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Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com, Forward slash Support and
do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone
back to the Pekingano Show for the first time. We've
been on streams before together, but not on this show.
Hunger the di merchant.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, Hunger, great man, it's a great
pleasure to be on the show for the first time.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for coming on, and I apologize for
asking you to come on and discuss a subject for
your first appearance that is so yeah. Well, I'm sure
people can look at the title of this and know
that this is, uh, this is going to be one
of those talks. It's going to be very personal to you.
So well, let's if for people who don't know you,
why don't you explain why this is a personal discussions.
Speaker 2: Here right, So if anybody doesn't hasn't seen me on OGC,
Pony Express Radio or other streams, I've been a guest on.
My name's Hunger. I am a Elebanese American born and
raised in the States, but descendants of two Elibanese parents.
My father escaped the Liberty Civil War in the seventies,
so that's how we got here. My mother stayed for
the entirety of the war there and then married. My
dad came came to America. But yeah, as as everyone
who follows the news and our favorite democracy in the
Middle East knows, there's a big there's a big conflict
going on, and I haven't. I have the interesting experience
of I've i've I've lived in the Middle East. I
wasn't born there, but I lived in the Middle East
as a teenager for about eight years, you know, very
very long time, very formative experience, and so I know
the region pretty well. And I met and I've met
a lot of people at that time, like I've met
I've met Palestinians whose grandparents or great grandparents were kicked
out of Palestine. I've met, you know, Syrians who left
during the Civil War in Syria like this. This is
a very complicated, you know, tense political region, but I
mean it's a very it's always a very interesting part
of the world that most people don't know a lot
about except you know, outside of you know, the g
WA and oil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's unfortunate that when most people hear about this
part of the world, it's uh, it's happening to do
with America's greatest ally, you know, saying, hey, they they
hate us because you know of who we are, and
they're they just they exist to kill us. And yeah,
I guess we've seen a lot of that lately. So
how have you have you been handling what's been going.
Speaker 2: On personally, I I really try not to. I really
try to keep my you know, GEO Paul hat On
when you know, thinking thinking about like what's happening, thinking
about the wider trends in the war and what is
the situation. But I mean, obviously I have friends and family,
a significant amount of friends and family still there who
are struggling. Thankfully, you know, people have reached out to
me personally and asked. Thankfully, I have nobody in my
personal you know circles that is close to the border
with Israel. You know, Lebanon is very diverse, you know,
spread out country. It's very mountainous country actually, so I
personally do not know anybody that's that lives very close
to the border with Israel. However, in Beirut, the capital city,
the capital is being bombed obviously, but again it's only
being bombed in specifically, not only definitely, not only, but
majority bombed in Sheite areas, which Husbala is a Shite organization,
So she Ete areas are getting the bront yeah, getting
most of the brunt of the bombings. So my family
is safe. I don't know anybody who's died personally. The
big thing that's happening there is actually the refugee crisis,
because a lot of Sheite Lebanese are you know, heading
heading up north and going into different areas of Lebanon
to escape the bombing and to escape the violence. So
in my in my in my family village, you know,
back home, a lot of people have open up their
doors to refugees from the South. I should also mention
I'm an Orthodox Christian. Lebanon has a very significant percentage
of Christians. It's the heighest in the Middle East by percentage,
and it's about you know, a quarter to thirty percent
of the country as Christian, whether that's Catholic, Orthodox, a
little bit of Protestant, you know, a lot of other
mixes in between. So that's kind of that's kind of
what's happening immediately in my circle. It's like, yeah, there's
a huge refugee crisis, and people are trying to be
very charitable and open up their doors and you know,
spread resources around to help people in this time of need.
Speaker 1: Can you explain, I mean, just a an overview of
what the why this beef? I mean, we know that
has Belah and the Ideaf of clash before we know.
I think a lot of us know about the nineteen eighties,
the bombings of Beirut, the blowing up of the marine
barracks there for no reason at all. I mean, the
Marines were there as peacekeepers, right, you know, it's just yeah,
I mean, I don't even get that. Obviously, that's being
very sarcastic. I actually have a friend who he knows
people who were stationed there. He knows people who were there,
and they've told them about the stories of what they
were doing there. And if anybody thinks that they were peacekeepers,
they they yeah.
Speaker 2: And I don't mean, I don't mean to share on
anybody who who served, you know, I totally I totally understand.
I nobody I know has any beef personally with any
American they met, whether they're in the military or civilian
or not. It's really the anti americanism in the Middle East.
It's not personal. It's extremely how do I say, it's
extremely political. It's extremely like as a result of government policy.
You did America. And I don't mean you that, that's
not not you personally, America or us G. I like
I like to say us G because that's not it
has nothing to do with what we're doing, because we're
both American. We don't agree with anything that our government
is doing. What us G has done in the Middle
East is create ship show after ship show after a
ship show that's caused enormous amounts of backlash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and in many such cases around around the
whole region. What different? And just talk about Libya all night?
But all right, let's let's stick let's tax to Elebanon.
You want me to put that map up? I think
right now it's a good time talk about talk about
the you know this, the Sheite what what looks to
be a Sheite stronghold? Where where are we here?
Speaker 2: The terrorist state?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, here we go. All right, let me
see if I can blow this up just a little
bit without making it at a screen. It's not gonna
blow up, so all right, so you have it on
your end and you can just explain what we're seeing here,
because when you look at this graph and you see
basically how this is, it shows by color where there's Shia,
where Shia, Sunni, Jruz Alawai, Maronite, Greek, Catholic, Greek Orthodox,
Armenian Orthodox, and Catholic I mean, this is like a
patchwork quilt that you would find in a thrift store
in the South that somebody's grandma made from a leftover
yarn that she had.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh basically. Yeah, So if for anybody interested,
the red, yellow, and orange are all Christian groups, which
is not an insignificant part of the country, and there's
also a lot of people who live that's the red, yellow,
and orange sections are all either Marrinite Orthodox or you know,
Eastern Greek or Greek Catholic, which is you know, like
it's like, how do I say? It's the Greek Catholics
are their eastern righte Catholics basically, and so it's a
very diverse country. As you can see, the green are
the Sunni areas, and the purple are the Sheites areas,
which is of big concern for us because of the
current conflict with Israel, and the blue area is our Drews.
And in all honesty, nobody freaking knows what the Drews are.
They don't understand what they are themselves.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: They're religious leaders like their clerics don't tell them their religion.
