Let's say I grant you that data, the one you just showed me, is completely accurate, 100%. Here's what we don't know, and maybe the fog of war, once things settle, we'll start to know more of the civilian deaths. How many of them were just people that didn't want to leave their building or didn't want to evacuate or whatever, or died in a way where, again, it was like a car accident and Israel set off a bomba, they called that as uh Israel's responsible for that civilian death. These are the things I we don't know. And it could be a high percentage of that were, you know, but no, no, again, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:21

Again, plausibly there's some number of natural deaths included there, but you understand that it you can't add most natural deaths because it would create unusual spikes in the data amongst elderly and very young. We would very clearly see if the data included 15,000 natural deaths, as many are claiming. There's plausibly one to two thousand natural deaths. The natural deaths would need to be added in a way that it has a natural distribution amongst all age groups as to not create unusual spikes. Um, if you're just adding all of them or most of them, that the population pyramid is gonna look spike at the top, right? There's gonna be elderly a spike, it'll reduce, and then at the very bottom, zero zero-year-olds are gonna have an unusual spike because uh the the they sometimes they die of natural deaths.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:05

Um but yeah, the point I was making, really quick, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:08

I will say when when you're when you're adding, when you're seeing you know dozens of dead people a day, you don't always know what to attribute it to, right? So you you could have a situation where Hamas shot somebody, they get to the hospital, the doctor doesn't know that it was Hamas, they think it was Israel, so they would add them to the list. Now, again, we get media reports when Hamas kills people, and we know that it's not in the thousands. There's been a few dozen that have been executed. And also, we have their names. So if you take the names of those executed, you could search if they're in the data. Most aren't. So most of those who have been executed by Hamas are not found in the data. Some are, but this is all negligible, right? We're talking about a few dozen here, a few dozen there, uh, maybe one to two thousand natural deaths. None none of this is meaningfully impacting the data. At the end of the day, the data very clearly shows per capita record number of women and children killed in the 21st century. Uh and my my point, my response, yeah. By a large margin, by a large margin as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:08

Yeah, my only response to that is okay, and again, assuming all that's true on the largest number ever, is we don't know exactly why, I would argue, or at least, you know, 100% why. Yes, it's a small area. I I don't think Israel was targeting civilians. It doesn't make any, it's no, it makes no logical sense. Maybe in some cases they did on purpose, and I'd be quite shocked. Maybe they did in a fit of rage rarely happen, and those should be investigated if somebody was specifically targeting a civilian purposely knowing it was a civilian. Yeah, but I think we don't know why it's so high, because it could have been, again, like I said, a lot of people just don't want to leave their homes when they're told to. They stay, the building gets blown up and they all die. Again, I'm not it's a brutal situation, it's horrible, but that could be a big reason why a lot of them died.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:53

Yeah, uh, but I feel like we're just rehashing the same points. What I'm saying is if we don't give a sufficient uh evacuation process and and space, then you you can't, you it's just that's not the way to look at it. There was one safe zone that is eight square kilometers that you can't fit two million people there. There were 200,000 people in that safe zone. It was full capacity, people living in squalor. You so the Israel provided a solution for 10% of Gaza. The other 90% did not have where to go. So you can't say, well, maybe people didn't want to leave their homes, leave their homes and go where. What I suggested, and you know, you said we look, not only did we kill an extraordinarily uh high amount of civilians, we didn't defeat Hamas. I uh the plan that I suggested, which would have been not let anything into Gaza and let everybody out, that actually inevitably would you would have defeated Hamas. Could you imagine now we had nearly three years without any food, water, aid, or fuel going into Gaza and all civilians are allowed out, Hamas would eventually surrender or die.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:56

I'm literally Hamas trying to disguise itself and try and run out with the civilian population? That's my thinking.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:01

No, but so you literally you have you have you have a process, right? So 70% are men, women, and children, relatively easy to let them out uh into a refugee camp in the negative. If you have if you have populations that you're unsure of, they could undergo background tests, or that the the males who you don't know if you could trust, then you could start to put them in a safe zone in the south because you're not talking about millions of people anymore. You're talking about a manageable number that you could put in the south. Uh, and that could be an area that you do let food, water, and aid in. Um so so again, you you literally could have you you you we could have had them surrender by not letting anything in. But we need to let we need to let food, water, and aid in because there's two million civilians there. So because we refused to, we we had we didn't effectively uh uh separate them from the civilian population, we created a situation where we enacted an unimaginable toll on the civilian population while not even defeating Hamas. It was it's a failure of epic proportion. Um

SPEAKER_00 2:12:00

Um and it's just do you think that a Hamas would have allowed that to happen, though? Just evacuating all the women and children, and they don't do anything that in response, like suicide bombings or just shooting the civilians lining up to leave. You don't think any of that would have happened?

