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Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekana Show

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for the first time. We've been on streams before together,

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but out on this show. Hunger the Die Merchant.

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Speaker 2: How are you doing, Hunger, I'm doing great, man, It's

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a great pleasure to be on the show for the

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first time.

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Speaker 1: Well, thank you for coming on, and I apologize for

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asking you to come on and discuss a subject for

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your first appearance that is so.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure people can look at the title of

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this and know that this is, uh, this is going

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to be one of those talks.

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Speaker 3: It's going to be.

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Speaker 1: Very personal to you. So well, let's for people who

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don't know you, why don't you explain why this is

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a personal discussion to here?

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Speaker 2: Right, So, if anybody doesn't hasn't seen me on OGC,

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Pony Express Radio or other streams, I've been a guest on.

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My name's Hunger. I am a Elebanese American born and

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raised in the States, but descendants of two elibanies p parents.

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My father escaped the Liberty Civil War in the seventies,

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so that's how he got here. My mother stayed for

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the entirety of the war there and then married my

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dad came to came to America. But yeah, as as

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everyone who follows the news and our favorite democracy in

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the Middle East knows, there's a big there's a big

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conflict going on, and I haven't I have the interesting

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experience of I've i've I've lived in the Middle East.

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I wasn't born there, but I lived in the Middle

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East as a teenager for about eight years, you know,

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very very long time, very formative experience, and so I

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know the region pretty well and I met and I've

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met a lot of people at that time, like I've

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met I've met Palestinians whose grandparents or great grandparents were

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kicked out of Palestine. I've met you know, Syrians who

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left during the Civil War in Syria like this. This

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is a very complicated, you know, tense political region. But

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I mean it's a very it's always a very interesting

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part of the world that most people don't know a

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lot about, except you know, outside of you know, the

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g WA and oil.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's unfortunate that when most people hear about this

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part of the world, it's uh, it's happening to do

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with America's greatest ally, you know, saying, hey, they they

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hate us because you know of who we are, and

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they're they just they exist to kill us. And yeah,

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I guess we've seen a lot of that lately. So

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how have you have you been handling what's been going on?

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Speaker 2: Personally? I I really try not to. I really try

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to keep my you know, geopaul hat on when you know,

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thinking thinking about like what's happening, thinking about the wider

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trends in the war and what is the situation. But

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I mean, obviously I have friends and family, a significant

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amount of friends and family still there who are struggling. Thankfully,

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you know, people have reached out to me personally and asked. Thankfully,

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I have nobody in my personal you know circles that

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is close to the border with Israel. You know, Lebanon

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is very diverse, you know, spread out country. It's very

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mountainous country actually, so I personally do not know anybody

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that's that lives very close to the border with Israel. However,

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in Beirut, the capital city, the capital is being bombed obviously,

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but again it's only being bombed and specifically not only

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stuff definitely not only, but majority bombed in site areas

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which Husbala is a Shite organization so seite areas are

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getting the bront Yeah, getting most of the brunts of

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the bombings. So my family is safe. I don't know

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anybody who's died personally. The big thing that's happening there

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is actually the refugee crisis because a lot of site

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Lebany are you know, heading up north and going into

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different areas of Lebanon to escape the bombing and to

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escape the violence. So in my in my family village,

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you know, back home, a lot of people have opened

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up their doors to refugees from the South. I should

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also mention I'm an Orthodox Christian. Lebanon has a very

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significant percentage of Christians. It's the heighest in the Middle

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East by percentage, and it's about you know, a quarter

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to thirty percent of the country as Christian, whether that's Catholic, Orthodox,

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a little bit of Protestant, you know a lot of

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other mixes in between. So that's kind of that's kind

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of what's happening immediately in my circle. It's like, yeah,

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there's a huge refugee crisis, and people are trying to

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be very charitable and open up their doors and you know,

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spread resources around to help people in this time of need.

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Speaker 1: Can you explain, I mean, just a overview of what

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the what why this beef?

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Speaker 3: I mean, we know that.

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Speaker 1: Hezbollah and the idea of clash before we know I

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think a lot of us know about the nineteen eighties,

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the bombings of Beirut, the blowing up of the marine

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barracks there for no reason at all. I mean, the

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Marines were there as peacekeepers, right, you know, it's just yeah,

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I mean, I don't even get that. Obviously, that's being

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very sarcastic. I actually have a friend who he knows

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people who were stationed there. He knows people who were there,

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and they've told them about the stories of what they

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were doing there. And if anybody thinks that they were peacekeepers,

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they they yeah.

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Speaker 2: And I don't mean, I don't mean to share on

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anybody who who served, you know, I totally, I totally understand.

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I nobody I know has any beef personally with any

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American they mets, whether they're in the military or civilian

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or not. It's really the anti americanism in the Middle East.

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It's not personal. It's extremely how do I It's extremely political.

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It's extremely like, as a result of government policy, you

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do America and I don't mean you that. That's not

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not you personally America or us G. I like I

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like to say us G because that's not it has

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nothing to do with what we're doing. Because we're both American.

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We don't agree with anything that our government is doing.

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What USG has done in the Middle East is create

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ship show after ship show after a ship show that's

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caused enormous amounts of backlash.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and in many such cases around around the

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whole region. What different and just talking about Libya all night?

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But all right, let's let's stick let's tax to Elebanon.

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You want me to put that map up? I think

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right now it's a good time. Yeah, talk about talk

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about the you know this, the Sheite what looks to

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be a Shehite stronghold.

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Speaker 3: Where where are we here? The terrorist state? Yeah, it's

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terrorist state. All right, here we go.

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Speaker 1: All right, let me see if I can blow this

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up just a little bit without making it at a screen.

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It's not going to blow up, so all right, so

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you have it on your end and you can just

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explain what we're seeing here, because when you look at

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this graph and you see basically how this is, it

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shows by color where there's Shia, where Shia, Sunni, jruz

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Ala Wai, Maronite, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Catholic.

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I mean, this is like a patchwork quilt that you

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would find in a thrift store in the South that

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somebody's grandma made from a leftover yarn that she had.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh basically yeah, So if for anybody interested,

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the red, yellow, and orange are all Christian groups, which

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is not an insignificant part of the country, and there's

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also a lot of people who live there. That's the red, yellow,

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and orange sections are all either Marrinite Orthodox or Eastern

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Greek or Greek Catholic, which is you know, like it's like,

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how do I say it's the Greek Catholics are their

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eastern righte Catholics basically, and so it's a very diverse country.

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As you can see, the green are the Sunni areas,

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and the purple are the Sheites areas, which is of

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big concern for us because of the current conflict with Israel,

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and the blue area is our Drews. And in all honesty,

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nobody freaking knows what the Drews are. They don't understand

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what they are themselves. I don't know, they're religious leaders,

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like their clerics don't tell them their religion. It's actually

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like a incredibly well kept secret, like they're not allowed

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to know what the tenets of their own religion are.

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But it's basically like an ethno sectarian, esoteric like patchwork

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of like Muslim and Christian beliefs.

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Speaker 3: Basically.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but asking Drews what what is what is Drusism?

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Like they have no fucking idea.

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Speaker 3: What that sounds like? Alohite too, ALOI is is kind

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of odd.

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Speaker 1: I've asked that before people and you always get the

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same kind of very mystical kind of answer to that.

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Speaker 2: The only answer I ever get from the Allo whites

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is we're Muslim, but we're allowed to drink alcohol.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And then you look at us, then you look

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at someone like Asad who is an Alo White, and

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you're like, that kind of looks like a white guy.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, all right, no, definitely.

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Speaker 2: I mean.

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Speaker 3: So on this map, just just.

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Speaker 2: Just on that point of like the the whiteness of

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just on that point, like the whiteness of the Meds.

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I just call myself Mediterranean. When people think of Arabs,

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they think of like you know, sand and words, which

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is not entirely inaccurate, but the Mediterranean basin has been

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a petri dish for four thousand years. Like, we have

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natural blondes and redheads. I have red heads in my

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own family who are pale. You know they if you

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didn't know they were from this area of the world,

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you would assume they were like Irish or something, or British.

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You would have no idea except for the accent. Just

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on that point, just wanted to say.

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Speaker 1: That, I mean, Europe is weird too. I mean I

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have Eastern European and Southern European and my family and

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I'm brown hair, brown eyes. My brother I have a brother,

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my youngest brother's blonde hair.

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Speaker 3: Blue eyes.

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Speaker 1: So it's just odd oddness all around, all right. So

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looking at this map, yeah, okay, so the IDF has

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been making incursions into Lebanon. Where on the map have

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they been making the incursions?

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Speaker 2: And so you're going to get a kick out of this.

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The incursions that are happening are obviously in you know,

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the furthest south where the entire purple is down there.

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But surprise, surprise, the Israelis have not gotten passed two

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three kilometers into the entire country, which is absolutely nothing.

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It's that it was. It's been a worse performance on

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the ground at least compared to two thousand and six

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and two thousand and six they took like ten fifteen

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kilometers of territory and before the invasion even started, the

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Israelis said We're going to invade ten to fifteen kilometers

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inland and create a Cordon Sanitaire buffer zone so that

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HUSBLA rockets are out of reach of Israel. Total failure, total, absolute,

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total failure. This is not the best map to go into.

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But like I can show you on a Google map

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of Lebanon, like how far they've gone into It's like

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two kilometers or less, which is like nothing. So yeah,

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on the ground at least, the military campaign has been

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a failure. By air, you know, I mean by air,

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they're causing huge amounts of destruction all over the country.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I was on one of the telegram channels this morning,

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it's we're Remnouvarum and they're basically saying.

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Speaker 3: That the IDF was pulling out today. The IDF was.

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Speaker 1: Pulling out a southern Lebanon because they I saw one

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report where they had taken seven hundred casualties and sixty dead.

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And yeah, like the report was saying, is they can't

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make it. They can't get into five kilometers in So

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what I don't see what their point is of even

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trying to make trying to do this incursion. I mean,

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unless it's to punish, unless it's to punish the population

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that's there.

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Speaker 2: I mean, there's it's definitely that. But it's like I

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have a hard time and even though even though these

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people are you know, neighbors and eternal enemies, like I

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have a genuinely hard time understanding their level of you know,

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paranoia and you know other psychological ticks they have. But

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it's like they knew what were they expecting to happen?

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Were they expecting to drive all the way to be route,

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which is like sixty seventy kilometers north of the border, Like,

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were they expecting to take over half the country? What

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about the other she had areas that are like all

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the way in the north, all the way in the northeast,

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Like those areas are Husbala areas as well. Do you

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are are you going to invade two thirds of the

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entire country? I mean, I genuinely don't know what they

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were trying to do. It's like the same thing with

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the same thing with ten seven, Like same thing with

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October seven, which which we've talked a lot about and

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everyone has been talking a lot about for the past year.

