487. The Islamic Republic of Terror： Hezbollah & Hamas ｜ Naftali Bennett
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 46 minutes
Words per Minute
146.83032
Hate Speech Sentences
101
Summary
In this episode, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett joins Dr. Jordan Peterson to discuss the October 7th attack in Israel, the political landscape in the wake of the attack, and what that means for the future of peace in the Middle East and the world. Dr. Peterson's new series, "Depression and Anxiety," provides a roadmap toward healing, and offers a way to find a way forward in the midst of anxiety and depression. Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Jordan B. Peterson on Depression and Anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Dr. B. P. Peterson is a leading clinical psychologist with decades of experience helping patients with anxiety, depression, and post traumatic stress disorder. He is the author of several books, including "Anxious: How to Overcome Depression and Overcome Anxiety: A Guide to Recovery from Post-Depression" and "Anxiety and Depression: The New Normal: How To Overcome It" and host of the daily show "Daily Wire Plus: Anxious and Depressed: A Path to Feeling Better" on the Daily Wire, Jordan Peterson sits down with the former Israeli Prime Minister, Dr. David Ben-Avraham Bennett, to discuss his life, career, and political life, his political views, and his views on the current political landscape and views on current events in Israel and the rest of the world, including his time in Tel Aviv, and how they intersect with his time as a former Israeli prime minister, Naftalia Bennett's life in the late 1980s and early days in the early in his career in the 1980s, and later in the 90s and 90s. . , Dr. Bennett talks about his experience as a member of the Israeli political life and how he became the 13th Prime Minister and early in the 80s and today, and shares some of his views about the current Israeli political success and the current day, and the lessons he has learned from his later years in the 1990s and the early days of his experiences in the 2000s, after his later life in his later days as a few years after he became a better version of the late Mr. Ben-era, after he returned to Israel, after becoming a full-time Israeli and later, he becomes a better man, , and what he does in the after his becomes a in is now ? and what s going to do in the future?
Transcript
00:00:00.940
Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480
Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740
We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100
With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420
He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360
If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.780
Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460
Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:01:09.580
I had the privilege and opportunity today to have a discussion with Naftali Bennett, who was the 13th Prime Minister of Israel.
00:01:19.600
And so, obviously, there's plenty to discuss on that front.
00:01:27.460
We discussed the polarization in Israel and how discussion and then protest regarding the reformation of the judiciary in Israel
00:01:38.580
distracted the population and the state and laid at least some of the groundwork for the October 7th attack.
00:01:46.780
We talked about that attack and its geopolitical causes, concentrating most particularly on Iran and the Islamic Republic of Iran more specifically,
00:02:02.380
focusing on that regime's stated intent to supplant and replace, let's say, eradicate and annihilate the United States and Israel,
00:02:14.080
which is certainly the kind of statement that would make you assume that you're dealing with a regime that is, to say the least, your sworn enemy.
00:02:22.900
The fact that Iran is responsible in large part for funding the events that led up to, in the narrow and the broader sense,
00:02:32.420
the attack on October 7th and what that might mean for the future,
00:02:36.860
while also maintaining a certain amount of optimism, let's say, on the Muslim-Jewish-Christian peace front,
00:02:45.340
given the establishment and the continuation of the Abraham Accords
00:02:50.200
and what that means for the future, even after the atrocities of October 7th.
00:02:59.100
Update yourself and find out what's going on in the Middle East and the world, particularly with regards to Iran.
00:03:05.080
Well, Mr. Bennett, I think we should probably start with the presumption of a fair bit of ignorance
00:03:11.820
on the part of the viewers and listeners and, well, and with regard to me as well.
00:03:16.660
And we'll get you, if you would, to position yourself.
00:03:19.540
Let everybody know who you are, what role you've played in Israel, what role you're playing now.
00:03:24.060
Just set the stage for us personally so that everyone understands who I'm talking to and why.
00:03:29.280
Sure. Well, I had the privilege of serving as Israel's 13th prime minister, years 21-22.
00:03:39.440
Prior to that, I was education minister, minister of economy and defense minister.
00:03:45.580
So, I spent a bit more than a decade in politics.
00:03:49.360
Before that, I had a whole nother life in high tech.
00:03:55.220
I was a startup founder, founded a company, became CEO, a real roller coaster, but ultimately we had success.
00:04:05.560
And then I ran another company, we sold it also.
00:04:09.240
And prior to that, like all Israelis, I served in the military in Israel's top unit.
00:04:16.480
It's called Sayeret Matkal, the guys who did Entebbe and all of that.
00:04:21.340
And I had the privilege of becoming a platoon commander and later a company commander in a special commando unit.
00:04:29.260
So, I spent quite a few years fighting our enemies, primarily Hezbollah in Lebanon.
00:04:36.160
I grew up in Haifa, a beautiful city in northern Israel.
00:04:41.360
Some people compare it to San Francisco because it's a mountain that sort of goes down into the sea.
00:04:46.640
My mom and dad were born and raised in San Francisco.
00:04:52.080
And they, what's called made Aliyah in Hebrew, when you move to Israel, you ascend, you go up.
00:05:04.620
And they are really my biggest heroes, my dad and mom.
00:05:09.700
And so, where would you position yourself on the, or where are you positioned on the political spectrum in Israeli politics?
00:05:17.760
And would you describe what the political spectrum is in Israel?
