Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defends U.S. support for Israel's Gaza war, comparing Hamas to Nazis and blaming their kleptocracy for poverty despite $8,600 per capita in aid versus Europe's post-WWII Marshall Plan. While host James Smith condemns the conflict as illegal occupation, they debate historical displacement, water control, and whether military action is necessary to prevent regional escalation or World War III. Ultimately, the dialogue highlights deep ideological divides over humanitarian crises, U.S. foreign policy priorities, and the moral justification of current military interventions. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Roll Back The State00:03:29
Fill her up.
You are listening to the gas human.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Cheers your host, James Smith.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am so grateful today to have returning to the show Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Of course, he's been on the show before.
It's been a little while.
For everybody listening, I'm sure everybody knows.
He is a candidate for president of the United States of America, an independent candidate, and the first viable third party candidate since Ross Perot, I would say.
So probably the second one in my lifetime who is outside of the two major parties and actually has a chance to be the next president of the United States.
So, Mr. Kennedy, thank you so much for joining us again.
How are you?
How's the campaign trail going?
Thank you.
It's going well.
I mean, I, you know, crowds are getting bigger and bigger and more intense.
The polling is good.
I'm now leading President Biden and President Trump in Americans under 45 years of age in the six battleground states and then under 35 all across the country.
I'm leading in independence, which is the biggest.
This is the first election in American history where independence is the biggest voting bloc.
And then we're in a three-way tie with Hispanic votes.
I'm polling at 24%.
And I think it was the Quinnipiac poll, which puts me only 10 points from victory because all I need is 34 theoretically to win the election because it's winner take all.
Yeah, right.
Well, it changes things drastically when there's three viable candidates rather than two, which is something we're very not used to seeing in American presidential politics.
And I say this as a member of the Libertarian Party, who I wish we were always offering up a true contender, but the reality of the situation is that just hasn't been the landscape in American politics.
As I mentioned, since really Ross Perot in 1992, I think was the last one.
And in my lifetime, I think the only one.
Yeah.
And then why I heard that you were going to be the candidate for the Libertarian Party, which would have been very, I'm glad I'm not running against you.
That would be very formidable.
You'd be the most formidable opponent I have.
But what happened?
Well, thank you, sir.
I appreciate that.
Yes, there were, I was considering it for a period of time.
There were a lot of people in the Libertarian Party who wanted me to run.
Ultimately, it just came down to kind of family decisions.
I have two very little kids, and it just seemed like a little bit too much for me to take on right now.
We went through a lot of things.
My son had some serious health problems.
All better now.
He's doing great.
But it was just a little bit too much of an undertaking for me in 2024.
But maybe in 2028, we'll go head to head.
Would you consider the vice presidency?
Oh, man.
Considering A Presidential Run00:02:29
What are you trying to do to me?
You're going to offer me a vice presidency on a Kennedy ticket?
That's dangerous.
I might end up being president or something like that.
Actually, it'd probably be good insurance for you because I'm no LBJ.
I don't think they want to get you out of the way.
Exactly why I want you.
So that's it.
You want me as your life insurance program.
Okay.
All right.
You know what?
Well played.
I'm a version of myself that nobody's going to want.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, there you go.
Okay.
So I'll, you know what?
Might.
In that case, I might consider it, but you got to give me something like my.
My task has to be something very simple that I don't have to leave home from or home for, or something like that.
Um, so I don't know, or I could be listen where here's where we agree, i'll be in charge of your Ukrainian policy, so i'll i'll take that role.
Good, all right.
So all right.
Well, I want to first off, I really want to say that I really appreciate you coming on, and I appreciated you coming on the first time, but even more so this time.
Um so, as you know, and everybody who who listens to to this show knows, I was um extremely interested in in your campaign.
Um there, there was a while there where I swear people listening to the show know almost every other episode of this show.
It could have been called the Defending Bobby Kennedy podcast, because it was almost like every week there'd be a new attack on you in in the media and you know my producer and my co-host would be emailing, what are we going to talk about today?
And i'd be like well, they're lying about Bobby again, so let's, let's do a show about that and your um your, your opposition to uh funding the proxy war in Ukraine uh, in this insane proxy war of choice on Russia's border um, and and especially just your deep knowledge of the history and what actually led to this conflict uh, uh was just nothing short of heroic.
Your criticism of the Covid regime and the coveted vaccine and the pharmaceutical industrial complex and the deep state and the neoconservative war machine all of them I find to be nothing short of heroic.
I am however, deeply disappointed and and frankly, kind of dumbfounded by your position on Israel's war in Gaza, and I now I tweeted something to this effect and uh, you reached out to me immediately afterward and said you'd like to come on the show and and discuss it, so that I?
I have nothing but respect, for I think that's a truly noble um response, and so i'm grateful that you you've come on here.
Criticizing Israel's War Efforts00:02:58
Uh, let's talk about this a little bit, and and maybe I can understand where you're coming from better um, maybe there's something that i'm missing.
Let me start by asking you this, we're now, as a direct result of this conflict, we have Biden launching bombing campaigns against the Houthis.
We've had three Americans who were just killed in Jordan, and the big topic on discussion right now is how Biden is going to respond.
Of course, all of the hawks which still permeate our political class are all calling for war in Iran.
Um, what do you?
Have you changed your position at all on this?
Does the threat of a wider war uh, give you pause on kind of the blank check support for Israel's war in Gaza, or are you still steadfast in we must support them till the end?
No, I mean, you know, let me, let me give some context.
First of all.
You know, I am um, I am I I, I think people who, uh that criticisms, criticisms of Israel, is fair, and I encourage people to do that.
It's a democracy and you know I'm not a fan of B.B. Netanyahu's.
I'm a long-term critic of his.
I think what happens in the Mideast isn't everywhere is that the zealots on both sides and militarists on both sides feed on each other and that they have a symbiotic relationship with each other and that everything they do to escalate the violence and the hatred actually empowers their partner on the other side.
And I think Netanyahu is in this very perverse partnership with Hamas.
I'm a opponent of the Likud.
I was a vocal protester against the so-called judicial reforms.
In Israel last summer, 20% of the people in Israel came out onto the street, one of the biggest demonstrations in the history of that nation.
It has the best judiciary, the most humane judiciary in the world.
I'm a lawyer and a constitutional lawyer, and I know there is no judiciary in the world that has taken the positions that the courageous positions that Israel's Supreme Court, by the way, there are Palestinians on that court.
And as there are Palestinians at every level of the Israeli judiciary, I oppose the settlements in the West Bank.
They're illegal under Israeli law and they're illegal under international law.
Eradicating Hamas Like Nazis00:06:07
And I'm generally opposed to wars.
I'm not, you know, I think there are just wars.
Very few of the wars that we have fought, particularly in the last century, have been just.
I would say World War II is alone in that category.
My grandfather vigorously opposed World War I and lost a lot of his friendships during that period.
And my uncle, John Kennedy, felt the same way.
We should have never gotten involved in that war.
And I feel the same way, that that was a war of choice.
World War II was not.
It was a just war in my view.
We were attacked at Pearl Harbor, and we responded by declaring war on the Japanese and their allies in the Axis power.
And Hitler was a disease and Nazism that had to be eradicated.
And there would be no peace in the world until Germany was denazified.
In fact, at Casablanca, Roosevelt and Churchill had a big fight about it because Roosevelt had made the announcement during Casablanca without checking with Churchill, demanding unconditional surrender, which meant denazification and the elimination of Hitler.
And Churchill got furious at him because he said that's going to cause every German to fight until the last man.
And Roosevelt said there will never be any peace until we denazify.
