← Part Of The Problem
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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
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- [01:15]
Dave Smith
What's up? What's up? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. Thank you guys for for joining me. I'm rolling solo this episode. Robbie the Fire Bernstein is out. It's just me. Very quickly, I do want to I apologize for missing our regularly scheduled show yesterday. There was some technical issues on my end. I apologize for that. We will make up that episode. Just working on scheduling it right now, but I will let you guys know as soon as we have it figured out. I did see just a a chorus of people blaming Natalie for it, but I will say it was my fault. It was an Internet issue on my end, not Natalie's. Although I did I did find it very funny that every single tweet replying to me announcing we weren't going to do the show yesterday was damn it Natalie. So welcome. That's Natalie's welcome to the team moment. You get blamed for everything that goes wrong. Somehow it's never my fault. Even though it's almost always my fault. Ok, before we get into things, quick bit of business I should say. As I've I told you guys I am not traveling for work until the new year. I try to do this every year but I take December as a family month so I will not I'll be doing the podcast and stuff but I Won't be on the road doing standup at all through December, New Year's Eve. We have a show, a local show here, but I think that's all sold out. But I am coming all over the place in 2025. Comic Dave smith.com for ticket links to all the dates. I know I have Boston, Chicago, Nashville, Bozeman, Montana. I'm coming all over the place. So go comicdavesmith.com to get tickets to see me and Robbie the Fire live in person. Should be. Should be a lot of fun gearing up for a big year. All right, so for today's episode, I wanted to do a bit of a response. One of those response episodes. I was. So I guess because I've been, you know, I've. I've made a name for myself as a critic of Israel at this point. So now whenever there's a video of anybody defending Israel, I, you know, I. People send it to me on Twitter. And so I got this one who. This was sent to me, but a bunch of people saying, oh, I want to see you dismantle this. A bunch of people being like, aha, Dave, you. You've destroyed Dave's heart broken after he sees this stuff like that. I have not watched the video yet. Sometimes it's fun to do it like this, to just kind of. To watch it live and just get like, a real reaction. I watched, like, the first 45 seconds of it, and I saw the quote in the tweet, so I have a little bit of an indication of. Of what's going on. This is a. This was a clip on the Trigonometry podcast. Don't worry, it's not another response video to Constantin Kiss in. We've. We've done several of those. This isn't him. This is his guest who is Nick Freitas. I apologize if I'm butchering that name. It's absolutely no offense intended. I just constantly butcher names, as people who. Who regularly listen to this show will attest. And I don't know Nick super well, but I. We both, we follow each other on. On Twitter and I've seen him on. On several shows where I thought he was making great points. And so this isn't much like with Constantine. There is no ill will on my end at all toward this, and I just want to respond to some stuff that I will see how I feel. And maybe he gets it right, because I have not really watched this entire video, but it's been sent to me a lot. Like, this is. This is the, you know, the most devastating takedown of the critics of Israel or something like that. By the way, I should mention before we get into this, that. Because I know I've had several people who are asking for it. Um, we. Because me and Constantin had agreed to do a debate or a discussion on this topic, we. I'm still very much happy to do that. They. Just so people know, they did reach out to me, and we tried to set it up. They were in the US For a bit, and it was just that, you know, just scheduling stuff, like they went out to Austin to do Rogan's podcast, and then I think I went out to Austin to do it, like, right after them. And we just weren't able to make it happen live. We were going to try to do it live while they were in New York City. Weren't able to make that happen, but we would still. I would still love to do that. I'll. I'll reach back out to those guys this week to try to. To try to schedule that. So without further ado, let's jump into it and I'll. I'll give my thoughts here. Here it is.
- [06:04]
Nick Freitas
You've served. You've probably seen some urban combat, I'm guessing. People like us who've never been in that situation, I hear. You know, I have my own views on it and having sort of read and listened and whatever, but ultimately, I've never been there. People talk about what's happening in Gaza and they say, you know, it's genocide, it's this, it's that. And then other people say, well, look at the civilian to a combatant death ratio. Actually, this is the, like, most humane operation in history. Like, what do you make of all of that?
- [06:33]
Constantin Kiss
I think the people that are calling it genocide are either being intentionally dishonest or don't know what the word genocide means. I think that's very intentional on their behalf. When it comes to civilian casualties, there's a lot of people that like to do what I call Excel spreadsheet fighting. And what they do is they look at the Excel spreadsheet with Israeli military capability and Hamas military capability and say, why do they need to do all of this? Look at how much more powerful they are. The reason why asymmetric warfare exists is when you have a weaker force that is attempting to utilize the strengths of the stronger force against them, so they're putting themselves in the best advantage possible. So we. I did a video on this. We have a program called the why Minutes, and we talked about what is Hamas's strategy And one of the questions that I asked when I looked at this from a strategic standpoint is, okay, so Hamas knew when they went into Israel that they weren't going to overthrow Israel. When they took hostages, they knew that the IDF was coming for them, and yet they did both. Right? So they knew they couldn't defeat the IDF militarily, and they knew getting hostages would force the IDF to come after them in a big way. So why'd they do that? And how did they know that Western academia and media would almost instantly be on their side? And the reason why is because a lot of these organizations have invested very, very heavily within America academia. I don't know the numbers for European academia, but I'm assuming it's probably significant. At the same token, they understood that the way that you manipulate Western media and Western sensibility is civilian casualties. Because even though we can look at our own histories, whether it's the firebombing of Dresden or dropping, you know, atomic weapons on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we've certainly been able to get over our problem with civilian casualties. But we also pride ourselves in attempting to avoid them to the extent possible. And reasonable. Urban warfare makes it incredibly difficult.
