The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - U.S. Support for Israel’s War Has Become Indefensible?

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

Atlantic writer Phil Klay https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/03/gaza-war-indefensible-united-states/677896/ discusses his recent article.

Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast for the world-famous comedy seller. Phil Clay, a novelist and essayist, his most recent book is Uncertain Ground, Citizenship in an Age of Endless War. Welcome to our show. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Yeah, we were talking off the air. Yeah, I was completely floored by your article, and I did all this research, but I have so much that I think I'm just going to talk to you and try to consult as little as I can about the stuff I've looked up.

Sure. But anyway, I'm a big fan of The Atlantic, and I'll start out by saying I thought it was pretty, like, presume that jeffrey goldberg doesn't see eye to eye with you on this i don't know and i but assuming he doesn't he edited the piece he was one of the people who looked at the piece and provided comments and feedback yeah i kind of admire his uh um devotion to presenting different sides of an issue and you you know, his support of free speech. Yeah, I think so. I think he's the real deal on that.

You know, it was funny. After my piece came out, there was somebody on Twitter who was like, the Atlantic is such a crazy publication. It'll have, like, a complaint about, I think, like, out-of-control left-wing stuff on campus, but then we'll publish, you know, my article on why I don't think the United States should be supporting Gaza. And people were like, so it's a publication that publishes a range of opinions. That's not, yeah, that shouldn't, that shouldn't seem like it's weird or crazy. It's very retro. Yeah. Yeah. No, it really, it really is, you know, and, and this is, we'll get to this in a second, but, you know, one of the things that I always think about was that Hannah Arendt, you know, Eichmann in Jerusalem, which is a really kind of very

difficult for Jewish people to read right after the Holocaust, was serialized in the New Yorker magazine, basically for Jews, right? A few years, I don't know, was it the 50s or early 60s, whatever it came out. And this was considered perfectly okay to feed them something that was known to, known was going to be offensive to them. Because that's the way it goes, right? That's what you have to, and now it's the opposite. Yeah, where, I think it's very easy to fall into silos. And I, I actually, you know, one of the things is, it's not just that I like debate. I like having a kind of raucous, chaotic, public sphere. But also, I have strong opinions about things, but I don't necessarily assume that I'm right. That's where we differ. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. And I find that sort of confronting that, you know, one of the reasons that I was very pleased to be able to do the piece that I did in The Atlantic was that I knew making in good evidence that there would be, you know, pushback, that they would want me to expand the argument in some places to acknowledge some of the criticisms that somebody

might have from a more pro-Israel perspective. And that forced me to work harder and think more deeply about the position that I held and ultimately, I think, you know, generate a stronger peace. And that kind of—that only emerges if you're trying to exist in a kind of intellectual space where that sort of debate is possible. Agreed. All right, so let's go through the article a little bit. The title of the article is, U.S. Support for Israel's War Has Become Indefensible. The subtitle is, A good pretext for war is not enough to make a war just. So does that, let's just start there, is the war in Gaza pretextual? This is one of the things that people have been furious about. I think that the point is,

you can have a war that starts for a just cause that turns into something else, right? And in the piece, I talk about how, look, like there is a very clear case for war. to tens of thousands of enemy forces whose goal is whenever you slip up to commit mass murder, torture, rape, and the kidnapping of hostages, right? Mm-hmm. And so going after Hamas absolutely makes sense, and I don't object to that, obviously, right? However, when you wage war,

there's a lot of other things that you need to think about, right? What are the consequences are going to be? What kind of political end state that you want at the end? And also, how are you going to wage that war, right? What are the costs going to be to the innocents along the way? It's all important, but I'm just asking as a threshold question, because pretext, as I understand it, has a particular meaning. Sure. Are you saying the war is pretextual, meaning that it's not really being fought for the reasons that they claim it's being fought for?

I think that the war is being fought to, in their mind, destroy Hamas, right? Which I don't think can happen. As far as what other things that they hope that they're going to achieve from the war, it's difficult to say because the Netanyahu administration, you know, the Israeli government has not laid out a clear plan for what the aftermath is going to be. What's this going to look like, right? One of Netanyahu's advisors say we're going to make sure that Gaza is never a threat to Israel again. It's not a realistic goal. Why is that not a realistic goal?

Well, even Israeli intelligence officials will admit that we're not going to completely destroy Hamas, right? You can certainly severely damage Hamas's kind of military capacities, right? But first off, Hamas is not just present in Gaza. It will regenerate. There's probably going to be a lot more sympathy for and certainly hatred for Israel in Gaza after this. And you can see in opinion polls that there's increasing sympathy for Hamas in the West Bank. Well, when you say never a threat again, I guess, you know, that's such an elastic term. What do you mean when you say it's not possible? And what do you think? Do you think that's the same thing Israelis mean when they say never a threat threat us again? I don't think it is. So, can you ensure that Gaza is a place where, say, hostile nations like Iran are never able to fund radical terror groups with an interest in killing Israelis,

waging war against the Palestinian Authority were in charge of Gaza. Again, that would, might assure that. Which is something that the Netanyahu, which is something that the Israeli government has ruled out. Well, you say it's not possible. Like, you know, Netanyahu government has their own reasons. I mean, that may, as I'm saying it, I'm asking you, but the truth is I'm not sure that would work because Gaza, Hamas took over with a coup once and they could possibly take over again. So I'm just asking you what you think. And even if you had the Palestinian Authority, that wouldn't mean that there was no terrorist groups operating in that region. So the next option would be Israeli occupation. And that seems to be what is on the offering, right?

So it is possible. But I don't think that leads to peace, right? A continual sort of violent suppression of— Nothing leads to peace. No, no. It's the best of bad options. Nothing leads to peace. So this is the question. Is what's happening now the best of bad options. Nothing leads to peace. can cause massive damage to Hamas, right?

And this, you know, I'm leaving aside the effects to the civilian population. We'll get to that. Just like in terms of morally. You can certainly severely damage Hamas's, like, current military capacities, right? There's no question about that. And if Israel wants, they can continue to have a strong military presence indefinitely in Gaza, which will be, you know, expensive in a variety of ways for Israel, but they can try and do that. I don't know in, you know, when scholars and one of them I quote in the piece look at attempts to eliminate terrorist groups and insurgencies, one of the things that they find is when you do repression of the sort that's happening in Gaza, the threat tends to disperse, right?

So, you know, Israel can do a tremendous amount of violence in this one region. Does that wholly eliminate the threat, right? Is the threat to Israel solely confined to Gaza, or is the threat broader, which it obviously is, right? There's Hamas and other sort of affiliated, more radical groups that have a presence in other regions, right? Well, let's just spell it. Those groups— There's Hezbollah in the north. Yeah.

