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30 Israel and Gaza

30 Israel and Gaza

Released Wednesday, 18th October 2023
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30 Israel and Gaza

30 Israel and Gaza

30 Israel and Gaza

30 Israel and Gaza

Wednesday, 18th October 2023
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

You're going to take on the world episode 30.

0:02

Israel, Gaza.

0:04

Welcome to the episode of You're going to take on the world.

0:13

I am Dustin and joining me is Lauren.

0:15

Lou, it's kind of big news.

0:17

Happening this week though. So, yeah, ignore this Israel Gaza stuff, I guess.

0:26

Especially this time around.

0:29

So, we need to start with history.

0:33

Everybody goes, "Ahhhh."

0:37

But actually it's really interesting. It's going to be high level, but we need to get through some history on the topic

0:42

before we do anything else.

0:44

The Jewish people in some form are originated.

0:48

And by originated started as an identifiable people

0:52

prior to the Assyrian and Babylonian empires conquering the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

1:04

Those are historically valid and validated.

1:09

Like, they had kings. Those kings do show up in other countries' records.

1:15

Well, are people claiming they never existed?

1:17

No, no, no, no. But that part, by the time you're getting into the book of Second Kings,

1:23

you're getting descriptions of events that have historical,

1:27

like that's pretty legit history with a fair number of those kings showing up

1:34

in written records of other kingdoms.

1:37

Yeah. The Assyrians did a lot of relocating of people.

1:43

So, the Northern tribes, a lot of them got shipped off.

1:47

The rest became known as Samaritans. Good Samaritans or bad Samaritans?

1:51

The Samaritans were believed to be bad because they weren't of pure Jewish blood.

1:56

Oh. So, that's why the story of the good Samaritan is a big deal is that was a Samaritan who was

2:05

better than the Pharisee who was the most pure of Jews.

2:09

Okay, I had no idea about any of that, but go on.

2:15

So, there was a Jewish kingdom in the general vicinity of the modern state of Israel,

2:22

a lot of very significant overlap from the Hasmanian period.

2:27

In the second century BCE, there was a kingdom of Judah that was reestablished

2:34

during the Machiappe revolt, which ended a several hundred year cycle

2:40

of the Greek Empire's successor states based out of modern Syria and Egypt,

2:46

fighting over who had control of that territory.

2:48

Okay. There's a long history of fighting over that territory.

2:51

Yep. That continued until the Roman Empire, and Judah being incorporated into the Roman Empire as the

3:01

province of Palestine.

3:04

Then there was the Roman Jewish War, which was a very lengthy, very bloody battle between

3:12

one of the most powerful empires in all of world history,

3:16

and a tiny, tiny, tiny minority within their empire.

3:21

The Roman Jewish War ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of all Jews from the land.

3:30

Okay. Under pain of death.

3:34

Well, death is painless up to the moment, but pain.

3:39

And we're so under the pain of death.

3:41

It's like, well, are you talking about the pain before death or like that sounds, it does sound terrible.

3:46

By a thousand years ago, there were Jewish populations in Eastern Europe, the Qazar Empire

3:58

is believed to have been Jewish and was why the precursors to the Zars considered Judaism as a religion

4:08

they could adopt in the, in the legend of them deciding between Byzantine Christianity, Judaism,

4:16

and Islam. Okay. So there were the Qazar's up there.

4:19

There was a very substantial Jewish population in all on the loose,

4:26

modern-day Spain. Okay.

4:28

That was when it was under Morish control, which were North African,

4:33

Burber Muslims, ruling over Spain.

4:36

Okay. And Spain had a, all I'll end up loose had a golden age of science, math.

4:45

It really became the, and banking.

4:50

Golden age. There has been a, had been a very large Jewish population in and around Alexandria, Egypt,

5:00

from the, like from Alexander's empire on.

5:07

Okay. And just random Jewish communities scattered all the way around the Mediterranean.

5:12

Because people spread?

5:14

Yes. Spread like herpes. Generally speaking, the Muslim empires in that time period, yeah,

5:23

thousand years ago were tolerant of Jews, because they were the people of the book,

5:27

and they ran the financial system.