- [08:40]
Dave Smith
All right, let's, let's, let's pause because I'll say there's not too much that I really disagree with so far. I mean, I think all of that is fairly reasonable. I think the question becomes like, what lessons do you take from this information? I guess my only objection to what he's saying there would be that the implication that the reason why universities and leftists or liberals in the US or in the Western world are appalled to see what's, what's going on in Gaza or why they could be counted on to be appalled to see that is not. And I'm not sure if he exactly said this, but the implication, and he kind of said, was that these people have invested money into the universities or something like that. And I just, you know, I'm not saying there's literally zero example of that, but the idea that the entire campus protest movement is because Hamas or Iran or whoever had, you know, invested into the universities, I just don't really think is the case. And this is something that, you know, like his breakdown of asymmetrical, of asymmetrical warfare is spot on. But this is something that people in this region have figured out a long time ago, and I don't necessarily think it's for nefarious reasons. So the, you know, one of the, the major influences of Palestinian resistance or Palestinian terrorism Whatever you want to call it, One of the major influences on them was the. Was the war in Algeria to drive out the French. And this, you know, was another asymmetrical conflict. And I think they learned pretty early on that if you are able to trigger an overreaction out of the stronger military force, at least in first world countries, if that overreaction involves mass civilian casualties, the people back home won't be too happy about that. And I don't think that's because. Because they've been bribed to feel that way. I just think that it's. These are kind of modern moral sensibilities, and I think it's actually a pretty great thing. I think it's good that we no longer tolerate those type of atrocities. And, you know, I'm not saying that there are no negatives in the fact that we are a softer generation than previous generations, but there are also undeniably a lot of positives in those. That's like, there's a lot of things just in everyday life that we just don't tolerate anymore that previous generations would have thought nothing of. You know, beating your kids with objects is something we just don't do anymore. And it's like, it's pretty wild. But, you know, in my. In my mother's father's day, like in my grandfather's day, that was just a normal thing that parents did to their kids is beat them with a belt. You know, that was just part of life. If, if me or any one of. If any one of my friends ever told me they beat their child with a belt, I would just be like a Paul. I don't think I could be friends with that person anymore. And I just could never. I never imagined hitting my kids with my hands. But the idea of taking an object to one of my kids is like, far anyway. I'm just that we have different sensibilities today. We kind of have like a different moral standard. And yes, that is, if you're doing something where you are just slaughtering innocent people in modern America or modern France or modern Western Europe or any of these countries, yeah, you're going to have tremendous resistance from within your own country against that. I think, I think he's right that people like Hamas has figured that out, but I don't think you have to go to some like, you know, like, I see the explanations for this constantly being like, well, that's proof that there's so much Jew hatred under the surface. But I think this would be the case if America did this with other countries. Also, and I don't think that this is a result of like Iranian investment into, you know, American universities or something like that. I think that's just where we've gone there. I think he's right essentially that the, the game here in asymmetrical warfare is the action is in the reaction. Right? And so the idea is to provoke a big reaction. And he's, he's spot on. Nick is absolutely right that Hamas never thought they were going to take down the state of Israel on October 7th and there was no chance they ever were. Likewise Osama bin Laden. And you can read him in his own words and you can read his son's words about this too. He never thought he was going to take down the United States of America by knocking down the twin towers, but he thought he could lure us into a war in Afghanistan that would bankrupt us. And I think if you, if you look at it on paper, obviously, like, okay, I'm not saying we were completely bankrupted by the war in Afghanistan, although pretty close, uh, but obviously a 20 year catastrophic quagmire of a war does a lot more damage to the U. S than our towers being knocked down. As tragic as the loss of life there is, we lost a lot more people in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More people than we lost on 9, 11 if you count the amount of people who committed suicide in the wake of it. Many, many more people. So, okay, but like, what do we do with that information? Okay, so clearly then the goal of Hamas here is as said, to provoke this reaction from Israel because this reaction now turns global opinion against Israel in a way that quite frankly was unimaginable as of a little over a year ago. And okay, if that's, if that's their goal, then perhaps the lesson we take away from that is not that's why we have to support Israel doing all of this, or that's why we have to fight a 20 year regime change war against the Taliban, which we end up losing in Afghanistan. The lesson seems more reasonably to be let's avoid that trap, let's not fall into that. That would seem to be a wiser course of action to me. 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- [17:21]
Constantin Kiss
The fight now is not my smart weapon against your AK47. The weapon is now my guys. And their strategic advantage is they have aerial oversight and they have body armor. Right. And night vision maybe. Right. But you can, they can buy night vision for, you know, five grand on the black market. So it's not like Hamas can't have access to that. And so now if you're in a position where you benefit strategically from civilian casualties, you have the perfect environment to maximize that in a way that no other military can mitigate other than giving up. Because if I have to, like I've, I've been in that environment where you are kicking in multiple doors to try to get to your bad guy and every other room, there's women and children and we go through an incredible level of training in order to make sure that you hit the right target. But That's a, that's a complex environment. Especially when that one time, women, kids moving on and then the 12 year old picks up an AK47 and starts shooting. Is that a civilian casualty or is that a military age male? Well, in that moment, that's a military age male. You're shooting at me. That's not how it's going to be reported by Hamas to CNN who will dutifully report X number of children killed on the objective. So what is considered reasonable mitigation of civilian casualties? Well, it isn't warning everybody ahead of.