00:05:22.020
Because obviously, there's a left-right spectrum or something approximating it.
00:05:25.540
But that doesn't mean that it maps to, you know, isomorphically with what we might expect in the rest of the West.
00:05:32.740
So, flesh out the political landscape there in your position.
00:05:40.160
On my political beliefs and opinions, I'm right of center.
00:05:51.160
I think the only way to achieve peace is by being incredibly strong.
00:05:56.720
So, I would be considered a moderate Republican here in America.
00:06:01.100
However, the way I view the political system today, it's less about a battle of opinions and more about a very dangerous group identity politics where opinions almost don't matter.
00:06:22.740
What matters is, are you for your group or is it against your group?
00:06:28.380
And in that sense, the government I established was a very unique creature.
00:06:37.280
It was the most diverse government in Israel's history.
00:06:42.300
When I was prime minister, I had left-wing ministers, right-wing ministers and parties.
00:06:53.400
And the government, even my biggest detractors agree it was an effective government in terms of getting stuff done.
00:07:03.260
They were angry at me for lots of stuff because I sort of broke rank from what was before then.
00:07:11.980
Either you're, if you're right, you only fight for the right-wing camp.
00:07:22.400
I think while I harbor my opinions and I will fight for them, we have to be able to sit together in broad unity governments by partisan governments.
00:07:34.620
I believe that's the only way forward for Israel because I'll say right now at the start, I think that the number one problem of Israel and challenge for the Jewish state today is the domestic poison and internal hatred between these two camps at levels that we've never seen before.
00:07:58.940
And what are the issues that are dividing them?
00:08:01.840
I mean, we're seeing something like a devolution into group identity politics broadly in the West.
00:08:07.340
And obviously the danger in that, at least one of the dangers, is that it undermines the primary narrative, let's say, or identity that holds everyone together.
00:08:16.020
So that's obviously dangerous if you don't like a descent into chaos.
00:08:20.480
But now I understand the identity politics that characterizes the United States, say in Canada, UK, etc.
00:08:26.880
I'm not exactly clear what the identity fragmentations are, I guess, on the Jewish side, but also between the Jews and the Arabs in Israel.
00:08:36.680
So how exactly is the domestic landscape fractionating as far as you're concerned in Israel?
00:08:41.540
Well, I believe that this is an artificially manufactured grouping for political reasons because there's a lot of benefit in creating camps in politics because you have your base and you eat them up and you get them mad at the other side.
00:09:01.500
I think it's not predicated on real big debates because here's the interesting thing.
00:09:09.560
If you actually analyze the big issues that supposedly tear ourselves apart, actually most Israelis agree on them.
00:09:22.240
It's the judicial reform and it's the Palestinian issue.
00:09:26.260
OK, so I can tell you in 40 seconds where almost everyone agrees that on religion, Israel is a Jewish state.
00:09:35.000
We want our kids to love our tradition, to love our heritage, our history, to be knowledgeable about it.
00:09:41.100
But we're also against laws that coerce religion.
00:09:46.800
And I'd say 80% of the Israeli Jews agree on that.
00:09:50.620
So this is an artificial battle, which is done for political reasons.
00:09:57.220
On the judicial issue, also here, there's a fairly simple compromise.
00:10:03.020
Basically, what happened over the past 40 years was the judicial system usurped a lot of power from the executive, from the government.
00:10:16.100
But over the past seven years, there's been a very gradual, incremental rebalancing.
00:10:24.280
So we have many more conservative judges who say this is not our business.
00:10:29.740
I love hearing that when a judge says this should not come to the court.
00:10:37.760
And so the whole craze about the judicial reform, in my opinion, was mainly about the terrible way the government introduced it.
00:10:51.880
It didn't introduce change in order to improve the lives of our people.
00:11:08.140
And again, I'm a right-wing guy, but I don't think that when I'm prime minister or education minister,
00:11:13.660
my goal in life is to get the other side to be terrified or aggravated.
00:11:20.420
I would call it a poke you in the eye attitude.
00:11:25.640
And even on the Palestinian issue, the de facto argument today almost doesn't exist.
00:11:34.640
For about 50 years, there's been a big divide where the left supported two-state solution and the right opposed it.
00:11:43.260
The past 20 years, the second intifada, and especially now, post-October 7th,
00:11:51.940
mainstream Israelis do not believe anymore that we should be founding a Palestinian state, certainly not in the near future.
00:11:59.740
So we agree that right now, one way or another, we're not going to allow a Palestinian state.
00:12:07.940
So why not be together in government and we can defer continuing to argue about it in six to eight years where I'll argue and fight against it.
00:12:18.640
But in the short term, there's no disagreement.
00:12:21.860
So there's no support for a two-state solution now?
00:12:26.780
But there's others who think that I'm wrong, which is fine.
00:12:30.040
We can argue and debate that in between us eight years from now.
00:12:41.800
So my sense is that, I mean, I've seen arguably similar moves in Canada in particular,
00:12:48.680
where the judiciary has increasingly taken on the role of the legislative branch,
00:12:55.780
partly because the legislatures don't like to make complex decisions and then they default to the judiciary,
00:13:01.520
which is not a good thing in the long run because it undermines parliamentary supremacy.
00:13:06.580
So has something analogous to that been going on in Israel?