5:29

The reason why Jews ran the financial system is Muslims were,

5:36

Muslims believed charging interest to be a sin.

5:42

And Christians, right? Christians also believed that charging interest was a sin.

5:47

Jews did not have any problem with charging interest.

5:51

So they were the only ones who could actually handle a banking system that made kind,

5:55

any kind of profit. You can't run a banking system without charging interest on loans.

5:59

It's the only thing that keeps everything going.

6:02

Yep. Okay. And not only that,

6:04

but stereotypes start to come in. That's part of where that comes in.

6:08

Also, there was the Jewish diaspora spread across,

6:13

you know, from Baghdad to Morocco to London to Russia.

6:20

You had this network of people who ended up running most of the banking of the known world at that point.

6:29

Well, aside note, we've been watching and catching up on Star Wars,

6:33

Clone Wars, and they touch on the banking clan.

6:36

And you can tell that it is a very thinly veiled poke at Jewish people,

6:42

like super bad, almost what you would expect from like old newspaper characterization.

6:49

Jewish people. It is super racist.

6:52

If you're going for an alien species, so they're just going with it.

6:55

But the banking clan, because they can run the banks.

6:58

And the banking, they do. The banking clan is very much a major, major, major character,

7:05

character of Ashkenazi Jews with just enough extra weird

7:11

shaping of the head to make it look alien and not...

7:16

I think you would expect from like 1800s or early 1900s political cartoons.

7:22

Like, it was just so far, I'm like really, really guys.

7:25

But that's the side of the point.

7:28

Yeah. Obviously that was based off of something.

7:30

So, when you get to more around 500 years ago,

7:35

is when you get to the Spanish acquisition?

7:38

Everybody just said it in their head.

7:41

Nobody suspects. Well, at that point, everybody did because they knew it was there.

7:45

When Ferdinand and Isabella decreed that all non-Christians

7:52

must convert, leave or die.

7:56

There...

7:58

One of their many fuck-ups. Their official reason for that was

8:05

breaking the treaty they made with the surrender of Granada when they completed

8:11

the reconquista, finally conquering the last bit of what is now Spain.

8:18

While Columbus was sailing across the Atlantic.

8:22

Oh yeah, yes.

8:24

Happy not Columbus Day.

8:26

The timing of that was it's not that the age of discovery started after the reconquista.

8:32

It was... It started...

8:35

Did buy. It started as it was ending and then Spain had a whole bunch of soldiers

8:40

very, very battle-hardened soldiers that they didn't want to have at home.

8:46

So they sent them to the New World and conquered the New World.

8:50

Well, we can't really area integrate you into society.

8:53

So off you go. So Spain...

8:56

So they decided to make sure that there wasn't any chance that the Muslims,

9:02

because at that point, 30 to 70% of Spain's population was Muslim.

9:08

Okay. They didn't want them rebelling against the Catholic monarchs.

9:12

Yeah. The really super Catholic monarchs.

9:16

So they ordered them to convert? Or upon the pain of death.

9:21

They also made the Jews convert because they're not Christian and they...

9:28

They had a lot more... They said everybody who wasn't Christian.

9:32

So that includes you guys. And the Jews in All Under Loose had much higher quality of life than they were getting offered

9:39

even if not for the Inquisition in Catholic Spain.

9:44

So the king of Poland invited Spain's Jews to move to Poland,

9:50

which prompted the Polish Golden Age.

9:53

Right. Like I'm sensing it's so funny because here is a people who have been harassed for a millennia.

10:02

And um... But they bring prosperity wherever they go.

10:07

Oh. So where's the logic there?

10:12

And it all comes down to that religious idealism.

10:15

Uh, not idealism. A religious, um,

10:18

purity that people are become hyper focused on.

10:22

And it's just that's really sad that you literally like...

10:25

All right. The German Inquisition...

10:29

Or upon you, I guess. The German Inquisition also...

10:32

They went after witches but also Jews.

10:36

Which is actually where you get a lot of the modern witch imagery.

10:40

The black hats, the ugly faces, what they would...