SPEAKER_01 2:12:13

No, no, I I don't think I don't think that would have happened. You you again, 30,000 people cannot stop 2 million people from evacuating. What we did see was um when they wanted to do the attack on Gaza City, uh, that Hamas put out a notice to employers saying, Don't let your don't let your workers out of work. You know, that's that was an effort to let to make them stay. Uh, but the idea that they were there was this mass systematic effort to not let them leave is just not grounded in the evidence that's ever been made publicly available. Um so so again, and and and again, if people don't want to leave, the the second that there's no food, water, and aid going in, but you could literally cross a border and then have get a home with food, water, and aid, people eventually would go. You it may maybe take a few months, but people will go.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:03

And then I I think this the international could do would the international world would be like, oh, isra the US is the US and Israel starving the Gaza population. Or I guess just Israel in that case. That's what I would I would that's how they'd react, I feel like.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:15

What what do you think what do you think is worse? The international community saying that or literally having daily videos of dismembered children.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:25

I mean, I don't, you know, it's it's past now. I I agree.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:28

Uh I don't think but you're talking about what I'm I'm literally giving you a plan how to not kill 20,000 children, and you're talking about like PR. It's it's a different conversation. So on my point, yeah, yeah. The the PR would have not nearly as bad as daily videos of dismembered children. Uh and second, it would have been a more effect you would have saved massive civilian life and you actually would have been able to deal with Hamas effectively. We didn't do either. We didn't do that.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:51

Israel wasn't gonna let them into uh the Negev, and I don't really support doing that either, just to be clear. Uh I if they wanted to go to uh Sinai and then allow the civilians back in, I would I would have been fine with that.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:02

So yeah, Israel could try to negotiate that. And it but it but again, if they can't, then they should look for other other options. Um and if they can't, if they don't want to evacuate, then they should not use as much uh high-powered, uh high-powered weaponry on civilians. Like it's just you, you, you, it's it's a choice, right? You Israel has a right to defend itself, but that doesn't mean everything that they do in the name of self-defense is legitimate, the same way Palestinians have a right to resist, but attacking kibbutzima Nova is not an acceptable form of resistance, right? Like, so you could accept a state's right or people's rights without with and still understand that not everything they do within that right is is legitimate.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:39

Hold on one second. You might yeah, sure, sure. I just want to well, I was just gonna say, I think one thing that we can do now is prevent this from ever happening in the future. And I think this could be a topic for another day. And I would love to debate you again, by the way. Anytime you want to have me on, I'm I'm there. Um, would be the you know, what to do about Gaza. And I'm kind of for Trump's deal. I know you'll you could kind of see it as a settler colonial kind of thing where it's you know all sorts of wealthier countries are gonna go and invest and build businesses and buy real estate, and it could push out the uh local Gaza population, but that is one way to prevent all these people from losing their lives, and they, you know, they could move to other countries and build up their whole lives and live a great life. You're not just gonna live a great life right now. At this point, if you live in Gaza, you're not gonna live a good life, you're gonna live a much better life elsewhere. But if your ideology tells you, no, no, this is my land, this is another issue I have of like the collect, the idea of collective ownership of land or collective government running the land, you know, you own your individual property, but the land is the land, it's there. It's you know, I get it. We we kind of spoke about it earlier. It's a deep philosophical discussion we don't need to get into. But I just think if you're if you are in Gaza right now, you're a Gazan, your life is gonna be much better outside of Gaza for sure. Unless something drastically changes, drastically.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:58

Would you support Gazans leaving and then having the right to come back?

SPEAKER_00 2:16:03

Yeah, I well, yeah, terrorists can't come back, but you know, regular ordinary people want to come back and be productive and live lives, of course. Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:10

Now, you know, Israel has never has has a long history of displacing Palestinians and never letting them return, right? So there needs to be some international guarantee that that could happen.

