Douglas Murray on Hamas, Iran, and the Collapse of the Two-State Solution

0:00 All right, everybody. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shurmer Show, brought to you by, as always, the Skeptic Society and Skeptic Magazine. I am your host, Michael Shurmer. My guest today, oh my god, have I got a great show for you today. He is our returning champion, Douglas Murray, best-selling author and journalist. His books include the Sunday number one bestsellers, The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, and Islam, and The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity, which he uh came on the show to discuss a couple years ago. He's the associate editor and regular writer at the Spectator since 2012 and contributes to other publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Mail on Sunday, and the New York Post. He's a regular guest on

0:46 broadcast news channels. He's also spoken at numerous universities, parliaments, and big arenas like the O2 Arena. I recall that. I think that was with Jordan Peterson, right? An epic lineup there. And the White House. Okay, we have to hear about that. Douglas, nice to see you. How are you? Very good to be back with you, Michael. Yes. And to see you in a non-social uh setting here. This is nice without adult beverages here to to lubricate the conversation. So, um you know, we we missed each other when your book first came out uh numerous times and here we are July 1st recording this and it felt to me like your book must have come out I don't know six, eight, nine months ago when I looked it up. It was April 8th, just three months ago. That's right. That's right. It's astonishing how much happens in such a

1:32 short period of time. Yes. On democracies and death cults. Uh is there it is. There it is. I forgot to hold it up and show it. There you go. On democracies and death cults. Israel and the future of civilization. Sorry for the uh the lacuna there, but yeah. How how's the reception been so far in three months? Uh amazing. Um uh it's hit all the bestseller lists which is of course really principally uh a joy because as you know Michael the best thing for writer is to be read um and uh actually getting the the feedback from readers about this book has been terrific not least because um in it's a pretty personal book in lots of ways um it's an account of the uh aftermath of October

2:19 the 7th and the war uh that resulted. And uh my aim in the book is to first of all give a firsthand account of uh of what I saw the in the aftermath of the atrocities, but also what I saw firsthand in the uh in the ensuing war and uh being embedded with the IDF in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere. and uh and then a sort of zooming out of what it is that meant that in this extraordinary and terrible societal moment so many people uh threw themselves not just behind the Palestinian cause which is something I can understand uh but behind

3:06 the cause of Hamas in other words just ran straight to backing and expressing jubilation for the worst death cult terrorists of our time. And we've seen that again just in the last few days with uh uh crowds at music. I mean, just consider this. You know, one of the one of the places where the terrorists hit on the 7th of October, 2023 was the Nova Music Festival, where young people were dancing in the early hours of the morning when uh Hamz terrorists set upon them, raped, butchered, murdered, uh tortured, and kidnapped. Couple of days before we're talking, another music festival, Glastonbury,

3:53 uh, had people chanting from the stage and the audience returning the chance of support for the rapists, for the death cult, for the people who' who' attacked that music festival in Israel and if they had a chance would would be gleeful at rampaging through the crowds like that at Glastenbury. It's an example of what I go into in the book of the extraordinary deranging thing that offered a really quite clear choice. So many people decided to jump on the side of the terrorists. Yeah. You uh open here in your introduction of that uh video that we've all heard now of the atrocity video as it were. In the midst of the attack, the terrorist made a phone call back to his family in Gaza. The excitement in his

4:39 voice was obvious. Hi dad. The three-minute call begins. Open my WhatsApp now and you'll see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands. Your son killed Jews. The father replies, "May God protect you." The son is exaltant. "Dad, I'm talking to you from a Jewish woman's phone. I killed her and I killed her husband and I killed 10 with my own hands." He goes on and on repeating himself, boasting, "Dad, I killed 10 10 with my own hands. Put mom on." That That's astonishing. I mean that's just hard to even read. Is that what you mean by a death cult? Yes. I mean literally the glorification of death as you and many of our viewers will know. I mean there have been death cult ideologies throughout history. Um,

5:26 one thinks of things like in Imperial Japan, uh, where some people were willing to get into a plane and commit suicide by flying the plane into American aircraft carriers and and more. There have been many uh, groups throughout history, sadly, from all political directions and and religious directions who've literally glorified in death. But but yes, in the case of Hamas, this is uh Hezbollah and and their backers in the Iranian revolutionary government in Thran, these are literally groups that that that say they want death and want to bring death to others and get it for themselves. And as I mull on quite a lot in the book,

6:11 that that's something which to the western mindset is largely almost impossible to comprehend. and and yet it is something worth thinking about and trying to comprehend. Um because there is a presumption I think in our societies you quite often hear it in good well-meaning people who will say things like I think most people around the world want what we want and um I usually think that's a sign that the person in question hasn't gone around the world very much. Uh but yeah, there are societies, there are groups who who who just simply don't want what we want, who have a different view of history, of um the future, of of the present. Uh and

6:56 and wildly say it all the time and yet are not believed. Um and yet when somebody like Hassan Nazar, the former now deceased head of Hezbollah says, you know, the the great weakness of the infidels is that they love life and we don't. You know, we love death. That is merely what people like Nazara thought and think. Well, they love death. They love the idea that there's an afterlife they're going to for which they'll be rewarded for dying. Yes. I mean that's a huge part of it is the idea that the present the the life we have is is not the main point that

7:43 that an afterlife particularly one in the case of this type of Islamist ideology. the afterlife is the the the demonstration, the vindication that what you've done on this earth uh will be rewarded and that the reward will come especially to those who lay down their lives in the service of this ideology, take life wherever they can and if they lose it themselves and that's all for the better. Yeah, that's it's a it's a very strong theological effectively millinarian movement. Um, and one which I think has to be understood as well as confronted. Yeah. Well, at least Marxist regimes since they're mostly atheists don't

