Ben Shapiro | Cambridge Union

[Music] good evening it's lovely to have such a full house tonight tonight we have something slightly different we have Ben chaper man that needs no introduction I'm just going to run through the format slightly for the evening so Ben's going to come he's going to give a quick 10 minute or so address from the dispatch box here after which we're going to retire to the chairs uh to have an opening interview and then our selected student speakers here at the front will take it in turns to ask one probing question I believe um and then after that we will Retreat to audience questions uh when everyone can have the chance to stick up their hands um and ask Ben what they want s s uh without further Ado can I announce Mr bench Piro well thank you for having me hello is this working no this one no it's working thank you for having me I really appreciate being here is very kind of you to offer last week this University's Opera Society announced that it would be cancelling a performance of George Frederick handle's Saul that Opera of course tells the biblical story of King Saul the first king of the Jews and his conflict with the soon to be King David so why precisely was this performance of this great work of art cancelled Max Mason's director of the show explained quote given the parallels of this conflict the production team made the difficult decision to cancel Saul we came to the unanimous conclusion that our production was not in the place to fully confront the issues that have striking synchronicity with the ongoing Middle East conflict so what exactly were those striking parallels in the Opera David kills Goliath a Philistine the Jew wins the Philistine loses this is apparently in some way offensive offensive perhaps to those who sympathize with those who slaughter babies in their cribs and rape and kidnap women on mass who shoot Holocaust survivors in the head and bind together parents and children before burning them alive it is no coincidence that the statement from the Cambridge Opera Society ofo all mention of Hamas in describing the quote unfolding situation in Gaza now this makes no sense never mind that the Philistines literally have nothing to do with the Palestinian Arabs of today the Philistines were likely meinian Greeks never mind the story of David and Saul lies at the root of judeo-christian culture raising serious and fascinating questions about power and morality never mind the spectacular music of hundle the Opera had to be canceled lest the supporters of Barbarians be offended the same week the Opera s Society canceled handle the Cambridge Student Union considered a motion blaming hamas's Slaughter of Innocence on quote Decades of violent oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli State and demanding that the Student Union quote condemn the British government's support for the Israeli State that's a motion called for a mass Uprising on both sides of the green line and across the Middle East The Barbarians and their supporters unfortunately are inside the gates that is why anti-semitic hate crime is up 1,350 in London over the past few weeks that is why imams shout and nodding oh Muslim here is a Jew behind me kill him and that is why 100,000 people march in London in support of Kamas so let's take a moment to consider an obvious question how is it that at this prestigious institution of intellectual achievement and so many others like it there's now a powerful Coalition of interests making excuses for terrorist groups the answer to that question is decades in the making and The Story begins with Western apologism much of the West has spent the past few decades apologizing not for its sins which you should apologize for but for its very existence the West's sins so the logic goes are so deep and abiding that they can only have sprung from the inherent evils of Western philosophy and culture and the only corrective is Western suicide the West the argument goes must quote unquote decolonize itself that argument originally Springs from the pen of frankophone radical France fenon in his 1961 book The Wretched of the earth fenon a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front put forth a shockingly violent Treatise calling for revolu revolution of the colonized against their colonizers Fon didn't merely call for the end of colonialism alag Gandhi instead he called explicitly for violence which he saw as purifying in all of its varied forms fenol theorized that revolutionary violence would usher in the new man free from the evils of the West decolonization he wrote is always a violent event decolonization he wrote which sets out to change the order of the world is clearly an agenda for total disorder in its bare reality phenomenal decolonization reeks of red hot cannonballs and bloody knives violence disorder bloody knives that's the essence of fenon decolonization the colonized must take everything from the colonizer in the name of restoring himself as a human being decolonization justifies any response in fact it requires any response the West must be destroyed for the West is colonized quote when the colonized hear a speech on Western culture they draw their machetes or at least check to see they are close at hand says fenon when the colonized here handle Saul they pick up a machete such hatred of colonial power was at least somewhat understandable in Alger but Fen wasn't merely making the case for revolutionary violence in Algeria he was making the case for revolutionary violence pretty much everywhere the man who made that clear was existentialist and Marxist Jean Paul SRA sra's introduction to fen's wretched of the earth makes the case not only that the colonized have an ultimate right to violence but that the entire West must be collapsed from within violence say SRA is man reconstructing himself killing a European is killing two birds with one stone eliminating in one go oppressor and oppressed leaving One Man's dead and the other man free the only honorable thing for the West to do is join in on its cultural suicide quote you who are so liberal so Humane who take the love of culture to the point of affectation you pretend to forget that you have colonies where massacres are committed in your name writes SRA we must recognize he explains that we are all complicit in quote a Thousand-Year oppression our beloved values are losing their features if you take a closer look there is not one that isn't tainted with blood so how exactly does the West recover from its guilt by joining in on the violence against our own civilization and how can we tell the enemy while you attack the powerful the colonizers are the powerful the colonized are the powerless therefore the powerful everywhere must be the colonizers and the powerless their victims this is how for example Israel the ultimate case of decolonization in human history after return of a native population to its Homeland and its battle to throw off the shackles of the British Empire became Today's Hottest decolonization cause sra's radical call has been taken up sporadically both at home and abroad as critical theorist homi Baba points out in his forward to phen book the Black Panthers found inspiration in fenon so did the Iranian revolutionaries the false binary oppressor versus oppressed can be transmuted into literally any form and used by any evil cause and it is now the Coalition of Fin's wretched of the earth that's his phrase of course could not materialize immediately despite the emptying of churches and the deconstruction of Western curricula so long as the Soviet Union loomed as a counter example to the evils of the West the West could still stand up for itself in contradistinction to the vicious predations of the Soviet but after the fall of the Soviet Union the West lost its way the West now completely dominant honic believed it had reached France's fukayama end of History the Western liberalism would now inherently dominate The Globe but the West Was unprepared to defend its own principles on their own merits the west by actually achieving hegemony opened itself wide to the charge that it was now the great oppressor in the words of deconstructionist Ja Dera writing in critique of fukayama quote it must be cried out at a time when some have the audacity to Neo Evangel I in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realized itself as the ideal of human history never have violence inequality exclusion famine and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity that of course was a radical lie suggesting that 1991 was the Apex of human suffering is simply ridiculous but the West Was unprepared to defend against the LIE having emptied itself of the central pillars of its own culture decades before having over having handed over its major educational institutions to members of the anti-western Coalition in the name of Tolerance and diversity no wonder s's radicalism has now become a mass movement a mass movement starting on campus but not ending there Cornell West a black Marxist radical who's now running for president in the United States says the colonialism isn't a quote far from home problem the West must be demolished for fenon West says revolutionary internationalism Anti-Imperialist anti-c capitalist anti-colonialist anti-patriarchal anti-white supremacist yields a new humanism that puts a premium on the psychic social and political needs of of poor and working peoples a solidarity and universality from below this is how the Coalition is built and the Coalition is now active the alliance of the supposedly marginalized marched together arm in-arm toward the destruction of the West nothing need bind them but hatred for the West institutions and values and that is why Hond will not be played in deference to fans of Kamas at one of the great institutions in Western history but hondel should be played he must be played because the West values are better than the values of Hamas because powerlessness alone does not confer moral decency because