Listen now | 2:06 Why hasn’t the ground invasion happened yet? 8:22 Do conditions in Gaza make terrorism more likely? 16:37 Palestinian violence compared to Israeli violence 27:05 Did Israel really offer the Palestinians a state two decades ago? 32:43 Does Hamas have much support in the West? 39:55 What should be done about Hamas? 51:09 Israel’s blockade of Gaza and strategy of massive retaliation 58:27 Indignities suffered by Palestinians in the West Bank 1:08:21 Should West Bank Palestinians focus on demanding the vote? 1:13:30 Eli’s growing interest in the deep state Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Eli Lake (The New York Sun, Commentary, Clements Center, The Re-Education). Recorded October 24, 2023.
The Haitian Revolution or Uprising is a clear example during the period of European enslavement of Africans of an extremely violent revolt that was vindictive.
Yes, but the Haitian Revolution is in some ways an outlier because of the truly extreme cruelty of the enslavers, and the nightmarish work of cutting and hauling sugar cane in such a miserably hot and disease-ridden place. I remember reading that the celebratory funeral marches in New Orleans can be traced to the Haitian practice of celebrating death as a release from this torment. I'm not sure there's anything comparable today. Maybe North Korea?
“You can go to Palestine, called Israel today, you can see Sodom, you can see Gomorrah, ain't nothing built there. God hadn't let anything be built there to show you his displeasure against homosexual behavior. Now, the church says it's all right.” — Louis Farrakhan
There wouldn't be the racial/ethnic dimension in North Korea though? Norman Finkelstein has compared Oct 7 to the Warsaw uprising which his parents were in. He recalled his mother's crazed blood lust for the Germans, despite the fact she was a relatively mild-mannered and moral person. The IRA committed some pretty ghastly atrocities in Northern Ireland (though they usually warned British authorities in advance when they bombed mainland UK). I think when you survey the landscape of human struggle and suffering it's not that hard to find comparable atrocities to Oct 7. Though Oct 7 was very bad, no doubt about it. But I don't think it indicates some new level of human depravity and I agree with Robert Wright -- most people are not born monsters, they are made into monsters. I was listening to a Rest Is History podcast which touched on the history of Islam. I was reminded that all Muslims are supposed to do the Hajj at least once in their lives. And it struck me that those young men born in Gaza who committed the atrocities on Oct 7 -- they can't even do the Hajj since they are imprisoned in Gaza. Really mind me think.
I'd generally agree that people tend to be made into monsters (although if you watch "Chimp Empire" on Netflix, you have to wonder about that). But I do think that our discussion about the conditions that go into making monsters should focus on cultural and religious conditioning in additional to political, economic and social factors. In some cases, people who have suffered very little physical deprivation and whose primary complaints are more psychological or emotional in nature can do truly monstrous things. See the pampered Saudis who perpetrated 9/11. Probably hundreds of millions of people around the world would give anything to have the level of material prosperity enjoyed by some of the (many) mass shooters in the United States. In the case of Hamas and Oct. 7, I do suspect that virulent antisemitic religious and cultural conditioning, combined with a certain nihilistic and narcissistic social media landscape (how many of these guys spent all their time watching ISIS videos, listening to conspiracist 'influencer' imams, etc.?) is part of the explanation.
Pardonne mon français . . . Je suis obligé d'écrire dans plusieurs langues parce que: 1. La plupart des gens aux États-Unis ont subi un lavage de cerveau pour croire que les Juifs sont leur salut; et 2., leur anglais est merde et ils ne peuvent pas rester silencieux assez longtemps pour entendre ou voir ce qui se passe évidemment autour d'eux . . .
Le judéo-messianisme répand parmi nous son message empoisonné depuis près de deux mille ans. Les universalismes démocratique et communiste sont récents, mais ils n’ont fait que renforcer le vieux récit juif. Ce sont les mêmes idéaux . . .
Les idéaux transnationaux, transraciaux, transsexuels, transculturels que ces idéologies nous prêchent (au-delà des peuples, des races, des cultures) et qui sont notre subsistance quotidienne dans nos écoles, dans nos médias, dans notre culture populaire, dans nos universités et dans nos rues, ont fini par réduire notre identité biosymbolique et notre fierté ethnique à leur expression minimale.