8:30 believe in the afterlife. So you we can assume that they're rational actors who will be deterred by something like mutual assured destruction and that a game theory analysis will predict what they'll do. And so far that's worked pretty well in terms of, you know, nuclear uh deterrence. But this brings us to Iran, right? Because this is one reason why we can't let them have nukes. Uh because they're not going to be the rational calculators like let's say the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. That's right. I mean the the the whole premise I mean the whole premise pre premise of mutually assured destruction of of a standoff a day between nuclear powers is that you hope that both sides are rational actors and they understand

9:15 that beginning a war with the world's most dangerous weaponry will lead to their own almost immediate swift demise themselves. And there have been plenty of uh close calls, shall we say, uh even in the history of comparatively rational uh uh countries, leaderships. Um the the during the cold war and in the present uh standoff with Russia, that's by no means straightforward. But uh yes, I mean even even at the height of the Cold War, the Kremlin wasn't eager wasn't eager and welcoming the idea of death. Um you might say India Pakistan is a sort of dayto both know that if they were to start throwing around the

10:01 nuclear weapons they have it would lead to their own immediate demise. So why would they do it? We haven't yet had a situation where a a regime government and ideology which of the kind I just described also has control of the most genocidal and dangerous weaponry. You know, one way to think of it is that um mutually assured destruction works until you have an opponent who loves the idea of Mhm. destruction of of every kind. Um people for whom uh mutual assurial destruction sounds like a an interesting thing to try. Yeah, that's right. Yes. Well, okay. I want to ask you about Iran and and um

10:47 and everything that's been happening in the last couple weeks there. Um it that must be tied I guess to uh Gaza and Hamas because Hamas is sponsored by Iran and Iran has promised to eradicate Israel if they can and that would be the justification for uh the strikes against them. Yes. Uh the uh one of the fascinating things about the post October 7th war has been that it's gradually uh the the that the the IDF and the IIAF and now with uh American B2 bombers backing them managed to roll the the the the enemy up pretty

11:35 pretty successfully and all the way back to the main backer uh in the revolutionary Islamic government of Iran which has misgueded uh Iran since 1979. That's one of the reasons why I mention early in the book what I think of as one of the two worst journeys of the 20th century the most lamentable journeys which is the flight that took the Ayatollahi from Paris to Thran in 1979 uh brought him back from exile in the west and to Iran where once he seizes power and once his militias and everything are embedded and once he's killed and imprisoned and murdered his political opponents, manages to have a vicelike clamp on Iran

12:23 and then to export their ideology across the Middle East. You know, the the great colonial power of the era in the Middle East is is Iran, colonized Iraq, colonized Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, uh wrecked these countries as its militias have been there. and of course Gaza uh where uh Iran not only knew of the October the 7th uh attacks and the planning but had to get approval for it and had trained and armed Hamas in the in the years prior to the attack. It has been very interesting watching the the process of the of the roll back occur since the seventh. Hamas has been pretty

13:10 much decimated. Still holding on. They still have hostages that they are still holding Israeli hostages. But then the destruction of Hezbollah to the extent that their their grip on Lebanon has massively massively weakened. Uh the destruction of Iran's proxy forces in Syria and now uh the regime in Iran standing pretty much alone and certainly naked with American and Israeli fighter jets operating over almost all of Iran uh without with ease. And it's been an astonishing thing to see. And then the removal of the the nuclear program that the Müller has been dreaming about for

13:55 decades. Mhm. Why don't I ask you about um how much we can trust the media, mainstream media, and the US government and Israel on what we assume to be true about Iran. Let me cue this up for you. I just listened to Lex Freriedman's podcast episode uh in which he hosted a debate. Scott with Scott Horton, the author and director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com and host of the Scott Horton Show uh and for the past three decades a staunch critic of US foreign policy and military interventionism. His debate opponent was Mark Dubowitz. He's the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, host of the Iran Breakdown podcast, and a leading expert on Iran

14:41 and its nuclear program for over 20 years. Okay. I never heard of any of either of these guys. I know next to nothing about Iran. So I thought, okay, this will be interesting. So Duboitz cues up and and just basically uh for 15 minutes uh outlines everything we've been hearing about Iran for the last 30 years and uh and pretty much echoing, you know, the Trump uh outline of what's happened recently. And then Horton is response is none of that is true. It's all lies. We've all been fed information, misinformation, disinformation, malinformation from the US government, from Israel. Uh Israel is telling the US government lies about things. They they you know, we're a puppet of them. And he just went on and on and and they went back and forth for you know, four hours. Okay. So, what's

15:28 an outsider like me who knows nothing about Iran to to make of these these kind of debates? What who should I trust and believe? Um well um the first thing is there there is a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of it I'm afraid comes from people who've um mugged up very recently on this. This is this is of course as I think you and I have talked about before Michael this is a perennial problem in our era which is that everybody can become a kind of expert fast uh thanks to the glories of Wikipedia and Google and so on. Uh and for instance, there have been I've noticed that in recent weeks there have been a large number of people who said things like you know well Netanyahu has

16:14 said for decades that Iran was on the brink of getting a nuclear bomb and and it hasn't got it so we're being lied to. It's like oh no thanks to very significant interventions presumably by the Israelis. things like setting off the stuckset virus in Honeyan that rampaged through the computers of the nuclear project in in Iran. Thanks to things like that, uh the Iranians have consistently been set back in their in their uh enrichment process in their development of a deliverable nuclear weapon. Um, so there are quite a lot of people who seem to be beused by things that if they'd have followed them even remotely closely, they could have realized they're they're misinformed on.

