The Great Debate: Israel v Palestine | Candace Ep 10
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All right, guys, welcome to another episode. This is going to be a really great discussion between Ami Kozak and Dave Smith. I'm excited just to have two Jewish comedians on because I will tell you one thing that has been lost in this Israel versus Palestine issue, Jewish humor. People used to be so funny. Jewish people used to be so funny they could take a joke. It was the one thing we had in common, the blacks and the Jews. But now all that's gone because people are way too serious.

Well, I'm very glad that these two guests will be able to have what I hope to be a meaningful discussion. And if anything, what I want you to take away is that speech matters. More speech, not less. That's what we have coming up on Candace.

All right, guys, I promised you we were going to have such a great discussion today. I'm very much looking forward to it because I've already had a discussion with these two individuals, and they were actually productive on this topic. And there has been a lot of nonsense and a lot of emotion. But I think that these two individuals are going to have a good discussion.

I think it's also important to say, because you hear people say, oh, I'm moderating the discussion. I don't have an opinion. You guys already know my opinion. You guys know that I've had Dave Smith on and that I agree with him on foreign policy. So to keep this discussion productive, I'm just going to be as quiet as possible. Not an easy task for me. Not an easy task at all. But I don't want I want to make sure that we're not accidentally tipping the scales. And occasionally I'm just going to say bad and mean stuff to Dave Smith just to make it make

Make it easy. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Candice. Thank you. And congratulations on the success of the new show. It's awesome to see.

Whoop, whoop, we can't cancel Candace. So Ami, I do want to start with you because you and I had an offline discussion about really how not productive my discussion was with other people that I had on the show that I was not intending to. People were upset with me thinking that I had sort of intentionally had on like a rabid pro-Israel voice. I'm going after Rabbi Shmuley and most people agree left and right that he's a, you know, an interesting person, so to speak.

And the truth was, I was really only having Rabbi Barclay on because he had personally written an article about me, not because I think that he's the most logical pro-Israel voice or that he gets it right all the time. I don't think he does. So I do want to offer you an opportunity right here at the beginning. We're seeing right now the media sort of saying that any critique of Israel as a foreign nation kind of registers as a critique of

all Jews across the world, which makes it easy to call people anti-Semitic if they disagree with Bibi Netanyahu. So I just want to hear your take on that.

Sure. Yes. Thank you. I think that there's always a better way I maintain when there's disagreements to lend themselves to conversations and coming in good faith and understanding your opponent's positions actually and actually what they've said before coming into any conversation. So there's conversations you've had since our conversation that I want to clear up. But also with regard to with regard to criticism.

It's not that any criticism of Israel is being labeled as antisemitic, but the point is that

There's a lot of disproportionate criticism, the signaling out the double standard that Israel is being subjected to. That is grounds for that, I do believe. And I think that there is a catch-22 that happens in the antisemitism game, where someone can make an incendiary comment, an antisemitic remark, and then the Jewish community calls it out. And they say, "Well, you see, Jews are trying to control me. You see, they're trying to control the speech."

And so it almost becomes an impossible task to combat effectively. And I said this in our last conversation that to call things that are not anti-Semitic, anti-Semitic is incredibly unproductive and wrong. And it's almost like a cry wolf scenario. But when we do see things that are anti-Semitic and we call it out or problematic comments that embolden anti-Semitism, a catch 22 forms where I've seen it all over Twitter too, where people say disgusting things about Jews.

They couch it sometimes in criticism of Israel. And no one can deny that there's a lot of anti-Semites that disguise themselves in anti-Zionist rhetoric. And they say these things. And then when the Jewish community calls it out because they say these Jews are trying to control our narrative, control our speech, then we call it out. They say, you see, you see, you see, and then proceed to double down. And it just continues to spiral. So it leaves the voices who want to speak out productively and constructively about this fairly stuck.

And in a world post-October 7th, when we see a rise of anti-Semitic incidences simply because Israel is in a war, and then you see thousands of people, mobs of crowds in the street cheering Intifada revolution, Al-Qassam, here are your next targets, protesting at the Nova exhibit where Jews were slaughtered on October 7th. I was there two hours before that with a cohort of comedians visiting. When you're seeing these things, and then you see a rise of anti-Semitism, it's

I think rhetoric that contributes to that, we need to be able to open our ears and eyes to understand that being aware of these things and calling it out is not trying to control or censor. And it is a real thing, even though in the past it may have been an exaggeration. What do you think, Dave? Well, I guess I agree to some extent. I mean, I think that there's certainly, like I see a lot of Jew-hating stuff on Twitter.

And I do think that you when you're Jewish, you kind of can't you can't win like you make a fair point there. It's like, you know, I've heard there was one thing that I got tagged in where it was like, you know, like a whole list of like political commentators with the star of Jewish of David.

you know, behind it. And it was like, first off, they just got a bunch wrong. Like a bunch of people who just aren't Jewish were put on there. But then they had like me and Glenn Greenwald and Max Blumenthal and like a bunch of other people. And you're like, yeah, but we're all like the sharpest critics of Israel. And they're like, yeah, but you see, that's the Jewish game. It's like you control both sides of the... So it just becomes this thing where it's like,

Oh, OK. So if I was pro-Israel, that's proof that there's a Jewish conspiracy. If I'm critical of Israel, that's also proof that there's a Jewish conspiracy. So my feeling on that is just kind of it's a it's a losing game and I find it stupid. And I just yeah, I mean, I totally don't like seeing that stuff. I do think that.

The difference is that these are kind of, for the most part, random Twitter comments, and it's hard to know what's really going on there. Is this somebody trolling? Is this a 15-year-old? I mean, like, I have no idea what it really is behind that. Whereas when it comes to actual people who are known, who are making these arguments, I don't... I just don't see...

Almost anybody. I mean, I don't know, you know, correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe there's someone I'm not thinking of, but I see people like Candace who from everything I've seen bends over backward to be like, hey, I am not talking about Jews here. I have nothing but love for Jewish people. I've grown up around Jewish people. I see that's what I see for the most part that people that then still just get called.

anti-Semitic. And so, you know, I do, where I would probably disagree a little bit is that I think the idea that if you are critical, I mean, look, Douglas Murray just had a debate at the monk debate the other day. His argument is that being anti-Zionist is being anti-Semitic. And it's, it's remarkable to watch people like Douglas Murray, uh,

Just become woke leftists when they talk. Well, anti-Semitism is a shape-shifting virus. And if you say anything critical of Israel now, you now own the entire history of hating Jewish people or something like that. The truth is that there definitely is more criticism of Israel than there are of other countries.

Other governments, other countries. Far worse governments, too, I would say. Yeah, but there's also perhaps there's also a lot of reasons why that's the case other than the fact that it's a Jewish state.

And we could get into what all of those are, but you could talk about worse governments. There is something very unique about the relationship between the United States of America and Israel as it pertains to our foreign policy, particularly over the last 20 years, which has been catastrophic for not just our nation, but every nation involved. There's also something different about a war, which I hesitate to even use the word at times because I'm not sure that's the correct term.

for what we've seen over the last eight months. There's, I don't know if I can think of another example around the world, again, correct me if I'm wrong, where a captive, permanently stateless refugee group of people are just being isolated

just mass slaughtered. A group of people who do not have a military of their own, do not have a government of their own, are completely captive and have been ruled by Israel since 1967. That's also unique. And so I think there's a lot at work here. I'm not going to argue that people hating Jews is not an element at all amongst anyone.

But at the same time, it's like if you are for border restrictions, you might attract some people who don't much like Mexicans. And if you're for DEI, you're going to attract some people who don't much like white people. And if you're critical of Israel, you also probably will attract some people who don't like Jews. All of this to me is kind of irrelevant to the real question, which is,

What Israel is doing to Gaza over the last eight months and whether or not this is acceptable and whether or not we should be funding and arming this conflict? That's a great, great question. And I would love to hear Ami's response to it. You know, when you and I first spoke, Ami, it was only a few weeks, I think, after October 7th. And I think that we had a really great discussion. Somehow I was still called anti-Semitic after it. And I was going, I thought that was such a productive discussion. I learned so much and I thought it was good and healthy for people to

for people to hear the pro-Israel side. - I was called a lot of things in the comments too, but fair enough. - Yeah, yeah, they just sort of like, I thought it did both of us a disservice. I was very proud of the discussion because I was coming from it in very good faith and I know that you were as well. And so I think that much has changed, I think. People were floating around, this is a genocide, I don't think that matters, we don't need to get hung up on the verbiage. Do you believe that the response to the October 7th attacks

has been equal, overboard, and also what would you say is an equal or an overboard response? Well, first of all, Dave, I know I'll just say, I know you wanted to debate Douglas Murray, but here you have him. It's the next best thing, okay? Everything Dave said is utter nonsense from the get-go. People of your ilk. But anyway, you know, that's what happens when you get two comedians on a talk series. Well, yeah, for you, maybe. Anyway, Dave.

I'm a huge Douglas Murray fan, and I think he did an awesome job. But for the record, I'll just say this. A couple of things just to what Dave said, and then I'll address your question, Candace, because I think, Dave, would you concede that this, you know, you don't like the word war. I don't like the word conflict because I think there's a fundamental flaw in presuming that Israel and its enemies are

And I'm using this word carefully. Moral equals in the sense in terms of the values that Israel tries to uphold, the state it tries to create, which confuses me about your position in the sense that you're someone who is always fighting for individual rights and sovereignty and that these governments, the purpose of government in and of itself is to...

is to protect those rights to the best of its ability. That's what its primary function is. And to the extent, to the degree to which Israel does that better than any other area in the region, I would think that at least morally, sympathetically, um, your, your solidarity or whatever you want to call it, your advocacy, your opinion on this would lie more

more so with what Israel has to go through because it's fighting regimes that do not share any of those values at all. Any of our values that are here today in terms of tolerance, individual rights, these kinds of things that Israel, although it's imperfect, is a Western democracy. So it always shocks me when I see people who are principled in your position not see that or side with that. And I know you haven't fully condemned Israel fully, but like

and I've seen other interviews where you do defend what Israel's, you know, the virtues of Israel, but at the same time, I always find that very surprising because the values that you uphold and say are fighting for on behalf of the Palestinians, it doesn't seem to me that they're regimes that represent them and a lot of people in those populations don't uphold those values themselves or those desires themselves. So seeing it through a Western American lens is,

There's a hierarchy of values here, and it seems that the real motivating factor in this war is it's not a geographical or political dispute or a conflict that presumes two sides are fighting as moral equals, but rather an ideological one in which Israel is fighting regimes that are genocidal, that wish to see its destruction because it's a Jewish state, because of...

Not just the, not just it as a Jewish state, but Jews worldwide. And they've been very explicit about that. So it confuses me that we impose this idea that everybody just wants the same thing and we have to just work this out, you know, as a geographical dispute with all that messy history. What's always seemed to me been animating this before any occupation of any territory even existed was a deep seated hatred for Jews, the Jewish people and the Jewish state. So even if people critical of Israel aren't anti-Jewish, the people Israel's directly fighting certainly are.

