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Oct. 23, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:07

Republicans, PLEASE Stop Kicking Yourself in The Nuts

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	The first rule of politics is this.
	Never run directly into a tree while kicking yourself repeatedly in the nuts.
	Republicans in Congress seem to have forgotten this rule.
	Two weeks ago, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, along with limelight-seeking compatriots like Representative Nancy Mace, decided it was time to get rid of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
	Sure, McCarthy had only been Speaker for approximately five minutes.
	And sure, in that time, McCarthy had defeated Joe Biden in a standoff over a continuing resolution and was preparing to pry concessions out of Senate Democrats that amounted to a cut in discretionary spending plus border funding.
	But it was time for McCarthy to go.
	Why?
	Because of the establishment!
	That's why.
	Now, you may be asking, what is the establishment?
	It sounds bad.
	Well, apparently, defining the establishment, it's a little like asking someone to capture the wind in a bottle or to strap starlight with one's hands.
	Sometimes the establishment means Republicans who are in favor of fiscal responsibility, like that establishment Toady Paul Ryan.
	Sometimes the establishment means Republicans who want to expand the size and scope of government, like that establishment RINO, George W. Bush.
	Sometimes the establishment means Republicans who are socially conservative, like that establishment Stooge Mike Pence.
	Sometimes the establishment means Republicans who are socially liberal, like that establishment pawn, Susan Collins.
	Sometimes the establishment means people who are hawkish on foreign policy, like that establishment dunce, Lindsey Graham.
	Sometimes the establishment means people who are dovish on foreign policy, like that establishment doofus, John Huntsman.
	Well, the term establishment used to have a meaning.
	It used to mean a person with power who is too conciliatory to left-wing positions.
	But during Donald Trump's presidency, when he was, you know, the actual president, we learned that power had nothing to do with it.
	Donald Trump, the most powerful person on the planet, wasn't the establishment.
	During Trump's presidency, we learned that friendliness to left-wing positions didn't make you establishment either.
	After all, it was Donald Trump who declared that entitlement programs, the single biggest drivers of America's debt, were off the table for discussion.
	So, what makes someone establishment?
	Today, the answer?
	Insufficient posturing.
	That's it.
	That's like the whole thing.
	Posturing.
	See, the only way to avoid being labeled establishment these days is to get nothing done but to yell really, really, really loudly, particularly about the establishment.
	To be anti-establishment is to complain about losing elections while doing nothing to win them.
	It's to shout that the game is rigged while refusing to even engage in the game at all.
	Being anti-establishment has turned into just whining.
	It's about showing what you're against by posturing, and then telling your audience that if you posture theatrically enough, wave your hands around a lot, your opposition will just surrender.
	Passing legislation?
	Nah.
	Recognizing reality?
	Mm-mm.
	Doing any of that is surrender to the opposition.
	Hell, you can even vote with Democrats to take down a Republican Speaker of the House with no backup plan, and you will be considered anti-establishment, all because you yell about the establishment.
	Now, here's the thing.
	That's fun and games in the commentary.
	After all, in my industry, it's easy to remain ideologically pure.
	The beauty of what people like me do for a living is we can speak on what we wish would happen, what the best of all possible worlds would be.
	We can point out where our politicians are falling short of our principles.
	We keep pressure on the politicians.
	That's our job.
	When it comes to Congress, purism is a recipe for stagnation and disaster.
	That's because, believe it or not, Americans expect that budgets will be passed.
	They expect that legislation will be crafted.
	And if you don't do these things, Americans will put you in the minority status, in the halls of power.
	Permanently.
	Now, because Republicans have to deal with a very slim majority in the House, a Democratic Senate, and Democratic President, any Speaker of the House will have to fall short of perfectly performative opposition.
	Being Speaker of a fractious caucus faced with a minority position in the upper chamber and White House necessarily means cutting deals, not just posturing.
	That was true for Kevin McCarthy.
	It would have been true of Steve Scalise.
	It would have been true of Jim Jordan, too.
	If Matt Gaetz suddenly became Speaker, it would be true for him as well.
	Our Congress, though, has now been filled with people responding to the incentive structure created for the commentariat.
	You get attention and money for posturing, not legislating.
	You yell about the establishment, i.e.
	anyone who does anything in Congress, and you win points.
	So, according to Matt Gaetz, Kevin McCarthy was the establishment, and that meant he had to be defenestrated in favor of, well, Someone, or no one, or maybe someone who is a no one, we don't actually know actually yet.
	What we do know is that the speaker will not be Kevin McCarthy, he of the 78% heritage action score.
	And it won't be Steve Scalise, he of the 82% heritage action score.
	Or Jim Jordan, who has the same 82% heritage action score.
	Maybe it'll be Tom Emmer, who also has an 82% heritage action score, but probably not.
	And it probably won't be Patrick McHenry, who also has an 82% heritage action score.
	It won't even be Matt Gaetz, who has An 84% Heritage Action score.
	Actually, it'll probably be no one for a good while longer.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden will work to ram through a $105 billion defense package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine and $10 billion for Gaza.
	All it will take is peeling off a few Republicans to vote with the Democrats.
	Again.
	Now, you know who could have helped stop that?
	Who could have proposed a single-issue spending bill on foreign policy?
	A Speaker of the House.
	But we don't have one.
	But at least the establishment was stopped.
	That's the important thing.
	And there's good news.
	If Republicans keep losing the way they did in 2018 and 2020 and 2021 and 2022, they're not going to have to worry about being establishment because they won't have any power at all.
	Note that none of this has anything to do with principle.
	It has nothing to do with conservatism or victory.
	It has to do instead with applause and cash and fame.
	But for many people in the Republican Party, that's apparently good enough.
	It should not be.
	Republicans can still win.
	They can still push the ball forward for conservatism.
	But to do that, they need to think about how to win, not merely how to posture and yell and get on TV.
	They'll need to stop running directly into trees.
	If they do not, all they will end up with is a minority position in Congress, a Democrat in the White House, and a terrible, terrible ball ache.
	In just one second, we'll get to Tom McClintock.
	Tom McClintock, a very conservative member of Congress, who's now written an open letter to the people who defenestrated McCarthy, asking them exactly what they're looking for.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
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	Okay, so.
	A lot of conservatives in Congress are very frustrated with the spectacle because on Friday, Jim Jordan, he stood for a third consecutive vote on his speakership and he went down in flaming defeat.
	Not because Jim Jordan is a bad guy, but because this caucus is unbelievably fractious.
	It is very difficult to attain 217 votes when you only have 221.
	All it takes is five people to peel off and grandstand and fundraise in order for a speaker to become impossible.
	So Republicans have been operating without a speaker for the last three weeks.
	Now, the problem with that, of course, is that it makes it very difficult to consolidate against Joe Biden's positions.
	So to take a quick example, as I mentioned before, Joe Biden is now proposing a $105 billion supplemental defense package.
	That defense package lumps together a bunch of things that are not alike at all.
