Will Chamberlain and Nicholas Fuentes debate whether or not to end all U.S. military assistance to the State of Israel. Will Chamberlain's audio is not available yet, but you can listen to the full debate live on Periscope here. You can also join the conversation by using the hashtag , and find us on and to join in on the conversation as well. If you like what you hear here, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and we'll read out your comments on the next episode! Thank you so much for being a part of this movement, and thank you to everyone who has been supporting this movement and supporting us! We can't wait to do it again! Tweet Me! if you have any thoughts or opinions on the topic, tweet me or send us your voice messages! and we will get them on the show! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - Should the United States end all military aid to Israel? 4:30 - What is the correct course of action? 5:00 6:40 - What should we do? 7:15 - Should we continue to continue to provide military assistance? 8:20 - How should we evaluate the situation? 9:15 10:40 11:00- What is America First? 12:30- Is Israel better or Israel better? 13:15- What are we supposed to do with the money? 14:30 15: Does Israel deserve our support? 16:40- Should we pay the money we get back? 17:20- Does Israel pay the debts we should we pay for it? 18:20 19:30 Does Israel get to keep the money it gets back from us? 21:30 Is Israel get any more money back from the money that we receive from the US? 22:00 | What is our country better than Israel should we give back to us in return for our taxes? 23: Should we have a say in what we should get back from our taxes, or do we have to pay for our debts? 26:40 | Is Israel pay our debts through the 17th Amendment to pay the taxes we are supposed to get it back through the federal government? 27:30 | What s our country should we have the right to a tax?
Transcript
Transcripts from "America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. You can also explore and interact with the transcripts here.
00:21:13.000Now, folks, it's been a pretty contentious build-up to this debate.
00:21:18.000There's been a lot of hype, there's been a lot of animosity, but me and Will have been talking for the past half hour and we have agreed, we have come to a mutual understanding.
00:21:28.000A mutual respect that this will be a substantive debate about the issue.
00:21:32.000So we will try our best to refrain from personal attacks, from ad hominem, all the Floyd Mayweather, Conor McGregor stuff is over, and we finally commence our debate over the question, should the United States end all United States foreign aid to the state of Israel?
00:23:20.000Now my central thesis, what I'm arguing tonight, the thesis that I am arguing is that the United States should end all military aid to the State of Israel, and the central reason why is that we must return to putting America first.
00:23:33.000Now when we ask ourselves why the United States should end all military assistance to Israel,
00:23:38.000It's important that we establish a standard for how we're supposed to judge whether or not military aid is a good thing or a bad thing, whether or not we should keep it going or we should refuse it.
00:23:47.000And so I will begin with the late, great Constitution of the United States of America that we will consult for.
00:23:55.000All enumerated powers by the federal government, which includes dispersing tax dollars to foreign nations.
00:24:01.000Now, the only clause which permits in the U.S.
00:24:04.000Constitution the disbursement of foreign aid, U.S.
00:24:07.000tax money, to foreign nations is Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which deals with the powers of the Congress.
00:24:14.000Article 1, Section 8 reads, the Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises.
00:24:21.000To pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.
00:24:25.000Now that is the only reason why that is the only constitutional power that is enumerated that is reserved for the federal government for how they are able to collect federal tax money through the 17th amendment through the income tax and disperse it to foreign nations which among these are Israel.
00:24:40.000Now, when we evaluate whether or not we should continue United States military aid to Israel, we have to evaluate, does Israel sufficiently provide for the common defense to warrant U.S.
00:24:50.000tax money being appropriated by the House of Representatives to be spent on Israel?
00:25:05.000During the back and forth, but the primary reasons is that Israel is almost solely and exclusively responsible for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.
00:25:14.000We talk about Iran, we talk about Syria, we talk about Libya, and most famously Iraq acquiring nuclear weapons.
00:25:20.000We forget that Israel was the first nation to acquire nuclear weapons almost 50 years ago.
00:25:26.000The second reason is that Israel's behavior as an ally of the United States, the vaunted closest ally, is not consistent with the claim that there is any friendship, there is any trust, there is any advantage gained by dealing with such a rogue state that is Israel.