Um, okay. That's, that is interesting. So I only want to say that because I, I did have, and I'm interjecting here. I did have a conversation with someone who, whose parents were forced out in, I want to say 1945. Is that the correct year? 48. And it definitely, um,

I don't think every person that has an issue with Israel is being guided necessarily by this idea that it's just Jewish people. I mean, some of these people were actually living there and had accepted Jewish refugees into their home. One Palestinian is coming to mind, Mohammad Hadid, who—

they were allowing these refugees to live there for two years. They went out one day, came back, and the locks were changed. And they said—this is, again, I'm telling you what Mohammed Hadid told me. "You're not allowed to come back here. Your home is being taken over. If you come back, they will shoot you and kill you." So I think some people are being motivated by what they perceive to be the historical injustice. Do you think that that's a fair assessment to say that some people aren't just looking at this as these are the Jews, they're looking at this as these are people who took our homeland, and it's not fair?

Or do you think that it's changed over the years? I think what's always fundamentally not like there are marginal issues and there are fundamental issues. And I'm not denying that innocent Palestinians suffered as a result of all this. And I think, you know, you could play a suffering Olympics all day long and keep going back and keep playing this game all day over who, you know, atrocities that have been committed across the board throughout history. That's not unique to the foundations and formings of any state. But I think that, um, um,

as far as what's fundamental here is not that there's this thirst and desire to create a Palestinian state, but rather to destroy the Jewish one. Dave? Okay, let me address a bunch of that stuff. So I think, look, when you say, okay, so like I'm a libertarian and I believe in freedom and government should, if it exists at all, only be there to protect property and natural rights. So-

Look, if you were to say, like, let's compare the United States of America to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which society would I rather live in? Which society do I think is more moral? Which government, you know, was less oppressive? Okay. Obviously, the answer is the United States of America, but or at least to its own people were probably a lot more oppressive to other countries. But, um,

But that's totally irrelevant to whether I'd have solidarity with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The question is, who's right in this conflict? Were you justified in invading and destroying and killing a million people there? And the answer is no. And so it doesn't matter. Like, it's just totally irrelevant to the conflict. Now, it's not irrelevant to how you feel about the country as a whole. But if you're talking about the war in Iraq, I'm not going to go like, well, you know,

You know, George W. Bush is not as brutal as Saddam Hussein, therefore I have some solidarity with him. It's like, no, he's destroying a nation of people. He has no right to do this. And by the way, he's also greatly degrading my country. Now, as far as the rest of your characterization of Israel, I just, I think it's totally unfair and not in line with the history. And it's kind of circular reasoning. Like, you're like, well, but don't you...

You know, Israel's the good guy, so how come you don't support the good guy? Wouldn't you be more sympathetic to them because they're the good guy? It's like, well, no, but that's... Look, Israel is not a Western democracy. They're just not. And they don't get to play this card anymore. Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.

They haven't occupied them for a few months after a war or even a few years after the war. They've occupied them for nearly 60 years, for longer than the Soviet Union occupied all of Eastern Europe. And none of the people in those territories have any voting rights whatsoever. So how can you call yourself a democracy? By the way, I don't even – I'm not that into democracy. I understand. I don't really care about voting rights.

My beef is that they have no natural rights whatsoever. But you don't get to just hold five million people captive for nearly 60 years with no voting rights and claim to be a democracy. That's an apartheid regime. And so I don't – listen, the fact is – and many – just to your other point because there were a few there. Sure.

Many Israelis at the highest level of government have admitted this for many, many years from Moshe Dayan to Barack, all up and down. A bunch of former prime ministers have admitted it was Ehud Barak who said, if I was a young Palestinian, I'd be a terrorist too. And it's not because they are just –

all possessed by evil and Jew hatred. The truth is that the creation of Israel, however you feel about it, involved three quarters of a million Palestinians being kicked off of their land. And

Then, after 1967, they've been occupied by a foreign military ever since. It is the most human thing in the world that you would develop hatred for the people who did that to you. There is no group of people anywhere, including the three of us, who would not develop a burning hatred for the foreign military that is policing your streets—

Kidnapping your people whenever they feel like it, killing your people with zero consequences. I mean, you know, imagine the you know, this government, look, the Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu's party, which is he is the longest serving prime minister in the history of Israel, was was founded by who?

Menachem Begin, a literal terrorist. That's what Israel did with their terrorists. They elected them prime minister. Who wouldn't? How could you possibly live in Gaza or the West Bank and not hate Israel? OK, I can I.

Sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. So there's a lot there. I mean, I appreciate we're letting each other go for a little while because I appreciate your perspective. But you mentioned the word invasion. And if we bring it to here and now and we talk about what happened on October 7th, because we are talking about this current military campaign, just to kind of hone in on specific points in history for a minute, because we can deliberate all of the history that you mentioned and alluded to, and it can take up three hours. But if we're just talking about here and now, right now, and trying to solve these problems...

On October 7th, who invaded who? And did they invade occupied territory or did they invade sovereign kibbutzim of individuals and deliberately target their civilians because they were Jews? Let's remember the terrorist that called his parents on October 7th, and they have an audio recording of it.

saying, mommy, mommy, daddy, daddy. He didn't say, I got our house back. I got our property back. Guess what? I liberated Palestine. He said, mom, dad, I killed 10 Jews with my bare hands. And they scream in pride and elation. They took Israeli babies that are still being held hostage today. The reason they're doing it because they're animated by Jew hatred. And I think to be naive to that is incredibly dangerous. And it misses the entire...

the motivation behind what Israel's facing, this occupation of these places that you mentioned, first of all, Israel leaving Gaza in 2005, 2006, leaving it to every effort, in other words, for Israel to give land back and minimize what you call the occupation, which I think is a false term, and we can talk about that, because occupation refers to

one sovereign nation illegally occupying an existing sovereign nation of which there was no such thing when it came to Palestine. I know the geography was called Palestine. And I say that just as a point of preference to say that a lot of the language in this conversation is deceptive. It's not just a propagandistic talking point, but I think saying terms like that

gives people this false narrative impression that a sovereign state of Palestine that was independent and had its own leadership and its own independence was usurped by Israel in what you alluded to today, leaving out what actually happened in the formation of Israel in that the refugee crisis was largely caused by the fact that a lot of the Arab nations did not want the creation of a Jewish state and sought to destroy it upon its formation.

And so we can't just start the story in the middle. So fundamentally, you can say it's the occupation that's leading to all this terrorism. And I know you're not excusing the actions of the terrorists, as some people have tried to throw your way. I'm not saying you're saying that, but you're saying that there's a context here. And I would say, yeah, it didn't start on October 7th, but it didn't start in 67 or 48 either. There were massacres of Jews in the 20s in Hebron. There were massacres and tensions between these two people and hatred going on.

In the Islamic world, going back to the beginning, if you go to protest today and you hear chants in Arabic, they're not saying two states side by side, liberation for the West Bank, for a free state of Palestine alongside Israel. They're saying, "Kheibar Kheibar Yar Yehud." And what is that reference to? Kheibar Kheibar Yar Yehud? The battle of Kheibar in which Muhammad came across the Jews and he gave them a choice, convert to Islam or submit and become dhimmis and second class citizens.

And this is what's animated the entire region and the expulsion of Jews throughout all of the Arab countries in the Arab world. And so the need for a sense of Jewish safety in the region, I think, is super important and not to be discounted. And my fundamental point is that I do not think it's occupation that leads to terrorism. It's terrorism that leads to occupation. In other words, the only reason these things perpetuate is because Israel is continually attacked.

And if you want the solution to stop, you have to have goodwill on the Palestinian side to commit to not wanting to kill the Jews in Israel and attack them. And I think leaving Gaza in 2005 was a perfect example of that. What did happen? I know you've heard these points before, Dave, that greenhouses and infrastructure were left there. Hamas takes over, kills their political opponents, fellow Muslims, Fatah.

and establishes a terrorist statelet using all the international aid and funding to fire rockets and attack at Israel, invade Israel on October 7th, breaking a ceasefire. So accountability, I'm not denying suffering of what you're talking about for local populations, but who's accountable for that? And at a certain point, you can't say Israel is. Okay, so thank you so much. And I want to ask a question back to you, Ami, Dave. I know you're going to have a lot to respond to with that. But again, I am, I want to be very clear that

Of the three of us, I know the least about the history, which is why I think it's important to let you two talk. I do keep hearing this point over and over again that it wasn't a state, meaning this was just some territory. But people lived here. And my family is St. Tomian. And I just think they've lived in generations upon generations in St. Thomas. It's not officially a state. It's a U.S. territory.

So is your thought process—I guess we're talking about Puerto Rico or we're talking about St. Thomas—that if the U.S. wanted to right now, they could say, "Hey, we're giving St. Thomas to Jewish people in Israel. Give up your houses. We're not going to give you any money. Get out or you'll get shot"?

And then your thought process is, hey, listen, you're not a nation. Like, you're not a nation. It's like this. I know you've been living here for a long time. Could you clarify that? Sure. I am not saying that. And I'm not saying there. I think the whole essence of creating Israel in a 1947 partition plan is

was that there were native peoples living there, Jewish and Arab alike, and no one disputes that native people live there. I'm simply dispelling a false narrative, and I think a lot of people fall into that who aren't informed on this issue when you talk to people, that there was this prosperous, free, independent state of Palestine with its own sovereignty,

not in the context of under a British mandate and previously under an Ottoman Empire, and at a time when the whole region was being carved up by the Western powers and figuring out what to do with the native peoples where there was tension. I'm not disputing that they were present, but I'm just...

I'm saying it to be very precise in getting the history right, because I think it's often misrepresented. And I don't know what Dave feels about that, but I'm being very particular and narrow in specifying that because I think a lot of this conversation about this topic is so co-opted by false words and language that's very confusing and deceptive.

But you would agree that telling people that have purchased a home and are living there irrespective of the politics that they have to get out without even giving them money, because I actually was very surprised when they didn't get anything in return. I thought maybe they wrote him a check and were like, get out. We would I think we would all principally agree that that

That first thing is wrong morally. Do you agree with that or not really? Yeah, I can understand that position, but I'm just saying at the time, the reason for a refugee crisis, and we can debate the history and our accounts of this, is that

If you accept that there's also a Jewish legitimate claim to the ancestral homeland in Israel and a priority to create a Jewish safe haven for Jews, given what had happened to Jews historically in Nazi Germany and the Arab world, not at the expense of local populations and to displace them. The reason they were displaced is because of a refusal to accept a Jewish state and Jewish sovereignty. And what followed were

attack after attack after attack from the surrounding Arab nations with the aim of destroying the Jewish state, not with the aim of creating free Palestine. Okay. Thank you so much for clarifying that. And I want to let you, Dave, now reply. I know, sorry, he said a lot. And then I just wanted to, because I'm also, I'm learning with you guys. So I'm kind of going to ask questions. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, as far as the idea that there wasn't a Palestinian state, I just, I do find this to just be one of the weakest arguments. I mean, human beings have natural rights. This is the

The foundation of Western civilization is that your rights are not derived from whether or not you have a government and that people were there. People were living in those homes. They had homesteaded the area. They had property rights. They had natural rights. And they were violently evicted from the place that they had been living for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years, and deported.

