TRIGGERnometry - October 07, 2024


Why I’m off the Fence About Israel’s War - Konstantin Kisin

Hosted by
Francis Foster Konstantin Kisin
Guests
Konstantin Kisin
Mentioned
Norman Finkelstein Natasha Hausdorff Sami Abu-Zukhari Hamza Youssef Safety Namus Ben Shapiro Grim Beeper
Israel Wants to Make This the Last War - Melanie Phillips Are the Police Losing Public Confidence？ - Chris Donaldson

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

184.14

Word count

2,154

Sentence count

129

Harmful content

Hate speech

18

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A year ago, when thousands of Hamas militants crossed Israel s border to engage in an orgy of medieval violence, I knew little about Israel and had no opinion about the long-running conflict there. I read, watched, and listened to endless commentary, debates, and discussions to understand what people on both sides were saying. Having gathered those perspectives, I then did my best to apply First Principles thinking to the arguments I heard.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.080 I'm off the fence about Israel's war. Here's why. 0.95
00:00:07.240 Exactly a year ago, when thousands of Hamas militants crossed Israel's border to engage in an orgy of medieval violence, 0.52
00:00:13.960 I knew little about Israel and had no opinion about the long-running conflict there.
00:00:18.560 I've never been to Israel. I've never been to Gaza. I've never been to the West Bank.
00:00:22.980 It's not a conflict I studied at university or read about extensively.
00:00:26.380 People on both sides who care passionately about this issue find it hard to believe, but in truth, most people are like this.
00:00:33.780 That's why, for many months after the October 7th attacks, I avoided commenting on the war or even discussing it on our show.
00:00:40.900 Instead, I read, watched, and listened to the endless commentary, debates, and discussions to understand what people on various sides were saying.
00:00:48.920 Having gathered those perspectives, I then did my best to apply First Principle's thinking to the arguments I heard.
00:00:54.480 Thinking from First Principles means stripping whatever you're trying to analyze down to its core and working back from there.
00:01:01.680 Context is extremely important to understanding, but when it comes to highly emotive situations like this one,
00:01:07.960 people often flood you with emotional context, which does not support the argument they're actually making.
00:01:13.580 There are some obvious examples in this debate, which we will address shortly.
00:01:17.200 First Principles thinking helps you see the structure of arguments.
00:01:20.060 The logic of an argument is like the skeleton of a body.
00:01:23.540 You cannot see it from the outside, but it is usually the cause of why the body moves the way that it does.
00:01:29.200 Getting to the skeleton of an argument is essential to understanding it.
00:01:32.760 This was my approach when we had prominent pro-Palestine guests like Bassem Yusuf and Norman Finkelstein on trigonometry,
00:01:39.920 as well as pro-Israel guests like Ben Shapiro and Natasha Hausdorff.
00:01:43.180 It was also my approach when I hosted a fiery debate on the subject of dissident dialogues,
00:01:48.220 and when Safety Namus invited me to discuss this issue on his podcast.
00:01:52.340 So what does First Principle thinking tell us about the conflict?
00:01:55.280 First, the easiest way to understand a complicated problem is to find a comparable situation about which you already know what to think.
00:02:02.920 For example, if we accept that October 7th was a terrorist attack, as I believe most people do,
00:02:07.680 the obvious approach would be to compare it to other terrorist attacks in recent history.
00:02:12.540 That, as it happens, is impossible, because on a proportionate basis,
00:02:16.260 the Western world has never experienced an attack on this scale.
00:02:19.280 If we take 9-11, the most impactful terrorist attack in living memory,
00:02:23.120 which shook the world's dominant superpower to its very core,
00:02:26.440 we see that 2,977 people were killed in a country of 285 million people.
00:02:32.160 On October 7th, approximately 1,200 people were killed in a country of just 9 million people.
00:02:38.160 Some keep calling October 7th Israel's 9-11.
00:02:41.460 That isn't remotely true.
00:02:43.420 If October 7th was Israel 9-11, on a per capita basis, only 100 people would have been killed. 0.66
00:02:49.480 In other words, October 7th was at least 12 times as bad as 9-11.
00:02:54.180 And that's before accounting for the fact that Hamas took hundreds of hostages,
00:02:58.000 many of whom have been killed since.
00:02:59.480 So the obvious question is, if thousands of armed Mexicans had penetrated the southern border of the United States,
00:03:06.180 killed 36,000 Americans, and dragged off thousands of hostages,
00:03:10.560 how would America have reacted?
00:03:12.480 Would there still be a Mexico to speak of?
00:03:14.720 Whatever your view of the history of this conflict, I believe the logic of this is impenetrable.
00:03:19.520 However, there are some persuasive arguments from the anti-Israel camp,