Those groups have been in some ways strengthened by Israel's actions right here. Let me just say one thing to change. Hezbollah's in the north. They have 150,000 rockets, many of them precision guided. And I would imagine they're watching very carefully to see what lesson they can learn from what Israel does with Hamas in terms of what they might expect if they want to fire them all at the same time,

and that would overwhelm the Iron Dome and set Talib on fire. So it has to be said that if Israel were to let Hamas off too easy here, weakness is very provocative, especially when the people in the north share the same kind of radical jihadist mentality. I have more to say about that, but I want to let you answer.

Sure. Weakness can be provocative, so can cruelty, right? Well, how much more cruel? They're already at 11. They just came over and raped and maimed and took hostages. I don't think Israel's worried about ratcheting up their cruelty. I think they're worried about making sure their cruelty can't manifest itself. We're talking about Israel, right? How Israel behaves, if Israel understand the... I'm saying how much more could it ramp up? How much more provocative could it...

I think you're missing an understanding. No, you meant Israel's cruelty. Israel's cruelty. Right, I'm saying Israel's cruelty and Israel's... I'm saying, yes, cruelty can be provocative, but what we just saw, it's hard to imagine provoking more from the Hamas, more harshness than we've just seen. What I'm saying is I don't think Israel right now is worried about the backfire of making Hamas even more murderous.

I think Hamas is pretty much at maximum murderousness. I agree cruelty can be provocative, but this is not the scenario where that would be the primary concern. The primary concern now is 150,000 rockets in the north. And can I say one more thing? Go for it. So one of the most important things here is that for a long time, Israel lulled itself into this now debunked theory that deterrence could keep Hamas in line. That somehow they couldn't really internalize

that the stuff these radicals say is real. I have trouble with it. Meaning they're ready to die. They love death. So they say, well, they would never do what they can do because they know what we would do to them. I've said this before on the show. Well, now we understand knowing full well what will happen to them.

They will do it if they can, which means that next time, if they can get their hands on chemical weapons, on gas, on enriched uranium, there's nothing they wouldn't do, which would seem to me to mean that no matter what, Israel cannot let them stay in power. They can't fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. They're never going to be able to sell to the Israeli public again. No, no, it's okay. They know what we would do to them. Now, Hezbollah is no less radical jihad than Hamas is. And Hezbollah was supposed to pull back behind the Latani River. They never did.

They reached a ceasefire in 2006. That looks like a terrible decision that Israel made, similar to this thing, which just kind of gave up on it. Nobody could go back and say, that was the right thing we did. Everybody looking back at 2006 now would say, that was the worst decision we ever made. We should have finished them then. This is an impossible situation. We can get into the details of it, but I'm saying to ask Israel at this point to rely on deterrence is not, they're going to laugh you off. We're not going to rely on deterrence anymore. We have to only rely on the fact that we can't be, the worst case

scenario is no longer a worst case scenario. So how can they accomplish that? So the question is, is maximum suppression all the time, where Israel is continually militarily involved all over the place, right? Instead of trying to find a better kind of political settlement, instead of trying to separate out the less radical from the more radical elements to just rely on the use of military force in the absence of any kind of political plan other than constant suppression. That seems, I mean, first off, that's going to exhaust Israel. It's not going to, it's certainly not going to end the threats,

right? I think that there's a, you know, this sort of question of like, well, you know, we're going to end it. And as I said, even intelligence officials in Israel don't think that the threat will be ended. There are hostile nations around the country who are perfectly willing to continue to fund violent groups in the area. And so the question is, are you going to be moving towards a more or less stable political situation? So are you saying the following, that the same people who are ready to do what Hamas did on October 7th— I'm not saying don't target Hamas. No, no, but the same people— I'm saying that you need a plan.

Can somehow be reached for a political settlement? I think that there are decisions that Israel has made in relationship to the Palestinian people, and there are decisions that the Palestinian leadership have made as well, that have made this an incredibly intractable and difficult complex. Well, that's in the past, but they have to go forward. So the question is, what is the path forward, right? And right now, the only thing that seems to be on offer is the use of military force to suppress threats without any consideration for what that might do in the long term,

both in terms of the population. Like, you know, I was in Iraq, right? And the global war on terror is just like one example after another of the fact that you can go into a region and you can use a lot of military force to take out a violent threat. And yet, as soon as that threat is relaxed even slightly, if there isn't a more stable political situation, everything goes right back to chaos, right back to violence, sometimes far worse than before. And I think that the idea that like a maximum suppression all the time is sustainable or a path towards security for Israel in the long term is totally illusory. All right. If I were the Israeli defense minister, I would find myself, you know, dogs look when they don't understand what I get what you're saying, but what am I supposed to do?

I noticed something. I noticed when H.R. McMaster, General Petraeus, and General Wesley Clark were asked about this, all three of them answered very, very succinctly, Israel has to finish Hamas. I think Wesley Clark went the further. Israel has to finish Hamas with as few civilian casualties as practical. Because they're military guys. They understand that you have to make a decision. Sure, but I'm not saying anything different. Well, yes, but in the end so you have all these hopeful this is the question sort of like well you know what would you do different look some of those some of those questions are really hard right and and like what does moving forward in a way that doesn't further inflame the region

and cause more radicalization that's that that is a hard question we can talk about that and it's worth maybe maybe but maybe they throw caution to the wind on that. Maybe sometimes a show of strength dampens the- If you're talking about something that is going to result in tens of thousands of people dying, if you're talking about something that is going to result in children starving to death, oh, we throw caution to the wind and hope it works out is not good enough. It's not even close to good enough. Well, children starving to death obviously should not happen. It's not necessary.

People dying may be necessary. I make this point in the piece. Look, there are hard questions and there are easier questions. The easier questions are like, what should Israel do differently? Like, wage a much less brutal campaign, have far less tolerance for civilian casualties,

actually be proactive in trying to make sure that they're providing, you know, just their basic responsibilities under the rule of law to make sure the civilian population gets the humanitarian supplies that they need, and which is their obligation to provide instead of being an actual roadblock for that. Those things are sort of like the easy questions, which by the way, John McMaster, all those folks, none of them would disagree with. The way that Israel is waging the campaign is not how America has waged past campaigns. Okay. Now that's it. Let me just say one other thing. Go ahead. And then there's like the much harder question, which is like, What possible routes forward are there that might actually start to calm the situation down or at least empower somewhat more moderate factions, lead to a situation where the only sort of possibility doesn't seem to be constant violence suppression all the time, which I don't think is good for Israel and certainly not good for the people who are going to be facing it. And that's hard.