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It's like did why did they do what they did?

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They knew this was not going to end the way

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they thought it would and these people aren't just going

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to go away. And it's not for lack of trying.

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The Israelis have tried everything they had they could to

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wreck Gaza and displace two million people out of Gaza.

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That didn't work. That didn't work at all. I mean

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they're still over a million Palestinians in Gaza. The ethnic cleansing,

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I mean they killed you know, almost one hundred thousand people,

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between fifty and one hundred thousand people, but there's still

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a million Palastinians still there. They haven't been ethnically displaced,

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which is which was israel stated goal. Israel wanted to

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resettle Gaza with you know, exclusively Israeli Jews, which didn't work,

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and then they launched us. They opened the second front.

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I mean, Husabela is the one that opens the second front,

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and people ask me this as well. It's like, what

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is what is the goal of Husbola? And I keep

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saying this because this is like you have to take

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these people at their word. Hasbela's goal is not to

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destroy Israel in this campaign. They're they're wider objective is

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to destroy Israel. But in this campaign itself, their objective

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was to stop the war in Gaza by opening up

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a second front, and the war in Gaza did not start.

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But by boxing Israel in on two sides, you know,

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they they've caused absolute panic and chaos and Israel on

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top of the also the Iranian support and MISSIF strikes

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that have been happening as well. Like, Israel is in

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a completely fucked situation and it's all of their own

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doing it. It's all of their own making. And I

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can't reason my way into thinking why would why would

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you put yourself in this situation?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking on that telegram page. It was eight

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thirty eight a m. This morning Central time. Israeli Defense

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Force so be going to slow withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

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Speaker 2: All right, So there's two but so yeah, and in

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these two areas, in these two areas, in these two areas.

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There's so there's four brigades or or four divisions that

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are active on the front line. I heard two of

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those divisions being withdrawn. The other two I'm not so

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sure about, but that that was the information I heard.

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Speaker 3: Okay, okay, all right, So.

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Speaker 1: Looking at the map now, you said from from the

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border down at the bottom by how's that is that

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pronounced bail?

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Speaker 2: So it's it's okay, don't bj right. So in two

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thousand and six, vintaje Bed was taken over by the Israelis.

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The town was captured by israel in two thousand and six.

285
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It's been over a month since the starts of the

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Israeli campaign. They have they are, they have not taken

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the city. They are still in the outskirts. There's a

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there's a very famous town a kilometer south of bentaje

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Bed called Marjayoun, and that even that town has not

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been taken over by the Israelis, which is literally, you know,

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eight hundred meters from the border. I mean that that's

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nothing like you're eight hundred meters away from home base

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and you can't take this one town of like five

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thousand people. When it was taken over in two thousand

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and six. Actually, so this is a much worse performance

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than even I expected compared to the first war that

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happened in two thousand and six.

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Speaker 1: Okay, if I look up to Beyrout, let's go to

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bea route, because that's where when this all started, the bombings,

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the massive bombings by the by the Israelis happened. If

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I look at the colors on beay Root, it looks

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like it's almost all sunny with just a couple little

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stripes of Shia.

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Speaker 3: Is that correct?

305
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Speaker 1: Uh?

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Speaker 2: Not? Not really? So, I mean if if you look

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at the tippy if you look at the tippy top,

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Beirut is huge. Beirut takes up like a much wider circle.

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So that purple right south of Beirut is the southern suburbs,

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which is where all the sites are, and the eastern

311
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suburbs are vastly like ninety percent Christian suburbs. So yeah,

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00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:44,039
at the tip, at the tip of Beirut is mostly

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Sundy's West West Beirut is a Sunni district, East Beirut

314
00:18:48,400 --> 00:18:50,759
is a Christian district, and South beir Roots is a

315
00:18:50,759 --> 00:18:53,200
Shiite district. And that's just how the demographics played out

316
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because of migration and economics and you know history. So

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00:18:57,839 --> 00:19:02,160
in south and South Beirut, the southern SUBURBSS is taking

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00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:06,319
an absolute beating by the Israeli Air force. Like I

319
00:19:06,359 --> 00:19:07,799
don't I don't even have to show you. You can just

320
00:19:07,799 --> 00:19:11,799
look this up anywhere. You'll see buildings. You'll see like

321
00:19:12,119 --> 00:19:15,839
twelve story apartment buildings just collapse from you know, a

322
00:19:15,880 --> 00:19:18,720
bomb striking the base of the base of the apartment building.

323
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And during the during during this the assassination of the

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Husbelo leader, Hassan no Sorella, there was a six, there

325
00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:31,480
was a six. There, there was an apartment complex of

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six buildings where the Israelis dropped one hundred and sixty

327
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thousand tons of explosives on this six building, on the

328
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six building complex which was housing the tunnels where Husbela

329
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was meeting where the Husbitlo leader was meeting some Iranian officials.

330
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And I mean those buildings are completely gone. And there's

331
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a giant, you know, fifty foot crater in the middle

332
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of the city where that building once was, well.

333
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Speaker 3: Were the building.

334
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Speaker 1: Did the residents of the building have time to get

335
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out or they warned to get out? I mean, are here,

336
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here's here's question. Here's a better question. Do the residents

337
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of those buildings know that those tunnels are there?

338
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Speaker 3: And who meets there?

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Speaker 2: Yes and no? I mean yes, yes and no. So

340
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it's hard to if you're not site, it's very hard

341
00:20:27,279 --> 00:20:29,839
to get this kind of information. And even if you

342
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are she Hite, it's very hard to get this information

343
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if you're not directly associated with Husbola. Because for for

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all the for all the recent events, Husbula has extremely

345
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good side, has extremely good op sect. I mean, there's

346
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a reason why they're winning the war in the south.

347
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They're winning the war in the South is because they

348
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have extremely good OPSEC and they have a lot of

349
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room to maneuver. But in Beirut, which is a very

350
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concentrated city, you're just gonna have like there's spies running

351
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all over the place and Husbola, it's it's hard, it's

352
00:21:01,079 --> 00:21:03,279
hard to get around that there is there is a

353
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huge network of tunnels. I mean, everyone knows this, but

354
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no one confirmed, No one ever saw it themselves that

355
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I know of. Everyone knows there's a there's a huge

356
00:21:10,839 --> 00:21:14,079
tunnel network under beir roots, under the southern suburbs. This

357
00:21:14,279 --> 00:21:17,759
was known for decades because that's what Husbaba does, because

358
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the Husbula leaders very rarely go above ground because at

359
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any one time they can be assassinated by Israel and

360
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they know this and this is how they live their lives,

361
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and the people around them close to them know this

362
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as well. But like there's not like a hidden civilian

363
00:21:33,920 --> 00:21:38,720
population living in these tunnels. This is military infrastructure for

364
00:21:38,839 --> 00:21:43,079
Husbudlah for the purpose of, you know, defending themselves against

365
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assassination attempts by Israel.

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Speaker 3: What's your opinion of Hesbela.

367
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Speaker 2: That is a very complicated question. Uh, well, of course

368
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I believe the State Department saying that they're a terrorist organization.

369
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But uh, I have as a Lebanese Christian, I have

370
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no beef with Husbolo because Husbola are not my enemy

371
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and Husbela has never done anything to the Christian community

372
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in my opinion that deserves any you know, backlash. A

373
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lot of other Lebanese Christians disagree. They don't like Husbola,

374
00:22:23,839 --> 00:22:28,119
not because their pro is reel, but because they want

375
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to open up to the West. They want to, they

376
00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:34,519
want they want to they they want to give the

377
00:22:34,519 --> 00:22:38,200
State Department a blowjob basically, and it's like they know that.

378
00:22:38,279 --> 00:22:42,160
It's like, oh, Husbela are Muslim, their reactionary, they're allied

379
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:44,640
with Iran. We wanna, we wanna, we want to be

380
00:22:45,079 --> 00:22:48,880
open and European and see the world and have business

381
00:22:48,880 --> 00:22:51,680
and do banking with you know, the rest of the

382
00:22:51,519 --> 00:22:55,200
the with the West, or the or the gay whatever

383
00:22:55,279 --> 00:22:56,440
whatever you want to call it. And there's a lot

384
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of Christians who genuinely believe that. And I know where

385
00:23:02,319 --> 00:23:04,359
they're coming from, and I understand why they think the

386
00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:07,759
way they think because they were Western educated, they have

387
00:23:07,839 --> 00:23:10,119
family in the West. I mean, I live in the West,

388
00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:16,559
so I want to complain. But they're wrong in the

389
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:19,920
sense that it's like you're you're pissing off your neighbors,

390
00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:23,920
your Muslim neighbors who don't like those governments and what

391
00:23:23,960 --> 00:23:27,599
they're doing, and you're inviting in the foreign influence of

392
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:30,359
very very bad actors. Which is not to say the

393
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:33,440
other air states are bad actors. I mean Syria, Syria

394
00:23:33,519 --> 00:23:37,359
is Syria has done many bad things in Lebanon. Syria

395
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:40,559
is the Also Syria is also the only thing keeping

396
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:43,640
Lebanon kind of staple at any one point in time.

397
00:23:43,799 --> 00:23:45,200
They've done a lot of bad things in Lebanon. I

398
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:46,559
can tell you, I can tell you the things the

399
00:23:46,599 --> 00:23:49,960
Syrians did to my family during the war. But at

400
00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:52,200
the same time, we need Syria. Like this is not

401
00:23:52,359 --> 00:23:55,920
a it's not about my personal desire. It's like, this

402
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:59,559
is the geopolitical reality, like we have to be we

403
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:01,799
have to have extremely close ties to Syria. They are

404
00:24:01,839 --> 00:24:04,359
they are our only Arab neighbor. This is a very

405
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:06,880
tough neighborhood to be and we are a very small country.

406
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:11,400
The goal of a very small state is to survive,

407
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:15,000
and the goal of a minority, the goal of a

408
00:24:15,079 --> 00:24:18,279
religious minority or any ethnic minority, is to survive and

409
00:24:18,279 --> 00:24:21,920
not piss off your neighbors. And that's that's that's what't

410
00:24:22,079 --> 00:24:23,160
Israel has never learned.

411
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:28,559
Speaker 1: You make it seem like the Shia or not in

412
00:24:28,839 --> 00:24:32,440
Lebanon or not the enemy of Christians are the Sunnis

413
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:35,000
in Lebanon the enemy of Christians.

