0:20

Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

0:22

This is Sam Harris. Well,

0:25

it's been a month since Hamas attacked

0:28

Israel, killing around 1,500

0:30

people and taking over 200

0:32

hostages. And

0:35

it's been a week since Israel's ground

0:37

invasion of Gaza began. Now,

0:40

like many people, I'm concerned that the extensive

0:43

bombing and now invasion of Gaza

0:46

could be a mistake. I'm not

0:48

saying Israel doesn't have to retaliate and destroy

0:51

Hamas. They clearly do. And

0:53

I would say they have to destroy Hezbollah,

0:55

too. And ultimately, they

0:58

and we have to dismantle every jihadist

1:00

organization that could impact our security

1:03

in the future. But there

1:05

may have been other ways to have gone about destroying Hamas

1:07

that would have better served Israel's interests and

1:10

produced fewer casualties on the Palestinian

1:12

side.

1:14

As everyone expected, collateral

1:16

damage in Gaza has convinced much of the

1:18

world that Israel is the real aggressor here.

1:21

Of course, many on the left began saying this before

1:23

Israel had dropped a single bomb

1:25

at a moment when it was clear that Hamas had committed

1:27

atrocities

1:28

of a sort that one scarcely imagines possible

1:31

in the modern world. The

1:33

fact that millions of people can't do

1:35

the moral arithmetic here

1:37

or have confidently produced the wrong answer

1:40

is itself an enormous

1:42

problem for open societies everywhere.

1:45

Because this should not have been confusing. Hamas

1:48

took a sadistic pleasure in torturing

1:50

and killing non-combatants that

1:53

should have made it instantly clear to

1:55

everyone, certainly to everyone on a college

1:58

campus, that jihadists groups

2:00

like Hamas are the permanent enemies

2:02

of civilization. So

2:04

Israel really does have a war to fight, but

2:07

I worry that the ground invasion of Gaza could be

2:09

a mistake. A different approach

2:11

has been discussed in a few contexts. I

2:14

believe Jaco Willink suggested something like

2:16

this on his podcast. As many of you know,

2:18

Jaco is a Navy SEAL who led

2:20

the SEALs in the Battle of Ramadi, so

2:22

he knows a lot about urban warfare and counterinsurgency.

2:26

A similar idea was recently described in an article

2:28

by Brett Stephens in the New York Times,

2:31

recommending that Israel provide humanitarian

2:33

corridors for civilians to leave northern

2:35

Gaza, as well as safe zones in the

2:37

south and perhaps Israel itself,

2:40

where people can be protected. And then the

2:42

IDF could simply starve Hamas

2:44

in their tunnels without much more extensive

2:46

bombing, much less a full ground invasion.

2:50

Now perhaps there are reasons why this just wouldn't work.

2:52

That's totally possible. It would certainly

2:55

take a long time because Hamas has

2:57

spent most of Gaza's resources. Billions

3:00

of dollars in humanitarian aid meant for

3:02

the Palestinians build in hundreds

3:04

of miles of tunnels and fortify

3:07

them with food and water and fuel

3:10

so that they could wage jihad. All

3:12

the while the world holds Israel responsible

3:15

for the deprivations of the Palestinian people. The

3:18

Palestinians of Gaza have been

3:20

deprived of food, water, and fuel,

3:23

and most other good things by Hamas.

3:27

So I can't say if this siege idea really

3:29

is a good one, but if a siege of this sort

3:31

were possible it would have obvious

3:33

advantages. It would signal

3:35

a clear commitment to not harming innocent

3:38

civilians, though some would inevitably

3:40

be harmed because Hamas is using

3:42

their entire society as human

3:44

shields. There's no question that some

3:46

not-so-innocent civilians would arrive

3:48

at humanitarian checkpoints as suicide

3:51

bombers, and there would be an infuriating

3:53

loss of life there, even as

3:55

Israel took great pains to protect it. But

3:58

an approach like this would have denied Hamas. a long

4:00

series of propaganda victories based

4:03

on the terrible imagery that has been coming out of Gaza.

4:06

However, all of this just may be moot in

4:08

the end. Because as

4:10

I said, much of the world took Hamas'

4:13

side before a single Israeli

4:15

bomb fell. And that

4:17

is what is so astonishing and so dangerous

4:20

and so in need of criticism. As

4:23

the war continues, I'm sure I'll do podcasts

4:25

that attempt to understand how we got here and

4:28

where all this is heading. There's a lot to talk

4:30

about, including the bewildering failure

4:32

of the IDF that left Israel so unprotected

4:35

and the commensurate failures of the Netanyahu government.

4:38

There's the pressing question of how America and our allies

4:41

can support Israel while avoiding World

4:43

War III. I certainly wonder

4:45

whether a war with Iran is now more

4:47

or less inevitable. And of course, Iran is

4:49

directly allied with Russia.

4:51

And there are longer term questions about whether peace between

4:53

Israel and the Palestinians is even conceivable.

4:56

Is a two-state solution possible?

5:00

I really have no idea what

5:02

one could rationally hope for at this point. However,

5:05

I want to say something about the extreme

5:08

moral confusion we have witnessed in

5:10

recent weeks. Some of it has just been

5:13

frank anti-Semitism,

5:14

which I'll also talk about. But much

5:17

of it is actual confusion. Most

5:19

people in the West still don't understand

5:21

the problem of jihadism. We

5:23

often speak about terrorism and violent

5:25

extremism generically. And

5:28

we are told that any linkage between these evils

5:30

and the doctrine of Islam

5:32

is spurious

5:33

and nothing more than an expression of Islamophobia.

5:35

Incidentally, the term

5:37

Islamophobia was invented in the 1970s

5:40

by Iranian theocrats to do just

5:43

this, to prevent any criticism

5:45

of Islam, and to cast secularism

5:47

itself as a form of bigotry.

5:50

Islam is a system of ideas,

5:52

subscribed to by people of every race

5:54

and ethnicity. It's just like Christianity

5:57

in that regard. Unlike Judaism.

5:59

Christianity and Islam are both

6:02

aggressively missionary faiths,

6:04

and they win converts from everywhere.

6:07

People criticize the doctrines of

6:09

Christianity all the time and

6:11

worry about their political and social influences,

6:13

but no one confuses this for bigotry

6:16

against Christians as people, much

6:18

less racism.

6:19

There's no such thing as Christophobia.

6:22

As someone once said, and it was not

6:24

Christopher Hitchens, but it sure sounds like him.

6:27

Islamophobia is a term created

6:29

by fascists and used by cowards

6:32

to manipulate morons.

6:35

In any case, fundamentalist Christians and

6:37

Orthodox Jews

6:38

don't tend to be confused about the problem

6:40

of Jihadism because they understand

6:43

the power of religious beliefs. However,

6:45

secular people generally are. We

6:48

imagine that people everywhere at bottom want

6:50

the same things. They want to live safe

6:53

and prosperous lives. They

6:55

want clean drinking water and good schools

6:57

for their kids.

6:58

And we imagine that if whole groups of people start

7:00

behaving in extraordinarily destructive ways,

7:03

practicing suicidal terrorism against non-combatants,

7:06

for instance,

7:07

they must have been pushed into extremis by

7:09

others.

7:10

What could turn ordinary human beings

7:13

into suicide bombers? And what could get

7:15

vast numbers of their neighbors to celebrate

7:17

them as martyrs, other than their entire

7:19

society being oppressed and humiliated

7:22

to the point of madness by some malign

7:24

power? So in the case of Israel,

7:27

many people imagine that the ghoulish history

7:29

of Palestinian terrorism

7:31

simply indicates how profound the injustice

7:33

has been on the Israeli side.