- [18:49]
Dave Smith
Time because it's an interesting point and it's also, you know, it's, it's again, as I always say with these things, you know, I'm not, I'm not claiming to be the expert on this issue. There are a lot of people who have far more expertise than then I do on these. And it is true for sure, as Constantine said at the beginning, that like, look, he's talking to somebody who's actually been in those situations and I'm, I've never been in those situations. All I'm claiming here is that as with all of these conversations on this topic, that I, I know enough about this that I, it's like I may not be the expert, but I can shatter the narratives of a lot of these arguments. So what he's describing here, I mean, look, there's no question that urban conflict is incredibly challenging and it's very difficult to minimize civilians. In fact, there was a major study that, gosh, I'm forgetting all the details of this, but I'll, I'll see if I can remember it and I'll tweet it out. But there was a study that was done after the war in Syria where essentially, you know, Vladimir Putin and Bashar al Assad are just like indiscriminately carpet bombing the places where ISIS is hanging out. And then they were comparing that to our, you know, precision strikes and at the end of it they're realizing it had almost no effect on civilian casualties. And they realize that really what matters is population density. Like if you're bombing an area that's very dense with, with civilians, civilian casualties are going to end up happening. That's very, very difficult to mitigate that. So I get the point. I think one of the things that we ought to keep in mind is that the experience that, that Nick has, because just, I just know this based on his age and the wars that we were fighting and at that time and you know, the war in Gaza right now, like what they kind of do have in, in common is that their occupations, and this has always been like ancient wisdom that occupations don't work. And a bit, you know, it's not so much, you know, people say like regime change, wars don't work a lot, but really the regime, like changing the regime isn't really the challenging part. And we took Saddam Hussein down in a few weeks, we, we took Muammar Gaddafi down in a few months. I mean, you know, we failed in taking Bashar Al Assad down, but there were a lot of factors involved in that. But when you're talking about occupying a group of people who do not want you there, yeah, that is a very challenging situation. But again, the lesson I would take from that is that like, that's why you don't want to occupy. That's why you don't want to be an occupier. Look, in the United States of America, this is our founding story. Is that the most powerful military and not a story like a myth, it really happened, or the most powerful military in the history of the world wanted to keep us as colonies, but we didn't want to be colonies anymore. And they sent that powerful military over here and we fought them off. And we probably should have learned this lesson at least by Vietnam, that it's very, even if you are way more powerful, it's very difficult to defeat an enemy who does not wish to be ruled by you. And that is that, that would be true for us. That's true I think, for all people. So it's not unique to that situation. However, if we're talking about the war that Israel is waging on Gaza right now, I don't think, you know, look, if the example you're talking about is a 12 year old grabs a rifle and points it at an IDF soldier and he kills him. And they're reporting that as a child, but really that should be like viewed as a combat, a combatant. Okay, I'm not really going to argue with you on that, but let's not. As I see a lot of the defenders of Israel do, let's not pretend that's what's happening over there. Like that describes it in its entirety. The footage of babies being pulled out of rubble, not breathing anymore is not because those babies grabbed a rifle and pointed them at an IDF soldier. And you know, we don't know the exact numbers, but it is going to be just, we know at this point that the number of children dying in this conflict is like way higher than any other, than any other War in modern memory, in a recent memory. And so, you know, it's like, how about that? Like why don't we address that? Because instead of addressing like the weakest argument from the other side, maybe address the strongest argument from the other side. And you know, yes, if somebody is saying that a 14 year old grabs a rifle and points at it, well, a 14 year old grabs a rifle and points it at anybody, they've forfeited their right and that person has the right to defend themselves. But that's not the situation in the overwhelming majority of cases here. That's not what's going on. What's going on. And even by the Israeli numbers, they're not claiming that that's like the, even by the BS inflated Israeli ratios that they put out. Even by their numbers, it's the minority of the people who are being killed are combatants or in this situation that he just mentioned. So yes, that is again, it's like sometimes these guys, this happens a lot where it's the guys who have military experience, there's, they certainly have a level of expertise that I don't have that a lot of people who haven't served don't have in terms of the day to day logistics. Like, I'm not denying that. Like that sure does seem like a tough job to be handed. You gotta go raid this house and by the way, try to make sure you only kill the wrong, the bad people and then you don't really know who's gonna pick up a weapon and point it at you. No question. Like that is a really tough job. But if you zoom out to the bigger political question, like should you be there at all? Having served doesn't really make you any more of an expert. And in fact I know a lot of those guys who like, they don't even know half the stuff that I, I'm not saying Nick doesn't, but I'm saying a lot of guys who have served, they don't even know half the stuff about what the real policy motivations were of the people who say lied you into that conflict or something like that. So yes, that's a dangerous situation. But if we're talking about Gaza, a huge part of the reason why this situation is so dangerous is because Israel has been occupying them since 1967. From 1967 all the way to 2005, Gaza was under military occupation by Israel, meaning soldiers in the streets, you know, enforcing martial law. And then after 2005 when they had the, the disengagement, they surrounded the place and still controlled Every inch of what goes in and what comes out does not allow them. They bombed their airport and won't allow them to rebuild an airport so you can't get in and out of Gaza. They control the sea, space, the airspace. They. They control how much electricity and water and fuel and all types of different resources can get in or get out. And the people there do not like that. They do not want to be ruled by Israel. And so that makes this dynamic even more difficult. So I don't disagree that it's tough, but let's give the full story here. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Small Batch Cigar. Small Batch Cigar is the perfect company for the cigar lover in your life. They have free shipping on every order. Almost every order arrives in two to three days in the continental United States of America. And they have B patches in every single purchase. 69 humidity packs. This way your cigar shows up in good shape. They have an amazing selection of rare, limited and hard to find cigars. Plus you earn 5% reward points instantly. If there is a cigar enthusiast in your life, this is the gift for them. Go to smallbatchcigar.com I recommend clicking new. 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- [27:41]
Constantin Kiss
Neighborhood. It certainly isn't calling them on their cell phones ahead of time and saying, hey, we're about to attack this area. It isn't doing drones where you bring stuff down going, please leave the area. We're about to attack this house. And yet the IDF is doing those things. I'm sorry, but there is no measurement that we can utilize with respect to how militaries engage in combat operations with a legitimate and honest attempt to mitigate civilian casualties. And not to the conclusion that at the very least, Israeli ground forces have tried to do, have gone above and beyond whatever those standards might be. And so at this point, what an honest media would be asking is, why do you insist on keeping women and children in combat zones? You're not. Hamas is not confused about where Israel is going to go. Why won't they Move them out of the areas. Why do they keep them in those areas? Why do they insist that they stay? And another video we did a while back was we asked the question of.
- [28:44]
Dave Smith
Why don't more countries.
- [28:45]
Constantin Kiss
Palestinian refugees.