And that objective cost 2 million German civilians their lives.
We killed 2 million German civilians in order to destroy Hitler and denazify the government.
And as a result of that, we did the same thing in Japan.
We have mass destruction of civilians, including atomic bombs on their cities, which you can argue.
A lot of people argue we should not have done, and I think that those arguments have a lot of merit, but the fact is we, we did it and as a result of that, of of demilitarizing Japan and denazifying Germany, those competent countries became the two of the richest countries in the world.
You're uh, Germany is the richest country and most powerful country in Europe, And Japan, until the rise of China, was by far the wealthiest country in Asia.
Both of them were very, very close allies of the United States.
They shared our values.
They were friends to long, they've been long-term friends with us, but it required at the outset that we make that profound sacrifice, which included the butchery of millions of people who were innocent.
Oh, I see Gaza in the same way, Dave.
I'm pro-Palestinian.
I want the best for the Palestinian people.
I believe in a two-state solution, which Netanyahu does not.
I believe that the Palestinians, you know, I have great friendships among the Palestinians.
And by the way, I'll say this.
A Palestinian pled guilty to the murder of my father.
And there was a lot of evidence that he had killed my father.
He was certainly part of the ambush that killed my father.
And then in 19, that was in 1968.
And my family wrote a letter to Judge Walker at that time, pleading with the judge not to give Sir Anne the death penalty, even though everybody in my family believed that he had killed my father.
And then in 1971, my elder brother Joe, who's older than me by one year, was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and who demanded the release of Sir Han.
And his plane was bought to, it was landed in the desert in Yemen and then blown up and burned.
And luckily, my brother was released.
But, you know, I have plenty of reason, if I wanted to, to hold a grudge against Palestinians.
But for the past 10 years, I've worked hard and soul to get Sir and Sir Hannah out of prison for two reasons.
One, I believe that he served more time than he was sentenced to.
And that he, you know, he served the parole board, let's put it this way, the parole board has said that he should be released.
And he posed no threat.
And the other is, you know, the evidence that I found that the bullets that he fired, although he did fire bullets at my father, those were not the ones that killed me.
You know, I believe in justice for whoever it is.
And I've worked, you know, I've been to Ramallah.
I've been to the West Bank.
I have friends in Gaza.
I've met with the Palestinian Authority leadership.
I've met with Palestinians all over.
In fact, one of my groups, a Jordan Riverkeeper, was the only group in Israel that had Palestinians on its board, Jordanians and Israeli Jews.
Oh, you know, I understand the issues that affect the Palestinians.
I want them to live lives of happiness, prosperity, dignity, and freedom and sovereignty.
I do not believe that that can happen as long as Hamas is in charge.
I believe Hamas is very much akin to the Nazi problem, that until they are eradicated, that Palestinians will not have a chance to live in the kind of prosperity that they deserve.
Opposing Wars Of Choice00:16:02
And that over the long term, people have to understand that this was the fifth attack.
So every previous attack was ended with a ceasefire.
And every one of those ceasefires, Hamas used to rearm, to regroup, to rehoist its banner, and then to attack Israel again.
Okay.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Survival Gear BSO.
Pre-made bug out bags that offer easy grab and go options for families.
They offer access to survival training and courses from the most qualified schools in the United States.
They give you the ability to talk to certified instructors about gear questions to guide you in the right direction.
And they're proud to say that Survival Gear BSO is an American-owned and operated business.
Tried and trusted product lines with over 800 products from top brands in the industry.
And they have custom orders from military, corporate, school, and outdoor groups.
So find your way through the wilderness and visit Survival Gear BSO today, survivalgear.us.
That is the website, survivalgear.us.
And make sure to use the promo code problem20.
Once again, that's survivalgear.us.
And the promo code is problem20 for 20% off your entire order.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, well, let me respond to some of this because I think that, look, the examples of Germany and Japan, where quite frankly, what we did was indiscriminately slaughter their civilian population in World War II, the biggest bloodbath in human history.
It is absolutely true that after that was done, we pulled them back into the global world order, into the liberal world order.
And that, listen, despite we could get up, we could spend three hours talking about World War II, but I will say, okay, that is quite an accomplishment.
It's also the accomplishment that almost every hawk and every neocon looks to as an example for why this is going to work and why we can go overthrow this government, why we can go start a war here.
Believe, as we all know, and you yourself know as well as anyone, this was used over and over again for the justification of the war in Iraq.
And of course, back then, Saddam Hussein was Hitler, Muamar Qaddafi was Hitler, Bashar al-Assad was Hitler.
I got to say, the comparison between all those wars.
Yes, I know you did, which is why I'm so dumbfounded about your position on this one.
To compare the Nazi problem to the Hamas problem, the Nazis ruled from France to Poland.
They had almost all of Europe taken over and were then going after England and Russia.
Hamas doesn't even rule Gaza.
They're the toughest gang in an Israeli prison.
So to compare these two, as if there's any, I mean, I just don't, they're anywhere near the same threat to the civilized world is just the comparison falls immediately.
And on top of that, you know, if you want to say that, well, we want the Palestinians to live these great lives and the reason they can't do that is because of Hamas.
Well, that certainly doesn't seem to be the reason in the West Bank.
And the Palestinians have, since 1967, lived under totalitarianism.
And it's just totally inexcusable.
There's just no justification for it.
Israel won a war in 1967.
I'm glad you admitted that the settlements are illegal under international law.
It's also illegal under international law to gain territory through war.
Israel gained the West Bank and Gaza through war.
They have no, absolutely no legal claim on these territories and no moral claim on these territories for that matter either.
There's just nothing there.
And they've held them since 1967.
Now, yes, it is true that the resistance movements against them have taken some ugly forms.
And Hamas, who of course, as you also know well, has been supported and propped up by Israel throughout the years.
Yes, they've grown into a very ugly terrorist group and what they did on October 7th was horrible.
But the obvious answer here is that we need to, and it's certainly an American president's perspective, should be that we need to be encouraging the peace process here.
I mean, you talk about we have to eradicate Hamas.
Okay.
So U.S. officials, as of right now, they estimate that about 20% of Hamas has been eradicated.
Right now, 50% of the homes in Gaza have been destroyed.
So what are we going to do?
Destroy all of them?
Do we honestly think, I mean, it's almost like you're doing insurgent math here, like General McChrystal warned against.
So what do you think?
We'll just destroy all of Gaza and then we won't have to deal with this Hamas problem anymore.
Although what you've already seen right now from the Houthis, from Hezbollah, from Iran, from everybody in this region, you're seeing, oh, and of course, Shiite-controlled Iraq.
Thank you, George W. Bush, and Shiite-controlled Syria.
You know, you're only going to drum up more hatred.
I think this is the worst move for the security of the Israeli people of any of the available options.
Okay, so all of those arguments sound good.
So let me deconstruct them.
First of all, I was not comparing the Hamas, the threat of Hamas as a global threat to the Nazis.
That's not where they're similar.
Where they're similar is that it's an ideology-driven conflict that's not territorial and has no negotiating position.
It's a group that is committed to the genocide of all Jews, not only in Israel, but all over the world, and that is committed to the annihilation of Israel.
And that has in its covenant a prohibition against even negotiating with Israel, except as a ruse.
So their covenant says that's a violation.
It's a sin against Islamic law to even negotiate with Israel.
So I, you know, I mean, the big question I have, I would have for you, but I'll ask it at the end is how, what is your path to peace?
Is it, you know, the people who are demanding a temporary, an unconditional ceasefire are leaving hostages there.
They're leaving.
Hamas is firing hundreds of missiles a day onto Tel Aviv.
People say that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world.