	It lumps together some border security, which is good, and some Taiwan security, which is good, and some Israel security, which is good, with $60 billion in Ukraine security, which is...
	And $10 billion in funding for humanitarian concerns in Gaza, which is super duper bad.
	Now, if you had a Speaker of the House, because bills generally are supposed to initiate in the House, you could split those apart.
	You could force Democrats to take an up or down vote on $14 or $20 billion for Israel, and then force them to take an up or down vote on the $60 billion that Joe Biden is asking for for Ukraine.
	You could force them to take a border vote, just funding the border alone, and at least get them on record as to whether they support that or not.
	You might end up with a crap sandwich, but at the very least, you'd get people on record as to what it is in the bill they actually support.
	But Republicans can't do that right now because they don't have a speaker.
	And this is now irritated Tom McClintock, who again, is one of the most conservative members of Congress from California.
	A super immigration hawk, by the way, Tom McClintock.
	And here is what he wrote.
	This is a letter to the eight Republicans who voted to get rid of McCarthy.
	And they voted with all the Democrats to get rid of McCarthy for some unspecified reason no one can understand.
	Here's what he wrote.
	Quote, Dear Wayward Colleagues, Your letter of October 20th, in which you graciously offered to martyr yourselves as long as you can get your way, is perhaps the most selfless act in American history.
	They all offered.
	That they were going to vote with the team, but only if they were willing to suffer censure, suspension, or removal from the conference.
	So he says this, I was certain our Republican colleagues who refused to vote with the Republican
	majority would have been inspired by your stirring example of party discipline and loyalty to vote
	with the team as you so eloquently phrased it. I was frankly stunned when they did not.
	I do not understand why a handful of our fellow Republicans couldn't see the simple fairness of the principle to which you have been so unswerving in your devotion.
	Heads I win, tails you lose.
	We should have been moved by your willingness to suffer censure, suspension, or removal from the conference to enforce your personal preferences on the overwhelming majority of your unenlightened colleagues.
	We should have appreciated how you and 206 House Democrats saved us from a Republican speaker.
	We truly don't deserve you.
	But, says Tom McClintock to, again, he's writing this letter to Andy Biggs, Ken Buck, Tim Burchett, Eli Crane, Matt Gaetz, Bob Goode, Nancy Mason, Matt Rosendale, who are the people who voted against McCarthy the first time to take him down.
	So Tom McClintock says, your sacrifice is not in vain.
	You have succeeded in replacing the outdated concept of majority rule with an exciting new standard that a speaker must be elected by 98.2% of the Republican conference.
	Someday, a messiah will be born unto us who can achieve this miraculous threshold, and on that day your judgment will be vindicated and you will be hailed as the geniuses that you are.
	I think we were all truly humbled to learn that your, quote, fidelity to republican virtues and principles remains unwavering.
	Who could not be moved to tears to read that you offer your self-sacrifice sincerely and with the hope of unity, with purpose?
	With this in mind, I modestly suggest you plan your martyrdom in the only way that truly matters.
	To have the wisdom to see the damage you have done to the country and to have the courage to set things right before it is too late.
	I enclosed a proposed resolution that perhaps one of you can offer as we begin the fourth week of national paralysis as the world burns around us.
	Your secret admirer, Tom Klintock.
	And again, the basic idea that Tom McLennan, he's saying like, what the hell is wrong with you people?
	Like, why did you do this?
	There's no purpose.
	So Matt Gaetz for his part, he's not sorry.
	Why should Matt Gaetz be sorry?
	Why not?
	Like really, he's making more money.
	He's raking it off the fundraising.
	He says the establishment a lot, right?
	That term, he loves it.
	He uses it a lot.
	Well, yesterday, a piece of the Wall Street Journal by Molly Ball says, quote, Well, I'm sure he's confident.
	and the Speaker's position going on his third week of vacancy, Representative Matt Gaetz surveyed the consequences of his
	actions and declared he had no regerts.
	I have extreme confidence, the Florida Republican said, that we will have an upgrade at the
	position. Well, I'm sure he's confident. That makes perfect sense.
	Any majority party is bound to have divisions, says the Wall Street Journal,
	but the upheavals that have wracked the House GOP since January
	are less a reflection of any coherent faction than one man's singular will.
	Gates doesn't have a posse.
	He isn't a member of the Freedom Caucus.
	His anti-McCarthy crusades have not been joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	Only half the members who joined him in forcing out McCarthy were members of a group he assembled to block McCarthy nine months ago.
	To many Republicans, the hair-gelled Gaetz is personally responsible for not only sparking the current chaos, but setting a destructive precedent that continues to hobble the body as small minorities assemble to block any speaker from being elected.
	But he insists he is about outcomes, not headlines.
	He says he has received a flood of approving feedback from conservatives across the country.
	Chaos doesn't scare me.
	American decline does, he wrote on social media late Thursday.
	Now, again, you know, Gaetz suggesting that he had, like, as I said before, using your power in order to leverage concessions from a party in favor of conservatism, I'm fine with.
	Chip Roy used Matt Gaetz's pseudo-rebellion back in January in order to do that.
	He had a bunch of promises from McCarthy, many of which were good.
	That's not what's happening here.
	Matt Gaetz is simply playing a game, and the game is, You become more famous, you're on TV more, and you raise more money, and you raise your profile more, if you yell establishment really loud and run into a tree.
	And this has consequences.
	This is not a good thing.
	By the way, there are nine Republicans who are now running for House Speaker, so this is all going to go great.
	They include Tom Emmer of Minnesota.
	Already, people like Gates have said they're not going to vote for Emmer.
	Representative Kevin Hearn of Oklahoma, who chairs the Republican Study Committee.
	A bunch of the so-called moderates in the Republican caucus probably will not vote for him.
	He voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
	A bunch of New York Republicans are not going to vote for him because of that.
	Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, who chaired the House Rules Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, he said that he would be running for Speaker as well.
	He also voted against certification of the 2020 election.
	Again, that is gonna be a big split because for a lot of Republicans, in order to demonstrate fealty to Donald Trump, you had to vote against certification.
	But for a lot of Republicans who are in the purple districts, you need to win in order to maintain a majority.
	They're like, do we really want a speaker who's gonna be saddled with that?
	Representative Austin Scott of Georgia emerged as a surprise speaker candidate last week.
	He ran against Jordan in a conference-wide vote and he got almost no votes.
	Representative Byron Donalds of Florida Who's a relative, he's a second term congressman.
	He's become famous mainly as a Trump acolyte.
	And he says that Biden is not the legitimate president, all the rest of this, again, are moderate Republicans gonna vote for Byron Donalds?
	Again, I like a lot of these Congress people.
	I'm just pointing out that when you have an extraordinarily diverse caucus, which is what the Republicans have, and by the way, what Republicans have to have in order to maintain a majority, the speaker position cannot be a purist.
	It's not in the operative incentive structure of the game.
	Other names include Representative Jack Bergman of Michigan, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Representative Dan Muser of Pennsylvania, Representative Gary Palmer of Alabama.