414
00:24:36,279 --> 00:24:40,960
Speaker 2: The Sunnis don't like anybody. But first of all, the

415
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,240
Soonis think the Sites are yeah, the Soonies think the

416
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:48,559
Shiites are heretics, and they tolerate the Christians. But I mean,

417
00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:50,960
if a certain I mean there's been a lot of

418
00:24:51,039 --> 00:24:54,839
radical Sunni groups who have come up in Lebanon, and

419
00:24:55,039 --> 00:24:57,960
they don't like the Christians either. I mean, Hasbola was

420
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:03,039
the one kicking Isis's ass in Syria, and who are

421
00:25:03,079 --> 00:25:05,759
Isis massacring in Syria? They were massacring the Alloites and

422
00:25:05,799 --> 00:25:09,000
the Christians and all the minorities, and so they were,

423
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:13,000
We're no friend of Isis, absolutely fucking not. I mean,

424
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:15,799
the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Husbola has never,

425
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:20,119
you know, has never done anything to attack the Christian

426
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:23,880
community as far as I know, or at least outside

427
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:26,319
of the civil War where everyone was fighting everybody. It

428
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:30,960
was nothing absolutely unique to Husbulah. And you know, defending

429
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:33,960
the regime of Bashar Assad and protecting the Christians is

430
00:25:34,039 --> 00:25:37,480
kind of the most important thing in my opinion, and

431
00:25:37,519 --> 00:25:42,319
they've never the Christians. The Christians are very very politically

432
00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:46,880
divided in Lebanon, very much fifty to fifty. Actually, the

433
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:51,000
Sites and the Sunnies are basically one political block who

434
00:25:51,039 --> 00:25:53,519
oppose each other. But the Christians are actually divided fifty

435
00:25:53,519 --> 00:25:57,039
to fifty. Half of them to half of them want

436
00:25:57,079 --> 00:25:59,400
to be open to the West, and that also means

437
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:03,480
being an ally of the Saudis, the Qataris, the Amortis

438
00:26:03,559 --> 00:26:08,279
and all the Gulf State puppets of America. Basically that

439
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:11,519
half of Christians support that siding with Saudi Arabia and

440
00:26:11,559 --> 00:26:13,960
the Gulf States and the West. The other half of

441
00:26:14,039 --> 00:26:19,559
Christians side with Hasabella and Syria because it is in

442
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:23,799
their best interest of their survival to do so. Because

443
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:25,880
we're in a very tough region. This is we don't

444
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:28,319
get to choose who our neighbors are. You know, you

445
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:31,759
have to make compromises, you have to you know, have

446
00:26:31,839 --> 00:26:33,240
to have you have to have it back and forth

447
00:26:33,279 --> 00:26:36,200
with these people, like you can't ignore who your neighbors are,

448
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:38,599
and you want to have good relationships with your neighbors.

449
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:41,400
Just like just like Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine Russia could

450
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:44,359
have gone, could have gone along very well. And Syria

451
00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:46,920
and Lebanon is very similar to Ukraine and Russia in

452
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:49,720
many many ways. So I mean there's a lot of

453
00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:52,680
people in Ukraine who are pro Russian and who maybe

454
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:55,519
they don't want to be a part of Russia, but

455
00:26:55,599 --> 00:26:57,640
they at least want to be friendly to Russia and

456
00:26:57,680 --> 00:26:59,720
not be an enemy of Russia. I have no reason

457
00:26:59,759 --> 00:27:01,799
to be an enemy of Syria. That would not be

458
00:27:01,839 --> 00:27:03,559
good for my people to be an enemy of Ceria.

459
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:09,839
Speaker 1: All right, So I have an important question to come

460
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:11,440
back to you, but I want to ask you this

461
00:27:11,519 --> 00:27:14,519
one before before we jump into that, because that'll probably

462
00:27:14,559 --> 00:27:15,880
lead us into a new subject.

463
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 3: Have you been to Israel?

464
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:20,240
Speaker 2: No?

465
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:24,319
Speaker 1: Okay, so you haven't been. You haven't been to Gaza, okay,

466
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:25,559
but you said that you had.

467
00:27:26,559 --> 00:27:31,920
Speaker 2: Sorry, in interesting story, my grandmother when before Israel was

468
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:35,559
when Israel was Palestin. My grandmother went to Jerusalem for

469
00:27:35,640 --> 00:27:38,319
a Christian pilgrimage and she had a tattoo of a cross.

470
00:27:39,319 --> 00:27:42,119
She got that in nineteen forty six actually, and then

471
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:44,960
two years later as Past nine became Israel. I just

472
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:47,079
just personal, interesting tidbit.

473
00:27:49,039 --> 00:27:53,559
Speaker 1: You did say that you've you've known people in Goza,

474
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:55,839
right or from Goz or people who've been So I'm

475
00:27:55,839 --> 00:27:58,400
asking I'm gonna ask you secondhand information here, But you

476
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:00,119
do know people who've been there.

477
00:28:00,079 --> 00:28:03,880
Speaker 2: Right, I know people who have family in Gaza.

478
00:28:04,279 --> 00:28:04,640
Speaker 3: Okay.

479
00:28:05,519 --> 00:28:07,880
Speaker 1: So I want to ask the same question about Gaza

480
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:12,799
that that I asked about Lebanon. How are the Christians,

481
00:28:13,079 --> 00:28:15,240
the Christians that are left there? I mean, I think

482
00:28:15,279 --> 00:28:17,799
they used to be thirty percent Christian and now it's

483
00:28:17,799 --> 00:28:19,759
down into low single digits.

484
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:21,359
Speaker 3: How are they treated there?

485
00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:25,119
Speaker 2: I mean, like, I mean the Christians, the Christians in Gaza,

486
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,759
who they're not nothing, but they're they're they're a negligible

487
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:32,240
portion of the kind of the society. It's like there

488
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:36,839
are too minion people in Gaza. There's maybe eight ten

489
00:28:36,920 --> 00:28:39,880
thousand Christians. I mean the I mean they no one,

490
00:28:40,119 --> 00:28:42,440
no one really bothers them. No one really bothers the

491
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:45,599
Christians for being Christian, even though there are radical Sunni groups,

492
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:49,079
But no one bothers the Christians in Gaza because they're

493
00:28:49,119 --> 00:28:53,240
they're struggling under the same occupation as everyone else. Like

494
00:28:53,759 --> 00:28:56,119
life is not better for the Christians because they're Christians.

495
00:28:56,119 --> 00:28:59,279
They don't have more access to the West because they're Christian.

496
00:28:59,319 --> 00:29:01,559
They're they're living in an open air prison, just like

497
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,240
the other two million Muslims around them. And they have

498
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:06,680
their own churches and they have their own they have

499
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:10,079
their own little community. But they're Palestinian. Their culture is Palestinian,

500
00:29:10,079 --> 00:29:12,839
their culture, their food is their food is arab their

501
00:29:12,839 --> 00:29:16,279
food is Mediterranean, and they're they're just like everybody else,

502
00:29:16,319 --> 00:29:17,440
except they don't wear the he job.

503
00:29:19,559 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: All right, So you said some things before that could

504
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:24,960
lead people down a path.

505
00:29:26,039 --> 00:29:26,359
Speaker 3: You say.

506
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:29,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, Basically, if you're Lebanese, you live in a rough neighborhood,

507
00:29:30,039 --> 00:29:32,400
you're surrounded by Yeah.

508
00:29:33,759 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 3: You're surrounded by trouble bullies.

509
00:29:36,359 --> 00:29:36,559
Speaker 2: Yeah.

510
00:29:36,599 --> 00:29:38,240
Speaker 3: The way what we're.

511
00:29:38,079 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: Taught here is that Israel is there to try to

512
00:29:43,279 --> 00:29:48,200
stabilize that, that they're the stabilizing force that before Israel,

513
00:29:48,839 --> 00:29:52,640
before the Jews went to Israel and decided that they

514
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:54,680
were going to buy.

515
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 3: Up all the land.

516
00:29:57,240 --> 00:29:59,839
Speaker 1: I think we know anyone who knows the real story

517
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:04,519
that that's bullshit, but that they they're the only stabilizing

518
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:07,720
force there, that if they weren't there, this would just

519
00:30:07,759 --> 00:30:11,240
be an eruption of Sunni and Shia killing each other

520
00:30:11,359 --> 00:30:18,200
and killing Christians and YadA, YadA. So how does that,

521
00:30:18,559 --> 00:30:20,079
How does that narrative play for you?

522
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:28,039
Speaker 2: It's on its face, it's wrong. But I'll just say,

523
00:30:28,079 --> 00:30:30,559
I'll just say this one thing that the grain of

524
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,119
truth in that statement. It has nothing to do with

525
00:30:33,119 --> 00:30:39,920
the Jews. Okay, the immigrants to Palestine have caused nothing

526
00:30:40,119 --> 00:30:45,599
but more destabilization, more massacres, more terrorism, more. You know,

527
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:47,519
I don't even have to mention it. You've gone through

528
00:30:47,519 --> 00:30:50,839
this on your show dozens of times. Everyone knows what

529
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:54,640
happened in Palestine in the thirties and forties with the terrorism,

530
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:57,640
the bombings and all that stuff, and the consequences thereafter.

531
00:30:58,599 --> 00:31:01,359
Speaker 1: The grain of truth and you're like, you're talking about

532
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:03,279
you're talking about Jewish terrorism.

533
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, o fact, and.

534
00:31:07,039 --> 00:31:09,599
Speaker 2: And and what the State of Israel has done since,

535
00:31:10,079 --> 00:31:11,960
and all the things the state of the Visual has

536
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:16,160
done since the Lavon affair, the assassination attempts, the Six

537
00:31:16,319 --> 00:31:20,279
Wars that started because of the creation of Israel. But

538
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,079
the grain of truth in that statement is that, Okay, yeah,

539
00:31:23,079 --> 00:31:27,920
the Middle East was not pretty beforehand. There were ethnic tensions,

540
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:32,279
there were religious tensions, There were you know, Muslim Christian massacres,

541
00:31:32,839 --> 00:31:38,240
but those things, it's not that those events were a

542
00:31:38,279 --> 00:31:43,160
consequence of the Ottoman Empire, the weakness of the Ottoman Empire,

543
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:47,680
the failure of the Ottoman Empire, and you know, uppity

544
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:51,839
nationalist movements trying to you know, take over their neighbors,

545
00:31:52,119 --> 00:31:54,839
which is not Again, this is a rough neighborhood. It's

546
00:31:54,880 --> 00:31:57,319
been a rough neighborhood ever since the collapse of the

547
00:31:57,319 --> 00:32:00,640
Ottoman Empire. So you have to kind of make compromises

548
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:04,920
to keep the peace and not get Like Lebanon used

549
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:08,960
to be a majority of Christian state. Okay, in nineteen

550
00:32:09,079 --> 00:32:13,440
thirty two, the population was fifty five percent Christian. Now

551
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:17,160
it's twenty five thirty percent, which is significant. You know,

552
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:20,599
that's almost a million and a half people out of

553
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:25,720
five but we're we're no longer the majority. You know.

554
00:32:26,759 --> 00:32:31,759
To survive as a community, you have to make interesting friends.