17:00 I think it's it's a striking thing that the the the weaponization of every aspect of something like the strikes uh that happened um last last week now before um is is extraordinary to watch. There's been this uh report that the Trump administration has pushed back on a lot which is from a part of the national security infrastructure which claims that that the project in Iran has been set back maybe weeks and months but not significantly. That seems to have been a report written almost immediately in order to leak. um which I mean everyone leaks, people leak in every direction, but that that

17:46 smells to me to be very uh very uh incorrect. I mean the the idea that the for instance the reactor at the Ford facility which needed I think a couple of bombs to destroy which had something like 10 or 12 dropped on it. The idea that that's in any kind of workable shape for the foreseeable future, I think is is is crazy. Um, uh, there are questions about whether or not materials were taken out of Fordo beforehand and if so, by whom. Um, but this is something that, you know, the world, not just America, should should keep a very close eye on. Um but yeah I I mean I

18:33 think I think in general the the bodies that have been expert on this I think uh Mark Dubitz and the others at FDD are very good examples of people who've been on top of this for for many years in fact decades now uh should be uh trusted and and you know there are international agencies like the IAEA um which have been committed to trying to keep an eye on the Iranian project and to act as accurately as they can sum up what the intent and capabilities of the regime there have been. I I think they can be at least if not fully trusted then then taken into account. Um and and and I and I and and you know

19:18 there are sort of very basic ones which is that the IEA and others said you know there's no reason to enrich uranium uh to the levels that the Iranians have been enriching before. There was no reason to do that if you wanted merely a civilian uh energy nuclear project. There's no need for it. And by the way, the the other thing that's worth uh noting is how some people who would not not normally be supporters of Israeli or indeed American military intervention have spoken up in the last couple of weeks. I was struck very struck by Chancellor Amedz of Germany's statement uh as the Israelis were doing the strikes on the nuclear facilities in Iran that that he said Israel is doing

20:03 our dirty work for us and by us he meant the effectively the civilized world the the world that does not want uh the Iranian regime to get nuclear and then the whole the rest of the Middle East to go nuclear in response. It was very interesting hearing German chancellor saying that because he he knew as governments across the west knew that that nobody wants to have to confront a nuclear armed Iran. No one wants the risk uh not just in the region but globally of an Iranian nuclear bomb and the resulting nuclear spread across the Middle East. But in the end it came down to the country most closely threatened by the regime and Israel as

20:50 the German chancellor said ended up doing the dirty work that a lot of other countries knew needed doing but were not willing to do themselves. I mean uh we have this very interesting thing where western governments have sort of called for things like deescalation in the early days of the bombing when in actual fact they all knew in private that massive escalation and victory in removing a nuclear capabilities of the mullet was the most desirable thing. So, as ever, there's a lot of um double speak and private public uh hypocrisy. I guess it's one reason as a lifelong libertarian, I'm no longer a libertarian, is because they have a very manakian view of the world. Everything's

21:36 black and white. Everything the governments do uh is bad and so on. You can never trust uh them to to do the right thing and so on. Uh and and it never it's that's just not the world we live in. And you know, libertarians would like to see a world without political borders. Well, yeah. Okay. But, you know, that's not the world we live in, and we're a long ways from that. Uh, you know, I'm reminded of, uh, of Jack Nicholson's character, and a few good men. You know, we live in a world with walls, and on those walls are men with guns. That's it. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. So, well, the other thing I'd add to that, Michael, is that I think that it's a it's a very interesting development of recent years, that the um there was always this anti-American uh anti-western view on the left side of

22:24 the spectrum, particularly in America. Um I think of it, I suppose, as a chskyite movement, that effectively, you know, uh nothing was a crime in the world unless America was involved, right? Um uh and anywhere in the world that went wrong in any way must be traced back to America either intervening or not intervening. And uh I've written quite a lot in the past about the the inadequacies of this interpretation. You nobody can do wrong unless we have inclined them to do so. Um but I think that that's now been mirrored on the right as well, particularly in America. this same sort of movement which is everything in the world that goes wrong

23:11 must be something to do with America. we either we didn't intervene and we should have done or we did intervene and we shouldn't have and and it's easy to say see why that's a sort of temptation because if everything in the world is effectively under American control it's sort of um it's rather flattering um and in a way it's slightly comforting because it means that the the jungle isn't real it's something we could restrain by acting well uh Do you mean the kind of isolationist wing of mega like the Tucker Carlton types? Yeah, I mean they um there's nothing there's nothing in the world that seems can't be blamed by them on on America.

23:56 Um you know America intervenes in a country and if anything in the rest of the country goes wrong that's on America and if America doesn't intervene in the country and everything goes wrong it's still inexplicably blamed on America. These are people who for instance will talk about the falling apart of Syria in the last decade and a half and will talk about it exclusively as an American issue when American military engagement in Syria in the aftermath of the civil war was minimal. the real actors or you know Iran uh Russia and so on but but maybe as I say it's a sort of narcissistic thing but well we have no control over China or Russia's actions or Iran's actions so it's sort of rather flattering to think

24:44 it must be us it must all be us and um and it's just not the case there are other actors in the world other than America other than the western powers And if you look in that region, the there's far more involvement by by Russia, Iran, and so on than anyone else. But yes, there's a sort of on the right, it's a kind of anti anti-American isolationism. Um, and on the left, it's it's very similar. That's really funny. At the end of that 4-hour debate, Dubit said to Horton, "Is there anything any other country has ever done that you've been critical of besides just America?" And he's like, "Well, not really." It's like, "Wow." Okay. Yeah. The normal libertarian response to that is, "Well, you know, I'm not a citizen of China or

25:31 well, I am a citizen of the United States." And you, okay, yeah, of course. And and and you have the right desire obviously to criticize your government. Fine. But but don't get it so off that you behave as if other people don't exist in the world. I mean it's it's it's a genuine form of what say lamentably coined orientalism. So if Iran just wanted to enrich uranium to have a nuclear power program, they would not need to do it 300 ft underground buried by concrete bunker. Yeah. I mean yes, you wouldn't need to enrich to 60% and above, right? And um if you did have an entirely innocent uh project, I mean, you would probably not bury it deep and secretly in a mountain. I think everyone

26:19 who's ever watched a James Bond film will know that in general, people who hide secret nuclear facilities in underground uh mountain complex, cave complexes tend not to be um people interested in world peace. Dr. Evil. Yes. Okay, but let's say they're they're doing it. Here's the other argument. Uh that they want a nuke just for mutual assured destruction and deterrence themselves. Like Kim Jong-un has nukes. He's not going to use them. He just wants them to prevent United States or anybody else from invading them. Well, there is uh an argument which has particularly resurfaced in the last few years in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is that countries that do have a nuclear