That that's wrong. And this is there's really no dispute here, because even if some of them just fled, which is true, some of them fled, some of them were violently evicted. Some of them fled because they saw how violently evicted others were, but they weren't allowed to return. And Israel had no right to do that. But do you do you agree that there didn't exist? I just just to get clarification, do you agree that there didn't exist a sovereign state of Palestine in the way we recognize countries today?

Yeah, but that's not even a debatable point. Yes, that's true. I think a lot of people think that. I think a lot of people do think that. I'm saying I think it's completely irrelevant. I understand. Yes, it's true that there wasn't a sovereign government known as Palestine. They were ruled by the British under the League of Nations mandate. And then before that, for 400 years or so, they were ruled by the Ottoman Empire. All of that is irrelevant to me, and especially in the United States of America, it's just

kind of, you know, like this was like the Putin logic that he opened his Tucker Carlson show with something about, you know, like who has historic claim over these different territories. I guess the British have historic claim over us, but we don't care because we wrote the Declaration of Independence and said, screw you. We're not doing that anymore. We have rights. God gave them to us. But there's a bunch of stuff here that I want to talk about. So the

Again, the question isn't whether they had a state or not. The question is that Israel has been militarily occupying these people. Now, in 1947, when the UN had their partition recommendation, they made a recommendation. The General Assembly had no authority whatsoever to just go around carving up countries and deciding whose territory was what. They made a recommendation. And then the Zionist settlers decided to violently enforce that.

Now, obviously, a lot of people, the Palestinians rejected it and for very legitimate reasons. In hindsight, maybe it would have been better if they accepted that. Maybe not. However, they were granted 54% of the land in this recommendation. After the war in 1948, they took 78% of the land.

After the war in 1967, they took 100% of it. What every single peace proposal has been based around, going all the way back to the first Camp David, through the Oslo Accords, through Camp David in 2000, to every time there's been a serious negotiation about a two-state solution, it's always been that last 22%.

You're talking about Gaza and the West Bank. No one, aside from what some dumb college student might be hollering or what someone on Twitter might say, there has never been a serious conversation about from the river to the sea, about the Palestinians actually get, even the right of return stuff is always whittled down to like a very small number of Palestinians who could maybe come back to where they used to live. But we're talking about the final 22% that Israel has apt

Absolutely no claim to. No claim. That's what Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas believe. From the river to the sea. Israel's fighting.

I'm sorry. I just want to point of clarification. Okay, one second. Hamas has actually in the past agreed – said they recognize Israel under 1967 borders. That may not be what they're saying right now at the moment, but just to be clear, they have said that before. Again, I'm not just talking about the dreams of some terrorist group that can never come true. Osama bin Laden also wanted worldwide Sharia law.

That wasn't probably gonna happen though, okay? So anyway, this is what's been going on in every single negotiation. The entire global community, including every single United States president of my lifetime,

knows that Israel has no claim to that last 22%. It is not theirs. It's not theirs to give. It ought not be their decision whether the Palestinians get a state or not. It's not their territory. That's why they're the occupying force. Now, I just want to mention, because this is something that I know the pro-Israel side always loves to brag about, that, well, we disengaged.

With Gaza in 2005. A little interesting note about that that very rarely comes up is that Benjamin Netanyahu resigned over the disengagement. This was in Sharon's government, and he resigned over it because he was so against it. So, by the way, the guy who's in there now, the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, resigned over this disengagement. Well, because it worked out so well, Dave, in the long run? No, no, no. To disengage? No, he resigned –

when they did it. - Yeah, he was against doing it. And how did it work out to disengage from Gaza for Israel's security? - Hold on, hold on. Why do you think they did it? - What's that?

Why did they do it? Why did they disengage from Gaza? They pulled out 8,000 people from Gaza because it wasn't worth the protection of that settlement to give an experiment in good faith and goodwill to see if a palatine-steading state could be created? Okay, let me read you a quote. Go ahead. Okay, this is Doug Weissglass, who was the senior advisor to Sharon and his government when they pulled out of Gaza. Here's why they did it. Quote,

The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders, Jerusalem. Effectively, the whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.

all of this with authority and permission, all with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. Of course, he's speaking about our government, not the Israeli government. I continue with the quote. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians. The disengagement plan makes it possible for

Israel to part conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians. You know, you mentioned that they pulled out 8,000 settlers or so. I think it was a little bit more than that, 8,500, something in that ballpark. And the graves. Hold on. That same year they put 15,000 in the West Bank.

So this was never... Now, by the way, they also... So they pulled the IDF forces out of Gaza and put them all on the perimeter. They still controlled the amount of food, the amount of construction supplies, the amount of medical supplies that could come in. They controlled the airspace, the sea space.

This is why all the international human rights organizations all say the occupation never ended. In fact, life actually got worse for the people living in Gaza. But just to be very clear, the Israelis were very explicit in their own words. They did this to...

dead the peace process which they had agreed to to see through because the Americans as well as the entire global community was like, you gotta stop eventually. You can't just occupy these people forever. You just did something inadvertently I can't let you get away with when you read me a quote of one person and then said the Israelis did this. There were a lot of people that were for the disengagement because they genuinely believed that if we cede land to the Palestinians to give their own right to

attempt to self-determine and form a state, then we will get more peace. And every attempt Israel has made to do that has led to more bloodshed and terrorism against Israel following Oslo Accords, Second Intifada. And as we've seen now, what happened in the last 18 years in Gaza, you cannot blame Israel for... Wait, wait, I didn't interrupt. You cannot blame Israel... You did, but okay, keep going. Once. I gave you one. I'll give you one.

You cannot blame Israel for a culture that is bred within Gaza, raising children every day in kindergarten, as young as kindergarten, that they should aspire to become Shahids and martyrs, and they should live the day that they can go into an Israeli cafe in Tel Aviv and blow themselves up. That is what they've been doing. You cannot blame Israel for all the international aid that's coming to Gaza, that instead of being used to invest in infrastructure and build up a prosperous state alongside Israel, instead we're investing in terrorist tunnels, terrorist activities,

and destroying any chance of an actual free, prosperous society. You can't blame Israel for wanting to secure its border. And you can understand why they would be cautious when pulling out of Gaza. And look at what happened 18 years later. I think you're always starting the story in the middle. You're saying, well, they pulled out and they were cautious in securing the border and monitoring things.

and that's what caused the terrorism. No, they were monitoring things because they were smuggling rockets into Israel in order to attack them and using all the aid and materials to build rockets and weapons to constantly attack and deliberately attack Israeli civilians.

Every rocket fired at Israel is indiscriminate with the intention of killing Israelis and maximizing civilian casualties. And so I think this moral equivalency that's being done is really disturbing to me in the sense that Israel is not doing those things, even though there's a disproportionate in terms of the numbers we can get into those details. But the point is...

the disengagement, there may have been politicians who said, oh, this will cause this, this will do this. We can benefit from this in such and such way. But you're taking all the agency away from the actual terrorist regimes that took over and sought to destroy Israel as explicitly stated in their charter. How can Israel be called the one who doesn't have the moral high ground here when they're fighting against regimes that took over with the explicit goal of wiping out Israel and all of the Jews? I don't care what they said. Something in 67 is some kind of tack

tactic to try to get world pressure off of them. But they benefit from this kind of apologists for what they're doing. I think for saying that it's all Israel, it's all Israel's responsibility. This occupation is perpetuated simply because of Israel.

It's perpetuated because of Israeli security needs. That's why it's perpetuated. You're doing a lot of arguing with straw men here and not anything that I actually said. So number one, I didn't pick a quote from some random Israeli. I picked a quote from Sharon's senior advisor explaining why they embarked on the policy that they did. He didn't say, this is what I like about the disengagement plan. He said, this is the purpose of the disengagement plan. I'm sorry if you had, I don't know,

Paul Wolfowitz on record telling you this is why the George W. Bush administration did something. That's not the same thing as just like some guy in Kansas said it. I didn't just pick some random Israeli. I picked a senior member of the government as they were doing this.

telling you what the policy was about. And in terms of this, like a lot of these are like the buzzwords that I hear in these debates, moral equivalency. I never said they were the same. In fact, I think Israel's done much worse to the Palestinians than the Palestinians have done to the Israelis. So I'm not saying they're the same at all. And in terms of a...

Well, you can react, it's kind of an objective fact. But look, No, intention and when evaluating morality matters a ton. I mean, if I'm driving Yeah, but you're just assuming what the intention is. I'm reading you the words of what their intentions are. But Dave, if I'm driving in my car and I accidentally lose control of the car, the brakes go out and I kill 10 people.

versus if I'm driving my car and I see one person and I deliberately run over them, the latter case is a much worse human being deserving of condemnation, even though in the first case, more people died. And I think people look at numbers and they say, Israel must be the bad guy here because of the disproportion. Yeah, but this is so disanalogous. I mean, like, yes, obviously there's a difference between vehicular manslaughter and first-degree murder. However... And self-defense and murder, I would say. Yeah, and self-defense. Listen, this is all the stuff. It's like, look, self-defense...

just to be very clear about this here, okay, to break down kind of these terms. If somebody broke into my house...

and points a gun at me, and I shoot and kill that person, I can say, hey, I acted in self-defense. This guy was threatening me. Nobody would argue if an IDF soldier shot one of the Hamas militants on October 7th in Israel, no one would be sitting here going like, oh my God, how could Israel do that? That would be legit self-defense. Don't say nobody, but yeah. Hold on, let me just finish my point here. Now, nobody I think is pretty fair on that, but whatever. Anyway, if someone broke into my house

kills a family member of mine, and then runs out into the world. And I go, I got to go get that guy because I have to defend myself. Now, I might have a right to go get that guy, but that's not self-defense. That's not what self-defense is. That would be justice. That would be revenge. What if he keeps firing at you?

Let me just finish my point, okay? Because you just told me to not interrupt you. So what we're talking about now, even if you're just talking about Israel going and getting the people responsible for October 7th, that's not self-defense. You can call it justice, you can call it revenge, but it's something else. Now, if that person...

who just came over in my house and killed one of my family members, goes back to his house, and I know that his kids, his wife, his aunt, his grandma are all in there, and I say, "I'm gonna blow up the house and kill all of them, 'cause I wanna get that one guy who came over here and killed somebody," I have committed not vehicular manslaughter, but murder in the first degree.

Cold-blooded murder, okay? So I'm just saying, I know things are a little bit different when we're talking about different countries, even though Gaza is not exactly a country, but I'm just saying invoking self-defense to justify what is actually murder in the first degree is just pure trickery. Like, that's not a real comment on what's going on. I think it is. I can explain it. You're not dealing with anyone's real objection. Okay, go ahead. Yeah.