10:44

We would consider big-nosed ugly faces of witches.

10:47

The style of a tire is all based on the...

10:50

This is a German Jewish witch hunt.

10:52

There's a lot of the faces of that is from those stories.

10:57

It's like, oh man. Around the same time, Russia was beginning to form.

11:02

And Eastern Orthodox with a bunch of Jews around...

11:06

pogroms began.

11:09

Uh, back in Germany, when Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation.

11:17

One of the key principles was that Jews were evil and needed to be destroyed.

11:21

Yeah, they gloss over that one in school.

11:25

So the 30 years war, you had Catholics and Protestants fighting all across Germany,

11:31

slaughtering Jews. Uh, like, bad, bad stuff.

11:35

Really bad. By the time you get to the 1890s, you start getting these

11:40

white racist evangelical pro-Jewish groups that they weren't actually pro-Jewish people.

11:52

They were... Let's get Jewish people out of our country because we don't want them here.

11:57

Not in our neighborhood. They're going to bring them back to Israel so that they can bring about the apocalypse by rebuilding the temple.

12:04

Yeah, some things are just too messed up to really comprehend that people think this way, but there you go.

12:11

So starting in about the 1890s, Jews from around Europe started migrating to modern-day Israel.

12:19

There had been... I mean, it was taught to us that it's a safe haven.

12:23

You guys have been harassed for far too long. Let's give you a safe place to live and we are spreading ourselves on the back to this day for doing that.

12:30

But there's a weird undercurrent.

12:32

In the... like, let's bring about the end of the world.

12:37

Here you go. In the 1890s. In the 1890s.

12:40

It was American racist and Germans and Brits putting Jews on boats to go to the Ottoman Empire.

12:50

Like, nothing about that made sense.

12:53

No, no. But that's what they did and the Ottoman Empire was pretty tolerant of Jews.

13:00

So during the Ottoman period, there had been Jews moving back into the area of Israel.

13:06

So there were some that had been there for quite a while. There were people who had been there all along though.

13:11

Really, all that time. And they were interbeing this influx of Jews that increased, of course, with the rise of Nazi Germany.

13:21

Yeah. Refugee kind of escape to someplace safe.

13:26

But by the time Nazi Germany had come about, that was British mandate Palestine.

13:34

Okay. So what is that?

13:37

At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was chopped up into pieces.

13:42

Plan the Allies had for what they were going to do with Turkey failed.

13:47

And there was another war over that. The Turks did not put up a fight over the rest of the territory.

13:52

Okay. So the British got League of Nations mandates for modern day Israel, Jordan, and Iraq.

14:04

Okay. The French got Syria and Lebanon.

14:07

You see how well that turned out. And the Saudis got everything else?

14:12

Saudi Arabia. What is now Saudi Arabia?

14:16

The Heshemite and Saudi dynasties in that area were allowed to just do their own thing.

14:23

Yeah, okay. The Saudis of Saud took over.

14:29

And but the British greatly increased the amount of Jews moving into Palestine.

14:37

And I'm using the word Palestine here because that was the name it had at the time.

14:41

Okay. That had been the name of the territory from 16 at least by 69 CE.

14:51

Oh wow. That's an old yeah.

14:54

Okay. Until 1948. So in 1948, Britain didn't know what to do with the land because there were a bunch of Jews.

15:06

There were a bunch of Arabs.

15:10

Some of those Arabs were Muslims. Some of those Arabs were Christian and they had a whole bunch of people.

15:14

They had been promising Jews that they would give them their own country,

15:19

but they couldn't figure out a way to actually do that.

15:22

Yeah. And so the UN worked out a partitioning.

15:28

And the partitioning created the state of Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank

15:37

and the Gaza Strip. Okay.

15:39

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip being the areas that had the highest Arab population

15:44

and the lowest Jewish population, the areas that were to become Israel were the areas with the

15:50

highest Jewish population. Okay.

15:52

So not an arbitrary line.

15:55

It was determined by population demographics.

15:59

Okay. We'll put it here and here.

16:02

And neither was going to get Jerusalem.