It's actually like an incredibly well kept secret, like they're
not allowed to know what the tenets of their own
religion are. But it's basically like an ethnosectarian, esoteric like
patchwork of like Muslim and Christian beliefs. Basically, Yeah, but
asking Drews what what is? What is Drusism? Like they
have no fucking idea.
Speaker 1: What that sounds like? Aloite too? ALOI is is kind
of odd. I've asked that before people and you always
get the same kind of very mystical kind of answer
to that.
Speaker 2: The only answer I ever get from the alloy whites
is we're Muslim, but we're allowed to drink alcohol.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then you look at us, then you look
at someone like a Sod who's an alo white, and
you're like, that kind of looks like a white guy.
But yeah, all right, no, definitely.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: So on this map, just just just that, just.
Speaker 2: On that point of like the whiteness of uh, just
just on that point, like the whiteness of the Meds.
I I just call myself Mediterranean. When people think of Arabs,
they think of like, you know, sand and words, which
is not entirely inaccurate. But the Mediterranean basin has been
a petri dish for four thousand years, like, we have
natural blondes and redheads. I have red heads in my
own family who are pale. You know, they if you
didn't know they were from this area of the world,
you would assume they were like Irish or something, or British.
You would have no idea except for the accent. Just
on that point, I just wanted to say that, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, Europe is weird too. I mean I have Eastern
European and Southern European and my family and I'm brown hair,
brown eyes. My brother I have a brother, my youngest
brother's blonde hair, blue eyes. So it's just odd oddness
all around, all right. So looking at this map, Okay,
so the IDF has been making incursions into Lebanon. Where
on the map have they been making the incursions?
Speaker 2: And so you're going to get a kick out of this.
The incursions that are happening are obviously in you know,
the furthest south where the entire purple is down there.
But surprise, surprise, the Israelis have not gotten pasted two
three kilometers into the entire country, which is absolutely nothing
that it's been a worse performance on the ground, at
least compared to two thousand and six and two thousand
and six, they took like ten fifteen kilometers of territory
and before the invasion even started, the Israelis said, We're
going to invade ten to fifteen kilometers inland and create
a Cordon sanitaire buffer zone so that Husbala rockets are
out of reach of Israel. Total failure, total, absolute, total failure.
This is not the best map to go into, but
like I can show you on a Google map of Lebanon,
like how far they've gotten into It's like two kilometers
or less, which is like nothing. So yeah, on the
on the ground at least, the military campaign has been
a failure. By air, you know, I mean by air,
they're causing huge amounts of destruction all.
Speaker 1: Over the country. Yeah. I was on one of the
telegram channels this morning. It's we're a renou arum and
they're basically saying that the IDF was pulling out today.
The IDF was pulling out a southern Lebanon because they
I saw one report where they had taken seven hundred
casualties and sixty dead. And yeah, like the report was
saying is they can't make it, they can't get in
five kilometers in So what I don't see what their
point is of even trying to make trying to do
this incursion. I mean, unless it's to punish, unless it's
to punish the population that's there.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's it's definitely that. But it's like I
have a hard time and even though even though these
people are you know, neighbors and eternal enemies, like I
have a genuinely hard time understanding their level of you know,
paranoia and you know other psychological ticks they have. But
it's like they knew what were they expecting to happen?
Were they expecting to drive all the way to be route,
which is like sixty seventy kilometers north of the border,
Like were they expecting to take over half the country?
What about the other she had areas that are like
all the way in the north, all the way in
the northeast, Like those areas are Husbala areas as well.
Are you going to invade two thirds of the entire country?
I mean, I genuinely don't know what they were trying
to do. It's like the same thing with the same
thing with ten seven, Like same thing with October seven,
which which we've talked a lot about, and everyone has
been talking a lot about for the past year. It's like,
why did why did they do what they did? They
knew this was not going to end the way they
thought it would and these people aren't just going to
go away. And it's not for lack of trying. The
Israelis have tried everything they had they could to wreck
Gaza and displace two million people out of Gaza. That
they didn't work. That didn't work at all. I mean,
they're still over a million Palestinians in Gaza. The ethnic cleansing,
I mean they killed you know, almost one hundred thousand people,
between fifty and one hundred thousand people, but there's still
a million Palastinians still there. They haven't been ethnically displaced,
which is which was israel stated goal. Israel wanted to
resettle Gaza with you know, exclusively Israeli Jews, which didn't work,
and then they launched as they opened the second front.
I mean, Hsabelah is the one that opens the second front.
And people ask me this as well, It's like, what
is what is the goal of Husabola? And I keep
saying this because this is like you have to take
these people at their word, because Aboua's goal is not
to destroy Israel in this campaign. They're wider objective is
to destroy Israel. But in this campaign itself, their objective
was to stop the war in Gaza by opening up
a second front, and the war in Gaza did not start.
But by boxing Israel in on two sides, you know,
they they've caused absolute panic and chaos in Israel. On
top of the also the Iranian support and MISSIF strikes
that have been happening as well. Like, Israel is in
a completely fucked situation, and it's all of their own doing,
It's all of their own making. And I can't reason
my way into thinking, why would you put yourself in
this situation?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking on that telegram page. It was eight
thirty eight am this morning Central time. Israeli Defense Force
to be going to slow withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
Speaker 2: All right, So there's two but so yeah, and in
these two areas, in these two areas, in these two areas,
there's so there's four brigades or or four divisions that
are active on the front line. I heard two of
those divisions being withdrawn. The other two I'm not so
sure about, but that that was the information I heard.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, all right, So looking at the map now,
you said from from the border down at the bottom
by how's that is that pronounced bail?
Speaker 2: So it's it's okay, don't bj anyway. So in in
two thousand and six, Vintage was taken over by the Israelis.
The town was was captured by Israel in two thousand
and six. It's been over a month since the starts
of the Israeli campaign. They have they are they have
not taken the city. They are still in the outskirts.
There's a there's a very famous town a kilometer south
of bentaje Bed called Marzayun, and that even that town
has not been taken over by the Israelis, which is literally,
you know, eight hundred meters from the border. I mean
that that's nothing like you're eight hundred meters away from
home base, and you can't take this one town of
like five thousand people when it was taken over in
two thousand and six. Actually, so this is a much
worse performance than even I expected compared to the first
war that happened in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: Okay, if I look up to Bay Route, Let's go
to Bay Route, because that's where when this all started,
the bombings, the massive bombings by the by the Israelis happened.
If I look at the colors on Bay Route, it
looks like it's almost all soony with just a couple
little stripes of Shia. Is that correct? Uh?