That's not true.
Tel Aviv has twice the population density, and they're firing hundreds of missiles a day.
How is Israel supposed to stop that?
They fired 30,000 missiles between 2006 and October 7th, and they fired 10,500 since October 7th.
What other nation in the world would put up with that, with a neighbor firing missiles onto their civilian population after declaring that they intend to annihilate the nation and to kill all of its citizens?
Now, You said that you made a statement that is absolutely incorrect, which is that you cannot claim that under international law, it's illegal to claim territory.
And you want a war.
But to acquire territory through war.
If you are fighting a defensive war, it is absolutely legal.
And there are, I can name you 100 presidents to take land that was used to launch a war against you.
And that is strategically important to your country.
After Germany, after Germans attacked us, do you think we broke up Germany?
Yes, we did.
We removed the Sudan land.
We gave it to Czechoslovakia.
We broke up the entire Ottoman Empire, which was our, and we took all of it, 100% of their territory and we gave it to people.
We invented news.
Hold on, you're talking about before.
After World War I, we created 22 new nations.
After World War II, we created 122.
Yes, but as you, but as you know, sir.
Cutting up territory, slicing and dicing.
And we did that because international law allows, particularly when you're fighting a defensive war, to claim strategic land that was used against you.
Okay, let me just respond to a couple things there, because as you know, sir, if you're talking about World War I, well, this is before all of these international laws were put into effect, which were a response to World War II.
So that is a little bit...
After World War II.
Yes, yes.
But I'm just saying, as far as the portion of World War I goes, there's that.
But number two, is your claim that the 1967 war was a defensive war and therefore it's okay?
Because look, 1967 war?
Yes.
Well, then I would say, yeah, the 1967 war was a defensive war because Israel made clear, and Egypt understood this, that closing the straits was an existential threat to Israel.
Okay, well, Menachem Begin himself said that it was a war of choice and that we did not know for sure that the war was necessary.
We chose to launch that war.
Now, he goes on to defend it, of course, because Menachem Begin is a terrorist and he's fine with that.
And by the way, I don't say that as a pejorative term.
The guy was literally a self-described terrorist who committed many acts of terrorism.
But I'm sorry, pre-creation of Israel, not just the post-creation of Israel.
And he's the founder of the Likud Party.
But even like the hard, most hardcore Zionists like Ben Shapiro or Dennis Prager, they all refer to it as a preemptive war.
Look, I don't even necessarily...
Yeah, it was preemptive.
It was preemptive because Egypt announced that it was going to close the straits.
And Israel knew that if they did that and they didn't attack Egypt's air force while it was still on the ground, that Israel would be destroyed.
So they made a choice against an existential threat.
Okay, sorry.
So let's say they're justified.
By the way, put this in context, the 48 war.
They refused to sign it.
All of these eight nations refused to sign a peace agreement after 48 war, recognizing Israel's existence.
So that war essentially was continuing.
And it continued again.
There was another preemptive war by the Arabs alone, surprise war in 1973.
But what's the other side of that story?
Each one of those wars, after each one, Israel offered to return all of the lands that it had taken in exchange for peace.
And the Arabs refused consistently until 1978.
And Egypt finally and Jordan said, Egypt first, and then Jordan four years later said, okay, we will trade land for peace.
And they did it.
But the Palestinians have never done that.
Well, okay, again and again.
They've been offered the pre-67 borders in 2001 by Ehlud Barak and by Omar in 2008.
They were the return of all their land in exchange for peace.
And Mahmoud Abbas refused to utter the words that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish nation.
He would not say those words.
And in 2001, Yasser Arafat walked away from what, you know, Prince Bandar called heartbreaking concessions.
And you, listen, you're shaking your head because you have a different view of history.
But here's the thing, is if you read the article that Basama I did this week in Newsweek, who was the leading human rights activist in the West Bank, his chronicle of history is identical to what I just told you.
So, and he is an Arab Palestinian lover and activist.
And, you know, you can say, well, I have a different, you know, history and you and I can go back and forth on our different recountations of history for the next 10 hours.
It's not going to get anywhere.
So all I'd say to you is respect that my view of history is what I believe from extensive investigation that I believe is objective.
I read both sides.
But I'm sorry, but it's not.
No, but it's not.
You believe that you're, you know, your recant, your recounting of, of those, you know, peace agreements and why they fell apart.
I can show you chapter and verse about that supports my position on it.
And you can show me, you know, quotes from my Menachem Bagant at this point.
But this is like, but this is, but, but, sir, this is almost like if somebody was saying that, you know, because as we discussed last time we were on the podcast, the whole history of the run-up to this, this war in Ukraine.
And if somebody is just saying like, no, none of that's true.
NATO never encroached on Vladimir Putin.
They were never talking about bringing Ukraine into NATO.
It was just that Vladimir Putin wants to reconstruct the Soviet Union.
And they can say, well, I have my history and you have yours, but I'm sorry.
There's like, no, this, there's an objective reality to this.
I'm happy to be able to do that.
Well, look, I'll just go through a little bit.
And just very quickly to some of the stuff that you just said right there, right?
So there is obviously, and I don't know why I see this a lot.
Look, I'm not against giving the pro-Israeli side of this also.
But it just seems like we're, whenever I hear you talk about this, you're ignoring the whole other half of it.
Like just talking about how in 1948, these other Arab nations wouldn't agree to recognize Israel.
It's like, yeah, but why is that?
Like what happened throughout 1947 and 1948?
Look, the UN partition, the General Assembly in the United Nations had no authority to create nations.
They put a recommendation, a partition recommendation that gave the Zionists 56% of the land and the Palestinians 44% of the land.
And this was by no argument fair.
There is nobody who could possibly argue that either the Jewish population or the Jewish percentage of land owned justified them getting 56% of the land.
But the Jews immediately started violently evicting Palestinians out of their side of the partition.
And okay, where in 1948, when the other Arab nations finally invaded, almost none of the fighting was done on the Jewish side of the partition.
It was almost all done on the Palestinian side of that partition because the Zionists had already moved well beyond what the UN gave them.
And then after that, they took about 78% of the land.
And then after 67, they essentially took the rest.
Now, your point about Camp David, Camp David 1, that is, when you talk about Camp David in the late 1970s, I understand this is what all, and believe me, I'm Jewish.
I've grown up around this.
I'm so well versed in the pro-Israel point of view here.
But it's funny that people always go, look, Israel was happy to give land for peace.
And okay, that's one way to look at it.
Another way to look at it is that they got peace.
Sheath Underwear Sponsorship00:02:16
They've had peace with Egypt and Jordan ever since.
And so now, now to your later point about the idea that the Palestinians have had all of these offers and they always turn it down.
I know it makes for a great slogan.
You know, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity or we have no partner for peace or a people without land for a land without people.
The problem is all of these slogans are lies.
They're not true.
And I would highly recommend to everybody listening and to you, sir, personally, because I know you are a reader and you actually know this stuff, read Clayton Swisher's book, The Truth About Camp David.
This guy went around and spent three years interviewing everyone, everyone who was a part of those negotiations.
And the official story that Arafat just walked away and he had such a good offer, but he wouldn't take it is not true.
And all of the players involved admit this.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear, the underwear of legends.
And it's one of those legends.
I'd love to tell you about Sheath Underwear, which is by far the most comfortable underwear I've ever owned in my life.
The best pair of boxer briefs that you will ever put on your body.
You will get them at sheathunderwear.com.
Sheath Underwear has been a loyal sponsor of this show for over three years.
And I got to tell you, they sent me a couple pairs of underwear when they first signed up over three years ago.