00:03:23.180 which are aimed at contextualizing October 7th.
00:03:25.980 Let's look at them.
00:03:26.680 Number one, history did not start on October 7th.
00:03:30.460 The crux of this argument, when broken down to its central premise,
00:03:33.700 is that the state of Israel is illegitimate.
00:03:36.280 In this conception, Israel was created because land belonging to Palestinians 0.92
00:03:40.440 was taken by Western powers and given to European Jews fleeing the Holocaust.
00:03:45.380 Palestinians were not consulted, did not give consent, 1.00
00:03:47.940 and found themselves kicked out of their homes.
00:03:50.200 Israel is a settler colonial state.
00:03:51.980 Two, October 7th was a response to Israeli brutality and oppression.
00:03:56.920 Those of you who watched my debate with safety in Amos will recall that he made this argument repeatedly.
00:04:02.040 The people of Gaza and the West Bank are treated so badly, he argued,
00:04:05.400 the response we saw on October 7th was totally understandable.
00:04:08.940 An act of resistance aimed at redressing the wrongs they have suffered.
00:04:12.640 Three, Israel is killing civilians.
00:04:14.580 The scenes of parents pulling their children out of rubble speak for themselves.
00:04:18.680 Four, Israel is engaged in indiscriminate attacks, which is why so many innocent people are dying.
00:04:24.440 This argument aims to prove that Israel is the bad guy in this war because it is killing lots of people, 0.83
00:04:29.140 either deliberately or due to a callous disregard for the lives of Palestinians. 0.99
00:04:32.880 These are, to the best of my knowledge, the four principal arguments made by the anti-Israel side.
00:04:38.380 If there are others, please let me know in the comments and I will address them in a follow-up video.
00:04:42.640 Let's go through the arguments one by one.
00:04:44.700 And for the sake of argument, let us accept that every point in each argument is valid and historically accurate.
00:04:51.200 I know many viewers will find this objectionable,
00:04:53.680 but I believe the best way to unpack this entire discussion is to take people's arguments as valid and see if they make sense.
00:04:59.920 The first argument, whose central premise is that Israel is illegitimate, seems to be at the core of every debate.
00:05:05.820 It feels reasonable and logical to many people to contextualize Israel's response to October 7th in this way.
00:05:12.160 After all, if Israel was created through illegitimate means, it puts the discussion on an entirely different footing, doesn't it?
00:05:19.100 Well, actually, no, it doesn't.
00:05:21.640 Again, let's think from first principles.
00:05:23.760 If we believe every pro-Palestinian claim and accept that Israel was created through the forced placement of European Jews in a foreign land by Western powers,
00:05:32.320 we must look for a comparable situation in which a country was created through some form of displacement of the native population.
00:05:39.540 Most of you live in such a country.
00:05:41.360 The United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are all the products of invasion, colonization and brutal conquest.
00:05:47.860 If you go back far enough, so is almost every other country in the world.
00:05:51.520 But like it or not, Israel exists. 0.94
00:05:54.820 It's home to over 9 million people.
00:05:57.060 The idea that they would, could or should accept the destruction of what is now their country is absurd.
00:06:02.020 The United States government would not tolerate missile strikes and terrorist rampages from Native American reservations. 0.97
00:06:08.680 Neither would any government of any country under any circumstances.
00:06:13.200 Peace in the Middle East will not be achieved by attempting to undo many decades of history.
00:06:17.360 The second argument centers on the idea that October 7th was a response to Israeli occupation and brutality.
00:06:23.760 This, again, seems reasonable to many people.
00:06:26.920 After all, what would it take for you to behave the way Hamas did on October 7th? 0.94
00:06:31.660 The problem with this argument is that what happened on October 7th was not an attempt to weaken Israel militarily.
00:06:37.200 It was not an attempt to break Hamas militants out of Israeli jails.
00:06:40.820 It was not an attack on the Israeli Defense Force.
00:06:42.940 It was not a prison breakout, as some people like to describe it.
00:06:46.660 Because when people break out of a prison, they don't normally head to the nearest town and start massacring women and children.
00:06:52.200 October 7th was, by design and implementation, a terrorist attack whose purpose was to slaughter civilians, terrify Israeli society, and nothing else.
00:07:01.480 This was not an act of resistance.
00:07:03.320 It was an act of terrorism.
00:07:04.760 Which is why Israel had to react to it in the manner that it has. 0.57
00:07:08.180 And why any other country would have done the same.
00:07:10.560 The third argument is that Israel is killing civilians.
00:07:13.660 This is the one claim made by the anti-Israel side that is undeniably true. 1.00
00:07:17.780 However, this is an example of the emotive but irrelevant context I mentioned earlier.