	Do any of these people actually think they're going to be Speaker?
	Very, very, very unlikely.
	So, while Republicans are busy kneeling themselves in the groin, actual serious things are happening around the world, and it would be good to have a Republican leadership class capable of doing something except stepping on its own d**k. It's unbelievable.
	At a certain point, you gotta stop jumping on rakes, guys.
	Grow up.
	It's a serious world out there.
	And shouting at walls and bouncing off of...
	Bouncing off spike-filled Indiana Jones tunnels is not a genius idea, as it turns out.
	In just a second, we'll get to the serious things happening in the world.
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	Okay, so while the Republicans are busy Kneeling themselves directly in the groin repeatedly.
	The world continues to spin and bad things continue to happen.
	So over the course of the weekend, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, they decided that they were going to make a PR move.
	Now, this PR move was designed for two purposes.
	One is to try and buy time to stop an Israeli ground invasion into the Gaza Strip and to try and get the media back on side.
	So the media have been itching, itching to get off Israel's side after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and get back on to the, well, moral parody cycle of violence.
	Hamas really does have some legitimate concerns.
	Like they want back on that train so bad they can taste it.
	And Hamas knows that.
	So that's purpose number one.
	Purpose number two is that Qatar, which is a regime in the Middle East that is very heavily aligned with Iran, and is sort of a terrorist home base for negotiations.
	They usually put their political wing in Qatar.
	So for example, when the United States was negotiating with the Taliban, they were doing it in Qatar.
	Qatar has a home base for Hamas.
	So Ismail Khaniya, who's the political leader of Hamas, he's staying at a five-star hotel in Qatar while Gaza is getting bombed.
	He's over there.
	So Qatar was starting to get significant outside pressure, as they should, to turn Hamas over to the Americans and to stop playing footsie with terrorist groups.
	And so Qatar is making the claim that they are the home of negotiations and the negotiations will only be fruitful if they're sort of left to their own devices.
	So Hamas did a bit of a favor to Qatar, which makes sense because Qatar also passes money to Hamas.
	And Hamas released two American hostages over the weekend.
	They did this late on Friday afternoon.
	The two American hostages happened to be, when I say happened, I mean they were released partially because of this.
	They were related to a reporter for NBC News, which again is a way of trying to buy off the media.
	Here was the NBC coverage of the release of the two hostages.
	Remember, there's still 222 of them remaining, including babies.
	On Monday, the group posted a video of a woman and made an offer to release foreign hostages.
	A senior Hamas official then told NBC News the group is willing to release all civilians and dual nationals, with a condition.
	We are ready to release all the civilians, including the foreigners.
	All of the civilians, including the Israeli civilians?
	I'm sorry, could I just clarify this?
	You say you're willing to release all of the civilians, including the Israeli nationals, if there is a stopping?
	And what are you asking for in order to do that?
	Do you want the airstrikes to stop?
	Is that the condition?
	Stop the aggression.
	How can we... technically, logistically, it is impossible to do it.
	So, our viewers might hear that and say that this offer doesn't mean anything.
	That if you're not willing to carry it out, then it doesn't mean anything.
	How?
	Well, if you stop the aggression, it can be implemented over the next hour.
	Or you could just release all the hostages, like, right now.
	NBC News covers it, and then Israel won't stop the aggression.
	They won't.
	So it's really Israel's fault that the hostages are being held there.
	Hamas knows exactly what it's doing.
	Hamas knows that if it releases a couple of hostages every so often, they got 222 of them, if they release a couple of hostages every so often, then maybe the world will hold Israel back from going into the Gaza Strip.
	Now, as we'll see, the Biden administration is sending mixed messages on all of this, and the PR war is part and parcel of all of this.
	Hamas committed the worst atrocity in decades, and now they're trying to buy all of that back and make everybody forget about that.
	Because here's the deal, even if they release all the hostages tomorrow, there are still 1,500 dead Jews who were butchered and mutilated, babies murdered in their cribs, and all the rest of it.
	And Hamas is basically expecting that the world will then tell Israel to stop.
	That's the math here.
	And Hamas is trying to run a PR op.
	The PR op is, we will release hostages every so often, and then the world will put pressure on the Israelis to stop and leave us in power.
	Now, the Biden administration, for its part, is sending some mixed signals.
	So on the one hand, they are correctly suggesting that the Hamas terrorists have to release all the hostages unconditionally.
	That's what Blinken said yesterday.
	Well, first, Kristen, we've been working on this from day one, engaged with different partners in the region, sending clear messages about the need to immediately and unconditionally release all of the hostages.
	And it was gratifying to see that Judith and Natalie Ronin were released yesterday.
	I had a chance to speak to them as well.
	They sounded Strong of mind, strong of spirit, but there remain many others.
	And we're hopeful that more are released, but the bottom line is this.
	They need to be released.
	Each and every one of them, now, unconditionally.
	Okay, so that is the right message, obviously.
	But even if all the hostages are released, Hamas still has to go.
	And that's the game that Hamas is playing right now.
	And the reason Hamas has to go, of course, is because what they're attempting to do is obscure what just happened a couple of weeks ago.
	Israel has now done something that it has never done.
	They held a press conference today where they had all the members of the media in the room, and they showed them the full GoPro footage from various Hamas terrorists, showing exactly what they did to Israeli civilians on October 7th.
	And it's horrific stuff.
	I mean, truly horrific.
	Some of it's been described to the general public.
	Here are two... Zaka is a... They're first responders in Israel.
	Here are two Zaka volunteers recalling the atrocities that they saw on the ground when they went into these Israeli areas that had been ravaged by Hamas.
	We went in.
	The first house we saw was a couple, father and mother, sitting there on the knees on the floor.
	They were on the knees.
	Now they were head down, hands tied to the back.
	On the other side of the dining room was a 7-year-old boy and a girl, I would say about 6 years old.
	Sitting just against the parents.
	Hands tied to the back.
	Same position.
	The bodies were tortured.
	While now, start to use your imagination.
	Who was tortured before?
	Who saw if this was Okay, so these descriptions, they just go on and on.
	looking at the parents being tortured, the parents seen, and when I say tortured,
	I will say missing body pieces.
	Okay, so these descriptions, they just go on and on.
	I mean, eyes torn out, fingers torn out, all the rest of this sort of stuff.
	Israel has a forensic pathology center, and they've gone through all the evidence now.
	They're making it open to the media.
	And what they found were people with charred hands, marks revealing where the victim's hands were bound behind
	their backs with metal wire before they were burned alive.
	One of the images in the slideshow is a completely charred mass of flesh.
	Which at first glance could not even be seen as ever having been belonging to a human being.
	It was only after the CT scan was done of the charred flesh that experts could see what exactly they were looking at.
	And it was a parent and a child bound together, burned alive by Hamas terrorists.
	Two spinal columns were in the CT scan.
	One an adult spinal column and one a child's spinal column.
	They were bound together by metal wires in a final embrace before they were set on fire.