SPEAKER_00 2:16:19

That's a different dis well, that's a different discussion.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:20

That we could chat about that whole discussion too from the 40 day war and the I I I I do think Gazans should be able to leave for sure. Uh being stuck in a war zone is horrible. They should they should have, again, been able to leave nearly three years ago. Uh there's they should just be guaranteed to be allowed to return. Um yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:16:41

The the Gaza would be according to Trump's plan for everybody. So not just for a Gaza, but a Saudi Arabian or a UAE person who wants to go move there, they can. So it'd be for everybody, basically, and buy your house or go be productive and live there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:54

Why not why not let the the why why not let Gazans decide that, you know, like you know, the problem is, you know, that led to Hamas.

SPEAKER_00 2:17:02

And apparently Hamas is still popular in Gaza. Although again, how reliable are those surveys? Oh, they're not. Well, I was gonna say, how reliable is the survey when you don't have free speech in Gaza, and I'm sure if they told the truth, they could get killed or something if they say, Oh, I'm against Hamas. So I get it, those polls are not reliable. So, yeah, okay. That's good that they're not popular, but I worry that another situation like this can arise.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:23

Most recent polls uh actually show very low popularity for Hamas in Gaza. In the West Bank, they have a higher, higher popularity, below relatively low in the West Bank, uh in Gaza.

SPEAKER_00 2:17:34

Interesting. Okay, I'll check that out. I mean, I also again I'm happy to uh do more research on the death toll numbers and just see the the whole data behind it, and uh I could get back to you on uh you know what I'm seeing in the numbers.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:44

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm uh very happy to, you know, I've uh it's something I've been and I it's not even uh I don't even want that this to be my topic, the death toll. I wish I'd never needed to talk about it again. It's just it's something that the the dishonesty and misinformation around it is so blatant, and I see I don't see the institutions have failed us for countering this. Uh and the institutions have failed in in both directions, right? It was, you know, the the pro-Palestine side was saying 600,000 dead in Gaza, right? You so you have the ridiculousness on both sides, but I will say the pro-Palestine side is not saying 600,000 anymore. They have actually updated their most of them aren't saying anymore. None of them came out and admitted they were wrong, but they've updated their understanding of things, whereas the pro-Israel camp is still pushing this completely ridiculous based on absolutely nothing, low civilian to command ratio. Um, and you know, now that I feel like I'm one of the few people who have done a deep dive into the research and analyzed it uh thoroughly, I almost feel an obligation to continue to challenge it because again, the counter-narrative is based on absolutely nothing and it's a form of atrocity denial. And, you know, as a as a Jew, I understand how atrocity denial feels when people uh deny the Holocaust. So why now I see we're doing this as a people to somebody else? Uh it's not who we're meant to be as a people. Um, and it's one of my grievances with Zionism is it took a people who, for most of history, were uh on the right side of moral progress and fighting for moral progress. So now uh so much of who we are is defined by trying to challenge moral progress and uh and continue the indefinite violation of the rights of another people. Uh and it's it it pains me that this is uh so much of what defines the Jewish people today.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:30

Yeah, yeah. And I mean uh my response to that is just, you know, unfortunately we live in a world that's imperfect and it's a brutal world, and we have to make decisions on how to make it how to make it better and how to respond to crazy crises that happen, and we have to deal with them as they are. And you know, we're we have the benefit of looking past. I mean, technically there's a ceasefire, but I know there's still some ongoing skirmishes there.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:55

Um, but you know, I I mean right now we're at we're we're I are there skirmishes or are there just occasional airstrikes, right? You've had around a thousand killed, mainly civilians since the ceasefire. I don't I don't know if a single IDF soldier has been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire. And if it has been, it's been one or two. You're not having daily skirmishes, you're having almost daily.

SPEAKER_00 2:20:16

Sure enough, they're targeting the uh Hamas, no? They're targeting like Hamas leaders.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:21

Uh, you know, they're they're claiming to be targeting leaders and militants, but again, you you know the the data shows us that the demographic data shows us that this is not primarily militants.

SPEAKER_00 2:20:32

Well, again, yeah, I and I do, you know, I do wonder, would you at least agree? By the way, we do need to jump, right? Because we've we've been going quite a while, it's two and a half hours. On the journalist one, you agree that there was exaggerations on how many journalists were killed, right? You at least acknowledge that.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:47

Um, yeah, yeah. Some some number of the journalists were not solely journalists, they were combatants as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:20:53

Uh and so then when you do things like that, my just opinion is you do stuff like that, people are gonna start doubting you on. And I've had that issue with you know the Palestinian like Gaza side for a while. The kind of, oh, you know, even like going back years and years, they've in 2009 they declared a genocide in Gaza. And you know, things like that. And you get to the point where you're crying wolf. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:12