I still own them.
I still wear them all the time.
And they're as comfortable as they were three years ago.
This is high quality boxer briefs.
You got to check them out.
And I'll tell you, a lot of independent voices like mine need sponsors.
And one of the loyal sponsors of this show has been Sheath Underwear.
So if you love what we do on this show, go support our sponsor, our loyal sponsor, sheathunderwear.com.
And in the process, get the most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you're ever going to own in your entire life.
Go check them out, sheathunderwear.com.
The promo code is problem20.
That will get you 20% off your next order.
One more time, sheathunderwear.com, promo code problem20 for 20% off your next order.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Expelling Indigenous Palestinians00:15:56
Look, Shlomo Bename, the Israeli foreign minister during the negotiations said, if I was a Palestinian, I never would have taken the deal we were offering them.
That's him.
That's their official side of the story.
And Yasser Arafat requested another summit and a series of summits afterward, and both the Americans and the Israelis denied them.
I mean, look, listen, this is Bill Clinton we're talking about, right?
This isn't like, you know, some perfect angel and all that stuff that we've agreed on with NATO expansion in Europe and how wrong Bill Clinton was for all of that.
He also got this one wrong.
So I'm not saying you have to like completely, you know, reinvent who you define yourself as, but it's just simply that, look, believe me, I'm Jewish.
I wish the Israeli side of this was just as true as it is.
So I could just take that position and I wouldn't have to have all the personal heartaches that I have.
The same way, everything you've gone through with the positions you've taken that have been very difficult personally and like within family, believe me, that's where I am with this position between Israel and Palestine.
But the reality is that even if you were right, even if you were right and they offered him everything, even though that doesn't sound right, that they offered him everything and they kept turning it down.
That offer, it's not Israel's to give.
What right does Israel have to decide whether the Palestinians get their own state or not?
It's not their decision to make.
They have no claim on this land.
The partition plan gave them 56% of the land.
They fought a war and they took 80% of the land.
And then in 67, they took 100% of it.
There is no argument, legal or moral, that Gaza or the West Bank belonged to Israel.
They shouldn't have to offer them a state of their own.
They have no right to deny them one.
Okay, let me just ask you before I respond to that, let me ask you something.
Would you be okay if Israel didn't exist as a Jewish state?
Well, I mean, I don't know exactly what you mean by that.
Like, what do you mean?
If Hamas overran Israel, which it says it wants to do, and returned it to Palestinian control, is that an outcome that would be acceptable to you?
No.
And specifically, what would happen to the Jewish state?
Do you think Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state?
Yes.
Okay.
Well, look, I mean, would you consider it a very, very bad outcome if Israel ceased to exist as a Jewish state?
Well, hold on.
But the problem, the reason why it's tough to answer that question is because let's say that they decided we're going to make all of like a one-state solution.
It's not a Jewish state anymore, but it was say a limited constitutional republic where everyone's rights are protected.
That I wouldn't have a problem with.
So if it just didn't call itself a Jewish state anymore, that I don't really care about.
If you're saying if all of the people of Israel were either murdered or forced to leave, yes, of course I'd have a problem with that.
In the same way that I can recognize what you, I mean, are you, do you support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state?
I think that that's fine.
I think that it's worth recognizing in the same way that we would probably recognize that it was not legitimate or just or moral what we did to the Native Americans to create our country.
However, it happened.
It's many generations ago.
People have built a life there for themselves, and we're not about to give the land back to the Native Americans, but we should make damn sure that any Native Americans that are still here have their natural rights protected.
So that's all I'm saying.
I'm not saying we're not going back to...
Aren't Jews actually the indigenous people of Palestine?
No, I think that's worth it.
They were there 2,700 years continuously.
Yeah, but no, prototypical Indigenous people.
Listen, I've represented American Indians 35 years in treaty negotiations and litigation to restore their rights to traditional lands.
And I would say that the Jews are the prototypical Indigenous group.
They've occupied the same land for 2,700 years, the same language, the same religion, the same culture, the same customs.
Don't they have a right to a Jewish state?
First of all, that's not true.
Hebrew was not spoken by any of the original Zionists.
They retaught themselves Hebrew because they wanted to go back.
These were European settlers.
And no, the idea that you can just go back to Ireland tomorrow, Bobby, and kick someone out of their home and say, hey, I'm the true Irishman who is here before all of you.
It's ridiculous to say you have some 2,000-year-old supernatural property right.
You believe Palestinians should be able to walk across the border and reclaim their land.
I never said that.
I never said that.
I said they get their land.
Gaza and the West Bank is theirs.
I'm not saying they can go back and reclaim Tel Aviv.
I'm saying that Gaza and the West Bank is theirs.
Okay, I just want to know where we disagree.
I think we agree on a lot of, I mean, listen, David, I think you and I agree on principles that the issues here are, you know, are really these clashing for narratives of history.
And what I would say to you, you know, and I've looked at this as an attorney, like I look at everything, I break it down in facts.
And so let me say a couple of things in response.
First of all, the birth certificate for Israel is as good as any nation in the world.
The pedigree, it was voted on by the United, by the League of Nations.
First of all, nobody, you know, the Ottoman Empire lost the war.
And you lose a war, there are consequences.
The Ottoman Empire ceased to exist.
The Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations said, okay, here's what we should do with the Ottoman Empire.
We should give it to its indigenous people to rule, carve it up, and give each indigenous group their own land to rule.
So then the empire is no longer ruling it.
Britain was given the Palestinian mandate to partition.
Now there are two races in Palestine, and one of them is Jewish and one of them is Arab.
There's actually Christians too, and the Christians were given their own country, which is Lebanon.
So that was carved out and of the Ottoman mandate.
Lebanon was given out, given to Christians.
Jordan, which was four-fifths of Palestine, four-fifths was given to the Palestinians and the Hashemites as a Islamic state, as an officially Muslim state.
Israel was created from a tiny, tiny sliver as a officially Jewish state.
Israel, by the way, there are 27 states in the region that all have official religions.
There's 41 countries in the world that have official religions.
There are Muslim countries, there are Buddhist countries, there are Hindu countries, there are Christian countries officially, and those countries all have rules that diminish the rights of minority religions.
Israel is one of 28 nations in the Mideast.
27 of those nations have an official religion.
Israel is the only country that doesn't.
Yeah, Israel's a Western country.
You're talking about third world countries.
Sure.
These just seem like talking points.
I'm not arguing any of that.
Well, no, because you're saying the state of Israel, you're questioning its existence and nobody does it.
No, no, Bobby, I feel like, listen, I feel like you're prepared to argue with somebody else.
And this is not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying, you can say.
No, you dragged us into this, David.
Come on.
No, I didn't say, I don't say, I don't have an issue with them being.
You made this foundational assertion, which is that Israel's birth was illegitimate.
No.
No, that's not what I said.
What I said was that Israel's birth involved forcibly kicking people out of their homes by the hundreds of thousands.
That's not, that's not.
It's a historical fact.
Hey, David, Pakistan was born the same year.
Yes, I grant you, I'm not even making that.
Okay, fine.
4 million people moved from Pakistan.
4 million people that moved from India.
Oh, you know, and that Greece and Turkey, the same thing happened.
Czechoslovakia.
This is the way of the world.
It's horrible, but it's the way of the world.
But listen.
And by the way, in November of this year, 176,000 Afghans were expelled from Pakistan.
Nobody didn't make a ripple.
They were legally there and they were just suddenly expelled.
It's horrible, but I'm not defending that.
In September, Azerbaijan emptied the Armenian state of Ardzak to 120,000 people.
Not a ripple in the news.