	According to Dr. Chen Kugel, who's the head of the National Center for Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv.
	He said, the proportion of bodies we've received to our chart is high.
	Many have gunshot wounds in their hands, showing they put their hands up to their faces in defense.
	Many were burned alive in their homes.
	You know they were burned alive because their suit and their trachea in their throats, meaning they were still breathing when they were set on fire.
	Kugel explained that the age range of the victim spans from three months to 80 or 90 years old.
	Many bodies, including those of babies, are without heads.
	Asked if they were decapitated, Kugel answered yes, although he admits that given the circumstances, it's difficult to ascertain whether they were decapitated before or after death, as well as whether they were beheaded by knife or had their heads blown off by RPG.
	Which is really the big question.
	You're seeing this from the Holocaust deniers today.
	Well, were they really beheaded with a knife?
	You know, they're probably still alive if they weren't beheaded.
	If they were just, if there was a baby who had his head blown off by an RPG, obviously a very different story.
	The reason that I'm bringing this up again, the reason Israel also is bringing this up again, is to remind people that even if the hostages are turned over, Hamas has to go.
	Israel has to do what it has to do to get rid of Hamas.
	And as we'll see, the West is already sending mixed signals because this is what many in the West do.
	They refuse to see the evil in front of them, and they refuse to understand how the Middle East works, which is that if you do not obliterate the evil today, it rises up and hits you tomorrow.
	Israel, for its part, has been intensifying the bombing on multiple fronts and preparing for this Gaza ground operation.
	There's still significant disagreement, apparently, within Israeli circles over whether to go in on the ground right now or whether to wait it out.
	To essentially keep facilitating movement of Gazan civilians south so they can then hit the tunnels because the last thing Israel would like to do is put 2,000 soldiers in harm's way in a highly dense urban environment that looks much like Mogadishu.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Israel ramped up its bombing of targets on three fronts, including a rare airstrike in the West Bank, as humanitarian aid trickled into the Gaza Strip in an international effort to ease the hardship the conflict has wrought on the two million civilians trapped there.
	Now, again, one of the things that's truly amazing about what's happening in the Gaza Strip right now is that I have never seen in my entire life a war in which the party that was aggressed against is now responsible for the civilians of the party that is the aggressor party.
	During World War II, do you remember a lot of conversation about German civilians and how the allies had to be very, very careful of what they did in terms of killing the Nazis?
	In terms of German civilians?
	There wasn't a lot of talk about that.
	Was there even a lot of talk about that after 9-11?
	Do you remember all the talk about, we need to make sure that we have humanitarian convoys getting into Kabul?
	During the post 9-11 period, I don't remember that either.
	When it comes to this, all of a sudden it's Israel's responsibility to deal with civilians that are really under the auspices of Hamas.
	That again is a game that's being played by the international community in order to, I would assume, attempt to smuggle in more resources to Hamas, which has been stealing these resources for literally decades at this point.
	International efforts, according to the Wall Street Journal, remain underway to free hostages in Gaza and prevent the fight from escalating into a regional conflict.
	As we'll see, the United States is trying to do that by both bribing and also by threatening.
	In northern Israel, a bunch of northern Israeli towns have been evacuated.
	Kiryat Shmona, which has 22,000 people, was fully evacuated in the northern front because of the possibility that Hezbollah attempts to get in the war and start firing rockets into the north of Israel.
	That, of course, would mean a major escalation.
	Israel also is taking the gloves off in a way that it should have for the last several decades.
	It's taking the gloves off with regard to terror sites.
	So, for example, over the weekend, Israel struck a mosque compound in the West Bank.
	They did that because they knew that weapons were being hidden in the mosque and a major terror attack was being planned from there, so they hit the mosque.
	This, of course, is the reason why Palestinian terrorists like to hide in mosques, because then they get to claim that Israel is striking religious sites.
	It's their very favorite thing to do.
	Meanwhile, again, the United States is sort of sending a little bit of mixed signals.
	So Tony Blinken, Secretary of State, he said we're concerned at the possibility that Iranian proxies are going to escalate the war against the United States.
	Well, here's the reality.
	They should be a lot more worried about escalating the war against the United States than we should be worried about them escalating the war against us.
	Just to be perfectly frank about this, if they fire on American warships, everyone in Hezbollah will be dead.
	The United States is not a power to be trifled with.
	And the fact that we are constantly kind of pussyfooting around this like oh well you know we're
	worried about Iranian proxies escalating against us they should be a lot more worried
	about us escalating against them considering the United States military is the most powerful
	fighting force in the history of the world bar none we have a military budget that is the
	rest of the world's combined times two so they like if Hezbollah decides that they want to get it on
	by the way this is the message we should It's like, you want to do this?
	Do you really want to cross that line?
	Do you really want to do that?
	Because it will be a giant's foot against a mosquito, man.
	Here is Tony Blinken, though.
	Again, the mixed signals here are pretty remarkable.
	Tension is very high in the region.
	Are you changing your security posture?
	Are you pulling any U.S.
	personnel out of the area?
	Margaret, we are concerned at the possibility of Iranian proxies escalating their attacks against our own personnel, our own people.
	We're taking every measure to make sure that we can defend them and, if necessary, respond decisively.
	So, I mean, I'm glad, if necessary, respond.
	Again, this is very easy.
	The President of the United States, in his last speech, he should have said, we don't want you to escalate.
	You should not want you to escalate, because if you escalate, you will be dead.
	I mean, that is how it works in the Middle East.
	And pretending otherwise is really, really, really done.
	By the way, Israel is saying some of that sort of stuff.
	So Nir Barkat, who is a member of the government right now, he's Israel's Minister of the Economy, he warned Iran that if they get directly involved, Israel will, quote, cut the head of the snake off, which is what Israel has to convey.
	If they don't convey that, then Iran will, in fact, get in.
	And it is worthwhile noting here that there is, in fact, a common interest Not necessarily among Iran, but even among Iran, and not escalating this thing.
	Right now, the math is this.
	Iran has a bunch of proxies.
	Those proxies include the Houthis in Yemen, they include Hezbollah in the north of Israel, they include the Syrian government, they include the Lebanese regime, which is Hezbollah, and they include Hamas.
	Hamas was not supposed to succeed this way.
	The entire goal of this terrorist attack was probably to kill 50 Jews and kidnap five, and instead it killed 1,500 Jews and kidnapped 200.
	And because of that, Hamas is now in existential danger.
	And so Iran would prefer not to have the knight on its chessboard knocked off the chessboard, but that is what's going to happen.
	And so Iran now has to consider whether it prefers to lose its knight in the Gaza Strip plus another knight in Northern Israel slash Southern Lebanon, in Hezbollah, Because if it escalates, that's where this is going.
	Or whether it just concedes the loss.
	So they're desperately trying to spin their way out of Hamas losing control of the Gaza Strip.
	And the only question is whether the West is going to prevent Israel from doing what it needs to do in the Gaza Strip.
	I think, I have faith that the United States is not going to do that.