no one should actually be ashamed or upset that David killed Goliath the capital P Philistines of yesterday have become the Philistines small P of today and those Philistines do indeed March alongside Hamas and its allies seeking the destruction of the West and its culture they must be stopped and they can only be stopped if the West stops being ashamed of itself and begins to defend its own values thank [Applause] you [Applause] thank you Ben I think there's a lot there that our members will want to touch on later um so what we're going to try and do now is just try and cover quite a broad range of topics um to give us some background um you talked there about Western values there um and what I think when we see and when we look to the US is perhaps um an absence of Western values particularly when we think about democracy um we look to Trump um who claims various claims about the election um and then we see in the Republican race at the moment that he's on what plus 48 or something um do we think it's an inevitability then that he's going to gain the nomination I would say inevitability is a bit strong but certainly he has the upper hand in the nomination process to be very surprising if he didn't win the nomination given his polling weight at this point and and you're a known critic of him obviously um but given the lawsuits the January the 6th rights and all that um do you think there's nothing that he could do um whereby he wouldn't maintain his appeal in the light of his followers I think it'd be very difficult to undermine his appeal because there are such massive trust problems in the United States there's no sort of common source of facts number one number two uh there's been pushes both legitimate against Trump and illegitimate against Trump and those been those have now been conflated by his supporters into all oppos to Trump is fundamentally illegitimate and that obviously is not true some of the things said about Trump that he's a Russian stoe that he's working for Vladimir Putin that kind of stuff that was false uh the the argument that that Donald Trump doesn't particularly have a lot of care for the institutions of democracy is clearly true um but supporters because of the binary nature of American politics and because everything is so polarized right now tend to resonate to every critique of trump as though it is equally false to the Russia Russia Russia stuff that that Trump is constantly talking about and so it's very difficult to sort of break that strangle hold and and I mean let's be real about what Trump is Trump is not a policy solution to a policy problem what Trump is is a giant orange pulsating middle finger to to a lot of the uh so-called Elites in in America people who believe that they have quote unquote better values and who live on the coast what what you're watching in America play out and and Trump is just the Avatar of this uh is is a breaking culture and you're seeing that in in broader scale via the Sorting of population that's happening where people who are more conservative like my family we lived in California which is a blue State we moved from California to Florida which is a red State you're seeing a lot of that happen both ways although the the net migration right now is very heavily toward toward the red States and then I mean the other topic of conversation in the US at the moment is obviously the speaker of the US House um would you say when Kevin McCarthy was quite unceremoniously kicked out do you think he deserved it no I think that was ridiculous and stupid um you and ser virtually no purpose uh Matt Gates this is again another incentive problem in American politics right now uh you allv in has has pointed as a philosopher in the United States and and he's pointed out that it used to be that people entered institutions in order to be shaped by those institutions you went to Cambridge to be shaped by Cambridge you entered Congress in order to be shaped by Congress and become a congress person and now people use institutions as platforms and so what you see more and more often in Congress and this is a bipartisan problem uh is Congress people who are getting elected not to do the work of being in Congress but instead to get on TV to have a podcast to they want to do what I do for a living right and and so what they've decided to do is use electoral office as a platform to do what I do for a living and what that ends up with very often is complete practic political inability and a lot of grandstanding a lot of grand stand so Matt Gates who who's the one who overthrew McCarthy right eight Republicans voted along with every Democrat to get rid of McCarthy Matt Gates had no plan I mean he his his entire plan was just to make a big fuss and then to essentially lie I think to the American people by saying that something better would certainly come along when the incentives are not aligned that way first of all I think that the greatest lie in politics is that it's really just a matter of kicking the bums out and getting new bums I don't think that's the way that that politics works as Thomas Soul has suggested if you really want to make a change in politics you have to change the incentive structures not just change the people you can change the people but that's not changing the underlying incentive structure so the decision- making process stays very similar but so so we do have a change of person now we have Mike Johnson um who's very much an unknown in the UK certainly in the US too nobody heard until five minutes ago yeah so so what do you think we can expect from Congress under his leadership um I think very much the same sort of thing I think that you will see him get more leeway from Matt Gates because it's Matt Gates's fault that he's there so I think that what you'll see is that the Republicans are going to solidify more around Johnson than they were around McCarthy which means he'll actually ironically have more leeway to cut deals over budgets and things with Democrats right McCarthy had very little leeway because he was afraid he was going to get kicked out well now Gates can't pull the same trick twice and so the question is who kicks him out if he signs if he signs a consing resolution or something he'll have a little bit more leeway to work okay um and then as I said we're going to try and cover quite a wide range so looking back over here to the UK it being where we are um I want to touch briefly on populism um so post brexit post Boris post Corbin we now have something some of heard to as bit of the battle of the BS um sunak starm um so do you think that the much sort of vaunted Rise of populism um in the UK in the US um do you think that's sort of diminished now are we entering more of a serious period um I I wish we were entering more of a serious period I'm I'm not a huge fan of populism I I don't actually think that populism is a philosophy I think it's an appeal uh you you see leftwing populists who look like Bernie Sanders in the United States and right-wing populists who look like Donald Trump in the United States and very often they sort of agree on this quasi conspiracy theory that whatever you do is not your fault there there forces at work at play that are really deciding your fate and so only I can solve right that's something that Trump said but it's certainly something that Bernie could have said and so I I'm not a big fan of that because I I really don't think the government is particularly good at solving a lot of people's problems uh when when it comes to you know more boring politics I certainly think that there is going to be a Revolt of the middle in in a lot of these countries where people say I'm tired of the spectacular all I want is just somebody who's going to sit in the chair and do the basic job and and leave me alone and as I've said in the United States I think that first party to sanity wins uh and you know obviously everyone in the room literally we'll know British politics better than I do I would assume that maybe some of the same forces are at work um talking with sanity then um the NHS so you've said many times um that you believe that Healthcare is not a right um that's obviously very different to what at the majority um of the UK believes but do you believe there's any sort of benefit to the structure of our healthcare system in the UK to the sort of nationalized social system is there anything there that you could see that might improve the system in the US I mean there are certainly many things that could improve the system in the US whether the NHS is the solution to that problem I have serious doubts about the NHS has serious structural problems in terms of its spending in terms of its cost in terms of its debts in terms of the the future growth of the NHS uh and all of those are things that politicians are going to kick down the can until disaster arrives which is usually the story with literally every social system in the United States that' be Medicare Medicaid and Social Security um but you know as far as could the United States system be improved sure I mean there are plenty of different models that I think work better than the United States system ranging from Singapore to Switzerland uh and and they have various different wrinkles to them ranging from privately sold healthare that's mandated to Cooperative Health Care in certain areas there are a lot of different models for it my my generalized objection to nationalized healthcare is that inevitably you'll end up with somebody who is not you making a decision about your healthare and that that person is going to inevitably going to have to take some cost into account and you are not really part of that process and that seems to me incredibly dangerous as far as my statement that that Healthcare is not a right I I mean that very specifically I think that we really really over broadly use the word right like all the time we use it and we use it it's a semantically overloaded term so right can simultaneously mean a thing that's good