Protester Arrested, Police Injured — Michael Knowles Returns to Pitt
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
203.75525
Summary
University of Pittsburgh allows conservative commentator Michael Vole to speak in a building hosted by a registered student group and protected by university pigs. Vole's return to campus was greeted with boos, jeers, and heckles.
Transcript
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Thank you very much to the police for removing that.
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Can you explain what happened the last time you came to the University of Pittsburgh?
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Yeah, I showed up for a debate on the topic of transgenderism, and when I walked up, the
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street was on fire with my welcoming committee, which was burning me in effigy.
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And as I was scheduled to walk out, some Antifa lunatic threw an explosive at the building
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I was inside, and all of a sudden I heard some loud boom, and it was a little bit worrying.
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You think Michael's nervous to come back to campus?
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Happily, one of the two lunatics who tried to blow me up is currently in federal prison.
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And the wife got off basically with a slap on the wrist.
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But in any case, it was all reason to expect that my return to Pitt would be similarly excited.
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Today, the University of Pittsburgh has made a positive decision to allow Michael Vole to speak
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in a university building hosted by a registered student group and protected by university pigs.
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Do you mind if I ask you if you've registered a protest?
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However, I was able to sit down with three left-wing students for a somewhat heated conversation.
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I guess my problem is for somebody who claims to be a conservative that's supposed to uphold
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the values of the Constitution, how it's difficult to justify some types of colonialism
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Well, the Constitution was ratified in a colonial age by people who were themselves colonists
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and who descended from the colonial settlers themselves.
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I just think that all colonialism is bad, per se, versus where you say some colonialism.
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Because you just said, how could one be a conservative and support the Constitution?
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But as I just pointed out, the founding fathers and the framers of the Constitution had no
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So it's one thing to say it's bad, but you couldn't say it's un-American or not conservative.
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It's contradictory to values, especially of like John Locke and life, liberty, and property.
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Oh, he didn't, but his ideas very greatly influenced it.
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You know, the life, liberty, and property directly led to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
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That's correct, but those ideas carried forward, especially in James Madison's framing of
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Yeah, I think Locke's influence is a little overstated, especially by liberals, deliberately.
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And I think that other guys like Montesquieu, or even Cicero, and some more conservative
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thinkers, even Thomas Aquinas, either directly or indirectly, I think influenced the Constitution
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But, fair enough point, you're saying you can't be a liberal and be a colonialist.
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Why did we go in and intervene in Libya, for instance, under a very liberal government,
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There was no particular direct American interest involved.
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It was a kind of colonialism, wouldn't you say?
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I'm saying that all types of colonialism are inherently bad versus where you are justifying
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I'm not saying when I support colonialism, I'm not supporting genocide or something like
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I'm just saying that nations have interests and we exert those interests in different
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Well, I mean, to Native Americans and people who were here before us, it does because they're
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They were being coerced because whenever the treaties are being signed, there's groups
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of people behind them with guns who are basically saying, sign this treaty or we'll shoot you.
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I mean, I think the first Native American interaction that we had in the United States
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in the first instance of settler colonialism in the Northeast, Plymouth, you know, the people
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who sailed on the Mayflower, which is a great cigar brand, they formed an alliance with
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Massasoit, who was the chief, became the chief of the Wampanoag Nation, which greatly benefited
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from an alliance with the Pilgrims, with the English colony.
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And the Wampanoag had enemies and they actually let the English know that the Massachusetts
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And so, in fact, Massasoit himself was nursed back to life by Edward Winslow.
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So later on, decades later, relations broke down because a direct descendant of Massasoit
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decided to start a war on the mistaken pretext that the English had killed his brother.
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But I say all of this arcane history to you, to point out, the real history is a lot more
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interesting than the notion that the Native Americans were just innocent little does who
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were coerced by the omnipotent white man who had total power over them.
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The real history shows that these Native Americans were real men.
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They engaged in real alliances and they benefited and sometimes they were damaged by it.
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But I guess my question then is also, what's the alternative?
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There is, unfortunately, no alternative, but I'm saying that the practice as a whole is
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And I don't think that it's good or beneficial or justified.