- [28:47]
Dave Smith
Okay, let's. And then bring it back a few seconds because I want to make sure I address this next point, because he starts talking about the refugees. But again, it's just. It's not accurate to frame this as the only reason why civilians are dying is because Hamas is keeping them in these areas. And look, again, I'm not denying that Hamas wants civilian casualties to be high. I mean, that's. I think that's the point of the whole thing. Just like Nick said. I agree with him on that. However, there's the. As we've heard from many firsthand accounts inside of Gaza and has many reporters have kind of broken this down, part of the reason why the civilians don't flee every time that Israel tells them to flee is because these are. Okay, first of all, try to keep in your mind here that Gaza is whatever. It's like, I forget the exact parameters, but it's like 7 miles by 25 miles or something like that. What. It's like it's a marathon by a jog. That's the. You know, like, someone in reasonable shape, in reasonably decent shape can run the width of Gaza, and someone in really good shape can run the length of Gaza. That's how big an area we're talking about. This is very small. Okay? Like, Israel is about the size of New Jersey. And then Gaza is, when you look at the map of Israel, a very little section of, you know, of Greater Israel. So also, these people are incredibly poor. Like, Gaza had, I think, a 50% unemployment rate before October 7th. And this is largely due to the blockade that Israel has around the country. So they can't trade with the outside world, which is a big part of how nations get wealthy. Um, and so in this environment, you know, like, it's not. You're. You're telling people, hey, you gotta leave. But, like, a lot of times they have nowhere to go. They have nowhere to go. Just leave with what you can carry on your back. And so they're like, we'd rather take our chances in our home. And then also, which we've seen an overwhelming amount of evidence for, when they go, they end up getting shot at. They end up getting bombed. The area that they said is the safe area to go to, that ends up being the target area two weeks later. So, like, imagine being really, really poor, having A family and someone telling you, go wander into the desert with what you can carry on your back. Just go wander. And then, by the way, you might get bombed and shot there and you might get, you can understand where a lot of people would go, like, I'm going to take my chances here. So it's not. Again, this isn't just as simple as, like, Hamas are doing all the evil things. Now, again, Hamas is a bad group. They're not like, good, peaceful people. So no one's arguing that, or no one serious is arguing that. But this is, this is totally incomplete to just say that, like, I mean, Israel's doing everything they can to avoid killing civilians. Why is Hamas insisting that the civilians are there? No, Israel is bombing the crap out of one of the most densely populated places on the planet Earth, and that is leading to this number of innocent people being killed. And that's something that people are rightfully appalled by. And the bigger question that, that a lot of times military guys don't ask. And part of this is because it's. It's their training not to ask this and a necessary part of their training not to ask this. Okay, but the most important question is a question you never want your soldiers to be asking. And that is, should we even be here at all? Is this even necessary? Because the one thing that everybody should agree with when it comes to war in general, particularly a war as horrible as the one in Gaza, the most important question is, do we absolutely need to be doing this? Is there any other way? Now, if you ask that question, in the case of Israel and Gaza, if you're being honest with yourself, you're going to pretty quickly realize that, no, Israel just doesn't need to be doing this. And that's the most important question. But there's also a reason why we never want our soldiers as asking themselves that question. Because you just can't have that in a war. In a war, you want your soldiers to go, sir, yes, sir. This is our mission now. How do we best achieve this mission? You know, you can't have a bunch of soldiers out there being like, what's this all for anyway? Should we even really be here? Now, when you end up fighting wars that you shouldn't be fighting, you're going to end up getting soldiers who ask those questions. This is why, by the way, I love reminding people of this fact anytime I can. But in 2008 and in 2012, the candidate who got the most money from active duty military members, okay, not just the most money, but more money than Every other candidate combined from active duty, active duty military who donated. There was one candidate who got more money than every other candidate combined, including Barack Obama. And do you know who that candidate was? It was Ron Paul, because Ron Paul was running on ending all of the wars. And at this point, by 2008, and particularly by 2012, the people who actually had to go fight these wars had all started asking this question. And that's the question that really matters to. You know, there's questions that matter to units on the ground who are about to try to embark on a mission. And those questions are things I do not have expertise in. But there's a question for, for people like us who are doing shows like this and talking about this conflict, the most important question is, is there any other way to do this? Do you absolutely have to be killing all of these civilians? And in the case of Israel, no, they absolutely don't have to be doing this. And we could get into that if we have time. But there's. If your priority was getting the hostages back, there's much more effective ways to do that where you don't risk the lives of the hostages. If your priority was to deal with Hamas, well, you're only going to get more Hamas or Hamas like groups by continuing this conflict. Which, by the way, you know, I've been saying from the beginning of the war and has totally been borne out by the facts there even say, even all those areas where they, like, you know, you're saying this is where they were attacking Hamas and then they tried to drive people out of there. Hamas is back in those areas. Even Israeli intelligence has admitted that at this point that they can't defeat Hamas militarily. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is my Patriot supply. You know, a lot of people are feeling pretty good about where our country is now over the last two weeks. I will tell you, I'm still concerned about the future. When you let your guard down, that's when you can be in trouble. And we have lived through some very turbulent times, including under Trump's first administration. That's why I always prepare for emergencies, no matter how good and comfortable life gets. And the only brand that I rely on for my security and safety in an emergency is my Patriot supply. Whether that be their emergency food kits, solar power generators, or water treatment systems, they're the best in the business. And right now, you can get their four week emergency food kit for $50 off. Their four week emergency food kit includes some of my favorite meals, Creamy Alfredo pasta. And I'm addicted to snacks like their sweet banana chips. With warehouses located across America, my Patriot supply can send your four week emergency food kit in as little as one day. Go to my website, prepare with smith.com to get your four week emergency food kit now. But don't wait. Emergencies can happen anytime. That's prepare with smith.com to get your four week emergency food kit now. All right, let's get back into the show. So anyway, okay, let's. Let's go back into the video areas.
- [36:36]
Constantin Kiss
Why do they keep them in those areas? Why do they insist that they stay? And another video we did a while back was we asked the question on why don't more Arab countries accept Palestinian refugees? The answer is they used to. And then Palestinian refugees sided with Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait. They tried to overthrow the Jordanian government. They did help destabilize Lebanon. They've caused problems within Egypt. And so it's not that I don't.