16:04

Okay. Jerusalem was going to be an international uh, cove ruled city that would be neutral territory for all.

16:13

Sounds like a pretty good plan.

16:15

The day that Israel declared independence, they were invaded by all of their neighbors.

16:21

Whoops.

16:24

Jordan. We didn't work with the neighbors.

16:26

Did they when they did this?

16:28

Jordan? To the traditions. No, because the neighbors also got independence at the same time.

16:34

So you give a whole bunch of people independence,

16:36

you know, and then at that point it is a scramble for resources.

16:39

Yep. For and then whoever's the most the strongest will hopefully be on top.

16:44

There'll be bloody for a few years, but then peaceful reign.

16:48

Stability will conquer all.

16:50

No. The final outcome ended up being Israel kept the territory that was supposed to be Israel.

16:58

Jordan took the or Israel took that plus most of Jerusalem.

17:02

Jordan got the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Egypt got control of Gaza.

17:09

Okay. That lasted until the 1967 war when the Arab countries invaded Israel again.

17:19

And Israel by that time was strong enough to take all of the land.

17:25

At that time, all the way to the Sinai canal and they took the Golden Heights from Syria.

17:32

Okay. 19. That leaves Jerusalem still split between Israel and Jordan.

17:38

Well, in 1967. Yeah.

17:40

Israel took over all of it.

17:43

Okay. So they took over Jerusalem took over the West Bank.

17:48

The West Bank. Gaza Strip.

17:50

Gaza Strip. They had it all. And the Sinai.

17:52

Yeah. And the Golden Heights. So the so the the Arab you said the Arabs attacked that would would have been what Turkey?

18:01

No. Jordan. Syria, Jordan.

18:04

Syria, Jordan, Egypt. So they they went in and got not just beat but totally beat back.

18:11

Yeah. Lost a budget territory. Okay.

18:14

The six days war. Yeah.

18:16

And where the Israel was paid for by the US at that point or is that

18:22

was that is that relationship still at that time.

18:25

Israel was getting backing from the US for the same racist

18:31

evangelical reasons largely.

18:34

Well, okay. It's actually to be fair.

18:36

In the US you have the pro-Israel groups.

18:41

You have evangelicals for really bad reasons.

18:46

Which not very many people know about those reasons.

18:50

That is not one that has talked about much and is not a huge population.

18:55

Maybe it is but it's not openly.

18:58

20 to 30% of the US population.

19:00

And George W. Bush. Okay.

19:03

Yeah.

19:06

Their reason for supporting Israel is so that Israel can rebuild the temple

19:12

and sacrifice the red heifer on the altar and bring about Armageddon.

19:16

Yeah, with baddies. Anyway, okay.

19:20

That's only 20 to 30%. Yep. For the rest, there is a major stereotype that a doctor I worked with once

19:31

his family fit the stereotype perfectly.

19:34

He was Jewish. He was a doctor.

19:36

He had a brother who was an accountant and his other brother worked in Hollywood.

19:41

He was a movie producer. There are a lot of Jewish people in the US tend to be very successful.

19:48

Whether they are the sons and daughters of refugees or

19:52

benefit forever or whatever.

19:56

There are a very disproportionate amount of Jews who are lawyers, work in Hollywood,

20:01

are working in high finance.

20:04

It's amazing what happens when you actually care about education.

20:08

But. Yep. That's not racially motivated.

20:10

Just. Not too long ago, the US Supreme Court was one third Jewish.

20:16

The Senate and House are both usually about one quarter Jewish.

20:22

When a quarter of the legislature is Jewish, they're going to support a quarter of the

20:31

legislature supports Zionism to bring about the end of the world.

20:36

Okay. So you got 50% there.

20:39

And the other half are getting campaign contributions.

20:42

Or honestly, just have a humanitarian idealistic view of the world.

20:49

They want to help out a traditionally marginalized group.

20:54

Yeah. Okay. So that fits it all out.

20:57

All right. So 1973 was the Yom Kippur War when, again, Israel's neighbors invaded.

21:03

And Egypt got the Sinai peninsula back.

21:08

Okay. Syria got some territory back.