7:36

Now, there are many things to be said

7:38

in criticism of Israel,

7:40

in particular its expansion of settlements on

7:42

contested land.

7:44

But Israel's behavior is not what

7:46

explains the suicidal and

7:48

genocidal inclinations of a group like Hamas.

7:52

The Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad

7:54

goo. These are religious

7:57

beliefs sincerely held. about

8:00

the moral structure of the universe, and

8:03

they explain how normal people, even

8:05

good ones, can commit horrific acts

8:08

of violence against innocent civilians,

8:11

on purpose,

8:12

not as collateral damage, and still

8:14

consider themselves good.

8:17

When you believe that life in this world has

8:19

no value, apart from deciding

8:21

who goes to hell and who goes to paradise,

8:24

it becomes possible to feel perfectly

8:26

at ease killing non-combatants,

8:29

or even using your own women and children as

8:31

human shields,

8:32

because you know that any Muslims who get killed

8:34

will go straight to paradise for

8:36

eternity. If you don't understand

8:39

that jihadists sincerely believe these things,

8:42

you don't understand the problem that Israel

8:44

faces.

8:45

The problem isn't merely Palestinian nationalism,

8:48

or resource competition, or

8:51

any other normal terrestrial grievance.

8:53

In fact, the problem isn't

8:55

even hatred, though there's enough of that

8:57

to go around. The problem is religious

9:00

certainty. It really

9:02

is possible to be critical of Israel,

9:05

and to be committed to the political rights of the Palestinian

9:07

people,

9:08

without being confused about the reality

9:10

of Islamic religious fanaticism,

9:13

or the threat that it poses not just to Israel,

9:15

but to open societies everywhere.

9:18

My friend Christopher Hidgens was extremely critical

9:20

of Israel, and openly supportive of Palestinian

9:23

statehood, but he wasn't even slightly

9:25

confused about the problem of jihad. There

9:29

have been nearly 50,000 acts

9:31

of Islamic terrorism in the last 40 years,

9:34

and the French group that maintains a database of those attacks

9:37

considers that to be an undercount. 90% of

9:39

them have occurred in Muslim countries. Most

9:42

have nothing to do with Israel or the Jews.

9:45

There

9:45

have been 82 attacks in France,

9:48

and over 2,000 in Pakistan during

9:50

that period. You want France to be more

9:52

like Pakistan? You just need more

9:54

jihadists. You just need more people

9:56

susceptible to becoming jihadists, which

9:59

is a trans- information that can happen very quickly, just

10:02

as quickly as new beliefs can take root in a person's

10:04

mind.

10:05

You just need a wider Muslim community

10:07

that doesn't condemn jihadism, but

10:10

tacitly admits that the theology that inspires

10:12

it will be true and perfect until

10:14

the end of the world. You just need millions

10:16

of people who will protest Israel for defending

10:19

itself or call for the deaths of cartoonists

10:22

for depicting the Prophet Muhammad, and yet

10:24

not make a peep about jihadist atrocities

10:26

that occur daily all over the

10:28

world in the name of their religion.

10:31

In the West, there is now a large industry

10:34

of apology and obfuscation

10:36

designed to protect Muslims from

10:38

having to grapple with these facts. The

10:40

humanities and social science departments of every

10:43

university are filled with scholars

10:45

and pseudo-scholars

10:47

deemed to be experts in terrorism and

10:49

religion and Islamic jurisprudence

10:51

and anthropology

10:53

and political science, who claim

10:55

that Muslim extremism is

10:57

never what it seems.

10:59

These experts insist that you can never take jihadists

11:01

at their word and that none of their declarations

11:04

about God and Paradise and martyrdom

11:06

and the evils of apostasy have

11:09

anything to do with their real motivations. When

11:12

one asks what the motivations of jihadists

11:14

actually are, one encounters a tsunami

11:17

of a liberal delusion. Needless to

11:19

say, the West is to blame for all the

11:21

mayhem we see in Muslim societies. After

11:24

all, how would we feel if outside powers

11:27

and their map-makers had divided our

11:29

lands and stolen our oil? These

11:31

beleaguered people just want what everyone else wants in

11:34

life. They want economic and political

11:36

security. They want to be free to flourish

11:38

in ways that would be fully compatible with

11:40

a global civil society if only they

11:42

were given the chance. Other

11:44

liberals imagine that jihadists

11:47

are acting as anyone else would given

11:49

a similar history of unhappy encounters

11:51

with the West, and they totally discount

11:53

the role that religious beliefs play in

11:56

inspiring groups like Hamas and Al-Qaeda

11:58

or even the Islamic State. to the point

12:00

where it would be impossible for a jihadist

12:03

to prove that he was doing anything for

12:05

religious reasons. Apparently,

12:07

it's not enough for an educated

12:10

person with economic opportunities to

12:12

devote himself to the most extreme and

12:15

austere version of Islam, and

12:17

to articulate his religious reasons for doing so ad

12:19

nauseam, and to even go so far as to confess

12:21

his certainty about martyrdom on

12:24

video before blowing himself up

12:26

in a crowd. Such demonstrations

12:28

of religious fanaticism are somehow considered

12:30

rhetorically insufficient to

12:32

prove that he really believed what he said he believed.

12:35

Of course, if a white supremacist goes

12:38

on a killing spree in a black church, and

12:40

says he did this because he hates black people, and

12:43

thinks that the white race is under attack, this

12:45

motive will be accepted at face value without

12:48

the slightest hesitation. This double

12:50

standard is guaranteed to exonerate

12:53

Islam every time. The game

12:55

is rigged. Do not mistake

12:57

what I'm saying now for anti-Muslim

12:59

bigotry. I'm talking about the consequences

13:02

of ideas, not the ethnic origins

13:04

of people.

13:05

Not a word I've said, or will ever

13:07

say on this topic,

13:09

has anything to do with race.

13:11

And the truth is, I'm not even remotely

13:13

xenophobic. I'm a xenophile.

13:16

The Middle East has produced some of my favorite

13:18

parts of culture, some of my favorite

13:20

foods, and music, and architecture.

13:24

Despite my better judgment, I absolutely

13:26

love the sound of the Muslim call to

13:28

prayer. Everything I'm saying

13:31

about the problem of jihadism is

13:33

about the problem of jihadism. The

13:36

triumphal belief, by some percentage

13:39

of the world's Muslims, that they must conquer

13:41

the world for the one true faith

13:44

through force, and that paradise

13:46

awaits anyone who would sacrifice his

13:49

or her life to that end. Of

13:51

course, many religions produce a fair

13:53

amount of needless suffering. Consider

13:56

the pedophile priest scandal in

13:58

the Catholic Church, which is something I've read. written

14:00

and spoken about before, I hope was

14:02

sufficient outrage. One

14:04

can certainly argue, as I have, that

14:06

Catholic teaching is partly to blame for

14:09

these crimes against children. And just

14:11

follow the causality here. By

14:13

making contraception and abortion taboo,

14:16

the Church ensured that there would be many out-of-wedlock

14:19

births among its faithful. And

14:21

by stigmatizing unwed mothers, it

14:24

further guaranteed that many children would be abandoned

14:26

to Church-run orphanages, where they could be

14:28

preyed upon by sexually unhealthy men.