for you to have which is not a right that's that's that's a thing that's good for you to have it's not the same thing right I I I love having pizza that doesn't mean that I have a right to Pizza uh it does mean however that the government does not have the ability to stop me from having pizza or should not have that ability so in that sense I do have a right to have pizza so I don't have a right to have pizza provided by you but I do have a right to have pizza that the government cannot prohibit me from having right so so I think that we have to be very clear what we what we mean when we say that somebody has a right to a thing uh there's a legal theorist in the early late 19th early 20th century named William hofeld and he broke down rights into into four separate categories ranging from privileges to immunities uh things that you're morally apathetic about so you have a a right to choose on a moral level whether to have hamburger or not today as long as you're not a vegan uh and uh and that's a matter of apathy um so that's a matter of moral apathy but you also have rights that are immunities from government where you don't want the government pragmatically to have enough power to stop you from doing a thing even if you think that that thing is immoral because government with that power can too broadly apply it so I think we have to be very clear when we say when I say Healthcare is not a right I don't mean that it isn't a good thing to have Healthcare is an amazing thing to have and necessary thing to have I do mean that you do not have a right to demand that somebody else provide you that healthare that right does not exist um and then one final question before we get some Saucy ones from the floor um when we invited you here today when we announced um that you were coming there was a lot of criticism a lot of controversy um we obviously are free speech Society but what do you think that says about free speech I mean people were there's a lot of different words used but it it was um slightly unpleasant to some might say what do you think that says about free speech um what does that say about Free Speech it say that speech free speech is is thriving I've never objected to people who protest or or ask difficult questions of me I mean that's that's legitimately the process and so whenever there are people who are upset that I'm coming you know as long as I'm still able to come that's their prerogative and they're perfectly I have no problem with that whatsoever super okay um let's get on to the questions from the floor then so if you want to take your place at dispatch box uh we're going to move to our first question so please I howdy uh so over La over the last couple of weeks you've been uh making this point that there's no moral equivalency between what Hamas did on October 7 and what Israel's response has been but do you think there is a point at which the civilian death toll no longer justifies the ACs of Israel or do you think that alternative Israel can justifiably kill every last civilian as long as its goal is to destroy Hamas so Israel should do its best to avoid killing civilians in destroying Hamas however there is no number where it goes from every life obviously being valuable there's no number however where it goes from 10,000 to 10,000 one at which point it has entered the realm of disproportion that's not how War works if War worked that way no one would ever win one it also completely destroys I talk about incentive structures it destroys the incentive structure for for military units to act in ways that do not put civilian lives in danger to allow Hamas immunity by Dent of the fact that they are deliberately hiding among civilian populations if you actually want people to not hide among civilian populations then there have to be serious penalties to those groups for for doing that sort of thing providing a ceasefire to the terrorist group as they hide under the ground is precisely the reverse of that but do you not realize that in using hamas's disregard for civilian life to justify Israel's action you are establishing the same equivalency that you are rejecting think and please explain um if you say that Hamas is hiding behind civilians therefore we have a right to uh go after Hamas despite the fact that we will get a lot of civilians in the way you're you're you're using the fact that your enemy is evil to justify your own evil action no I'm I'm lamenting the fact that the enemy is evil that's a different thing I'm lamenting the fact that Kamas is hiding beneath civilians and I'm suggesting that if Israel has to get done what it has to get done that that lies with with Kamas that's not it's not it's not the death of civilians here is unjustifiable across the board but is blameworthy on hamas's part there's a difference between death being justifiable in these circumstances in the sense that it's ever morally praiseworthy or good and where you place the blame for that death I mean that's a that's that's a pretty obvious moral point and to to to suggest that it's somehow it's somehow a celebration of the death of civilians to point out that Kamas is hiding beneath them is to miss the point entirely the entire point is that it's horrifying what Hamas is doing if Hamas wants to end this all today all they have to do a surrender that's literally all they have to do they have to walk out of the tunnels with their arms up and hand the hostages back to the Israelis and this all goes away literally tomorrow so all of this moral heartburn that people are having over Israel attempting to destroy a terrorist group that just murdered 1500 civilians in their beds including babies burned alive in ovens the the heartburn over that because Kamas has simultaneously mistreated its own CI cens and so that's somehow Israel's responsibility so Israel has to allow its own civilians to be put at risk because Hamas is deliberately putting its civilians at risk Hamas is the governing body in the Gaza Strip they've robbed they've robbed their own citizens blind to the tune of billions of dollars they have a $500 million Investment Portfolio in real estate around the globe while 80% of their citizens are living in poverty they took all the water pipes out of the ground and carved them into rockets and somehow Israel is supposed to stop from deposing them because they're so cruel to their own civilians that that logic doesn't work in any way shape or form thank you thank [Applause] you i' would like to ask a I'd like to ask a question on the topic of universal basic income so last year Andy Burnham the mayor of Greater Manchester said that Universal basic income was an idea whose time had come as he spoke on the cost of living crisis today the Welsh government is running a a tri a pilot guaranteed income scheme and England has just launched a similar trial do you believe that Universal basic income is something that can reduce poverty and guard the workforce from potential technological advances such as AI or automation I'm not a huge fan of the idea of universal basic income except as a possible replacement for all the other welfare schemes so if you were to take all the other welfare schemes which are badly administered and basically wrap them into one and call it Ubi as a substitute or replacement it still wouldn't be my ideal but I think that it might be better as far as the the effect of universal basic income the question obviously is at what level how much does it in disincentivize work there have been various attempts at this some have been discontinued because they've been failures others are still continuing obviously and so we're waiting to see the impact or effect of that the other problem is that when you give a universal basic income to everyone the natural effect of that is to increase prices which requires more Universal basic income which requires increased prices which requires more Universal basic income helicopter money tends to create inflation I know that's something that over the past 40 years seemed to be not a concern but obviously now it's a major concern and it turns out that when you just spend money through a fire hose as every Western Government did in the year 2020 2021 2022 that that increased prices well essentially 2020 was a great experiment in Universal basic income in the United States everybody just got paid to stay home I mean the government just blew out the money and and we're still seeing the effects of that so I have a hard time believing that a solid real Universal basic income for millions of people wouldn't have a similar effect on on price wage spy rolles on dis incentivization of work uh and and the fiscal health of a country okay but do you not believe that firstly during the pandemic we saw uh this huge increase in wealthfare payments with very little changes in taxes if anything there was LE less Taxation and by providing a universal basic income we're giving individuals the opportunity to choose and decide what they what they decide to spend their money on and whether they want to allocate that on health or education and does that not align with the liberal values which you so regularly preach so I mean if again as a substitute for other forms of welfare I generally agree I also see a train running down the track which is what happens when a lot of people use their Universal basic income to buy lotto tickets which is one of the problems right very very often in the United States for example you have to you our welfare programs are means tested uh and they are very often specifically allocated to particular goals so for example EBT cards in the United States are for food stamps you can only use them for particular products giving people cash if they spend those if they spend their cash on things that keep them in poverty and then come back the government with their hand out saying well I didn't pay for my healthare I didn't pay for my kids schooling I didn't pay for the school books but I definitely paid for my lottery ticket I have a feeling