Yeah, but if if you actually look through my all my content the past few years uh on Twitter, I've never mentioned once about journalists being killed because I don't think it's uh I I don't think it's extremely important. I don't know how much it's intentional, and I know that some have dual jobs, journalists and combatants. I don't to me that's not the most important thing. To me, it's just the sheer destruction uh of Gaza while the civilian population is stuck within Gaza. And it's beyond that, right? It's not just the airstrike campaigns uh and our our lack of proper evacuations, it's also the destruction of a lot of vital civilian infrastructure. So we did systematically destroy cropland, water, and electricity infrastructure. There was a severe diminishing of um health care system. So at a time when the healthcare system needs to be as highly functioning as possible, its ability to function was greatly diminished. Um we turned large swaths of Gaza into no-go zones where uh some units it was permissible to shoot women and anyone on site, including women and children. Like this is just unheard of, and this is completely unprecedented. Uh Israel was engaging in un you know unprecedented levels of proportionality. We know from whistleblowers that it was permissible to kill uh 20, 20 civilians for a junior militant and over 100 for a senior militant. This again, we we don't see evidence of the U.S. doing this in Iraq, Assad doing this in Syria, uh, Russia doing this. We're just not seeing this as a normal war practice. Uh in Gaza, there's been 1,500 families that have been wiped off the face of the earth, entirely unprecedented. Um the Israel, you know, we always hear Hamas uses human shields, but they don't really say what they mean by that. If by human human shields you mean tunnel infrastructure, then sure, but that's not really what human shields means. Um but Israel actually uses human shields, right? Israel actually has uh we saw a policy where I don't know if it's a policy, but we just saw a few units uh taking civilians and sending them into homes to see if they're booby trapped. Uh one one instance was a 70-plus-year-old man who for hours was being sent into home after home to see if he was booby-trapped. Eventually the unit released him. A few minutes later, he was shot dead by another unit. This report is actually significant because it shows two units operating side by side, both engaging in in some degree of war crimes, um, not letting uh food, water, and aid in for months at a time. Again, this is not normal conduct in in war.

SPEAKER_00 2:23:39

It's just not what one thing I'll say is um I think this war has been the most transparent war probably in human history. And uh we can you know it gives us an inside look at the horrors of war compared to like Russia, Ukraine, and some of these other wars that are going on even today. I don't think we're getting the same transparency. Who knows what we would find there? Um, you know, it's a horror show, all of war. I can't respond to all these, but I I would again one one sit down. I'd love to just debate with you about the Gaza War. I'm happy to debate the whole thing inside and out. Because right now I feel like uh press for time, we might go down 10 different rabbit holes about the whole thing. But yeah, you know, in terms of Israel's conduct conduct of the war and Israel going on, I I I overall think it's done a pretty good job overall. And look, I mean, I uh just in terms of Zionism, going back to our point and everything, and you know, my support of Zionism is just the world we live in, we have to protect human rights. I think Israel's doing that than the better than say the governments in Gaza and the West Bank, just overall. And everybody needs to do a better job, including Israel, including the United States. Um, and that's what I'm advocating for. And I think the more people understand we're all humans and we all have human rights, then so things will start to improve. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:55

How can you say Israel's done a good job protecting human rights when they've killed 2% of all children in Gaza and when the West Bank has been under an indefinite military occupation, what people who don't have their rights? Like, is that do you see that as a good protection of human rights? I I think Israel currently is one of the worst violators of human rights.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:15

Uh well, first I would I pointed out earlier. I first put those deaths at the hands of Hamas because their their obligation is to protect their constituents' rights, or the people that are operating under them. They have the obligation to protect the rights of their people. Israel's doing theirs. So, number one, it is Hamas. But I do agree.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:33

But there's a concept of like dual culpability, right? It's not we we we have this concept in society. It's not that you could have more than one party responsible, but if rights are meant to be inalienable, why should a foreign government be able to violate the rights of a people? Like, even if they're not your citizens, you should still respect their inalienable rights.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:52

Yeah, so my I I would do want to see a full investigation, and I think we'll know over time just everything that went on in this war and all the accusations of what was done wrong and what was done right. Um, I I think Israel, I don't know if they do they hand out leaflets in like Ukraine. I don't know. I I think that that's yeah, yeah, I think the US does.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:13