27:06 capability um tend to be uh hard to invade or unattractive to invade. Um, and that the deal after the fall of the Soviet Union that saw the Ukrainians uh effectively denuclearize, send weapons out of the country with a piece of paper signed in 1994 um by other governments including the British and French governments justifying um promising security guarantees for their future. Many people have said in the wake of things like that, yes, um it's a mistake. It's a mistake to give up your nukes. There's an argument that people have made and I I have some agreement with this which is

27:52 that when Colonel Gaddafi voluntarily gave up his nuclear project in the 2000s which was nent but but developed that as as a result when the civil war in Libya erupted um people including Western governments including NATO were were far more inclined to intervene on the side of the rebels and to try to prevent the uh massacre that was purported to be about to happen in Benghazi. Um that they' be less they were more likely to intervene in Libya because Colonel Gaddafi didn't have nuclear weaponry and and that that is a lesson that I think dictates around the world are likely to have learned from recent years. But at the same time in the case of Iran, I can completely understand why the Müllers

28:38 would want to have a nuclear bomb because they would be effectively entrenched domestically and arguably international for the foreseeable future. But um you know, one thing not to do if you're trying to trick the world and actually develop a nuclear bomb, one thing not to do is to say that you want to eradicate other nations and other nation states. And one thing not to do would be to repeatedly call for death to your enemies. That's noticeably America. And um you know the the the fact that the Müllers couldn't resist doing that is is is is in the end one of their weaknesses. Maybe if they' have kept quiet and kept the death to America

29:23 chance down a bit, they'd have been allowed to go further and faster. So we should take them at their word when they talk about the great Satan, the United States, and the little Satan, Israel. Yes, very much. I that's not it's not hyperbole and it's not um that's a for and it's not bluster. Um as I've often said if somebody says they want to annihilate you and you should take them seriously. Yes. Um in terms of regime change you know Trump has made it clear that's not what we're doing. Okay. Yeah. We're not supposed to do that in an international order. Um, but if you go back to say Gulf War I where George HW Bush, you know, pulled back and said, "All right, we're going to just let uh Saddam Hussein continue. It's not our issue. Hopefully his own people will overthrow

30:09 him." That didn't happen. Um, and it seems like if we don't intervene too much, then uh the cancer grows back, the tumor comes back uh even stronger. What are your thoughts on on that? Everybody would like to see regime change in Iraq, but in Iran, but I I guess that's just not kosher in terms of international order. Um, it's it's a tricky corner. I think Trump has trotten it pretty well actually. Um, the the prevailing feeling I think uh is that if the Iranian regime is to fall at some point, it should be done at the hands of by the hands of the Iranian people. And that one can't uh underestimate how hard that is because

30:56 we know from multiple uprisings in Iran like the uprisings of 2009 so-called green revolution. We know uh and we know from the history of dictatorships and other terror groups and others how how you can use force to effect to very very effectively keep down such movements. I mean, it was the shooting of a Yano Iranian woman in the head by the Basage militia, one of the terror arms of the Iranian government. Um, that that helped put a stop to those protests because if you you know, it's not it's rather like the Chinese Communist Party. The Mullers are not afraid to use extreme force, violence, terrorism, and much more

31:42 against their own people, imprisonment, and torture. They're not at all afraid to do that against their own people in order to stay in power. But the question of the the the corner that that has been uh most in view in recent weeks, I think effectively you come back to the thing of the famous uh old pottery barn rule about uh regimes, which is, you know, if you break it, you own it. And that if if um if America, let alone Israel, were responsible for the o for the for the downfall of the Iranian regime, there would be a sense that they would have to own the aftermath. And I don't think there's any I know

32:28 there's no desire in Israel. I'm very certain there's no desire in DC either to become effectively the power that needs to restructure the governance of Iran. there are options available. Um, and I do believe those should be wielded but by the Iranian people. Uh, and I think this is where some of the skeptics about interventionism and so on have a perfectly valid point which is we have not got a great track record of being able to um institute effective governance in some of these countries. But then there's a counter argument which is that the Iranian people are very different from the Afghans for instance uh much more educated and

33:15 cultivated people with a genuine sense of national identity and terrific history and much more. Maybe um maybe that would be an easier prospect. But I can see clearly this was one of Trump's red lines which is will not be dragged into regime change and that I do believe the reports that he stopped um uh short of the uh killing of the Ayatini. Yeah. Remember when W uh talked about Nathan Sherinsk's book the case for democracy? So, I read it and I thought, "Yeah, that seems right." That it it seems a little um condescending to say, you know, some some people are just not ready for democracy as if it's like nuclear physics or something. They they just don't have the intelligence or the

34:00 culture for it. But on the other hand, the counter to that is some countries are very tribal and they're deeply entrenched in religious beliefs that are not conducive to Western values and things like democracy. What are your thoughts on that? Yes, Sharansky's book was a very important one. I I I suppose that the the argument he makes in the case of democracy is essentially, you know, that um what has been said about the Arab and Muslim world, the Middle East and so on, which is, you know, they're not ready for it. They couldn't do democracy. Um one of his ma main cases, I remember it in that book, is well, this is what they said about Eastern Europe. Um uh and then there's a counterweight to that argument which is yes but I mean Eastern

34:48 Europe had a memory of of democracy where you know many other countries don't but again you come back to that thing of you know maybe Persia maybe the Iranian people are different in that they they they do have a memory going back to and you know only 46 years ago to an era where there were was a effectively a constitutional uh dem monarchical democracy. And um and so maybe the hope that that could exist again is is is real. It's just that nobody really seems at the moment to want to. So nobody seems to have the confidence, rightly or wrongly, I'm not inflecting that word, nobody seems to have the confidence to be sure that if they were to step in and bring about end to the regime that what would