555
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that a lot of people would hear

556
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,440
that about the Ottoman Empire, and they would think that

557
00:32:40,079 --> 00:32:45,759
really the best way for to keep peace in this

558
00:32:46,079 --> 00:32:50,200
area is to have a strong overlord, Like if the

559
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:54,400
Ottoman Empire, you know, demanded order was very on the ground.

560
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:56,519
I mean, and we can go back in history and

561
00:32:56,519 --> 00:32:58,359
we can talk about Rome, and we can talk about

562
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:03,440
you know, Alexander and oh a whole host of people

563
00:33:03,440 --> 00:33:04,839
who attempted this.

564
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:07,759
Speaker 3: But it would seem to me it.

565
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:10,319
Speaker 2: Wasn't it wasn't even that, it wasn't even that long ago.

566
00:33:10,359 --> 00:33:13,119
I mean, the the Ottoman Empire lasted in the Middle

567
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:17,720
East for five hundred years, and only in the last

568
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:22,359
sixty years of those five hundred were their significant blood

569
00:33:22,359 --> 00:33:25,960
feuds and ethnic you know, massacres. Those four hundred, those

570
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:29,039
other four hundred and forty years were very strong, stable

571
00:33:29,119 --> 00:33:30,000
central governments.

572
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:37,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all right, well let's talk about the uh, well,

573
00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:44,400
let's talk about our greatest ally, Israel. How how did

574
00:33:44,559 --> 00:33:50,480
it start with the tension between Israel and Lebanon? Where

575
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:55,799
had where does the genesis of that come from?

576
00:33:55,920 --> 00:34:02,279
Speaker 2: Well, the story of Israeli Benese tensions, I mean first

577
00:34:02,279 --> 00:34:03,839
of all, First of all, it goes back to nineteen

578
00:34:03,880 --> 00:34:05,680
forty eight. It goes back to the creation of Israel.

579
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,480
So when Israel was founded and the Nakba, which is

580
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:15,719
Arabic for the catastrophe, the displacement of almost a million

581
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:20,480
Palestinian refugees, the displacement, the displacements of Palestinians from Palestine

582
00:34:20,519 --> 00:34:25,920
into the surrounding territories. Lebanon got a. Lebanon received a

583
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:30,119
significant portion of those Palestinian refugees because it's literally on

584
00:34:30,119 --> 00:34:35,039
the border of Palestine, not surprising, and so from nineteen

585
00:34:35,079 --> 00:34:38,679
forty eight onwards there has been a significant Palestinian refugee

586
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:40,199
population in Lebanon.

587
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:42,880
Speaker 3: And with the.

588
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:48,360
Speaker 2: Creation of the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Yasadatafat

589
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:55,199
in the sixties, Palestinians started conducting cross border raids into Israel,

590
00:34:55,800 --> 00:35:00,480
you know, for a very noble cause to reclaim their homeland,

591
00:35:00,519 --> 00:35:06,800
which everybody understands. But this caused Israel to retaliate in

592
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:10,119
Lebanon and it led to Lebanese casualties. It led to

593
00:35:10,159 --> 00:35:13,880
Lebanese people being caught in the crossfire between the Palestinians

594
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:16,239
and Lebanon and the Israelis, and a lot of people

595
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:20,119
died in the sixties and seventies because of Israel attacking

596
00:35:20,159 --> 00:35:23,599
Palestinians in Lebanon and against civilians getting caught in the

597
00:35:23,679 --> 00:35:26,400
cost fire. This caused a huge backlash to you know,

598
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,960
both sides. The Shiites, as you can see on the map,

599
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:32,960
which is the entire proper area down south is where

600
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:36,039
all that is where a huge number of the Palestinians

601
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:40,199
were based out of to attack Israel. And so it

602
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:45,119
was almost eighty to eighty percent Sheites getting killed as

603
00:35:45,159 --> 00:35:50,480
as collateral damage in the Palestinian you know, Israeli skirmishes.

604
00:35:51,320 --> 00:35:55,960
This caused a huge resentment in the Shiite community and

605
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:58,199
so a lot of them started traveling up north. That

606
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:01,880
is why the southern suburbs of Beirut received a huge

607
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:05,760
influx of sites because in the sixties and seventies when

608
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:08,360
the conflict was going on, a lot of sites left

609
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:11,400
the south to move to Beirut to escape, you know,

610
00:36:11,519 --> 00:36:16,079
Israeli attacks as a result of Palestinian attacks. That's kind

611
00:36:16,079 --> 00:36:18,280
of the animus, that's kind that's kind of the the

612
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:21,559
that's kind of the starting point of how Husaboba came

613
00:36:21,599 --> 00:36:24,639
into being. In the sixties and seventies, Shiites were getting

614
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:28,239
killed by being in the middle of Pastinians and Israelis,

615
00:36:28,559 --> 00:36:32,400
and so the sites started founding their own militias to

616
00:36:32,559 --> 00:36:36,960
protect theirs, to protect themselves, and this happened in the seventies.

617
00:36:38,679 --> 00:36:45,360
To think about the Palestinians in Lebanon, they I sympathized

618
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:49,840
with them very much so, but they also wrecked my country.

619
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:55,119
I mean, unronically, the Palestinians started the Lebanese Civil War

620
00:36:56,119 --> 00:37:00,480
because the past Indians were majority Sunni. There was Christian

621
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:04,440
Palastinians who fled, but because ninety plus percent of the

622
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:10,599
Pastinians were Suni, it upset the entire sectarian demographic balance

623
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:14,000
in Lebanon and we received hundreds of thousands of these

624
00:37:14,079 --> 00:37:19,400
radicalized Sunni fighters who you know, were interested in conflict

625
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:22,800
and having a war with Israel. This caused a huge

626
00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:26,480
backlash in the Christian community, and the Christian community started

627
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:29,320
forming militias as well to protect themselves from the past

628
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:33,400
Indians because the Pastinians were trying to take over Lebanon

629
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:38,920
to be the permanent base of attacks on Israel. And yeah, surprise, surprise,

630
00:37:39,039 --> 00:37:42,199
the locals did not like being the basis of attack

631
00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:44,400
and getting caught in the middle of these two groups.

632
00:37:45,559 --> 00:37:49,199
So this led to the Lebanty Civil War of nineteen

633
00:37:49,239 --> 00:37:54,000
seventy five. It lasted for fifteen years. It was a

634
00:37:54,199 --> 00:37:57,000
Christian Muslim civil war, but it was actually it was

635
00:37:57,079 --> 00:38:01,480
mostly a Christian Pastinian war, with the Saites and the

636
00:38:01,559 --> 00:38:07,119
Drus and the Sundies also committing massacres against everybody. Like

637
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:11,880
the Sahites committed massacres against the Palestinians, the Drus committed

638
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:16,400
massacres against the Christians. The Christians committed massacres against the Palestinians.

639
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:20,440
The Sundies, you were, the Lebanese Sunnies used the Palestinians

640
00:38:20,599 --> 00:38:25,800
as their you know, their strong right arm to further

641
00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:30,000
their Sunni political interests. And Yasad Adafetz, the leader of

642
00:38:30,039 --> 00:38:34,639
the PLO, this his attacks on Israel eventually caused a

643
00:38:34,639 --> 00:38:39,800
backlash in Israel, which led to two invasions of Lebanon.

644
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:44,280
The first ones in the first one in nineteen seventy eight, Yeah,

645
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:48,039
so Israel occupied like maybe again ten fifteen kilometers of

646
00:38:48,039 --> 00:38:51,840
southern Lebanon, which caused more site refugees to flee north

647
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:54,519
and radicalize the Sahites even more because their land was

648
00:38:54,519 --> 00:38:57,760
occupied by Israel now. And in eight nineteen eighty two,

649
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,840
which was the big invasion, they occupied half of They

650
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:03,840
occupied half of Lebanon, half of Beiruts, and they got

651
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:08,800
into a war with the Syrians over eastern Lebanon. And

652
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:10,960
this was a huge part of the conflict. The Syrians,

653
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:15,440
after the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War invaded to

654
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:21,000
re establish security. Not really, they just chose side. They

655
00:39:21,159 --> 00:39:23,800
from one year to the next, the Syrians would play

656
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:26,719
both sides of the conflict and try to get the

657
00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:29,920
most out of both sides. Like one year they would

658
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:32,639
support the Christians and try to stabilize the country. The

659
00:39:32,679 --> 00:39:35,880
next year they would support the Sunnis and destabilize the country.

660
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:41,079
Given the fluctuating, you know, events that Syria was very

661
00:39:41,159 --> 00:39:43,159
much a part of. And so in eighty two, the

662
00:39:43,199 --> 00:39:47,079
Israelis and the Syrians, you know, crossed arms and it

663
00:39:47,159 --> 00:39:50,159
was pretty much I would say it was a stalemate.

664
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:53,519
But I think the Israelis won that exchange in eighty two,

665
00:39:53,639 --> 00:39:55,480
but I mean it was very bloody. It was a

666
00:39:55,519 --> 00:39:58,119
very bloody exchange as well. The Syrians have always been

667
00:39:58,119 --> 00:40:01,639
the best. Ians have always had the best track record

668
00:40:01,679 --> 00:40:03,719
of all the Arab states when it comes to fighting

669
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:11,880
the Israelis. So eventually people, eventually the conflict settles down.

670
00:40:12,519 --> 00:40:14,880
In nineteen ninety, there is a peace agreement in nineteen

671
00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:19,199
ninety between all the militia groups of all of all

672
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:24,320
religions and they agree to have a more for they

673
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:28,079
agreed to a new power sharing arrangement where power shifted

674
00:40:28,079 --> 00:40:32,320
from the Christians to the Sunnis and sites because again,

675
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:35,840
like I said, when Lebanon was created, it was a

676
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:38,760
majority Christian country and the Christians had majority political power.

677
00:40:39,519 --> 00:40:42,199
The Civil War changed that. The Civil War caused the

678
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:45,880
Christians to lose political power in exchange for peace with

679
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:49,000
the Sunnis and with the Sundis basically and the past Indians.

680
00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:53,719
The Pastinian Liberation Organization was actually kicked out of Lebanon

681
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:57,679
by Israel and they fled to Tunisia or or somewhere

682
00:40:57,679 --> 00:41:00,119
along that lines until out of fact comes back to

683
00:41:00,119 --> 00:41:04,320
make peace with Israel. So the Palesinians come in, screw

684
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:08,039
Lebanon up, screw up the demographics, provoke an invasion by

685
00:41:08,119 --> 00:41:13,519
Israel twice and cause everyone in the country to fight them.

686
00:41:14,079 --> 00:41:19,199
So in the middle of this, because of the nineteen

687
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:23,360
eighty two invasion, all of southern Lebanon is occupied by Israel.