00:13:10.760
And you said there's been a rebalancing, but that it was handled badly on the messaging side.
00:13:18.620
Become something like a battle between the legislative branch and the judiciary?
00:13:23.920
Well, you basically articulated it precisely right.
00:13:28.240
As I said, in the past, we had a fairly minimalistic Supreme Court that was very hesitant
00:13:37.460
and not inclined to cancel laws or to override the government.
00:13:45.060
It did it from time to time, but in a very cautious way.
00:13:49.740
What happened beginning the late 80s primarily was the Supreme Court became way more active
00:14:00.340
and gradually began canceling laws and creating its own self-made constitution
00:14:12.120
based on what's called basic laws in Israel, but they went too far.
00:14:17.660
Was that primarily a leftist movement on the judiciary side?
00:14:30.300
In many cases, it was a result of government not being courageous enough to solve some
00:14:37.240
or to figure out some very fundamental issues like the draft law of ultra-Orthodox.
00:14:45.880
So when the politicians are not courageous enough, they throw it to the Supreme Court
00:14:52.180
and then they attack the Supreme Court for getting involved in what they couldn't solve.
00:14:57.320
Now, there was already a gradual process of rebalancing.
00:15:02.340
It was happening prior to this craze of the past couple of years.
00:15:07.300
So things were on track to gradually get better.
00:15:13.520
As prime minister, I cannot recall one event where I wanted to get something done
00:15:20.780
and I knew how I'm going to do it and the legal folks stopped me.
00:15:26.260
I do remember as minister, there was one or two cases that it really got me angry
00:15:31.020
and I thought the judicial system is too aggressive, but it was on track.
00:15:37.840
And then the government came and as I said, they talked about a revolution.
00:15:44.920
And it's funny because I'm a right-wing guy, but what they came to do was to punish the other side,
00:15:58.460
The other side, which is lots of very decent people, about half of the country that, you know,
00:16:04.100
serve in the military, risk their lives, pay taxes, hardworking people,
00:16:08.400
much of the middle class in Israel, the secular middle class, they indeed got terrified.
00:16:14.220
They felt subjectively that there's a government that wants to punish them
00:16:18.840
and no one should feel that their government hates them.
00:16:22.540
And that created a rebound effect of these huge protests and refusal to serve in reserve,
00:16:35.460
And what happened essentially year 2023 was a horrible year prior to October 7th.
00:16:42.060
The whole country went crazy in this internal war.
00:16:50.920
Our enemies saw that we're killing ourselves from within.
00:16:55.600
They saw our national immune system is getting weaker and weaker.
00:17:01.680
So you think that was associated with that internal strike?
00:17:06.060
They could have done this attack two years ago, four years ago, 10 years ago, 12 years ago.
00:17:11.340
We know from intelligence, from hard intelligence, that they were following this.
00:17:20.160
When we think about wildly successful businesses, we often focus on their great products,
00:17:26.940
But there's an unsung hero in their success stories, the business behind the business that
00:17:33.300
For millions of entrepreneurs, that business is Shopify.
00:17:36.360
Shopify is home to the number one checkout on the planet.
00:17:41.300
With ShopPay, they boost conversions up to 50%.
00:17:44.020
That means fewer abandoned carts and more completed sales.
00:17:47.560
Our marketing team uses Shopify every day to sell our merchandise, and we love how easy it
00:17:52.160
is to add more items, ship products, and track conversions.
00:17:55.160
In today's market, growth-minded businesses need a commerce solution that's just as flexible
00:18:01.760
Whether your customers are browsing your website, scrolling through social media, or wandering
00:18:05.800
into your store, Shopify ensures you're ready to sell.
00:18:10.940
Upgrade your business today and get the same checkout Daily Wire uses.
00:18:14.600
Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash jbp, all lowercase.
00:18:20.540
Go to shopify.com slash jbp today to upgrade your selling.
00:18:29.460
We were doing a great job tearing ourselves apart.
00:18:33.860
That attack, a horrendous attack, stopped the craze.
00:18:40.360
And now we have another opportunity to get our act together, and we have to seize this opportunity.
00:18:47.120
So let's talk about, well, first of all, I'd ask you just for a definition, because there'll
00:18:56.960
Tell us about intifada and exactly what it means.
00:19:01.400
The intifada, the second intifada started in, I believe, October of 2000, where, just as
00:19:10.140
we have background, beginning 1993 all the way to 2000, Israel engaged in the Oslo Accords,
00:19:17.300
a labor-led government led by Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister that was thereafter assassinated.
00:19:24.560
They believed that we need to reach a compromise with the Palestinians and ultimately believed
00:19:36.720
I opposed it, but I could understand the other side.
00:19:41.460
I can understand that they had a theory that if we hand over land, they'll fulfill, the Palestinians
00:19:48.480
will fulfill their national aspirations and will live side-by-side by peace.
00:19:58.640
Hence, what happened was already in the 90s, as we handed more land over to the Palestinians,
00:20:07.620
it started in the labor government, then Netanyahu continued and handed, I believe, about 13%
00:20:13.680
of Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank, to the Palestinians, we began seeing more and more terror
00:20:24.780
What happened in the Oslo Accords, though, was the Palestinians formed an entity, a government,
00:20:34.480
And a big tract of Judea and Samaria, of the controversial territories, was handed to them,
00:20:48.160
What happened in October 2000, there was a violent uprise and war against Israel that started,
00:20:57.540
and it manifested itself in daily suicide attacks that, where Palestinians came in,
00:21:06.220
usually with an explosive vest, entered a bus in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, blew themselves up,
00:21:19.920
And I had been living in Manhattan, running my company, but the R&D center was in Israel,
00:21:31.340
And in March of 2002, we went forward with Operation Defensive Shield, and we recaptured
00:21:45.140
And to this day, the way it runs is they govern themselves on the civilian aspect.