- [37:03]
Dave Smith
Let's not pause it here for a second. I am trying to, because this is of all of the arguments that I hear that, that regularly get thrown out, this is one of the ones that I just find the most amusing. And I. In a dark way. But I live in the world of dark comedy, so I guess that's why it's amusing to me. But you know, to just. If the argument is like, well, if these Palestinians aren't a problem, how come they get kicked out of so many countries? Right? I mean, that proves it right there, right? Clearly they're bad people. How come no one else wants them? And, you know, for people who know anything about history, you could just understand how profoundly ironic it is to use that argument on behalf of the Jewish state. Just saying it's like, well, I mean, if you get kicked out of a whole lot of places, obviously you're. The issue is a wild argument to use on behalf of Jewish people. Just saying this is that it's not similar. It is identical to the argument that the white nationalists make about Jews. Why were you kicked out of 109 countries? You're saying 109 countries were the problem. I think it's pretty obvious Jews are the problem. And look, I can, I can understand why to those, you know, those people who don't like Jews very much, that sounds like a really compelling argument. And I can understand to the people who don't like Palestinians very much where on its face, that kind of sounds like a compelling argument, right? I don't know. It's not Just Israel, who's got a problem with them. Jordan had a problem with them. Lebanon had a problem with them. Egypt had a problem with them. You know, Iraq had a problem with them. But if you know a little bit about the history, you just realize that it's actually much more complicated than that. And actually, that argument doesn't really hold that much weight. So first of all, one might ask themselves if they were saying, okay, like, no one wants to take in these refugees. Lebanon didn't want to take them in, and, you know, Jordan didn't want them, and Egypt didn't want them and all of this. You might start with the question like, well, what are all these Palestinians doing in these places to begin with? Why are there a whole bunch of Palestinians in Jordan and in Egypt and in Lebanon? Like, why aren't they in Palestine? Right? And it's because they were driven out by the Israelis. So that's. And there's really no dispute about this at all. The refugee crisis was caused by the. By the Civil War in 47 and the war in 48. This is where the crisis came from. And they were. They were kicked out of the land where they were living, and they were not allowed to return. This is the start or the major start of this conflict. And so, okay, first of all, in. In Jordan, the situation there, like. Like, just to make the point, okay, imagine you kicked a whole bunch of people out of an area where they had been living for hundreds of years with nothing but what they could carry on their backs. And, you know, imagine a bunch of the. The old people and the babies. They died on this walk, you know, because they're just walking with what they can carry on their backs. People are passing out, you know, on the side of the road. Elderly people, young children are being left behind because everyone will die if you stay with them. So they just keep walking. And then you're just throwing, like, all of these people who have been robbed of their land and their homes and their possessions, and then you're just throwing them up in a refugee camp. And not, by the way, a 20, 24 refugee camp, right? These are makeshift refugee camps in 1948, 1949. You think there might be some problems associated with those groups? I mean, wouldn't that kind of be true for most people? There might be some issues with integrating them into the new area. They are many times not getting citizenship, but just being kind of in permanent refugee status. Yes, there were issues that came. There was also. Yes, a lot of them were political radicals who wanted to go and fight back against the Israelis who had kicked them out in Jordan, particularly. Right. Jordan had been. They had the Hashemite Kingdom, and I believe they had been propped up by the British. So they weren't even like, truly Jordanians. They were like a government that had been propped up by a European power. And the Palestinian population there was, at one point, I think it was over 50% of the country was Palestinian. And so, of course, they're like, in any. Under any government structure, that would be a major problem now. You have, like, a majority of the population here. And then I know when the PLO first rose up, they. They tried to have the right to tax the Palestinians. Like, they wanted to actually be their government inside of Jordan. So this was obviously a huge threat to the sovereignty of the Jordanian Kingdom. Again, I'm not like, taking sides here or saying one's right or the other's wrong, but it doesn't know. It doesn't prove that the Palestinians are so. Are, like, uniquely terrible people or something like that who deserve this. It's just. It's a complicated situation. As far as Egypt not taking in the refugees, this gets brought up a lot. I mean, look, there's. Perhaps they should take in more. If they. Even if it was just wrong that they did that, it doesn't make Israel right for doing the same thing. But there's also a lot of other dynamics at play. There's also, you know, the fact that Egypt is after Israel, the next biggest receiver of foreign aid. And there's a reason for that. We pay Israel and we pay Egypt to be nice with Israel. You know, then this is why we propped up Mubarak for 40 years. And this is why when they had elections in Egypt and elected the Muslim Brotherhood, ooh, that government got overthrown pretty quickly and a military dictatorship was put back into power. They will continue receiving the foreign aid and they will continue to not go to war with Israel and look the other way at their treatment of the Palestinians. And then one more factor that. That is kind of the most wild part of all of this is that one of the other reasons why other Arab countries or other Muslim countries don't want to take in the Palestinian refugees is because they don't wish to help Israel with their ethnic cleansing campaign. Like, isn't it kind of a weird thing to just be like, hey, we're trying to ethnically cleanse these people and no one will help us. No one will take them in? Well, why do they have to be taken in? Why do they have to leave Gaza? Why do they have to leave the West Bank. Look, there is no, there is simply no, absolutely no justification or reason for Israel to have the right to Gaza and the west bank or East Jerusalem. You know, the. Okay, in, in 1947 in the UN had their partition recommendation and which by the way, is a recommendation. There was no teeth in it whatsoever. Because the General assembly of the United nations has no authority to just create new countries. They don't have the authority to do that. And they don't even pretend to have the authority to do that. It's a recommendation. And the UN was like a year old. They recommended that the land be split between the Jews, between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. And by the way, nobody in the region supported that recommendation. Nobody, I mean, except the Zionist settlers, of course. But aside from that, nobody in the region. It was a bunch of like far off European powers decided, hey, let's cut this thing up into two pieces and give the Jews a state and the Palestinians a state. Now the, the Zionists in Israel, I keep wanting to say Israelis, but technically speaking, you understand they're not Israelis for another year here. So they're Zionist settlers in what is now Israel was then referred to as Palestine. They accepted this. They went, yep, good deal, we'll take it. And the Arabs rejected it. And they said no. And they said it for good reason. I mean, you know, you know, in hindsight, maybe, probably it would have been better if they had accepted it. But at the time it was like, I think Jews owned around 10% of the land there. And the UN recommendation gave them 56% of the land. And so you could understand why the Arabs were like, no, what type of settlement is that? You get 66% of the 56% of the land and we got to live on 44% of the land. This is, this was ours. We don't accept that deal. And so when the Zionists just started implementing it, a civil war broke out. And you know, there was fighting between