Les banquiers juifs inondent l’Europe de musulmans et l’Amérique de déchets du tiers-monde . . . L'exil comme une punition pour les gens qui prêchent la sédition devrait être rétabli au cadre juridique de l'Occident . . . Le judaïsme, le christianisme et l’islam sont des cultes de mort originaires du Moyen-Orient et totalement étrangers à l’Europe et à ses peuples.
Aucun pays ne mène sa propre course dans cette invasion parce qu’il s’agit d’un programme politique dirigé par l’ONU et piloté par les Juifs et leurs marionnettes (les politiciens). La plupart des gens ne savent tout simplement pas ou ne comprennent pas qu’il s’agit d’un programme politique. Cependant, certains parviennent à comprendre que les politiciens travaillent délibérément à importer des musulmans et à remplacer des gens, mais c'est tout, ils sont comme un ordinateur qui ne peut pas fonctionner parce que le programme ne le permet pas.
Les gens demandent parfois pourquoi la gauche européenne s'entend si bien avec les musulmans. Pourquoi un mouvement qui a souvent été ouvertement anti-religieux prend-il le parti d'une religiosité farouche qui semble s'opposer à presque tout ce que la gauche a jamais prétendu représenter? Une partie de l'explication est que l'islam et le marxisme ont une racine idéologique commune: le judaïsme . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
Forgive my French . . . I am compelled to write in several languages because: 1. Most people in the United States have been brainwashed into believing that Jews are their salvation; and 2., their English is shit and they can't stay silent long enough to hear or see what's obviously going on around them . . .
Judeo-messianism has been spreading its poisonous message among us for nearly two thousand years. Democratic and communist universalisms are recent, but they have only reinforced the old Jewish narrative. They are the same ideals . . .
The transnational, transracial, transsexual, transcultural ideals that these ideologies preach to us (beyond peoples, races, cultures) and which are our daily sustenance in our schools, in our media, in our popular culture, in our universities and on our streets, have ended up reducing our biosymbolic identity and ethnic pride to their minimal expression.
Jewish bankers flooded Europe with Muslims and America with third-world garbage . . . Exile as a punishment for people who preach sedition should be restored to the legal framework of the West . . . Judaism, Christianity and Islam are death cults originating in the Middle East and totally alien to Europe and its peoples.
People sometimes ask why the European left gets along so well with Muslims. Why does a movement that has often been openly anti-religious take the side of a fierce religiosity that seems to oppose almost everything the left has ever claimed to stand for? Part of the explanation is that Islam and Marxism have a common ideological root: Judaism. https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
This was a valuable conversation to hear, primarily for how to maintain civility. Eli made some really unhelpful comments ("where are the palestinian freedom riders," "you're getting close to attributing oct 7 to Israel," "why don't we give the land back to lebanon"), but Robert commendably avoided the temptation to start exchanging hyperbolic jabs.
It must be difficult for Eli to think critically about such an emotional event, doubly so with how social/media demographically targets rage bait so everyone will continue watching! But I'm glad he was able to mostly avoid lingering in the unhelpful. It seemed like a good faith effort. These conversations are important because they show they are possible; no matter who you disagree with you can "be the bigger person" and either succinctly respond to a misrepresentation of facts or simply ignore the comment.
Maybe Robert can do an episode on "how to talk to ideological enemies?" Even better if its a conversation about civility with someone who is an ideological enemy!
I’m afraid that everyone who is close to this issue has too much emotional salience to be objective enough to discuss or make decisions. Eli’s view has a lot of attribution error, and I think the other side also suffers from similar bias. They could have spent an hour digging into any one point and Eli would have still had a thousand reasons why his side is right.
Very difficult to see a way out without quasi-neutral outside mediators, which the current monopolarity -> new cold war international situation can’t provide. Need a UN and ultimately an escape from tribal psychology.
Just heard Ofer Cassif on Useful Idiots. Lefty Israeli politician who just got suspended from Knesset for calling for ceasefire. Would be interesting to hear you talk to him, even if it’s later on long term plans for peace.
“Destroy Hamas” is not an achievable objective. Much of the Hamas leadership resides outside Gaza, and Israel’s ability to identify Hamas militants within the general Gaza population—let alone target them specifically—is open to question. So what would be the achievable objective of an invasion? Without one, Israel is just wreaking generalized vengeance, which does not a just war make.