	Because again, I think everybody has an interest in seeing Hamas fall, including, by the way, Egypt.
	How do you know this?
	Because actually, over the weekend, The IDF accidentally hit an Egyptian outpost and Egypt immediately said, we get it.
	It happens.
	Fog of war.
	So for all the talk about how the entire Arab world is united against Israel, that's not really true.
	Basically of the Iranian proxies who are united against Israel and the Sunnis who are like If Hamas gets taken out, we can't say that we're happy about it, but we're pretty happy about it.
	We're pretty much okay with all of that.
	The United States is seeking another way, which is buy off Hamas.
	Try and pay off these guys.
	Now, this is a strategy that is doomed to failure.
	It's a very dumb strategy.
	You cannot buy off Iran.
	You cannot buy off Hamas.
	You'll be giving them money, and they will use it for the worst possible purposes.
	And yet, And yet, you are seeing, again, this attempt to win Arab support by somehow looking as though you're putting clamps on the state of Israel, when in reality, what the United States should be saying to Israel is, you do what you need to do, and we will push everybody else off the ball.
	But if you appear to be holding Israel back, if you appear to be trying to tell Israel to back off, then what you're really doing is you're providing fodder for the so-called Arab Street.
	Because if you keep saying to Israel over and over and over, you guys, don't violate human rights, don't violate, then you are playing directly into the narrative, which is that there is some sort of human rights comparison between the state of Israel and its enemies.
	We'll get to that momentarily.
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	So, again, the West is sending these mixed messages in an attempt to sort of contain things.
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	So again, the West is sending these mixed messages in an attempt to sort of contain things.
	Now, the way that you actually contain things in the Middle East is you say,
	if you step over the line, I'll hit you so hard that I will bomb you forward into the Stone Age.
	That's what you actually say in the Middle East.
	If you wish things to remain contained.
	Because that happens to be the reality.
	And this has been true for literally all of Middle Eastern history.
	Force and threat of force are the coins of the realm in the Middle East.
	They have always been that.
	And the West is too shy these days.
	And so the West is like, well, what if we, you know, talk about human rights?
	Do you think that Hamas cares about human rights?
	Do you think Iran cares about human rights?
	For that matter, even the countries that were Allied with?
	Do you think Saudi Arabia cares deeply about human rights?
	I think not.
	I think not.
	They care about realistic interests.
	They care about what they can do.
	That's what they care about.
	And yet you're seeing kind of this weird push from the West all about human rights and encouraging Israel to follow the rules of war.
	Understand the entire basis for the terrorist opposition to Israel is trying to get Israel to quote unquote obey the rules of war in ways that no other country would while violating the rules of war yourself.
	This is the way this works.
	So, Joe Biden, again, it's this sort of stuff that it's why having a doddering president is not a good idea.
	And again, Biden has not been horrible on the situation thus far, but he's just not good at this.
	I mean, he's not with it.
	So over the weekend, he was asked whether Israel should delay the ground invasion as he was walking up the stairs to Air Force One, trying not to trip.
	And he said, yes, which like, dude, that is a confidential military discussion that you are having with the Israeli government.
	That is not something you should be spilling to the press.
	That's just buying time for Hamas, obviously.
	What's your goal as a free American?
	Well...
	Will Israel delay the ground invasion until they can get more hostages out?
	Yes!
	But, no! Now the White House has threatened to pull the war away.
	Yes!
	But, no!
	Okay, so then they tried to walk it back.
	Quote, the president was far away.
	He didn't hear the full question.
	The question sounded like, would you like to see more hostages released?
	He wasn't commenting on anything else.
	Well, maybe that's true because I mean, the guy is 80.
	Or maybe he should shut up when he's walking up the stairs and people are yelling,
	like he's perfectly happy ignoring most questions as he walks away from the press.
	Why this one?
	Tony Blinken then tried to walk that one back again.
	These sorts of mixed signals do have ramifications in real bloody terms.
	Have you asked the Israeli government to delay in order to give you more time to broker the release of these hostages?
	First, step back for a second because it's important to remember what happened.
	It's incredible how quickly that gets lost because it was only a couple of weeks ago that Hamas Invaded Israel with its terrorist fighters and Slaughtered and I use that that word very deliberately slaughtered So many people again men women young children babies old people You name it and they continue to rain rockets down on Israel when I was there a few days ago We were in the but we were we had to take shelter a couple of times because of the rockets from Hamas so my point is this
	No country, no country can be expected to tolerate this, to live with this.
	And as we said from the start, Israel has both the right and even the obligation, not only to defend itself, but to try to make sure that, to the best of its ability, this can't happen again.
	Now, the problem is that the opposing point of view, the sort of, but isn't it a cycle?
	That point of view is incredibly strong in the State Department, so much so that Blinken had to have a listening session with all of his little buddies over at the State Department.
	Those morons.
	Which is an amazing thing.
	Like, first of all, what is this, a college campus?
	You have to have listening sessions with your employees?
	Not having a listening session with my employees over whether to support terrorism or not, that's absurd.
	It's absurd.
	Okay, so Blingin tried to walk it back, but then you have the mixed message that is coming out of the Biden administration, which is, but there are so many good people on every side.
	On both sides, you might say.
	There are good people on both sides, you might say.
	So Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, who's been very strong in saying Israel should be able to defend itself, then he keeps adding this tag, Israel has to follow the laws of war.
	You know what I noticed?
	I noticed that the invasion of Iraq cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.
	Hundreds of thousands, if not a million civilian lives, I noticed.
	And there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of talk about this sort of stuff.
	And Iraq, by the way, had not committed a direct terrorist assault on the United States of America.
	But here's Lloyd Austin lecturing the Israelis about how they have to follow the rules of war.
	Hamas literally slaughters babies in their cribs and then takes other babies captive.
	But it's Israel that has to continually be warned about following the laws of war.
	This kind of language is nonsense.
	To your point, each target, John, needs to be assessed, carefully assessed, and we need to do everything we can to make sure that civilians are not injured or threatened.
	So the right thing to do is to make sure that we account for civilians in our planning, that we provide corridors for their movement out of the battle space, that we are not destroying protected Properties and where possible and I think the Israelis have been doing this for some time again They are a professional force and we will encourage continue to encourage them to make sure that they're doing things in accordance with the law of war
	Yeah, they need everybody looking over their shoulder and telling them to do things in accordance with the law of war.
	That's the big thing.
	This sort of delusional cycle of violence, Israel has to be encouraged to do the right thing.
	Meanwhile, they face down, you know, a murderous terrorist group that calls for the genocide of all Jews all over the planet.
	That sort of stuff has consequences.
	Joe Biden did a lot of this last week when he gave his address where he talked about how the Israelis had to be warned over and over not to take revenge like 9-11.
	They had to be warned about the mistakes of 9-11.
	The Israelis have to be told about human rights.
	They have to be lectured like small school children about human rights.
	Meanwhile, the people they're facing are, you know, raping women and taking them captive.