Yeah, I would say you're stopping the continuation of things. It's not just going into the house. And this really boils down to a lot of this conversation boils down to the morality of war to begin with, because it's not just a bunch of random individuals fighting. We have governments that have a responsibility to seek out justice and defend their citizens. And I would say it's not just somebody committing a violent act against you, but threatening to do so over and over again. And under that duress,

a threat of violence is just as justified to defend yourself as actual violence in real time. Would you agree to that? - No, not necessarily. - If I put a gun up and I say, I'm gonna shoot you and I'm gonna keep doing it, you have a right to defend yourself. - Right, but if a homeless guy on the street goes, I'm gonna kill you and your whole family, and I just murder that guy, you'd be like, no, that's not justified just 'cause he made some threat that he has no ability to follow through on. And so, no, it's not. - I understand that, but I'm just,

Yes, to continue my point, it's not that they just commit this act and then go back to their business. If they stay in that family's house, outfit the windows of that house so that they can successfully shoot RPGs at soldiers trying to do special operations and trying to gather intelligence, and they use these houses and create military installations out of these homes...

then you do have the right to, that is self-defense and blaming Hamas for putting these people in harm's way, for implicating themselves and embedding themselves and exploiting that asymmetry. And Israel makes efforts to minimize civilian casualties, but it's not accountable to Israel to do that when it is fighting a war defense. It's a good,

First off, that does not describe the vast majority of the cases of people being killed in Gaza. But okay, in that hypothetical, I think the way you put it is an interesting one. They're exploiting that asymmetry. That's right, because this is an asymmetrical war. Okay? Do you think Israel exploits the asymmetry at all? Do you think they exploit the fact that they have way more power than the Palestinians? Dave, Dave, Israel...

In terms of this claims about genocide and being leveled at Israel, which I think is a smear, just think about it this way. Israel could level the place tomorrow. They could have done it on October 8th and 9th and leveled the entire country. They could do it, but they won't do it. And Hamas can't do it, but they would do it. If they had the military capacity, they would kill every Israeli tomorrow. Do you not agree with that?

Okay, so I just want to jump in here because I do want to ask a question about that because I have shown aerial footage. There have been Doctors Without Borders that have gone there that have worked in tons of war zones and have written pieces saying that this is not a regular war. Like it looks like they are raising the place. And when I see, again, of course, someone will always say that's propaganda here. But when I look at it, it does sort of look like they are

They want these buildings fully collapsed. And then it doesn't—it's not helpful to the pro-Israel side when Jared Kushner jumps up and talks about how profitable the property would be. And so I do want to jump into kind of what Israelis are currently protesting. I actually got a phone call today from an Israeli newspaper who was saying we would like a comment from Candace because the Israelis are believing that some of this was a false flag. He had interviewed some Israelis on the ground.

and they think that there's a larger plan that's at bay. Now, that sounds crazy unless you read the Jerusalem Post article, which came out earlier this week. I covered it on my show, where they are saying that there is no question that—

The Israeli government knew that Hamas was going to kidnap 250 people. I want to read to you verbatim here because I don't want to misquote the Jerusalem Post. Obviously, none of us would say the Jerusalem Post is anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.

The headline read, "The IDF knew of Hamas's plans to kidnap 250 before October 7th attack. The IDF had precise information about Hamas's intentions, but due to prevailing conceptions in the security establishment and possible negligence by officials, the warning signs were not acted on." Now, you can go ahead, you can read that article, guys. We'll drop it in the link. And I do want to say, this is—kind of gets into what Charlie Kirk was saying instantly about any of us who have been to Israel, just like it's a very long time for them not to respond. "I've been to Israel. You've been to Israel."

It's very small, and there is just—it feels like there's a military presence every five feet. It's actually scary going into the country. They're so secure. You see women holding, you know, massive guns pointing down at you in the airport. And so people were questioning whether or not they allowed this attack to go on, and they had this intelligence, and they wanted it to go on for larger regions. Additionally, we know that Egypt said that they had handed Israel a report and told them that there was something that was being planned.

Ami, do you look at that and say, well, that's all a conspiracy and that's crazy? Or do you think that's interesting? I'd just like to hear your feedback on that. What I would say to that is obviously everybody on the pro-Israel side especially wants a full investigation as to how something like this could have happened. The fundamental obligation of any government, first and foremost, before any other policy – and we all would agree here –

is to protect its citizens, and everybody acknowledges that security failure. To infer this nefarious incendiary reason, to me, sounds very much like 9/11 truthers saying, "Hey, there was a lot of money to be made from the Iraq war, and we needed a reason to go in, so let's just let the planes hit the towers, and it's not really Saudi Arabia, and it's not really the hijackers. It was an inside job." So to me, it has as much credibility.

Upon hearing it for the first time from you here, that idea sounds about as credible as a 9-11 truth or conspiracy. Yeah, sorry, I should add more here because the article was a bit longer. I didn't realize this was the first time you were hearing it because it did just come out yesterday, so that makes total sense. It's that they actually have a document, so a newly surfaced document.

has revealed, and this is the reason why the Israelis are protesting, has revealed that the IDF and the intelligence systems had detailed knowledge of Hamas's plan to raid Israel and kidnap 250 people weeks before the October 7th massacre. The document, which was compiled in the Gaza division, outlined Hamas's intentions and was known to top intelligence officials according to a report by Can News. And then it goes into further detail. So I think, and by the way, quite ironically, yeah,

9/11, there were a lot of questions as well, USS Liberty. And just so you know where I stand on this, I do not think that false flag attacks are impossible. In fact, I know they're not impossible because of the CIA declassified documents pertaining to Operation Northwoods and JFK's refusal to allow them to stage a false flag attack of the CIA on American soil to go to war with Cuba. So if we accept that,

intelligence agencies, and I'm referring to America now, have attempted those things in the past. And now they have documents alleging that they absolutely knew they knew something. Now, they could have been negligent. That's entirely plausible. I do think, given a lot of the rhetoric, and I definitely, I personally don't think Bibi Netanyahu is a good person. I do think he's quite nefarious, given statements he's made in the past. And he's been caught on camera talking about, don't worry about America. And we're going to do this to the Palestinians. Turn the cameras off. It's

I just don't see him as a good guy. And I think that that's what a lot of people are questioning. Like, why do Jewish Americans feel that they have to defend this guy simply because he's the leader of Israel? There are always bad leaders. I wouldn't defend Joe Biden against crazy stuff. I think it's important to make those distinctions. I would simply say that, you know,

someone I think we all like, Thomas Sowell, is always asking when you're evaluating things, compared to what? It's not like I can stand by everything Bibi Netanyahu has said or would defend him, and not everyone should, but compared to what? When we're looking at the situation, the leadership of the opponents and the enemies of Israel have said far, far, far worse, worse, more disgusting, more genocidal things than I think anyone in Israel has ever said. And it's evidenced by the fact that you don't see the same kinds of

You don't see IDF going in to a Palestinian home, dragging a body through the streets of Tel Aviv to mobs of cheering crowds. And I will say also, just as a point, that as we got into the weeds of the military actions here and what's justified in our discussion before, Dave, about self-defense, I know that argument from authority, everyone should be able to talk about anything, but it's

to approach this topic with humility as we all sit here comfortably in armchairs in the West, commenting on our microphones and on our podcasts as if we're military tacticians knowing exactly how to conduct a war. If we all accept the fact that war is horrible and war is tragic and war is ugly, like even the just war, if we could...

if you agree that there are wars that are just, and you're never going to not have civilian casualties and collateral damage, not saying those terms as just buzzwords and just ways to evade responsibility and accountability, but we accept that in reality, war is hell and war is tragic and you do your best, you do the best you can, but you, you, I just think it's, it's really, I always find it really frustrating and it's kind of a,

just rich to see people, all of us, everybody kind of commenting on this as if they know if Israel is just in responding to October 7th, we can tell them not the IDF, not the military experts on this who are trying to conduct this war. We know best how they should do it. And what the way that what that manifests in ultimately is,

you know, soldiers having, 19 and 20 year old Israeli soldiers sitting in a booby trap building in Gaza waiting to be killed because the rules of engagement in Israel are super, so, so strict and they have to go through so many channels before they actually execute operations.

And then we get reports back of dead soldiers who were blown up, who were killed because they couldn't execute properly, effectively, because they were restricted by rules of engagement that Israel imposes upon itself. You would never hear that from the Hamas side. You would never hear the Hamas issuing an apology for a rocket that landed in the wrong place or Hamas getting up and saying, we're launching an investigation to find out what went wrong here. And Dave, I know you're not defending that, and I'm not trying to just make points past you. I'm just, I'm pointing out that, that...

To me, it's a point of confusion as to why not more people see it that way. Yeah, if you only look at things from one side's perspective, and of course that is the more powerful, the more wealthy, the ones who are doing more of the killing. If you just look at it from their perspective, that's true. You could just as easily say, hey, we're all sitting here in America talking to our microphones. What do you know what it's like to be lived in a blockaded, occupied territory where you just got to accept –

that your grandmother was just killed in some drone strike or that your kids just got their limbs blown off. Maybe you got to join Hamas. What do you know about the rules of engagement? Maybe you got to go over there and kill whoever you can. I mean, you could play this on either side. Let me just say a few things because there's just been a lot here. So I want, number one, I did read this piece in the Jerusalem Post, and I will say I'm not a conspiracy theorist on this. I think that the most...

likely explanation, although I'm not ruling anything out. I mean, there's definitely no question there were wild, exaggerated claims made about

about October 7th that were just not true and were not founded. The atrocities were horrific enough. There was really no need for it, but there were a lot of claims that were made that just turned out to not be true at all. There is no question that Benjamin Netanyahu is desperate to keep this war going as long as he can because whenever the music runs out, he

He's the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history, and his entire doctrine was I'm going to do this and thwart a Palestinian state so that we can protect our people, and it culminated in October 7th. So yes, I wouldn't say nobody doesn't want a real investigation of October 7th, but there's a reason why we haven't had that yet. But I don't know if any of you guys ever heard –

In fact, I think I might have brought this up when I was on your old show, Candace, with my first and I'm guessing last appearance on a Daily Wire show. But I made this point that there's a hot mic or like a secret recording of John Kerry that you can listen to from back when he was secretary of state. Then he was talking about the rise of ISIS in Syria, which, of course, for people who know about this, the Obama administration had a brilliant plan of arming all of the anti-Assad groups.

rebels, to have another regime change there in Syria. And this is why ISIS was driving around in Toyota trucks as they were taking over parts of Syria and parts of Iraq. And John Kerry is talking very candidly about this. And if you remember, this is around the time when Obama called them the JV.

This was while he was sending weapons and funds in that he knew was ending up in the hands of ISIS. And John Kerry says very blatantly, he goes, look, we saw the rise of ISIS and we thought this will be great because this will put pressure on Assad to step down because these guys are coming toward Damascus. What's he going to do now? You know, and so he's going to have to step down and then we can put the government in that we want. But then they turned around and invaded Iraq.

That wasn't part of the deal. You know, like it's just this tremendous hubris that you can prop up this terrorist organization and then use them in the way that you want them. And this is I'm just saying I know that for years this was the Israeli attitude toward Hamas. This was the quote. We can control the height of the flame. Benjamin Netanyahu said he was.

propping up Hamas intentionally so that he could look to the rest of the world and say, hey, look, we got no partner for peace. Look, it's a terrorist group who's won there. He was literally just a week or two weeks, I think it was, before October 7th, he sent the head of Mossad into Qatar to make sure, because some of the funding to Hamas had slowed down, so he sent him in there to make sure the funding continued. This was his strategy. By the way, this has been acknowledged, again, by, we could go through a lot of quotes on this one,

by all types of people at the top level of Israeli government. It's been reported on in the Jerusalem Post, the Times of Israel, Haaretz, the New York Times, Washington Post. It's been widely reported on. But I think this was more likely what happened, that they totally underestimated Hamas's abilities.