And one of the reasons that's hard is because of the particular government that we have in Israel right now. But I don't feel as though I have to work that problem out to say it's not good enough, right? If you have a malignant tumor, is the example that I use in the piece, and we all agree that Hamas is a malignant tumor. Okay, we want to get that out, but that doesn't mean that you just hand a rusty scalpel to any old drunk passing by and have him cut away while the patient screams in terror. You need a better plan if you're going to be waging war, because especially a war like this, which means wide-scale death, not just of militants, but of a lot of civilians. And I agree with Defenders of Israel that, like, look, some of that is on Hamas, right? They have waged war in a way that puts their own

civilian population at risk. They're disgusting. Doesn't Hamas intend for their civilian population to die? And it should give us pause. Well, yes. They've said it publicly. They see it as a propaganda victory to be able to publicize civilian death. So, for instance— And that should give us pause in terms of how Israel is waging the campaign and whether it's fully delusional of Hamas to think that this is of benefit

to the long-term. Even on the question of aid, there was a headline in Reuters about Hamas threatening to kill any Palestinian who helped in the delivery of aid. Can you imagine what they're up against? And the question of evacuation, Hamas did everything they could to prevent the evacuation, including putting roadblocks up. This is what Israel is up against. Essentially, anything that they try to do— It is a horrifically difficult environment for them to operate.

Right, right. There's no question about that. Now, let's make some comparisons. You compared it to 9-11. The Israelis compared it to 9-11, and then I asked whether or not we were going to be dealing with the same issue. You said the United States enabling Israel to make the same terrible mistakes we made. So I just want to say, and use the word pretext, we're in a war in 9-11 as well. So I want to say a few things about 9-11 and then you tell me where I'm wrong.

First of all, it's not clear to me that our war in in afghanistan anyway was a mistake because we haven't had a single major terrorist attack since 9-11 uh and uh you know so so that it's easy for us to say that it was a mistake because you know nothing's happened but maybe nothing's happened because of the war, number one. Number two, I don't know how to put this. So there's 200,000 displaced Israelis now. I asked a data journalist if that would be as big proportionally to America as San Diego. He said it would be as big as New York City. It's about the size of Cincinnati. Without a single death, without a single death, what do you think America would do if we had to evacuate Cincinnati until further notice?

I think we'd probably wage a series of long-running and— I don't have to guess. I know what the past 20 years were, and they were a series of poorly fought wars that oftentimes— Now imagine New York City is evacuated, and not a single person has died. And it's evacuated, and there's 150,000 rockets pointed pointed and rockets coming in every day. We would go in there before a single death and we would destroy the place just for the fact that we had to leave New York City empty. Am I wrong? I think we clearly would. The question is whether it would be a good idea. Really?

You're ready to give up New York City to save? And this is why I don't, I do not like arguments that necessarily, like, demonize Israel for going in, right? It absolutely, as I say in the piece, it absolutely makes sense why the civilian, like, the population wants Israel to wage this war. Okay, let me add one more thing. In Mosul, we kill between 9,000 and 40,000 people, that's by some accounts. In Raqqa, I don't know, you probably know the number of thousands of people. For one millionth, one ten millionth the threat to America that Israel's facing, we did basically the same thing, same kind of proportion of civilians. And you said that was necessary.

Mosul was necessary, but Israel is so far over the line that we should not even support it. You've got to explain that to me. Sure. So there's two different points you made. One is you said, you know, if America faced the kind of thing that Israel has faced, we would go in and we'd go in guns blazing. I don't disagree with you, but the past 20 years have suggested to me that America going in guns blazing does not always work out particularly well. We haven't had any more terrorist attacks. I mean...

Al-Qaeda is done. Bin Laden is dead. If that is the only... ISIS is gone. But you said that was necessary. It was necessary to get rid of ISIS. If we haven't had another terrorist attack of the scale of 9-11 is enough to justify the past 20 years of often disastrous warfare why was why was getting rid of isis necessary why was that why did

that warrant all the civilian deaths in in in iraq and syria so in iraq and syria and you know especially in in mosul which is the the most direct comparison that I was using, the main difference is that I think that the campaign could result in a more stable political situation within Iraq that would result in greater potential for long-term peace, right? And this is why, you know, I talk about going through Mosul at the, after the, I think two years after the battle, and I don't want to sugarcoat it, like, it was destroyed. Max, you have that picture? I have a picture of it. Just, I figured you might. I mean, that's what it looked like.

Yeah, I had never seen anything like... Completely destroyed. The old city of Mosul. Now this, let the record show, this was necessary for our... We were so threatened, this was necessary. United States of America, but Israel is surrounded by Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas. They've been raped, they were evacuated internally, and their war is not necessary. You're laughing, but I don't think I'm being unfair the the question is whether the war can move towards a more just end or not and whether we're taking all the precautions that are possible in order to you could

say the war is necessary but I want to see them fight differently. Yeah, deal with the civilian population and also lead to a more stable political situation afterwards. So, like, I talked to this man in Mosul who's like, you know, if ISIS ever came back, even if I only had a piece of wood, I would fight them. Right. You talk to Mosul, they would never want ISIS to come back.

That this was a terrorist group, a army, an Islamic state, that was so horrific, right? As opposed to Hamas? And horrific to the population, right? That it was attempting to rule, but the population came to reject it, right? And if you compare that to what's happening with Hamas, right, during the war against ISIS, ISIS's political legitimacy declined among the population it was trying to control. Hamas's political legitimacy is going up as a result of this war. That makes it – look, you don't have to like it.

Mr. Clay, I got it. with that as a consequence of what's happening and you have to factor it into whether or not you're going to be able to achieve the kind of political goals that you want from this war. Sir, I understand that the political goals are... Nobody's in dispute that ISIS is awful and Hamas is awful, right? I don't believe Israel has... I know that, listen, there are problems with Israel. It's like I always tell people this, people this I'm so proud of the mission statement of my organization, all the efforts that we

take to make sure every customer is happy to refund money, we do everything and yet every week somebody who works for me does something terrible, something humiliating from time to time something just totally outrageous an employee will just

do the most horrible things to a customer from time to time something just totally outrageous. I have an employee who will just do the most horrible things to a customer from time to time, you know? So speaking as someone who's on the side of Israel, I'm perfectly willing to admit that yes, regularly Israelis will do horrible things because that is the nature of real life. But macro, Israel is a organization that's fighting for an absolutely just cause, which is to not die. So when you get into specifics of what Israel should do better, I don't think I'm going to put up much of a fight with you. But I'll just add to it that even if they were doing those things better, we would then turn up our microscope as we should. And we'd find other things that they should.

Oh, there's no end to that. But what I do feel I have to be humble about is that knowing that the enemy, and this is unique to any enemy I know about, is doing everything it can to have Israel do these horrible things. You're going to try to give aid? We'll shoot anybody down who helps you. You're going to try to evacuate things? We'll put up roadblocks. You're going to try to be careful about your bombing? We'll move to where you can't be careful about your bombing. It's so overwhelming that I just wonder if it's fair. And then to what number is it fair? So if, let's take the number,

let's say 25,000 civilians have died, which is somewhere, you know, let's just say that. If Israel did everything perfectly, would it be zero? Would it be 10? Would it be 22,000? Like, what is this margin of error,

which is enough to swing you from we should support Israel to we should let Israel hang out to dry, because they have not been able to overcome, as I said on this show before, if God were to come down and pick up every Gazan civilian and deposit them somewhere where they were, you know, out of strategic importance, which side would be happy about that and which side would immediately try to bring the civilians back? Israel would be, thank God, now we can destroy you all. And Hamas would say, oh shit, we better make our way over to this.