	So Biden over the weekend, he tweeted out, this is the Western attempt to go back to sleep.
	The two-state solution is dead.
	The reason the two-state solution is dead is not because Israel wants it dead.
	If Israel could have handed over control of the Gaza Strip to Egypt, it would do it today.
	If Israel could hand over control of Jenin to Jordan, it would do it today.
	Israel has no interest in governing these areas because Israel does not want to govern these areas.
	They're violent and very difficult to run.
	And yet the reason the two-state solution is dead is because of that.
	It's because these areas are very violent and very difficult to run because they keep electing terror groups, for example, and have heavy levels of support for the terror groups.
	We can all pretend away that the civilian population in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, that these are full Western liberal-minded people.
	It's a lie.
	It's not true.
	You can pretend that about the people in the Gaza Strip.
	Also a lie.
	Also not true.
	And so when you say there ought to be a peace process, With, quote-unquote, the Palestinian people.
	The only people you can negotiate with are the representatives of the Palestinian people.
	So far, in history, they've had the following representatives.
	The Palestinian Authority, led by Yasser Arafat, followed by the Palestinian Authority, led by the Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, Islamic Jihad, an actual terrorist group, and Hamas, an actual terrorist group.
	That's their entire leadership class.
	So, what are you jabbering about a two-state solution for?
	We'll get to the wages of that in a moment, because again, it sets up this false binary that makes it impossible for Israel to do what it needs to do to preserve its own security.
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	So again, what should have happened with the Hamas attack is the West waking up to what the threat is, and that would have a bunch of consequences.
	In terms of the Middle East situation, it would remind the West that the so-called free Palestine movement is in fact a pro-terror movement that hates the West and seeks its destruction.
	That is a reality.
	You can pretend that away, or you can't, but it would mean that Israel would be far less pressured to make concessions to terrorist groups.
	In terms of what the West would do, it would mean that the West would seriously think about restricting its immigration protocols.
	I mean, the number of radicalized Islamic immigrants from Northern Africa and the Middle East over the course of the last 20 years in Europe is astonishing, which is why you are seeing giant, giant rallies across the West.
	Those are not mainly left-wing people.
	There's some left-wing hangers-on who are too stupid to recognize that the first people who get beheaded if the radical Muslims take over are them.
	But the reason that you're seeing, for example, a 100,000-person pro-Hamas rally in London That is not because you have a bunch of people in London who are moderate Muslims who are just a little upset about the human rights situation in the Middle East.
	It's because you have imported hundreds of thousands throughout Europe, millions of radicalized Islamists who hate the West.
	I mean, that's just a reality.
	And you can pretend, again, you can pretend that away, but it's really stupid to.
	You're going to pay the price for it.
	And here's, by the way, what the video looked like from London.
	I mean, just London covered, blanketed, 100,000 people protesting in favor of Hamas.
	According to The Guardian, they said thousands, but look at the size of this crowd.
	I mean, it's astonishingly large.
	The Metropolitan Police estimated 100,000 people participated in the protest.
	They'll have signs that say, free Palestine.
	By that they mean, by the way, like all of Israel should be obliterated.
	And again, these are not all, you know, nice left-wingers who just went to the wrong university.
	A huge percentage of these people are new immigrants from the Middle East and from Northern Africa who hate Jews, like really, really hate Jews.
	And that starts in the Middle East and pretending that it doesn't is a serious mistake.
	So Joe Biden, for example, yesterday, he tweeted out and strategically he's trying to He's trying to have it both ways.
	He's trying to say Israel should defend itself, but also the people that it's fighting with very often.
	They're very nice people.
	Everyone's nice.
	If we could only just come together.
	So he tweeted out, Israel has the right to defend itself.
	We must make sure they have what they need to protect their people today and always.
	That should be the end of the tweet.
	That should be, but it doesn't.
	It goes on for two more paragraphs.
	Quote.
	At the same time, Prime Minister Netanyahu and I have discussed how Israel must operate by the laws of war.
	Again, there's this lecturing, hectoring tone here.
	Like, if we don't tell Israel to stop this, then they will be horribly genocidal.
	That means protecting civilians in combat as best they can.
	We can't ignore the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace.
	That's why I secured an agreement for the first shipment of humanitarian assistance for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
	And we cannot give up on a two-state solution.
	So first of all, that is a wild non sequitur.
	The end where he says we can't give up on us.
	With whom?
	You're talking about obliterating Hamas, a terrorist group.
	What the hell are you talking about?
	As far as ignoring the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace, there are two things that are happening there.
	One, he is thrusting the responsibility for civilians in Gaza, not on the legitimate government of Gaza, the Hamas, right?
	If the United States is attacked by a foreign power, the Russians, you know whose responsibility it is for safeguarding the civilians in the United States?
	America, our government.
	That's our responsibility.
	It's not Russia's responsibility.
	We would hope that they follow the Geneva Conventions, but we have to assume that they might not.
	And so it would be our job to make sure that our civilians are safeguarded, that they are provided for.
	That's literally the job of the government.
	But in the Gaza Strip, apparently it doesn't apply.
	You get it both ways.
	You get to be a terrorist group, and you have no responsibility for your own civilian population.
	Also, the suggestion beneath all of this is that, again, Hamas is just a few bad apples.
	Just a few people who are bad apples that there's no actual- which is why a two-state solution is possible, after all.
	If it turns out that Hamas is a few bad apples, and the Palestinian Authority is a few bad apples, and Islamic Jihad is a few bad apples, Then really, and Lion's Den is a few bad apples, and Hezbollah is a few, they're just a few bad apples.
	I mean, yeah, a lot of them, but they're really just a few bad, so peace is still possible.
	Justin Trudeau, a moron, he tweeted similarly along these lines.
	He tweeted out, quote, as members of the Palestinian Arab and Black communities gathered for prayer yesterday, I wanted them to know this.
	We know you're worried and hurting.
	We're here for you.
	We will not stop advocating for civilians to be protected and for international law to be upheld.
	Yes, I can think of a few civilians who are hurt.
	In fact, I can think of civilians who were burned alive by Hamas.
	I can think of them.
	But this sort of moral equivalence language is what people are comfortable with.
	Now, I just want to point out here that these so-called peace partners here are not peace partners, both governmentally, as well as, yes, the civilian population in Judea and Samaria in the West Bank.
	There is no evidence whatsoever that they are seeking a negotiated peace deal in which the state of Israel gets to continue to exist.
	The evidence does not exist for that.
	It is literally non-existent.
	The same thing is true in the Gaza Strip.
	Here, for example, is a Palestinian Authority minister yesterday, okay?
	The Palestinian Authority, these are the so-called moderates.
	These are the people that Joe Biden is calling up.
	This guy is the head of the military wing of the Palestinian Authority.
	It's called Fatah.
	And here he is, what he says in English is, in the name of the Fatah movement, we only want national unity.
	That would be national unity with Hamas, by the way.
	Here he was yesterday.