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Yeah, so I had a lot of issues with what you were talking about.
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So the first thing I want to talk about is abortion.
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So you mentioned that abortion is killing, which I understand biblically.
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But do you not agree that there are certain circumstances in which abortion is necessary?
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And adding on to that, do you not think that abortion is not as much of a black and white
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I suppose if one looked at a very, very small number of medical problems that could arise,
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the death of the preborn baby could result as a consequence of that medical treatment.
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You'd look at a taste like ectopic pregnancy with a baby implants in the fallopian tube.
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There, it might be necessary even to remove the fallopian tube to prevent the woman from
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That would necessarily result in the death of the baby.
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But the death of the baby is not what is intended.
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And the abortion of the baby is not the medicine to treat the mother.
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But of course, for 99% plus of abortions, it's not to protect the life of the mother.
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It's not because of a pregnancy that resulted from rape or incest.
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So would you agree, as a Christian, for those pregnancies, at the very least for those pregnancies,
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I think morally is different from how we view things in the political sense.
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Because I think that morally, yes, it is wrong to kill a fetus.
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However, if you're looking at the impact that that child will make on the future of anyone
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in the United States or looking at how their life will progress, I don't think that we
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should be taking away the mother's right to decide whether or not they want their child
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Because when you're pointing out these statistics, you're saying that 99% of the cases are elective.
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But what is causing the mother to make these choices?
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Are they doing it because they want to go on a rampant killing spree of their child?
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Imagine you were in the circumstances where you were dirt poor, where you didn't have
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the financial ability to give your child a good life.
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So I appreciate the fact that you're bringing that up.
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But I think that when the mother makes that type of decision, instead of outwardly ruling that,
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oh, abortion is wrong, we should allow the woman to make that choice.
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You already said it's morally wrong, but I just don't want to enforce it politically.
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So what, we're going to make laws without any recourse to morality?
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Yeah, because we're not supposed, okay, I understand that morals do play a big role
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A civil law is just an instantiation of the perception of the moral law.
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So then why would you divorce the two on this one particular issue?
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Well, I don't divorce the two on this one particular issue because there are other circumstances
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in which I believe we have to move away from the moral.
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I'm saying that not everything is as black and white as it is portrayed morally.
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And so when a woman decides to kill her child, it's not out of the perception that she just
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It's because she thinks that this is what's best.
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And also, if we're looking at the future of the United States in a way to actually decrease
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abortion rates for the long haul, removing abortion right now is not going to stop that.
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When abortion was legalized, the rates shut through the roof.
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So let's talk about what happened when the United States banned alcohol.
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What happened to people who are drinking alcohol?
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No, no, when people stopped drinking alcohol, domestic abuse.
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Also, when abortion was made illegal in 1973, what happened to black market abortions?
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They'll say, well, we're going to have black market abortions run by criminals and a lot of
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Do you know how many women died from illegal abortions the year before Roe v. Wade was ratified?
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Do you know how many women died from legal abortions that same year?
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And when you factor in the number of states where abortion was legal and illegal, the rate
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So the comparison to some black market kind of abortion, there's no analogy whatsoever.
00:11:19.920
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Once you are banning abortions in the United States, what's going to happen is that we're
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going to have women fleeing to other countries that have these abortions.
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I thought you said it's because women are poor that they kill their kids.
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Just on that point, at the very least, before we move on.
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You said you've had the experience of being poor.
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We had money problems a little bit when I was growing up.
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However, at no point did I ever think that it would be better to be dead than poor.
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And at no point do I think here, with the argument that you're making, a woman would
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be justified in killing her kid because she doesn't have enough money, particularly in
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the richest country ever in the history of the world.
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I think you also have to take into consideration the women who are actually committing abortions.
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It's not the women who are high class in the United States that are actually having these
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Some of them are, but they're not the majority.
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A lot of, 60% of black babies in New York are killed before they're born.
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Because they realize that their children are not going to grow up in a system where they
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Now, morally, I can make the argument all day long that abortion is wrong.
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And I will make the argument that abortion is wrong morally.