00:25:40.000We can look at events such as the Levon Affair.
00:26:13.000Will will argue along the same vein as those that sold us Iraq, along the same vein as those that sold us Afghanistan, the same vein that sold us the TPP and the disastrous NAFTA trade deals of putting America second or last to foreign interests.
00:29:21.000Third, it would create massive economic disruption.
00:29:24.000Oil prices would skyrocket, shipping in the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf would be compromised.
00:29:28.000And that would be extraordinarily expensive to the United States, far more expensive than the $4 billion a year that would cost to maintain military aid.
00:29:34.000Four, if there was a major Middle Eastern war, there's a high chance that the United States would intervene in that war, in which case that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and potentially thousands of lives of U.S.
00:30:08.000Without Israel, we would either have to send carriers in order to maintain operations, or simply not conduct operations at all, in which case jihadists would be able to conduct planned attacks without harassment.
00:30:16.000That would mean to dead American lives.
00:30:19.000Additionally, there are lost American jobs.
00:30:21.000Under the American aid package, Israel is required to spend all of the $4 billion it accrues
00:30:26.000On, uh, you know, on in America, because it has to buy American military equipment.
00:30:30.000That means if you end military in Israel, you're losing United States jobs and losing United States manufacturing, but no commensurate gain.
00:30:36.000Third, you lose intelligence cooperation.
00:30:38.000citizens can actually operate in the human intelligence level within the Middle East.
00:30:41.000On the other hand, Israel has the Druze minority and a variety of other people who can go into the various difficult Middle East places and provide incredibly crucial human intelligence.
00:30:49.000For example, there's been a lot of rumors that Israel was able to place a source within
00:30:53.000Um, ISIS, and that's one of the reasons we- only reasons we had human intelligence.
00:30:56.000Human intelligence saves American lives.
00:31:03.000You say that it should come America first.
00:31:04.000Every argument I've made so far operates under a thesis that says even if you prioritize America over other reasons, it's still a reason to maintain that $4 billion in aid.
00:31:12.000Additionally, you list the Constitution's spending power.
00:31:14.000General welfare has been construed extraordinarily broadly by the Supreme Court, which means that the general welfare clause is met by everything.
00:31:20.000Indeed, again, if a major war occurs that the United States participates in,
00:31:23.000It's easy to see that spending four billion dollars serves the general welfare in this instance.
00:31:27.000You next say that Israel is not a particularly good ally.
00:31:29.000We'll get into more detail on this later because you didn't provide it.
00:31:31.000You say first that Israel is solely responsible for proliferation in the region.
00:31:35.000Maybe they wouldn't have to proliferate if all the neighboring countries didn't try and invade them and wipe them off the face of the earth every so often.
00:31:40.000Second, you say their behavior is inconsistent with being friends.
00:31:42.000You cite Le Bon Affair and various histories of espionage.
00:32:33.000All right, so now the majority of this counter-argument is built upon the assumption that withdrawing four billion dollars a year, and probably a lot more depending on how you look at what constitutes military aid, would result in an all-out war in the Middle East.
00:32:50.000He lists three reasons for why this might precipitate a Middle Eastern war of all against all in a very Hobbesian fashion.
00:32:57.000His first argument is that this would affect the regional balance of power.
00:33:01.000Now it's true that we give four billion dollars a year to Israel, but that number...
00:33:05.000That number is, of course, very small.
00:33:07.000Israel has appropriated more than five times that for their military budget, and their military budget is only 15% of their entire budget.
00:33:14.000So if they're spending 15% of their entire budget, and our assistance for their military is only a fifth of that 15%, of course, they could supplant that.
00:33:25.000Additionally, there's $2 billion given every year in private contributions from the United States, which could, of course, be increased.
00:33:32.000If we were to revoke foreign direct assistance from the United States government.
00:33:36.000There's $2 billion in private aid given that could easily be bumped up to $4 billion if we reduced our $3.8 billion commitment or all foreign military assistance altogether.
00:33:46.000The second reason he gives for the war of all against all is that we restrain Israel.
00:33:52.000If you recall in the first press conference, the first joint press conference between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump, President Trump explicitly told Netanyahu
00:34:00.000Stop building settlements in the West Bank.