Excellent discussion (and great column). One question I have is this: Bob is the only mainstream foreign policy thinker I know who is anti-escalation in Gaza, Ukraine, and China (trade war). Why is that? (If there are others with similar clout (e.g., can publish opeds in the WaPo/NYT), I would like to know. It seems odd that these are very defensible positions (I’m convinced) and have a lot of popular support but completely underrepresented in the establishment and its media organs.
This was a difficult conversation to listen to, but exactly the kind of good faith conversation we need.
I’d like to hear Bob talk to Dr. Norman Finkelstein. Dr. Finkelstein has dedicated his life to researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it shouldn’t be controversial to say he’s the world’s leading expert. I’m sure Bob would disagree with some of Dr. Finkelstein’s opinions, but I honestly think the Nonzero podcast is one of the only places where you can have these extraordinarily complex discussions and disagreements in good faith.
Yep like you said no Israel-Palestine discussion. I wish I could go back in time, and show folks like Finkelstein and Sam Harris the movie PCU (Politically Correct University) right when it came out in 1994. It’s all in the movie, militant feminists and woke black people, almost everything that the culture warriors still argue about today (except trans people). I would tell them that in almost 30 years we’ll be arguing about the exact same thing, and if they get involved in the culture war it will eat up a very significant portion of their time and attention for the rest of their lives. I wish someone had given me that warning, I would have chosen to spend more time with my family.
There is no question that the Gaza blockade has harmed and killed untold numbers of Palestinians, as have Israel’s periodic attacks there. The argument that lifting the blockade will result in more Israeli deaths is entirely speculative. It hangs, I think, on what Hamas’s aims were here, and no one really knows what those aims were (though everyone has an opinion.)
One thing we can say definitively now is that the Gaza blockade failed to protect Israel from Gaza.
In addition to the point made by Bob Narus, I think that since it’s not clear the long term consequences of lifting the blockade, the immediate moral implications ought to be considered. The blockade is unethical.
This is the conversation I’ve been longing for on this topic. Cheers to Eli and Bob for maintaining civility and making good arguments.
The Haitian Revolution or Uprising is a clear example during the period of European enslavement of Africans of an extremely violent revolt that was vindictive.
Yes, but the Haitian Revolution is in some ways an outlier because of the truly extreme cruelty of the enslavers, and the nightmarish work of cutting and hauling sugar cane in such a miserably hot and disease-ridden place. I remember reading that the celebratory funeral marches in New Orleans can be traced to the Haitian practice of celebrating death as a release from this torment. I'm not sure there's anything comparable today. Maybe North Korea?
“You can go to Palestine, called Israel today, you can see Sodom, you can see Gomorrah, ain't nothing built there. God hadn't let anything be built there to show you his displeasure against homosexual behavior. Now, the church says it's all right.” — Louis Farrakhan
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/catholic-church-in-california-grapples-with-over-3000-lawsuits-alleging-abuse/ar-AA1bUiC8
There wouldn't be the racial/ethnic dimension in North Korea though? Norman Finkelstein has compared Oct 7 to the Warsaw uprising which his parents were in. He recalled his mother's crazed blood lust for the Germans, despite the fact she was a relatively mild-mannered and moral person. The IRA committed some pretty ghastly atrocities in Northern Ireland (though they usually warned British authorities in advance when they bombed mainland UK). I think when you survey the landscape of human struggle and suffering it's not that hard to find comparable atrocities to Oct 7. Though Oct 7 was very bad, no doubt about it. But I don't think it indicates some new level of human depravity and I agree with Robert Wright -- most people are not born monsters, they are made into monsters. I was listening to a Rest Is History podcast which touched on the history of Islam. I was reminded that all Muslims are supposed to do the Hajj at least once in their lives. And it struck me that those young men born in Gaza who committed the atrocities on Oct 7 -- they can't even do the Hajj since they are imprisoned in Gaza. Really mind me think.