00:21:57.520
It's a democratic government, though they only had elections once.
00:22:04.600
They have their own anthem, their own parliament, what have you.
00:22:08.440
But the overall security responsibility is Israel's.
00:22:13.500
And that's why we don't have this sort of terror stemming from the PA that we saw from Gaza.
00:22:22.960
So let me switch a bit to, I'm going to ask you a complicated question.
00:22:29.580
I want to lay out, if you don't mind, how the situation in Israel looks to me.
00:22:35.440
Not that that's particularly important, but it'll give you a chance to restructure the
00:22:41.800
I want to tell you how it looks to me from the outside.
00:22:44.080
And I've been trying to sort this out very carefully in my imagination, too, so that I
00:22:50.160
can have a clear head about the circumstances in the Middle East.
00:22:56.100
So I'm going to start with the Abraham Accords, and they're very striking to me because I saw
00:23:05.500
a number of, the first thing they indicate is that there are profound divisions within
00:23:11.580
the Arab world with regard to Israel and how Israel should be treated and dealt with.
00:23:18.560
And the Abraham Accords formalized an agreement with a number of Arab states that Israel should
00:23:29.060
Now, the reason for that, as far as I'm concerned, is threefold.
00:23:37.220
Israel's proved itself to be an economic powerhouse.
00:23:39.960
It's starting to, it's like a second Silicon Valley in many ways.
00:23:46.320
There are extreme economic advantages to partnering with Israel, trading with Israel, learning from
00:23:54.460
And then Israel is also a formidable military powerhouse.
00:24:00.040
And so the combination of those three things was sufficient, along with some alteration in
00:24:06.200
the stance on the more forward-looking Arab side, to make agreements of peace with Israel
00:24:15.860
Now, my sense is the Abraham Accords are viewed with something you might describe as extreme
00:24:22.380
skepticism and horror, even by the Iranians, most fundamentally, because they don't want to
00:24:33.620
They're sworn enemies of many of the Arab states that signed the Abraham Accords.
00:24:40.380
And they'll do anything to undermine and destroy it, along with Israel and the United States.
00:24:46.340
And so, okay, so then let's think about that in relationship to Palestine.
00:24:50.820
So you're putting forward something approximating a two-state solution.
00:24:54.680
That's been a solution that's been proffered in the past.
00:24:57.180
But the problem with a two-state solution is it's predicated on the idea that the parties
00:25:02.400
involved in establishing the states want states and they want peace.
00:25:06.360
And my sense of it is that Iran would sacrifice every single Palestinian in a heartbeat if they
00:25:11.980
could do serious damage to Israel and the United States in doing so.
00:25:15.260
And Iran continually funds the agitators in, let's say, Hamas and Hezbollah, for example,
00:25:22.920
to do nothing but cause Israel in the United States problems.
00:25:25.860
And they don't give a damn in any way, shape, or form about the Palestinians.
00:25:29.920
And so I don't understand at all, first of all, how the Israelis can negotiate with the
00:25:34.480
Palestinians, with the Iranians lurking behind them, doing nothing but to cause, causing
00:25:39.400
trouble and funding at every possible opportunity, every way of breaking down any possibility of
00:25:45.340
Because what do they care whether the Palestinians make peace with the Israelis?
00:25:49.380
That's just annoying to them from a foreign policy perspective.
00:25:52.180
So I don't see any victory, I don't see any potential for solving that problem as long
00:25:58.480
as Iran is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
00:26:02.800
It's in their best interest, given their stated foreign policy objectives, to keep the Palestinians
00:26:09.420
and the Israelis at each other's throats for as long as possible.
00:26:13.180
And if that does in the Palestinian people, oh well.
00:26:17.840
You know, collateral damage in the bigger game.
00:26:24.820
Now, so uninformed people in the West might be thinking that by standing with the poor
00:26:31.640
oppressed Palestinians, they're, what would you say, they're showing their solidarity with
00:26:40.240
And, but they're, they're certainly not allied with the mainstream of peace loving Arabs around
00:26:47.120
the world, peace loving Muslims, as far as I'm concerned.
00:26:49.700
And they're crawling into bed with a state that's hated, not least by its own people.
00:26:58.400
And it wants to destroy the United States and Israel.
00:27:02.420
And so all the protesters on American campuses who are hypothetically supporting the poor,
00:27:10.440
And I know there's plenty of complex things to say about that are really acting as proxy
00:27:17.200
And the command he came out on X, Twitter, not very many months ago and basically said
00:27:22.980
exactly that, congratulating the American protesters, for example, for supporting his agenda.
00:27:31.760
It didn't seem to slow down the protests at all.
00:27:35.140
So the first question for having laid that out is like, is there anything that I'm missing
00:27:40.940
with regards to the, the positioning of Iran in relationship to Israel in the United States?