14:31

Now, I don't think any of this was consciously planned. It's

14:33

just a grotesque consequence of some very bad

14:36

ideas. And yet the truth is, there is no

14:38

direct link between Christian

14:40

Scripture and child rape. However,

14:43

imagine if there were. Just

14:45

imagine if the New Testament

14:48

contained multiple passages promising

14:51

heaven to any priest who raped

14:53

a child. And then imagine

14:56

that in the aftermath of an endless series

14:58

of child rapes within the Church,

15:01

more or less every journalist and politician

15:04

and academic denied that

15:06

they had anything whatsoever to do with

15:08

the, quote, true teachings of Catholicism.

15:12

That is the uncanny situation we find ourselves

15:14

in with respect to Islam. The

15:16

problem that we have to grapple with, and

15:19

by we I mean Muslims and non-Muslims

15:21

alike, is that the doctrines that

15:23

directly support jihadist violence are

15:26

very easy to find in the Quran and

15:28

the Hadith and in the biography of Muhammad.

15:32

For Muslims, Muhammad is the greatest

15:34

person who has ever lived. Unfortunately,

15:37

he did not behave like Jesus or

15:39

Buddha at

15:40

all.

15:42

It sort of matters that he tortured people

15:44

and cut their heads off and took sex

15:47

slaves, and this example

15:49

is meant to inspire his followers for

15:52

all time. There

15:54

are many, many verses in the Quran

15:57

that urge Muslims to wage jihad.

16:00

as holy war against apostates

16:02

and unbelievers, and the most violent of

16:04

these are thought to supersede any

16:06

that seem more benign. But the truth

16:09

is, there isn't much that is benign

16:11

in the Qur'an. There's certainly no Jesus

16:13

as we find Him in Matthew, urging people

16:16

to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. All

16:18

the decapitation we see being practiced by

16:21

jihadists isn't an accident.

16:23

It's in the Qur'an and in the larger

16:25

record of the life of the Prophet. Worse,

16:28

in my view, is the moral logic

16:30

one gets from the doctrine of martyrdom and

16:32

paradise. If you take martyrdom

16:35

and paradise seriously, it

16:38

becomes impossible to make moral

16:40

errors. As I said, if you blow

16:42

yourself up in a crowd, your fellow

16:45

Muslims will go straight to paradise. You've

16:47

actually done them a favor. Unbelievers

16:50

will go to hell where they belong. However

16:52

many lives you destroy, it's all

16:55

good. Again, most

16:57

of this horror has nothing to

16:59

do with Israel or the West. In 2014,

17:03

six jihadis affiliated with the Pakistani

17:06

Taliban attacked a school in Peshawar.

17:09

These jihadis came from outside of Pakistan.

17:11

There was a Chechen and two Afghans

17:14

and three Arabs.

17:15

They murdered 145 people, 132 of whom were children. They burned a teacher

17:17

alive

17:18

in front

17:21

of

17:24

her students and then killed all the

17:26

children they could get their hands on. They

17:28

didn't take any hostages. They

17:30

had no list of demands. They

17:33

intended to die to achieve martyrdom.

17:36

And they did die, so they got at least half

17:38

of what they wanted. It is very

17:40

difficult for secular people to understand

17:44

how this behavior could be possible. They

17:47

assume only madmen would do

17:49

this sort of thing. But that's the

17:51

horror of it. You don't have

17:53

to be mad to be a jihadist.

17:56

You don't even have to be a bad person.

17:58

You just have to be a bad person. to be a true

18:00

believer. You just have to know,

18:03

for sure, that

18:05

you and all the good people will get

18:07

everything you want after you die, and

18:09

that the Creator of the universe wants nothing

18:11

more than for you to kill unbelievers. Here's

18:14

what a supporter of the Pakistani Taliban

18:17

said when interviewed about that school massacre.

18:20

This is a direct quote. "'Human

18:22

life only has value among you

18:24

worldly materialist thinkers. For

18:27

us, this human life is only a tiny, meaningless

18:29

fragment of our existence. Our

18:32

real destination is the hereafter. We

18:34

don't just believe it exists. We know it

18:36

does. Death is not the end of

18:38

life. It is the beginning of existence in

18:40

a world much more beautiful than this. As

18:43

you know, the Urdu word for death is

18:46

intikal. It means transfer, not

18:48

end. Paradise is for those of pure

18:50

hearts. All children have pure

18:52

hearts. They have not sinned yet. They

18:55

have not yet been corrupted. We did not

18:57

end their lives. We gave them new ones

18:59

in paradise, where they will be loved more

19:02

than you can imagine.

19:03

They will be rewarded for their martyrdom.

19:05

After all, we also martyr ourselves

19:07

with them. The last words they heard

19:09

were the slogan of Takbir, Alahu

19:12

Akbar. God is great. Allah

19:14

Almighty says Himself in Surah Al

19:16

Imran that they are not dead. You

19:19

will never understand this. If your

19:21

faith is pure, you will not mourn

19:23

them but celebrate their birth into paradise.

19:27

My point is that we have

19:29

to take declarations of this kind as face

19:32

value, because they are honest

19:34

confessions of a worldview, and

19:37

it is a worldview that is totally

19:39

antithetical to everything that civilized

19:42

people value in the 21st century. This

19:45

problem is much bigger than

19:47

the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Palestinians.

19:50

As many of you know, I've always had a paradoxical

19:52

position on Israel. I've

19:54

said that I don't think it should exist as a Jewish state,

19:57

because in my view, organizing a state around religion

20:00

religion

20:00

is irrational and divisive.

20:03

This follows directly from my views about organized religion

20:05

in general. So obviously I don't think

20:07

there should be Muslim states either, or

20:10

Christian ones for that matter. However,

20:12

there are over 20 countries in which

20:14

Islam is the official state religion and

20:17

over 50 in which Muslims are the majority. And

20:19

there's exactly one Jewish state. Given

20:22

the history of genocidal antisemitism, which

20:25

persists even now, mostly in the

20:27

Muslim world, given that Jews have been

20:29

run out of every country in the Middle East and North Africa

20:32

where they lived for centuries, if any

20:34

people deserve a state of their own, organized

20:36

on any premise they want, it's the Jews.

20:40

In 1939, the SS St.

20:42

Louis, a ship carrying over 900 Jews

20:46

seeking to escape the Holocaust, was

20:48

denied entry into Cuba and

20:50

the United States and Canada,

20:52

and then forced to return to Europe, where

20:55

many of those Jews ended up in the ovens of Auschwitz.

20:58

In my view, that's all the justification for Israel

21:00

one needs. Never

21:03

again should Jews have to beg

21:05

to stand on some dry patch of earth,

21:08

only to be denied one and then systematically

21:10

murdered. As I've said

21:12

before on this podcast, I've never taken

21:15

modern antisemitism very seriously.

21:18

I think I've done exactly one episode on

21:20

the topic. I've studied it.

21:22

I understand its roots in Christian theology,

21:25

despite the fact that Jesus and his apostles

21:27

and the Virgin Mary were all Jews.