00:34:02.000Will said the West Bank could be a possible flashpoint to initiate a war.
00:34:06.000President Trump explicitly told Netanyahu not to build settlements, and in March, the Knesset in Israel approved, for the first time in two decades, an expansion of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank.
00:34:16.000There is nothing about American military aid that is restraining Israel in any capacity.
00:34:20.000Furthermore, Israel could not launch any kind of war against Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt, because they do not have the manpower, they do not have the money.
00:34:29.000I don't know who he thinks would be invading Israel in this circumstance.
00:36:17.000In 1991, during the Gulf War, we were not able to use Israeli troops because the presence of Israeli troops would force the 400,000-troop-strong coalition of Arab partners to disband.
00:36:27.000They do not like to work alongside Israeli troops.
00:36:30.000There are reports by the CIA, or, let me, I'll find the exact source once we're into free-flowing debate,
00:36:36.000But there was a report from the intelligence community which said that in 95% of contingencies in the Persian Gulf, which is where a conflict would inevitably happen, Israel would be useless militarily.
00:36:47.000Now we can look at... He said that, well, most of these things are just stemming from the war.
00:36:53.000Most of these are just stemming from the cataclysmic world.
00:36:57.000intervention would all be a contingency if there was a war, but I just took out all three reasons why there wouldn't be a war.
00:37:05.000I suppose I could talk about the Strait of Hormuz.
00:37:07.000He says that in some event, if we stop supplying Israel with foreign assistance, that there would be oil prices spiking because of a war.
00:37:14.000When Iran actually blocked the Strait of Hormuz in 1982, Israel could not assist in any way, shape, or form and didn't.
00:37:20.000And if you look in the 1973 war, the oil weapon leveled against the United States by the Arab countries was actually states that Israel is a liability to our strategic interests, not an asset.
00:37:38.000If you were in my college debate, you know, if I was coaching you, there's a good amount of raw material here to work with.
00:37:47.000Got some talent if you haven't done it before.
00:37:49.000Anyway, so what I'm going to do, it's going to be an overview and then we're going to talk about, uh, the disadvantage and then, then your argument.
00:38:10.000In debate world, we would call that an all defense speech.
00:38:13.000Nick has failed to articulate a single positive change to the world that would occur as a result of ending aid to Israel.
00:38:17.000Meanwhile, you're basically hoping that a war doesn't happen.
00:38:20.000So essentially, if you're weighing this out, sitting at home thinking like, what do I want to decide?
00:38:24.000On the one hand, you have a $4 billion savings in the deficit.
00:38:27.000There's no explanation of how that meaningfully changes any American lives for the better.
00:38:31.000And on the other hand, you have a risk of a major Middle Eastern war, you have a loss of the intelligence cooperation in the Middle East, you have a loss of Israel's support operating base, and you do have lost American jobs, right?
00:38:41.000If there's nothing to outweigh any of these possibilities, there's no rational policymaker that would ever agree to the policy that Nick has proposed.
00:38:49.000Let's look at again, what has he provided?
00:39:19.000You're conceding, one, that it's the qualitative military edge that United States actually is making with the technology that means that the money is particularly valuable coming from the United States.
00:39:28.000Additionally, you're conceding the fact that it no longer looks like the United States will be backing Israel.
00:39:33.000That means that neighbors won't think that there's a risk
00:39:54.000That's not actually a good argument for you.
00:39:56.000It means that in the absence of any U.S.
00:39:58.000aid, Israel would be far more aggressive, because if they're willing to do that to contradict Trump now, what would they be willing to do in a world where they didn't even have to worry about military aid?
00:40:06.000That means Israel would be even more provocative and more bad, right?
00:40:11.000You said, oh, there's no possibility that any of these neighboring countries were because they're in provocative situations, but you're conceding Hezbollah, you're conceding Hamas, and Hezbollah is funded by Iran.
00:40:19.000A major invasion by Hezbollah, and one that continued, and one that Iran was supporting, could easily draw in all these other countries, even if they're in somewhat weakened positions.