the same people who are now advocating for Universal basic income will be looking back to the government to fill that Gap again all right thank you thank [Applause] you hi Ben thank you for coming um I just wanted to ask what is your view on the fact that bans on abortion do lead to about a 21% increase in pregnancy related deaths when you hold that your views on abortion and abortion bands are based in the fact that you have a desire to protect life and save lives because every human being is made in God's image because I think we're going to have a fundamental disconnect here the entire abortion debate is centered on whether indeed a an unborn child or a or a human life with potential is in fact that or if it is just a ball of cells if you believe that there's inherent value to a fetus then I am seeking to preserve that life as well as the life of the mother if you look at the raw numbers in terms of for example in the United States a million abortions a year let's assume that laws Banning abortion in the United States were Universal those million abortions go away tomorrow that's an effective law the abortions go away but there's also a concominant increase in the number of women who are seeking back alley abortions for example there's a concominant increase in the number of women who are dying in pregnancy related child birth that would not be a million that would be a lot lower than a million because a million women out of a million women that would suggest that a million abortions would if if brought to term a million of those women would die that's obviously not true so for me an abortion prevented is a life saved and you have to weigh that against what you're talking about which is the life of of the mother when it comes to a pregnancy now even as a fan of of pro-life position and I am I'm I'm a deeply pro-life person I still have an exception for the life of the mother so if the life of the mother is endangered by a pregnancy then abortion would be legal that's true for every prolifer in the United States by the way including the most pro-life people including me so you know the the I think that in order to make the argument that you're making you would have to assume that there is no cost to abortion remaining legal in terms of lives lost okay so you're doing it on a utilitarian basis well I'm doing it on a Liv saved basis yes well yeah so utilitarian basis so then if you look at comprehensive sex education which the US does not have a lot of people in rural areas don't have any form of sex education you yourself have said and I quote um on a general level I don't think that teachers should be talking about sex in the classroom with kids at all at any age um it's shown that comprehensive and correct sex education reduces rates of abortion and teen pregnancy so then if your goal is to save lives why do you not support comprehensive sex education it seems like your goal is something else no because the these first of all I would like to see the studies that you're citing in support of that particular that study is the University of Washington are plenty of other studies in the United States that suggest essentially no difference in for example unwed pregnancy in the United States in can I have those studies what can you can you have them you can look at the pregnancy rates in California New York Massachusetts I just gave you my reference I mean I'm I'm happy to get I'm happy to email you references if you [Applause] so I mean this does happen to be a this does happen to be a topic where there is social science on both sides I'm not I'm not saying that you're that the study that you're citing is invalid I'm just suggesting that there is uh a a difference in in data methods and I'm suggesting that the the single motherhood rates in the west with Comprehensive sex education are Miles higher than they were in say the 1950s when there was not comprehensive sex education so obviously that has not militated against the amount of unwed pregnancy happening in society so the the idea that The Cure All here is comprehensive sex head if you could prove to me let's put this way if you could prove to me the comprehensive sex ad did result in lower levels of abortion lower levels of unwed pregnancy and that that it was values neutral comprehensive sex ed in the sense that what it was actually teaching is here is how to prevent a pregnancy without ending it in abortion then I I actually don't have a huge problem with that it depends on the age of which you're teaching kids there are other there are other issues that I have with Comprehensive sex ed including the fact that what is taught is not simp the simple biology of sex and how to prevent a pregnancy comprehensive sex ed simply goes a lot further than that and I have serious moral problems with that seems like you're just trying to women mother not say l and I mean just to respond briefly to that I'm confused as that the the very language of of forcing women into motherhood suggests that in a vast vast vast majority of cases in which women get pregnant they had no part in the actual pregnancy making act which is not true i' I've done nothing when when you get if you or any of your friends get pregnant that is generally not having anything to do with with me per se so I'm confused as to why I would want you to force anything hello hi Ben hi that's going to be a really hard one to follow I think but I will try thank you for a very interesting discussion my question is uh about your beliefs uh on gay marriage which I believe are informed by your practice as an orthodox Jew is that right um I I will say yes and no that yes only in the sense that yes Orthodox Judaism is against gay marriage and yes I also have secular reasons for opposing gay marriage I don't I don't make public policy based on on my judaic beliefs which is why none of you keep kosher I see okay well uh on the stance that you do hold that is informed by your um Orthodox uh Judaism beliefs why do you think it's justifiable to extend these religious prohibitions on people who don't practice Orthodox Judaism so I just said I didn't so I mean so I'll start with that so so there's that if you want to get that doesn't form your belief though am I right in saying that that on a religious side but not on a secular not on a secular moral side so on a secular moral side the argument against gay marriage is very is is not even an argument against you living a life that you want to live or anybody else living a life that they want to live without government subsidy the question of what publicly subsidized marriage looks like if you want to go to a pastor right now and do whatever you want to do that's your that's your prerogative I don't have any problem with that but I do have a problem with is when the state which has to presumably have an interest in the sanctification of relationship in order for them to sanctify the relationship the question is what is the thing that is being Sanctified by the state and why so when I look at marriage the purpose of marriage for literally all of human history was the bearing and rearing of children the definition of marriage on a fundamental level sort of shifted culturally in the 1960s into two people who love each other I agree that under that rubric gay people count right two men can love each other two women obviously but under the rubric of our all relationships created equal in terms of their utility to the state and the utility to the state is two parents make baby baby lives with married mom and dad then yes of course the the form of marriage that ought to be subsidized is the form of marriage that produces children and that's particularly true in West that is currently reproducing at low lower than replacement rates okay yes um I suppose I'd ask to that um do you have children you I presume you do have children four when they grow up and when they leave the home are you going to seek a divorce having fulfill the sole purpose of marriage where is that I'm not asking Fally I mean it genuinely I don't I'm not trying to catch you out here I mean I hope not I hope my wife and I are getting along at that point but um the but the the obvious answer to that is that Parenthood does not end when your children leave the home I mean I'm still parenting my children proc process does well no I mean I assume you're still in touch with your parents I am in touch but they're not raising me I know but they are still very much involved in your life you you you how they how they interact with you makes a difference in your life I would assume and I think that's true for pretty much everybody who has live parents in the room the parental relationship didn't end the minute that you left the house I assume so and and that that parental relationship will continue up until the point that they die I mean I mean this is actually a pretty interesting example that you're using because it's obviously true that even after kids leave the house if the parents get divorced that has a tremendous effect on a child so to to pretend that that that relationship simply ends is is not true that the the rearing process is lifelong it is not a moment in time in other words okay I disagree with that but thank you very much I appreciate it so my question is on gun control so the gun violence archive reported 647 mass shootings in the US in 2023 alone 2022 alone sorry meanwhile though tragic there were only seven in the UK since 1996 do you believe the marginal increase in Freedom is worth the loss of life so the answer as an American and as a second amendment Advocate is yes but it's not the same for every country meaning that in the UK before the vast gun ban of the 1990s there were not a lot of guns in circulation in the UK before that and the number of mass shootings in the UK was similarly low before the mass ban so the idea the legislation in the United Nations in the UK sorry in the United Kingdom is what created the low level of gun crime is not true there were low levels of gun