21:30

I'm a student of the Holocaust. I'm

21:32

well aware of the antisemitism that existed in

21:35

Europe and the US at the time. Read

21:38

David Wyman's book, The Abandonment

21:40

of the Jews, to understand how widespread

21:42

antisemitism was in America, even

21:44

as Jews were being killed by the millions in

21:47

Europe. And of course, I'm also aware of the

21:49

antisemitism that is endemic to Islam

21:52

and of the way it has been compressed into a diamond

21:54

of intolerance and hatred throughout

21:56

the Muslim world by the modern

21:58

influence of Nazism. There's some

22:01

very depressing history there for anyone who wants

22:03

to read it. And I've been aware that year

22:05

after year in the United States, no

22:07

group has been targeted with more hate and

22:10

hate crime than Jews. This

22:13

is something that many Americans aren't aware of. As

22:15

I said, the American left would have you believe that Islamophobia

22:19

is a major concern. Vice President

22:21

Kamala Harris is now heading a commission on Islamophobia

22:24

in America, as though that's the problem we've

22:26

been seeing in recent weeks. Just a massive

22:28

outpouring of hatred for Muslims in America

22:31

by non-Muslims. Has

22:33

that ever happened? Even

22:36

in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, Jews

22:39

were targeted far more than Muslims. And

22:41

that has been true every year since. According

22:44

to FBI statistics, though Jews

22:46

are just over 2% of the population, they

22:49

receive over half the hate in America,

22:51

and five times the level that Muslims do. I

22:54

think it's safe to say that much of this hate comes from Muslims

22:56

themselves. Jewish schools

22:58

and synagogues have always incurred

23:01

greater security costs than non-Jewish institutions,

23:04

and for good reason,

23:05

because the threat to them is greatest.

23:08

Now, while this status quo has been

23:10

despicable, I have always

23:12

believed that it was tolerable. And

23:14

I say this as someone who has received death threats

23:17

for two decades, and many of these threats

23:19

are often explicitly anti-Semitic. And

23:22

given all of this, I have felt that anti-Semitism

23:25

as a real threat to Jews, certainly

23:27

in the West, was behind us. I

23:30

can't say that now. In

23:33

the last few weeks, with Jews

23:35

being openly reviled and threatened

23:37

all over the world, in the immediate aftermath

23:39

of the most shocking atrocities committed against

23:42

them since the Holocaust, I've

23:44

begun to think that anything is

23:46

possible. Incidentally, have you

23:48

ever wondered how you might have behaved had

23:51

you been a German on the morning after Kristallnacht?

23:54

Have you ever wondered whether you would have just gone about your business

23:57

or done something to resist the slide of your society?

23:59

into absolute depravity,

24:02

more or less everyone on Earth, is

24:04

now getting a chance to see just that. There

24:08

was a mob chanting, gas

24:10

the Jews, in front of the Sydney

24:12

Opera House. We have Jewish

24:14

students in Ivy League universities

24:17

cowering behind locked doors

24:19

in fear for their physical safety. All

24:23

university administrators and diversity,

24:25

equity, and inclusion geniuses and

24:27

Hollywood celebrities who rushed to sign

24:29

open letters in support of the Palestinian cause

24:32

without taking a moment to understand what actually

24:34

happened on October 7th or understanding

24:37

it and not caring, you are all

24:40

now part of history. The

24:42

outpouring of anti-Semitism that we

24:44

have witnessed since October 7th really

24:47

seems to mark a new moment, both

24:49

in the US and globally. And

24:52

for the first time, I now worry that my

24:54

daughters will live in a world where their Jewishness

24:56

will matter to people who do

24:58

not wish them well and will be forced

25:00

to make certain life choices on that basis.

25:03

Choices that I never had to make, apart

25:06

from being a public figure and having to deal with disordered

25:08

people of every description, I have

25:11

never been concerned about anti-Semitism

25:13

for even five minutes in my life.

25:17

I now feel that I have been quite naive,

25:20

and that's putting it charitably. I

25:22

have been utterly ignorant of

25:24

what has been going on beneath the surface. I

25:27

guess there were some recent intimations of this that

25:30

caught my attention. I did criticize

25:32

Elon Musk for how he handled the deluge

25:34

of anti-Semitism that came onto Twitter once

25:37

he started randomly turning knobs and

25:39

flipping switches over there like a villain

25:41

in a James Bond movie. Is

25:43

he still threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation

25:45

League? That would be a prudent use of resources,

25:48

wouldn't it, right about now? Sue

25:50

the Jews for complaining about murderous anti-Semitism

25:53

on the platform that I own. Why

25:56

are the Jews so worried about conspiracy

25:58

theories that make people want to kill them? Can't

26:00

they take a joke? I thought

26:02

Jews were funny. I

26:05

also criticized Lex Friedman for platforming

26:08

Kanye. How does that decision

26:10

look now? Anyone in alternative

26:12

media want to stick a microphone in front of Kanye

26:15

so he can tell us more about how much he hates Jews?

26:18

Or what about RFK Jr.? Can

26:20

we get a tech bro interview with RFK

26:22

Jr. where he just asked some more questions

26:24

about COVID being engineered not to infect

26:27

Ashkenazi Jews? I mean we're in the free

26:29

speech business, right? What's wrong with just

26:31

asking questions? I mean surely Alex

26:33

Jones has got some questions he'd like to ask about

26:36

whether any of the murdered Jews in Israel

26:38

were really lizard people.

26:40

Anything less than a full airing of these profundities

26:43

would amount to censorship, right?

26:46

Do I sound snide? Okay,

26:49

I will let that go. To

26:52

be clear, I don't think Elon and Lex and

26:54

RFK Jr. are anti-Semites. I

26:57

just think they have been reckless and

27:00

morally unserious and

27:02

unwise. Of

27:05

course, the boundary between anti-Semitism

27:08

and generic moral stupidity

27:11

is a little hard to discern, okay? And

27:13

I'm not sure it's always important to find it. I'm

27:16

not sure it matters why a person can't

27:18

distinguish between collateral damage in a necessary

27:21

war and conscious acts of genocidal

27:24

sadism that are celebrated as religious

27:26

sacrament

27:27

by a death cult.

27:29

Our streets have been filled with people literally

27:31

tripping over themselves in their eagerness to demonstrate

27:34

that they cannot distinguish between

27:36

those who intentionally kill babies and

27:39

those who inadvertently kill them, having

27:41

taken great pains to avoid killing them,

27:43

while defending themselves against the very people

27:46

who have just intentionally tortured

27:48

and killed innocent men, women,

27:51

and yes, babies, and

27:53

who are committed to doing this again at any opportunity

27:56

and who are using their own innocent non-combatants

27:59

as human shields. If

28:01

you're both sizing this situation,

28:03

or worse, if you're supporting the wrong side, if you're

28:06

waving the flag of people who murder non-combatants

28:09

intentionally, killing parents in front

28:11

of their children and children in front of their

28:13

parents, burning people alive

28:15

at a music festival devoted to peace and

28:17

decapitating others, and dragging

28:20

their dismembered bodies through the streets, all

28:22

to shouts of God is great, if

28:24

you're recognizing the humanity of actual

28:27

barbarians while demonizing the

28:29

people who worry about war crimes and

28:31

who drop leaflets and call cell phones

28:34

for days in an effort to get non-combatants

28:36

to leave specific buildings before they are bombed,

28:39

because those buildings sit on top of tunnels

28:41

filled with genocidal lunatics who,

28:44

again, have just sedulously

28:46

tortured and murdered families

28:48

as though it were a religious sacrament,

28:51

because for them it is a religious

28:54

sacrament. If you have landed,

28:57

proudly and sanctimoniously,

28:59

on the wrong side of this asymmetry,

29:02

this vast gulf between savagery

29:05

and civilization while marching through

29:07

the quad of an Ivy League university wearing

29:10

yoga pants, I'm not sure it matters

29:13

that your moral confusion is due to the fact

29:15

that you just happen to hate Jews. Whether

29:18

you're an anti-Semite or just an apologist

29:20

for atrocity is probably immaterial.