00:40:26.000Additionally, it's not just right now you're doing this, you're cutting off aid over a 10-year period, so you can't just be like, oh, there won't be a war tomorrow.
00:40:33.000You need to win that there won't be a war over the next 10 years, and your policy certainly risks that.
00:40:40.000You make arguments about how, like, the lost American jobs.
00:40:43.000Indeed, that is my weakest argument, but it still actually is a major mitigating factor as to why, like, it's not that bad to have this policy.
00:40:49.000We're spending jobs, spending money ultimately on American goods.
00:40:52.000It's like, it's just like any, particularly not, you know, it's just like an infrastructure project except that it preserves the regional order of the Middle East.
00:40:59.000Additionally, you would say that we couldn't, in 1991, you couldn't use it as a forward operating base.
00:41:03.000I'm talking about drones that are currently flying out of Israel right now.
00:41:06.000And you completely concede the human intelligence point.
00:41:50.000Number one with the intelligence is I would challenge you to point to me a single example in the past ten years in which Israeli intelligence has benefited America.
00:42:02.000That's my number one challenge because I've done a lot of research.
00:42:04.000The only two things I could find was 1956 Khrushchev's secret speech
00:42:10.000And in the 1960s they allowed America to inspect Soviet military equipment that they recovered in the 67 war.
00:42:17.000So that's number one is I challenge you to come up with a single instance in the past 10 years where Israeli intelligence has actually assisted us.
00:42:25.000Number two, my number two contention here is Israeli aid has actually been false.
00:42:31.000And I think the best example of this is the Iraq war.
00:42:34.000And I'll pull up some sources here so I'm not just
00:42:45.000One of the hard things about doing a debate with evidence, unless you're, like, actually spending a whole year doing a debate with evidence, is that it's hard to bring it in, so... Yeah.
00:42:58.000Um... I don't know if this is going direct, but... Anything?
00:43:29.000So, Bibi Netanyahu came to Washington to meet with U.S.
00:43:32.000Senators in mid-April, 2002, and he warned them that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons that could be delivered in a suitcase.
00:43:38.000Ariel Sharon's spokesperson said, the Cleveland Reporter,
00:43:41.000And if Iraq wasn't stopped, we would have to deal with a nuclear-armed Iraq.
00:43:45.000Haaretz said that Hussein gave an order to Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission to speed up its work.
00:43:51.000Israel sent alarming reports to Iraq about Iraq's WMD program at a time when Sharon said that strategic coordination between U.S.
00:43:58.000and Israeli intelligence had reached unprecedented dimensions.
00:44:02.000Okay, so I'll respond to those in turn.
00:44:21.000First, I find your challenge under most circumstances to be a little bit absurd because these things are test classifying, right?
00:44:29.000Like the idea that I would be able to point to an Israeli intelligence piece that would actually prove a benefit to the United States is a pretty remarkable challenge.
00:52:04.000I would assume it is, and then you make this argument about nuclear weapons.
00:52:08.000I mean, obviously that intelligence was wrong, but I don't understand how it makes sense for Israel to want to, like, intentionally mess with the United States, right?
00:52:16.000Israel's primary fear is when other countries acquire nuclear weapons, and the intelligence that they had on Iraq was they thought they had nuclear weapons.
00:52:23.000If they actually, if they knew the opposite, then they wouldn't provide, then they would feel no fear of Iraq, so they wouldn't, they wouldn't see any need to dupe us into attacking them.
00:52:34.000Right, like, so that's why that argument doesn't really make sense.
00:52:36.000And, again, one has to suspect that, like, the British and American intelligence services came to the exact same conclusion.
00:52:43.000Like, I don't think you can pin all the blame on Israel.
00:52:53.000If this is like intelligence sharing, we could still do intelligence sharing with Israel.
00:52:58.000Like, we do intelligence sharing with European Union countries, and we don't give them the most foreign aid out of any other country in the world.
00:53:05.000And so, I mean, number one, intelligence sharing would probably resume.
00:53:09.000We would probably remain a strategic ally of Israel's, even without the foreign aid.
00:53:13.000In 97, Bibi Netanyahu promised that they would start phasing out foreign aid to Israel.