The tables are so turned here, and what we are doing unwittingly is normalizing this strategy. The concrete is setting on this strategy. The world is accepting this as the royal flush strategy to win any war. All you have to do is make sure that the enemy cannot fight you without killing your civilians. And that is the final, that's the highest hand. Nobody can beat that hand. And as a matter of fact, we'll call the guy who tries to, who you killed, we'll call them the bad guys. You can even keep their hostages. We will take away all their leverage.

Israel is now just, what has Israel got to get the hostages back now? Begging? Negotiating without leverage is begging. Does Israel have any leverage now? Please give us our hostages back. Please. We're not going to hurt you. Just do it. You know it's the right thing to do. Give us our hostages back. This is what we brought them to. This is the unintended consequence

of, and for the last two months, do you have any doubt over the last two months, SINWAR has been saying it's working. Fellas, don't worry. Look at them. The cracks are forming. They're getting bigger.

They're bigger every day. Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, President of the United States. Why would we do anything differently? We're winning. We don't have to do anything. All we have to do is make sure a steady stream of Gazans get killed every day, and we will win. Am I exaggerating this? I think you're arguing against a straw man.

Because nobody, at least... You can say that. I'm not sensitive. You can say... There are people who say all sorts of things, but I'm not saying, and a lot of the critics of Israel are not saying you have to wage an immaculate war. Or even a war where they're not horrible mistakes right i am saying that i don't see why america should be providing two thousand pound bombs for israel

to use in strikes that are orders of magnitude greater in terms of the risk to civilian lives than we would have ever so cut off the two thousand pound bombs well this is what i'm saying no no like that's different than what you're saying. Disentangle American support for this war. No, no. Cutting off the 2,000-pound bombs. By the way, I just want to say, I invite everybody to read. There was a deep dive in the Washington Post about these 2,000-pound bombs.

And I haven't satisfied myself about it. And by the way, I just want to let you know, if you don't know me, especially at the beginning, I assume that the rage in Israel was so great that decisions that would otherwise not be made are made in anger. I also assume that the people in the room, lawyers, who are normally in charge of signing off on these things, are under such social pressure that they will sign off on things that they maybe wouldn't have years ago. came to take over. They would rather, I believe, risk their own life and limb than be the guy who stopped, who wouldn't authorize the bombing of a terrorist leader, and then that terrorist leader comes back around and kills a bunch of Israelis, soldiers or something.

There's such social pressure. So I cannot and would not sign on the dotted line for every Israeli action. To the contrary, I am sure, I am sure. So let me just... Even that would be suggesting a far more deliberative process, and certainly for the early stage of the bombing. Israel dropped 6,000

bombs in northern Gaza in the first six days. In all of Iraq and Syria, we tended to drop about 5,500. Let me read the appendix to this report about the 2,000-pound bombs, just because it threw me for a loop. I didn't know. It says, damage depends on nearby structures, building materials, the soil, whether a bomb

has been set to explode above or below ground, and other factors. Experts also noted that even the largest munitions can be employed to ensure that nearby civilian infrastructure is not damaged or is minimally affected when they explode. So all of which is saying that I don't know that 2,000 pound bomb is the end of the consideration. But I agree with you that if America knows... It's how it's being used. If America knows... And I give an example of a strike where... In the Jabali refugee camp. Although,

let's put that aside for a second, because I looked into that and I don't know, but that looks like it's probably an example of what you're saying. If I were the American president, I'd say, listen, we're not going to authorize any more 2,000-pound bombs unless you sign

that you will not use them in these situations or you consult with us before. That's different than pulling out support for the war. But as for the refugee camp, I mean, I have it here. I actually have it here. Israel decided not to warn civilians in the area of an imminent airstrike

via phone messages out of fear of giving the militants time to evacuate. Now, this is always a problem with these. What's that? What's that? Uh, the,

uh, noncombatant casualty cutoff value is that there's a trade off between, which is the number of civilians you're allowed to kill for a particular target. And one of the things is that if you, it slows everything down and by the time you get to it, they're gone. So this was,

these were high value targets. The military appears to have deployed at least two of the largest bombs in its arsenal rather than using smaller targeted munitions. Air Force commanders attempted to limit collateral damage by aiming guided bombs between buildings and using fuses that slightly delayed the detonations until munitions had penetrated beneath the surface. But by destroying the tunnels, the buildings came down. So, again, humility says,

well, you know, then I don't know. If these tunnels collapsed, and then the buildings that they built these tunnels under collapsed, and that's the reason so many people died, this is a terrible thing I'm about to say. Throughout history, and maybe for all time, innocent people suffer for the decisions that the leadership of their political unit makes. In the same way, innocent children suffer for the bad luck of good parents and bad parents. The innocent Japanese suffered for the Japanese government. The innocent children suffer for the bad luck of good parents and bad parents. The innocent Japanese suffered for the Japanese government. The innocent Germans suffered for the Nazi government. The innocent Iraqis. This is the way it is.

And the people in Gaza, tragically as anybody can express, are suffering for their political unit. But this is not new to the world. This is the way it has always been. We don't have a plan. Did America have a plan when it went into Japan? Did America have a plan when it went into Nazi? It had no plan. We were attacked.

We went over there. We're going to end Japan, and then hopefully we'll come up with a plan. Should we have planned? Would I like to see Israel planning? Yes. Do I know that the right-wing Ben-Gavir are putting mud in the works of netanyahu's of course i know this is but this is none of this is a reason to pull the rug out from under israel it's like we're gonna

have election biden and trump we have to vote for one if you don't vote at all it's like a vote for one or the other you know and if you're gonna pull the no matter what you think about israel if you want to pull the rug out from under Israel, this is a vote for Hamas. I reject that. I think that that gives you want them to buy weapons from the Chinese. I think that that gives carte blanche to like America is going to support Israel no matter what. And then we're on the hook, which, by the way, has genuine repercussions for America, right? Like, it is difficult for us to argue for the sorts of things that we're trying to argue in Ukraine, in other places,

if we are supporting this level of violence. If you, like, yeah. Dude, do you think the Ukrainian army is not committing atrocities worse than what Israel is committing? They are not. Oh, come on. I am sure over, the difference, I mean, the difference is Russia has They are not. Oh, come on. I am sure over the difference.