The only time people, you know, and by the way, during 1948, when 750,000 people left, Palestinians left Israel.
Why did they leave?
They left.
Many of them, because they were, many of them left because they had their villages ransacked and people were slaughtered and they were force marched out.
And then many others left because they had heard the rumors of what was going on in these other villages.
And then some of them left just because a war was breaking out and they wanted to flee and return to their homes later.
But do you deny that there was huge numbers of them who were violently evicted?
I think a small number of them were.
Let me give you my reasoning for that.
Okay.
There are no recordings.
There's no good historical record of any systematic effort by Israeli officials to expel Arabs from their land.
Yeah, but there's records of all of the Jewish militias doing it.
This is a Benny Johnson cop-out.
There's no official like directive.
By the way, this is also what Holocaust deniers say about the Holocaust.
You can't find the official order.
David, sorry, let me finish.
Sure.
There were certain villages like Lodz, which were emptied by Hagenah, which is, as you point out, a paramilitary group.
Most of the best historical records indicate that most of the Arabs left Israel because they were told to by the Arab League nations.
Now, because the Arab League nations, which were invited by the Palestinians to come in, invade and kill all the Jews, wanted to get the Arabs.
And defend them so they could commit a genocide.
Now, look, this is a quote from the foreign minister at that time, Khalid al-Adzam of Syria, who was part of those nations.
Since 1948, he says, we have been demanding the return of the refugees.
While it is we who made them leave, we brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees by calling on them, pleading with them to leave their lands.
We ordered their departure.
We have accustomed them now to begging.
We have participated in lowering their moral and social level.
Then we exploited them in executing crimes, murder, arson, throwing bombs upon men, women, and children, all this in service to political purpose.
This is Mahmoud Abbas, okay, who is the current prime minister of the Palestinian Authority.
He accused the Arab armies of having abandoned the Palestinians after they, quote, forced them to immigrate, to leave their homeland, and to throw them into prisons and slums in which similar to those in which the Jews used to live.
I can show you hundreds of Arab newspapers ordering the people of Palestine to leave so that the Jews could be exterminated.
Now, many Palestinians did not.
The ones that did not became citizens of Israel.
Ones who left are not citizens of Israel.
There are Arab countries around Israel that provoke them to leave, which are 600 times the area of Israel.
At the same time, those eight Arab nations expelled a million Jews a million.
They ethically cleansed their populations and that's horrible.
Right, those Jews were taken in and that's wrong to this tiny little nation.
Israel took them all in.
Yeah, of course, because they want the Jewish information.
The Arab nations, who are dealing with their refugee crisis of their creating, refused to take in the Palestinians.
So why are we blaming Israel?
Well, I don't know.
It seems like and I don't exactly get this it seems like you're quite comfortable to say it's horrible when Jews were expelled from Arab nations, but somehow it's not horrible when the Jews expelled the Arabs and you can say it's all because other hey David, listen thing.
Bad things happen in war, everything's horrible.
Yeah, but why is it always an excuse?
Why isn't it always an excuse?
Fine, bad things happen in war.
Why do we have to support it?
Why does America have to pay for it?
Can I get one presidential candidate who doesn't want to support a foreign war?
Can I get one presidential candidate who will say, six months without war?
David, you already said that you don't believe that those Palestinians or their offspring have a right to return.
You just said that to me.
So I no, I didn't say I didn't say that I think I it would be nice if, if some of them were allowed to, but I don't think that's really what the battle's over.
I think what the battle is over is the occupation since 1967, the blockade of Gaza since 2006, and I think what the what the battle is really over right now is what Israel is doing to Gaza, absolutely leveling the place and all the while bragging about how they want to um um okay, I don't know they want to move the population.
Well, Netanyahu is going and I know you can say, you're a critic of Netanyahu but you support Israel, but at the same time, it's like the guy is the longest serving prime minister and the current prime minister of the country.
So if you're supporting the country, you kind of are supporting, at least to some degree, what he's doing right now and it is unconscionable.
It is the the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world right now and the idea that you, who are supposed to be the Anti-neocon, anti-war presidential candidate, are immediately on october 7th, before we even had an investigation before we even knew what happened there.
You immediately say what?
Basically, you said everything they say about Ukraine.
You said it was an unprovoked attack which like, come on, give me a break, an attack from Gaza against Israel is unprovoked.
Poisoning Gaza With Salt Water00:15:08
And then you said we have to support them in whatever it takes.
Well look sir, we're watching it right now.
This is whatever it takes.
Just women and children dying under rubble every day.
You can't go on social media without seeing another video of some baby dying.
This is what we're supposed.
After the last 20 years of disastrous wars, we got to support the next one.
I mean sir, this is, this is like a biblical level of evil.
And and why?
Why should we, as Americans, have to fund this?
Why should we have to give them a blank check?
I'm sorry, it's been long enough.
A lot of different issues, and can I now resolve?
Sure yeah sure, okay.
First of all, the idea that Israel created the deprivation in Gaza is is nonsense.
Israel left Gaza in 2006.
It doesn't occupy Gaza, there is no occupation.
It left them and said, you know?
And it removed all the settlers.
So when Israel, you know, wants to make peace, it has shown its willingness to remove all the settlers.
It even removed the graves of Jews who were there.
So there's no Jews left in Gaza.
It removed all the IDF from Gaza and it gave Gaza.
And not only that, it gave them...
It put them on the border.
Let me just finish.
Sure.
Israel offered to rebuild for free the port of Gaza, to make it the Singapore of the West.
So Gaza should be one of the richest nations in the Mediterranean.
It has miles of white sand beaches.
It's not a desert.
It's an oasis.
That's why the Philistines, who were from Greece, colonized it, because it had rich agricultural lands.
The Israelis had built a very, very extensive irrigation system to irrigate that land.
They had put out of business all the illegal wells that were threatening the water table with saltwater infiltration.
And they built 4,000 hot houses, state-of-the-art hothouses, and then donated them to the people of Gaza when they left as a gift to make Gaza completely food self-sufficient.
They then, the international aid community, then poured in an unprecedented tsunami of cash to the people of Gaza.
After World War II, we rebuilt Germany.
We rebuilt all of the 17 nations of Europe with the Marshall Plan.
We gave the people of Europe $48 per capita apiece.
That's about $623 in $2023.
We've given to Gaza, the international aid community, $8,600, so 13 times what we spent to rebuild Europe.
And what's happened?
Aza, as you say, is an open-air prison with 47% unemployment.
Why is that?
Is that the fault of Israel?
No, it's the fault of Hamas, which has taken that money, stolen it for its leaders.
Ismail Hainiyah, who is the head of Hamas, according to Forbes, has a net worth of $5 billion.
Yazar Arafat died a billionaire.
His wife gets a $22 million annual subsidy from the Palestinian Authority.
Mahmoud Abbas, the current head of the Palestinian Authority, is a billionaire.
His sons have $750 million.
The top three guys at Hamas have a collective net worth of $11 billion.
So this is a kleptocracy.
They're stealing from their people.
And then the rest of that money, instead of building an economy, an agricultural system, making it a center for commerce, for peace, for prosperity for their people, instead, they've used that money to build an underground city, 300 miles of tunnels, to bring in weapons, rockets, etc.
They have torn up the irrigation system that made it agriculturally completely self-sufficient.
they tore up hundreds of miles of pipes and used those pipes to make rockets with they ended the regulation of the wells so that now anybody can build a well and the it has poisoned all the agricultural lands of gaza with salt water so this is what hamas has done to it hurt people to the people okay but i mean look i say they need to be eliminated and then they raise each generation The question is,
is nobody finish with the biggest aspiration that they can have to kill a Jew.