	Today, we do not want, in the name of the Fatah movement, except the national unity.
	And they're firing guns in the air.
	They seem super peaceful.
	I feel like a two-state solution is imminent, don't you?
	Meanwhile, by the way, again, the lie that Gazan civilians are entirely disconnected from Hamas.
	This does not mean, by the way, that Israel should target civilians.
	They're not.
	It doesn't mean that they shouldn't attempt to minimize civilian casualties, which they are.
	This is why they're pushing people south toward where the electricity and water are still running.
	By the way, shops are still open in southern Gaza.
	Well, what it does mean is that this lie, that basically it's a few people at the top who are the problem, and the rest of the population, they are just Western liberals, so we can either import them into the West, or we can force Israel to make concessions that ends with a Palestinian state, because after all, aren't we all the same underneath?
	It's a lie.
	It's not true.
	For example, this is video from the Gaza...
	The Hamas attack from Gaza on the Israeli Moshavim.
	These areas have killed 1,500 Jews.
	In this video, you're going to see a lot of civilians.
	It turns out it was not just card-carrying members of Hamas, heavily armed and uniformed.
	It turns out it was a crapload of civilians.
	Here's some of the video.
	Here are people walking around by the open border of Gaza.
	These are all the Gazan civilians.
	They look like civilians.
	These are members of Hamas and civilians who are riding on their trucks.
	People celebrating next to members of Hamas.
	Civilians, some of whom are on crutches going into Jewish areas to steal things.
	So many civilians, people riding bikes, kids bikes, directly out of the Jewish areas, stealing things.
	These are all of the uninvolved Gazan civilians.
	Again, this sort of attempt to create a hard ideological distinction between the Gazan population and Hamas is ridiculous.
	The idea that, again, there's an ideological distinction that can be made such that Israel must make concessions.
	And that's really what needs to happen here.
	And again, that the West should accept hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, for example.
	That's going to work out well for the United States and for Europe.
	That's ridiculous.
	By the way, you know who plays this for all it's worth?
	Members of Hamas.
	So, for example.
	That guy's very happy about the rockets being fired into Israel.
	And flash forward.
	I can't believe the atrocities that are taking place.
	I just, I can't believe it.
	It's just, it's so, it's so devastating.
	So this is the guy they show on BBC, right?
	I mean, this is the kind of person they show on BBC crying from the inside of a hospital.
	What they don't show is the first half where he's celebrating the rockets being fired into Israel.
	This sort of double message is what continues to allow the West to blind itself on a routine basis, just constantly blinding itself.
	By the way, while we are trying to get the humanitarian aid into Gaza, it is worth noting here that Hamas is literally, literally right now, according to Anthony Blinken, preventing American citizens in Gaza, not the kidnapped, like Arab Americans who are in Gaza, Hamas is trying to stop them from leaving.
	So we're smuggling them aid, and at the same time, Hamas is trying to prevent the American civilians from leaving.
	But don't worry, these are so many wonderful people.
	In terms of what's happening in Gaza, I know there are an estimated five to six hundred Americans there.
	Is there any chance Israel lets some of those Americans out, or Egypt allows some of those Americans in?
	You're exactly right.
	And, to date at least, Hamas has blocked them from leaving, showing once again its total disregard for civilians of any kind who are stuck in Gaza.
	Well, I mean, there's a shock.
	There's an absolute shock.
	But don't worry, guys.
	I mean, really, the peace process, the two-state solution must continue at pace.
	Now, here's the thing.
	When you send that mixed message to the Western public, the public gets the mixed message.
	The public gets the mixed message.
	And, by the way, they're constantly being told things that are untrue about the nature of many people who immigrate to the West.
	So, just to take a quick example, there's a poll from an organization called Signal This poll pulled Americans on a wide variety of issues, including the Palestinians.
	And one of the things that I found is that, for example, Muslim Americans in the United States, according to this poll, have a plus 16 net favorable rating for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and a net 4% favorable rating for the leader of Hamas.
	Americans, by the way, are 47 points underwater on the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, but Muslim Americans are four points over water on the leader of Hamas.
	Also, it turns out that Muslim Americans, unfortunately, a majority of Muslim Americans, according to this SignalPoll, are not anti-Hamas, which is unfortunate.
	Apparently, a majority of Muslim Americans have a positive view of Gaza.
	Not only that, it turns out that A majority of Muslim Americans disagree that Israel should invade Gaza.
	A majority, like a large majority, 58% of Muslim Americans agree that Hamas was justified in its attack on Israel. 58%.
	So, you know, when it comes to, again, the lie that all human beings think the same way and have the same values, that's wrong.
	And it's a stupid, stupid thing to believe.
	But Americans are ingesting it, which is why, for example, there's a new poll from the Wall Street Journal, and what it shows is a 2022 survey.
	2022 survey.
	75% of Americans have a positive view of the Israeli people.
	51% of Americans have a favorable view of the Palestinian people.
	I'm just wondering what that would be based on.
	Seriously, you can have an unfavorable view of people and also not believe that they should be mistreated or harmed in any way, but it's that separation.
	It's this idea that, again, everybody just wants the same thing.
	Everybody just would love to have the same.
	We all agree on all of these things.
	By the way, this new poll from the Wall Street Journal shows that if you're under the age of 30, a broad majority do not support Israel and its war against Hamas.
	The statistics among young people, by the way, are just devastating.
	Because again, when you indoctrinate people in a post-colonialist, idiotic, wild left-wing, wretched-of-the-earth mindset, this is what you end up with.
	So, there's polling data that now shows that young Americans particularly are heavily sympathetic to actual terrorism.
	According to this poll from Harvard-Harris, this Harvard-Harris poll shows, here's the question, do you think the Hamas killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians in Israel can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians or is not justified?
	The older you get, the more sane you are on this question.
	If you are above the age of 65, 91% say not justified.
	If you are between the ages of 18 and 24, a majority, a majority, 51% of people aged 18 to 24 believe that Hamas is justified in murdering 1,200 civilians.
	Justified, 51%.
	If you're between the ages of 25 and 34, barely minority, 48% believe that that is still justified.
	That's insane.
	By the way, the same exact poll says, do you think the attacks on Jews were genocidal in nature or not genocidal?
	18 to 24, 62% say genocidal, which is wild.
	So 62% of young Americans, 18 to 24, say that the attacks by Hamas were genocidal, but 51% still say they were justified.
	Which is nuts!
	Which is nuts!
	But again, this is what happens when you indoctrinate people into the belief system of multiculturalism.
	All cultures are equal, all cultures are equivalent.
	Now, again, this has wages and effects into the West.
	When you import hundreds of thousands of people who believe this sort of stuff, things tend to get pretty ugly.
	And so this is why we've seen mass protests, not only in London, but mass anti-Israel protests in New York City.
	Mass anti-Semitic protests in New York City.
	Here's what it looked like over the weekend.
	It's in Brooklyn.
	People, um, getting rough with the police officers.
	But, you know, no big deal because they're of the right political persuasion.