688
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:29,360
A one specific Site militia splits off from the other

689
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:33,119
Shiite militias and gets This is because this is nineteen

690
00:41:33,159 --> 00:41:38,440
eighty two, they get foreign funding from the Islamic Republic

691
00:41:38,519 --> 00:41:43,800
of Iran. This group becomes Hezbollah and they are radicalized

692
00:41:44,079 --> 00:41:48,039
by They are raticalized by the Iranian Revolution. Actually, the

693
00:41:48,119 --> 00:41:52,119
Lebanese contributed very much to the Iranian Revolution happening in

694
00:41:52,159 --> 00:41:55,760
the first place, but that's a more complicated story. So

695
00:41:56,039 --> 00:42:00,000
the Celebanese Chites and the Iranian Sites radicalize each other

696
00:42:00,119 --> 00:42:04,639
in exchange, and eventually, after nineteen eighty two, Sites and

697
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:08,800
Lebanon formed Hesbela and Hesbela's main goal is not to

698
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:11,840
fight the Palestinians, not to fight the Christians. It is

699
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:15,639
to drive Israel out of Lebanon and retake the site

700
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:20,039
lands that were now occupied by Israel. And Israel occupied

701
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:26,440
southern Lebanon from nineteen seventy eight till the year two thousand,

702
00:42:27,239 --> 00:42:31,519
So yeah, twenty two years the south was occupied and

703
00:42:31,559 --> 00:42:36,559
that was the Rizondetra of Hesbela. And so after the

704
00:42:36,639 --> 00:42:40,280
Israelis left Lebanon in the year two thousand, they left unilatterally.

705
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:45,119
But throughout that entire time, even post civil war, Hezebela

706
00:42:45,159 --> 00:42:47,199
and the Israelis were fighting each other in the nineties

707
00:42:47,199 --> 00:42:51,360
and southern Lebanon and a lot of again civilians died.

708
00:42:51,679 --> 00:42:54,280
Even though the country was at peace because the civil

709
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,239
war was over, the country was still at war with Israel,

710
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:00,480
and Hezabela was the main force fighting Israel in the

711
00:43:00,519 --> 00:43:06,159
south because Israel occupied Chiite territory. There was a very

712
00:43:06,159 --> 00:43:10,400
famous incident. Actually, if you look at that little orange

713
00:43:10,559 --> 00:43:13,800
speck in the middle of the purple, like right in

714
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:15,400
the center of the purple in the south, there's an

715
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:19,320
orange speck that is actually a very famous town. You

716
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,280
might have heard of it in the Bible. It's called

717
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:26,840
Kina or Kana. That is the village where Jesus turned

718
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:31,360
the water into wine. At the wedding. And in nineteen

719
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:36,559
ninety six, Israel was launching a military operation in this

720
00:43:36,639 --> 00:43:40,360
region of the south and a lot of civilians fled

721
00:43:41,039 --> 00:43:44,840
to a United Nations compound here looking for safety from

722
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:49,000
Israeli shelling. This is a nineteen ninety six and Israel

723
00:43:49,159 --> 00:43:53,480
shelled that UN compound and you know, over one hundred thousand,

724
00:43:53,559 --> 00:43:57,519
over a sorry, over one hundred civilians were massacred. It

725
00:43:57,559 --> 00:44:00,960
was called it was called the Kana massacre nineteen ninety six,

726
00:44:02,199 --> 00:44:05,679
and that caused a huge backlash because you went, peacekeepers

727
00:44:05,679 --> 00:44:08,119
were there, they were some of them were killed as well.

728
00:44:08,559 --> 00:44:13,000
And yeah, there's there's there's I can go down all

729
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:14,559
list of things that have happened like that, but that

730
00:44:14,599 --> 00:44:18,239
was a big one. Israel leaves in the year two thousand.

731
00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:24,039
Finally Lebanon has no Syrian troops or Israeli troops on

732
00:44:24,119 --> 00:44:26,880
its territory. It's fully independent, you know, for the first

733
00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:31,320
time and basically its entire history, and I mean politically,

734
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:35,239
shit just hits the fan. America and the West are

735
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:39,800
trying to tear Lebanon away from the Syrian and Iranian

736
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:43,320
sphere of influence. The Syrian and Iranians push back trying

737
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:46,639
to keep Lebanon in their sphere of influence, and we

738
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:53,079
become basically Ukraine using using their client groups in Lebanon

739
00:44:53,199 --> 00:44:57,159
to further you know, foreign backers. To tell me, tell

740
00:44:57,199 --> 00:44:58,559
me if you want me to stop, or if I can,

741
00:44:58,679 --> 00:45:00,320
or if I should keep going, because I I've been

742
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:01,559
rambling for some time.

743
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I have a question. It seems to me

744
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:09,960
that the smart thing that would have would have happened

745
00:45:10,039 --> 00:45:13,480
is if as soon as the palace, as soon as

746
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:16,239
it becomes clear that the Palestinians who were in Lebanon

747
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:21,360
are you know, troublemakers. They should either be ejected somewhere

748
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:22,079
or dealt with.

749
00:45:24,079 --> 00:45:24,880
Speaker 3: They were.

750
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:28,599
Speaker 2: So the reason they the reason the past, the reason

751
00:45:28,599 --> 00:45:32,559
the plow is in Lebanon is because they were. They

752
00:45:32,599 --> 00:45:37,920
were ejected from Jordan. Beforehand, the Palestenians tried to overthrow

753
00:45:38,199 --> 00:45:42,880
the overthrow the King of Jordan, and the Arabs got

754
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:48,440
together and schemed like, okay, we can't kill yas he's

755
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:50,840
too important. We can't kill the leader of the Pastadene

756
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:54,800
national movement. However, he tried to overthrow the king of Jordan.

757
00:45:55,199 --> 00:45:57,239
Where do we put him. We'll put him in Lebanon.

758
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:02,079
Why Lebanon. We were too weak to stop it. We

759
00:46:02,079 --> 00:46:03,800
were two weeks to stop it. We have no leverage.

760
00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:08,639
We are a tiny country. Syria, the Palestinians wanted to

761
00:46:08,639 --> 00:46:11,079
go to Syria. Syria said hell, no, you're troublemakers. We're

762
00:46:11,079 --> 00:46:12,760
putting you in Lebanon where we can keep an eye

763
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:15,920
on you. And because Lebanon borders Israel so that they

764
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:19,199
can all they all had an interest in keeping out

765
00:46:19,199 --> 00:46:21,880
of facts alive and putting him in a place where

766
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:24,679
he could cause trouble for Israel but not them, And

767
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:27,199
so Lebanon was pretty much the ideal destination.

768
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:35,039
Speaker 1: So it seems to me that the Palestinians, if you're

769
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:39,000
if I'm listening hearing this right, wherever they go, they're

770
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:39,800
causing trouble.

771
00:46:41,679 --> 00:46:43,639
Speaker 3: Is that pretty much? Yeah?

772
00:46:43,679 --> 00:46:46,719
Speaker 1: And you know people will say, well, you know, if

773
00:46:46,719 --> 00:46:49,480
they're in Gaza, they're causing trouble.

774
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 3: If they're on the.

775
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:53,880
Speaker 1: How many Palestinians are on the West Bank I'm trying

776
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:55,440
to remember, is.

777
00:46:57,119 --> 00:47:00,320
Speaker 2: I think it's like I think it's like two three million, Yeah, yeah, okay,

778
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:01,840
three million.

779
00:47:01,599 --> 00:47:04,079
Speaker 1: But let's concentrate on Gaza. Then it's like, well, if

780
00:47:04,079 --> 00:47:08,159
they're in Gaza, then they're going to be causing problems everywhere,

781
00:47:08,199 --> 00:47:11,880
it seems. I've heard the argument that the Palestinians, no

782
00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:14,639
matter where they go, they cause problems.

783
00:47:14,639 --> 00:47:16,119
Speaker 3: And you know, and I've always joked that.

784
00:47:17,599 --> 00:47:22,559
Speaker 1: Uh, doctor Schlomo sand And and Sheldon Richmond, you know,

785
00:47:22,679 --> 00:47:25,320
hold to the theory that the Palestinians are actually like

786
00:47:26,079 --> 00:47:29,400
the real Jews, that they have Jewish DNA that they

787
00:47:29,519 --> 00:47:32,840
converted over the centuries and everything. I would say, well,

788
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:37,280
they sure do. They sure do sound subversive, so there

789
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:40,280
could there could be some evidence there, but it sounds

790
00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:44,239
like they're just fucking troublemakers wherever they go. So I mean,

791
00:47:45,679 --> 00:47:46,280
I think that.

792
00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:50,199
Speaker 2: It would be just on that good, just on that

793
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:53,199
one point. I mean, if you were kicked out of

794
00:47:53,199 --> 00:47:57,880
your ancestral homeland where your grand where you're not even

795
00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:02,159
your grandparents, you're great great great parents started build a

796
00:48:02,199 --> 00:48:05,920
house or a farm or a factory that goes back

797
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:08,400
to three hundred years or even further. You know, these

798
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:12,960
people have been indigenous to the land since the time

799
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:19,519
of Christ basically, and these upstart Eastern European migrants come

800
00:48:19,559 --> 00:48:23,679
in and because they have guns and you don't, your

801
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:27,760
your property is now their property because right of conquest.

802
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:30,159
You don't think people are going to have a problem

803
00:48:30,199 --> 00:48:30,400
with that.

804
00:48:31,599 --> 00:48:36,639
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, somebody maker, you know, somebody with

805
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:40,119
Spanish lineage who understands the history of Spain and knows

806
00:48:40,159 --> 00:48:44,880
that the reconquista there took over seven hundred years, that

807
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:49,480
you know, never forget and just keep taking back as

808
00:48:49,559 --> 00:48:52,039
much of the property as possible. Yeah, I mean I

809
00:48:52,079 --> 00:48:55,480
get it, Yeah, I get it. And you know, but

810
00:48:55,519 --> 00:48:59,000
it's also you know, Europe and these are different people.

811
00:48:59,639 --> 00:49:03,719
You're europe is your Europeans or Europeans, and people from

812
00:49:03,719 --> 00:49:10,880
this place are different cultures, different different ways. And so

813
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:18,679
all right, let's let's go back to Israel. So what

814
00:49:19,039 --> 00:49:25,639
is Israel's purpose? Is Israel's purpose to just basically take

815
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:31,239
all of this land because the Old Testament says it's theirs? Yeah,

816
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:34,199
and I know that they're not religious most of the

817
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:36,719
you know, Benjamin, I don't think Benjamin and Yahoo is

818
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:40,119
a is a religious person. But that doesn't mean that

819
00:49:40,159 --> 00:49:41,800
you're not going to take a Bible and take the

820
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,719
Bible look at as a history book and go or

821
00:49:45,079 --> 00:49:50,039
you just rationalize, well, as it says here that God, whoever,

822
00:49:50,119 --> 00:49:52,920
this person, whoever, this guy is said that this is

823
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:56,039
ours and it's in this book, and a bunch of

824
00:49:56,079 --> 00:49:58,599
Christians all around the world and especially in the United

825
00:49:58,639 --> 00:50:01,920
States have been brain Washington believe in that we're these people,

826
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:04,639
then why don't we use this book?