They make kiddie suicide fences.
They indoctrinate them from kindergarten.
This is a, you know, and Israel did not put up the barriers until they started.
There was an open border there for many, many years throughout the 70s.
Israel only put up the wall when commandos started coming over and butchering Israelis.
What other people?
So you're talking about back when, back when the IDF was occupying Gaza, you're saying they didn't have the wall up yet.
Okay.
The asymmetry here.
But hold on.
You're talking.
No, because you're blaming that Israel for creating an open-air prison.
And that's baloney.
It is total baloney.
Listen, there's an asymmetry here because you're talking to me about how bad Hamas is.
And like, yes, I agree.
Hamas is a very bad organization, but I'm also not standing here arguing that Hamas is doing a great job and that we, America, better fund Hamas than some aggression.
Hold on.
I made an assertion.
No, no, no.
I'll go back to this.
It's not.
But let's just agree.
It's not an assertion.
It is not true.
No.
What assertion have I made that's not true?
Listen.
Israel turned Gaza into an open-air prison.
No, I'm not saying they turn.
Yes, it is.
And look, the reason why international human...
Why don't you blame Egypt?
Egypt has a border with if they were.
I do.
I blame Egypt too.
I've never heard you blame Egypt.
All right, well, you just heard me.
You just heard me right here.
Okay.
Well, you just heard me.
That's fun that you've never heard me.
I've been highly critical of Egypt, and I think we should cut off foreign aid to them as well.
But the fact is that I am not sitting here arguing that we ought to support Hamas financially in their aggressive war towards the people of Israel.
But you are arguing that we ought to financially support Israel in their war against the people of Gaza.
So yes, the reason why international human rights groups like Human Rights Watch, like Amnesty International, said that the occupation never ended in 2005 is because as Sheldon Richmond put it, essentially they had all of the prison guards leave the prison and surround the prison.
And then they went, look, we freed all the people in the prison.
David, they can't surround the prison.
They don't own the land around.
Okay, so nine-tenths.
So nine-tenths of the prison.
Sorry.
My mistake.
They control nine-tenths of the borders around it.
They control the sea space.
They control the airspace.
They control the water.
They control the electricity.
They control all of the telecommunications.
I mean, like, I just don't understand why you...
David, let's go through each one of those.
Why does Israel control the water?
They control the water because there's plenty of water in Gaza and they have diesel plants all over Gaza.
So they got plenty of water.
Why does Israel control the water?
It doesn't control the water.
It has 9% of the water, which it gives as a gift.
Right.
So Bobby, very quickly, because I don't want to go too long here.
If they don't control the water, how was it on October 8th they turned the water off?
They turned their part of the water off.
Hamas turned most 90% of the water off.
Yeah, they can't turn the water off, David.
The water is locally manufactured in desal plants.
Israel has no control over there.
Hamas turned them off because Hamas didn't know.
Hamas wanted to use the fuel, the million liters of fuel that they have in their tunnels to send rockets onto Israel rather than power their diesel plant and give water to their people.
They did the same thing.
They hoarded the food.
They stopped their people from getting international aid.
Israel was making that aid available to them and they refused to give it to me.
Israel just said, We're not going to send it to the parts where we're fighting and no nation in the world would do that, David.
And have you ever heard of a country that while they are fighting and there's rockets being fired over their head at their own people, that they would go in and feed the warriors who are fighting against them?
Who would do that?
I don't know, but you know, I've never, I haven't heard of a Western country in modern times who's occupied territory since 1967 either.
I mean, I don't know what is the example that is that.
David, yes, rockets were fired back at you from that area.
Hey, David, okay, let's look at this history.
In 1948, Israel won Gaza.
They occupied it.
And what did they do?
At the end of the war, they gave it back to Egypt.
Give it to Egypt.
And Egypt used Gaza to attack Israel with.
So they were sending Mujahideen over from Gaza to make commando attacks on Israel.
So Israel took Gaza again.
They had a right under international law because it was used strategically against them to annex it.
Did they?
No.
They said, we don't want it.
They tried to give it back to Egypt.
And in 1973, Egypt, they signed the Camp David Accords and Egypt and Israel again said, you can have Gaza.
We'll give it to you.
And Egypt said, no, we'll take the Sinai.
We don't want Gaza.
It's your problem.
Again and again, Israel has tried to return Gaza.
And then 2005, it said, we're going to walk out.
We're going to give them the keys.
We don't want it.
Then what did they do?
Gaza started Hamas fires 30,000 missiles, 2,000 missiles a year onto civilian targets in Egypt.
There's a million Israeli families whose children were raised in bomb shelters with nobody, you know, nobody, nobody in the international community saying, oh, you know, these poor kids who have PTSD, nobody talked about that.
Oh, Israel did something no country in the world has ever done.
If any other country, if Egypt declared, or if Mexico declared war on us, if a Mexican government took control of Mexico, reclaimed Texas, and then fired rockets onto San Antonio and Houston, how long, how many would they have to fire before we went in there and removed them?
Maybe two.
They absorbed 2,000 a year.
And what did the Israelis do?
Because they didn't want to go into Gaza.
They spent hundreds of billions of dollars.
And this is where our money goes.
Building the iron dome.
Every Gaza rocket that comes across costs Hamas $800 to manufacture and fire.
Israel pays $40,000 to shoot them down.
And Israel bore at enormous cost because it did not want to go into Gaza.
You know, to say that Israel's been, you know, hatching these ulterior plans to go into Gaza is just completely controversial.
But why is it, why is it, sir, when you're retelling this history, which I don't even have a problem with a lot of the stuff that you're saying, it is true that they fire these rockets into Israel.
But why is it that you never mentioned that during this time also, Israel has been regularly mowing the grass?
Israel has been regularly launching bombing campaigns against Gaza.
Because you paint this picture.
Let me just talk a little bit here too, because I'm listening to you, but you paint this picture as if there's Israel sitting here and they're being bombarded by these Palestinians when in reality, Palestinian have been dying 10 to 1 at least compared to the Israelis.
It's the Israelis have also been going on massive bombing campaigns.
I mean, look, you had protests.
I'm on the protest in 2008.
I'm against Hamas.
And Hamas is firing the rockets.
And Israel has gone in when too many rockets are coming over and they become intolerable.
Israel goes in and removes them.
And that's what's called mowing the grass.
What other nation, David?
No, that's not.
Just tell me one nation in the world.
One nation that would not do that.
One nation that would absorb 2,000 rockets a year from an enemy.
Yes.
Okay.
Again, sir.
But again, so tell me what nation or what group of people would stand being occupied since 1967.
Okay, is the West Bank occupied?
Yeah, the West Bank.
And you know why the West Bank is occupied?
It's also justified, right?
Oh, no.
The West Bank is not occupied to protect Israel.
Israel, the West Bank is occupied to protect the Palestinian Authority.
Because if the Israelis left the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas would be overthrown overnight.
And who would be in charge of the West Bank?
Hamas.
That's an acceptable outcome.
No, but I don't think the status quo is an acceptable outcome either.
That's why, okay, I think we both agree now.
Neither of them are acceptable outcomes.
So how do we get to an acceptable outcome?
That's what I think you and I can agree on.
Well, it's sure not.
It's sure not.
It's sure not this war that you're supporting, sir.
This sure ain't the way.
This is the road to disaster.
Let's talk about that, David.
What are your ideas for how you get the hostages back?
Okay, well, I think, first off, if your goal is getting the hostages, the hostages back, my God, Israel has destroyed 50% or something, 60% of the residential buildings there.