00:53:19.000And then number two, with the intelligence, with the Iraq war, it's fair.
00:53:24.000It's fair to say that they would tell us if it was wrong, and I'm going to turn the game, I'm probably really loud because you were quiet, and now I'm going, so I'm probably bursting.
00:53:55.000This is from the Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
00:54:01.000So this is on Israeli military intelligence.
00:54:04.000One former CIA official reported, quote, I saw this political intelligence, this is Israeli military intelligence, and it was lousy, laughably bad, gossip stuff mostly.
00:54:25.000So, with the intelligence, it's kind of a wash.
00:54:27.000Number one, we could remain sharing without foreign aid.
00:54:30.000Number two, the Iraq War demonstrates it obviously wasn't particularly helpful.
00:54:34.000And then number three, when it concerns any of their interests, which by the way is the whole Middle East, they tend to lie about it.
00:54:39.000This is according to the CIA and according to several other sources close to President Nixon, President Johnson, and others.
00:54:47.000All right, well, so first on your point that Israel would remain a strategic ally even after we cut off aid, I disagree.
00:54:56.000I think this is a really dramatic change of policy from the United States, especially after signing a deal about a year ago for a 10-year deal to go from the most aid of anybody to zero.
00:55:29.000The idea that because intelligence agencies made a mistake 15 years ago is a good argument for why cooperation isn't really worth anything.
00:55:35.000I just don't think it's particularly persuasive.
00:55:38.000I, you know, we are not in a position to really have a good handle on what sort of intelligence Israel's providing because it's classified.
00:55:45.000But the fact that we keep using it and the fact that we keep hearing stories like, oh, yes, they had a site, a source inside ISIS.
00:55:51.000And I mean, if you do some reading on that, on not just, there's really interesting books that, I haven't actually read the whole thing, but there's a really interesting book on sort of what Israel did to infiltrate Hamas, Hezbollah, and various other groups.
00:56:03.000And it's fascinating the sort of work that they were doing.
00:56:06.000Somebody asked if I have an Israeli passport.
00:56:39.000Yeah, I just, you know, it's just kind of hard for me to, I mean, out of the few, like, positive things that Israel offers us, it is the forward base and the intelligence.
00:56:49.000The intelligence, I guess people can make up their minds whether or not they think the U.S.
00:56:53.000and Israel would remain allies if there was only a security guarantee and only, like, uncontested diplomatic support in the United Nations and economic aid.
00:57:06.000And then, you know, to the second point there is the idea that if there was this dramatic cut in aid, if we shut down the Memorandum of Understanding, which is the 10-year, $3.8 billion-a-year agreement that was struck in 2016, I think there would be precedent for that because you got President Trump, America first.
00:58:11.000That in a country that borders Iraq, we couldn't use their troops, we couldn't use them as a base because the Arab partners wouldn't want that.
00:58:19.000I mean, maybe drones, but couldn't our base in Qatar or in an Arab Gulf country or in Egypt or Turkey suffice?
00:58:26.000Why is it worth $4 billion a year to Israel?
00:58:31.000So, like, first, you're sort of challenging me on, like, oh, there's only a couple of these benefits.
00:58:36.000There's the forward operating base, and there's the intelligence cooperation.
00:58:40.000It's like, well, one, I still think that you haven't beaten the Iraq war the war has had.
00:58:44.000But second, I guess my fundamental point, and why I think it's really clear that, you know, in this world I've been in this debate, is you haven't articulated, throughout your entire time, a single actual positive change in American lives that results from the plan, that results from cutting military aid to Israel.
00:58:58.000Like, and I challenge you to say, like, I mean, I'll let you back into it, I guess, in the sense that I would say, what is the positive change in American lives that results from cutting military aid to Israel?
00:59:08.000Well, it's funny the way you frame it, because it's actually, while the position of our debate is, or rather the resolution of the debate, is the U.S.
00:59:18.000should cut foreign aid to Israel, giving foreign aid to Israel is a positive action.
00:59:24.000And I suppose in a way it's a positive action to get rid of the aid, but I mean really we're talking about the absence of something.