827
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:04,960
Speaker 3: Is that?

828
00:50:05,119 --> 00:50:07,880
Speaker 1: Is that what their goal is is to take from

829
00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:09,719
the take back from the river to the sea.

830
00:50:11,679 --> 00:50:13,599
Speaker 2: I mean that's yeah, that's basically it. I mean, when

831
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:18,079
when Zionism started in Europe, I mean there was a

832
00:50:18,119 --> 00:50:23,199
religious and secular aspect of Zionism which still which still

833
00:50:23,199 --> 00:50:25,440
exists to this day. I mean, like, like you said,

834
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:27,800
not every Israeli is religious, but there are a lot

835
00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:30,400
who are, and there are a lot who quote Scripture

836
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:35,800
to justify their current holding of the land. The secultors

837
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:37,559
really don't think that, don't believe that at all. The

838
00:50:37,559 --> 00:50:40,760
secutors really believe, oh, this is a safe place for Jews.

839
00:50:41,079 --> 00:50:42,559
You know, this is this is a safe place for

840
00:50:42,599 --> 00:50:45,199
my people. Why where? Why would I be anywhere else?

841
00:50:46,599 --> 00:50:50,760
The goal, basically, the first goal of the state of

842
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:55,400
Israel is the survival and continuation of the Jewish race.

843
00:50:56,679 --> 00:50:58,559
Take it, take it early, that's it. That that is

844
00:50:58,559 --> 00:51:03,119
their sole reason for existence. Israel is the last homeland

845
00:51:03,320 --> 00:51:07,519
for Jews all over the world, that whatever happens, whatever

846
00:51:07,639 --> 00:51:11,159
happens post you know, Nuremberg, there will always be a

847
00:51:11,199 --> 00:51:14,119
safe place for Jews, run by Jews, controlled by Jews.

848
00:51:14,559 --> 00:51:16,840
That is the purpose of Israel. That that's what we

849
00:51:16,880 --> 00:51:21,239
all know it to be. Now within that project, there

850
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:23,719
are a lot of different opinions. A lot of them

851
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:29,239
are expansionists. They took the Golden Heights from Syria, and

852
00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:32,079
Donald Trump, when he was president, recognized the Golden Heights

853
00:51:32,119 --> 00:51:35,599
as a part of Israel. Israel is the only country

854
00:51:35,639 --> 00:51:39,639
in the world that doesn't declare its own borders. Why

855
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:41,559
because if it declared its own borders, it would have

856
00:51:41,599 --> 00:51:46,679
to demarket where it's where it would stop expanding. But

857
00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:48,559
there are lucky pople in Israel who don't, who want

858
00:51:48,559 --> 00:51:52,400
to continue expanding. Southern Lebanon has a lot of water resources.

859
00:51:52,599 --> 00:51:57,440
It's very hilly, it's a very nice area, beautiful mountains, rivers, everything.

860
00:51:57,440 --> 00:52:00,559
It would supply a lot of water to Israel, which

861
00:52:00,599 --> 00:52:04,119
is still majority of desert. That's one I mean. They

862
00:52:04,119 --> 00:52:05,920
want to take the Sinai as well, because the Sinai

863
00:52:05,960 --> 00:52:08,880
is very important to the Jewish religion. These are all

864
00:52:08,880 --> 00:52:13,119
things that happened, and Israel had to make compromises, giving

865
00:52:13,159 --> 00:52:16,719
back the Sinai to Egypt, for example, in exchange for peace.

866
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:21,079
But at its heart, it's about the survival of the

867
00:52:21,159 --> 00:52:25,159
Jewish race, and within that project the expansion of the

868
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:28,519
Jewish state to the natural borders of former Israel.

869
00:52:31,599 --> 00:52:37,000
Speaker 1: Right, So anybody who people need to understand that, to

870
00:52:37,119 --> 00:52:44,360
understand that who've bought into the narrative that Israel is

871
00:52:44,400 --> 00:52:47,079
just trying to live there peacefully and everybody around them

872
00:52:47,159 --> 00:52:49,960
is trying to kill them. As I know, they seek

873
00:52:50,039 --> 00:52:55,440
to expand out and go into territories that people already exisit,

874
00:52:55,639 --> 00:52:59,000
people already live there, have lived there for thousands of years,

875
00:52:59,519 --> 00:53:02,679
just like they did by starting to come there in

876
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:07,559
the in the early nineteen hundreds. Is their goal is

877
00:53:07,599 --> 00:53:10,519
to take this back, and not only the land that

878
00:53:10,559 --> 00:53:15,280
they have now, but to move beyond that. And it

879
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:19,199
seems that they anyone who's standing in the way of that.

880
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:25,400
If if Iran is helping Hesbalah, I guess here there's

881
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:28,519
a good place to go. Why do you think Iran

882
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:34,760
is so intent on helping Hesbealah? And I mean, we

883
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:38,440
know that Iran has helped the helped Hamas too, which

884
00:53:38,519 --> 00:53:43,960
is you know, Shia helping Sunni. So what's Iran's whole

885
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:45,800
thing in this? What's their play in this?

886
00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:54,320
Speaker 2: Iran and Hesbalah they just like just like America and Israel,

887
00:53:55,039 --> 00:53:59,800
Iran and Hesbla have a very special relationship. The Lebanese

888
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:06,679
sites historically have traveled back and forth to Iran to

889
00:54:06,719 --> 00:54:13,159
teach the tenets of site Islam that currently rule Iran today.

890
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:17,199
Because I'm not I'm definitely not an expert on this,

891
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:20,199
that's for sure. I am not an expert on Islam.

892
00:54:20,519 --> 00:54:26,440
But the Lebanese and the Iranians have a centuries long relationship.

893
00:54:26,679 --> 00:54:30,320
The Lebanese sites and the Iranians have a centrally long

894
00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:35,119
relationship going back and forth. And the Lebanese sites because

895
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:41,199
of certain emoms and sheikhs in the sixties and fifties,

896
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:46,000
radicalized again because of the creation of Israel, because at

897
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:48,400
this time Iran was pro Israel. Iran was in the

898
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:51,719
American sphere of orbit, so Iran was pro Israel at

899
00:54:51,719 --> 00:54:55,800
this time when we had the Shah of Iran famously,

900
00:54:56,400 --> 00:55:00,400
so the Libines Sheites became radicalized, you know, having Israel

901
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:04,199
on their border and being the victims of Israel. They

902
00:55:04,199 --> 00:55:08,719
started talking to their Shiite you know cousins or cousins

903
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:13,440
or you know, fellows in Iraq and Iran, and that

904
00:55:13,519 --> 00:55:16,920
radicalized them both. And I don't I don't know the

905
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:21,320
history of Komeni because Kmiani was one of these other people.

906
00:55:21,599 --> 00:55:23,800
I don't know his connection. I don't know his Lebanese

907
00:55:23,840 --> 00:55:26,159
connection exactly, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was

908
00:55:26,199 --> 00:55:32,360
something there of how Komeni was radicalized into into believing.

909
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 3: What he believed.

910
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:36,119
Speaker 2: That that's pretty much the best explanation I can tell

911
00:55:36,159 --> 00:55:38,400
you without doing a deep dive. I don't I don't

912
00:55:38,440 --> 00:55:41,559
have the background knowledge on that. There was a very

913
00:55:41,559 --> 00:55:46,639
famous person. His name was Musa al Sud. He was

914
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:49,559
the first person in Lebanon. He was the first Shiite

915
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:54,800
imam in Lebanon to start these Sheite militias for the

916
00:55:54,800 --> 00:55:57,840
purpose of defending the communities from both the Palestinians and

917
00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:03,880
the Israelis. Suda was a little troublemaker himself, and while

918
00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:09,920
visiting Libya he was kidnapped, tortured and killed by Momar Gadaffi.

919
00:56:11,280 --> 00:56:13,559
Why and for what reason, I have no idea, but

920
00:56:13,639 --> 00:56:17,400
that was the beginning of SHII radicalization in the sixties

921
00:56:17,880 --> 00:56:19,159
Musa Southern.

922
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:27,320
Speaker 1: It's interesting that even into the eighties, Iran had had

923
00:56:27,320 --> 00:56:30,119
a relationship with the United States, especially with the quote

924
00:56:30,159 --> 00:56:33,320
unquote Deep State. I mean they're running arms.

925
00:56:33,719 --> 00:56:35,920
Speaker 3: There was Aigan contract.

926
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:39,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean people don't realize that. It's like, well,

927
00:56:40,480 --> 00:56:44,239
this this what happened in you know, so many Americans

928
00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:45,840
want to be like, well, you know, they took our

929
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:49,039
embassy in nineteen seventy nine, and I'm like, kind of

930
00:56:49,079 --> 00:56:51,199
overthrow the government twenty six years earlier.

931
00:56:51,199 --> 00:56:52,280
Speaker 3: And these people don't.

932
00:56:52,039 --> 00:56:55,679
Speaker 1: Have short memories now, they deal with a very low

933
00:56:55,760 --> 00:56:58,920
time preference when it comes to things like that. But

934
00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:02,920
yet still after that and after the hostages are released

935
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:08,119
on Inauguration Day in nineteen eighty one, the yeah, they're

936
00:57:08,199 --> 00:57:12,400
still doing They're calling them their enemy. And Israel's already

937
00:57:13,079 --> 00:57:15,480
talking about their two weeks. You know, there are two

938
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:19,280
months from getting a nuclear weapon, and yet they're running

939
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:22,800
weapons for the for the Contras.

940
00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:26,519
Speaker 2: Interesting tidbit on that Israel was one of the prime

941
00:57:27,800 --> 00:57:31,920
weapons exporters to Iran post revolution. This is eighty one

942
00:57:32,079 --> 00:57:35,079
eighty two. The Israels were sending weapons to Iran and

943
00:57:35,079 --> 00:57:38,719
the Araanians were accepting them from Israel because the Israelis

944
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:41,719
thought Iraq was the bigger threat than Iran.

945
00:57:44,039 --> 00:57:48,760
Speaker 1: It seems like Israel is just the Israeli leadership is

946
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:52,400
schizophrenic when it comes to who who their enemies are.

947
00:57:53,239 --> 00:57:55,480
It could be Iraq this week, it could be Iran

948
00:57:55,519 --> 00:57:57,440
the next week, it could be both.

949
00:57:57,519 --> 00:57:59,360
Speaker 2: They have they have, they have no theory of mind.