I mean, the difference is Russia has a real army. So, you know, there's a real what's what's horrible about this was that Hamas is not a real military threat. So there's something just asymmetrical about it, which is difficult to look at. It was like we're shooting them, but they're not a threat. Ukraine actually is there. There are two equal armies. But they're fighting under Ukrainian territory with Ukrainian citizens that they whose lives they care for i i don't i imagine that the ukrainian mentality is not that different than the russian mentality what war what war

i mean if you think that ukrainians are hyper sensitive to i would actually know a um i wouldn't say i actually know a ukrainian soldier's a writer who was uh joined up when when russia invaded and um is part of a military police unit and actually spoke to me about the importance for him being of a unit in a unit that investigated war crimes of the ukrainian military and why that was yeah and valuable for them. Like in Israel. Israel does have a war crime. But there's going to be war crimes. We pay zero attention to what war crimes might be going on in Ukraine right now, while at the same time funding them full speed ahead. But the Ukrainian, this is not a big issue.

It doesn't affect the presidential election. The left wing is not up protesting about it. We don't have demonstrations all over the world. I can't speak to hypothetical war crimes that neither of you or I can point to. Well, I think you can agree that we're not looking into war crimes and there's no free press there. A lot of the things we find out come from the Israeli press, right? A lot of the war crimes that are reported are reported in the Israeli press. That's how we know about it. There's no adversarial, aggressive Ukrainian press that's ferreting out war crimes.

There's absolutely an information war going on. By the way, on this topic of noncombatant casualty cutoff, so you said it was 10 to 1 in Mosul. Yeah. And Israel, I think, who knows what they're up to now. But I just want to read. So I looked into this. I spent a lot of time. This was from an article from like National Defense, blah, blah.

I can't believe I didn't bring the link. It's like one of these almost like trade publications of military, you know. There's an interesting paragraph here where it quotes Lieutenant General Sean McFarland. I don't know if you know this. If I was on the operations floor and executing a mission that was coming up against a high NCV number, I would go to General McFarland, my boss, and say, sir, I'm about to run an operation. I think my NCV is going to be high. I think I'm going to need something like 14 or 15, but I can put a request in. Kirsten said, he's got a point to where he was like, Gunn, stop calling me. Call CETCOM. I've woken General Austin up. He's our defense secretary right now. I've woken General Austin up in the middle of the night and said, sir, I need authority for an NCV of 15. I

need it now. And I would tell you a hundred times out of a hundred, General Austin said, guns, do what you see best. What he was saying is execute your commander's proportionality judgment. Every single time, General Austin never questioned me, nor did my commander. Meaning that the statistic, wherever you picked it up from, some manual somewhere or some, you know, regulation, 100 out of 100 times— This moment's booked the hardest place on Afghanistan. They rubber stamp it. You heard this General Austin say, listen, guns, do what you think is best. That is the great procedure that we have for keeping these numbers low. I think it's all a fantasy.

And by the way, I said one of the things, rubber stamping is a big threat to all organizations. Well, so, yeah, there's two things. One is whether that's a good thing. It's a terrible thing. Two is... But it's no different than Israel. Yeah. Is that a good thing? Also, he's talking about

14 right there, right? Jabali strike, I think we got like 109 named civilians who have been determined and killed in that strike. Okay, but let's be fair. We just said the building came down. I don't think that was in their calculation.

I think if you're dropping large bombs on a civilian area, attacking tunnels designed to make them cave underneath a building, the idea that that wouldn't cause harm, I don't understand how you would think that that might not cause problems for the structure. Of course it would, but what we didn't face in Raqqa was an enemy that was completely enmeshed and strangling. Okay, but you're saying two different things. One is that it's a difficult operating environment, which I agree with you. The other one is, could that have been, could it be predicted that you would have a very high casualty rate of civilians?

And I don't think there's any plausible argument that you couldn't. No, I'm saying two things, but not two different things. One is that I don't know whether that hundred and something number you use is fair in the same way that this number that they approved of 15, that bombing could have brought down a building and killed 100 people, but they would have still authorized it as a 15. I don't know what Israel had determined. I don't know of any American strikes that would be comparable.

OK, so what would America. And I've been and I've been critical of, you know, American. What America. So are we backing into this situation? And this is, by the way, this is actually one of the concerns that I have, which is sort of separate from the war, which is like, I feel like we are like in defending America, in defending America's involvement in Israel. We're starting to defend ways of fighting that we would never accept from our own military that have caused bad effects in places where we have been involved, have generated hate for hatred for America. And we're sort of all of a sudden we're saying, well, like, you know, this strike that we did, you know, that killed 12 people unnecessarily was a huge disaster for us. But now we're trying to justify Israeli strikes,

you know, that killed over a, as if that's somehow proportional or fine. And I actually, I mean, one of the concerns that I have is seeing American military professionals talk about this as if it is an acceptable way to wage war, which I think will corrupt the way that Americans wage war. Okay, so I don't want to justify killing 100 or not justify it, because I don't know what's at stake, but I would say that in past wars, we've certainly justified, we dropped an atom bomb. We did all sorts of terrible things. We'd firebombed Dresden and Tokyo and killed lots and lots and lots of civilians.

But the reason, the difference between those instances and here is that the Nazis did not embed themselves in Dresden. we actually wanted to kill the germans and i say again i i don't know that you everything you're saying historically we've come to determine that that was a horrible thing that we did it well the in dresden i think that i think that's true and i think the jury is still out on the atom bomb for a lot of people. But, as I said, if the Nazis were in every home in Dresden, I don't think we'd be looking at the firebombing of Dresden as something that we shouldn't have done. We would say, those fucking Nazis put themselves in every home and forced us to kill their civilians. That's what we would say, no question. And I would even go so far as to say that if I could, with a clear conscience, say

that if Israel would stop now, the threat is over, I would say they should stop now. But when I force myself to follow it through and I say, well, what does that mean? It means a jolt of electricity through the entire world of its enemies that they were victorious. So when is the threat over? The threat is over when nobody can fire a rocket from Hamas, from Gaza anymore. Or it's very, very, very, very difficult for them. As soon as Israel pulled out this week, rockets immediately started again. The threat's not over.

Is it over when we can go home? That's a big one. When the 200,000 people that can't go home can go home. I would say to you, and I mean this respectfully, it's a lack of really putting yourself in other people's shoes if you're ready to say, well, yeah, that country should have

of course they should give up a city or two. It's almost like treating Israel like it's not a real country. No European country is going to give up a city because you don't like their casualty ratio.

They're going to say, they're going to say, when is the threat over? Like when, when is, when is Iran going to stop sort of funneling rockets into Gaza? Well, you know,

Benny Morris has, so is it just endless war? Is that, I don't, I don't know, but the threat is now, look, if,

if, if Hezbollah presses the button, is endless military occupation for the Palestinians in Gaza, the only, Oh no, No, but the threat is now. Look, if Hezbollah presses the button. Is endless military occupation for the Palestinians in Gaza the only future? Oh, no. I'll tell you when it ends. The Palestinians should have a leader that says, we want peace, like Sadat. That's when it ends. It won't end until then.