35:34 come next would be uh workable. Um, I would just say that whatever it is, I mean there's there's many scenarios you could see if if the Mullers were finally overthrown. Um, it's definitely possible that if things fragmented, you would have a sort of Iraq Syria 2010s nightmare scenario. Uh but on the other hand, there's also the the scenario that in any situation um the worst the worst outcome is all is the one that's already there, which is um a a a madly apocalyptic millinarian regime, which spreads terror and colonization across the region, which at least would be restrained. And I mean it would be

36:20 interesting, wouldn't it, to see what would happen in somewhere like Gaza or Lebanon or Yemen if the Iranian revolutionary government was not arming everyone to the hilt on their side. You could see a genuine um shift across the region for the good. Um, but it is a very complicated one and I can understand why President Trump is is loathed to be dragged into something more than doing what he has told his voters for more than a decade he would do, which was prevent Iran getting a nuclear bomb. You're a staunch supporter of Israel as am I. Can you be critical of Netanyahu strategies and still be a staunch supporter of Israel? say maybe they've gone overboard in Gaza or this or that.

37:06 I mean, uh, it's it's funny when people think that, you know, you you can't criticize the Israeli government without being accused of all sorts of things. It's like, you know, oh, just read the Israeli press, you know. Um, uh, yes, of course. I mean, people could criticize aspects of the war, uh, the the tactics. I mean there are people like uh the former uh defense minister Yav Galant who's been critical of Netanyahu in office and out of office. So of course the people who say you can't criticize Israel without being accused of stons the the place which the place which is surprising and which has been much trotten upon uh around in in the last

37:54 year and a half or so is the people who condemn Israel whatever it does but never have a positive view of what they would do to the in the situation and it's pretty much a challenge which I've laid out and never had answered by anyone on the anti-Israel side, which is if you know, if you do this in in uh population extrapolation terms, a country of 9 million people or so in the case of Israel, it's 340 million in the case of America, then what happened on October 7th is the equivalent of about 44,000 Americans being killed on American soil in one morning and 10,000 Americans being taken hostage. And you know, my my my

38:40 question repeatedly to the the just outright critics of Israel is just, "What would you do in this situation to get your citizens back?" And they say things like, "Oh, well, I'd get around the negotiating table." I go, "Yeah, yeah, cuz Hamas have such a a a moralistic and decent side to them that you can appeal to." I mean, yeah. So that's the place where legitimate and illegitimate criticism divide. Which if you if you never present any scenario that allows Israel to legitimately retaliate for the atrocities committed against it. If you don't come up with any scenario, then you're not simply a

39:26 critic of Israel. You're an enemy to the country. I'm going to read a portion of your book. I love your writing, Douglas. You're one of my favorite authors. I've read pretty much everything you've written. Among much else, the thought brought me back to a conversation I had near the very start of the war. Late in the evening, at a Friday night dinner with a Sphartic family in Jerusalem, one of the fathers came over to the table I was at. He slammed down his vodka glass and suddenly said, "So, iron dome, good idea or bad?" As I told him, it was a question that no one outside of Israel would even understand. Anyone outside of Israel would say, "A good idea, obviously." But my friend's point was not that what had Israel managed to do since the withdrawal from Gaza in the end of the 2006 Hezbollah war with the

40:13 assistance mostly of the United States. It had managed to create a worldclass system of which everyone was very proud to shoot down the regular rockets. But perhaps this had not been a good thing at all. If New Jersey had launched rockets at New York City constantly for a decade, would New York State find a way to shoot down and learn to live with it or would it take out whatever infrastructure was launching the things? I thought of because I live in Southern California, I thought, you know, if Mexico started launching rockets into San Diego, uh, you know, where we have a naval base and then we have a marine base at Camp Pedal then just north of Oceanside. I mean, would the United States say, "Well, we really need to build the Iron Dome over San Diego." No, we would just invade and take out the the people doing this. Yes. And that's one of the frustrations

40:59 of the pe that I have with the people who consistently call for a return to the status quantity in relation to Israel, which is, you know, um that is, you know, October 7th happened. Let's go back to the situation on October 6. But the situation there was very far from uh normal either because since the Israeli withdrawal in 2005 uh regular rocket fire all the time in peace and war uh uh into into southern Israel and from the north Hezbollah regular rocket fire into in into the north and um that's obviously an intolerable situation for any country. The aim of Iran was to effectively pence a movement Israel so that the north of

41:46 Israel was effectively unlivable and the south was made unlivable. And therefore you've got the tiny portion of the middle of the country and their ballistic missiles, ICBMs and others were uh were partly designed to make even that bit of Israel impossible to live in. Um that was a pretty effective strategy by Haz Hezbar and the Müllers. But what I think many people in the international community have not realized is every time they say ceasefire, they without the destruction of Hamas, the people launching the rockets, Islamic jihad as well. Every time they just say halt it here, the preconditions are set up for the next round of the conflict. Which is why I've said from

42:32 the beginning of this war that the real question is, is this the teenth Gaza war or the last Gaza? Is this the third uh uh Lebanon war or the last one? And I would like to see it being the last one. I I don't think Israel or any of her neighbors should have to exist in this situation where rocket fire is normal and you just invent clever and clever ways to cower, shelter your people from such routine assault. I think it's uh I I think it's something that again it goes back to this thing about you know legitimate and illegitimate criticism. Uh if you can't sympathize with a country's desire to stop its citizenry

43:20 being repeatedly bombarded by rockets, you're not really being serious and considering the whole picture at all. So the emphasis by some on the left uh of the atrocities allegedly being committed by Israel of let's say children in Gaza who are dying or starving and so on. Th those things are perhaps some of it is real but that's just a byproduct of war. I mean we can't be sympathetic to the people of Hamburgg uh and Dresden in World War II. They started the war. That's just the way it goes. Um well that that's a part of it. I mean um uh it's it's certainly a morally complex question but uh yes a part of it