It's quite possible that the hostages have been killed already by this war.
So if you wanted to get the hostages back, what you should have done is start negotiating.
That would have been the plan.
And in fact, they did get some of the hostages back by negotiating.
They've gotten none of them back by dropping these bombs.
And they've likely killed a whole bunch of them.
That's the truth.
What do you think the negotiation?
What does Hamas want?
Hamas has said what it wants is, you know, the end of Israel.
Well, I mean, at different times, they've said that.
At certain points, they've also said that they would accept 1967 borders.
So it would have been great if Israel had taken them up on that when they said it.
Okay, listen.
Let me just ask you, let me ask you this.
2008 and 2001, and they refused.
Rejecting Military Options Only00:16:37
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Z-Biotics.
Z-Biotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic.
It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking.
So here's how it works.
When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut.
It's this byproduct and not dehydration that's to blame for your rough next morning.
Z-Biotics produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down.
It's designed to work like your liver, but in your gut where you need it most.
Just remember to drink Z-Biotics before drinking alcohol, drink responsibly, and get a good night's sleep to feel your best tomorrow.
Give Z-Biotics a try for yourself.
Go to zbiotics.com slash P-O-T-P.
That will get you 15% off your first order when you use the code P-O-T-P at checkout.
Z-Biotics is backed with a 100% money-back guarantee.
So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money.
No questions asked.
Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash P-O-T-P and use the promo code P-O-T-P at checkout for 15% off.
And thanks to ZBiotics for supporting this episode.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Do you, sir, do you have, I don't agree with that, but okay, do you have concerns about the level of Israeli influence in our politics here in the United States of America?
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know.
I just, I'm not, you know, I'm not a politician in political office, so I don't see much of that.
So you don't think like, so, so in after 9-11.
Listen, I think, listen, I think everybody has, you know, that there are so many malevolent influences on Capitol Hill.
And they include many nations and they include many, you know, corporate entities.
Oh, and I, you know, I want to have a real democracy in our country where you get money out of politics and the influence out of politics.
That's what I would like and have publicly funded elections.
Oh, I don't think anybody, but do I think the Israelis have more influence than others?
I, David, I believe in the, you know, in supporting Israel that it's important to the United States.
And you and I can disagree on that.
I believe, and I believe our aid to Israel, the $4 billion a year is designed to keep the peace over there.
Certainly.
You've been such a critic and such an effective critic.
You've been such an effective critic of the neoconservatives.
I am a critic of the neoconservatives.
Yes, I know.
That's what I just said.
But you know that these two issues are so like intertwined.
And I know you know that because I know you know this stuff.
But look, the report.
David, again, I would, you know, I would vote for World War II.
I would not vote for any other war.
The neocons vote for every war I'm voting for this?
I led the opposition to the Afghan war, to the Iraq war, to Panama.
Okay, fine.
But I was all I'm saying.
Be Vietnam.
So I, you know, all these wars, but I'm just saying I don't want to live in a world where I think it would be bad for our country.
It would be bad for the world to eliminate the only democracy in the Mid East.
Well, I mean, yeah, they're not really a democracy if you include the West Bank in there, are they?
I mean, you can say they're not occupying.
Israel wants to give the West Bank back.
All they're asking for is a recognition which no Palestinian official has ever made.
Fine.
Recognition that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.
That's all they wanted.
Okay.
Well, you add in a Jewish state.
Yasser Arafat recognized the right to exist under 1967.
As a Jewish state.
Oh, now it has to be said as a Jewish state too.
Okay, fine.
Okay, fine.
Okay.
So if we recognize, if you want to say the danger of Israel not existing, I think actually the current course, which you've pledged to support as president, is probably the biggest risk to Israel not existing.
But the point I was making before, the point I was making before, let me just finish.
Let me just finish my point and then I'll give you the last word.
Okay.
The point I was making before is that, look, you talk about being a sharp critic of these neoconservatives.
And if you go read the letter, A Clean Break, which was written by Richard Pearl and David Wormsar.
Okay.
And this is what outlined in 1996, the desire to fight the war in Iraq.
And you know who that was written to, right?
It wasn't written at that point.
was a PNAC document.
Well, no, but specifically a clean break was written to Benjamin Netanyahu.
This is, they're very much all involved.
And look, sir.
Why are you trying to connect me to Benjamin Netanyahu?
I'm not trying to connect you.
I don't want to fund their war.
So of course I have to bring up who he is.
I'm saying Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who you are saying, who you said as president, you will support his war until the end, give him everything they need.
He has been since the 1990s lying to the American people, saying Iran is five years away from developing a nuclear weapon.
Do you not have any misgivings about supporting someone in a foreign government who is lying the American people into a war, which he wants us to fight, not them?
It's not Israel who's going to be fighting a war with Iran.
It's the young men in our country.
Okay, let me just, before we, before we end, let me clarify a couple of things.
One is, I don't like Benjamin Netanyahu.
I don't like the NEACONS.
I don't want to be lumped in with them.
There's 80% of the Israeli public is now against Netanyahu.
90% of them support the action in Gaza as necessary to eliminate Hamas.
Now, do I think that the action in Gaza could end up in the destruction of Israel, lead to a chain of events that ended up in the destruction of Israel?
Do I worry about that?
Yes.
Do I worry that it could end up in a chain of events that could walk the world into World War III?
Yes.
I absolutely believe that.
Do I believe that it is a good choice?
No.
Do I believe that it is the best option available?
Yes.
Because I think that kicking this down the road again, because the now, the demonstration of strength that Hamas showed on October 7th, where 3,000 air-sea land with rockets, backpack missile systems, and the equipment that they're now receiving from Iran and North Korea makes them a existential threat to Israel.
And when they come back the next time, they're perfectly willing to have a ceasefire, of course.
And they'll use that to rearm.
They're going to increase their prestige around the world because the world admires them for that October 7th attack.
And if you ask me, what I would have done as president, it's not what would have happened now.
What I would have done is I would have, first of all, I'd end the Ukraine war so that we can talk directly to Putin.
I bring Xi in, I bring Putin in, I bring the CC in from Egypt, I bring Erdogan in from Turkey.
And I'd say this war is not in any of our interests.
The Chinese and the Russians don't want to, you know, they don't want fundamentalist Islam conquering the Mideast and controlling the oil fields.
They don't want that ultimately.
We have a community of interests.
If the Security Council the day after October 7th, on October 8th, had condemned Hamas and had demanded the prosecution of their leadership for war crimes.
And if we then had pressured Qatar to arrest Ismail Hainea and Erdogan to arrest the leaders that are hiding in Ankra and brought them up to the world court, then I think we'd be in a different world.
What we did instead is we isolated Israel and we left them alone to solve the problem.
And the only option they have, Dave, for solving this problem is very limited military option.
And it would be my job as president to make sure this never happened, make sure that they had other options rather than the military.
But we don't have anybody in the White House today who, you know, who understands even how to begin that process.
They're still living in a bipolar world where, you know, the America is a superpower.
Everybody's got to do what we say.
And they will not go and reach out to other leaders and say, let's convene and solve this problem together in ways where we can find common ground with each other.
And I think that that is necessary now.
And that, you know, it is tragic where we are.
But I don't.
And the reason I posted that post on October 7th, because I knew what was going to happen.
I knew the world was going to turn against Israel immediately.
And that, you know, and that even the Biden administration would.
And that Israel needed somebody so that it got in the world so it does not feel isolated.
So that feels there's other options other than military options.
I believe that our military aid to Israel actually advances the cause of peace.
It allows them to maintain the Iron Dome, which gives them the option of not going to war.