00:27:51.300
About a decade ago, I came up with a strategy against Iran and I called it the octopus, terror
00:28:03.500
The first thing was to understand what's going on and then you can build a strategy.
00:28:09.420
What's going on in the Middle East is about 70% of the problems in the entire Middle East
00:28:19.980
I would view it, it's a very radical regime, by the way, also incompetent and corrupt, a bit
00:28:31.600
But what it does, it exports its ideology and terror with its arms all across the Middle
00:28:40.220
Every country it touches, it ultimately destroys.
00:28:50.640
So in all these places, it builds a local proxy, sometimes based on Shiites that live there,
00:29:03.240
It has, it empowers them, it funds them, it provides them weapons, it trains them.
00:29:11.120
And ultimately, it also commands them to generate terror, not only against Israel generally, but
00:29:21.100
Now, if, and I'll say straight at this point, we need to topple the Iranian regime.
00:29:34.220
The mistake that Israel has made for the past 30 years, and I was a soldier, I was fighting
00:29:40.140
Hezbollah, which is essentially the fingertip of one of its tentacles.
00:29:44.800
And the mistake was that we have expended and exhausted ourselves fighting those fingertips
00:29:53.080
of the octopus, and instead of directing our energy to topple the goddamn head of the
00:30:00.920
And what I did as prime minister, I gradually, I wanted to not have wars on our borders, because
00:30:08.580
that's playing to their strategy, and redirected our efforts to the head of the octopus.
00:30:13.940
Israel has done a lot of work throughout the years on the nuclear dimension, but my point
00:30:28.040
I look at the Cold War as a very good, you know, case analogy, and ultimately, the Soviet
00:30:41.760
You know what I did when I became prime minister?
00:30:45.400
I, the first month of my, on my job, I dedicated to deep study of Iran, its society, its economy,
00:30:52.760
and what America did in the 80s to accelerate the toppling of the Soviet Union.
00:31:00.340
Reagan's America empowered oppositions in Eastern Europe.
00:31:05.980
It strengthened the enemies of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Mujahideen, etc.
00:31:15.620
But my point is that we need America and Israel and the West to apply tremendous diplomatic economic
00:31:24.200
pressures and covert, overt, cyber, lots of stuff to accelerate the demise of Iran.
00:31:31.540
This regime will fall because it's much weaker than we think.
00:31:37.800
And what sort of support do you think the Iranian government has in Iran itself?
00:31:48.280
In fact, it has all the plagues of this sort of regime.
00:31:55.900
The children of the leaders are all corrupt, you know, driving in their cars, Lamborghinis,
00:32:02.620
whatever, while the people in many areas of Iran don't even have good tap water.
00:32:10.920
And it was doing quite well in the 70s on that regard.
00:32:13.260
Yeah, and so I believe that this regime will topple, will fall either, but it could be in
00:32:23.360
And what I did when I met the Biden administration and the folks there outlined a bunch of about
00:32:32.460
30 different vectors of action that we can take, soft action, and sort of divided the
00:32:43.760
Every time there's protests there, you know what the first thing the regime does?
00:32:50.600
Why don't we ensure that the internet's on with technologies like Starlink, etc.?
00:32:56.120
There's lots of stuff, easy stuff, cheap stuff that we can do to accelerate the toppling.
00:33:03.040
All we need to do is help the Iranian people, which are a great people.
00:33:07.060
And unfortunately, my successor discontinued this policy, but I think it's time to go for
00:33:15.200
And so what sort of, what do you see happening in the West, in the United States, with the
00:33:20.600
rest of the Western countries with regard to their stance contra Iran?
00:33:26.820
And I'd like to hear about what you think is being done that's actually effective and also
00:33:31.460
what you think is being done that isn't effective or counterproductive.
00:33:38.160
And everything I described, there's a bunch of moderate Arab states, Saudis, Emirates, Bahrain,
00:33:52.280
There's lots of subtleties here, but I would just say all of them hate radical Islam.
00:33:58.600
Hate radical Islam in one of two strands, either the Shiite strand, which is Iran, or
00:34:04.180
the Sunni strand, which is the Muslim Brotherhood.
00:34:06.480
And they can't always voice this publicly, but they need Israel to lead the way.
00:34:13.020
They need, their biggest dream is for Israel to step up to the plate.
00:34:18.640
And step up to the plate, and what, in relationship to radical Islam?
00:34:22.320
Fight radical Islam, weaken it, choke the money.
00:34:30.420
I mean, it's not the most complicated stuff that we're not doing.
00:34:33.460
I mean, America is perceived in the region, and I'm not going to talk about one side or
00:34:40.100
another, as unstable and sort of doesn't see things through.
00:34:47.600
So, you know, you might be there today, but you're out tomorrow.
00:34:56.800
We didn't choose our neighborhood, but we're stuck in the neighborhood, and we're a reliable
00:35:02.140
Granted, October 7th, we took a hit on our credibility because it should not have happened.
00:35:07.860
But I think we're in the process of strengthening again.
00:35:13.160
And, you know, stuff that's happened over the past month or so that seemed pretty clever.
00:35:20.360
That's the sort of thing that we've got to be doing.
00:35:23.440
Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration
00:35:30.960
But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead, and you have no idea
00:35:36.680
In our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury.