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But you want to actually try to reduce the number of abortions?
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The best way to decrease abortions, honestly, is to increase the amount of sexual education that
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My last question on this, to try to understand your thinking here, because I'm very impressed
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that you would say, I think abortion is wrong, and it's tantamount to murder, and I want
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there to be fewer abortions, and I want all this stuff.
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If it were the case that outlawing abortion would, in fact, reduce abortion dramatically,
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why would you not support that if you have all of those other goals that you've just
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Well, I would support it, but that's not what the actual case is.
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If I could convince you that banning abortion would reduce the number of abortions, you
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It does happen, but I'll get you this statistic.
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I guess I disagree with you regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.
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People try to pin me down on Israel-Palestine, which I don't really care all that much about.
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Do you support Israel's settlements in the West Bank, especially the ones lodged inside
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cities like Hebron and the settlers who commit violence against the Palestinians and take
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their resources and decrease their quality of life?
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I don't have strong feelings about Israeli settlements.
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I don't lose sleep at night one way or the other over it.
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I do think broadly that the state of Israel probably ought to be able to exist, which is
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contrary to the views of many people on the left, even prominent people.
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I do think that it would be imprudent to give the Palestinian Arabs yet another state.
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I do think it would be wrong, actually, to abolish the Jewish state that has come to exist
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in the Holy Land so that we could liberate from the river to the sea a stretch of land
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So in that way, I guess I'm sort of vaguely pro-Israel, but it's not my top issue.
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Well, personally, I believe that Israel should do more to limit the settlements of Israelis
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in Palestinian territories because the vast majority of Israelis do not support the settlements
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It's just a really fringe minority that do, and the settlers do not contribute to the peace
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By the way, I do not support Hamas or anything.
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I think the war that Israel is currently waging against Hamas is causing a lot of civilian
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casualties, and it is not bringing back any of the hostages.
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It is, in fact, killing the hostages and Gazan civilians.
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I think Israel should try to negotiate with Hamas and, through a longer period of time, like
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slowly try to build peace and build security in Israel and Gaza, improve their quality of
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life so that they would not have an incentive to attack Israel again because they attacked
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Israel because they suffered so much and they just wanted to take revenge, which that form
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of revenge by killing civilians is not justified, but it is caused by their suffering.
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It sounds like what you're saying, except for this one point which we can talk about, it
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sounds like what you're saying is it's a great pity that the war is happening and I hope it
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comes to a resolution soon and I recognize the Israelis have some rights, but I wish they'd be
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So the one point of contention maybe would be that the reason that a group of people
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went out and raped and murdered like a thousand people and took hundreds of hostages was because
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You know, they were just expressing their feelings because I suffer too, and I'm not a
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Muslim and I'm not a Jew, so I guess I don't have much of a role in the Israel-Palestine
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And when Christians suffer, we're told to kiss it up to God and have our suffering unite us
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I'm never at any point impelled to go kidnap and murder and rape people.
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So why are we justifying it when the Palestinian Arabs do it?
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I'm just saying the reason they did it is because of their suffering, but that is absolutely
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But another point is Hamas was propped up by Netanyahu's government as a counterbalance
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Netanyahu himself has said in past years that yes, Hamas-
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Well, that happens all the time in politics, but I don't think- you can blame Benjamin Netanyahu
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You can't really blame him for the election of Hamas, right?
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It was indirectly Israeli politicians that caused Hamas to be elected because they have
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caused so much pain and suffering upon Palestinians that they felt that they needed to elect such
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Some would call it suicidal empathy, but it's charming in any case.
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And thank you for not throwing any explosives at me.
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You go from explosives to- maybe I'll join the drum circle.
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Michael, Mercy, and Kenny did not end up agreeing with me.
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Or, if they did, they at least did not admit it.
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As my YAF campus tour continues, I hope to encounter more students, like the ones I spoke
00:19:23.620
Students willing to cross the picket line, engage in thoughtful dialogue, and perhaps even summon
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the courage to sit down for a face-to-face conversation.
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Homecoming fear to sit down for a face-to-face discussion.
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If you do not confess anything, you might not be the same anymore.