00:59:31.000So I think really the burden of does this benefit Americans is more on you because you're telling us you want to direct money in a certain place.
00:59:39.000If you want to direct the money in a certain place, don't you have to justify how that benefits Americans as opposed to me saying, well we can spend as much money as we want.
00:59:57.000First is, you're proposing a change to the status quo.
01:00:00.000You know, the status quo is we give it.
01:00:02.000And in debate world, if there are, if you think about things in terms of legalistic burdens, the burden is always on the affirmative to prove why we should change the way that things are.
01:00:13.000But second, even if you were right about that, as long as you concede I've articulated some benefits, the burden's now on you to explain why I've articulated some disadvantages.
01:00:24.000The burden's on you to articulate why the advantages of cutting aid outweigh.
01:00:30.000Even if you mitigated the impact, you need to have something on the other side that says, here's this really good outcome that happened as a result of cutting military aid to Israel.
01:00:40.000You know, when I told about you, like, you have some talent, in the sense that, like, I were, like, pushing you, I'd be like, we can work with this, right?
01:00:46.000You're efficient in the way you speak and a lot of things, but you made it very, like, if a debater were listening, like, if you were in a real formal debate round, the judge would look at you and be like, where's the impact, dude?
01:00:54.000Like, you didn't read and impact a positive change in the world that would happen as a result of cutting aid, which is sort of, like, the first thing you probably want to read.
01:01:02.000All right, well, I mean, I suppose maybe it wouldn't pass in a collegiate academic setting, but I think when the American people are told that we have to give money and cutting frivolous, wasteful spending is not helping them in their interest, I think, you know, it kind of belies the central point in favor of some academic standard.
01:01:18.000But if you want me to demonstrate what actual benefit would accrue to stopping all foreign aid, I mean, I have it right here.
01:01:25.000I just think that it's more of a negative.
01:01:27.000But if you insist on making me demonstrate why it's not good to waste $4 billion a year because it's not actually a lot of money, number one, I would say it's actually not $3.8 billion, it's $38 billion over the next 10 years.
01:01:38.000And actually, we're looking at $150 billion since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.
01:02:16.000Ramzi Youssef, who you may remember, he was the one who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
01:02:21.000He mailed many letters to the New York Times before his bombing saying, I have a problem with the U.S.'
01:02:27.000's support of Israel, their foreign aid to Israel.
01:02:30.000In Osama Bin Laden's fatwa in 1996, when he declared war on the United States of America,
01:02:36.000According to Benjamin and Simon, these are two prominent scholars on terrorism, said that, in fact, the most prominent grievance in Osama Bin Laden's fatwa when he declared war on the United States was our support for Israel.
01:02:54.000That Bin Laden and other key Al Qaeda figures wanted to accelerate the timeline for 9-11 to coincide with a visit by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount.
01:03:05.000So I don't want to say that Israel's support is exclusively responsible for terrorism, but it is a major factor.
01:03:12.000It is a major factor that many scholars have said that contributes to anti-Americanism in the Arab world and terrorism on U.S.
01:03:45.000If you saw, I mean, if you've been following ISIS and you've been following their literature and the stuff they put out in their inspired magazine, they're talking about how, like, there are all these reasons we don't like you, but you know what?
01:03:56.000We would still hate you no matter what because you're not Muslim and you're not paying the jizm, right?
01:04:02.000So given that outcome, I think, you know, it's sort of, to me, this feels like appeasement, right?
01:04:07.000This sort of logic of like, well, if we just stop backing Israel and we just stop trying to anger people in the Middle East, they'll leave us alone.
01:04:20.000And so the question is, how do we best stop that?
01:04:23.000And I think Israel is an asset in stopping that and not a liability.
01:04:26.000Like I said, it's not a question of whether or not terrorists wake up every day and the primary reason, but if even a little bit, our unquestionable $4 billion to Israel and our support of their occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip contributes to terrorism, and it's $4 billion and there's not a major justification for it otherwise, again, I don't see that as appeasement.
01:04:57.000A single terror attack, because we stopped our foreign aid of Israel, I would say that $4 billion is worth it.