	At Barry Weiss's free press, Barry, of course, is a Zionist and a Jew, and at her offices at the free press, somebody came by and graffitied outside the office, F Jews, So, obviously people who, they have territorial disputes.
	Meanwhile, a woman who is a Detroit Jewish community leader named Samantha Wool was murdered over the weekend.
	The police have yet to establish who exactly did it, but they're jumping to the conclusion that they know the motive, which is interesting.
	So we'll find out whether that is true or not.
	But certainly, tensions are running incredibly high.
	According to the Washington Free Beacon, an Israeli Harvard Business School student was accosted and harassed amid a Gaza die-in on campus.
	Here's what that looked like.
	Also in Skokie.
	So Skokie is most famously the site of a neo-Nazi march in which the left suggested that everyone has the right to free speech and all the rest of it.
	But the new neo-Nazis, the neo-neo-Nazis, they arrived in Skokie as well.
	They were supposed to hold their protest actually in in downtown Chicago.
	And then they saw that the Jews were going to hold their protest in Skokie,
	which is a heavily Jewish part of Chicago.
	My grandmother used to live there.
	And so I know Skokie pretty well and very, very Jewish area of Chicago.
	So naturally, you go where the Jews are.
	I mean, if you want to target Jews, this is where you go.
	So two people were taken into police custody on Sunday evening after one man
	allegedly fired a shot in the air near demonstrators.
	Why did that happen?
	Apparently, his car was surrounded.
	He had Israeli flags on it, and people started ripping the flag apart off the car and surrounded the car.
	So he felt scared, so he got out of the car and fired a shot in the air.
	He was arrested.
	But the fact that they're going to Jewish areas, meaning the anti-Semites are going to Jewish areas in order to start trouble, that, of course, is not a shock.
	Here's what it looked like.
	This is Laura Loomer.
	I have problems with Laura, but this coverage is good and necessary.
	Shame on you!
	That's the whole point here.
	Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!
	Shame on you!
	Shame on you!
	shame on you after massacring you know twelve hundred jews
	that's that makes perfect sense so tensions are high
	The good news is, again, when you cultivate not only people who are terror supporters in the West, but also a bunch of useful idiots in the West, that's very helpful.
	The New York Times is populated entirely by useful idiots.
	This is how you have useful idiot Michelle Goldberg writing an entire column called, It's Impossible to Know What to Believe in this Hideous War.
	No, I actually know what to believe and who to believe in this hideous war, actually.
	I actually do know that.
	I love the throwing up of the hands.
	I don't know.
	I don't.
	I don't know.
	I'm sure it's Michelle Goldberg.
	You know what they know?
	They know that if you accidentally find yourself in the Gaza Strip, they will know what to do with you.
	Because your last name is Goldberg.
	It turns out.
	So, obviously, it's too much.
	She just doesn't know what to believe.
	Or you have Nick Kristof.
	We must not kill Gazan children to try to protect Israel's children.
	No one's killing Gazan children except for Hamas, which is putting its children in the way of bombs.
	But Nicholas Kristof, again, looking for that moral equivalence, that very comfortable, lukewarm, soft embrace of moral equivalence.
	The crisis in the Middle East is a naughty test of our humanity, asking how to respond to a grotesque provocation for which there is no good remedy.
	And in this test, we in the West are not doing well.
	The acceptance of large-scale bombing of Gaza and a ground invasion, likely to begin, suggests Palestinian children are lesser victims, devalued by their association with Hamas.
	No, it doesn't.
	It assumes that the only way a sovereign state can protect its territory is by taking out terrorists who murder its citizens.
	That's what it assumes.
	That's literally the entire thing.
	But again, that soft, squishy moral relativism is everybody's favorite.
	And then you have people who have been hinting at their anti-Semitism, particularly with regard to Israel for quite a while.
	Dave Chappelle comes to mind.
	Everybody, including me, was willing to overlook his space-Jews routine, in which he suggested that, of course, the Jews were the big colonizers in the Middle East, and he basically parroted all of the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish nonsense that has been promoted around the left wing for years and years in one of his old specials.
	And I kind of looked the other way, and I was like, okay, whatever, you know, he's a comedian.
	Well, apparently, he was sort of standing for Hamas, and of course, calling Israel a human rights violator at one of his shows last week.
	And a bunch of people walked out.
	He suggested Israel was a giant human rights violator and all the rest of this.
	And you can always count on Hollywood to contribute its bit.
	So morons in Hollywood.
	All the best people.
	All of them.
	All of your moral exemplars.
	Everybody from Melissa Milano, who took a break from standing for abortion to stand with terrorists.
	Apparently she likes dead babies across the board.
	So you got Alyssa Milano, you have David Cross, you have people like Hassan Minhaj,
	recently spotted falsifying many of his personal stories about American anti-Arab sentiment.
	Jeremy Strong, who is so far up his own rear that he has become totally familiar with his own colon.
	Kristen Stewart-McLemore, Mark Ruffalo, who, and by the way, I would trade any of these people
	for any of the hostages in Gaza right now, and we'll see how they enjoy it over there.
	Ryan Coogler, the director of Black Panther.
	Susan Sarandon, no shock there.
	Rooney Mara, Jon Stewart, who's just a despicable human being.
	Wanda Sykes, Rosario Dawson, Kate Blanchett, Andrew Garfield, Mahershala Ali, America Ferreira,
	recently the star of Barbie.
	Joaquin Phoenix, all these people signed a letter.
	And what does the letter say?
	The letter says that Israel must stop.
	It must stop.
	You must leave the terrorists in place.
	They wrote a letter to the President, quote, Dear President, we come together as artists and advocates, but most importantly, as human beings, witnessing the devastating loss of lives and unfolding horrors in Israel and Palestine.
	We ask that as President of the United States, you call for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Gaza and Israel before another life is lost.
	There is zero mention in this entire letter of Hamas.
	There is zero mention of what led off this conflict.
	This is the way, by the way, that moral morons do what they do.
	What they do is they just ignore the beginning of every war.
	It's a fun way to, again, escape moral culpability and the fact that you, in fact, are a fellow traveler with Hamas to do all of this stuff.
	It makes it really easy.
	You just ignore what started the whole thing.
	They've been doing this for 20 years.
	Hamas fires a bunch of rockets at Israeli civilian centers.
	Israel retaliates.
	They go, the violence must stop!
	It's like, well, what led to the violence?
	If you can ignore it, then you can just move right back into that warm bath of moral equivalence.
	But here's the reality.
	The moral equivalence doesn't exist, and guess what?
	Reality is gonna hit you directly in the face if you continue with this nonsense.
	So the West has a choice.
	They can either wake up or they can continue to facilitate moral idiocy in the name of tolerance.
	It's not just going to be Jews who pay the price for that one, by the way.
	Alrighty, guys.
	The rest of the show continues right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be joined by Michal Kotler-Wunsch.
	She's a former member of the Knesset and Israel's newly appointed special envoy for combating anti-Semitism.
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