Arabs and Jews on the streets. And then the Zionist terrorist groups, which ultimately formed the idf. And I do not, I'm not saying this with the slightest bit of hyperbole, this is just what they were. They were terrorist groups, self described, who committed acts of terrorism and killed innocent people. You can go look up the King David hotel bombing or any of this stuff. They started going into Palestinian villages and just kicking everybody out, in many cases committing horrific atrocities. And so then the other Arabs, as a response to this was as refugees are being, are flooding into the surrounding Arab countries, the other Arab countries declared war. They fight a war with Israel, and they ultimately end up losing. So after they lose the war, Israel doesn't just set up a government in their 56% of historic Palestine, they take 78% of it. They expand their borders, they take 78% of the land, and the Palestinians are left with 22% of it. And then in 1967, Israel launches a preemptive war against Egypt. Jordan gets into the fight. They have the what's known as the Six Day War. And then they took 100% of it at the end of that, they took all of it. The question here, then the big problem is that there's still Palestinians living on those 22. On the 22%. So just to be clear here, since then, every single peace offering, every single peace process, every single negotiation from everybody, the starting point has always been the last 22%. That's what people are talking about when they're talking about a Palestinian state. Okay, now that you might have some campus activists who yell from the river to the sea, but I'm talking about in the Oslo Accords at Camp David. In terms of the actual peace process, the negotiation has always been over what they call the 1967 borders. And what the 1967 borders mean is before the war, in 1967, at the beginning of 1967. So what they're saying is you get the 78%, even though the UN never had the authority to give you the 56% and you just took the 78% because you won a war, fine, you get that. But the Palestinians get this last 22%. This last 22% is what modern day is considered Palestine. Okay? And Israel just simply has no claim to that. So people don't need to evacuate Gaza or the West Bank. They should have the right to live there. Like, we're past even saying they should have the right to the whole thing, you know, but they should at least have the right to that last 22%. So no one should have to take the Palestinians in is the ultimate point. All right, let's keep playing.
- [48:56]
Constantin Kiss
To minimize civilian casualties when they take place. But I think it's absurd to rationally look at what is going on on the ground right there and then come to the conclusion that Israel's just saying if Israel wanted to do genocide Gaza, they could, and it wouldn't have taken him this long. They didn't. Now, here's the. Now let's ask the reverse question.
- [49:20]
Dave Smith
Okay, here, let's. And we could get into his reverse question right here. But here's another argument that I hear all the time that I under. I do understand. Again, we're like, on the surface of it, when you just say that, it sounds kind of compelling. But if you scratch the surface a little bit, I think you find that there's really not much to that argument. Likewise, if you were to say, I don't know, it's kind of like, I'm trying to think of a good example for this, but like, let's say there was like an abusive husband or something like that who's like, beating the crap out of his wife, and you were like, well, I mean it, if you really wanted to hurt her, he could have done a lot more. Or if he really wanted to kill her, he could have just killed her. Well, no, that's not. That doesn't really prove he didn't want to do more or he couldn't have killed her. Maybe there's other forces involved that are stopping him from doing that. And to say that, first of all, look, again, as I've said many times before, I don't really use the word genocide when describing this conflict. I just feel like when you use it, you end up getting into a semantics debate. And I'm not really interested in having the debate over whether this rises to genocide, because I just, My argument is just that it's wrong and it should stop. But the truth is that the definition of genocide that in. Under international law is incredibly vague. It's like if you try to. If you try to destroy a people, religion or ethnic group in whole or in part, so it's not actually required that you kill everybody for it to be considered a genocide. And so, you know, the definition is kind of vague. And I don't really. It seemed like if, if some, if some kids like you know, in the south side of Chicago were like, we're going to go. We're going to go kill some white people or something like that, and they went out and killed three white people. You could actually make an argument under international law that they committed a genocide because they targeted and killed a group. In part. But it seems kind of stupid to me to call that a genocide because that's not what anybody thinks when they think of the word genocide. Likewise with this. It's just kind of debatable. And essentially that's what the International Court of Justice ruled, and it was plausibly a genocide. But they didn't really say for sure either way. The argument that if Israel wanted to just kill all of the Palestinians, they could have done it is not self evidently true. And in fact, I say I don't think they could have. Now if you just think about, think about what Israel's been doing over the last year and how much global opinion has turned on Israel and how there have been major protest movements across the world. I mean, across the Muslim world, across Europe, across America, major, major protests against Israel. The level of hat toward Israel has skyrocketed to a level that for in my childhood would have been unimaginable. So it's not exactly clear that Israel could have gotten away with killing everyone in Gaza. And so think about like, not only how much more opinion would have turned on Israel, but even amongst Israel's staunchest defenders, if they just started killing every man, woman and child, it would be, they wouldn't even be able to pretend that that wasn't what they were trying to do. It would be obvious that you'd probably have like a 5,000% increase in the number of people who are critical of Israel and you probably would have lost like 80% of the people who support Israel if it was just so nakedly obvious that they were just killing all of the Palestinians. Right? So it's actually not true to say, oh, they could, they obviously could have just done this. Probably not even as reckless as Israel is, they probably realize that they can't get away with doing that. So it's not clear at all that because they haven't just started doing that, that therefore means that their intentions are pure. I mean, I'm sorry, I just don't think that does not logically follow at all. And like, let's, I mean, think about this for a second. Like, they keep building settlements on the West Bank. What am I to take from that? Is their motivation. Seems to me like their motivation is that they want Judea and Samaria. Seems to me like they want their land. And it just, it simply doesn't follow that because they haven't done something that they very clearly couldn't get away with doing. I mean, again, I'm not enough of an expert on this to even know. Like, could they just nuke Gaza? I mean, just look at it on a map. Like, it seems to me like if the winds were blowing the wrong way, they'd probably kill a whole bunch of Israelis if they did that. I don't exactly know. I'm not enough of an expert in like nuclear warfare. But it's not, it's just not clear that they could just kill everybody in Gaza if they wanted to. In fact, I would venture to say, and this is a bit of an assertion too, but I think it's a much more reasonable one than. Than what Nick is making here. I would say that there is absolutely no chance that they could get away with killing every man, woman, and child in Gaza without in just an uproar from the international community. I even think they'd lose their support from the United States of America. I just don't think, politically speaking, I don't think there's any way that, like, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris could have sold that to the American people. So that's just wrong. I think it's just an absolutely wrong way to look at it. Okay, let's keep playing.