You can't push on a string until such time as there is a Palestinian leader and citizenry that wants to live, that's ready to— Listen, my read on it is— Okay, so— Let me just answer your question. My read on that— Go ahead. This is related to this. Okay, so—

I do have a little bit more to say about that. Go ahead. So just, I think, two weeks ago, not much longer before the article was published, the Minister of Finance announced the largest seizure of land in the West Bank in decades, right? When he announced that, he announced—reiterated his belief that Judea and Samar belong to Israel, right? Who did? Smotrich. Smotrich, okay. Yeah. The 2003 was on track to be the most violent year in terms of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank prior to October 7th and then was more violent afterwards.

You have factions within the Israeli government who are quite open about the desire to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. So the question for you is, does the Israeli government want peace? Yes, of course. Because that's not the action of a country that wants peace with the Palestinians.

All right, let me ask you. First of all, these creeps, embarrassments to their country, Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, have only gotten their feet near the government in the last year and a half. And all the arguments that you're making were in full effect prior to that. There is a fucked up system there, you know as well as I do. And Netanyahu, who couldn't bear to lose power that he made a deal with the devil it's similar to like we expect that marjorie taylor green might be ahead of the

fucking intelligence committee someday because of coalitional politics and also netanyahu was one of the ones who was perfectly happy to allow funding for hamas well as as did uh um the the interim prime ministers. Yeah. And I think it was either Smotrich or Ben-Gavir who straight out said, like, it's a benefit to us. Lapid also continued to fund Hamas. And by the way, I think you would have, too. I mean, they thought that this was the way to keep the peace. We fund Iran to try to get them to be more compliant.

This is not like an outrageous thing to do, but it certainly blew up in their faces. But, you know, then if they shouldn't have funded them, what's the alternative? Make things harder on them? Would you have supported, you know, this is what I would say. Well, OK, so you think Netanyahu went too easy on Hamas, but you're the same people who would be outraged by Netanyahu going hard on Hamas. Like there's no policy that anybody would say good for Netanyahu because he's dealing with a fucking murderous cult. And there is no way to come out of that interchange looking good unless somebody is ready to say, dude, I understand it's not your fault. They're a murderous cult. that becomes a constant that's no longer considered, then yeah, every Palestinian that dies is Netanyahu's fault, is Israel's fault, because we've taken off,

out of the consideration the fact that this murderous cult is throwing these people into harm's way for them. Here, take another, take another. But I want to say about wanting peace. I think that's what we're talking about. Yeah. Israel, so that's it. Israel wants peace.

The pivotal event in Israeli modern history is the second intifada. When right in the heart of the most serious peace offer anybody's ever seen, the Palestinians started to basically a slow rolling version of October 7th, just started killing people in cafes, buses, whatever it is. Even as late as 2014, I have it here somewhere. When Kerry proposed the framework, you can look at it with The New York Times. Obama was frustrated because Abbas had no interest in the in the framework. He only he wouldn't answer and he only want to talk about the fact that Israel shouldn't be a Jewish state.

Oh, here it is. This is from the New York Times, 2014. A March meeting with Mr. Abbas in the Oval Office. Mr. Obama tried to sell him on Mr. Kerry's framework. This is President Obama, right? So you know this wasn't trump palestinian leader official said did not respond preferring to reiterate his rejection of the israeli demand that the palestinians recognize israel as a jewish state quote the president was skeptical about a deal after that meeting the official

said abbas was more comfortable pivoting to public grievances than focusing on private negotiation and now look at this in a speech last week at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Martin Indyk, no bigger hater, drew a distinction between Israel, between the Israeli government and Mr. Netanyahu, who he said took substantial risks. He moved. He showed flexibility, Mr. Indyk said. We had him, I think, by the end of that process in the zone of a possible agreement. So we can go around this again and again and again. If that's not evidence, they don't want peace. If Hamas is not evidence, they don't want peace. And let me say one other thing. Have you noticed that Hamas has not once mentioned the settlements? Hamas doesn't give a shit about which side of the green line you're on. You would think that Hamas, even to be smart, would say, we object to the Israeli taking of our land in the West Bank. Why don't they say that? It doesn't even enter their mind

because they do not distinguish even a little bit between Tel Aviv and Ramallah. And this is the bottom line with them. And that's where it's at. Well, I mean, I make no apologetics for Hamas.

No, I know. And my read on the entire issue you tell me is and i don't say this was with that much sophistication but this is where i've come to is that the humiliation of accepting this 22 percent it's not really 22%, but this really, this 22% and extinguishing that cause is so painful psychologically to them that they would, they would prefer the status quo. I just think that's, I think that's what it is. I don't, I mean, Arafat kept saying to Clinton, you're going to get me killed. You're going to get me killed. I think that's what it is. I mean, Arafat kept saying to Clinton, you're going to get me killed, you're going to get me killed. I think that's where they're at right now. And this is tragic. And I don't know the answer,

but I do know that if I were an Israeli citizen and I saw those 150,000 rockets in the north now and I couldn't go into my home, I would demand my government take care of it. I would say, get me to my home and get rid of those rockets. And I would hope that our ally, America, would understand that in general, that's a righteous cause. I'm not an Israeli citizen. I understand that. I understand that feeling very much.

I don't discount it. I'm an American citizen who's providing weapons for a war about which I think there are extremely serious questions about how it's being waged and whether this is going to move towards any ultimately more peaceful place or whether it's actually going to inflame the region further.

And let's get lighthearted for a second. And so like, I just think it's, and also that I know right now has diplomatic costs for America around the world. And so I, you know, it would be one thing if I was like, this is a righteous cause that's going to solve this issue, and they're waging it the best way that they can. And so I'll take the hit on the world stage. I would understand that and probably support it. But I can't honestly say those things about this war. And so why should you? I think it should be the opposite.

I think you could say, listen, our interests are not Israel's interests. We have six different relationships to juggle. Israel has its own. And we can't go there with you, Israel, because you're not the only thing we're concerned about. Rather than telling them, the reason we can't go there with you is because you're immoral, you're committing genocide.

I didn't say that. No, but I'm saying, like, that I— Look, passions get heated around war for justifiable reasons, right? But you get me, right? Some of us are not yours. My case is not about demonizing Israel or Israelis. It's, like, can I support this war as it's being waged? And, you know, are they providing for their obligations to the population

under the laws of war, which we haven't really talked about? And then also, like, do I see this heading towards a good place in, not just in Gaza, but in the region more broadly? And so it's like, okay, you know, I'm not going to demonize Israel, but I also think that there's no reason for America to support it. Can you look me in the eye, or with what degree of certainty do you feel you could say that if Israel fought the war the way you think it should be waged, that they could achieve the objective of going home and ending the threat of Hamas and Hezbollah? How certain are you that that's possible? I don't think that the amount of devastation that they've caused can be justified purely on... There are neighborhoods that are flattened. Mr. Clay, wait. I'm asking you, if I were the president of the United States, I would ask my defense secretary this very question.