950
00:58:00,199 --> 00:58:04,480
These people have no theory of mind. They that the

951
00:58:04,480 --> 00:58:07,840
theory of mind is the basis of all empathy, and

952
00:58:08,199 --> 00:58:11,039
to understand other people, you need empathy, and that's just

953
00:58:11,079 --> 00:58:14,800
something these people cannot. I've never seen these people demonstrate

954
00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:17,760
that unless the person they're talking to is also a

955
00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:23,840
fellow member of the tribe.

956
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:21,559
Speaker 3: You know.

957
00:58:21,639 --> 00:58:27,199
Speaker 1: And people who want to talk about how oh Israel

958
00:58:27,239 --> 00:58:29,559
deserves this land and everything it was given it was

959
00:58:29,559 --> 00:58:35,280
given to them. Okay, what even granting that? Why would

960
00:58:35,320 --> 00:58:40,199
they want to move here? If they It almost seems

961
00:58:40,320 --> 00:58:44,400
like you're led to believe that these Jews wanted to

962
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:48,280
take back their ancestral homeland and they thought they would

963
00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:51,480
just be Okay, we might need to. And at first

964
00:58:51,519 --> 00:58:54,079
it wasn't oh, we're going to kill everybody there. You

965
00:58:54,079 --> 00:58:57,440
could read Ben Gurion and Ben Gurion's referring to that, well,

966
00:58:57,519 --> 00:59:00,880
you know, we have people there, there are brothers, We're gonna.

967
00:59:00,599 --> 00:59:01,280
Speaker 3: Have to do something.

968
00:59:01,360 --> 00:59:03,840
Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden, like overnight, it flips like

969
00:59:03,880 --> 00:59:06,119
you're saying like you're saying boom, oh, no, we're gonna

970
00:59:06,159 --> 00:59:10,679
have to kill them all. If you know, and anyone

971
00:59:10,719 --> 00:59:13,800
who knows their history knows the tensions in this area,

972
00:59:15,079 --> 00:59:19,719
why would you move to this area? The only argument

973
00:59:19,800 --> 00:59:22,199
you could make is, well, you know it's God gave

974
00:59:22,280 --> 00:59:24,480
us this. But I mean most of the people who

975
00:59:24,559 --> 00:59:28,599
were who were in stern Gang or in Hagan or Aragon,

976
00:59:29,159 --> 00:59:33,760
these these weren't religious characters. I mean these were these

977
00:59:33,840 --> 00:59:37,559
were basically humanists. These were people who didn't believe in God.

978
00:59:38,039 --> 00:59:42,559
So it's like, don't they get to get some blame

979
00:59:42,719 --> 00:59:45,440
for wanting to take back a land that's surrounded by

980
00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:48,880
people they know we're going to hate them.

981
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:50,760
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's not it's not even that. I mean,

982
00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:55,639
the the Ottoman history and the Ottoman Empire, this was

983
00:59:55,719 --> 00:59:58,880
not This was not a very tense part of the world.

984
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:02,360
Free World War One, This was not a tense part

985
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:04,639
of the world. Okay, the Ottoman government was very weak.

986
01:00:05,639 --> 01:00:10,320
This did cause ethnic tensions and you know, sectarian rivalries

987
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:13,440
to flare up, which did happen. There were massacres that

988
01:00:13,559 --> 01:00:16,440
happened in the late nineteenth century that totally happened because

989
01:00:16,480 --> 01:00:18,440
of the failure of the Ottoman Empire and the tension,

990
01:00:18,559 --> 01:00:22,400
the ethnic tension. But like I said, pre World War One,

991
01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:24,199
this was not a very tense area of the world.

992
01:00:24,880 --> 01:00:28,360
There were already Jews in Palestine. The thing was they

993
01:00:28,360 --> 01:00:31,239
were Arab Jews, and the Arab Jews had been there

994
01:00:31,639 --> 01:00:35,360
for three thousand years or two thousand years, where whatever

995
01:00:35,719 --> 01:00:38,519
date post Roman history you want to you wanna call

996
01:00:38,559 --> 01:00:43,440
it this, these people were indigenous to the land. They

997
01:00:43,480 --> 01:00:48,679
were not foreigners. No Christians, Muslims and Jews lived in

998
01:00:48,800 --> 01:00:53,880
Palestine uninterrupted for fifteen hundred.

999
01:00:53,679 --> 01:00:58,280
Speaker 1: Years or they didn't lock the doors on their I

1000
01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:03,639
remember reading one diary of a rabbi, European rabbi who

1001
01:01:03,679 --> 01:01:07,639
went to Jerusalem and like they was from like seventeen

1002
01:01:07,679 --> 01:01:11,000
eighty or seventeen ninety, and he wrote there that on

1003
01:01:11,800 --> 01:01:14,519
the Sabbath, they didn't even lock their doors. They didn't

1004
01:01:14,519 --> 01:01:17,920
shut their doors. They didn't have a worry that Muslims

1005
01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:20,360
were going to come in there and kill them. This

1006
01:01:20,599 --> 01:01:25,239
wasn't a everyone, it seemed. And Christians there were Christian

1007
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:28,480
churches there too. No one's locking their doors, No one's

1008
01:01:28,519 --> 01:01:30,920
worried about these kind of things. When these kind of

1009
01:01:30,920 --> 01:01:34,679
things pop up, they can be hyper political and they

1010
01:01:34,679 --> 01:01:40,320
can be cultural. Sure, but there wasn't this problem, and

1011
01:01:40,400 --> 01:01:41,280
it wasn't.

1012
01:01:43,840 --> 01:01:44,480
Speaker 3: And wasn't.

1013
01:01:44,519 --> 01:01:48,880
Speaker 2: There wasn't this problem because politics was out of their hands.

1014
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:51,360
I mean literally out of their hands. You know, these

1015
01:01:51,400 --> 01:01:55,039
people were just part of the tapestry. Palestine was a

1016
01:01:55,119 --> 01:01:59,840
region of the Ittoman Empire, and Constantinople was where all

1017
01:02:00,039 --> 01:02:02,719
government authority was centralized. Okay, there were Yeah, they were

1018
01:02:02,719 --> 01:02:07,000
administrative governors. There always are, but it was not. It

1019
01:02:07,039 --> 01:02:09,039
was not a mass democracy.

1020
01:02:09,199 --> 01:02:09,559
Speaker 3: People.

1021
01:02:09,679 --> 01:02:12,639
Speaker 2: You didn't you had no you had no say over

1022
01:02:12,760 --> 01:02:17,760
government policy. You had local religious representatives that's interfaced with

1023
01:02:18,199 --> 01:02:21,679
the regional government and then the central government. And you

1024
01:02:21,760 --> 01:02:26,480
went to your priest or your rabbi or your imam,

1025
01:02:26,760 --> 01:02:30,199
and they interfaced with the government on your behalf to

1026
01:02:30,280 --> 01:02:33,639
represent your interests. There was no actually, there was no

1027
01:02:33,719 --> 01:02:36,360
mass democracy of like, this is a numbers game, and

1028
01:02:36,400 --> 01:02:39,159
if there's more of us, therefore you don't get anything

1029
01:02:39,199 --> 01:02:41,360
of what you want. And this was this was a

1030
01:02:41,400 --> 01:02:47,519
government people don't understand, like, yes, the government in the

1031
01:02:47,519 --> 01:02:53,719
Ottoman government was okay, monarchical, Yes, it was also extremely

1032
01:02:53,840 --> 01:02:59,360
consensus based, extremely consensus based, like you had to get

1033
01:02:59,599 --> 01:03:02,599
everyone on board or at least piss off the least

1034
01:03:02,599 --> 01:03:06,239
amount of people as possible to achieve anything. In the

1035
01:03:06,239 --> 01:03:09,039
Ottoman Empire, to achieve anything, you had to piss off

1036
01:03:09,079 --> 01:03:11,599
the least number of people, whether it was the merchants,

1037
01:03:11,840 --> 01:03:16,880
the Christians, the drus, the military, anybody, the administrator, the administrators,

1038
01:03:16,880 --> 01:03:18,480
you had to piss off the least amount of people

1039
01:03:18,800 --> 01:03:23,400
possible or they would stop you from from enacting your policy,

1040
01:03:23,519 --> 01:03:26,840
even though you were quote unquote the sultan or the emperor.

1041
01:03:30,119 --> 01:03:30,400
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1042
01:03:31,039 --> 01:03:37,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it really seems like up until pretty much

1043
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:40,199
anywhere you go in the West and even in this area,

1044
01:03:40,679 --> 01:03:44,800
up until the twentieth century, when you had rulers, before

1045
01:03:44,840 --> 01:03:48,519
you had democracy, you you.

1046
01:03:48,599 --> 01:03:49,920
Speaker 3: Just lived your life.

1047
01:03:50,079 --> 01:03:52,760
Speaker 1: You know, some people may be poorer than others, some people,

1048
01:03:53,079 --> 01:03:57,039
some people were served, some people were But it really

1049
01:03:57,079 --> 01:04:01,440
seems like the twentieth century, this twenty century of democracy,

1050
01:04:01,559 --> 01:04:04,639
where World War One is trying to end every monarchy

1051
01:04:05,039 --> 01:04:07,360
and then World War two is trying to end every

1052
01:04:07,400 --> 01:04:12,800
ethno state that it's after that that when the people

1053
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:17,760
have a say in everything, which means that your government

1054
01:04:17,760 --> 01:04:21,480
can be subverted by special interests, and those special interests

1055
01:04:21,519 --> 01:04:24,199
are not going to have your best interests at heart,

1056
01:04:24,480 --> 01:04:28,480
that everything wants to ship that that we've been dealing

1057
01:04:28,519 --> 01:04:32,239
with that now for one hundred fucking years, where it's

1058
01:04:32,400 --> 01:04:38,000
just you know, liberalism, oh liberalism, classical liberalism hasn't even

1059
01:04:38,039 --> 01:04:40,039
started yet. That's what's going to take us, you know,

1060
01:04:40,159 --> 01:04:46,320
that's what's going to defeat Global Hoomo and everything. It's like, no, no, no,

1061
01:04:46,440 --> 01:04:48,559
that's what caused it, That's what brought it here. That's

1062
01:04:48,599 --> 01:04:51,920
what that's what allows it to even if it doesn't

1063
01:04:52,320 --> 01:04:54,039
even if it didn't bring it here, even if it

1064
01:04:54,079 --> 01:04:57,599
didn't allow it in, however it got in, it definitely

1065
01:04:57,639 --> 01:05:01,119
allows it to thrive. It definitely allow to feed like

1066
01:05:01,159 --> 01:05:05,760
a cancer. And yeah, I mean it seems like this

1067
01:05:05,880 --> 01:05:08,519
is the same exact thing. Once you have people who

1068
01:05:09,519 --> 01:05:11,800
once you have people who are over have a ruler,

1069
01:05:12,199 --> 01:05:17,440
even a weak ruler, someone who's like the Ottoman Empire,

1070
01:05:17,480 --> 01:05:21,159
who's really not good at what they're supposed to. What

1071
01:05:21,159 --> 01:05:24,159
they're supposed to be doing here, you have more peace.