- [55:13]
Constantin Kiss
October 7th. To do everything it wanted to do. Would Israel still be here? We know what they do. I visited the music festival. I visited some of the kibbutz. I'm not confused about what they would do with similar power. And so that's the part where I get. I get frustrated by this because, again, I understand America.
- [55:36]
Dave Smith
This is another argument. And I don't know, man. Like, people send me these things, like, it's some, like, devastating argument. But I just. I gotta say. And again, I like Nick and I like Constantin. Nothing against these guys, but, like, I just find this argument to be really, really weak. Yeah, if. Listen, there is no question that, like, if Hamas had the power to do it, if Hamas had the power to, like, rule over Israel and just do as many October 7th as they want, or they could do whatever they want to with the Israeli people. Yeah, they'd probably kill all of them if they could. And so that's why no reasonable person is advocating that Hamas rule over Israel. And it is nowhere in the realm of conceivably plausible outcomes that Hamas will ever rule over Israel. This is like the Dennis Prager thing where he goes, what would happen if Israel laid down all of their weapons? They'd be annihilated. It's like, all right, well, then I guess that that's a good case, that Israel shouldn't lay down all their weapons. No one's advocating that. They do. Again, when I say no one, I mean no one. You know, okay, you could find some loon out there, but no serious person is advocating that. And so that's not really the question. Like, if I. If I were to just go, like, start beating the crap out of some schizophrenic homeless person, and you're just like, yo, Dave, this is horrible. You're just, like, beating up some helpless, crazy person. And I were to say to You. Well, this person's crazy. Like, if he had a gun and I was coming up to him, he would shoot me and kill me. That's not a defense because, like, he doesn't have a gun. So what. What point does that mean? I mean, like, the question is, is what Israel's doing to the people of Gaza justified or not? And in order to answer that question, at the very minimum, for this to be justified, you. The onus would be on you, and you would have to prove that there is absolutely no other option here. And as terrible as this is, anything else would be worse. And you just can't prove that. You can't. So, you know you've got nothing here. Yes, it would not be a good idea for Israel to unilaterally disarm and put Hamas in charge of Israel. That would be a big mistake. Luckily for all of us, it's not going to happen. And so now let's go back to this situation. You know, like, let's go back to, you know, it'd be like if you were arguing about slavery and you said something like, man, you guys are building these bit. You know, this is 1820 or whatever, and you guys are. Your guys are taking these, these huge, you know, slave ships into Western Africa, and you're, you're forcing people against their will onto these ships, then you're bringing them back here to own them, like, property. And you were to say, well, yeah, but I mean, they're really primitive down there. Like, if they had the power, they'd enslave all of you guys. It's like, okay, maybe, but they don't have that power and they're not enslaving all of you. So don't. Don't do that. It's not justified. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear. Love this company, love the people who run it, and I love their product. Most of all, Sheath uses moisture wicking technology to create underwear that keeps everything breathable and incredibly comfortable for you downstairs. Sheath Smart underwear comes in a number of different styles, including a brief with a dual pouch that just. It separates everything, keeps them where they're supposed to be. It's a real game changer. I am wearing a pair of Sheath underwear right now as we speak. And that's true every time I speak to you, because they're the only underwear I own. I say this with full sincerity. I say this with full sincerity. The most comfortable pair of boxer briefs I have ever worn in my Life. And right now, now you can get your new favorite pair of underwear by going to sheath underwear.com and use the promo code PROBLEM20 for 20% off your order. That sheath underwear.com promo code PROBLEM 20 for 20% off your order. All right, let's get back into the show. Okay, let's keep playing.
- [60:02]
Constantin Kiss
Israel's war, not ours. I get that. I get it when they say it's Ukraine's war, not ours. And I do believe that, again, we should think strategically about what our involvement is going to look like. But I also think that we shouldn't engage in this kind of moral relativism where it's just, well, it's just not our problem. Okay? Not primarily, but Hamas actively seeking, targeting and killing women and children because they believe it's perfectly morally justified, taking hostages. I'm looking at some of the people on the right, too, that are talking about this, especially some of the tough guys on the right. And like, if it was your kid in Israel right now, you would not be calling ahead to see, hey, just wanted to let you know we're going to be coming in. You'd be kicking doors and beating the living piss out of people. So spare me your moral outrage when Israel wants to do the same thing.