29:24

The crucial point is that you are

29:26

dangerously confused about

29:28

the moral norms and political sympathies

29:31

that make life in this world worth

29:33

living. What is more, you

29:35

don't even care about what you think you care about,

29:38

because you have failed to see that Hamas and

29:41

jihadists generally are the principal

29:43

cause of all the misery and dysfunction we see,

29:46

not just in Gaza, but throughout the Muslim

29:48

world. Gaza is

29:50

only a, quote, open-air prison, because

29:53

its democratically elected government is

29:55

a jihadist organization that is

29:58

eager to martyr all Palestinians for

30:00

the pleasure of killing Jews. A

30:03

rational government in Gaza that

30:05

cared about the fate of its citizens could

30:07

have made something beautiful out of that strip of

30:09

land on the Mediterranean, or at least

30:12

not awful. But Hamas

30:14

has spent billions of dollars on terrorism.

30:18

The suffering of Gaza is due

30:20

to the fact that it has been run by

30:22

a death cult against which Israel

30:24

has had to defend itself continuously.

30:28

The line you keep hearing from defenders

30:30

of Israel, that if the Palestinians

30:32

put down their weapons there would be peace, but

30:35

if the Israelis put down their weapons there would

30:37

be a genocide, happens to

30:39

be true. But now we

30:41

have college students at our best universities

30:44

tearing down posters of hostages held

30:46

by Hamas, some of whom are

30:48

Americans and some of whom are children,

30:51

imagining that they're supporting the Palestinian

30:53

cause. It boggles

30:56

the mind. We have LGBTQ

30:58

activists supporting Hamas

31:01

when they wouldn't survive a day in Gaza,

31:04

because Hamas throws anyone suspected of

31:06

being gay off of rooftops. They're

31:08

directly supported by Iran, where gay

31:11

people are regularly hung. We've

31:13

got feminist organizations like Code

31:15

Pink going all in for Hamas

31:18

and accusing the Israelis of genocide. Do

31:21

they understand how Hamas treats

31:24

women? Did Code Pink

31:26

support the women of Iran who were thrown

31:28

into prison and even killed for daring

31:31

to show their hair in public? Do

31:33

they realize that women are treated like property throughout

31:35

the Muslim world and that this is not

31:38

an accident? Under

31:40

Islam, the central message

31:42

about women is that they are second-class

31:45

citizens and the property of

31:47

the men in their lives. Rather

31:49

than support the rights of women and girls to

31:51

not live as slaves, Western

31:53

liberals support the rights of theocrats

31:56

to treat their wives and daughters however

31:59

they want. as long as these theocrats

32:02

are Muslim. If anything

32:04

good comes out of this outpouring of hate

32:06

and moral confusion, it

32:08

will be the end of identitarian politics

32:11

on the left. A friend of mine was

32:13

just at an art opening where they

32:15

were passing hors d'oeuvres and someone

32:17

she knew came up to her and asked her if she had any food

32:20

in her teeth. And

32:21

my friend said, no, your teeth are perfectly white and

32:23

beautiful.

32:24

Unfortunately, the woman herself was black

32:26

and considered the association of the terms

32:29

white and beautiful to be a

32:31

microaggression. She got greatly offended

32:34

and stormed off. Did she

32:36

want brown teeth? I

32:38

know nothing more about this person, apart

32:40

from this anecdote, but I guarantee

32:43

you that this prodigy of social

32:45

justice is completely confused

32:48

about Israel and Hamas and jihadism.

32:51

This is the sort of person for whom words are

32:53

violence, but massacring women

32:55

and children with knives or

32:57

burning them alive is a completely

33:00

defensible response to quote oppression.

33:03

Most elite circles in the West, academia,

33:07

Hollywood, the media, non-profits,

33:10

have been poisoned to one degree

33:12

or another by this social justice

33:15

psychosis where imaginary

33:18

harms are seized upon as though

33:20

they were existential concerns and

33:22

pure evil is easily shrugged

33:24

off or even celebrated as

33:26

a moral victory. In

33:29

a previous podcast, I argued that the

33:31

bright line, ethically, between

33:34

Israel and her enemies can be seen on

33:36

the question of human shields. There

33:38

are people who use them

33:39

and there are people who are deterred by them, however

33:42

imperfectly.

33:43

Hamas put its headquarters in Gaza

33:46

under a hospital. Let me say

33:48

that again. Hamas put its headquarters

33:51

in Gaza under a hospital.

33:54

Again, imagine the Jews of Israel

33:56

doing that and imagine how little

33:58

it would matter to Hamas. Hamas if they did.

34:01

Hamas is telling people to

34:03

stay in place in Gaza and

34:05

even physically preventing them from leaving so

34:07

that they will be killed by Israeli bombs.

34:10

They are using their own people as

34:13

human shields, in addition to more

34:15

than 200 hostages they took for this purpose.

34:18

No one cares less about Palestinian

34:21

women and children than Hamas does.

34:24

However horrible the image is coming out of Gaza,

34:26

it is Hamas that should be blamed for the

34:28

loss of life there. You are

34:31

calling for a ceasefire now?

34:33

There was a ceasefire on October 6th.

34:36

Hamas broke it by deliberately

34:39

murdering more than 1400 innocent people. Of

34:42

course Israel should hold itself to the highest

34:45

ethical standards for waging war

34:47

for two reasons. One,

34:49

because it should. It is right

34:51

for the IDF to do whatever it can to minimize

34:54

the loss of innocent life. And

34:56

two, they should hold themselves to the highest

34:58

ethical standards because the rest of

35:00

the world will hold them to impossible ones.

35:04

Look at these protests we are seeing all

35:06

over the world which began before

35:08

Israel had dropped a single bomb. Now

35:11

that there have been several thousand Palestinian casualties,

35:15

cities across the globe are

35:17

seething with rage. But

35:19

Assad has killed hundreds

35:22

of thousands of his fellow Muslims in

35:24

Syria. The Saudis have killed well

35:26

over 100,000 Muslims in Yemen.

35:29

Where are the protests? No

35:31

one cares, least of all

35:33

Muslims. They only

35:36

care when non-Muslims

35:38

produce these casualties and they

35:40

especially care when Jews

35:42

do it. Israel is routinely

35:45

condemned by the United Nations

35:48

and yet the UN could not pass a condemnation

35:51

of Hamas.

35:53

For the atrocities it committed on October

35:55

7th.

35:56

If this isn't anti-Semitism

35:58

at the level of nations I

36:00

don't know what to call it. As I said, I

36:02

don't know whether this ground invasion is the right approach,

36:05

but there's no question that Israel had

36:07

to act. They have to destroy

36:10

Hamas. And whatever they do,

36:12

non-combatants will get killed in the process.

36:15

Again, this is Hamas's fault.

36:18

But the problem is much bigger than Hamas.

36:21

Civilized people everywhere, both

36:24

non-Muslim and Muslim, have no

36:26

choice but to combat jihadism. This

36:29

has been glaringly obvious since September 11, 2001. But

36:33

it should be much more obvious now. For

36:36

Israel, October 7

36:38

was much worse than 9-11 was

36:40

for America.

36:41

There's almost no comparison. The

36:43

revealed threat to Israel really

36:45

is existential. However,

36:47

in the long term, I think the threat

36:49

of jihadism is existential for the

36:52

West, too. This demands

36:54

a much longer conversation about what to do about jihadism.