Speaker 2: Not? Not really so. I mean if if you look
at the tippy if you look at the tippy top,
Beirut is huge. Beirut takes up like a much wider circle.
So that purple right south of Beirut is the southern suburbs,
which is where all the sites are, and the eastern
suburbs are vastly like ninety percent Christian suburbs. So yeah,
at the tip, at the tip of Beirut is mostly
Sundy's West West Beirut is a Sunni district, East Beirut
is a Christian district, and South beir Root is a
Shiite district. And that's just how the demographics played out
because of migration and economics and you know history. So
in south and South Beirut, the southern suburbs is taking
an absolute beating by the Israeli Air Force like I don't.
I don't even have to show you. You can just look
this up. Anywhere you'll see buildings. You'll see like twelve
story apartment buildings just collapse from you know, a bomb
striking the base of the base of the apartment building.
And during the during during this the assassination of the
Husbela leader, Hassan no Sorella, there was a six, there
was a six. There, there was an apartment complex of
six buildings where the Israelis dropped one hundred and sixty
thousand tons of explosives on the six building, on the
six building complex which was housing the tunnels where Husbela
was meeting, where the Husbitalo leader was meeting some Iranian officials.
And I mean those buildings are completely gone, and there's
a giant, you know, fifty foot crater in the middle
of the city where that building once.
Speaker 1: Was well were the building had did did the residents
of the building have time to get out or they
warned to get out? I mean, are here. Here's here's
a question. Here's a better question. Did the residents of
those buildings know that those tunnels are there? And who
meets there?
Speaker 2: Yes? And no, I mean yes, yes, and no, So
it's hard to if you're not shite, it's very hard
to get this kind of information. And even if you
are she hite, it's very hard to get this information
if you're not directly associated with Husbula, because for for
all the for all the recent events, Husbula has extremely
good side, has extremely good opsect. I mean, there's a
reason why they're winning the war in the South. They're
winning the war in the South is because they have
extremely good opsec and they have a lot of room
to maneuver. But in Beroots, which is a very concentrated city,
you're just gonna have like there's spies running all over
the place and Husbola, it's it's hard, it's hard to
get around that. There is there is a huge network
of tunnels. I mean everyone knows this, but no one confirmed.
No one ever saw it themselves that I know of.
Everyone knows there's a there's a huge tunnel network under
Bay Roots, under the southern suburbs. This was known for
decades because that's what Husbobla does. Because the Husbula leaders
very rarely go above ground because at any one time
they can be assassinated by Israel and they know this
and this is how they live their lives, and the
people around them close to them know this as well.
But like there's not like a hidden civilian population living
in these tunnels. This is military infrastructure for Husbudlah for
the purpose of, you know, defending themselves against assassination attempts
by Israel.
Speaker 1: What's your opinion of Hesbela.
Speaker 2: That is a very complicated question. Well, of course I
believe the State Department saying that they're a terrorist organization,
but I have as a Lebanese Christian, I have no
beef with Husbolo because Husbola are not my enemy, and
Husbela has never done anything to the Christian community in
my opinion that deserves any you know, backlash. A lot
of other Lebanese Christians disagree. They don't like Hesbalah, not
because their pro is real, but because they want to
open up to the West. They want to, They want
they want to. They they want to give the State
Department a blowjob, basically, and it's like they know that.
It's like, oh, Husbalar Muslim, their reactionary. They're allied with Iran.
We wanna, we wanna, we want to be open and
European and see the world and have business and do
banking with you know, the rest of the the with
the West, or the or the gay whatever whatever you
want to call it. And there's a lot of Christians
who genuinely believe that. And I know, I know where
they're coming from, and I understand why they think the
way they think, because they were Western educated, they have
family in the West. I mean, I live in the West,
so I I want to complain. But they're wrong in
the sense that it's like you're you're pissing off your neighbors,
your Muslim neighbors who don't like those governments and what
they're doing, and you're inviting in the foreign influence of
very very bad actors. Which is not to say the
other air of states are bad actors. I mean Syria,
Syria is a Syria has done many bad things in Lebanon.
Syria is the Also Syria is also the only thing
keeping Lebanon kind of staple at any one point in time.
They've done a lot of bad things in Lebanon. I
can tell you, I can tell you the things the
Syrians did to my family during the war. But at
the same time, we need Syria. Like this is not
a it's not about my personal desire. It's like, this
is the geopolitical reality. Like we have to be we
have to have extremely close ties to Syria. There they
are our only Arab neighbor. This is a very tough
neighborhood to be and we are a very small country.
The goal of a very small state is to survive.
And the goal of a minority, the goal of a
religious minority or any ethnic minority, is to survive and
not piss off your neighbors. And that's that's that's what't
Israel has never learned.
Speaker 1: You make it seem like the Shia or not in
Lebanon or not. The enemy of Christians are the Sunnis
in Lebanon the enemy of Christians.
Speaker 2: The Sunnis don't like anybody. First of all, the Soonis
think the sites are yeah, the Soonies think the Sites
are heretics, and they tolerate the Christians. But I mean,
if a certain I mean there's been a lot of
radical Sunni groups who have come up in Lebanon and
they don't like the Christians either. I mean, Hasbola was
the one kicking Isis's ass in Syria? And who are
who are isis massacring in Syria? They were massacring the
Alloites and the Christians and all the minorities, and so
they were We're no friend of Isis, absolutely fucking not.
I mean the enemy of my enemy as my friend.
Husbula has never, you know, has never done anything to
attack the Christian community as far as I know, or
at least outside of the Civil War where everyone was
fighting everybody. It was nothing absolutely unique to Husbulah. And
you know, defending the regime of Bashar Assad and protecting
the Christians is kind of the most important thing in
my opinion, and they've never the Christians. The Christians are very,
very politically divided in Lebanon, very much fifty to fifty. Actually,
the Sites and the Sunnis are basically one political bloc
who oppose each other. But the Christians are actually divided
fifty to fifty. Half of them to half of them
want to be open to the West, and that also
means being an ally of the Saudis, the Qataris, the
Amortis and all the Gulf State puppets of America. Basically
that half of Christians support that siding with Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf States and the West. The other half
of Christians side with Hasabella and Syria because it is
in their best interest of their survival to do so.
Because we're in a very tough region. This is we
don't get to choose who our neighbors are. You know,
you have to make compromises, you have to you know,
you have to have you have to have it back
and forth with these people, like you can't ignore who
your neighbors are, and you want to have good relationships
with your neighbors. Just like just like Ukraine and Russia,
Ukraine Russia could have gone, could have gone along very well.