crime well before that where you tried to apply that same thing in Texas say a vast gun ban in Texas and you were going to try and grab all the guns in Texas I promise you you'd have an immediate increase in the amount of gun crime particularly against Federal officers coming to get the guns the entire purpose in the United States the United States obviously being a revolutionary country against our our motherland uh the the the the United States experiment was built on the idea of the the gun being important in resistance to government tyranny as well as in terms of self-defense now once a huge percentage of the population owns guns once guns are are readily available the idea that you are going to be able to either full scale confiscate or remove move those guns in any practicable way is not true that's certainly the case in the United States and so anytime there's been a serious gun control regime that's been put in place in the United States and there are many of them California has pretty serious gun control Chicago has gun control DC has gun control the rates of gun violence have not gone down because the availability of guns remains widespread typically the rule is that people who follow the law tend to follow the law and criminals tend not to the widespread availability of guns in the United States is not something that can simply be be done away with now as far as sort of the princip principled argument the principled argument is that I'm a law abiding citizen and I should be able to protect myself that's that that is the that is the principled argument so in small scale communities for example homeowners associations there are in many cases in the United States gun bans and I don't have a huge problem with that in the sense that you have a lot of social cohesion you know all your neighbors you have a security force that is quickly responsive to you with that said in a country of 340 million people that is incredibly diverse and where a huge percentage of the population has access to a gun the idea of a widespread removal second amendment rights would result in some pretty terrible things so do you think there's a value to a cultural shift away from God um not necessarily it depends where you are so so the the the idea that the it I want to think about it it's it's an interesting it's it's a really interesting question um and again I think it's it's so it's kind of based on circumstance I'm not sure the entire United States is similar in this way so I I I like the idea of being able to protect myself and my family I think owning a gun in order to do that is is a good thing in the United States I don't know what I would think if I hadn't grown up in a culture that that actually values that so um what would I see value in in in moving it away from that I don't think it's that easy to move the culture away from that so in terms of waving magic wands I I I I I'm running up against reality but on on an ideological level it's an interesting question I'm not sure I have a good answer to it frankly and one quick smaller question the UK slowly phasing out certain types of knives by phasing out I mean making it legal to hold what do you think about that because those knives are there's no reason for a person to carry them as a British citizen but I mean I don't know enough about knife policy in the UK uh in the United States we have you know tanks so uh thank you so much for your time um my question is uh sort of going back to the topic of Israel and Palestine and specifically focus on resolution uh 242 and just to give a context to the audience like what's resolution 242 is so in 1967 the United Nation passed resolution 242 and this uh legislation requested that Israelite Armed Forces retreated from the territories occupied during uh the recent conflict from territories occupied not territories it's actually a real distinction in the Lawes differ ter yeah sorry um and it also stress the importance of resolving um the refugee issue justly and also encourage the end of the um belligerency uh claims States um however the resolution did not explicitly state which territories um Israel had to withdraw from because of the ambiguities in the language of the English version which is the French version um and this ambiguity kind of is being used as a resol like at by by the Israelites to justify its continued uh occupation of some territories and furthermore um although the resolution mentioned a just resolution for the refugee issue um it fa to clearly address the right of the Palestinian people to saood and from my understanding that is the reason why a lot of the Arab Nations sort of reject that resolution so my question for you this if you were in their shoe if you're a Palestinian um aware that this imprecise impreciseness withinin the resolution um that will potentially put your people in disadvantage um how would you respond to that and whether you will um accept the partisan deal um or were you rejected and before you um answer I'm ready to be destroyed by sh so I mean the the answer if I were a Palestinian citizen which fortunately I'm not because it's horrible to live under the Palestinian Authority or Islamic Jihad oramas um but if I were I hope that what I what I would be doing is pressing for a fullscale attempt at a at a peace deal that would involve a two-state solution the biggest problem with the two-state solution right now is that one side wishes to exist and the other side wishes it not to and that's that's a serious problem so if that were to alleviate there's there's been heavy movement for decades in is Israel for seeding territory which is why yaser Arafat was in charge of areas of the West Bank which is why the Gaza Strip which was completely seated to the Palestinians in 2005 Israel removed 8,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip in 2005 they did not have internal military presence in the Gaza Strip which is why they didn't actually have any intelligence as to what was going on on October 7th and so the the the the obvious answer would be that if a Palestinian government were to arise that were trustworthy and credible and its pledges not to actually attack and use their their new state as B for attack and that would require time and trust and that would have to be built up over time given the amounts of distrust in the region which would allow for presumably gradual gradually increasing control of borders with say Jordan right if you're talking about the W Bank it would also require land swaps I mean all these things have been discussed by Israel before they were proposed in 2008 by mer Mahmud abas literally got up and walked away from the table without a counter offer so when it comes to you know the the the practic the practicality of solution that rests on whether the Palestinians are willing to have a government at any point that would actually make that peace deal it was interesting I I was at Oxford last night the other university I was I was there last night and and student after student got up and asked about this and then I asked them a simple question they kept talking about occupied Palestine I said what do you mean by occupied Palestine and invariably to a man or woman each one of them said everything like from the river all the way to the Sea that's occupied well you can't make peace on that basis obviously so you know as far as whether Israel's been willing to yes Israel be willing do that but again that's going to take time and it's going to take credibility that's what OA was supposed to do and it never even came remotely close to achieving that credibility largely because Yas Arad is one of the worst people who has ever lived in an arch terrorist so uh what would be like sort of your solution to that what would you propose if you're the one that's mitigating the deal between Israel I mean right now there's no deal to be actually mediated between between hyp hypothetical in the magical hypothetical deal it would end up looking like the Palestinian areas that are currently governed by the that're currently largely Palestinian would end up under Palestinian control it would look like land swaps probably where the Israeli outside the green L like a which 30,000 CI living out there that not going to end up in Palestinian control you're going to have to land swap somewhere else I mean that that's everybody sort of acknowledges that that is the the the way that it would would go even even Le could which started off anti- Oslo once that was the reality on the ground started to embrace a lot of the language of the two-state solution so again I think that the the the everyone in the west is trying to jump to the solution without recognizing the failure of the premise if you have two parties who are willing to make a a deal is available and if you only have one part who's willing to make a deal a deal is not available right now only one party is willing to make a deal the other party has shown itself repeatedly literally for all of Israeli history unwilling to make a deal there's not been a single deal accepted by the Palestinian Arabs or by their predecessors when I say the predecessors I mean the the Arabs who were in Palestine didn't consider themselves nationally Palestinian at the time people who are Syrian people who are Turkish the appeal Commission in 1937 recommended a significantly smaller state of Israel the Jews accepted it the Arabs rejected it this has happened over and over and over 37 48 8 happened again in 2000 happened again in 2008 like over and over and over and over so again it all comes back to the same point once there's a peace partner you can talk until there's a peace partner there's no talks thank you so much I feel being destroyed but thank [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you thanks um I'll start by quoting one of your videos you say I know it's h by the way my question is on climate change um you're saying thank you for allowing me to prepare myself um so you're saying um I know it's hot outside you