36:57

I happen to think that most of our response to it should be

36:59

covert. I don't know why the Israelis

37:02

or the Americans or the British or

37:04

anyone else has to take credit for anything.

37:07

However long it takes, members of Hamas

37:09

and Hezbollah and Al Qaeda and

37:12

the Islamic State and al-Shabaab

37:15

and Boko Haram and the Pakistani

37:17

Taliban and every other jihadist

37:19

organization on Earth should be made

37:21

to understand every day of their

37:24

lives that the martyrdom they seek

37:27

will be granted to them.

37:28

Jihadism has to be destroyed

37:31

in every way that it can be destroyed,

37:34

logistically, economically, informationally,

37:38

but also in the most material sense,

37:41

which means killing a lot of jihadists. We

37:43

can argue with their sympathizers and we

37:45

can hope to deradicalize them, but

37:48

we also have to kill committed

37:50

jihadists. These are not normal

37:53

antagonists with rational demands.

37:56

These are not people who want what we

37:58

want. This is not politics.

37:59

politics,

38:00

and it will never be politics.

38:03

It is a very long

38:05

war. Back

38:07

in 2016, I released an episode of this

38:09

podcast titled, What Do Jihadists

38:12

Really Want? based on an issue

38:14

of the magazine, Dabiq, put out by the

38:16

Islamic State. You can listen to that

38:18

for more detail. You can

38:20

also read the book I wrote with Majid Nawaz, Islam

38:23

and the Future of Tolerance, to understand

38:25

more of my thinking on this topic. This

38:28

ideology has nothing to do with

38:30

Israel or American foreign policy

38:33

or colonialism or any other

38:35

rational grievance, and there is

38:37

no concession that any civilized

38:39

society can make to appease it. We've

38:42

forgotten about jihadism in recent years,

38:45

but it hasn't gone away. Whatever

38:47

one thinks about our withdrawal from Afghanistan,

38:50

it was surely perceived as a victory

38:52

by jihadists everywhere, and the implications

38:55

of that have yet to be felt. In

38:57

the West, we tend to remain blissfully unaware

38:59

of Islamic terrorism, which is just another

39:01

name for jihadism. Unless it happens

39:03

in the US or Europe, we don't tend

39:06

to notice jihadist atrocities committed

39:08

in Afghanistan or Pakistan or

39:10

India, much less in a dozen or so

39:12

countries in Africa that suffer them more or less continuously.

39:16

And we are totally unaware of foiled plots,

39:18

of which there have been many. As

39:21

I said, we also tend to think in terms of terrorism

39:23

or violent extremism, and while I use

39:25

those terms myself, we have

39:28

to focus on jihadism, because

39:30

that is the underlying ideological commitment.

39:33

Now, jihadists themselves are not a unified

39:36

front. There's a very deep schism

39:38

between Sunni and Shia, despite the fact

39:40

that some groups will collaborate across it, as

39:43

we see with Hamas and the Iranian regime,

39:45

and there are internecine divisions even among

39:47

jihadists of the same faith. The

39:50

Afghan and Pakistani Taliban don't

39:52

even get along at this point. And that's a

39:54

very good thing. Hopefully

39:57

we have an army of smart people with the necessary

39:59

language skills. souls, sowing hatred and

40:01

confusion among jihadist groups 24 hours a day.

40:05

But jihadists are all united in

40:07

their hatred of liberal Western values and

40:09

in their certainty of paradise and in their

40:11

willingness to turn this world into an abattoir

40:14

for the glory of God. We cannot

40:17

tolerate jihadists. We

40:19

cannot let them immigrate into our open societies.

40:22

And by we, I mean not just non-Muslims.

40:26

I mean all Muslims who want to live

40:28

sane lives in the 21st century. In

40:31

the case of Israel and Palestine, the

40:33

Palestinians have to rid themselves

40:36

of their jihadists. And

40:38

if that's not possible, a stable

40:40

peace with the Palestinians is

40:42

not possible. But

40:44

this problem is so much bigger than Israel

40:47

or even global anti-Semitism. I spend

40:50

some time reading about how the Islamic State

40:53

treats Shiites or look at the

40:55

history of terrorism in Pakistan or

40:57

India. If you want a totally painless

41:00

way to do this, watch Hotel Mumbai.

41:03

It's a great film. It depicts the terrorist

41:05

attacks in Mumbai in 2008 by

41:07

the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba. If

41:10

you've forgotten, around a dozen jihadists

41:12

killed over 160 people in Mumbai,

41:15

many at the Taj Hotel. And

41:17

the film shows this with brutal realism.

41:21

And while they killed some Jews, too, at

41:23

a Jewish center, this attack

41:25

had nothing to do with Israel or America

41:28

or race

41:29

or so-called settler colonialism

41:32

or any of the other factors that leftist

41:34

fellow travelers have been fixated on since

41:37

October 7th. Really. This

41:39

is the least boring piece of homework you

41:41

will ever be given. Go watch

41:43

Hotel Mumbai. And once the

41:45

killing starts, ask yourself

41:48

how anyone, east or west,

41:51

Muslim or non-Muslim, can

41:53

live with these people. There's

41:56

an intuition out there that in order to solve the

41:58

problems in the Middle East, We must

42:00

understand them in all their depth and complexity.

42:03

And for this, the most important thing to grapple with is

42:06

the so-called historical context. But

42:08

for the purpose of really understanding this

42:11

conflict, and why it is so intractable,

42:14

historical context is a distraction.

42:17

Every moment spent talking about something other

42:19

than jihadism is a moment when the

42:21

oxygen of moral sanity is

42:23

leaving the room. There's no sorting

42:26

this out by reference to history, because

42:28

any group can arbitrarily decide where to set

42:30

the dial on its time machine. In

42:33

any case, the Jews in Israel are indigenous

42:35

people. The British were

42:37

colonialists. Colonialists have

42:39

some place to go back to. Where

42:42

could the Jews go back to? There's

42:44

been a continuous presence of Jews in what is now

42:47

Israel for thousands of years. Most

42:49

of the recent immigrants, Jews from Iraq

42:51

and Syria and Yemen and Libya and

42:54

other Muslim-majority countries, were driven

42:56

from their homes by their Muslim neighbors after 1948

42:59

in collective punishment

43:01

for the founding of Israel. Is anyone

43:03

talking about their right of return? There

43:06

are displaced people everywhere on earth,

43:08

but only the Palestinians have been turned into

43:11

a global fetish for their so-called

43:13

right of return. Incidentally,

43:15

if a history of land theft and

43:18

oppression were sufficient to produce genocidal

43:20

terrorism, where are the Native American

43:23

suicide bombers? Where are the Tibetan

43:25

Buddhist suicide bombers? Do you realize

43:27

how much oppression they've experienced at the hands

43:30

of the Chinese? Where are the Palestinian

43:32

Christian suicide bombers?

43:35

I think there has been one.

43:37

The truth is,

43:39

ideas matter.

43:41

It absolutely matters what

43:43

people believe. Certainty

43:46

about paradise and about martyrdom

43:48

as a way of getting there is one of the most

43:50

potent, memetic poisons the

43:53

human mind has ever produced. Whatever

43:56

historical or political or economic

43:58

context you want to apply, to Israel

44:00

and Palestine. Jihadism

44:03

is real. Its intentions

44:05

toward the Jews and infidels and

44:08

apostates

44:09

are genocidal

44:11

and this is a global problem because

44:13

Jihadism enjoys an appalling level

44:15

of support throughout the Muslim world

44:18

despite the fact that it's responsible for far

44:20

more death and destruction among Muslims than

44:23

Israel's acts of self-defense have ever been.