And Syria and Lebanon is very similar to Ukraine and
Russia in many many ways. So I mean, there's a
lot of people in Ukraine who are pro Russian and
who maybe they don't want to be a part of Russia,
but they at least want to be friendly to Russia
and not be an enemy of Russia. I have no
reason to be an enemy of Syria. That would not
be good for my people to be an enemy of Syria.
Speaker 1: All right, So I have an important question to come
back to you, but I don't want to ask you
this one before. Before we jump into that because that'll
probably lead us into a new subject. Have you been
to Israel?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, so you haven't been. You haven't been to Gaza, Okay,
but you said that you have.
Speaker 2: Sorry, in interesting story, my grandmother when before Israel was
when Israel was Palestin, My grandmother went to Jerusalem for
a Christian pilgrimage and she had a tattoo of across.
She got that in nineteen forty six actually, and then
two years later as past nine became Israel. I just
just personal, interesting tidbit.
Speaker 1: You did say that you've you've known people in Goza,
right or from Gaza, or people who've been So I'm
asking I'm gonna ask you secondhand information here, But you
do know people who've been there, right.
Speaker 2: I know people who have family in Gaza.
Speaker 1: Okay. So I want to ask the same question about
Gaza that I asked about Lebanon. How are the Christians,
the Christians that are left there? I mean, I think
they used to be thirty percent Christian and now it's
down into low single digits. How are they treated there?
Speaker 2: I mean, like I mean, the Christians, the Christians in Gaza,
who they're not nothing but they're they're they're a negligible
portion of the kind of the society. It's like, there
are two million people in Gaza, there's maybe eight ten
thousand Christians. I mean they, I mean they no one
no one really bothers them. No one really bothers the
Christians for being Christian, even though there are radical Sunni groups,
But no one bothers the Christians in Gaza because they're
they're struggling under the same occupation as everyone else. Like
life is not better for the Christians because they're Christian.
They don't have more access to the West because they're Christian.
They're they're living in an open air prison, just like
the other two million Muslims around them. And they have
their own churches and they have their own they have
their own little community. But they're Palestinian. Their culture is Palestinian,
their culture, their food is their food is arab their
food is Trainian. And they're they're just like everybody else,
except they don't wear the he job.
Speaker 1: All right, So you said some things before that could
lead people down a path. You say, ye. Basically, if
you're Lebanese, you live in a rough neighborhood, you're surrounded
by yeah, you're surrounded by trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The way what we're taught here is that Israel is
there to try to stabilize that, that they're the stabilizing
force that before Israel, before the Jews went to Israel
and decided that they were going to buy up all
the land. I think we know anyone who knows the
real story knows that that's bullshit, but that they they're
the only stabilizing force there, that if they weren't there,
this would just be an eruption of Sunni and Shia
killing each other and killing Christians and YadA, yad. So
how does that How does that narrative play for you?
Speaker 2: It's on its face it's wrong. But I'll just say
I'll just say this one thing that the grain of
truth in that statement, it's it has nothing to do
with the Jews, Okay. The immigrants to Palestine have caused
nothing but more destabilization, more massacres, more terrorism, more. You know,
I don't even have to mention it. You've gone through
this on your show dozens of times. Everyone knows what
happened in Palestine in the thirties and forties, with the terrorism,
the bombings and all that stuff and the consequences thereafter the.
Speaker 1: Grain of truth, and you're like, you're talking about you're
talking about Jewish terrorism, Yeah yeah, o fact, and.
Speaker 2: And and what the State of Israel has done has
done since and right, all the things the state of
the Visual has done since the Lavon affair, the assassination attempts,
the six Wars that started because of the creation of Israel.
But the grain of truth in that statement is that, Okay, yeah,
the Middle East was not pretty beforehand. There were ethnic tensions,
there were religious tensions, there were you know, Muslim Christian massacres,
but those things, it's not that those events were a
consequence of the Ottoman Empire, the weakness of the Ottoman Empire,
the failure of the Ottoman Empire, and you know, uppity
nationalist movements trying to you know, take over their neighbors,
which is not Again, this is a rough neighborhood. It's
been a rough neighborhood ever since the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire. So you have to kind of make compromises
to keep the peace and not get like Lebanon used
to be a majority Christian state. Okay, in nineteen thirty two,
the population was fifty five percent Christian. Now it's twenty
five thirty percent, which is significant. You know, that's almost
a million and a half people out of five But
we're not We're no longer the majority. You know. To
survive as a community, you have to make interesting friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that a lot of people would hear
that about the Ottoman Empire, and they would think that
really the best way for to keep peace in this
area is to have a strong overlord, Like if the
Ottoman Empire, you know, demanded order, was very on the ground.
I mean, and we can go back in history and
we can talk about Rome, and we can talk about
you know, Alexander and a whole host of people who
attempted this. But it would seem to me.
Speaker 2: It wasn't it wasn't even that, it wasn't even that
long ago. I mean, the Ottoman Empire lasted in the
Middle East for five hundred years, and only in the
last sixty years of those five hundred were their significant
blood feuds and ethnic massacres. Those four hundred, those other
four hundred and forty years were very strong, stable central governments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all right, well, let's talk about the uh, well,
let's talk about our greatest ally, Israel. How how did
it start with the tension between Israel and Lebanon. Where
does the genesis of that come from?
Speaker 2: Well, the story of Israeli Lebanese tensions, I mean, first
of all, First of all goes back to nineteen forty eight.
It goes back to the creation of Israel. So when
Israel was founded and the Nakba, which is Arabic for
the catastrophe, the display meant of almost a million Palestinian refugees,
the displacement, the displacement of Palestinians from Palestine into the
surrounding territories. Lebanon got a. Lebanon received a significant portion
of those Palestinian refugees because it's literally on the border
of Palestine, not surprising, and so from nineteen forty eight
onwards there has been a significant Palestinian refugee population in Lebanon.