And they did not think at all that they could pull off something like October 7th. And it seemed from what I've read about it that even when they were getting this intelligence that was like, hey, they're planning something here. They're planning something big. It was like, yeah, yeah, they'll never pull that off. We don't even really have to worry about them. Israel has...

for the last 20 years been much more concerned about the threat of Hezbollah, much more concerned about the threat of Iran. They're totally downplayed Hamas as this little like punk gang that like couldn't do anything to them. So I'm just saying,

Is there a bigger conspiracy involved? It is possible. From everything I'm looking at, it seems pretty likely that that's just the easiest explanation, is that Benjamin Netanyahu had tremendous Dick Cheney-like hubris, thinking he could get away with doing whatever he wanted to. And this is why he was propping up Hamas for years. And it backfired.

That all, to me, starts the story in the middle, Dave, still, because at the end of the day, what's been Hamas's attitude towards Israel since its inception and what's been Israel's enemy's attitude towards Israel since its founding in 40 years? We're not on the side of Hamas. Hamas has a bad attitude, for sure. And in perpetuating violent attacks and raising populations of people to hate the Jewish state and want to kill it, I mean...

Whatever political benefits one can operate in that scenario, that scenario exists because it's a given and by default not having to do with any occupation. They want to destroy all the Jews. But don't you see the asymmetry here? But don't you see the asymmetry in our arguments here is that I'm making a point. Listen, I'm not defending Hamas, but you are defending the government of Israel. No, no, no. So when I point out something... By shielding accountability from Hamas in what's perpetuating this war, you're not defending their actions, but you're missing where the accountability lies. No, I'm... Okay, again.

I'm not defending Hamas. I'm not shielding them from accountability. But you are defending the government of Israel. So when I point to something that Israel's done horrifically wrong, that there's just like no excuse for, you immediately pivot to how bad Hamas is. Only because I agree. Hamas is a bad group. Hamas is a bad group. But the way you say it is all the emphasis. Okay.

Let's say I agree with you. Netanyahu did all these nefarious things. And I'll just, for the sake of argument, I can... That's a fact, dude. It's been widely reported. It's documented. It's proven. And we have the quotes in their own words. There is still, to me, just the way I see that, there is a marginal issue and a fundamental issue. There is a world that these...

politicians are operating in in that world is that Israel is the underdog surrounded by regimes that wish its destruction continually and constantly and to shield accountability for them that's not Bibi causing them to do that Bibi didn't cause Hamas to come in slaughter opponents and Fatah members and take over in Gaza and oppress its own people it doesn't Bibi doesn't write curriculum for schools in the Gaza Strip to hate Jews he doesn't know any just funds a terrorist organization so that he can make sure he never has to give the Palestinians their freedom if the

In his own words. If the Palestinians wanted a state tomorrow and started saying, you know what, we support a two-state solution alongside Israel. We're going to raise our children to support freedom and prosperity and live coexistent with our Israeli brothers next door. And then we have a Gaza Strip that I could go visit when I go to Israel and go in and vacation there along people. And by the way, no Jews allowed to ever live in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. It has to be Jew-free for this to be just.

People are just emphasizing the complete wrong side of the picture here, and that's what I feel you're doing. It's that in the Gaza Strip, the idea is we have to get rid of all the Jews, and no one seems to have an issue with that. Every Jew has to leave for this to become a Palestinian state, and no one seems to have an issue with that. In talking about the disengagement, no one seems to care that their main priority is Judenrein. No Jews here at all allowed. In the West Bank, what about the, quote, settlements? Listen, there's a distinction to be made between a caravan on top of a mountaintop with, quote, settlers,

versus neighborhoods that have established a real property right in the settlements in that designation, and one has to account for new factors on the ground. And you've said this before in conversations, Dave, that you don't want Israel to be... In terms of the right of return, I heard you respond in your conversation with RFK that you don't believe...

Tel Aviv should just be turned over to the Palestinians and completely... You would object to all that, right? So I'm just saying my distinction here is not that I'm fully... Israel's imperfect and has its flaws, but I do think it's super important to make distinctions between the marginal issues driving the conflict and the fundamental issues. And to me, to overlook the ideology that animates this region against the Jewish state existing at all is the fundamental. Look, there's no question that

There's a long and I find very fascinating, very tragic and very complex history in this region. And it involves the Zionist settlers embracing terrorism. It involves the Arabs embracing terrorism. I shouldn't say –

all of them, but groups of both. It involves occupations and terrorism and military conflicts and all of this stuff. But if you say you want to get down to the foundational issue here, like what's really going on, this is the bottom line.

a bunch of Eastern European Jews decided that they wanted to start a homeland in historic Palestine. That this was like where their holy book told them that this would be the place to go, and they had suffered a tremendous amount of oppression in Europe, and so they embarked on this plan. This very radical and pretty damn impressive that they pulled it off. This was their plan. It was a group of Eastern Europeans who had

had never been to the area, did not know anything about the local people, really. Most of them didn't speak the language that they decided they wanted to build this country around. In fact, I don't think any of them did at the very beginning. And they started migrating there. In this process, way before the beginning of the creation of Israel, it involved a whole bunch of Palestinians being kicked out of their homes. There was resistance to that. There was violence on both sides.

When it culminated in the creation of the state of Israel, it resulted in 750,000 Palestinians being evicted from their land. Can I respond to that? After the 1967 war, Israel has occupied them ever since. And my argument is not that there's no bad guys on the Palestinian side or that

they've never done anything wrong. My argument is that that is the fundamental issue. And if you're not talking about that, you're not having a serious conversation about this issue. In the same way that if you want to actually talk about 9-11, you have to talk about American foreign policy. If you don't acknowledge that, then you're not even really having a conversation about what's going on. That understanding of the history, I think, is false. The way you just said it, that this fundamentally... What was false? Fundamentally, Israel is formed by...

Eastern European Jews displacing the native populations there. Do you dispute that there has always been a Jewish presence in that part of the world? In Israel? Of course there has. There has been. And that indigenous rights, and on that argument alone, that historically Israel, that part of the world, the last actual state, and you could go back, I'm going back now to the 2,000 years argument that I know you don't like, but the point is that there is a connection between the Jewish people and Israel that goes back thousands of years. You don't deny that.

Yeah, sure. But you don't get to claim a property right because you were somewhere 2,000 years ago. I know, I know. But just let me finish the point because you're simply starting the story at this one element of Jewish immigration to Israel and ignoring what about all the Jews in the Arab countries that were immigrated because they were kicked out and expelled and the efforts to purchase land from absentee landlords. Sorry, I just want to jump in there because this is where it gets confusing because...

Over time, you know Judaism used to be a religion now. It's a race and now it yeah, some people think it's not the group It's a bit right. It's not you think it's not a race Okay, because some people would say to be Jewish is to be race I think what he's saying is that that migration from the majority of Eastern Europeans into

the Middle East, just to clarify, because I know it gets kind of confusing. It's like, of course, there's always been people that followed Judaism that have lived in that region. There's always been Christians. There's always been Jews. I'm talking about the rise of Zionism, which is what ultimately culminated in the creation of Israel. My point was there were hundreds of thousands of Jews that were displaced from the Arab world and ethnically cleansed from the Arab world in that part of the region as well. We conveniently leave out that fact of what

was going on. - No, but there's no, it's not conveniently leaving it out. Yes, it's true. In 1948-- - You said foundationally this was all a European colonization and displacement of a people, so I'm disputing that. - No, I was starting from the late 1800s and taking you up to the creation of Israel. But yeah, there's no question in 1948 in Iraq and other surrounding Arab countries a bunch of Jews were kicked out. That's wrong that they did that. I have no problem acknowledging that that's wrong.

The difference is that nobody's defending that. Nobody's pretending that never happened. Again, listen, to your point that you said earlier, and this is

When I said, no, of course, that I don't think all of the Jews should go back to Europe is the answer any more than I think we're going to give the land back to the Native Americans. That's not going to happen. You know, it's many generations later and you would be committing the same evil act to kick all these people out of their homes now. However, what I am saying about Native Americans is that, number one, we could recognize what was done to them.

and say, hey, that wasn't so cool. And number two, if there's any Native Americans around still, they should have foresight

full rights protections under our legal order, that they should have their natural rights protected. You can't just keep abusing them. At a certain point, you got to go, hey, the past was bad. We're not going to 100% make up for it. But going forward, you deserve your freedom as much as anyone else does. And that's all I'm demanding out of Israel. You just said the whole indigenous rights arguments to Israel where Jews were technically there first and displaced by previous empires doesn't matter. No, no, no, no. You're talking about, hold on, hold on. Listen,

This is a totally different argument. To say, oh, well, someone else was displaced 2,000 years ago or something like that. Okay, fine. Yes, lots of bad things have happened historically. And as I just said, we're not going to be able to go back and rewrite every wrong that's historically ever happened. We can say stop doing it now. I get it. That's the argument. I'm arguing that the Palestinians get their crummy 22%. Israel won.

Okay, they've won by illegitimate means. - I do also wanna interject. I get confused about the argument that like, we are the original Jews from the Bible. It's just, Ivanka Trump has converted to Judaism. Is she now get to say that she has claimed to, I mean, people,

over these years have also under Israeli law. That's why I keep trying to say it is relevant that we are talking about a religion here because you can just convert into a religion and then to say, well, I'm this religion. So I'm the original person and I have a right here. I think it just gets crazy. So we should really talk about practical solutions, which I think what you are saying. I'm only talking about it. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, what you are saying, Dave, is that you just believe that it just needs to stop. Like, everything just needs to stop. Allow the people that are remaining there to be there. And Ami, what would you say is a practical solution? Do you follow Bibi Netanyahu's perspective that until we get every last hostage, we can just keep blowing everything up? Well, as

As far as things blowing up, we can keep blowing things up. This idea that Bibi should accept a negotiation and ceasefire is to me so backwards. They should give back the hostages unconditionally. Don't we all agree? What if they don't? Then you have to pursue the hostages. What they're doing is- What does that mean? What does that actually mean practically? I need to hold you on the answer here because is your perspective that if they don't get back all 250 hostages, that he has a right-

to kill every Palestinian? Every Palestinian. There was a...

a mission that took place a few weeks ago and Israel was demonized because hundreds of Palestinians were killed in an operation to try to rescue the hostages. I guarantee you, if Israel could have walked in and taken them peacefully without firing a bullet, they would have. The question isn't, are hundreds of Palestinians, even though they're, of course, they're not making a distinction between who of those Palestinians were actually terrorists and attacking the Israeli soldiers trying to rescue the hostages. No distinction was made there. And the real question isn't, um,

Is hundreds of Palestinian lives worth rescuing for Israeli hostages? The question is, are hundreds of Palestinian lives worth keeping for Israeli hostages, worth kidnapping for Israeli hostages? I hate this perversion that's going on. They should be returned unconditionally. And Israel as a government has a response. I just need to hold you to an answer because I want to understand. Unconditionally. Unconditionally. They took them. They took them. So you mean. But let's be practical here.