You think they should fight differently? Can they win? If they do everything you say, can they win? This is the answer this is the answer i see the level of devastation and i i don't see a a straightforward military rationale for why their entire neighborhoods that have been totally demolished i think like a third of the structures in northern gaza were destroyed in like the first six or seven weeks i can you know i don't know how do you get to the tunnels uh without the buildings on top of them

i'm asking i don't it sounds flippant i mean it like how do you how do you how do you do that that level of debt as i mentioned the piece like yeah you can justify some of that destruction with like hey there are tunnels destroying the tunnels and it requires some degree of of of damage the way that hamas fights means that there's going to be widespread damage and et cetera. But there's no, the, the idea that the 300 miles of tunnels, and it's a small place. It's, I'm saying it's a lot of, it's a lot of tunnels under buildings and hospitals and mosques and schools. And, and I don't deny that. Yeah. We're talking about a level of devastation that is unbelievable. Well, it seems that way.

And also— That's an intuition on your part. That's not an informed— I don't think even the IDF is claiming that all the devastation is due to, you know, destroyed tunnels, right? Well, some—I mean, again, what's your margin of error? Of course we have to stipulate. It's not going to be perfect. The question is, would Gaza look drastically different?

Would Israel be able to succeed? Would they be able to go home? If they just would do what you say they should do, and they win. There are neighborhoods that have been totally flattened. There was not a tunnel under every building. Get me another general. Yeah. He won't give me a straight answer. No, no, that's was not a tunnel under every building. Get me another general. Yeah, right?

He won't give me a straight answer. No, no, that's the answer, right? That's not an answer. It's like, I don't see the straightforward military justification for that. And also the idea that that bombing campaign, especially in the initial phases, right? And hopefully it's better now. I know America has been pressuring Israel

to be better now. Hopefully it is better now. Targeting is hard. Israel didn't even have good intelligence. Like Israeli officials admitted that their target bank in Gaza was bad in the first place, which is not surprising.

Like it's not surprising that their intel on Gaza was not very good prior to October 7th. I'm surprised. Because October 7th happened, right? And then you have, as I said, 6,000 bombs in the first six days. Just this unbelievable amount of ordnance dropped on this tiny stretch of territory. I don't know a single person who's familiar with American bombing campaigns or targeting who's under the illusion that that was like precisely except that if you look at that newsweek article that came out early on where it talked about how the administration was complaining about there was a

quote there which said that in individual target selection there has been no disagreement between the white house and the idf i remember reading that i could google it i mean i i i guess what i'm saying is i'm ready to and then when we put a microscope on some of the strikes like the one that we talked about earlier they start to look really bad yeah i mean it's when you're dealing with something so chaotic what i'm afraid because like for instance you you quoted somebody in your article and i looked him up and he turned he was very anti-israel guy he's a guy from the just security i mean he'd been tweeting anti-israel stuff for years and he was a guy who you quoted was against the war i'm like well dude why don't you quote somebody who's usually on israel's side who said this is too

far you know so when you when you're dealing with something so chaotic, you can, through confirmation bias, come to whatever conclusion that you want. Because there's going to be strikes which are outrageous. There's going to be war crimes. Whatever you want to find, you're going to be able to find it in a six-month war. So the question is, to what extent, wittingly or unwittingly, are you overlaying your own preconceived ideas and sympathies in this conflict? Is it because in some way you feel Israel has been a bad actor in the past, that they're not sufficiently seeking peace, their occupation of the West Bank? And this is all valid, which is why I say the threshold question has to be, you have to force yourself, in my opinion, to say, all right, I can say what I want. But can they actually do what I'm saying and achieve the objective that any country is entitled to?

Or am what I saying is, I wish they would do these things and I don't really like Israel. And fuck them. Let them deal with Hamas and let them deal with Hezbollah. I'm not coming from wish they would do these things that aren't really like Israel and, and fuck them. Let, let them, let them deal with Hamas and let them deal with Hezbollah. I'm not coming from an anti-Israel perspective. You can search my, no, I don't mean you're at,

you're not coming from an anti-Israel perspective, but by, in my opinion, this is this, I don't mean to be disrespectful here by, by, but I've dealing with this with a lot of friends by not forcing yourself to answer the hardest of questions. You can skirt over that. That's why

the military guys, I always noticed, like, they always answer the question first. Yes, they need to destroy Hamas. And then they go on with the explanation. Or no, I don't think they need to. And then they go on. It's very interesting how the military people are trained because they understand you have to come up with an answer at the end. And I told my friend, my friend Colin the other day, and I said, listen, before you tell me all this other stuff, you have to tell me what should Israel do? And he said, they should give him an ultimatum. We'll give you two weeks. And I said, since they actually haven't even responded to all the bombing. At the end of that two weeks, what should Israel do? And of course, he doesn't have an answer, but he knows he's against the war. Well, that's fine if you're not in charge of Israel and you have to actually lead the people. You have to make a decision. You have to go to your people and say, listen, we're going to let this one slide, or we're going to

fight this one, and we're going to lose a lot more soldiers. And by the way, in the end, we're not even going to accomplish anything. Or we're going to beg them to give the, we're going to take the military pressure off and hope they give us the hostages back. It's such an un, anyway, more lighthearted way. When you wrote this article, this was, you're a brave man. I know you have military service. Have you ever done anything as scary as write this article with all your Jewish friends are going to come at you and really hand you out to dry? You must have been nervous about it. Yeah, I have a buddy in Israel who's working on a rebuttal, actually. I'll send it to you.

Who's working on a rebuttal? A buddy of mine in Israel, yeah. Oh, yeah, send it to me. I'll send it to you, and then you can, you know, have more ammunition to tell me that I'm wrong. I admire that. I like to see people, nice people, good faith people who stand by their opinions and are not afraid. And I like that Jeffrey Goldberg ran the article. And I think it's terrific that you wrote the article.

I had no. I was I had a worry writing the article. right? It's, it's a sensitive subject and it's understandably sort of like, well, let's like look at it, you know, from like a rational perspective, like they understandably don't want to hear it. And, you know, if you're... No human can do that. Right. And if you're Israeli and you, you know, are living in the aftermath of the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, right? I don't, I don't,

you know, I think that's understandable that that sense that it's a difficult topic is oftentimes for me as a writer, a sense of something that I should go into. I try to go into it with a certain sense of humility. I tried to make my case in a relatively conservative way, right? I wasn't trying to throw, you know, wild accusations around. When, you know, when I look at the casualty— She made comments just like that about your article. She thought it was measured and nicely written, and she's to the right of me on Israel, so you succeeded.