01:05:02.000I would say that, again, if we look at the Constitution of the United States, which is provide for the common defense, if you have Ramzi Youssef, if you have Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda,
01:05:12.000And additionally, you say that, and I guess I'll confront you on the central point, which is Israel helps us fight terrorism more than they contribute to terrorists not liking us.
01:05:23.000That's actually demonstrably not true.
01:05:25.000The Israeli defense minister said that they would prefer ISIS to Iran any day.
01:05:29.000The chief intelligence officer of Israel said that they have no interest, they have no interest in defeating ISIS in Syria.
01:05:57.000Well, so, I mean, there's another point here, which is that you say, like, why do these countries want us to stop giving military aid to Israel?
01:06:58.000and I think the the and I guess in here's the other thing like I so you know I could concede this and then be like the small risk of increased terrorism is actually outweighed by potential of a major power war in the Middle East in terms of the consequences so I don't think I don't think this argument gets you nearly as far as you
01:07:15.000Well, let me resolve the tension for you.
01:07:18.000If we can address the Great War, the reason I skimmed over it is because if you've read Kenneth Pollack, if you've read Mearsheimer, I mean, this is an absolutely ridiculous proposition.
01:07:28.000Again, I don't say that to, like, assault you.
01:08:18.000The Egyptian government was not able to stave off mass protests.
01:08:22.000The only country that poses a significant threat to the state of Israel is Iran.
01:08:27.000And if Iran wanted to invade Israel, it would have to go through Iraq.
01:08:30.000And number two, Iran would never be able to ally with the only other countries that could matter, which would be Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, which all hate Iran,
01:09:20.000It made no sense, really, for Egypt to want to start a war in 73.
01:09:23.000They had to thread a needle so thin it was ridiculous.
01:09:26.000They had just gotten rolled in 67 by Israel and lost the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula, along with everybody else, along with Syria losing Golan and Jordan losing the West Bank, right?
01:09:37.000Like, Israel was already seen as superior, and yet they all went to war again six years later because it turns out people really, really, really hate Israel in the Middle East, right?
01:09:45.000And so, you know, you have to think about the fact that I think you're really, really underselling the probability of war in a region that's seen a ton of wars like this historically, right?
01:10:03.000Unconditionally United States backing of Israel combined with no other meaningful, like, I mean, I guess Russia was still around, but like it was clear after 73 Egypt realigned with the United States, and so, and then it was, okay, well the United States backs Israel, we can't meaningfully attack it, and now Russia's gone, so there's no other superpower.
01:10:25.000Because the big reason is both the qualitative military aids, but the symbolism, the fact that we are the ones, we are the big world superpower.
01:10:35.000We have the ability to say, look, Israel is going to be the most powerful country, and if y'all invade it, we're going to screw with you.
01:10:40.000But we're going to restrain Israel through diplomatic measures.
01:10:43.000And that creates, at least in terms of Westphalian nation-state warfare, creates a stable balance of power in the region.
01:11:50.000Uncontested diplomatic support in the United Nations.
01:11:52.000More than half of all combined vetoes in the United Nations during the Cold War were the United States vetoing anti-Israel resolutions.
01:12:00.000And you look at, you know, if you take for example another country like Ukraine.
01:12:04.000Ukraine does not even come close to the military aid we give to Israel, and yet it's the security guarantee.
01:12:10.000It's basically the understated assumption that if Russia were to attack or invade in a significant way, and people can argue that there are the
01:12:17.000Little green men in Crimea in eastern Ukraine the reason that Russia has not invaded the Baltics the reason that Russia is not invaded
01:12:47.000It's a hard sell, and I think it'd be a hard sell to any reasonable, rational person, that a security guarantee alone, plus a nuclear deterrent, plus the strongest conventional military in the world, is not enough of a deterrence, but we need the most generous foreign aid in all the land on top of that.
01:13:56.000Contest that not only do three countries go against their word and also Syria and and all these other countries Develop some kind of conventional advantage and overcome the nuclear deterrent, but then on top of that Iran Overcomes their status as a pariah state overcome the Persian Arab differences the Shia Sunni differences their current antagonisms with the Gulf States and with Saudi Arabia and like oh and then Pakistan I mean this is just
01:14:22.000Like, sure, the United States and China are likely to go to war in the next 50 years.