And with the creation of the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation
Organization and Yasadatifats in the sixties, Palestinians started conducting cross
border raids into Israel, you know, for a very noble
cause to reclaim their homeland, which everybody understands. But this
caused Israel to retaliate in Lebanon and it led to
Lebanese casualties. It led to Lebanese people being caught in
the crossfire between the Palestinians in Lebanon and the Israelis,
and a lot of people died in the sixties and
seventies because of Israel attacking Palestinians in Lebanon and against
civilians getting caught in the cost fire. This caused a
huge backlash to you know, both sides. The Shiites, as
you can see on the map, which is the entire
proper area down south is where all that is where
a huge number of the Palestinians were based out of
to attack Israel, and so it was almost eighty to
eighty percent Sheites getting killed as a as collateral damage
in the Palestinian you know, Israeli skirmishes. This caused a
huge resentment in the Shiite community and so a lot
of them started traveling up north. That is why the
southern suburbs of Beirut received a huge influx of sites
because in the sixties and seventies when the conflict was
going on, a lot of sites left the south to
move to Beirut to escape. You know, Israeli attacks as
a result of Palestinian attacks. That's kind of the animus,
that's kind of the the that's kind of the starting
point of how Husboba came into being. In the sixties
and seventies, Shiites were getting killed by being in the
middle of Palestinians and Israelis, and so the sites started
founding their own militias to protect their to protect themselves,
and this happened in the seventies. To think about the
Palestinians in Lebanon, they I sympathized with them very much so,
but they also wrecked my country. I mean ironically, the
Palestinians started the Lebanese Civil War because the Pastinians were
majority Sudani. There were some Christians Palestinians who fled, but
because ninety plus percent of the Palestinians were Sunni, it
upset the entire sectarian demographic balance in Lebanon and we
received hundreds of thousands of these radicalized Sunni fighters who
you know, were interested in conflict and having a war
with Israel. This caused a huge backlash in the Christian community,
and the Christian community started forming militias as well to
protect themselves. From the Pastinians, because the Pastinians were trying
to take over Lebanon to be the permanent base of
attacks on Israel. And yeah, surprise, surprise, the locals did
not like being the basis of attack and getting caught
in the middle of these two groups. So this led
to the Lebanty Civil War of nineteen seventy five. It
lasted for fifteen years. It was a Christian Muslim civil war,
but it was actually it was mostly a Christian Palestinian war,
with the Sahites and the Drus and the Sunnis also
committing massacres against everybody. Like the Sahites committed massacres against
the Palestinians, the Drews committed massacres against the Christian The
Christians committed massacres against the Palestinians. The Sundies, you were,
the Lebanese Sunnies used the Palestinians as their you know,
their strong right arm to further their Sunni political interests.
And Yasad Adafetz, the leader of the PLO this his
attacks on Israel eventually caused a backlash in Israel, which
led to two invasions of Lebanon, the first ones. In
the first one, in nineteen seventy eight. Yeah, so Israel
occupied like maybe again ten fifteen kilometers of southern Lebanon,
which caused more Shiite refugees to flee north and radicalize
the Sheiites even more because their land was occupied by
Israel now. And in eight nineteen eighty two, which was
the big invasion, they occupied half of Beirut, They occupied
half of Lebanon, half of Beirut, and they got into
a war with the Syrians over eastern Lebanon. And this
was a huge part of the conflict. The Syrians, after
the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War invaded to re
establish security. Not really, they just chose side. They from
one year to the next, the Syrians would play both
sides of the conflict and try to get the most
out of both sides. Like one year they would support
the Christians and try to stabilize the country. The next
year they would support the Sunnis and destabilize the country.
Given the fluctuating, you know, events that Syria was very
much a part of. And so in eighty two, the
Israelis and the Syrians you know, crossed arms and it
was pretty much i would say it was a stalemate.
But I think the Israelis won that exchange in eighty two,
but I mean it was a very bloody It was
a very bloody exchange as well. The Syrians have always
been the best have The Syrians have always had the
best track record of all the Arab states when it
comes to fighting the Israelis. So eventually people, eventually the
conflict settles down in nineteen nine. There is a peace
agreement in nineteen ninety between all the militia groups of
all of all religions and they agree to have a
more for They agreed to a new power sharing arrangement
where power shifted from the Christians to the Sundanis and
sites because again, like I said, when Lebanon was created,
it was a majority Christian country and the Christians had
majority political power. The Civil War changed that. The Civil
War caused Christians to lose political power in exchange for
peace with the Sunnis and with the Sundis basically and
the past Indians. The Palestinian Liberation Organization was actually kicked
out of Lebanon by Israel and they fled to Tunisia
or or somewhere along that lines until out of fact
comes back to make peace with Israel. So the Palestinians
come in, screw Lebanon up, screw up the demographics, provoke
an invasion by Israel twice and cause everyone in the
country to fight them. So in the middle of this,
because of the nineteen eighty two invasion, all of southern
Lebanon is occupied by Israel. A one specific Sheite militia
splits off from the other site militias and gets This
is because this is nineteen eighty two, they get foreign
funding from the Islamic Republic of Iran. This group becomes
Hesbolah and they are radicalized by They are raticalized by
the Iranian Revolution. Actually, the Lebanese contributed very much to
the Iranian Revolution happening in the first place, but that's
a more complicated story. So the Celebanese Chites and the
Iranian sites radicalize each other in exchange, and eventually, after
nineteen eighty two, Sheites and Lebanon form Hesbela. And Hesbela's
main goal is not to fight the Palestinians, not to
fight the Christians. It is to drive Israel out of
love and retake the site lands that were now occupied
by Israel, and Israel occupied southern Lebanon from nineteen seventy
eight till the year two thousand, So yeah, twenty two
years the south was occupied and that was the Rizondetra
of Hesbela. And so after the Israelis left Lebanon in
the year two thousand, they left unilatterally. But throughout that
entire time, even post civil war, Hezebela and the Israelis
were fighting each other in the nineties and southern Lebanon
and a lot of again civilians died. Even though the
country was at peace because the civil war was over,
the country was still at war with Israel, and Hezabela
was the main force fighting Israel in the south because
Israel Israel occupied Shiite territory. There was a very famous incident.
Actually if you look at that little orange speck in
the middle of the purple, like right in the center
of the purple in the south, there's an orange speck.
That is actually a very famous town. You might have
heard of it in the Bible. It's called Kina or Kana.
That is the village where Jesus turned the water into
wine at the wedding. And in nineteen ninety six, Israel
was launching a military operation in this region of the south,
and a lot of civilians fled to a United Nations
compound here looking for safety from Israeli shelling. This is
a nineteen ninety six and Israel shelled that UN compound
and you know, over one hundred thousand, over a sorry,
over one hundred civilians were massacred. It was called the
it was called the Cana Massacre of nineteen ninety six,
and that caused a huge backlash because UN peacekeepers were there,
they were some of them were killed as well. And yeah,
there's there's there's I can go down a list of
things that have happened like that, but that was a
big one. Israel leaves in the year two thousand. Finally
Lebanon has no Syrian troops or Israeli troops on its territory.