know what I can do about it zero things thank God we have this thing called air conditioning it's awesome you know it's a great cure when it's super duper hot being in a first world country so I agree that as individual you actually have no power to mitigate global capitalism induced uh ecological breakdown um therefore I'm curious about your views on structural government policies such as n zero strategies um especially having in mind that this year we saw devastating wildfires in North America and Australia which is the first world and that also sadly burned the houses with the said air conditioning so when it comes to wildfires first of all a lot of controversy as to whether the extent of wildfires which actually have not become more common over time whether the extent of the damage of wildfires is driven by climate change or whether it's driven also by bad forestry policy that's been a major issue in the state of is a major issue in Montana where they had a major wild wildfire in the United States as well when it comes to Net Zero policies my big problem with Net Zero policies is that they are impracticable this is my big problem China is not signing on India is not signing on they're the two greatest polluters on planet Earth for all the talk about the evils of global capitalism it turns out that the giant communist state is the biggest polluter on Earth China by a large margin it is not close Okay when it comes to other countries that are not First World countries they have very little interest in whether or not they are emitting carbon given the fact that many people are so poor they are burning dung for fuel and it turns out that when you attempting to survive past the age of 40 it's much higher priority for you to be able to survive using the resources at your disposal including the single most effective and efficient source of energy on the planet carbon-based fossil fuels that is more important to you than whether it's going to warm incrementally over the course of the next 100 years what human beings are good at and what human beings are bad at are two separate categories human beings are very very bad at mitigation and we are very very good at adaptation so we stink at the at when when it comes to if you guys if we save a penny today we'll save a pound tomorrow human beings suck at this we're really bad at it which is why everybody in Europe everybody in America we're we're I'm just 10 years from now we're all going to be doing austerity because we're going to be forced into it because everybody's bad at this logic but what human beings are very good at is adaptation which is why human beings migrate which is why human beings build new inventions and innovate so one of the so if I'm going to invest resources the things I'm going to invest resources in are going to be not telling everybody they have to drive their car less which is likely to be wildly unsuccessful what I'm going to instead invest my money is in building is building better levies in New Orleans so when the hurricane does hit the entire town doesn't get flooded right building better infrastructure mitigating the damage is where the money actually should be going and is going to be a lot more practical in both the near and the long term than attempting to what tell everybody that they're to turn the air conditioner to 75 or or tell everybody that they can't drive their car as much meanwhile you're not half the globe is not on board with any of that right half the globe doesn't care about that and they're not going to care about that until ironically they reach first world standards via the power of capitalism so my my big problem with with the climate change argument is not whether it's happening I'm fully willing to accept anthropogenic climate change is a reality my big problem is that the solutions that are being proposed for that are not in any way serious or practical the only way that human beings have ever gotten out of problems of this sort is through Innovation and and the real litness test is who is willing to humor nuclear power right that's the real litmus test many of the same people who are trying to push against mitigating factors on climate change are also pushing against nuclear power which seems to me totally crazy uh tanks a couple of factchecking things I actually graduated this year and now work as a climate Economist I did my dissertation on climate disaster so actually um uh there are multiple studies saying that wild forest and other climate disasters are caused by climate change and their increase are definitely caused by climate change also China em emits much less CO2 per capita than us or per capita oh yeah but that still kind of matters well no what what actually matters the amount of carbon that's going in the air that's what actually matters yeah but then like who to blame what we answering the question who to blame for CO2 America's carbon emissions have been going like this and China's carbon emissions are going like this so if I'm if I'm focusing on who is to blame I'm probably going to try to focus on the people who are going like this not the people who are going like this sure go ahead um just um the last question and if if I'm going to answer so uh Your solution to climate change is adaptation so more Technologies which is great uh my question is when it comes to actually developing countries that are bearing in most of the cost of climate disasters and climate change and they did not obviously have the money to implement all of those High costing technologies that the develop world can what would be solution for them I mean the solution for them presumably would be in terms of mitigating against climate change the building seaw walls for them too I mean if the if if we can give our foreign aid to corrupt foreign governments to embezzle then we can certainly attempt to build some seaw walls in low-lying coastal areas of third world countries it seems like if you're going to give foreign aid that's seems like not a terrible place to to give the foreign aid but as far I I I I do reject the generalized argument that the first world owes it to the third world because of climate change because the first world is the first world and the third world is the third world I just fundamentally reject the idea that capitalism has been a process of exploitation of the third world and enrichment of the first world when literally half the world's Global poor disappeared because they are not Global poor anymore by by un standards over the course of the last 50 years thanks entirely to the magic of capitalism so you can't take the benefits and then reject the downsides I don't think it works that way way all right thank you and free Palestine Whi which part really it's it's it's it's it's it's it's a it's a serious question what what is it I'm not I mean I saw you say from the river to the Seas you can just say it out loud yeah yeah there we go okay I appreciate I appreciate the idea that the Jewish State should be wiped completely off the map with a concominant loss of life but we're worried about climate change and the humanitarian aspects of climate change over the course of the next 100 years sure okay okay thank you Oscar um so we're moving back to the floor now is there anyone on the floor who' like to ask Ben a question and we'll get to you a mic I see a lot of hands I think we'll head over here first can we get mic over there [Music] yeah quiet please can we have a question from over here uh thank you for coming Ben um I was hoping to ask you about uh fiscal policy I know you spoke before about the idea of uh government intervention and incentives I was wondering if you could speak to the idea of austerity which I I know you referenced briefly before here in the UK we've had austerity since 20 0 we've seen oh thank you sorry um here in the UK we've seen significant austerity since 2010 uh we've seen stagnating growth increasing child poverty increasing adult poverty for the first time since I think World War II was said an increase in the child mortality rate um we've also seen quite similar phenomenas during the Great Depression years um here in the UK between 1929 and 1939 I was wondering if you could speak to the idea that you think that's not a as a result of austerity and why you disagree sorry uh why you think that austerity policies will produce more benefit thanal spending so in in so in the short term austerity policies do hurt obviously I mean when people get dependent on the government the government spends oodles and oodles of money and then the and then the money disappears the incentive structures change and that and that creates an enormous amount of suffering in the short term which is why you should try to take care of these problems before you reach austerity in the first place the the idea of debt-led growth cannot be sustainable forever is sort of the argument that eventually you have to pay the bill and when the bill does have to get paid you only have a few choices one is to radically increase taxes which leads to business stagnation much of the stagnation that you're talking about now you have just a series of really really bad options right so I'm not recommending austerity in terms of you know preemptive austerity I'm recommending restructuring these things in ways that actually are sustainable now I'm also not a big believer that the government is is doing the right thing and injecting itself into every area of the economy and creating replacement level economies rooted in government because again that can only be based on somebody else's money so my my general objection to National Economic Policy is that you're substituting giant swaths of the market and putting it in the hands of bureaucrats who tend to know much less about what you want on an individual level from your Healthcare or from anything else than than you do and who are very and who have an incentive structure that is loaded toward inertia and not toward change and competitiveness and Innovation