1072
01:05:24,719 --> 01:05:27,480
Everybody thinks that. Everybody thinks that before the Jews shut

1073
01:05:27,519 --> 01:05:30,239
up there, that there were bombs blowing up and people

1074
01:05:30,239 --> 01:05:32,599
were just killing each other and it was just these

1075
01:05:32,639 --> 01:05:35,960
mass slaughters and everything. And it's like probably no more

1076
01:05:36,000 --> 01:05:40,400
than anywhere else in the world.

1077
01:05:41,559 --> 01:05:45,039
Speaker 2: No, absolutely, absolutely, And again the massacres that did happen

1078
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:50,239
were a result of the breakdown in governments, the breakdown

1079
01:05:50,280 --> 01:05:52,840
in the Ottoman Empire and the factionalism within the Ottoman

1080
01:05:52,880 --> 01:05:57,199
Empire that led to you know, ethnic groups causing trouble

1081
01:05:58,079 --> 01:06:01,079
and not to be a libertarian, I know were now

1082
01:06:01,079 --> 01:06:05,840
libertarians anymore. But how did how did individuals how did

1083
01:06:05,920 --> 01:06:08,960
like normal everyday people, whether they were Muslim or Christian, like,

1084
01:06:09,000 --> 01:06:12,119
how did they hold power? Like in the Ottomani government,

1085
01:06:12,320 --> 01:06:18,719
they held power through private associations, the private association you're

1086
01:06:18,960 --> 01:06:23,239
the merchant guild or you know, the religious community, the church,

1087
01:06:24,079 --> 01:06:25,760
or I don't know, you were part of the military

1088
01:06:26,360 --> 01:06:28,400
or just anything you were you were you were a

1089
01:06:28,480 --> 01:06:32,760
high administrative person in the local council. Like this was

1090
01:06:32,800 --> 01:06:37,880
a very communal, very bottom up there. There there was

1091
01:06:37,960 --> 01:06:42,599
not there was there was a people thought like all

1092
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:46,760
power was centralized. Not at all the complete the complete

1093
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:51,400
opposite was the case. Power was extremely decentralized, and the

1094
01:06:51,519 --> 01:06:55,440
job of the sultan was to keep was to piss

1095
01:06:55,440 --> 01:06:59,599
off the least number of these decentralized centers of power

1096
01:07:00,159 --> 01:07:03,280
throughout the entire Ottoman Empire, whether it was the merchants,

1097
01:07:03,360 --> 01:07:07,079
the military, the administratives, and the various religious sects. The

1098
01:07:07,079 --> 01:07:10,760
Sultan was the ruler of millions of people who were

1099
01:07:10,800 --> 01:07:14,440
not Sunni Muslim and they had to be governed just

1100
01:07:14,480 --> 01:07:16,880
as well as the Sunnia Muslims. And they had their

1101
01:07:16,960 --> 01:07:21,239
own they had they had private religious law. Like if

1102
01:07:21,239 --> 01:07:23,960
you're a Christian, you followed Christian law, you did not

1103
01:07:24,199 --> 01:07:27,159
follow Sunni law. The Suni law was not imposed on

1104
01:07:27,199 --> 01:07:29,800
you because you were not Sudni. You followed Christian law

1105
01:07:30,320 --> 01:07:32,760
or Jewish law if you were Jewish in Palestine in

1106
01:07:32,800 --> 01:07:35,079
the Ottoman Empire, and no one knows it, and no

1107
01:07:35,079 --> 01:07:39,760
one knows anything about this, it's not wrong to say

1108
01:07:39,800 --> 01:07:41,559
you were a somewhat second class citizen.

1109
01:07:42,159 --> 01:07:42,400
Speaker 3: Okay.

1110
01:07:42,519 --> 01:07:45,760
Speaker 2: Yes, Sunis were privileged the state. The head of the

1111
01:07:45,760 --> 01:07:48,639
state was a Sunni Muslim. Yes, that didn't mean you

1112
01:07:48,719 --> 01:07:51,920
didn't have you know that didn't mean your life was

1113
01:07:51,960 --> 01:07:56,199
that different than anyone else's. And they kept they the

1114
01:07:56,239 --> 01:08:01,719
sultan never forced the Sultan never imposed like Christians to

1115
01:08:01,760 --> 01:08:05,559
follow Muslim law. Never happened in the entire and then

1116
01:08:05,559 --> 01:08:09,320
in the entire history of the Ottoman Empire, the mass

1117
01:08:09,360 --> 01:08:12,000
the forced conversions were like in the time of Muhammad,

1118
01:08:12,079 --> 01:08:13,119
which was a thousand.

1119
01:08:12,880 --> 01:08:19,279
Speaker 1: Years before, sounded a little like Consermahappa there talking about

1120
01:08:19,319 --> 01:08:20,600
democracy they got of the field.

1121
01:08:22,079 --> 01:08:24,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can take you can take the you can

1122
01:08:24,640 --> 01:08:26,960
take the libertarianism out of out of the boy, but

1123
01:08:27,000 --> 01:08:29,840
you can't take the boy out of libertarianism or opposite.

1124
01:08:30,319 --> 01:08:31,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was that.

1125
01:08:31,479 --> 01:08:34,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always I mean, there's not bad ideas there.

1126
01:08:34,920 --> 01:08:38,800
They're just making it into a religion is the problem.

1127
01:08:39,199 --> 01:08:41,439
Making it to its own religion is the problem. So

1128
01:08:42,399 --> 01:08:44,840
we've been going, Yeah, we've been going a while. Is

1129
01:08:44,880 --> 01:08:47,000
there anything anything you want to conclude with?

1130
01:08:49,880 --> 01:08:51,279
Speaker 2: I got, I mean, I could, I could, I could

1131
01:08:51,279 --> 01:08:54,000
talk about the subject for hours, but I think I

1132
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:58,119
think we covered pretty much the complicated history. I'm sorry

1133
01:08:58,199 --> 01:09:01,800
for going on huge mon about the entire history. It's

1134
01:09:01,880 --> 01:09:03,319
it's it's a lot to digest.

1135
01:09:03,760 --> 01:09:07,119
Speaker 1: And I have a podcast where I have Thomas seven

1136
01:09:07,159 --> 01:09:10,680
seven seven on once a week. It's okay, it's okay

1137
01:09:10,680 --> 01:09:11,079
to go on.

1138
01:09:12,800 --> 01:09:15,720
Speaker 2: It's yeah, yeah, it's just a lot of information to

1139
01:09:15,800 --> 01:09:20,239
digest I have. There's there is one book I do

1140
01:09:20,359 --> 01:09:23,279
there's one book I do recommend people read. It's not

1141
01:09:23,319 --> 01:09:28,199
specifically about Lebanon, but it's a great book that gives

1142
01:09:28,239 --> 01:09:31,800
you a perspective of the Middle East and the history

1143
01:09:31,800 --> 01:09:34,640
of the Middle East in the twentieth century. And this

1144
01:09:34,680 --> 01:09:38,159
book is called the Chatham House Version. It was actually

1145
01:09:38,159 --> 01:09:42,840
recommended to me by a mister Curtis Yarvin. Actually we

1146
01:09:42,880 --> 01:09:46,720
met briefly in d c and he recommended me this book,

1147
01:09:46,800 --> 01:09:51,359
and it's an excellent book. The author is an Iraqi

1148
01:09:51,479 --> 01:09:54,720
Jew who never lived in Israel. He was living in

1149
01:09:54,720 --> 01:09:57,920
the UK. He was a British academic and his name

1150
01:09:58,000 --> 01:10:03,159
is Ili Kaduri k E d o you are i E.

1151
01:10:03,520 --> 01:10:05,800
And the book is called the Chatham House Version. It's

1152
01:10:05,800 --> 01:10:08,119
a collection of essays he wrote on the Middle East.

1153
01:10:08,680 --> 01:10:12,079
And there's yes he's an Arab Jew, which is actually

1154
01:10:12,159 --> 01:10:15,680
kind of like the most interesting perspective on the entire conflict.

1155
01:10:16,600 --> 01:10:20,880
But there's there's so many good tidbits of information in

1156
01:10:20,960 --> 01:10:25,000
that book. And me and my good friend Hitman have

1157
01:10:25,079 --> 01:10:27,920
a series on this book where he reads out he

1158
01:10:27,960 --> 01:10:30,279
reads out each chapter and then we have a discussion

1159
01:10:30,680 --> 01:10:33,159
on that chapter specifically. It's a great series. If you

1160
01:10:33,159 --> 01:10:35,880
want to learn, like if you want to learn a

1161
01:10:35,960 --> 01:10:40,319
like a fascinating perspective on twentieth century Middle Eastern history,

1162
01:10:40,840 --> 01:10:43,479
definitely pick up that book by Ali Kadouri, the Chatham

1163
01:10:43,479 --> 01:10:44,039
House version.

1164
01:10:44,920 --> 01:10:47,359
Speaker 1: It's that series on your YouTube channel or something like that.

1165
01:10:48,319 --> 01:10:50,920
Speaker 2: Uh no, my friend hit Man, I'll send you a

1166
01:10:50,960 --> 01:10:51,920
DM of his channel.

1167
01:10:52,199 --> 01:10:54,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, as semi so I can. I can linkwer that

1168
01:10:55,960 --> 01:10:57,039
anything else you want to pull.

1169
01:10:59,000 --> 01:11:02,000
Speaker 2: Follow me at Twitter at hunger d D y E

1170
01:11:02,439 --> 01:11:04,560
And I don't know which day exactly this will be

1171
01:11:04,560 --> 01:11:07,720
coming out, but it's those secrets I am. I'm a

1172
01:11:07,760 --> 01:11:11,000
member of the Philadelphia chapter of the O g C

1173
01:11:11,800 --> 01:11:15,960
and we are very happy to say this Saturday, November two,

1174
01:11:17,079 --> 01:11:20,439
we'll be doing an event in Valley Forge and if

1175
01:11:20,479 --> 01:11:24,199
you want more information on that, please follow our Twitter

1176
01:11:24,199 --> 01:11:29,279
account Philly chap O g C, Philly p h I

1177
01:11:29,399 --> 01:11:34,000
L L y chap Philly chap C h A p

1178
01:11:34,199 --> 01:11:37,359
O g C and for more information on that event,

1179
01:11:38,439 --> 01:11:38,720
Philly

1180
01:11:38,800 --> 01:11:43,640
Speaker 1: Chap okay I'll get that in there too, all right, Hunger,

1181
01:11:43,880 --> 01:11:45,399
I appreciate it, Thank you very much.