It's fully independent, you know, for the first time and
basically its entire history, and I mean politically, shit just
hits the fan. America and the West are trying to
tear Lebanon away from the Syrian and Iranian sphere of influence.
The Syrian and Iranians push back, trying to keep Lebanon
in their sphere of influence. And we become basically Ukraine
using using their client groups in Lebanon to further you know,
foreign backers. To tell me, tell me if you want
me to stop, or if I can or if I
should keep going, because I've been rambling for some time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I have a question. It seems to me
that the smart thing that would have would have happened
is if as soon as the palace is it becomes
clear that the Palestinians who are in Lebanon are yeah,
trouble makers. They should either be ejected somewhere or dealt with.
They were so.
Speaker 2: The reason they the reason the past, the reason the
PLO is in Lebanon is because they were. They were
ejected from Jordan. Beforehand, the Palestinians tried to overthrow, the
overthrow the king of Jordan, and the Arabs got together
and schemed like, Okay, we can't kill YaST Otafat, he's
too important. We can't kill the leader of the Pastaden
national movement. However, he tried to overthrow the king of Jordan.
Where do we put him? We'll put him in Lebanon.
Why Lebanon. We were too weak to stop it. We
were too weak to stop it.
Speaker 1: We have no leverage.
Speaker 2: We are a tiny country Syria. The Pastinians wanted to
go to Syria. Syria said hell, no, you're troublemakers. We're
putting you in Lebanon where we can keep an eye
on you. And because Lebanon borders Israel so that they
can all they all had an interest in keeping out
of facts alive and putting him in a place where
he could cause trouble for Israel but not them, and
so Lebanon was pretty much the ideal destination.
Speaker 1: So it seems to me that the Palestinians, if you're
if I'm listening hearing this right, wherever they go they're
causing trouble.
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And you know people will say, well, you know,
if they're in Gaza, they're causing trouble. If they're on
the how many Palestinians are on the West Bank I'm
trying to remember.
Speaker 2: I think it's like, I think it's like two three million, Yeah, yeah, okay, million,
three million.
Speaker 1: But let's concentrate on Gaza. Then it's like, well, if
they're in Gaza, then they're going to be causing problems everywhere.
It seems I've heard the argument that the Palestinians no
matter where they go, they cause problems. And you know,
and I've always joked that, uh, doctor Schlimos sand And
and Sheldon Richmond, you know, hold to the theory that
the Palestinians are actually like the real Jews, that they
have Jewish DNA that they converted over the centuries and everything.
I alwuld say, well, they they sure do. They sure
do sound subversive, so there could there could be some
evidence there, but it sounds like they're just fucking troublemakers
wherever they go. So I mean, I think that it
would be just on that good, just on that one point.
I mean, if you were kicked out of your ancestral
homeland where your grand where you're not even your grandparents,
your great great great grandparents started build a house or
a farm or a factory that goes back to three
hundred years or even further. You know, these people have
been indigenous to the land since the time of Graig basically,
and these upstart Eastern European migrants come in and because
they have guns and you don't, your your property is
now their property because right of conquest. You don't think
people are going to have a problem with that. I mean,
you know somebody maker, you know, somebody with Spanish lineage
who understands the history of Spain and knows that the
reconquista there took over seven hundred years, that you know,
never forget and just keep taking back as much of
the property as possible. Yeah, I mean I get it, Yeah,
I get it. And you know, but it's also you know,
Europe and these are different people. Your Europe is your
Europeans or Europeans, and people from this place or different cultures,
different different ways. And so all right, let's let's go
back to Israel. So what is Israel's purpose? Is Israel's
purpose to just basically take all of this land because
the Old Testament says it's theirs? Yeah, and I know
that they're not religious most of the you know, Benjamin,
I don't think Benjamin and Yahoo is a is a
religious person. But that doesn't mean that you're not going
to take a Bible and take the Bible look at
as a history book and go or you just rationalize, well,
as it says here that God, whoever, this person, whoever
this guy is, said that this is ours and it's
in this book and a bunch of Christians all around
the world and especially in the United States have been
brainwashed in to believe in that we're these people. Then
why don't we use this book? Is that is that
what their goal is is to take from take back
from the from the river to the sea.
Speaker 2: I mean that's yeah, that's basically. I mean that when
Zionism started in Europe, I mean there was a religious
and secular aspect of Zionism which still exists to this day.
I mean, like, like you said, not every Israeli is religious,
but there are a lot who are, and there are
a lot who quote Scripture to justify their current holding
of the land. The a secultor Israelis don't think that.
Don't believe that at all. The secutors really believe, Oh,
this is a safe place for Jews. You know, this
is a safe place for my people. Where why would
I be anywhere else. The goal, basically, the first goal
of the state of Israel is the survival and continuation
of the Jewish race. It take it or leave it,
that's it. That is their sole reason for existence. Israel
is the last homeland for Jews all over the world.
That whatever happens, whatever happens post you know Nuremberg. There
will always be a safe place for Jews, run by Jews,
controlled by Jews. That is the purpose of Israel. That
that's what we all know it to be. Now, within
that project, there are a lot of different opinions. A
lot of them are expansionists. They took the Golden Heights
from Syria, and Donald Trump, when he was president, recognized
the Golden Heights as a part of Israel. Israel is
the only country in the world that doesn't declare its
own borders. Why because if it declared its own borders,
it would have to demarket where it's where it would
stop expanding. But there are lack of people in Israel
who don't who want to continue expanding. Southern Lebanon has
a lot of water resources. It's very hilly, it's a
very nice area, beautiful mountains, rivers, everything. It would supply
a lot of water to Israel, which is still majority desert.
That's one I mean. They want to take the Sinai
as well, because of Sinai is very important to the
Jewish religion. These are all things that happened and Israel
had to make compromises giving back the Siyani to Egypt,
for example, in exchange for peace. But at its heart
it's about the survival of the Jewish race, and within
that project the expansion of the Jewish states to the
natural borders of former Israel.
Speaker 1: Right, So anybody who people need to understand that, to
understand that who've bought into the narrative that Israel is
just trying to live there peacefully and everybody around them
is trying to kill them. As I know, they seek
to expand out and go into territories that people already exisit,
people already live there, have lived there for thousands of years,
just like they did by starting to come there in
the early nineteen hundreds. Is their goal is to take
this back, and not only the land that they have now,
but to move bed on that. And it seems that
they anyone who's standing in the way of that. If
if Iran is helping Hesbelah, I guess here there's a
good place to go. Why do you think Iran is
so intent on helping Hesbelah? And I mean we know
that Iran has helped the helped Hamas too, which is
you know, Shia helping Sunni. So what's Iran's whole thing?