so again I I I'm not going to deny that austerity results in suffering of course austerity results in suffering the question is how avoid the austerity in the first place and the answer to that is you don't get in bed with the government if you don't expect to get [Applause] screwed super thank you uh let's go over that side can we get a microphone to that hand that one just sort of I can't really see the person yeah there we go perfect thank you for coming Ben I have a question on G you raised two main points firstly that it's impractical and in effective to take guns away from a society like the US which already has guns and secondly that you have an ideological belief in the right to bear arms does the second Point fully justify a lack of gun control and to give an example would you recommend that the UK adopt a second amendment in order to satisfy the right to bear arms or would you think that once we've rid Society of GS that it's good to keep it that way so I think it depends on the Threat Level to the society and and the level of society societal fragmentation so I I think that it the answer is that I I do believe ideologically in the right to bear arms to protect yourself however I think that the right to bear arms does not include owning nuclear weapons for example right like so in in my situation I I also believe that that threat levels are different to different populations and so it depends who you are in society it depends how well the society can protect you and it depends on the the possibility of a government going truly tyrannical and violating your core rights and so that's not going to be the same between every society so you know I'm I'm I'm hesitant always to speak on on foreign countries CU I know way less about them you know I know way less about Britain as I've said than than virtually anybody in the room um but when it comes to the idea if you have a functional system I'm very hesitant to tamper with functional systems as a as a as a general rule and do you do you believe the UK is a functional system in terms of gun control um I mean I think that the UK is I would have to look at the murder rates and I would have to look at where the crime is located and I have to look I mean I'm I I again I'm I'm going to beg off for lack of data I mean before I start making recommendations in the UK and running for Parliament I feel like I should know a little bit more about your country I can't even spell correctly here okay thank you so much okay super um over on this side the hand in the corner over there please thanks Ben um i' just like to ask a question about the internet and how we debate I'm wondering what you think about this sort of Internet bubbling thing where people get views that are regurgitated agree with them and whether that feeds into the way we debate where we debate with slogans you know brexit means brexit we've had enough of experts to choose a rightwing example because I think that's more amable to the audience um as opposed to actually engaging with the substance of what people believe and whether that feeds into the ccel culture that we're seeing in our society that it's almost if you like an emotional response to not being able to support what you believe because it's being reinforced by you just seeing this well C I mean certainly the internet has made us more atomized the promise of the internet which is that we would all be more interconnected was only true in the sense that we're more pissed off at each other um but but the idea that the internet has been a great unifying body and I'm speaking of someone who's made a lot of money off the internet uh that the internet has been just in unalloyed good in terms of the political discourse is obviously untrue the echo chambers that have emerged are are really a problem it's why I make a habit I mean I I have people on my show on a fairly regular basis who disagree with me I try to have conversations with people who disagree with me actually Alex and I just had a conversation today which we completely disagreed on everything religion related and it was a lot of fun it was really enjoyable so you know I I agree with you that the the current online but I will say there is a subsection of the internet that is quite good right there is a subsection of the internet where people actually are having these long form conversations and they're becoming increasingly popular I think that you know a lot of the formats are not conducive to this Tik Tok obviously not conducive to it Snapchat not conducive like anything that's like a minute or less is not going to be conducive to that sort of thing but long form audio is actually having a moment right now and I think that is quite a good thing so I I want to you know talk about the benefits as well as the drawbacks but yes the sort of algorithmic siloing is incredibly dangerous and leads people to believe that their arguments are convincing when they are not and leads them to believe that they don't have to examine the other side of the argument because everybody else is just a dumbass because that's what people on the internet say thanks [Applause] man and can we go the lady with the hand up just here please um uh thanks for speaking uh this is a political question mostly about America but also the West in general um do you think because of the rise of extremes and political views um almost what do you think will happen to a lot of Western political systems like will they collapse or will they have to drastically alter themselves to kind of maintain order so I think that what we're actually seeing is a fragmentation of the body politic over over Viewpoint and that's resulting in a lot of polarization especially because the top level governments do have so much power so in the United States which again I'm going to speak about the us because that's what I know best uh in the United States the federal government simply has too much power which means that everybody's incredibly invested in federal politics and a way they're not invested in the stuff they should be invested in which is actually local politics like how they're actual local community is government govern so if you believe that the federal government is going to step in and is going to Simply squash you then it becomes a matter of life and death who the presidents of the United States is when for much of American history no one actually cared all that much who the president of the United States was and didn't seem to make a huge level of difference in fact huge swats of the of the 19th century were precisely that uh the the maximization of the power at the top level is a real problem and this is something that monu was talking about hundreds of years ago I mean the idea of devolution of authority to the lowest available level so you can have more homogeneous communities deciding for themselves how they wish to live and let their neighbors live as they wish to live and then the amount of authority delegated reducing As you move up the chain I think that's that's the good way out of this the bad way out of this is viol fracturing Mass riots in the streets people reacting very strongly to that by electing ever more polarized governments in order to hit the enemy and I I think that's that's incredibly dangerous I'm I'm I'm a big fan of federalism in the United States and I think there needs to be more of it pretty much everywhere localism and federalism are an answer to a lot of these questions and do you think that riots and stuff are inevitable um I again I think that when people are feel as though they have lost control of a situation uh they they tend to Riot and I think that's also again fermented by the internet culture that that does favor the most extreme expressions of viewpoints I would even say the most extreme viewpoints because I'm not sure that's even true it's the most extreme expressions of the viewpoints and the most extreme expression of any Viewpoint is going to be violence thank [Applause] you can we go front and middle here please hia I wanted to ask um about gay marriage which I didn't think we properly duked out earlier um you may disagree but I felt your argument for the secular side of posing gay marriage was that you feel the state sort of advantages marriage because it's a a useful thing for society um I find that very odd because I don't feel that that's why we have rights and freedoms in society um if we're being utilitarian in the US you know a lot of our rights make governance harder so thinking of the first amendment that makes societal Harmony a lot harder the second amendment makes saving lives a lot harder shouldn't secular debate on gay marriage be focused mostly on the pursuit of happiness over what's useful so again I'm going to hone in on the definition of rights in in what you're saying so when when I say right to gay marriage as I expressed earlier I think that you have a right to go down to your local church and have anybody sign any document that you want what you're actually talking about is a government benefit when the government says that it sanctifies a marriage that comes along with certain legal procedures otherwise I don't think the government should be in the business at all let me make that clear if it's just about getting a government piece of paper that says magically your marriage is now Sanctified by a bunch of politicians I don't give a about that at all it makes no difference to me I have two I have two marriage documents in my possession one is my religious marriage document which I actually care about and then I have the secular marriage document which I don't even remember the date of and is buried somewhere in the garage I don't care about it at all because I don't rely on the state to sanctify my personal relationships and frankly I think if you do rely on the state to sanctify your personal relationships you need better relationships and you need better institutions again politicians and bureaucrats giving you a piece of paper should not make