44:07 is I mean you know there is a cost to starting wars against your neighbors and one of the costs is losing and uh Hamas kept starting wars and has has very significantly lost. Um the the the the again one of the things that I think any reasonable person should take into account is to at least notice that Hamas desires the death of people on its own side as much as welcomes it as much as it embraces and seeks the murder of people and their opponent's side. And that's something which is is again you just have to take this into account if you're going to be a reasonable critic of any of these actions. You have to

44:53 take into account the fact the fact that Hamas welcomes the death of its own citizens, its own citizens of Palestinians and encourages the murder of Israelis. Israel under whatever the government does not seek the death of Israeli civilians in attacks from Gaza or Iran. It doesn't regard citizens being killed as a desirable thing in order to whip up public program against its enemies. But this is something that Hamas does. And again, I it's astonishing watching some of the coverage of just the ignoring of the fact whether it's to do with aid. There's endless conversations about the

45:39 amount of aid that goes into Gaza. And very often the the the the people who criticize Israel, the international community for not getting enough aid in some of the people who make these criticisms of EST friends of mine. um they they take they just don't take into account at all Hamas's tactics of seizing aid for themselves and their terrorists and selling aid to that has been given to the citizens of Gaza selling it to Gaza citizens in order to help to fuel the Hamas uh war effort. I I I'm I'm I am pretty astonished uh to the extent I still can be at the number of people who just ignore very significant parts to the story like

46:25 that. Yeah. Uh I want to ask you about your general motive for supporting Israel. You're not Jewish. I'm not Jewish. My reason for it uh was when I was researching my book on the Holocaust deniers, denying history. I went to Israel twice. um my co-author Alex Groman and I we visited all the death camps in Europe and went to all the museums we could find and so on. You know, I really got a sense that uh and then, you know, I kind of read about the history of anti-semitism going back thousands of years and all the uh the pilgrims and the anti-semitism in Europe, you know, Hitler's willing executioners. It wasn't just the Nazis, you know, there were a lot of Jew haters in Europe and so on. And you kind of look at the whole picture and they almost, you know, Hitler almost finished

47:10 the job. You know, six out of the 9 million uh were exterminated in World War II. And now they have their own state. And when I went there, I remember getting to the airport and they're like, "Okay, what are you doing here?" I'm like, "Well, I'm here to research this book, The Holocaust Deniers." I made it clear, you know, we're not neo-Nazis. We're here to debunk these guys, right? They're like, "Okay, where are you staying exactly? Let's see the let's see your hotel room." And this went on and on for like half an hour. I thought, man, these people are not around. I mean, when they say never again, they mean never again. You you try to do this to us again, we are going to you up. And I think, yeah, okay. Yes, I get it. I totally get it. If I was, that's what I would do. That's the world we live in. And so, I am sympathetic uh to, you know, when they have to respond with

47:57 violence. Yes. I mean there's again this is why one of the oddities of the reaction that's happened that I go into in the book one of the oddities of the reaction around so much of the world is you know um I don't know if there there are lots of Muslim countries lots if you add or subtract one by erasing a border or whatever it's no big shakes you know um there's only one Jewish state withdraw that state or destroy that state or the state thrives and continues is is everything for uh the Jewish people and um I believe but there are

48:43 many deep things that I could go into but I think that there's also something very interesting that people in the west should in as a whole should take note of which is that with 100% accuracy you can predict where somebody will land on the question of Israel and it will depend on the country in the west they also live in and their attitude toward that. So that it's not a coincidence that at something like Glastonbury Festival, music festival in the UK, it's not a surprise that one act or several acts um call for death through the IDF and get this chanted back at them as well by uh liberals who would otherwise think of themselves, I'm sure, as kind and decent

49:31 people. It's no coincidence that from the same stages that the anti-Israel stuff is chanted from other rappers and singers will sing, you know, uh, taunting songs against the British public and say how rotten Britain is. It's all it's all on a continuum. There's, you know, I I almost want to coin it as Murray's law, which is if somebody, if there was a pro-Israel group in um Canada, America, Britain, or whatever, a protest, people will fly the flag of the country there in as well as the country, the flag of the state of Israel. Whenever there is an anti-Israel protest, America, Canada, Australia, wherever,

50:16 you will never see the flag of the country that the protesters are in. They do not revere or like the countries they're in. Uh, and that goes whether they're Muslim or non-Muslim. But you do not see the protesters, for instance, in DC attacking Israel. You don't see them proudly flying the American flag. In fact, in the the particular protests in question, they will drag an American flag down from a flag pole and burn it in the street. I think this is this is something that everyone should take into account that that Israel remains the first subject of hatred, by no means the last. And I think you can you can track with almost complete accuracy

51:02 that where people want to annihilate the state of Israel, whether it's the Mullers or radicals on the left or right in the West, they also want the eradication of Western democracies like the ones that we're sitting in next. And I think that that is a very serious thing to take into account. And it's just one of the reasons why people should not be in favor of the annihilation or the um demonization of the country that is on the front line of this. Yeah. Couple quick questions. Two-state solution. Is that off the table forever temporarily? Can we get back to that? I think he killed it on the 7th of October. Yeah. I think it's extremely hard to see how for a two-state solution to exist. I

51:49 mean, by the way, it would be three states anyway because Fata and uh Hamz could never get on and in fact kill each other. So the the Judea Samaria West Bank land swap or negotiation would in any case always have been separate from the Gaza issue. Um, but it it in the wake of October 7th, it's almost impossible to see how the trust could exist on any side to go for land swaps and and statehood for the for part of the Palestinian people in in the West Bank. Um, I think it's it's off the table for generation at least, if it ever. I mean in any case it it has

52:35 become such a shibilith of the of of the international community who who seem to have for a generation left, right, conservative, republican, democrat who seem to genuinely have believed that the question of Palestinian statethood was the question that would unlock all the other problems in the Middle East. This is what we were told left and right for a generation or two, which was if the Palestinians have even more statethood and than than they currently do, and it is significant in the in the West Bank uh and was total in the case of Gar. Okay, the Hamas didn't have control of uh of everything that went in and out, but that was because they should have