if you say we're just gonna keep looking for our hostages until we get them back, okay, is your perspective that he can quite literally kill every Palestinian if it means that he's able to get hostages? We have to actually talk about this practically because everyone says unconditionally and we say until every last hostage. I'm like, okay, let's really talk about what you're saying here. - So the question to me is problematic and I'll tell you why. The question should be aimed at Hamas. Is it really worth keeping these hostages

When Israel has an obligation to bring them back and whatever the military cost is in the collateral damage, you have a responsibility to return this hostage. You are the aggressor against Israel in this scenario, in this current military campaign. I know, Dave, we're talking about the broader context, which I can revisit to sort of wrap up the conversation. But in this current military campaign on October 7th, a ceasefire was broken. You went into sovereign territory. You slaughtered people. And I take issue with this.

exaggerated claims of October 7th. I mean, it's a gross conversation to have. And I've spoken to many, many people who, it's not just reports I've read. I've spoken to people personally who can attest to the atrocities. But as you said, Dave, even murder and burning people alive is enough. So let's just take that for what it is. But my point is they aggressed against Israel. It's their risk. You can't all of a sudden then, uh,

complain when there's consequences for that. You have to be the ones responding. I'm not complaining. I'm just trying to understand what you mean when you say, until every last hostage. I just need like a yes or no. Does that mean that Bibi Netanyahu and the IDF have a right to kill every Palestinian if it means that they are able to secure their hostages? It's a very simple moral question. It's not a simple moral question at all. I don't think they have a right to kill every single Palestinian, and gratuitous violence should be condemned, but they have a right to pursue them. And if Hamas keeps

committing to keeping them in civilian homes, hidden amongst civilian populations. Israel has a right and obligation and responsibility to rescue them. I can't see how we don't agree on that.

Well, because the problem is there's a whole bunch of babies being killed. So why don't you say Hamas, give them back and stop them? No, it's not. Everyone wants the hostages returned. Everybody wants the hostages returned. I just disagree with unconditionally. I think that that's very scary to me. It's just to pursue them, but maybe you're disagreeing with the means. Yes, I'm saying you can't kill every Palestinian to get back 250 Israelis. That's my position.

All right, guys, I hope you're enjoying this conversation. I just want to take a brief pause here because we are talking a lot about freedom. We're talking a lot about children. We're talking about peace, prosperity. Are these things achievable? And of course, just as Americans, we ask ourselves, what kind of a future do we want to leave for our children? We know, especially now, that these are not guarantees, freedom, peace, prosperity. It's up to us parents and us grandparents to instill knowledge and a love of liberty in them. Public schools are definitely not going to do it.

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Unless this is what's crazy and what there's such a disconnect when you even ask the question you go I don't understand how this is even like an issue. It's like oh well the issue is that babies are being murdered. That's the issue that me and Candace have with this. I disagree with the term murder. You can disagree but that's factually true. Killed and murdered are different things. You're ascribing intent. Yes. They are different things. Murdered.

Murdered. That's where we fundamentally disagree. When you drop a bomb, knowing that there's babies down there, knowing you're going to kill babies, you murdered them. That's murder. When Obama drops a drone on a wedding in Yemen, that's murder. And when Israel drops these bombs on Gaza, they are murdering people. It would be... Listen, the standard, if you did that, like...

Within a government, within the legal framework of any government, this would be murder in the first degree if anybody else did it. So I'm quite comfortable using the word. Let me just finish my point here. So if you don't just fundamentally value Israeli life above Palestinian life, then obviously if you have to kill a whole bunch of children to save one person, it's not like, oh, that's obviously the correct answer. You go, oh, I don't know. I mean, this is...

There's so many innocent victims here, and that's the issue that people have. Now, as far as your constant kind of like deflecting this back to like, why don't you tell Hamas to release the hostages? It's like, again, Hamas, release the hostages.

Okay, didn't work. So let's talk about what we can focus on now. This would be like if right on the dawn of the invasion of Iraq, I were to say, well, I think Saddam Hussein should step down and institute Jeffersonian republicanism in Iraq so we don't have to invade. It's like, yeah, but that's not on the table right now. So like what is on the table right now is should we invade or should we not? The truth is that

If the mission truly was, which by the way, just a slight correction, Candace, Benjamin Netanyahu has not said that if they release the hostages, the war will be over. That's things that I've heard a lot of pro-Israeli pundits say. Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas has to be eradicated. So even if they did release all of the hostages, it's not as if he's said the war will be over now. He said until the job is finished, meaning all of Hamas is taken out, which is totally unachievable and will not happen.

But the question becomes, if the primary goal here is to retrieve the hostages, which I do think should be Israel's primary goal, then...

What has led to them getting the vast majority of hostages back, not just in this conflict, but in the past? It's what we do when people take hostages right here in the United States of America. Someone runs into a bank and holds a few hostages. You know what we do? We don't start dropping bombs on the place. We don't go in spraying machine gun fire. We call in a person known as a negotiator, and you try your absolute best to negotiate the return of the hostages. That's it.

And this has been successfully done many times. It's a much, much better strategy than just slaughtering an insane amount of innocent people, which is going to do nothing but guarantee that there's more hatred and more terrorism in the future. I think history disproves that whole outlook that this will create more terrorism in the future, because I think when you demonstrate to an aggressor that attacks you for ideological reasons...

that to the extent that you support this ideology of hating the Jewish people and hating the Jewish state and wishing our destruction, to the extent that you buy into this, you will face the consequences of our...

military doing what it needs to do to defend itself against that. And if you keep it... But history disproves my point? Yes. You guys have been... Israel has been dominating militarily the Palestinians for decades and decades and decades. We can go back to World War II and we can go back to the fact that when you assert your... I mean, war is a ruthless, terrible thing. Can you imagine any sort of war where there isn't collateral damage or any civilians? Does that mean it's never just? Does that mean it's not just? No, it doesn't mean it's always just. But...

But you said something interesting before where you said, OK, Hamas, release them, but they're not going to release them. Does that still mean they're not accountable for what's to come when they don't do that? No, Hamas ought to be accountable, but innocent Palestinians shouldn't be. For the innocent Palestinians that die in the crossfire, I'm not denying that that happens. Why are you not...

agreeing with me that Hamas is ultimately accountable for the escalation, for the perpetuation. In other words, all of us here hate the sight of dead Israelis, hate the sight of dead innocent Palestinians. So this whole idea of valuing one life over another, I...

I'm with you on that, but I'm saying, you know who does like the sight of dead Palestinians? Hamas. They tell you that very explicitly. They love the sight of them. So do a lot of Israelis. Yeah. That's a false equivalency. Not at all. Why do you use this term? I didn't say they're the same thing. I didn't say they're equivalent. I said there's also a lot of Israelis who like the sight of them. Not at all to the same degree. And a lot of the people killed, as I said, on October 7th were peace activists. Israel would want peace tomorrow with its neighbors if its neighbors just said, okay, we want peace with you too.

But they don't. So I would just interject here to say that I believe that BBNet and Yahoo has a different agenda. And I think what gives a lot of people pause, people that...

are agnostic on this issue is when you say something that feels like a very easy moral question, like do you believe every Palestinian should be killed in an effort to get 250 hostages? And people don't say, no, of course not. That would be crazy. Like we can't just kill a million people, women and children, majority children, because we need to get 250 hostages. I did say no. And I think that that kind of leads into that. You didn't say, like it wasn't an easy question. You were like, eh.

I don't know about this question. It would be Hamas's fault. And I think that that might be, and this is really to be constructive here, Ami. I'm not trying to come down here. I'm just trying to be constructive because I see, I'm actually using you as a conduit to talk to the entire pro-Israel lobby. So do not take any offense to this. I'm not a lobbyist. I'm just me. No, no, no, no, no. That's why I'm saying I'm using you as a conduit. So please don't take offense to this. But I want to communicate this because there are a lot of people that are pro-Israel who lobby for Israel interests. And I want them to just hear this feedback because

For me, and I think that I am a person that really just does see racial equality. Like, I am not—I just do not value Israeli life more than Palestinian life, period. Innocent life more than one over the other. And when I hear that question, and people are not able to give such an easy response, like, obviously, no.

I demand, I want every hostage returned, but not under a circumstance where a million Palestinians are going to be obliterated. And yet we see so often that a lot of the perennial voices are not willing to say that. They're like, honestly, I've seen people tweet this until every, it looks like we're going to have to go in there until every last Palestinian and it's Hamas's fault. That's dumbfounded.

doesn't make me—like, I don't think that that brings people closer to the pro-Israel side. It makes people go, "Okay, are we dealing with racial supremacists? Are these good people? How is there no compassion? How is there no 'wait a second, no, of course, we do want the hostages back, but we also

obviously know that we can't kill a million people to get back 250 people because that just sounds radical. Right. It sounds that way. And when we talk about war and we look back at history and the millions of innocent people who were killed in conflict, in war, one has to do one does have to evaluate fundamentally how these things happened.

and who's accountable for those deaths, and who's accountable for innocent collateral damage. And it's so obvious to me that all of those people we talk about that have been killed and have sympathy for in this conflict were alive on October 4th, 5th, and 6th. Now, back to your question, if I need to clarify it. Yes, of course, not every...

What was your initial question? No. Every single Palestinian life? No. And Israel doesn't have to do that. And thank God it doesn't have to do that. And it wouldn't be just to have gratuitous violence against innocent Palestinians. But when there are innocent Palestinians that are killed in collateral damage, yes, the fault is on Hamas for initiating this war. Absolutely. And when they embed themselves among those civilians, when they hide hostilities,

inside a journalist's home that then gets reported, Palestinian journalist killed, and you see that headline and say, oh my God, Israel's killing journalists. Well, the journalist was keeping three people hostage. So this muddying of the waters over who's a combatant, who's a civilian, in all of these situations, when somebody talks about children, but we're talking about a 17-year-old with an RPG,

That's where I'm telling you it becomes, I'm illustrating why it's very, very complicated and we can't just think of these things in the black and white terms or in abstractions. Like, well, a million people, that would be terrible. But when it comes to World War II, when millions of people were killed in Nazi Germany or hundreds of thousands in specific instances,

we're judging things in reality itself under the context of war, which is horrible. And nobody on the pro-Israel side, at least for me, and I speak for myself, desires it or wants it at all. But in wars of self-defense against wars of aggression that are committed against Israel, who are we as far as military taxidermists to say how it should be conducted other than the fact that it is just and the hostages should be returned unconditionally. And that would certainly mitigate the

civilian death on the palestinian side so i like this who are we to say what they should do militarily other than to say it's just and it's great i guess we're we're qualified enough to say that it's just but we're not qualified enough to say that it's unjust okay the devil's in the details absolutely well okay so look yes there is a moral question to be asked here on war absolutely uh so if you imagine i'll get to that question about war in a second but if you imagine um say like uh

You know, there's a... Someone goes and takes a bunch of hostages in a school or something like that, and they...