I'd generally agree that people tend to be made into monsters (although if you watch "Chimp Empire" on Netflix, you have to wonder about that). But I do think that our discussion about the conditions that go into making monsters should focus on cultural and religious conditioning in additional to political, economic and social factors. In some cases, people who have suffered very little physical deprivation and whose primary complaints are more psychological or emotional in nature can do truly monstrous things. See the pampered Saudis who perpetrated 9/11. Probably hundreds of millions of people around the world would give anything to have the level of material prosperity enjoyed by some of the (many) mass shooters in the United States. In the case of Hamas and Oct. 7, I do suspect that virulent antisemitic religious and cultural conditioning, combined with a certain nihilistic and narcissistic social media landscape (how many of these guys spent all their time watching ISIS videos, listening to conspiracist 'influencer' imams, etc.?) is part of the explanation.
Pardonne mon français . . . Je suis obligé d'écrire dans plusieurs langues parce que: 1. La plupart des gens aux États-Unis ont subi un lavage de cerveau pour croire que les Juifs sont leur salut; et 2., leur anglais est merde et ils ne peuvent pas rester silencieux assez longtemps pour entendre ou voir ce qui se passe évidemment autour d'eux . . .
Le judéo-messianisme répand parmi nous son message empoisonné depuis près de deux mille ans. Les universalismes démocratique et communiste sont récents, mais ils n’ont fait que renforcer le vieux récit juif. Ce sont les mêmes idéaux . . .
Les idéaux transnationaux, transraciaux, transsexuels, transculturels que ces idéologies nous prêchent (au-delà des peuples, des races, des cultures) et qui sont notre subsistance quotidienne dans nos écoles, dans nos médias, dans notre culture populaire, dans nos universités et dans nos rues, ont fini par réduire notre identité biosymbolique et notre fierté ethnique à leur expression minimale.
Les banquiers juifs inondent l’Europe de musulmans et l’Amérique de déchets du tiers-monde . . . L'exil comme une punition pour les gens qui prêchent la sédition devrait être rétabli au cadre juridique de l'Occident . . . Le judaïsme, le christianisme et l’islam sont des cultes de mort originaires du Moyen-Orient et totalement étrangers à l’Europe et à ses peuples.
Aucun pays ne mène sa propre course dans cette invasion parce qu’il s’agit d’un programme politique dirigé par l’ONU et piloté par les Juifs et leurs marionnettes (les politiciens). La plupart des gens ne savent tout simplement pas ou ne comprennent pas qu’il s’agit d’un programme politique. Cependant, certains parviennent à comprendre que les politiciens travaillent délibérément à importer des musulmans et à remplacer des gens, mais c'est tout, ils sont comme un ordinateur qui ne peut pas fonctionner parce que le programme ne le permet pas.
Les gens demandent parfois pourquoi la gauche européenne s'entend si bien avec les musulmans. Pourquoi un mouvement qui a souvent été ouvertement anti-religieux prend-il le parti d'une religiosité farouche qui semble s'opposer à presque tout ce que la gauche a jamais prétendu représenter? Une partie de l'explication est que l'islam et le marxisme ont une racine idéologique commune: le judaïsme . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
Forgive my French . . . I am compelled to write in several languages because: 1. Most people in the United States have been brainwashed into believing that Jews are their salvation; and 2., their English is shit and they can't stay silent long enough to hear or see what's obviously going on around them . . .
Judeo-messianism has been spreading its poisonous message among us for nearly two thousand years. Democratic and communist universalisms are recent, but they have only reinforced the old Jewish narrative. They are the same ideals . . .
The transnational, transracial, transsexual, transcultural ideals that these ideologies preach to us (beyond peoples, races, cultures) and which are our daily sustenance in our schools, in our media, in our popular culture, in our universities and on our streets, have ended up reducing our biosymbolic identity and ethnic pride to their minimal expression.
Jewish bankers flooded Europe with Muslims and America with third-world garbage . . . Exile as a punishment for people who preach sedition should be restored to the legal framework of the West . . . Judaism, Christianity and Islam are death cults originating in the Middle East and totally alien to Europe and its peoples.
People sometimes ask why the European left gets along so well with Muslims. Why does a movement that has often been openly anti-religious take the side of a fierce religiosity that seems to oppose almost everything the left has ever claimed to stand for? Part of the explanation is that Islam and Marxism have a common ideological root: Judaism. https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
This was a valuable conversation to hear, primarily for how to maintain civility. Eli made some really unhelpful comments ("where are the palestinian freedom riders," "you're getting close to attributing oct 7 to Israel," "why don't we give the land back to lebanon"), but Robert commendably avoided the temptation to start exchanging hyperbolic jabs.