01:15:03.000So, first, on the security guarantee, security guarantees are in the eye of the beholder regardless of whether or not the United States officially has a continued security guarantee.
01:15:12.000The radical change of perception that results from launching the biggest military aid program last year and then cutting it in the eyes of the Arab countries is very different.
01:15:21.000Second, where the fuck was my second article?
01:15:32.000You were making the point, oh, China, the Great Power War, and the War of All Against All in the sense that a variety of countries would have to participate.
01:15:39.000My scenario does not rely on every single country in the Middle East joining in, right?
01:15:42.000So you probably have a deep-sea scenario about one or two of those countries.
01:15:46.000But that doesn't mean there's not going to be a serious war.
01:15:48.000That doesn't mean there aren't countries where thousands are going to die.
01:15:51.000And that's still something that's not in American interest, regardless of whether specific countries stay out of it because of their particular situations.
01:16:08.000I think that mutually assured destruction and, like, the lack of actual conflict between the United States and China historically, and sophisticated diplomats without the intense ethnic hatred that exists within the Middle East.
01:16:20.000I think a Middle Eastern conflict is far more likely, especially given the history of these conflicts.
01:16:26.000So I think, on all three of them, I just, again, I think you're underselling it.
01:16:37.000And if you're looking at a risk like this of starting some sort of Middle Eastern war, even if you're like, well, this country wouldn't participate, it's just not worth it.
01:16:45.000Like it's five, $4 billion is 0.1% of the federal budget.
01:18:05.000Like, there's a serious risk of war if you change the regional power structure or the balance of power.
01:18:10.000There's a risk of losing, and then there's other risks that are involved in losing intelligence cooperation and losing the ability to easily conduct operations with drones in Israel.
01:18:20.000So even in a world where you had no love for Israel, even in a world where
01:18:41.000You know, Will has tried to demonstrate, I think because of the weakness of his argument throughout, that I've been losing, that there's no justifiable case.
01:18:49.000And he can say that, but for everybody that's been listening and paying attention, I've made clear the case for revoking Israeli aid.
01:18:55.000Israel has proved to be a rogue state, whether it was the Levant Affair in 1954,
01:19:01.000When Israeli operatives in Cairo conspired to blow up American civilian hotspots to trigger a war between the United States and Egypt, whether it was them stealing our nuclear secrets throughout the 1960s, evading our nuclear inspectors under both Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, not signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty,
01:19:19.000Whether it was their sale of American military technology to China throughout the 80s in 1993 and in this decade.
01:19:26.000Whether it's the fact that they conduct the most aggressive spying operation on American soil behind only Russia and China, the most aggressive.
01:19:33.000You can look into the Pollard case where they steal thousands and thousands and thousands of documents of our secrets.
01:19:38.000Where they convinced us to go to war in Iraq.
01:19:40.000And in Afghanistan, and where they're currently trying to convince us to go to war in Syria and Iran and other places for their interests and not ours.
01:19:47.000I would say that we have been rewarding a bad state.
01:19:50.000We have been rewarding a country that thwarts our interests at every turn.
01:19:54.000And I would encourage everybody to look into, of course, the late, great USS Liberty to see truly what is going on here.
01:21:02.000It was fun, informative, and most importantly, thank you, the audience, for tuning in, for giving us patronage,
01:21:08.000With your eyeballs and for those in the super chat who donated, thank you guys for supporting the good fight.
01:21:14.000You know, at the end of the day, I think it's important on the right wing that so long as we have been fighting, it might as well be productive.
01:21:28.000If you have any questions, comments, concerns, remember for tomorrow, I think we'll take these, um, hmm, maybe we'll do a special hashtag.
01:21:36.000I don't know, but remember if you hashtag AmericaFQ on Twitter, you can ask questions about this debate that will be answered tomorrow on the program, on the show.
01:21:44.000Remember you can follow me on Twitter at NickJFuentes, you can follow me on Facebook.com slash NickJFuentes, follow me on Periscope at NickJFuentes, and you'll find all my content at NicholasJFuentes.com.
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