Dave Smith (115:03)
Yes, right. But look, I mean, there's a lot of these scenarios where we look back at Nelson Mandela, for example. You know, Nelson Mandela was not imprisoned because he was, you know, making picket signs. I mean, there have been people who have embraced violence as a means to achieve a policy end, including the early Zionist settlers, including the Israeli government, including the US government, and lots of governments around the world. The tragic, tragic mistake in terms of political outcome from the Palestinians is that they really just underestimated the fact that these Jews had no home to go to. This was their home. And you could drive out the French from Algeria. Cause they go, screw it, we're going back home to France. The Jews had been so persecuted in Eastern Europe that there was no home to go. And of course, then after World War II, they were here to stay. And so it's, of course, it's been a tragedy. And of course, a lot of Palestinian actions I wish would be different. I wish Hamas didn't exist. It should be pointed out, by the way, that in 2005, you did mention that it was really part of the Bush administration exporting democracy around the world that put pressure on them to have these elections. It should also be mentioned that Hamas did not win a majority in one single precinct. They won pluralities all around. So just saying, when we're bringing up this election, half the population of Gaza today is under the age of 18. They were toddlers. If they were alive in 2005, of the other half that maybe, maybe half of them voted in these elections there, it was never a majority that supported Hamas. They eked out a victory. And then, of course, there was an attempted coup coup after that, and that's when Hamas seized complete control. The coup failed. Regardless of any of that, I agree with you that, like, yeah, the Palestinians have agency, and I wish some of them had made better decisions. Now many of them have made better decisions, and it's still resulted in nothing better happening for them and their people. And so I do find it kind of hard to, like, lecture a group of people who are going through so much, like, the level of human suffering that's being inflicted on the people of Gaza right now cannot be overstated. And so to lecture them about how you're supposed to handle that. Exactly. But I will say, man, I think there's kind of this selective empathy that you have here. I agree with you talk about these teenagers being slaughtered at a Music Festival on October 7th. It's like, my God, I have little kids. I can't imagine the nightmare, nightmare of this happening to somebody's children. But at the same time, we're not having this conversation on October 9th or in November or December of 2023. We're having it in 2025, where the tragedy that's been inflicted on Gaza is orders of magnitudes greater than October 7th. There are just every day people are inundated with images of just dead women and children. This is like one of the most brutal wars. And by several metrics that really, you know, like, personally matter to me, like, the number of dead kids, I think that's a pretty good one. It's more children have died than in any recent war. I mean, this is like it does. I do think there's almost like a fundamental framing bias that you get into when people have these debates. And I've had several of them, as you have also. But it seems to me that there's almost an implicit difference in the value that you place on Israeli life life versus the value that we place on Palestinians life. And to even, like, we've gone this far into the conversation and haven't even talked about the fact that, like, dude, Israel has feel. However you feel. If you want to argue, I haven't been there. Stuff does get through the blockade. Okay, fine. This is a captive people, you know, that Israel has dominated since at least 1967. Many of them are there because of the creation of the state of Israel who used to live in what is now called Israel. And they are just. I mean, the amount of human suffering that's being inflicted on them when even as you kind of acknowledged with the George W. Bush exporting democracy, Hamas in many ways was forced on these people. In fact, we saw protests against Hamas just recently. So, I don't know. I mean, that to me seems to be the greatest human tragedy. And I think much more so than you can characterize it as people being pro Hamas or people being anti Semitic. But I actually think that the mass movement around the world of people who oppose this war has been that people feel really awful about all these babies who are being slaughtered.