00:35:41.640
Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport, you're essentially
00:35:46.620
broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept
00:35:51.120
And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:35:54.320
With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords,
00:36:05.360
Well, on the dark web, your personal information could fetch up to $1,000.
00:36:09.220
That's right, there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities.
00:36:15.800
It's like a digital fortress, creating an encrypted tunnel between your device and the
00:36:20.500
Their encryption is so robust that it would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a
00:36:30.300
With just one click, you're protected across all your devices.
00:36:35.400
That's why I use ExpressVPN whenever I'm traveling or working from a coffee shop.
00:36:39.640
It gives me peace of mind knowing that my research, communications, and personal data
00:36:45.620
Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash Jordan.
00:36:50.360
That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash Jordan, and you can get an extra three months free.
00:36:58.620
So, let's talk about radical Islam for a minute, and maybe we can use that as an entry
00:37:09.280
point into discussing the relationship between religion and politics more broadly.
00:37:16.700
So, the first issue is, it's interesting to me that there are a variety of forward-looking
00:37:24.640
leaders in the Muslim world who, for example, have been pushing forward the Abraham Accords,
00:37:31.100
normalization of relations with Israel, but even more importantly, the establishment of
00:37:36.900
So, it's obviously that within the broader confines of the Islamic world, the possibility
00:37:48.780
So, now then the next issue, I'm trying to work this out in the West in general.
00:37:54.640
So, you know, there's always a percentage of truly bad actors in any population.
00:38:00.320
So, the psychological data indicates that the prevalence of pure psychopathy in the population
00:38:11.020
So, those are seriously bad actors, and we want to say a few things about the psychopathic
00:38:18.440
They only use their language to manipulate for their own benefit, right?
00:38:27.560
They're narcissistic, which means they want undeserved attention and will do anything to
00:38:32.640
And, to top it all off, because that's not enough, they have strong proclivity towards
00:38:37.160
sadism, which is positive delight in the unnecessary suffering of others.
00:38:48.320
They like to hide behind a mask of victimization, because that's very effective.
00:38:53.220
So, the psychopathic types are always claiming that they're the victims and that there are
00:38:59.040
people they can identify as oppressors, and the moral thing is to stand with them.
00:39:03.320
But the other thing they do is hijack the political agenda on both sides.
00:39:08.460
So, for example, the psychopaths will use compassion to manipulate the left, and they'll use free
00:39:16.460
But they don't care, because they're not political at all.
00:39:22.460
And then, what even makes the situation more dire is that the psychological literature indicating
00:39:30.020
that the psychopathic types can be rehabilitated is dismal, to say the least.
00:39:39.380
And again, I'm speaking of, I'm speaking, let's say, of the 1% of criminals who are responsible
00:39:49.200
Now, you know, a person who deviates from the path of law and order and makes a mistake
00:39:55.160
But I don't think that this is the explanation to what's going on in the Islamic world.
00:40:03.940
Because while there are psychopaths, like Saddam Hussein was a psychopath, definitely, and Yahya
00:40:13.800
I'm not sure other radical Islam leaders are necessarily psychopaths.
00:40:19.520
I think they truly believe that the world needs to act according to Sharia law.
00:40:30.660
It's like, it's such a difficult thing because you have, on the one hand, the obvious fact
00:40:34.840
that there's much movement in the Islamic world to establish peace with Israel and to
00:40:40.520
move their populations forward in a productive manner.
00:40:43.720
But then you have this core and separating out the religious claims from the manipulation
00:40:50.140
of the religious claims by the self-interested psychopaths.
00:40:55.860
I think what undermines this case is the numbers.
00:41:02.920
I think, look, I don't have the data regarding what percentage of Muslims support radical Islam.
00:41:12.280
I'm not saying they engage in terrorism, but they support.
00:41:23.580
Okay, I'm going to push back slightly because...
00:41:26.840
Well, I'm wondering, you know, is that also because it's easier for the psychopathic self-interested
00:41:32.580
manipulators to manipulate a comparatively undereducated population and to get away with their claims
00:41:38.340
that really what they're doing is abiding by the doctrines of the one true religion?
00:41:42.680
You know, because when you're dealing with a population whose fundamental ideational structure
00:41:49.180
is encapsulated within a single religious viewpoint, it's a lot easier for the bad actors to manipulate that.
00:41:54.800
So they definitely use this, first of all, to deflect all their incompetence.
00:42:08.420
It just means, you know, you're a cynical person.
00:42:19.120
I'll tell you what I think about how we need to go about fighting radical Islam.
00:42:28.340
I think, especially in the case of Gaza, everyone asks me, but Hamas is an ideology and you can't kill an ideology.
00:42:38.640
I agree that there's no point in trying to persuade people, don't be radical, don't be Hamas supporters.
00:42:45.120
Hamas enjoys a great popular support in the Palestinian population, about two-thirds.
00:42:55.720
But there is a way to get them away from Hamas by defeating Hamas.
00:43:01.600
Had we, you probably know way better than me, let's say a hypothesis.
00:43:08.640
Had we done a poll in Nazi Germany in December of 1944, right?
00:43:16.600
My belief, I have no basis for this, is that a vast majority of Germans still supported the Nazi ideology.
00:43:25.180
Now, within several years after the war, we had a new Germany.
00:43:29.920
What happened was, there was a step before persuading their hearts and minds that Nazism is bad.
00:43:38.700
There was something way more important, that Nazism is gone.