It must be difficult for Eli to think critically about such an emotional event, doubly so with how social/media demographically targets rage bait so everyone will continue watching! But I'm glad he was able to mostly avoid lingering in the unhelpful. It seemed like a good faith effort. These conversations are important because they show they are possible; no matter who you disagree with you can "be the bigger person" and either succinctly respond to a misrepresentation of facts or simply ignore the comment.
Maybe Robert can do an episode on "how to talk to ideological enemies?" Even better if its a conversation about civility with someone who is an ideological enemy!
I’m afraid that everyone who is close to this issue has too much emotional salience to be objective enough to discuss or make decisions. Eli’s view has a lot of attribution error, and I think the other side also suffers from similar bias. They could have spent an hour digging into any one point and Eli would have still had a thousand reasons why his side is right.
Very difficult to see a way out without quasi-neutral outside mediators, which the current monopolarity -> new cold war international situation can’t provide. Need a UN and ultimately an escape from tribal psychology.
For now a ceasefire would be nice.
Just heard Ofer Cassif on Useful Idiots. Lefty Israeli politician who just got suspended from Knesset for calling for ceasefire. Would be interesting to hear you talk to him, even if it’s later on long term plans for peace.
“Destroy Hamas” is not an achievable objective. Much of the Hamas leadership resides outside Gaza, and Israel’s ability to identify Hamas militants within the general Gaza population—let alone target them specifically—is open to question. So what would be the achievable objective of an invasion? Without one, Israel is just wreaking generalized vengeance, which does not a just war make.
If the Iranians nuke Israel, the Palestinians also die in the fallout . . . peace at last.
Excellent discussion (and great column). One question I have is this: Bob is the only mainstream foreign policy thinker I know who is anti-escalation in Gaza, Ukraine, and China (trade war). Why is that? (If there are others with similar clout (e.g., can publish opeds in the WaPo/NYT), I would like to know. It seems odd that these are very defensible positions (I’m convinced) and have a lot of popular support but completely underrepresented in the establishment and its media organs.
Recalling the "Whose side is time on?" moment in the Bret Stephens discussion: https://youtu.be/9Mcjpxmczv8?t=4015
Bret's intuition there of pursuing the abraham accords and it taking +100 more years is depressing.
This was a difficult conversation to listen to, but exactly the kind of good faith conversation we need.
I’d like to hear Bob talk to Dr. Norman Finkelstein. Dr. Finkelstein has dedicated his life to researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it shouldn’t be controversial to say he’s the world’s leading expert. I’m sure Bob would disagree with some of Dr. Finkelstein’s opinions, but I honestly think the Nonzero podcast is one of the only places where you can have these extraordinarily complex discussions and disagreements in good faith.
I did have a conversation with Finkelstein (though we mainly discussed things other than Israel-Palestine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZD8MQeBw9c&t=26s .
Yep like you said no Israel-Palestine discussion. I wish I could go back in time, and show folks like Finkelstein and Sam Harris the movie PCU (Politically Correct University) right when it came out in 1994. It’s all in the movie, militant feminists and woke black people, almost everything that the culture warriors still argue about today (except trans people). I would tell them that in almost 30 years we’ll be arguing about the exact same thing, and if they get involved in the culture war it will eat up a very significant portion of their time and attention for the rest of their lives. I wish someone had given me that warning, I would have chosen to spend more time with my family.
Thanks Bob I somehow missed this conversation. Listening to it now!
There is no question that the Gaza blockade has harmed and killed untold numbers of Palestinians, as have Israel’s periodic attacks there. The argument that lifting the blockade will result in more Israeli deaths is entirely speculative. It hangs, I think, on what Hamas’s aims were here, and no one really knows what those aims were (though everyone has an opinion.)
One thing we can say definitively now is that the Gaza blockade failed to protect Israel from Gaza.
In addition to the point made by Bob Narus, I think that since it’s not clear the long term consequences of lifting the blockade, the immediate moral implications ought to be considered. The blockade is unethical.