They're in with all the children and your local police department comes down and they go, all right, boys, blow up the school. They blow up the school. They kill the guy who took all the hostages and they kill a whole bunch of kids with them. And then they turn around to you and go, hey, Dave, why are you so outraged with your local police department? I mean, that was on the guy who took the hostages.

And he was using human shields. And so it is sure does suck that we had to kill all these kids, but it's not our fault. It's that guy's fault. You could see where maybe I wouldn't accept that answer. Hey, first of all, I wouldn't need my, my tax dollars fund you.

Okay? Which I'm not thrilled about to begin with. And number second, you're the one, your whole justification here, right, is that you're the cops. You're supposed to be the good guys. You're the first world democracy in a sea of the third world, right? So yeah, there is a little bit of a different standard.

you would hope over a terrorist group or someone taking hostages and you, who's supposed to be my taxpayer funded police officers. And if they turned around and said, well, sorry, all the deaths are just on them. I think we would all say that just on the logic of it saying, because they took hostages and because they're amongst civilians, therefore responsibility absolved is ridiculous. Now to your point about war, um,

I had a question on that. Well, let me just hold on, but I just want to get to the other stuff because there's a few things that I haven't addressed that you said. Look,

There has long been many brilliant people, particularly in the tradition of Christianity, who have thought about just war theory, what a just war looks like. One of the big separations that always is made is whether it's a war of necessity or a war of choice. The question—look—

When you think about the ungodly level of human suffering that Israel is bringing to Gaza right now, I mean—

Forget even like all so many of these debates which I appreciate that we haven't gotten bogged at like get bogged down into like the numbers Do you trust the God's Gaza health ministries numbers? Do you trust Israel's numbers? Look, I literally watched a couple months ago in interview with a doctor who just got back from Gaza who was talking about the shortage of Anesthesia, it's like if you could try to just think what that looks like is they're operating on children and

with no painkillers, with no anesthesia, operating on little kids. You're talking about bringing this profound level of human suffering to a group of people. There's only one question that matters, and it's: Do you absolutely have to do this? Is there no other option? Is it so self-evidently clear

That the alternative to doing this would be worse than doing this because this is so bad. And the simple reality is that Israel just doesn't have to do this. They don't have to. Israel had a monumental collapse of intelligence and security.

security on October 7th. It is not a guarantee, especially after all they've done the last eight months. It's not a guarantee that October 7th are going to happen left and right if they were to end this war today. If they were to end this war to Israel, October 7th is the worst terrorist attack that's ever been pulled off in the history of the existence of Israel. And there's been lots of terrorist groups and they've been plotting a lot of things. They pulled off this one big one, which I'm sure if we ever get that investigation, we'd find out

As much as we already know, we'd find out even more about what a massive failure it was on Israel's part. So how about they could plug that up? Israel for years before October 7th was propping up Hamas, was underestimating the threat of Hamas, and was relying way too heavily on their machine gun robots instead of having actual soldiers protecting their border. So they could just not do that.

They could just stop right now and not do that anymore. Stop propping up Hamas. Stop relying so much on the machines. Have actual soldiers there and don't underestimate the threat. They don't have to keep doing this. They don't have to keep bringing this level of human suffering to the people of Gaza. Two points, Dave, I wanted to ask you. Does a government that represents a people have a unique obligation to its own civilians as far as protection? Sure. Yes. So...

In your scenario of the bank robber guy going into a bank and taking people hostage and his own government coming in and mowing everybody down, you would say it's clear that that's not comparable to two warring governments going at war against each other, one being responsible for its own civilians and one other being responsible for protection of its civilians.

Okay, so just to be clear on a couple things there. Number one, there is no government in Gaza. Hamas is not a government. They are a government. No, they are not. In what sense are they not a government? Israel literally has control over the tax revenue. They have control over their trade, their airspace, their sea space, how much medicine gets in, how much technology gets in, how much food gets in, how much sugar gets in. No, they're not a government. They're ruled by Israel. But to your question, Yeah.

Look, I'm not saying it's an identical situation. And I even pointed out that, okay, things are a little bit different when you're talking about like, you know, within a country versus not. So you said disanalogous before, so I'm pointing that out. No, no, no. It's a logical analogy. The point is that the logic...

that says because they took hostages and because they struck first, therefore all the death that follows from this is on them, simply does not follow. It's just not correct. But could you imagine if you did a further analysis, hypothetically speaking, given that it's just for Israel to respond, which we agree, when they're attacked after a while, they have to respond. We're really arguing here, and I'm just...

honestly trying to identify this area of disagreement. It's that the means have been disproportionate. They don't have to do it this way. They could do it a different way. And when I say, who are you to say that? It's more like, if you analyze it, could you imagine a situation where given the fact that Israel does

a lot of dropping of leaflets and intelligence gathering to find out where people are and sending in special forces and risking their own soldiers' lives and their civilians' lives for the rockets and fire they're willing to tolerate, having a high tolerance for their own civilian casualties. If you analyze the situation, could you imagine a situation where the choices are just between bad and worse? Well, I mean, look...

Obviously, as I said, October 7th was the worst single terrorist attack. But in the 70s and 80s, Israel was dealing with terrorist attacks on a much more regular basis. Of course, there was also the first and second Antifata attacks.

It was not until Benjamin Netanyahu that they ever started treating the terrorism problem as a military problem. It was always targeted assassinations, special operations, negotiations for hostages, things like that. That was always.

always how Israel dealt with the terrorism problem throughout its entire history until this psychopath Benjamin Netanyahu rose to prominence and decided that we're just going to treat it for the regular old army. Just treat it like it's not a people that we've had captive for six decades. You think trading a thousand Palestinian prisoners who've been convicted of

who've committed crimes against Israel, who've committed- - Have they been convicted? Have all thousand of them? - They've committed violent acts against Israelis. I think this fall- - Have they been convicted?

Because you started saying that, but then you kind of stopped. In certain cases, yes, and in certain cases, no. But they're not hostages. That's my point. They're not innocent. They've committed violent acts against Israelis. Well, you know, you kind of don't get to say that if they haven't been convicted of a crime. That's kind of the whole way a system of justice works. I understand that point. Fair point. But my point is this. Do you think it is moral to trade $1,000 for...

As far as disproportionality. In other words, incentivizing kidnapping and hostage taking on the Palestinian side. That's what those negotiations ultimately lead to. Yes, again, because- Sinoir, who was traded back to Israel, was the one responsible for October 7th. Okay. Yes.

Everyone who's a member of Western civilization that should be foundational would agree that yes, it's better to let a thousand guilty men go free than put one innocent person away. Yes. No, that's not what I'm saying. Hold on. No, it's exactly what I'm saying. It's better to let a thousand people who are guilty go free than to kill 200 trying to save one person. Yes. It's better to let a thousand people who could risk attacking Israel again in the future.

Go for it. Go for it. See, listen, this is the point that I think me and Candace were getting at that I think you're not exactly understanding. Okay. See, even when you say this, you go, but that's a risk that some innocent Israelis could die.

Right. No, because that's better. That's better than just slaughtering a bunch of Palestinians. Correct. No, because there is. And I'm going to say it again. This false equivalency between, oh, well, there's prisoners and Palestinian prisoners and there's Israeli hostages and we should just trade for them. And I'm just saying there's a moral difference between the actions of the actions of one and the actions of another. The crime of the hostages being taken were that they were Israeli Jews. And the crime of Palestinian prisoners is very different than that. These a lot of these these people have committed acts of violence.

violence against Israelis. And they swear to do it again, like Sinoir, for example. I think you're getting at a really important point here. By the way, it also, this is, as a lot of the pro-Israeli side does, it's very like looking at Israel through rose-colored glasses. I have heard several different, like, first-hand reports from former IDF soldiers who, like, quit

and left Israel because they're like, no, we were just like rounding up people and kidnapping them. And then like your, your like Sergeant would be like, ah, whatever. We'll say he was throwing rocks at us and get like, no, there actually are a lot of innocent people, both in the West bank and Gaza who have been kidnapped by the Israeli government with zero due process. Because again, they have zero natural rights, you know, cause screw them, I guess that's just what they have to accept forever. But you made a point earlier that I never responded to. And I think what you're talking about now is somewhat on the same, a similar vein.

And that you were saying, look, there's a moral difference between like Hamas running in on October 7th and just trying to slaughter in the most barbaric way, like any civilian they could get their hands on. And in Israeli borders,

bomb that is trying to get one bad guy and sure might kill a lot of innocent people in the process. But like, there's just a moral difference between those. And I do on some level, I do agree. Like there is no question that one is like so much more primitive and barbaric. And you know, like, so I was just, by the way, I know me and Candace are both pro-life. I don't know where you fall on the abortion issue, but it's not really important just for the point. But someone said this to me yesterday, which is a very like kind of basic, um,

pro-choice argument that someone said to me. They go, oh, so you say abortion is murder, Dave. Well, so that means you've probably been around women who've had abortions before. You're not treating them like a murderer. You know what I mean? And there is a sense in which that's true. That's true. If I found out my neighbor was a woman who had an abortion once, I would feel a lot different than if I found out my neighbor was a murderer. You know what I mean? But

But that's not necessary.

But like the act is the same thing. It's just that, look, you have a little bit more grace for one because it's kind of like, eh, we live in this culture where people have been so poisoned. Look, I know a bunch of military guys who went to Iraq. They're murderers. But I also don't look at them in the same way as someone who just like murdered his neighbor because they were caught up in this much bigger system. They were propagandized. I'd like to change the culture to a point where they kind of look at this in a different way. So I'm saying there is something different about the

barbaric murderer versus the soldier who fought in Iraq or the woman who's had an abortion or something like that. However, while you can recognize there's something different about it, you can also recognize there's something very similar about it. And if from the Palestinian perspective, like if that was my kid and they got killed and you said, well, Dave, it's not as if it was some barbarian who ran over into your country. It was just something that we accepted as

100 would be the outcome of pushing this button, then it's like, yeah, no, that. So, yes, there is kind of a difference. But there is also something where because a government is more sophisticated and more powerful, we do have this kind of reaction to look at it the way you are. This is different. They're not they're not being kidnapped. They're being detained. They're obviously guilty. We're not just slaughtering people. We're having collateral damage. I get the point.

However, if you're on the receiving end of that,

It doesn't feel any different. But it's not a linguistic trick, Dave. I'm judging actions and the differences between someone taken into an Israeli prison. I'm not claiming it's a linguistic trick. I'm saying that there is often a feeling, the more sophisticated and more powerful a country gets, that it's like, oh, well, we're a little bit removed from the brutality of what we're doing. Whereas if you're on the receiving end of that,

You can understand where it feels just as brutal. Okay. I said, as far as the subjects go who experience such a thing, it doesn't matter if somebody killed your family member by accident or on purpose for the subjects experiencing it.

Let me finish the point. The distinction isn't by accident. No, no. I'm just saying for somebody experiencing a tragedy, a loss, a bomb being dropped on their family, and I can argue that it was just, if you can make that argument that it's just, as far as they're concerned, it doesn't matter. I understand that point that you're making that for those subjects...