44:26

Now, obviously, there are

44:28

whole populations throughout the Muslim world

44:31

that are effectively hostages to the

44:33

religious fanatics that control them and

44:36

certainly a large percentage of the Palestinians fit

44:38

that description, as does much of Iran,

44:41

but it is very easy to underestimate how much

44:43

sympathy there is for the jihadist project

44:45

among Muslims who are not themselves

44:47

actively waging jihad and

44:50

this is a terrible thing to contemplate.

44:52

When 100,000 people

44:55

show up in the center of London in support

44:57

of Hamas, we have a problem.

45:00

Of course, it's an open question how many of those people

45:02

really support jihad, but

45:04

imagining that very few of them do

45:07

is pure delusion.

45:09

We have to win a war of ideas

45:11

with these people because if the future

45:14

is going to be remotely tolerable, the

45:16

vast majority of Muslims have

45:18

to disavow jihadism and

45:21

unite with non-Muslims in fighting

45:23

it. When hundreds of thousands of people

45:26

show up in London to condemn

45:28

Hamas or the Islamic State or

45:30

any specific instance of jihadist savagery

45:34

without both sides in anything, then

45:37

we will know we have made a modicum of progress.

45:39

When Muslims, by the millions, pour

45:42

into the streets in protest, not

45:45

over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad,

45:47

but over the murder of cartoonists by

45:50

their own religious fanatics, we will

45:52

know that an open-ended future of pluralistic

45:55

tolerance might be possible. Yes,

45:58

there are many other problems in the world. at

46:00

the moment. There's the war in Ukraine and

46:02

the looming possibility of a conflict between the

46:04

U.S. and China. Some of these problems

46:06

appear much bigger than jihadism, but

46:09

they all admit of some rational basis

46:12

for negotiation and compromise. However

46:15

bad things get with the Russians or the Chinese,

46:18

they are not chanting, we love death

46:21

more than the Americans and Europeans love

46:23

life. Only jihadism

46:26

has the power to turn our future into

46:29

a zombie movie. Jihadists

46:31

are the enemy with whom there is no rational

46:33

or pragmatic compromise to make.

46:36

Ever.

46:38

So as I've said many times before,

46:41

the Muslim world needs to win a war of ideas

46:43

with itself and perhaps several

46:46

civil wars. It has to de-radicalize

46:49

itself. It has to transform

46:51

the doctrine of jihad into something

46:54

far more benign than it is. And

46:56

it has to stop supporting its religious

46:59

fanatics when they come into conflict

47:01

with non-Muslims. This

47:03

is what is so toxic. Muslims

47:06

supporting other Muslims no

47:09

matter how sociopathic and insane

47:11

their behavior. And if the Muslim world

47:13

and the political left can't stand

47:16

against jihadism, it's only

47:18

a matter of time before their moral blindness

47:20

fully empowers right-wing authoritarianism

47:23

in the West. If secular

47:26

liberals won't create secure borders,

47:29

Christian fascists will. There

47:32

may be two sides to the past, but

47:35

there really aren't two sides to the present.

47:37

There are two sides to the story of how the Palestinians

47:40

and Jews came to fight over land in the Middle East.

47:43

Understanding all of that is important.

47:45

And I think it's important to understand the cynical game

47:48

that the Arab world has played with the plight of the Palestinians

47:50

for the last 50 years. If there's

47:52

a stable political settlement to

47:55

ever be reached between Israel and the Palestinians,

47:57

it will entail a full untangling of the facts.

48:00

from all the propaganda that obscures them, while

48:02

keeping the problem of jihadism in view. It

48:05

will also entail that the religious lunatics on the

48:07

Jewish side get sidelined. As

48:10

I said, the building of settlements has been a continuous

48:12

provocation. But even on the point

48:14

of religious fanaticism, there really aren't

48:17

two sides worth talking about now.

48:20

Whatever terrible things Israeli settlers

48:22

occasionally do, and either crimes for

48:24

which they should be prosecuted. Generally

48:26

speaking, the world does not have a problem

48:29

with Jewish religious fanatics targeting

48:31

Muslims in their mosques and schools. You

48:34

literally can't open a Jewish school

48:36

in Paris, because no one will

48:38

ensure it. Yes, there are

48:40

lunatics on both sides, but the

48:42

consequences of their lunacy are

48:44

not equivalent, not even remotely

48:47

equivalent. We haven't spent the last 20

48:50

years taking our shoes off at the airport, because

48:52

there are so many fanatical Jews eager

48:54

to blow themselves up on airplanes. There

48:57

is a bright line between good

49:00

and a very specific form of evil

49:02

that we must keep in view. It is

49:05

the evil of bad ideas, ideas

49:08

so bad that they can make even ordinary

49:11

human beings impossible to

49:13

live with. There's a piece of

49:15

audio from October 7th that many people

49:17

have commented on. It's a recording of

49:19

a cell phone call that a member of Hamas made to

49:21

his family while he was in the process of massacring

49:24

innocent men, women, and children. The

49:27

man is ecstatic, telling his father

49:30

and mother, and I believe brother, that he's

49:32

just killed 10 Jews with his own hands.

49:35

He had just murdered a husband and wife and

49:37

was now calling his family from the dead woman's phone.

49:40

I'm not going to act as

49:42

ecstatic as

49:43

he was, but here's the translation.

49:47

Hi, Dad, open my WhatsApp now and you'll see those

49:49

killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands.

49:51

Your son killed Jews. And

49:54

his dad says, may God protect you. Dad,

49:56

I'm talking to you from a Jewish woman's phone. I killed

49:58

her and I killed her husband. I killed ten

50:00

with my own hands. Dad, pen with my own

50:02

hands. Dad, open WhatsApp now and

50:04

see how many I killed, Dad. Open

50:07

the phone, Dad. I'm calling you on WhatsApp.

50:09

Open the phone. Go. Dad,

50:12

I killed ten. Ten with my own hands. Their

50:14

blood is on their hands." I believe that's

50:16

a reference to the Qur'an. Put

50:18

mom on. Then the father

50:20

says, Oh my son, God bless you. I

50:23

swear, ten with my own hands. Mother, I killed ten

50:25

with my own hands. And his father says,

50:27

May God bring you home safely. Dad,

50:30

go back to WhatsApp now. Dad, I want

50:32

to do a live broadcast. And the

50:34

mother now says, I wish I was with you. Mom,

50:37

your son is a hero.

50:39

And then apparently talking to his comrades, he yells,

50:41

Kill, kill, kill, kill them.

50:44

And his brother gets on the line asking where

50:46

he is. And he tells his brother the name of

50:48

the town. And then he says, I killed ten.

50:50

Ten with my own hands. I'm talking to you from a Jews

50:53

phone. And the brother says,

50:55

You killed ten? Yes, I killed ten.

50:57

I swear. And then he says, I'm the first

50:59

to enter on the protection and help of Allah. Surely

51:02

another scriptural reference. Hold

51:04

your head up, father. Hold your head up. See

51:06

on WhatsApp those that I killed. Open

51:08

my WhatsApp. And his brother says,

51:10

Come back. Come back. And

51:12

he says, What do you mean come back? There's no going

51:15

back. It's either death or victory. My

51:17

mother gave birth to me for the religion. What's

51:20

with you? How would I return? Open

51:22

WhatsApp. See the dead. Open it. And

51:25

the mother sounds like she's trying to figure out how to open

51:27

WhatsApp. Open WhatsApp

51:29

on your phone and see the dead, how I killed

51:31

them with my own hands. And she

51:33

says, Well, promise to come back. And

51:36

then the call ends. Now,

51:38

I don't speak any Arabic. And it seems to

51:40

me that not every word in the audio that's being circulated

51:43

was translated. But

51:45

I think we get the gist. When

51:48

I spoke to Graham Wood about this, he

51:50

said that to him, the mother and father sounded more

51:52

shocked and worried than anything

51:54

else,

51:55

which would be understandable.