21:12

Jordan didn't get anything.

21:16

Although the king of Jordan is the holder of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

21:25

So he is the one who is responsible for those for current rules and agreements and treaties.

21:31

After that, Egypt and Jordan both normalize relations with Israel.

21:37

They're the first Arab countries and the first Muslim countries to recognize that Israel exists.

21:43

And to agree that Israel has.

21:46

They're trying to take it away and they stood their ground.

21:48

So eventually you're going to say, all right, all right, all right.

21:51

Yeah. Now, when I was in Jordan, I made a weekend trip to Jerusalem.

21:57

As far as Jordan was concerned, I did not cross any border crossings.

22:01

So they did not stamp my passport out or in because they did not recognize

22:08

the Jordan River as a border.

22:11

Israel sure did. Yeah.

22:13

They stamped me in and out. Okay. It resulted in a situation where I had to get my visa extended in Jordan

22:20

because even though I left the country and re-entered, I didn't leave the country and re-enter.

22:25

Yeah. Yeah. And the timing of that trip was one week after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip.

22:32

Now, who is Hamas? So the Palestinians ever since the partition?

22:41

All of the, yeah, they have been powerless, largely refugee because one of the things that happened when

22:49

with that war in 1948 was a lot of Arabs got kicked out of their houses and they had to move.

23:01

They became refugees. So you had a large refugee population.

23:06

You have cases of people living in refugee camps for generations.

23:11

You have Palestinian refugees in Jordan and other surrounding countries.

23:17

For Jordan, it's, they've got about a million Palestinian refugees.

23:21

Between Palestinian and Iraqi refugees and Syrian refugees now, Jordan is on the verge of

23:29

collapse at all times because of the number of refugees.

23:33

They just don't have the resources to support that many people in need.

23:38

Yeah. Jordan would not be able to do that without USAID.

23:42

And the region is much stable because that exists.

23:46

Right, because those people need to go somewhere. They don't go somewhere.

23:49

They just end up staying and getting slaughtered. So there were several Arab movements.

23:55

The PLO, Palestinian Liberation Organization, was the primarily secular organization.

24:04

They were the ones involved in the Munich Olympics bombing,

24:07

main hijackings. And that was Yasser Erafat's group.

24:11

He renounced terrorism in the 90s.

24:15

And his organization went peaceful and moved towards getting more autonomy for their occupied territory.

24:25

Okay. The, in the early 2000s, the PLO rebranded to the Palestinian Authority.

24:35

This was especially as they were gaining independence or at least autonomy.

24:40

Not independence, but autonomy. Okay. They had control of the West Bank and Gaza until June 2007.

24:49

When they had elections and the Palestinian Authority continued to do well in the West Bank.

24:57

And Hamas won in Gaza.

25:01

I just still haven't answered your question of what was Hamas.

25:04

Hamas is a group that has, it was a Palestinian, specifically Muslim, Palestinian,

25:11

liberation organization that had a political wing and a military wing.

25:19

And the military wing of the party, everybody calls terrorists because it is a,

25:24

they're the fighters. They're the fighters and have engaged in acts of terrorism because they have, they are powerless.

25:32

Okay. Politically powerless.

25:34

Politically powerless and militarily, not particularly powerful.

25:38

So in 2006, or to be 2007,

25:43

Hamas won the elections. They seized control of the West Bank and like everybody was tre-

25:50

or not West Bank of Gaza. There were a lot of efforts to keep them from actually taking control, but that failed.

25:57

And so Israel has had Gaza siege ever since.

26:02

So they, so Haza won the, Hamas won the elections.

26:07

Israel said no way moved in.

26:09

No, they just blocked it off.

26:11

Oh, block. Okay. The Gaza Strip is tiny.

26:16

Right. It's called a strip for reasons.

26:20

What did you say? Like 40 square miles or something?

26:22

In that ballpark, yeah. It has 2.3 million people living in it.

26:26

Yeah. It's crowded.

26:28

It started out as just Gaza City.

26:30

But refugees filled up the rest of the available land.

26:36

It is one of the most densely populated territories in the world.