you feel better about your relationship the the whole purpose of the debate over gay marriage should have been over whether certain forms of marriage are beneficial to the state or not because it's about the benefits that acrew I think that it actually morphed into something else because there was an attempt I think by some people to suggest that because the state hits a stamp on a piece of paper this Grant's quote unquote moral credibility to the thing I'm not in favor of the state granting be being the Arbiter of moral credibility on personal relationships in general I just don't I don't think that that's the state's business I do think that it's the state's business to incentivize or disincentivize particular types of behavior and in this Cas I don't think it's the state's business to to disincentivize particular types of sexual relationship I do think that it's very much in the state's interest to incentivize particular types of familial [Applause] relationships okay I think we have time for one more question and we'll go back corner over there please [Music] oh um hello um my question is going to be about the Israel Palestine issue and and let it be known that I'm not a big from The River To The Sea kind of person um my question is about your claim about uh Israel uh having always having its doors open to peace for a two-state solution and I just don't think this narrative is true I don't think that any Israeli Prime Minister since yitzak Rabin has really had their doors open for peace and yitzak Rabin the most open for peace Israeli Prime Minister of all time was shot by an Israeli extremist um who was motivated by um Jewish Jewish fundamentalism um which as a Jew I find really appalling that that was the closest we've ever got got to peace and it was our very own religious fundamentalists that stopped that from happening um I don't think that Israel does currently have its doors open for peace Benjamin Netanyahu has made his voice opposed to the two-state solution very often Israel is under the control of a a minority settler population who are not willing to give up on the land of Judea and Samaria which land which is land that needs to be given up in order to achieve peace so I just don't think this is true and yes I don't think Hamas has its doors open for peace either but this does not change the fact that Israel is culpable for also this current situation in which it is not willing to negotiate because it views the entire land as its own look at the nation state law uh the Judea Samaria Golan everything is all meant to be exclusive Jewish sovereignty okay so let's talk about the history for a second to suggest that the last Israeli Prime Minister who's in favor of peace with Yin I'm sorry but it's just historically inaccurate shim Perez who was yakin's partner in the peace plan was prime minister AUD Barack who is so far to the left that he makes yakin look like a perer was the Prime Minister and offered a peace deal in 2000 ahud Omar offered a an incredibly generous peace deal much much greater even than the 2000 peace rejected by arat m so that's just historically inaccurate the idea that yak Rabin was simply willing even at the time this not even what the oo Accords say the oo Accords really kind of embody some of the things that I was saying about a gradualistic process of surrender of some parts of the land which is why you still have areas a andc when it comes to the idea that Israel as a whole is somehow culpable for a terrorist group that calls for its extermination running into its Center and murdering 1500 Jews is deeply immoral that's deeply immoral you're not talking about people who are arguing in favor of some sort of land for peace settlement the people who ran in are arguing for the extrap of every Jew from the region every Jew and as far as the idea that Israel is somehow ethnically intolerant as opposed to his neighbors that's untrue as well Israel is 20% Arab Gaza has zero Jews zero the Palestinian Authority has zero Jews living under its Authority nor could they be trusted to have Jews living under their Authority given the fact that when Jews accidentally drive into rala they're a danger of being lynched which is certainly not true of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who every single day are given work permits into Israel including by the way people from the Gaza Strip who had work permits into Israel some of whom then went back and gave information to Kamas on these specific locations and number of people in each house in these various mosha those are the villages in the Gaza envelope so to suggest that that this is that BB netanyahu's fault that Hamas murdered 1500 people by by the again ignoring the fact that Hamas has been firing rockets on Israel continuously for about a 17year period at this point spanning governments of both the left and the right BB Netanyahu wasn't even prime minister a year and a half ago it was y Leed who was very much to the left so to to make the argument that somehow Israel has a responsibility to make a quote unquote two-state solution with the current Partners is totally crazy what who who's the partner it would be one thing to argue if there was a liberal-minded partner that actually sought peace but what you're talking about is a Palestinian the most liberal partner that is there is the Palestinian Authority which right now today is paying Hamas terrorists a stipend for having killed Jews those are not people you can make a peace deal with I mean I I understand that Hamas is not a group you can make peace with but I do think that Israel has made a concerted effort to destroy every group it could possibly make peace deal with in 2019 Netanyahu said that the best way to stop pal inian statehood which is his aim was to fund and Empower Hamas in order to further the Divide between Gaza and West Bank this is what he believed should be done in order to prevent Palestinian statehood and second when you talk about uh Barak ahud Barak um as being a leader who was very willing to open a peace deal I think that the reason why the 2000 peace deal failed was because ultimately uh Israel was not willing to give up control over the Temple Mount which is for Muslims the alas compound which is something as a secular Jew I think should have been given up in order for peace but I can understand that religious people might struggle with that but at the same time I think that um Arafat was under a condition where he could not have given up uh permanently sovereignty over Alaska compound because he would have had a fatwa in uh against him okay so your argument is actually my argument which is that arat could not have accepted a peace deal offered to him because his own people would have murdered him for having made any sort of peace deal which by the way I agree with I think sort of peace deal a peace deal that gave up the Temple Mount and I would that's that's okay so the the the the idea that first of all we should point out that having been on the Temple Mount multiple times the I tried I dressed up as a Muslim to try and get onto the Temple Mount well yeah there's a there's a picture of that happening by the way you don't you don't so if if if if you if you'd like the hook up I can make it happen it's not difficult you all you have to do is walk up a particular tunnel and you can go up on to the temple M anyone can but only Muslims can pray there only Muslims can pray on the Temple mount that is the on the wrong day it wasn't open to foreigners that day I I'm telling it is a fact of the matter I've seen people arrested for attempting to pray to open a prayer book that is in Hebrew on the Temple Mount only Muslims can pray on the Temple mount the Islamic W is in technical control of the Temple Mount so I put aside the politics of the Temple mount for a second once again the argument that I'm making is that there is no party on the other side please name the party on the other side with which the Israeli should currently negotiate not currently because I as I've said has tried Israel has assassinated leading Arab academics leading Palestinian academics at when when during the naar in 1948 Israel kept largely rural areas in the Galilee intact but they went after um urban areas where there were Palestinian academics there had been a concerted effort to make sure that I I think you're saying you're saying the war strategy of the Israelis in 1948 was to go after Palestinian academics not academics they went they went after urban urban Palestinian life it turns out that Wars typically take place in heavily urbanized areas and not in Open Fields I mean it was a largely rural area at the time so I don't think that's right either so well I mean that happens to be right the biggest battles around the 1948 war of war of independence a battle of lat trune which is a battle between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to open the road to Jerusalem there were there were hotly fought battles in the streets of safed saat so I mean there there were battles in every populated area of of the region clearly because it was a war for the establishment of the state of Israel so the Palestinian population was which is unusual sit uh first of all not particularly unusual considering that the Allies including this country promptly after World War II depopulated Poland to the turn to the to the the sound of two million Germans depopulated from Poland back into Germany repatriated back into Germany that nobody ever talks about nobody's talking today about the fact that right now okay I think we need to wrap up there thank you very much ben for being here tonight and can we have one round last round of applause for all the contributors tonight the questions [Music] Det

Channel: Cambridge Union

Views: 1,198,975

Keywords: Cambridge Union, Cambridge University, Speech, Debate, Cambridge, The Daily Wire, Columnist, Political Commentator

Id: 7qShHd-uxKQ

Length: 71min 39sec (4299 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2023