51:57

But I would submit to you that this piece of audio

52:00

It is more than just the worst WhatsApp

52:02

commercial ever conceived. It

52:04

is a window onto a culture. As

52:07

I told Graham, this is not the type of call

52:09

that would have been placed from Vietnam by

52:11

an American who just participated in the My Lai

52:14

Massacre. Nor is it the parental

52:16

reaction one would expect from an American family

52:19

had their beloved son just called them from

52:21

a killing field. I mean,

52:23

as terrible as Vietnam was, can

52:25

you imagine a call back to Nebraska?

52:28

Mom, I killed ten with my own hands. I

52:30

killed a woman and her husband. I'm calling you from

52:32

the dead woman's phone. Mom, your son

52:35

is a hero. Do you see

52:37

what a total aberration that

52:39

would have been? Even in extremis?

52:43

This call wasn't a total aberration.

52:46

This wasn't Ted Bundy calling

52:48

his mom. This was an ordinary

52:50

member of Hamas, a group that

52:53

still might win an election today,

52:55

especially in the West Bank, calling

52:57

an ordinary Palestinian family. And

53:00

the mere existence of that call, to

53:02

say nothing of its contents, reveals

53:05

something about the wider culture among

53:07

the Palestinians. It's important

53:09

to point out that not only members of Hamas,

53:12

but ordinary Gazans appear

53:14

to have taken part in the torture and murder of innocent

53:16

Israelis and the taking of hostages. How

53:19

many did this? How many ordinary Gazans

53:22

were dancing in the streets and spitting on

53:24

the captured women and girls who were paraded before

53:26

them after having been raped and tortured? What

53:29

percentage of Palestinians in Gaza or

53:31

the West Bank, many of whom are said to hate

53:33

Hamas for their corruption and incompetence

53:36

and brutality, nevertheless support what

53:38

they did on October 7th with a clear conscience

53:41

based on what they believe about Jews and the

53:43

ethics of jihad? I don't know, but

53:46

I am sure that the answers to these questions

53:49

would be quite alarming. We

53:51

are talking about a culture that

53:53

teaches Jew hatred and the love

53:55

of martyrdom in its elementary schools,

53:58

many of which are funded by the U.S.

54:01

Of course, all of this horror is

54:03

compounded by the irony

54:06

that the Jews who were killed on October 7th

54:09

were, for the most part, committed liberals

54:11

and peace activists. Hamas

54:14

killed the sorts of people who volunteered

54:16

to drive sick Palestinians into Israel

54:19

for medical treatment. They murdered

54:21

the most idealistic people in

54:23

Israel. They raped, tortured,

54:26

and killed young people at

54:29

a trance dance music festival

54:31

devoted to peace, half of whom were

54:33

probably on MDMA, feeling

54:36

nothing but love for all humanity when

54:38

the jihadists arrived. In

54:41

terms of a cultural and moral distance,

54:44

it's like the fucking Vikings showed up at Burning

54:46

Man and butchered everyone in sight.

54:49

I mean, just think about what happened at

54:52

the Supernova Music Festival. At

54:54

least 260 people were

54:57

murdered in the most sadistically gruesome

54:59

ways possible, decapitated,

55:02

burned alive, blown up with grenades.

55:05

And from the jihadist side, this wasn't

55:08

an error. It's not that

55:10

if they could have known what was in the hearts of

55:12

those beautiful young people, they would have thought,

55:15

oh my God, we're killing the wrong people. These

55:17

people aren't our enemies. These people are

55:19

filled with love and compassion and want nothing

55:22

more than to live in peace with us.

55:24

No,

55:25

the true horror

55:27

is that given what jihadists believe,

55:29

these were precisely the source of people

55:31

any good Muslim should kill and send

55:34

to hell where they can be tortured in

55:36

fire for eternity. From

55:39

the jihadist point of view, there

55:41

is no mistake here and there

55:43

is no basis for remorse. Please

55:46

absorb this fact. For

55:49

the jihadist, all of this

55:51

sadism, the torture and

55:54

murder of helpless, terrified

55:56

people is an act of

55:58

worship. This is

56:00

the sacrament. This isn't some

56:03

nauseating departure from the path

56:05

to God. This isn't stalled

56:08

spiritual progress, much less

56:10

sin. This is what

56:12

you do for the glory of God. This

56:15

is what Muhammad himself did.

56:19

There's no substitute for

56:21

understanding what our enemies actually

56:24

want and believe. I'm

56:26

pretty sure that many of you listening to this aren't

56:29

even comfortable with my use of the term

56:32

enemy because you don't want to believe that you have

56:34

any.

56:35

I understand that,

56:36

but you have to understand that

56:38

the people who butchered over 1,400

56:40

innocent men, women, and

56:42

children in Israel on October

56:44

7th were practicing their

56:47

religion sincerely. They

56:50

were being every bit as spiritual from

56:52

their point of view as the trans dancers

56:55

at the Supernova Festival were being

56:57

from theirs. They were equally devoted

56:59

to their highest values, equally

57:02

uplifted, ecstatic, amazed

57:05

at their good fortune. They wouldn't

57:07

want to trade places with anyone.

57:11

Let this image land in your

57:13

brain. They were shouting,

57:15

Allahu Akbar, God is great,

57:18

all day long as they

57:20

murdered women and children. And

57:23

these people are now being celebrated,

57:25

the world over, by those

57:27

who understand exactly what

57:29

they did. Yes, many of those

57:31

college kids at Harvard and Stanford

57:34

and Cornell are just idiots

57:36

who have a lot to learn about the world.

57:39

But in the Muslim community, and that includes

57:41

the crowds in London and Sydney

57:44

and Brooklyn, Hamas is being

57:46

celebrated by people who understand exactly

57:50

what motivates them. Again,

57:52

watch Hotel Mumbai or read

57:55

a book about the Islamic State so

57:57

that you can see jihadism in another

57:59

context. We're literally not one

58:01

of the variables that people imagine to be

58:03

important here in the present.

58:06

There are no settlers or blockades or

58:09

daily humiliations at checkpoints or

58:11

differing interpretations of history, and

58:14

yet we have the same grotesque distortion

58:17

of the spiritual impulse, the same

58:19

other-worldliness framed by

58:21

murder, the same absolute

58:24

evil that doesn't require the

58:26

presence of evil people, just

58:29

confused ones, just true

58:31

believers. Of course,

58:34

we can do our best to turn the temperature down

58:36

now, and we can trust that the news cycle

58:38

will get captured by another story. We

58:41

can direct our attention again to Russia or

58:43

China or climate change or

58:46

AI alignment, and I will do that

58:48

on this podcast. But the problem

58:50

of jihadism and the much wider

58:52

problem of sympathy for it isn't

58:55

going away. And civilized

58:57

people, non-Muslim and Muslim

59:00

alike, have to deal with it.

59:03

As I said in a previous podcast on this topic,

59:06

we all live in Israel now.

59:08

It's just that most of us haven't realized it yet. Thank

59:27

you.