00:07:22.360 Civilians are always killed in war. 0.65
00:07:24.460 The question is not whether they are being killed, but who bears responsibility for their deaths, and who can stop the killing.
00:07:30.600 Again, applying first principles thinking, we must reach for a comparable example.
00:07:34.940 There is no exact equivalent that comes to mind, but there is some useful context we can consider.
00:07:39.700 Hamas has repeatedly stated that given the opportunity, they will repeat the October 7th attacks again, and again, and again.
00:07:47.600 While this may seem shocking to us in the West, it makes perfect sense given that Hamas believes Israel is illegitimate and would like to see her gone.
00:07:55.520 This means that unless Israel destroys or degrades their ability to carry out their threats, it is likely to experience more terrorist attacks again, and again.
00:08:04.360 Does anyone seriously believe that any government of any country anywhere in the world would or could react to something like 12 9-11s in one day,
00:08:14.360 and the threat of more to follow as many times as possible, with anything other than all-out war?
00:08:19.880 And who can end the killing?
00:08:21.320 Well, theoretically Israel could, of course, but for the reason we just discussed, they can't, won, and shouldn't. 0.99
00:08:25.860 That leaves Hamas, who could have returned the hostages and surrendered the people who took them. 0.82
00:08:31.000 What is more, they could hide their civilians in the vast network of tunnels they've built to reduce casualties.
00:08:36.920 Instead, they refuse to build bomb shelters and do everything they can to maximize civilian casualties.
00:08:43.580 That's not my opinion.
00:08:44.880 It's something Hamas are themselves proud of. 1.00
00:08:47.060 A senior spokesman for the group, Sami Abu-Zukhari, gave an interview on Palestinian station Al-Aqsa TV the last time this conflict flared up.
00:08:55.620 The policy of people confronting Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against the occupation, he said.
00:09:04.600 We in Hamas call upon our people to adopt this policy in order to protect Palestinian homes.
00:09:10.080 So yes, the deaths of civilians are tragic, and in a modern world where you can fill your social media feed with gruesome footage, that tragedy can be broadcast straight into your home 24-7.
00:09:21.380 But the responsibility for their deaths is entirely with Hamas, and the failure to put a stop to the killing is theirs and theirs alone. 0.82
00:09:28.820 Which brings us to the final argument.
00:09:30.880 Israel's attacks are indiscriminate and designed to inflict civilian casualties.
00:09:35.320 This is actually the simplest argument of the four to address, because it is an empirical matter.
00:09:41.620 The war in Gaza is not the first conflict in human history.
00:09:44.800 We can compare the ratio of combatant to civilian deaths in this war to others.
00:09:49.100 What happens when we do?
00:09:50.920 Historically, urban warfare operations result in a casualty ratio of nine civilians for every one enemy fighter killed.
00:09:58.020 In Gaza, it is two to one.
00:10:00.140 In other words, despite the deliberate attempts by Hamas to increase the number of civilian casualties, Israel has been extraordinarily successful in reducing them.
00:10:09.900 This doesn't mean that there won't be incidents in which innocent Palestinians are killed, and, as in any war, there will likely be war crimes committed by both sides.
00:10:18.300 But overall, the numbers don't lie.
00:10:20.160 If you need further evidence that claims of Israel's indiscriminate attacks are nonsense, just look at the way various commentators reacted to what has been dubbed Operation Grim Beeper.
00:10:30.540 Thousands of Hezbollah pages were rigged with explosives and then detonated simultaneously, killing and injuring thousands of terrorists and a small number of bystanders.
00:10:39.580 The pages in question were not picked at random.
00:10:42.580 Israel specifically selected a batch of senior Hezbollah operatives.
00:10:45.800 And still, people like Hamza Youssef, Scotland's former first minister, complain about Israel's indiscriminate attacks.
00:10:53.560 This was, definitionally, the most precise, targeted and surgical large-scale anti-terrorist operation in human history.
00:11:00.640 In summary, I've engaged with an open mind and in good faith with all the anti-Israel arguments presented to me over the last year.
00:11:07.600 On balance, I regard them as disingenuous, irrelevant, and designed to pull at my heartstrings in order to obscure the harsh reality of this conflict.
00:11:16.800 We would respond exactly the way that Israel has. 1.00
00:11:20.300 The only difference is we would do so with the support of every member of the international community.
00:11:25.300 While Israel has to fight not only the terrorists who want to wipe them off the map, but Western apologists for those terrorists as well.
00:11:32.080 If you enjoy these videos, you should know that they're available on my substack weeks, sometimes months ahead of time.
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