It doesn't matter, but it's super important for the basis of basic civilization and understanding these things that murder is not the same thing as killing and it's not the same thing as self-defense. Even though the outcomes, as you're describing, are all the same. What's the difference? This person was killed and it's barbaric and this person was killed. I think you're missing my point. I think you're missing my point a little bit because I'm not saying, no, it would look as terrible as it is to lose a kid. You would feel different if it was an accident.

than if it was intentional. Like, if it's an accident, you might fall to pieces and be hurt. If it was intentional, you might be ready to go murder that person who killed your kid. Now, that...

My point is that it's not that it's unintentional. Again, if Israel bombs a building that they suspect a member of Hamas is in, but they know that there's a whole bunch of innocent people there, it's not an accidental killing. It's still a murder. They've decided that the price of murdering these people is worth it to get this guy. But you're ignoring the other side of that equation where leaving that person in place will...

lead to a battalion being killed or an attack on an Israeli city that's pending? No, I'm not ignoring that. That's not a foregone conclusion. It's not true. It's easy for you to say. If you don't face the risk of that on a regular basis, it's convenient to say that. Again. Okay, guys, we're coming up. You're only looking at it from one perspective. Sorry, go ahead.

All right, guys. Well, you just heard Dave Smith mention the fact that he is pro-life. You already know that I am pro-life. Well, the reality is that new estimates show that more than one million babies were killed by abortion in 2023. That is the highest amount of abortions since 2012. The overturning of Roe v. Wade only made them more ravenous for the blood of babies. We absolutely must fight back against this evil.

Because when they shout abortion, we have to be screaming life. And how do we do that? Well, you know what I'm going to say. We join hands with Preborn, the largest pro-life organization in the country that sponsors ultrasounds for clinics in the highest abortion areas. Because when a mother is considering abortion and she meets her baby via ultrasound and she hears that sweet little heartbeat, it virtually doubles a baby's chance at life.

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So we are running up against time here. And so I first and foremost, just want to say how much I appreciate both of you guys. But I want to just give the floor for two minutes, Ami, for you to make your points regarding what is happening in Israel and also how Americans should engage in the topic and then to give the floor to Dave similarly. And then I'm going to give the floor to myself because I was so good at staying quiet and it was very hard for me. So you first, Ami. Okay. I, in an effort to sort of steel man Dave's point and try to understand it fully, which I,

I believe I do. And it's been great talking to you, Dave. And I think you've been really passionate about this issue. And I appreciate your perspective. I still stand by the idea that fundamentally what's driving this conflict is not geographical and it is not political. It is not a land dispute. It is ideological. It is religious. And the ideologies that animate what's going on in the West Bank, the people who hate the state of Israel and what's going on in Gaza, who hate the

the state of Israel and wish it destroyed, don't wish it destroyed because of a property dispute or because of what happened about its founding. They don't want the existence of a Jewish state and they are the ones who are genocidal explicitly towards Israel and Jews around the world. And to ignore that and say, if we just went back to 67 borders and gave these two places the right to the self-determination, we would just get peace and prosperity and coexistence. Well, every single effort to do that over decades and decades has led to more violence against Israelis.

And the fact that even before an occupation of between 48 and 67, before the West Bank in Gaza, there was an effort to destroy Israel and attack Israel. And they were, even before the founding of Israel, there was violence against Jews in the region. And I think to ignore that fundamental reality, to ignore the culture that exists, not because of Israeli brutality, but because of radical Islamic fundamentalism that dictates that

"Chebar, chebar, yad yahud," we must destroy the Jews, not just in Israel, but around the world. And next up, by the way, America too, death to Israel, death to America. This is an ideological conflict. And there are other players at play here too. We didn't talk about Iran and funding the proxies to destroy Israel, the little Satan, and America, the great Satan. And so that to me is fundamental to this problem. And other political actors we could disagree with, we can dispute, and we can talk about which policy is better.

Netanyahu hasn't been the only prime minister of Israel. There have been other prime ministers with different policies, and Israel still faces genocidal threats and annihilation constantly from the north, from the south, from countries all around that want to see it destroyed because it's a Jewish state. As far as American support for Israel, there is an academic discussion to be had about the role of

foreign aid to any country. And I'm curious to continue a discussion another time with you, Dave, about the positions of nation states and the legitimacy of nation states and the role of how we support allies and adversaries. But as far as the list of countries, if we want to start with a priority of who to support or pull foreign aid from, there are plenty of worse countries, much more adversarial to the United States

than Israel. And one could make the argument that Israel doesn't ask for charity from the United States, but rather there is a strategic alliance that America benefits from in supporting its only ally in the region because they share the same enemies. So one can have that discussion. That's an academic discussion. And there are plenty of pro-Israel people that are anti-foreign aid too. There have been super pro-Israel Zionists who didn't want Israel entangled with other countries and want to have full sovereignty and believe Israel's sovereignty is compromised by accepting foreign aid. And that's a

Kind of a separate subject. And I think to conflate being against foreign aid to Israel with other hostility or anti-Zionism isn't necessarily fair either. But at the end of the day, the fundamental issue that Israel is facing is an ideological one from its enemies that want to see it destroyed much more than they want to see a free, prosperous Palestinian state. They want to see a non-Israel exist.

Um, okay. I, you know, maybe I could start with kind of a point of agreement there on the last thing you said. I mean, it's certainly not the case for the majority of Palestinians, but there are certainly groups like Hamas, um, who I do think you're right, basically at this point, like things have gotten so bad that this death cult has kind of like risen up. And I do think they just want to destroy, um, Israel more than they even want something for their own people. They're clearly very willing to sacrifice their own people and it's terrible.

At the same time, because I don't solely put myself in Israel's shoes, I can just go,

Look, I got two little kids. And if someone ever did anything to one of those kids, there is no level of evil that I wouldn't stoop to. I mean, like I'm capable of doing very, very evil things if anyone ever hurt one of my little kids. I mean, like I could do something to the kids of the person who did that to me. I could go to very, very dark places. And so, yes, basically this conflict has gotten so bad on both sides that it

The Palestinians are stuck, as Daryl Cooper put it, who's one of the best minds on this topic, by the way. Hamas essentially celebrates losing. It's like a sick death cult. But this didn't arise out of nowhere. And I'll say just two things I want to say very quickly, OK?

Number one, I reject all foreign aid. If I could only cut foreign aid to one country, it would be Israel. Israel is the first one that should go. Number one, because it's received the most of it. But number two, as you kind of admitted there, we have the same enemies, right? Why? Why?

Why do we have the same enemies? Okay? It's because we inherit all of Israel's enemies. Benjamin Netanyahu came over to the United States of America in 2002 and testified before Congress as a regional expert. And you know what he said, Candace? You'll never believe it. If you overthrow Saddam Hussein, democracy will sweep the region. So I highly recommend that you go fight a war with Iraq, who, by the way, the neocons—essentially the Likud vanguard in America—

had been planning overthrowing Saddam Hussein with Benjamin Netanyahu since the 90s. You can go read A Clean Break, the memo from Richard Perle and David Worms are to Benjamin Netanyahu about their plan for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Not Israel overthrowing Saddam Hussein, of course. The United States of America overthrowing Saddam Hussein on behalf of Israel. Also, in that same congressional hearing testimony, Benjamin Netanyahu advocated that the U.S. preemptively attack Iran.

Coincidentally, we do have all the same enemies. Look, let me just say this, and I'll finish on this. There's nothing unique about Jews or Israel in terms of the evil stuff that their government's done. I think that the way they founded the country involved violating a lot of people's property rights. I think they've killed a whole bunch of innocent people. Nothing I wouldn't say about my own government as well. And it's true for lots of governments around the world. Throughout human history, there has been...

atrocities, genocides, ethnic cleansing campaigns, slavery, all types of horrible things. And at every single point, there were people who would rationalize it, because that's what human beings do. People are, we play tricks on ourselves, we're very capable of coming up with good rationalized arguments,

What Israel is doing to Gaza right now is simply evil. It is inexcusable. It's been going on for eight months. Forget the health ministry's numbers. When this thing is all over, it's going to result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and displacements. It's going to ruin lives for generations, and it should stop.

All you really need to do is look at some of the images of what's going on in Gaza right now. The only question that should matter is, do you absolutely have to do this? Does this have to happen? Could you stop? Is there any other way? And as soon as you start asking that question, you'll realize that, yeah, there actually could be a lot of other ways.

to handle this. I do want to also say I really do appreciate the spirit of this debate. I know that we're both pretty passionate about it, but a lot of the... For some reason, the topic of Israel is a very...

I don't know, Candace, have you noticed it's a little bit of a hot button issue? Yes, and that's why I was very happy to have you guys back because I just feel like we've had productive discussions. And I do. I want to just really commend Ami because he's coming into this knowing that, first and foremost, I tend to agree more with Dave Smith and he was still willing to do it. And here's what I always say.

In terms of any person who's pro-Israel, I respect the people the most that will get out there and debate their ideas. It is the reason why I respect Dennis Prager. Even though I had disagreements with him, he will go out there and he will actually debate what he believes. It's the people that won't debate what they believe that you should never listen to. That's why I respect Ben Shapiro so much. Oh, wait. These comedians are just telling a joke. And the last thing.

And the last thing that I want to say, and just now to interject my opinion and where I come at this, you know, I became very well known for being a person that stood up to my own community when Black Lives Matter became the prevailing ideology in America and everyone was sort of calling everyone racist. We didn't support this corporation. And I challenged black Americans to go, hey, first and foremost, you're an American. Don't let somebody pigeonhole you and tell you that you are black and you therefore must defend these certain things that don't really make sense.

And I want to say to Jewish listeners the same thing. I know that in school I was propagandized to see myself as a black person, to think about slavery as a horrific sin, and to always therefore have an emotional response when anything was happening to a black person. But at the moment that they are able to instill in you a fear, no matter how rational or irrational it is, they're able to control you. And so to my Jewish friends,

I don't think of you as a Middle Eastern foreign nation that you are required to defend. You aren't. You simply aren't. You are an American first. You are allowed, of course, to critique Bibi Netanyahu, to critique what's going on there. And you are certainly not required to defend death, because you have some fear that perhaps was instilled in you to believe that if you don't, it's going to represent some sort of existential crisis, and suddenly they're going to wipe you out of, you know, New York and L.A. and Boca Raton and all the other places that I go with my Jewish friends.

It's just not going to happen. And I just come at this for I don't want to be involved in any of these foreign conflicts. If you do feel a closeness to Israel, if you are Israeli, there are people whose family, like you said, grew up in Israel, and that is the reason why you feel so attached to this issue, then more power to you. You should also be allowed to speak about what you want to say. You should never feel fearful in any city in America.

saying that you want to support Israel, that would be completely wrong. And to the extent that that is happening, you will always have my support. And I hope that what everyone listening to this has learned from today is that what this country needs is more speech, not less. You're going to agree with Dave some. You're going to agree with Ami some. But we can all agree on is that, you know,

I'm better looking than both of them, you know, and you should just keep watching my podcast and my show for that reason. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me. And I wish we had more time to do this, but I've got I've got a sick daughter. So I've got to I've got to go take care of her. Thank you. I know how that goes. Thanks, Candace. Thanks, Amy. Thank you so much.