00:43:42.040
So, first defeat Hamas, first defeat the Nazis, and so it's no longer a matter of whether it's good or bad.
00:43:55.660
And only then, I think, I'm asking you actually, psychologically can the individual open his mind to hear other arguments.
00:44:07.240
We need to defeat Hamas and then begin changing the hearts and minds.
00:44:12.780
Well, I think the historical precedents that you outlined are the correct ones.
00:44:23.240
I mean, Japan went from that war-like state that it was to a very peaceful and productive society overnight.
00:44:29.600
Well, and you can say exactly the same thing about Germany.
00:44:34.180
All right, so there's good historical precedent.
00:44:37.040
Whether that's the relevant case, that's a different issue.
00:44:44.160
We have no success in sustainable Arab democracies.
00:44:53.920
You know, you look, none of the countries in the Middle East, even the stable ones, are democracies.
00:45:00.340
And it gets you thinking that maybe we're trying to implement something to square a circle.
00:45:09.240
And maybe there needs to be some sort of hybrid.
00:45:15.160
One of the great leaders today, I believe, is Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed of the Emirates.
00:45:34.220
And so we have to be creative about these sort of things.
00:45:38.320
Not impose our values and structures where it won't necessarily succeed.
00:45:45.740
This gets us farther down the religious rabbit hole, too.
00:45:49.000
We don't know what the grounds for democracy are.
00:45:53.160
You know, democracy emerged in its modern form as an offshoot of Judeo-Christian culture.
00:46:00.860
And I think you can make a strong case that, and I've felt this particularly from studying the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, is that once the presumptions of Judeo-Christian morality are axiomatic, it's possible to erect a democracy that's functional and stable.
00:46:21.440
There are preconditions for liberal individualism.
00:46:24.860
And one of the preconditions is that your society is basically peaceful and everybody trusts one another.
00:46:30.180
And then, well, now you can all go out there and be individual and liberal and vary in your creative ways.
00:46:37.780
Look, it isn't fluke, obviously, that there aren't functional democracies in the Arab world.
00:46:43.960
Now, why there aren't functional democracies are a hard thing to pull off.
00:46:47.600
And there's many places in the world that don't have them.
00:46:49.380
Functional democracies are hard in America and in Israel as well.
00:46:54.000
And they've had a hard time really getting themselves going in South America, for example.
00:46:58.600
Like the one, countries that were settled by England tend to have functional democracies.
00:47:03.020
And countries that were settled by any other country, France, Spain, Portugal.
00:47:07.780
And Israel is a remarkable miracle in that sense.
00:47:12.020
Because the Jews had been in exile in the diaspora for 2,000 years.
00:47:17.620
They didn't have, you know, we were organized in small communities, not as a nation.
00:47:23.620
And to have these folks come from all around the world back to our homeland and form a stable democracy, it in itself is a miracle.
00:47:33.180
But, you know, when you think about it, it makes sense because Judaism, as it evolved in the diaspora, and previously in the two previous states we had in Israel, was a very democratic and open for debate society.
00:47:59.380
You know, when you have the Orthodox Jews study Talmud, Talmud, essentially, people don't know what I'm going to, about this.
00:48:26.040
They debate the most arcane, strange topics, but no one cares about the bottom line.
00:48:39.200
It's like a combination of mathematics and logic.
00:48:46.820
And then 400 years later, rabbis in Europe continued, or in North Africa, continued the debate.
00:48:54.980
And the method of study in Judaism is also unique.
00:49:05.460
Two guys sit one next to another and learn together and debate.
00:49:11.420
You don't sit, the structure was not a teacher in a classroom.
00:49:15.340
And we've been doing this for thousands of years.
00:49:18.260
And I believe, by the way, that's part of the secret of the startup nation,
00:49:28.840
I remember in my startup company, we were yelling at each other the whole time.
00:49:32.860
Anyone who came into my company heard screaming between the VP, R&D, but it was positive.
00:49:41.260
At its worst, it can tear apart societies when the debate is not for the right reasons.
00:49:48.020
Yeah, well, so that means upward-oriented debate.
00:49:51.520
Well, it seems to me that that implies that maybe one of the things that the Jewish state
00:50:01.320
and Christian or Judeo-Christian democracies have in common
00:50:05.700
is something like a conceptualization or an embodiment of the logos, right?
00:50:11.040
The idea that the way that you make progress forward is through thought,
00:50:16.960
and that's mediated by speech, and that speech has to be free and can be intense.
00:50:24.260
The most respected person in the community for those 2,000 years was the rabbi.
00:50:36.680
That's how the most famous rabbis, like Maimonides, who was also a physician.
00:50:43.160
And first and foremost, they were the best at study.
00:50:51.180
Their children got the best marriages of usually the most wealthy,
00:50:55.520
and that created a very positive cycle, a genetic cycle,
00:51:00.300
which made for very smart folks all across the Jewish world.
00:51:06.320
The good thing is that rabbis get married and have kids.
00:51:10.980
And so you take a really smart guy, but then he doesn't have descendants.
00:51:18.500
By the way, in Israel today, Israel is the only Western country in the world
00:51:33.300
By the way, people think it's only because of the ultra-Orthodox,
00:51:38.200
But even if you carve them out, the secular are also net positive.
00:51:46.500
We're at about 2.3 with the secular, and all in all, at three kids per family.