In this, what's their play in this?
Speaker 2: Iran and Hesbelah, they just like just like America and Israel,
Iran and Hesbela have a very special relationship. The Lebanese
Shiites historically have traveled back and forth to Iran to
teach the tenets of Shiite Islam that currently rule Iran today.
Because I'm not I'm definitely not an expert on this,
that's for sure. I am not an expert on Islam.
But the Lebanese and the Iranians have a centuries long relationship.
The Lebanese sites and the Iranians have a centrally long
relationship going back and forth. And the Lebanese sites because
of certain emoms and sheikhs in the sixties and fifties
radicalized again because of the creation of Israel, because at
this time Iran was pro Israel. Iran was in the
American sphere of orbit, so Iran was pro Israel at
this time when we had the Shah of Iran. Famously,
so the Lebanese Sheites became radicalized, you know, having Israel
on their border and being the victims of Israel. They
started talking to their site, you know, cousins or cousins
or you know, fellows in Iraq and Iran, and that
radicalized them both. And I don't I don't know the
history of Komeni because Comieni was one of these other people.
I don't know his connection. I don't know his Lebanese
connection exactly. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was
something there of how Komeni was radicalized into into believing
what he believed. That that's pretty much the best explanation
I can tell you without doing a deep dive. I
don't I don't have the background knowledge on that. There
was a very famous person. His name was Musa al Sud.
He was the first person in Lebanon. He was the
first Shiite imam in Lebanon to start the Chite militias
for the purpose of defending the communities from both the
Palestinians and the Israelis. Musa Sud was a little troublemaker himself,
and while visiting Libya he was kidnapped, tortured and killed
by Momar Gadaffi. Why and for what reason, I have
no idea, but that was the beginning of Si radicalization
in the sixties. Mosalla Southern.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that even into the eighties, Iran had had
a relationship with the United States, especially with the quote
unquote Deep State. I mean they're running arms.
Speaker 2: There was aign contract.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean people don't realize that. It's like, well,
this this what happened in you know, so many Americans
want to be like, well, you know, they took our
embassy in nineteen seventy nine, and I'm like kind of
over through the government twenty six years earlier. And these
people don't have short memories. Now, they deal with a
very low time preference when it comes to things like that.
But yet still after that and after the hostages are
released on Inauguration Day in nineteen eighty one, the yeah,
they're still doing they're calling them their enemy. Israel's already
talk and about they're two weeks you know, they are
two months from getting a nuclear weapon, and yet they're
running weapons for.
Speaker 2: The For the contrast and interesting tidbit on that Israel
was one of the prime weapons exporters to Iran post revolution.
This is eighty one eighty two. The Israels were sending
weapons to Iran and the Araanians were accepting them from
Israel because the Israelis thought Iraq was the bigger threat
than Iran.
Speaker 1: It seems like Israel is just the Israeli leadership is
schizophrenic when it comes to who who their enemies are.
It could be Iraq this week, it could be Iran
the next week, it could be both.
Speaker 2: They have they have no theory of mind. These people
have no theory of mind. They that the theory of
mind is the basis of all empathy, and to understand
other people, you need empathy, and that's just something these
people cannot. I've never seen these people demonstrate that unless
the person they're talking to is also a fellow member
of the tribe, you know.
Speaker 1: And people who want to talk about how oh Israel
deserves this land and everything it was given it was
given to them. Okay, what even granting that, why would
they want to move here? If they It almost seems
like you're led to believe that these Jews wanted to
take back their ancestral homeland and they thought they would
just be okay, we might need to. And at first
it wasn't oh, we're going to kill everybody there. You
could read Ben Gurion and Ben Gurion's referring to that, well,
you know, we have people there. There are brothers, We're
going to have to do something. Then all of a sudden,
like overnight, it flips like you're saying like you're saying, boom, oh, no,
we're gonna have to kill them all. If you know,
and anyone who knows their history knows the tensions and
the area, why would you move to this area? The
only argument you could make is, well, you know it's
God gave us this. But I mean most of the
people who were who were in stern Gang or in
Hagan or Aragon, these these weren't religious characters. I mean,
these were these were basically humanists. These were people who
didn't believe in God. So it's like, don't they get
to get some blame for wanting to take back a
land that's surrounded by people they know we're going to
hate them.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's not it's not even that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the.
Speaker 2: The Ottoman history and the Ottoman Empire, this was not
this was not a very tense part of the world
pre World War One. This was not a tense part
of the world. Okay, the Ottoman government was very weak.
This did cause ethnic tensions and you know, sectarian rivalries
to flare up, which did happen. There were massacres that
happened in the late nineteenth century that totally happened because
of the failure of the Ottoman Empire and the tension,
the ethnic tension.
Speaker 1: But like I said, pre.
Speaker 2: World War One, this was not a very tense area
of the world. There were already Jews in Palestine. The
thing was they were Arab Jews, and the Arab Jews
had been there for three thousand years or two thousand years,
whatever date post Roman history you want to you wanna
call it this, These people were indigenous to the land.
They were not foreigners. No Christians, Muslims and Jews lived
in Palestine uninterrupted for fifteen hundred years.
Speaker 1: Or they didn't lock the doors on their I remember
reading one diary of a rabbi, European rabbi who went
to Jerusalem and like he was from like seventeen eighty
or seventeen ninety, and he wrote there that on the Sabbath,
they didn't locked their doors, they didn't shut their doors.
They didn't have a worry that Muslims were going to
come in there and kill them. This wasn't a everyone,
it seemed. And Christians, there were Christian churches there too.
No one's locking their doors, No one's worried about these
kind of things. When these kind of things pop up,
they can be hyper political and they can be cultural. Sure,
but there wasn't this problem, and it wasn't that, and there.
Speaker 2: Wasn't There wasn't this problem because politics was out of
their hands. I mean literally out of their hands. You know,
these people were just part of the tapestry. Palestine was
a region of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantinople was where
all government authority was centralized. Okay, there were Yeah, they
were administrative governors. There always are, but it was not
It was not a mass democracy. People, You didn't you
had no you had no say over government. So you
had local religious representatives that's interfaced with the regional government
and then the central government. And you went to your
priest or, your rabbi or your imam and they interfaced
with the government on your behalf to represent your interests.