- [60:56]
Dave Smith
I want to hear the number there for a second. So this is, again, it's like almost every pro Israel argument always relies on, on this. And they do this thing where they, they'll say like, oh, you're, you're involved in moral equivocation or in this term you said moral relativism. And you know, then, and then we look at one side of the story and only one side of the story. And so look, even when he's like, look what Hamas does, I mean, they target innocent women and children and they keep, they take hostages. And listen, all I'm saying is, and this isn't moral relativism, I mean, there's nothing about my position on this that is moral relativism. Now, I understand, I'm not one of the right wing tough guys who Nick is talking about here, but there's, it's just, it's only reasonable in a conflict to look at both sides and hold them to the same standard. If you hold them to double standards, then that's more in line with relativism than what I'm saying. And the point is that Israel does target women and children. They do target them. You know, it's a lot of times people play around with this language where it's like, oh, well, that, like that somehow that's not targeting innocent people. Listen, if you listen, and I just want to make this clear, I understand. I'm not making the argument that the way you deal with a conflict domestically within one nation is the exact same way that you deal with conflicts in foreign nations. Although in the case of Israel and Gaza, those waters get pretty murky. Because I think when you've, when you've had control of a people and a group of. And a land, you know, it's like when you've been occupying an area since 1967 longer than the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe, at a certain point that does become your own people. It is kind of like doing this to your own people. It's not just like a foreign government, it's a little bit different. But regardless of that, I'm not saying even like foreign conflicts and domestic conflicts are the same. I'm just saying as a way to think about this. Right? Like just like as a thought experiment or a way to conceptualize this, if you. Let's say there was somebody who I wanted to kill and let's even say I'm justified in killing that person, whatever that means to you. You know, they just killed a family member of mine or something like that. And I. They're in a house that I know. I know for a fact that there's five children and three women in that house. And that guy's there too. And I blow up the house and I kill all of them. And I sit here and say, I wasn't targeting the women and children. I wasn't targeting them. I was only targeting the one guy. If you went to court, you'd get laughed out of court. It'd just be like the most ridiculous defense ever. Like, okay, guilty. And you know what you'd be guilty of? Murder in the first degree. Not manslaughter. You know, not like an accident. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You knew there were people there. You premeditated and planned it out, by the way, because I've consulted with some lawyer friends of mine about this analogy. It's not. Not only would it be murder in the first degree, but the bomb making would be prima facie evidence of intent. You clearly planned this out. It is the worst type of intentional planned murder in the first degree. Cold blooded murder. And you'd be charged with murder for every single one of the people who you killed there. You couldn't say, oh, I wasn't targeting them. Did you know they were there? Did you know they would die if you dropped this bomb? Then it's murder in the first degree. And if you were to do this over and over and over again, knowing that innocent people die when you do this, then it would just be murder in the first degree. Again, no one would buy into this idea of not targeting, whatever that means. Like so no, Israel is doing the same thing. Oh, and by the way, in terms of hostages, Israel has a whole bunch of hostages to tons of them. Thousands, hundreds of them are children. They've had them for a long time, many of them held without due process, never been charged with anything. They say they threw a rocket and IDF soldier or something like that and they take them. And there was a huge epidemic of them being tortured as well. Legally it was until either 1999 or 2000 when they finally banned torture. And Israel used to call, they called it, I think it was moderate interrogation techniques. But the moderate interrogation techniques included like binding them in uncomfortable positions while using sleep deprivation, you know, loud music so they couldn't sleep while they're binded in crazy position. You know, what any normal person and the entire international community would call torture. They were doing that to these hostages up until 1999. Legally, they've done lots more since then. But it's not technically legal anymore. So like again, it's not. This isn't moral relativism or an equivocation to just say take that standard and apply it to both sides. And look, same thing with this argument of like, what if it was your kid? I mean, look, man, I got two little kids. If anybody ever threatened their, their safety. I've never been in a situation where like my kids safety was actually threatened or God forbid, something horrible was done to one of my kids. But I take Nick's point there and he is right. I'd be down to kill anything that moved if someone did something to one of my kids, no question. And so, you know, someone did something. If I was an Israeli and one of these Hamas motherfuckers came over and killed one of my kids, I'd prob I would be like, burn the whole thing to the ground. However, that's not necessarily the best place to put yourself mentally when you're trying to make policy decisions. If you're saying something happened to one of my kids, now I'm in charge of policy. I'm probably not going to come up with a great policy that is probably not the healthiest way to view these things. I don't know, people who don't have kids maybe don't understand this as well, but it's like the Type of irrational decisions that I would make if my kids safety was on the line cannot be overstated. I would, I mean, I'm not exaggerating. If I had a choice, somehow it was just my choice to say.
- [67:36]
Constantin Kiss
A.
- [67:36]
Dave Smith
Billion people die or one of my kids dies. It is an easy decision for me, a very, very easy decision. And I think people who have kids know what I'm talking about. I mean, I wouldn't. If you're like, one of your kids is going to die unless you hit this button and then a billion people will die button, hit. Not even a thought, save my kid. I'd kill the whole world before I'd let one of my kids die. But that's not exactly the most rational place to make policy from. You know what I mean? But aside from that, here's the real flaw in the argument. And I know everybody listening to this is already saying it to themselves before I can even say it out loud. Because it's what? It's what? Okay, fine. What about the perspective of a Palestinian who's had their kids killed? Oh, and by the way, there's been way, way, way more of that. Way more Palestinians have been killed by Israel than Israeli kids have been killed by Palestinians. And so why is it exactly that we're only supposed to put ourselves in the position of an Israeli who's lost their kid and never a Palestinian? That's the BS that the entire pro Israel argument relies on, is that you only consider this one side and don't look at this other. But this same argument, look, it's the same. He's literally saying it. He's going, hey, you tough guys out there, if someone ever killed your kid, you'd be beating the crap out of everyone. Thank you for explaining the terrorism problem that Israel has to deal with. That's it. That's the whole thing right there. You kill other people's kids and they are going to become irrational barbarians ready to tear you limb from limb. And that explains it. That explains the terrorism issue. What do you think those Palestinians feel about their kids being killed? And yet, and yet as their kids are being killed and really think about this as their kids are being killed in drastically larger numbers than Israeli kids have ever been killed, we're supposed to put ourselves in the position of the Israeli parent and justify their slaughter. How do you think that feels from their perspective? And so I'm going to wrap up the show here on this one, but I'll just say, like I always say, if you're going to do, if we're going to do this game, then why do we need two standards when one will do just fine? Take. Give me one argument that defends Israel. One argument that defends Israel that starts from this starting point. Ok. And this is why I was pick. This is why I was picking on Constantin about the first principles thing, which maybe seemed like it was a little bit like, what difference does it make? He's just using first principles in a different way than you are. But I was making the point that it's like, no, look, all I'm saying is if you have first principles, then state the principles and apply them equally to both sides. Give me one pro Israel argument that can start from that point that these are my principles. We're going to apply them equally to both sides. And I value Palestinian life equal to Israeli life. That's all I'm asking for. Because every single pro Israel argument seems to rely on only looking at one side of the equation, not the other one. And if not explicitly saying it, implicitly saying that Israeli life is more valuable than Palestinian life. And what I mean by that is saying we're not going to put ourselves in the, in the shoes of the person who's a Palestinian who's lost their kids, only in the Israelis. That I think that's bullshit. All right, we're going to wrap the show on that. Thank you guys so much for, for listening. We will be back with a brand new episode, Manana Peace.