00:51:56.560
I mean, it seems to indicate something, you know, it's a wild hypothesis,
00:52:00.460
that there's a certain degree of existential threat
00:52:04.640
that might optimally facilitate the desire to have children, right?
00:52:13.060
You can be more cavalier, I suppose, about life in general.
00:52:16.500
Like, one of the things I noticed about being in Jerusalem,
00:52:19.200
I've been there a couple of times, is the intensity of life.
00:52:25.220
And people, you know, in some ways, people are conducting themselves
00:52:35.640
And I wonder if, you know, Hemingway said at one point
00:52:39.240
that every generation needed a war to sort out what was important,
00:52:42.380
and sufficient existential threat might play that role of focusing.
00:52:46.300
You're on to a very salient point, because October 7th shook us.
00:52:58.880
Bull market, bear market, rates will rise, rates will fall.
00:53:04.000
Until then, over 38,000 businesses have found a way
00:53:06.580
to future-proof their operations with NetSuite by Oracle,
00:53:11.520
Imagine having your accounting, financial management, inventory,
00:53:14.220
and HR all seamlessly integrated into one fluid platform.
00:53:22.400
You're wielding a powerful tool that gives you the visibility
00:53:27.700
It's like having a map in a maze of market uncertainties.
00:53:32.940
It's like peering into the future with actionable data at your fingertips.
00:53:38.200
You'll be closing your books in days, not weeks.
00:53:40.320
That means less time drowning in paperwork and more time focusing
00:53:43.120
on what truly matters, steering your business towards success.
00:53:46.680
Here at The Daily Wire, we are proud to partner with NetSuite
00:53:48.980
because they are leading the way in future-proofing operations
00:53:53.240
Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions,
00:53:56.320
NetSuite adapts to your needs, helping you respond to immediate challenges
00:54:01.700
Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI
00:54:16.860
I grew up, I was born in 72, a year before Yom Kippur War,
00:54:20.660
which was sort of the last time that we thought existentially
00:54:29.140
And my childhood in Mount Carmel in Haifa was very similar,
00:54:36.160
It was a very standard and regular Western childhood.
00:54:43.560
And my whole generation grew up taking Israel for granted.
00:54:46.860
We did not feel that there's any existential threat.
00:55:02.760
This is a fascinating insight that not many people are aware of.
00:55:09.460
One is a massive institutional failure of the state of Israel
00:55:23.180
You know, we've always had terror, but a terror attack usually wraps itself up
00:55:32.400
So it was a huge failure of intelligence, of operations,
00:55:36.200
and the government melted down for the month subsequent.
00:56:23.460
their brothers and sisters that they've never met.
00:56:33.760
And, you know, I was in Manhattan on September 11th.
00:56:42.800
And there was a river of people running away to the north
00:56:47.740
Only the firefighters went south, which is okay.
00:56:57.860
just went and fought sometimes with their bare hands,
00:57:05.880
And these boys and girls are the toughest we've had.
00:57:11.460
And, you know, when I compare them to boys and girls
00:57:17.120
let's say here in America, I do a lot of universities,
00:57:19.440
and I see the nonsense that they're being fed with
00:57:24.000
or the way they're being developed versus our kids.
00:57:36.160
a nation of lions, a courageous younger generation,
00:57:40.500
tough, resilient, being embedded with values of work ethics,
00:57:58.040
they need the right pronoun, otherwise they're triggered,
00:58:01.100
and they need a safe space and microaggressions
00:58:03.660
and all this nonsense, which builds very feeble people.
00:58:09.820
Because I have a newsflash, the world out there is a tough world,
00:58:16.320
And the reason I'm so optimistic about the next 50 years of Israel,
00:58:24.120
You remember, American GIs came back from Europe,
00:58:27.820
and they carried America for its best 50 years,
00:58:34.580
These boys and girls, including my own son and daughter,
00:58:50.520
and went to do farming because we didn't have hands to do it.
00:59:02.340
And I know that that year of farming or fighting
00:59:06.180
is developing them so much more than any university.
00:59:10.360
So by the time they're going to enter the civilian world after army,
00:59:27.520
We don't know how much that kind of a heroic commitment to the future
00:59:33.700
has to be inculcated or developed in young men and young women
00:59:37.700
so that they'll take up the responsibility, for example,
00:59:42.180
but certainly the responsibility of having a family.
00:59:45.300
And so I guess part of the problem possibly with being wealthy and secure
00:59:51.140
it always appears as though you can put things off.
01:00:00.460
And you miss things a lot faster than you think.
01:00:03.140
And so, you know, like I've calculated, for example,
01:00:06.620
that the typical person is lucky with regard to,
01:00:11.120
that half of women in the West now will be childless at 30
01:00:15.180
and half of them will never have a child, right?
01:00:21.620
So it's one in two at 30 who don't have a partner or a child.
01:00:26.500
You know, I came back from South Korea last week.
01:00:34.420
who's going to have to support four grandparents.
01:00:38.840
Well, and I was thinking about establishing a relationship.
01:00:44.560
if you get to try out five people in your lifetime.
01:01:41.420
They have an opportunity to meet three, four times,
01:02:21.560
or that the relationships are less stable, right?
01:02:27.400
probably assume that they're going to have to do some work
01:02:40.020
Like the window to have children is relatively short.