There was no actually, there was no mass democracy of like,
this is a numbers game and if there's more of us,
therefore you don't get anything of what you want. And
this was a government. People don't understand, like, yes, the
government in the Ottoman government was okay, monarchical, Yes, it
was also extremely consensus based, extremely consensus based, like you
had to get everyone on board, or at least piss
off the least amount of people as possible to achieve
anything in the Ottoman Empire. To achieve anything, you had
to piss off the least number of people, whether it
was the merchants, the Christians, the dru the military, anybody,
the administrator, the administrators, you had to piss off the
least amount of people possible or they would stop you
from from enacting your policy, even though you were quote
unquote the sultan or the emperor.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's it really seems like up until pretty
much anywhere you go in the West and even in
this area, up until the twentieth century, when you had rulers,
before you had democracy, you you just lived your life.
You know, some people may be poorer than others, some people,
some people were served, some people were But it really
seems like the twentieth century, this twentieth century of democracy,
where World War One is trying to end every monarchy,
and then World War two is trying to end every
ethno state, that it's after that that when the people
have a say in everything, which means that your government
can be subverted by special interests, and those special interests
are not going to have your best interest at heart.
That everything wants to ship that. We've been dealing with
that now for one hundred fucking years, where it's just
you know, liberalism, Oh liberalism, classic liberalism hasn't even started yet.
That's what's going to take us, you know, that's what's
going to defeat Global Homo and everything. It's like, no, no, no,
that's what caused it. That's what brought it here. That's
what that's what allows it to even if it doesn't
even if it didn't bring it here, even if it
didn't allow it in, however it got in, it definitely
allows it to thrive. It definitely allows it to feed
like a cancer. And yeah, I mean it seems like
this is the same exact thing. Once you have people
who once you have people who are over have a
rule or even a weak rule, or someone who's like
the Ottoman Empire who's really not good at what they're
supposed to what they're supposed to be doing here, you
have more peace. Everybody thinks that. Everybody thinks that before
the Jews shut up there that there were bombs blowing
up and people were just killing each other and it
was just these mass slaughters and everything. And it's like
probably no more than anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely, absolutely, And again the massacres that did happen
were a result of the breakdown in governments, the breakdown
in the Ottoman Empire and the factionalism within the Ottoman
Empire that led to you know, ethnic groups causing trouble.
And not to be a libertarian, I know we're not
libertarians anymore, but how did how did individuals how did
like normal everyday people, whether they were Muslim or Christian, like,
how did they hold power? Like in the Ottoman government,
they held power through private associations, the private association, you're
the merchant guild or you know, the religious community, the church,
or I don't know, you were part of the military
or just anything you were you were you were a
high administrative person in the local council. Like this was
a very communal, very bottom up there. There There was
not there was there was a people thought like all
power was centralized. Not at all the complete the complete
opposite was the case. Power was extremely decentralized, and the
job of the Sultan was to keep was to piss
off the least number of these decentralized centers of power
throughout the entire Ottoman Empire, whether it was the merchants,
the military, the administratives, and the various religious sects. The
Sultan was the ruler of millions of people who were
not Sunni Muslim and they had to be governed just
as well as the Sunnia Muslims. And they had their
own they had they had private religious law. Like if
you're a Christian, you followed Christian law. You did not
follow Sunni law. The Suni law was not imposed on
you because you were not Sudni. You followed Christian law
or Jewish law if you were Jewish in Palestine in
the Ottoman Empire. And no one knows it, and no
one knows anything about this, and it's not wrong to
say you were a somewhat second class citizen. Okay, Yes,
Sunis were privileged the state. The head of the state
was a Sunnia Muslim. Yes, that didn't mean you didn't
have you know, that didn't mean your life was that
different than anyone else's. And they kept they the Sultan
never forced. The Sultan never imposed like Christians to follow
Muslim law. Never happened in the entire and then in
the entire history of the Ottoman Empire, the mass the
forced conversions were like in the time of Muhammad, which
was a thousand years before.
Speaker 1: Sounding a little like Consermahappa there talking about democracy, they
got of the field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can take you can take the you can
take the libertarianism out of out of the Boy, but
you can't take the boy out of libertarianism or opposite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the that. Yeah, it's always I mean,
there's not bad ideas there. They're just making it into
a religion is the problem. Making it to its own
religion is the problem. So we've been going, Yeah, we've
been going a while. Is there anything anything you want
to conclude with?
Speaker 2: I got, I mean I could, I could, I could
talk about the subject for hours, but I think I
think we covered pretty much the complicated history. I'm sorry
for going on huge monologues about the entire history. It's
it's a it's a lot to digest.
Speaker 1: And I have I have a podcast where I have
Thomas seven seven seven on once a week. It's okay,
it's okay to go on.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, yeah, it's just a lot of information to digest.
I have. There is one book I do there's one
book I do recommend people read. It's not specifically about Lebanon,
but it's a great book that gives you a perspective
of the Middle East and the history of the Middle
East in the twentieth century. And this book is called
the Chatham House Version. It was actually recommended to me
by a mister Curtis Yarvin. Actually we met briefly in
d c and he recommended me this book, and it's
an excellent book. The author is an Iraqi Jew who
never lived in Israel. He was living in the UK.
He was a British academic and his name is Eli
Kidouri k E d o U r I E. And
the book is called the Chatham House Version. It's a
collection of essays he wrote on the Middle East. And
there's yes he's an Arab Jew, which is actually kind
of like the most interesting perspective on the entire conflict.
But there's so many good tidbits of information in that book.
And me and my good friend Hitman have a series
on this book where he reads out he reads out
each chapter and then we have a discussion on that
chapter specifically. It's a great series if you want to learn,
like if you want to learn like a fascinating perspective
on twentieth century Middle Eastern history, definitely pick up that
book by Ali Kadouri, the Chatham House version. It's that
series on your YouTube channel or something like that. Uh no,
my friend hit Man, I'll send you a DM of
his channel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as smy so I can. I can linkswer that.
Anything else you want to plug.
Speaker 2: Follow me at Twitter at Hunger Dye d Ye And
I don't know which day exactly this will be coming out,
but it's in those secrets.
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: I'm a member of the Philadelphia chapter of the OGC,
and we are very happy to say this Saturday, November second,
we'll be doing an event in Valley Forge and if
you want more information on that, please follow our Twitter
account Philly Chap O g C Philly p h I
L L y chap Philly chap C j A p
O g C and for more information on that event.
Speaker 1: Philly Chap o G. Okay, I'll get that in there too,
all right, Hunger, I appreciate it, Thank you very much,