53:21 refrained from smuggling rockets in and then firing at their neighbors. But it's it it's very hard to see how you could get any of the necessary trust that you would have to have in place for an actual uh solution to that question. I think it's Hamz killed the two-state solution such as it was. I think many people can see by the way that normalization in the region does not in the end rely on Mahmud Abbaz or or any of the other failed leaders who who tried to run the Palestinian people in recent decades. a normalization as the Abraham Accords showed um can come a different route and perhaps

54:07 instead of the Palestinians being the eternal pawns of the Arab and Muslim world and increasingly part of the left and right and the West perhaps people will see that actually it's about uh a liberalization and or normalization that comes from places like Riyad and um so yes I I I and by the A and not to sound too harless about this, but there are lots of problems in the world that are not solved and just parked as insoluble. The Cypress question is is a pretty insoluble quest question at this point. The Western Sahara question, I mean, and the Palestinian question, which is, you know, and maybe if an insoluble problem exists that it exists for a reason. In

54:55 the case of the Palestinian problem, I I submit that it's It's still there as an unresolved problem question because the Palestinian lamentable leadership of the Palestinians has repeatedly from 1948 before and since has just consistently said that they would rather not have a state. What they wanted the annihilation of uh of the Jewish state. They they mark this up for themselves. Yeah. Okay. West Bank, one of my favorite documentary filmmakers is Louis Thorough. a very amusing filmmaker that like his films on Scientology or you know what it's like to be a prostitute in London. Big big fun to watch. Then I all of a sudden I see he's done one on the settlers. So I watched some of that and I thought you know I'm just not getting a fair

55:40 shake here. I can tell I'm being direct you know pulled down this path. I don't know if if you haven't seen it it's okay. But um what is what are your thoughts on on the settling of the West Bank? Is it some of it illegal? Are there some atrocities going on? Is it fair across the board? What are your thoughts? Well, it it's it's very interesting how much misunderstanding there is about the situation there. Um there is a there is a all sides want control territory and they want areas they could settle and expand. My view has always been that there are parts of the West Bank, Judea, and Samaria which in any final status agreement are obviously going to be Palestinian ruled and they're Arab ruled and uh there'll be other areas that will

56:26 be Israeli ruled. Um and that's just the facts on the ground. Um I thought that Louis Thru who like you I I I admire a lot of his work. I thought that the uh settlers documentary was was in every way set up to be unfair because you know um well let me put it this way. I mean Louis threw would not get access to the equivalent or the other side on this. He would not get the ability to live with Hamas families in Gaza and he wouldn't have done before the seventh ea by the way. Right. Um, and he will not get access to the millinarian crazy death cultists in

57:12 the West Bank. They just they'll maybe kill him and dump his body. So, and that's always something I think in journalism has to be taken into account. I've always said this about covering conflict in general is you have to be honest about what it is you're not allowed to cover. And you know, I've told this story, I think, before, but I was very struck when I as with some international journalists in the south of Lebanon last year, and a couple of them said, you know, I've got to be very careful what I say in my reporting from this because I have colleagues in Beirut who might be mistreated, abducted, kidnapped by Hezbollah if they don't like the coverage. I think stuff like that is what you should say. And so my

57:59 my thing I'm I don't mind if Louis threw wants to make documentaries about uh Jewish settlers or anyone else but I think I think there there's a sort of duty to say to put it in the context of saying you know these people have welcomed me and have subjected themselves to interview um their counterparts not so much and um you know there's there are lots of misunderstandings about what is happening there and it was exemplified only a couple of days ago when a British government minister called where's streeting went on television asked about the chance of death to the IDF said and the objections of the Israeli foreign ministry and others said well I think the Israelis should get their house in order and they shouldn't allow for instance settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and it's

58:45 like they seem to have no idea that there was outbreak of violence just a few days ago some settlers on not just against some Palestinians in the West Bank but against IDF who were trying to stop the the uh settlers, you know, uh uh violence. Um those people have been arrested. Benjamin Netanyahu among others incredibly explicit in his condemnation of the settler violence. Why would they not be? That's it's a it's a very strange thing to see, you know, again a country struggling with internal problems and misrepresent those internal problems. It's just with Israel that's just legion.

59:32 Okay, a couple of uh USoriented questions just to wrap it up here. You live in the United States now. In fact, you live in New York City. So, what's the deal with the democratic socialist Zoran Manny? Could he win? How can a democratic socialist be in charge of this the the world capital of finance and capitalism? It would be very interesting to see. He he um he got through the Democratic primary um partly by skill um partly through uh the fact that I mean uh Governor Cuomo was a horrible candidate to rerun horrible candidate to rerun. Um so Mandami managed to get a sort of present himself as a generational shift vibe shift candidate.

1:00:19 Um but also I mean he he promises things he couldn't possibly deliver including a foreign policy for New York which is preposterous but um it would be to say it would be a stress test of the city is to understate things were he to actually uh become there because um as you say I mean New York and the global finance hubs has already suffered like London has a lot of uh of of people, you know, hot footing it to lower tax areas. And um I don't know that New York would be able to survive a a socialist mayor given that the hits it's already and

1:01:06 very visibly taken in the era of CO lockdowns and so on. Um, I think that one thing many Americans don't realize is, sorry, many non-Americans don't realize is the ease with which in America, comparatively with other countries, the ease with which you can you can, you know, up sticks and go to another state. The whole system is very clever in that regard. You don't like California, you can go somewhere else in the in the country. totally different than than the threat to leave say Britain and move to France or Italy and move to this. It's just totally different. I think I think Mandari would be a real uh disaster for New York and I love New York and I want to see it thrive and I think he'd do the