Yeah, you know, and it is what I believe, right? And I felt that it was important. I felt like as an American, I have a stake in this that is different from in Israel, right? But that I do have a responsibility as an American. Are you Jewish? No, I'm not. It's okay and yeah um and and and make an argument right and then people are welcome to to reply and i really appreciate that you wanted to have me on and and uh i hope you think

i was respectful conversation absolutely no no i i appreciate that a lot of times a lot of times i do these conversations then people ghost me. Right? We had this guy John Hoffman on last week. He won't answer a single email to me. No, but this is what I wanted, right? I didn't – I don't think – look, I have strong opinions about this. You clearly have strong opinions. But I don't think, like, I've got the handle on the Israel-Palestine debate.

Like, that's a pretty complicated debate, right? I do think there's something that I can add to the conversation, a perspective that I can put forth that, you know, people can talk about. Can I say something? Can I answer now? Then it'll be the turn of you just because I don't want to lose my thought.

What I noticed, you know, that whole John Stuart Mill kind of on liberty and talking about it by free speech. But what I do notice, something that he kind of alluded to that happens to me all the time when an article like yours comes out it causes me to do so much research and so much learning yes that i i in this particular case i it's hard in my opinions but in other cases i I might... You came loaded for bear. Well, yeah. But I just want to say that it's so essential for people who don't like to hear opinions

that they disagree with and are offended by them and angered by them and feel an emotional reaction to them. I just want to make the point, they're really doing you a favor because if you respond to it properly and then you go and you redo your math and you do the reading and this elevates on both sides the quality of the conversation that's being had. And that smacking together of opinions eventually, hopefully produces more often than not a wiser outcome. And so it's actually, it's actually, this is really,

I think the reason America is the most successful country. I think we don't understand that, but go ahead. I think that anybody who in good faith is engaging in conversations about what's going on in Israel and Gaza has to acknowledge that it is of critical importance to think about the tragedy that is happening to the Palestinian people and that we all want that to end. I mean, this is a little bit anecdotal, but everybody who I know has been protesting the Netanyahu administration well before October 7th. People have been marching and sleeping in the streets. And I don't know that. I mean, that's perhaps a little bit of a separate issue. And also the fact that if you're going to have this conversation, you at once also must address that the hostages need to be released immediately. And it's not this is not an Israeli or Jewish thing.

There are people there who are Muslim and who are Buddhist and who are Christian and an American, an American and American. Um, and it is utter and sheer insanity to let any of these hostages continue to linger on. I mean, it's been half a year. It's insane. Yeah. Who knows how many are alive? Well, I mean, I, and I don't know if this is true and you don't like it when I say things that you see this in a meme. No, I didn't see this in a meme, but I did see it on Instagram. That is a meme site. That Hamas has recently rejected yet another ceasefire and has said that the reason why that they won't release the hostages

is because who knows where they are? They don't know where they are and they're not necessarily even alive. But they know, to the man, how many people have died. Listen, I truly, and you know how I've always lived in the very far left world politically on Israel. I've always been. And when she says far left, it means that if you won't sleep with a woman with a penis, you're a bigot. That's how far left she is.

That's true, too. Go ahead. That's true, too. I'm assuming you're straight. Go ahead. I do take that position. Now I forgot what I was going to say. You live in the far left world.

Right, but what were we talking about? I suppose you're saying that you find yourself more right-wing now. No, that's not what I was going to say. I was going to say something about, oh, that I really think that there is no greater enemy to the Palestinian people than Hamas.

I mean, they are intentionally, I mean, you used the word honeycomb of tunnels in your article. Yeah, the intention is to maximize civilian casualties. And it's horrific. And I don't, I really don't have an answer, but I also don't know how you're supposed to get out of this with the eye on peace, which is one of the things that I liked about your article. Um, the goal here is for everybody to live together next door to each other as cousins, as neighbors. Um, and I do think that that's possible. I mean, we've done it before. i think we have a lot more in common than um a lot of other people

in the world i'm i hope it's possible you know as i've said before one of the one of the things that makes me pessimistic is when i see the much much worse terrorism and tribal violence throughout the rest of the middle east And there's this kind of notion that with, with the Jews, these tribes can lay down their animus, but you know, if Sunni and Shiite and Christian, they all kill each other like this all the time.

Jews are the least likely candidate for them to, to forgive, you know, I, I, I, you know, but there'll be a border

i don't know there was a time we all had hope there was a time we all had hope and and sometimes tragedies are the turning points in history often right well so maybe let's rachel paul and goldberg her hersh hersh's mother who has we all know, the hostage who had his arm blown off, was just at the six-month rally in Central Park. And she said hope is mandatory. Yeah. So I do think that those are words of wisdom. You know, we have to end. But just to put it out there, the fact is that if Hamas survives this, that would be the worst thing for peace. Not because of Hamas, but because that would send the message throughout the Arab world, we can win this. This is how we do it. Why would we go for two states now when we've shown and proven we can go kill a thousand of them and the world takes our side? Oh, not really taking our side.

The world is just upset about all the civilians they killed. But we'll see to it that we provide the civilians. If that's what the world wants, we'll make sure they have it, right? That's what they'll make sure. So that's it. Game over. Well, I will reiterate that you said that hopefully we do see new thinking. we'll make sure they have it right that's what they'll make sure so that's it game over well i i will reiterate with that you said that hopefully we do see new thinking right um because it's

certainly needed if there's going to be anything other than than endless conflict yeah and she and by the way you know it's not we gotta end this it's not just words what she says we have we've agonized we've never seen a war like this all wars have been like this but we've actually never seen war like this and it's impossible to look at yeah but

I wouldn't want to trade places with anybody who had to actually make the decisions you know I wouldn't want to be Harry Truman alright sir it was really a pleasure maybe a few months you come on again make the decisions, you know, I wouldn't want to be Harry Truman. All right, sir. It was really a pleasure. Maybe, um,

if you must come on again. Yeah. Thank you. See what else is going on. Maybe you want to come down to the club some night. It's a wonderful place. Have you been there before? Oh, many times.

Oh, well now next time, next time you have to come on the VIP. Okay. And, uh, so podcast at comedy. So.com.

You want to put any contact information or Twitter? I just feel Kly K L a Y. Oh, it's Kly. Why don't you want to put any contact information or Twitter? It's just Phil Klay, K-L-A-Y. Oh, it's Klay. Why don't you call me? I've been saying Klay. I just like to screw with people. You've been dealing with your whole life, obviously. I'm used to it at this point.

I just spell it right. If you listened to me and hated everything that I said, Jacob Siegel is the one who's writing a rebuttal. Thank you very much. All right. Okay. Good night, everybody. Who's Jacob Siegel?