I think the whole John Spencer bullshit that like other countries don't do leaflets. Uh Russia did do evacuation orders for sure. Uh I mean even even with all the and again, I uh like Russia is the aggressor here, uh, very much so. Even though I do I do think that uh NATO actions did increase uh instigate Russia, Russia is the aggressor here. I I am not supportive of Russia in any way, shape, or form. Um but generally enemies of the West, you're gonna hear the most severe propagandized version of what they do, and then allies of the West, you're gonna get the softest, most charitable version. So uh a simple Google search is gonna tell you the the least charitable things about Russia, and yet you're gonna see that they did uh issue evacuation orders.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:01

Okay, fair enough, which is good.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:02

And this show I do not I do not support Russia's uh invasion of Ukraine in any way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:08

Yeah, same. Um, so no, and it's good. I'm glad Russia to hear that Russia was handing out leaflets, but I think there was there Israel did take precautions to limit civilian casualties. That happened, and I don't know why. And that's one thing I'd like to you know get to more research more of why were there all these civilian deaths. Um, and yeah, that could be something a topic for another time. Yes, I couldn't give you a full answer right now of why you know the numbers, but I I want to get to the bottom of it. I will research it.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:36

All good. I had a great I had a great chat. Uh this was fun. This was a really good time. There's a crew here on Discord. Uh, they might want to continue the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:45

Normally they do, but um uh they can I do need to jump, but I mean I'd be happy to do it just to win another time and just do full QA the whole time, just hear what they have to say and feedback and go back and forth. Lots of options.

unknown 2:27:59

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:59

I'm surprised we went this long, by the way. When I got on, I was like, Oh, I'm tired. It's 7:38 a.m. here I might make it half an hour, and we went for two and a half hours.

SPEAKER_01 2:28:06

I can't believe we went for two and a half hours. Conversations are energizing. I do see one thing. Uh they are a trish. You're saying what's the number? Adar, what what number are you referring to? I don't know when you asked that, so I'm not sure I know exactly what you're talking about. But let me know what number you're referring to, and I'll answer. Uh the conversation will continue on Discord, so I'm gonna drop uh a link here um in the chat for anybody who wants to join. And maybe I'll even join back after dinner, after Shabbat dinner. Um dun. And with that, and James, stand because I just didn't I want to say say something to you offline.

SPEAKER_00 2:28:41

But uh of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:28:42

And and James, if people want to follow your work, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 2:28:46

Uh just you can follow me on my ex James Delmore 1. I couldn't get the James Delmore handle, but you can follow me on X, uh, James Delmore 1. Uh I just created a sub stack, and you know, I have a website, JamesDelmore.com, but that's a lot of my crypto work. So probably James my ex James Delmore 1.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:02

Yeah, I'll put a link to your Twitter account in uh in the Oh wait, actionable freedom. You're saying rip your question. I I missed it. What what's what's the question? Happy to happy to answer real quick, but oh uh Trey's you're saying what's the death toll number? Well, we have 72,000 confirmed deaths. Um probably there's a margin of error of around 5%, so maybe max 5% are shouldn't be there, whether it's natural deaths or other causes. Uh, but then you have some number of indirect deaths, you know, uh malnutrition, disease. Uh we don't know plausibly, some of them are on the list, but again, uh indirect deaths like natural deaths overwhelmingly impact very young and very old, and we're not seeing unusual spikes in the data of those age groups. So we don't know how many natural death, uh indirect deaths there are. Um, and also you still have some number buried under rubble. Some, you know, Hamas says there's 10,000 missing. Based on the recovery rate in Gaza so far, it doesn't seem like there's 10,000 missing. So I would say, you know, death toll between 72,000 to 100,000 uh is is probably uh a fair a fair range. The thing with indirect deaths, sometimes they they continue for many years after because just collapse of the infrastructure, um uh inhaling asbestos increases cancer rates. The the real way to measure deaths is over time uh by looking at excess deaths. So there's around 9,000 natural deaths in Gaza a year. We should look at what the natural deaths are over the next few years. And again, should this be included in casualty data? Uh unclear, that's up for debate. But generally, indirect deaths are included, right? So if you look at the Holocaust numbers, it's not six million dead from actual being killed by in gas chambers or executions, it's something like one and a half million one and a half million of the six million uh died of disease or some other indirect causes related to uh their conditions. Um, actionable freedom. You're asking about vision movement. Um that that's too that's a whole uh can of worms. I've had Yehud on a few times, though. I I I know him, I I think he has a very interesting perspective. Even consider him a friend. Uh, but ask me next time and I'll go deeper into it. Uh and with that, friend, signing off. Uh join Discord if you want to continue. Until next time. Signing out from the beautiful gallery and the beautiful land of