We were able to use our military donations to them, which by the way are not donations, as you know, they come back here.
100% of it comes back here to U.S. weapons manufacturers.
But I'm not saying that's a good thing.
They're wonderful.
I'm just saying that that's what it is.
But we were able to leverage that aid to Israel to stop them from going into Lebanon after Hezbollah, to stop Netanyahu from doing that.
And I think that's a good use of that power.
Agreed.
I think that the, you know, U.S. now, look, I want to withdraw.
There's 800 bases abroad.
I want to withdraw from 90% of them.
But the last ones that I would leave are that, you know, what I've always said, that my job as president is going to be arm America to the teeth around its borders, make ourselves too expensive to ever invade.
And then to, but to protect neutral areas, have enough strike force, protect neutral areas like the Antarctic, and to protect the sea lanes, and to have strike force for really bad behavior in two theaters at the same time.
And that's what, and that'll bring us down to military expenditures about less than 500 billion a year.
We can do that.
But I would not immediately withdraw from America's traditional role of protecting the open sea lanes.
I don't think that that's a good idea for our country and particularly to do it suddenly.
I think we can feel our way through that, but it has to be done with the cooperation, with an orderly transition.
I'll tell you something, because you and I often quote John Quincy Adams, his urging that we go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
So all of the framers believed in that, that America would be destroyed by getting in military entanglements abroad.
But when the Barbary pirates started attacking American shipping, Jefferson, who was the most adamant of all the framers against the U.S. Navy, sent an emissary over there to say, why are you doing this?
We are anti-colonial nation.
We're in the same position as you are.
And the prince told them, we don't care.
We're just going to take all your shipping because we want the money.
Jefferson then authorized the creation of a navy and we went over there.
The Marines went over there and bombarded Tripoli and there was never a capture of an American ship again.
And that set the president of American foreign policy that, you know, the key U.S. foreign policy, the fulcrum to U.S. foreign policy would be keeping open the sea lanes.
And I, you know, I would not walk away casually or without considering every aspect of what would happen if we walked away from that obligation.
Okay, seriously, fair enough on the shipping lands.
Is that international objective of keeping open the sea lanes, particularly the Suez Canal?
Listen, I'm not going to argue with you about keeping open the shipping lanes.
I'm just going to argue about what Israel is doing to the people of the Gaza.
Can I just say a couple quick notes about the Barbary Wars that are very interesting?
You know, traditionally, the French and the British, they just paid him off.
That was their way of dealing with the Barbary pirates.
Just pay him the money.
And they advised Jefferson.
They're like, just pay him.
But Jefferson had his principles and he's Thomas Jefferson.
So he's like, no man has a right to extort money from me.
So he built up the Navy and he went over there and he fought this war against them.
And the cost was so much greater than it would have been to just pay them off.
And number two, if you want to talk about precedents that were set during the Barbary Wars, Thomas Jefferson launched the first military action without a declaration of war from the Congress.
And it was Thomas Jefferson.
It was the author of the Declaration of Independence who did it.
And so I could also argue there were some pretty bad historical precedents set by that.
Listen, the argument about the shipping lanes aside, sir.
I don't think this is going to age well.
I just think that there's a reason why the entire world is turning on Israel right now.
And for the record, I don't, I love Israel.
I'm not against Israel.
I'm Jewish.
I have a lot of family connections to Israel.
I think Israel is a cool country and they've pulled off something amazing.
They've done something really incredible.
They created a country that's a great place to live.
And the truth is that if you are an Arab in the Middle East, the best place to live is in Israel, as long as you're a citizen.
The best place to live is not in Palestine.
But in the same way that America is a great country and that America is a way better place to live than Saddam Hussein's Iraq, that doesn't mean what we did to Iraq was okay.
And that doesn't mean that we weren't the bad guys in this fight.
And I think you've...
You're not putting me in that bucket, I hope, because I know, I know you don't support the war in Iraq.
I'm just saying you're so great on Iraq and you're so great on Ukraine and you're so great on the vaccine.
Why can't you just be great on this too, Bobby?
That's what I'm saying to you.
Because I don't, it doesn't make sense to me.
I just think it's wrong.
But, you know, just as a footnote, I know you agree with me on this.
I think that Gaza happened because as a direct result of us overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
And it allowed, you know, the, I mean, we overthrew him and not realizing that he was keeping in check the Shia majority in Iraq.
And the result was that, and I want to say one other thing because of what happened in Turkey, because I think you and I, I mean, what happened in Jordan this week, because I think you and I will agree on this.
When, you know, we had funded Saddam Hussein and supported him in his war against Iran, which killed a million people, but he was keeping, he was the primary bulwark against Iranian expansion in the region.
He was a key ally of ours.
And Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush gave him permission to go into Kuwait again because they were sucking his oil out from under his fields.
Creating ISIS Through War00:02:15
And he said, he went over there and said, I'm going to go in there.
And they said, okay.
And then he went in there and they said, oh, we're horrified.
We got to go to war against them.
We destroyed him and we created ISIS.
ISIS was the Sunnis who were with Saddam, who were fighting the Shiitis and now are thrown out of their own country.
So we now have this, I think it is a catastrophic tactical decision.
We've put these bases in Syria and Iraq.
Iraq wants us out.
The parliament voted us to get out.
And we threatened that if they make us leave, that we will not give them the dollars that were paid by their oil money that are being held by the Fed.
And then we had to replace Saddam Hussein as the bulwark with U.S. military.
So we put these soldiers in harm's way in the middle of the desert along the Syrian border.
Syria is another vassal state of Iran where they're vulnerable to these drones attacks.
And it's just a matter of time, of course, before they get killed.
We should not be in there.
We should bases.
We should eliminate them from the area.
We should withdraw to the bases, the traditional historic bases where we're welcome, where the nations want us in there, and we can protect the sea lanes from there.
And by the way, ISIS is now the biggest enemy in the region to Iran.
ISIS killed 100 Iranians two weeks ago.
And we claim that the reason we have that base there is to fight ISIS.
So, you know, it is insane what we're doing there.
That is somewhere where we can certainly find an area of agreement, get all of our troops out of those regions where they never should have been before.
I would just take it one step further and do what Colin Powell wanted to do after 9-11, what Michael Schormer, the CIA head of the bin Laden unit said, which is that also we got to get out of supporting Israel, what they do to the Palestinians.
But we'll agree to disagree on that.
Agreeing On Troop Withdrawal00:01:56
Listen, sir, I will say I very much respect you coming on to go back and forth with me.
And I do appreciate that very much.
So please let people know where they can support you on the campaign trail and anything else that you want to mention to my listeners.
Yeah, I mean, people can come.
I got to get a million signatures, kennedy24.com.
And David, I really, I enjoy talking with you.
I respect you.
I know that you believe in what you say.
You're very well researched.
You're one of the best informed people that I know of.
You make the best defense of this that any of anybody that I've ever heard of your position.
I think you're wrong on it.
I respect you.
I respect you for holding that position.
And I know that it's heartfelt.
And for me, it is not an easy decision.
I believe I'm on the right side of it, but I also see the jeopardy of it.
I see the peril.
And I don't like being in the same camp on this particular issue with people like Netanyahu and the Niacons.
I don't like that at all.
But I think ultimately, I'm, you know, my position is the correct one.
But, you know, it's not an easy one because, you know, we could be walking into World War III.
Anyway, thank you for having me on.
And thank you for having this kind of congenial discussion, which is what we all ought to be doing everywhere across our country, being able to have well-informed talks about, you know, difficult issues and still be able to love each other as Americans.
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
So yeah, amen to that.
And anytime you want to, I appreciate the kind words.