26:41

One of the most impoverished territories in the world.

26:44

Probably the most impoverished territory in the world.

26:48

And it has been a humanitarian crisis for generations.

26:53

Right. Because you have a bunch of displaced people.

26:56

Whose parents were displaced.

26:58

His grandparents were displaced.

27:00

Yep. They don't have a home. They don't have territory.

27:02

So that leaves them vulnerable to gang-like living situations.

27:07

You got people piled on top of other people.

27:10

They don't have anywhere to go. Yep. And it depend wholly on aid from outside territories.

27:15

Right. Primarily Iran.

27:18

Okay. All right. So.

27:21

So you can see why some bleeding heart liberal might say,

27:23

"Oh, that's, that's, we got to fix this."

27:25

So what I'm going to say before we start about the,

27:29

talk about the current crisis. Israel is in apartheid state.

27:33

Yes. By definition of apartheid.

27:36

They are what they have been doing to Gaza has been

27:40

has been a crime against humanity.

27:42

There are no good solutions.

27:45

There are no solutions to the Gaza problem.

27:50

Because Gaza is a problem. Having that many people packed into that type of a territory.

27:55

That is a territory that shouldn't exist.

27:57

Not in that the people should be wiped off the map.

28:01

Right. Through the current crisis.

28:03

Hamas militants

28:05

successfully pulled off a sneak attack on Israel.

28:10

With trucks and heavy equipment

28:13

knocking down the border walls and crossing

28:16

with people paragliding across the border

28:20

with boats making amphibious landings.

28:23

It was a massive operation. And five thousand missiles.

28:28

Enough that they were able to overwhelm

28:31

Israel's iron dome anti-missile defense system.

28:35

So we paid for that.

28:38

That's all I can think was like somebody paid for that.

28:41

Israel didn't know it was going to happen.

28:43

Amazing. Mossad failed. The US didn't know it was going to happen.

28:48

Mossad is Israel's intelligence organization.

28:51

Okay. Yeah.

28:53

Yeah, nobody knew it was going to happen. Yeah. Obviously that's why it was a surprise attack.

28:56

Hamas managed to

28:58

as far as we know. Hamas killed over a thousand people.

29:02

Yeah. They took over a hundred people hostage.

29:07

They captured several towns and villages.

29:10

And between then and the time of recording,

29:15

which is Sunday, October 15, Israel has retaken their territory.

29:19

The civilian death toll on both sides is well over a thousand.

29:24

Yeah. The military death toll on both sides is approaching a thousand.

29:29

Hezbollah has been launching

29:33

some missiles out of Lebanon.

29:37

Which is normal activity.

29:40

And normal for that area.

29:42

Relatively normal activity. And there have been a few people killed in the West Bank as well at this point.

29:48

I don't know any details on that one.

29:50

Yeah. There's a lot of there's a lot of details that we are missing at the moment.

29:55

Yeah. As things change over the next week or two or year.

29:58

Yeah. We'll see what happens.

30:02

As of recording, Israel has also

30:07

ordered everyone in northern Gaza to

30:11

evacuate to southern Gaza.

30:15

So half of that 2.3 million people.

30:18

Approximately 1 million people. You did just skidaddle.

30:21

Need to go to the other part of the overly crowded area.

30:27

Some of these... Set up for failure much.

30:30

Some vehicles fleeing have been hit

30:35

by Israeli missiles. They have been given specific instructions about where to go,

30:41

what hours to travel and when to be off the roads.

30:45

And some of the vehicles are still getting hit by missiles.

30:47

And from the last report, I saw

30:50

several hundred thousand Palestinians have fled northern Gaza.

30:55

Yeah. Israel is a full-blown war zone.

30:59

Israel is preparing a full-scale invasion of Gaza.

31:04

And those are the facts of the situation at this point.

31:09

There are two statements I'm going to make that are going to sound

31:15

contradictory that I believe to be true in this situation.

31:18

Israel absolutely has a right to defend itself.

31:22

If they cross the border into Gaza, they will be committing genocide.

31:27

That's not really contradictory.