1:01:53 opposite. I think he'd he'd kill it. Well, he said he he doesn't think there should be any billionaires and I just saw I just watched Bernie on Rogan for a couple hours talk ranting about the billionaires. Why is it so many people just they they don't even seem to have a basic econ 101 understanding of how it works? That there are billionaires doesn't mean they took their money from poor people or it's like you hear this, you know, the distribution of wealth as if there's a zar handing out the money and oh Elon you get extra this month or something like that. I mean it's just so preposterous. I don't know. What do you make of this kind of duncap economics people have? It's been around for decades. I mean um in the speech Reagan used to give that lovely example. He said you know that there's the type of person who can't

1:02:39 help looking at a thin man the fat man and thinking that the fat man must have taken some food from the thin man. Um that that that's that's routine it's it's the sort of easiest one of these sort of anti- capitalist left is is to rail against the tallest poppies when in actual fact I don't I as as I see it the the it's not about inequality uh when it comes to issues like that the real thing is fairness and I think that right and left should take very much into account the unfairness of the system uh as it relates to uh millennials growing up um having suffered you know the the consequences of inflation of money printing much more

1:03:27 um I think people should be sympathetic to the people who are finding it hard to to get going in their 20s and um and should should find sensible policies but the and to address that unfairness but I think that the the cheapest easiest and least productive way is to do the the sort of what you might call the populist leftwing thing and say, "Aha, the billionaires are the problem." Um, I I I I I think one of the great things about America is the celebration of success. And I like I really like that in the American spirit that you know that it's a famous cliche but it really is true in my experience that there is a tendency in America to say that guy's got an amazing car and someday I want to drive

1:04:14 a car like that. Whereas in Europe, Britain and elsewhere it's much more common place to sort of have you know that guy's driving an amazing car. He must have taken something from right. It feels like a zero sum game. Um, all right. Last question on immigration. Um, I was just at a conference in Buckingham with Ba Bacha Angar Sargon, who's an interesting uh character. Anyway, so I asked her in the Q&A because they she was ranting about immigration. Uh, and that was being debated. I said, "All right, what's the number?" Okay, so you too many have come in. Okay, then what's the number? And her answer was zero. Like, oh, zero. Okay, so let me let me just cue this up for you. So, I live in Southern California my whole life. We've had illegal Mexicans here all over the

1:05:00 place, but not that many. You know, for decades, it was like everybody knows what's going on, the gardeners, the babysitters, and so on. My dad had a a Ford dealership and, you know, half the people washing the cars along with me when I was 15, you know, were illegal Mexicans. Okay, not a big deal. But the problem, it seems to me, is, you know, when you open it up and let everybody in and then you have millions and millions, then finally somebody says, "All right, something needs to be done." and you get Trump policy, but even Trump's not saying zero. I don't know. How do you answer the question? What's the number? Um, yeah, look, it's a good question and as you know, it's partly because it's largely unanswerable. Um, I believe that I've always said that with immigration there are three things

1:05:46 that matter. Uh, speed, numbers, and identity. the speed and the numbers you can get relatively accurate on. I mean you might for instance think a government like the governments that have ruled Britain in the last 20 years they always talked about reducing immigration their view was that you should get it back to 1990s levels which is of thousands of net immigration a year rather than hundreds of thousands. You might say, "What's the difference between 99,000 and 101,000 net immigration a year?" And the answer is that the five figures to six figures divide is simply

1:06:32 a a a version of it's just where the public would feel more comfortable. Um the the truth is that the numbers and the speed you can see I mean in the Biden years in America it went way way out of control. Um, you can't put a finger on the number exactly, but it's just obviously out of control. Out of control to control uh in housing policy, everything. Um, and the the bit of it that that is I've always said is the hard part is the identity one. It's very hard to put your finger on or for a lot of people, it's very hard to say not who you want, but who you don't want more of. And that's because there's a whole realm of potential bigotries real or

1:07:19 imagined that exists in that area. Um I think what Batia was probably referring to is something that has happened in a lot of countries which is a call for effectively a moratorum uh to figure out you know how to absorb people who are already in the country, how to uh distribute things fairly, how to work out who has no right to be and who does have a right to be. That would be a full-time job even if there was a moratorium. even if somebody back got zero now and the crossings across the southern border in the recent months has been pretty much zero but it'll be a full-time job just to get the uh people who are criminals and illegals out of the US. Um uh but

1:08:08 this is this is as I've often said this is going to be one of the biggest questions of the 21st century because I think that many people in the west as well as being wildly ignorant of what is out there um are are not aware of how attractive our societies will always be to people from outside. And it's not just values that that is an issue. But many people do not come because they want our values. They come because they recognize that our economies work and their the theirs in the country that countries they're from do not work. So they just can't have a better life. Um but this is going to be the big question in in the 21st century because people in the developed western countries. We're a minority compared to

1:08:55 the number of people who would like to come here. And we'll see country by country. We'll see who succeeds in addressing this question and who fails. And the ones that fail will things will fail very fast. I think immigration is going to become a looming large issue in the 20 in in the rest of this century because just had a guest on an economist who studies population growth or degrowth. Uh in fact you know most western nations are well under replacement level you know 2.1 replacement level most of them are like 1.6 and lower and that you know where are you going to get population to support your economy in the coming uh decades it's not clear. Well, yeah. The the the question on that I always say is um uh you might end up

1:09:42 saying, you have a choice. You either uh uh you either have a population decline and you address that and you die in a country that's recognizable or you address it in um the easy fix ways and die in a country that's totally unrecognizable as your own. That's right. All right, Douglas, I know you got to go on democracies and death cults. There it is. Beautiful read. The future of civilization. Exactly. Right. That's a good uh barometer. What are you working on next? Oh, I never know what I'm working on. Good. It's very nice to see you, Mike. I really enjoyed it. And uh let's glass in private soon. Yes, again indeed. You're one of my favorite authors. Again, get the book

1:10:27 and read it. It's also on on available on audio and you read it, which is I do, which is I always prefer that. It was like listening to Richard Dawkins reads his books. Hitch read all his books. It's always good to hear it from the author directly.