31:30

So much. Yeah, the right to defend yourself, but as soon as you start invasion,

31:35

you've switched from defense to offense.

31:38

And if this... Of course, there, you know, it makes sense.

31:42

It's like, okay, if you guys are going to sit on the border and still attack us,

31:45

then we're just going to eliminate the border or move it.

31:48

And if this was Israel invading Lebanon again,

31:51

the invasion itself would not be inherently a genocide.

31:58

Gaza is a different situation because you could literally line up bulldozers

32:03

and wipe it and its population off the map.

32:07

This is nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go.

32:10

It's only a couple miles wide. They could literally bulldoze it right into the Mediterranean Sea.

32:15

It is a humanitarian catastrophe.

32:19

It is a absolute disaster.

32:22

And as we look at the history,

32:26

unpreventable. Yeah, this has been

32:29

for so long.

32:31

This is an expected outcome. It's not going to fix anything.

32:34

This is going to continue. This is...

32:36

It is... I'm way. Absolutely unexpected outcome.

32:38

It sucks. If you were to assume the worst will happen.

32:43

And I would say the worst in this situation is real wipes out Gaza

32:48

and kills a million civilians. Would be the worst case scenario.

32:52

You'd still have about 1.3 million

32:56

refugees fleeing. Assuming Egypt ever opens up the border.

33:00

We all know how people feel about

33:02

refugee immigration at the moment.

33:05

Yep. They also have nowhere to go right now.

33:08

Because right now, they... They might open their hearts and say,

33:10

come on in, but nobody in Europe,

33:13

nobody in Africa.

33:16

The Middle East is... Jordan is already cramful.

33:19

Egypt isn't accepting... They've sealed the border.

33:24

Right. They want the war hit in them either. Right now, the US is just trying to negotiate with Egypt to let

33:30

American and European nationals

33:32

and UN staffers out of Gaza.

33:35

At least let our people out. That's an easy to negotiate one.

33:38

Yeah. And I can... I understand you just like,

33:41

no, no, we're not touching it. You guys are in there.

33:44

That's your own fault. Egypt doesn't want a million refugees.

33:48

No. And there is a certain mentality of

33:51

this has been building up. Why would you have your people there?

33:54

But then again, this has been

33:56

a humanitarian crisis for generations and there have been people who have been

34:00

in there helping. Very far getting caught now.

34:03

And very few people that are in Gaza

34:06

necessarily want to be stuck there. Who wants to be there?

34:09

They just have nowhere else to go or have to be there for work.

34:12

So... It's a mess.

34:16

Yeah. It's a mess and a lot of people

34:19

have very strong feelings about it on both sides.

34:23

We've heard one or two opinions from sides.

34:27

There are many others that I could

34:30

just as easily agree with. Many that I would disagree with.

34:32

But it's one of those things where this

34:35

does seem like an unsolvable problem.

34:37

And honestly, from my couch here in Idaho,

34:41

my opinion doesn't matter in the long run.

34:44

My feelings about who to protect or who to not protect are meaningless.

34:50

But we'll see over the next couple of weeks

34:53

how the US responds, how Israel responds,

34:56

who can we can be saved and who can't.

34:59

And that's a really hard thing to just sit back and watch.

35:02

Yeah. And the lack of information is...

35:06

Yeah, and I have to re-emphasize

35:10

we don't have enough information to say

35:13

who is right or wrong in the situation.

35:16

So... Well, many of you might be getting on your keyboards

35:21

and writing up a nice thing saying, "You're wrong about this.

35:24

I understand." Because this is just from our perspective

35:29

that this is like, "Oh, this is really messed up."

35:31

There's a lot of stuff that are right and wrong here.

35:33

I fact, "Oh, no, there isn't. There's nothing right or wrong here.

35:36

There's just a lot of confusion. And there's nobody will win."

35:40

And I feel really, really bad for everybody involved.

35:43

Because of the situation that is Gaza,

35:45

there is no right. Yeah. A whole lot of wrong.

35:50

It is a situation... It's about something that we can all agree on.

35:53

It is a situation where there is so much evil

35:56

that there is no good. Now, one thing speculation-wise on this,

36:02

why the hell would Hamas do this?

36:04

They knew, as hard as they hit,

36:08

that Israel would destroy them.

36:10

Well, I mean, I've been going off a little bit on conspiracy theories with Dustin.

36:16

Every time we talk about this has been brought up.

36:18

I'm like, "Well, this doesn't sound like, this doesn't sound right."

36:20

This sounds like somebody paid to have a bunch of weapons,

36:24

a bunch of... Somebody else with military intelligence

36:27

went in there and orchestrated this plan

36:30

and they're going to make money off. They're going to win.

36:32

I don't know who it is. I ran.

36:34

I'm possibly... Israel?

36:37

I ran, it's been pumping the missiles. Israel and Hamas would never work together.

36:41

But I was like, maybe not officially, but I'm sure somebody shook hands.

36:45

But it's so easy in this situation to say,

36:48

this doesn't make sense. It must be conspiracy.

36:50

And that's just not the case. But...

36:54

And the only... But it will be winning out of this.

36:57

And unfortunately, a lot of people are going to die in the process.

37:01

The only...

37:03

That's the goal, though. I don't know. Only plausible explanation that makes sense to me

37:08

is that Hamas was looking at

37:11

more and more Arab countries,

37:14

normalizing relations with Israel and figuring this is their last chance to get help.

37:20

And the only way to get help is to create a crisis

37:24

big enough to force their allies to come to their aid.

37:28

I think they're going to find they don't have allies.

37:31

Yeah. Yeah.

37:33

Nobody who's willing to step in anyway.

37:36

You do an attack like that.

37:38

Israel's got the money, the power,

37:40

the allies to totally destroy them.

37:43

So was... Is it you saying that this might be like a martyrdom situation

37:47

where they're like... No. I think it was that they were...

37:51

They were hoping to get Syria...

37:53

Who's messed up? And Jordan.

37:55

And Iraq and Egypt to come to their aid.

37:58

Syria's got their own problems.

38:00

Yeah. Jordan's already overburdened

38:03

and cannot militarily intervene.

38:05

I mean, it's just... Yeah, maybe.

38:08

Maybe this is just desperation. Like, okay, this is our last chance.

38:11

Let's try it. Oh, that backfire tremendously

38:14

and now we've lost everything. Iraq doesn't share a border with Israel

38:18

and is a mess.

38:20

Not touching. Yeah, right? Syria does share a border, but is a mess.

38:24

It's like a call-off or reinforcements and the person's like, "Nah, we're out."

38:27

Egypt is not interested.

38:31

Jordan...

38:35

Can't.

38:37

They just... And also, Jordan wouldn't do that.

38:41

No. Without... They would not be...

38:45

Let's just put it this way.

38:47

No country flying F-16 fighters

38:50

would be allowed to attack Israel.

38:53

I'm sure that statement means something to you,

38:56

but to me, that makes... I have those words in a sentence

38:59

that don't actually make any sense. The countries who have...

39:02

Who are using predominantly US military tech.

39:07

Okay, thank you. That all comes with US power and leverage behind it.

39:12

Yeah. So, yeah.

39:15

It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of weeks.

39:18

It doesn't look good. No, it does not.

39:22

All right.

39:36

After that heavy topic,

39:38

we are not going to talk about anything else. And that's probably not going to make sense to you

39:42

because I will be editing the reference to there being something else.

39:45

Yeah, this is a heavy one.

39:49

Yeah. Yeah, it was. And if you do, if you do want to share opinions and questions

39:56

and want us to discuss something further as things happen,

39:59

let us know. This was very much a high-level overview.

40:03

I am...

40:07

And details may come out that make us flip certain opinions, but we'll see.

40:11

So, email us at [email protected].

40:16

Send us a voicemail message using the SpeakPipe button on the website.

40:21

Or by calling us at...

40:23

208-996-8667.

40:27

And if you want to support us, you can find out how at htotw.com/donate.

40:34

Until next time, this has been Humanist Take On The World, and remember,

40:37

not all those who wander. Our loss.

40:40

[Music]

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