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So, we're on team civilization here. We want to see the maniacs of Hamas be defeated. So, we've seen um news this morning that quite honestly I'm a little confused by and I was hoping you could navigate it and help us understand, which is that Israel uh bombed Qatar, which houses a lot of Hamas officials. What happened here? And if I were to introduce just a skeptical question, will this potentially endanger America's own interest in the Middle East? So, please Ben, help me better understand the situation.
Sure. So, I think that that the leadup to understand here is that Qatar sort of plays both sides when it comes to its negotiating stance between Hamas and Israel and and the United States. So, it has provided extraordinary material support to Hamas directly. Billions of dollars in material support to Hamas. The leadership of Kamas have been living in Qatar for years at five-star hotels. Kamas's priorities have been pressed by Qatar in negotiations multiple times. Qatar has not put significant pressure on Kamas in the past to release the hostages or to end the war. And so basically, as Israel nears the end of the war, which is what this last movement in Gaza City is supposed to be, that there was a final offer that was put on the table actually by the Trump administration that essentially said that Hamas should release the remaining 48 hostages, meaning 28 dead bodies and 20 alive hostages. And the United States would then guarantee through his own honest brokerage some sort of ends of the war that would result in the disarming of Hamas and the movement of the Gaza Strip to presumably some sort of coalitional government supported by regional states and the rebuilding of the area. And Qatar was pushing Kamas apparently we we heard and kamas this morning in Arabic actually rejected it. That's not been widely reported by the media but it's true. Kamas actually rejected the American offer. The president had put out via truth social a statement saying this is your last chance and if you don't do that bad things are going to happen. The the idea that that Israel would be able to fly 10 F-16s all the way across the Middle East to Qatar to strike a very specific terror target in Doha without American knowledge beggars the imagination. It it is extraordinarily unlikely to say the very least. It honestly it would not be wildly improbable if Qatar knew that that was coming as well. And so Israel struck at the the top level of the remaining Hamas in Qatar in an attempt to basically change the negotiating status. So the basic idea here was is if you will not negotiate, if you refuse to get to the end of this war, well then maybe we'll find somebody who can or maybe the idea is that you're safe nowhere until this war ends. Additional pressure had to be brought to bear and that's why Israel did what it did. Obviously I as well am on team civilization. I'm very happy to see Kamas's top leaders killed. I I hope that that as many of them in the in the leadership with as little loss of civilian life as possible. I I hope that as many of them died in this attack as it's humanly possible. And again, I'd be very surprised. I mean, we do know actually from contemporaneous reporting that the United States was at least given the heads up on the Israeli operation in the moments before it went.
I I just spent time in Japan and one of the things that kind of looms over Japan is that Japan, they engaged in an unconditional surrender that they said, "We're done." and they laid down their arms obviously after the two atomic bombs. Very controversial. People have mixed opinions on it. I certainly do. But that that it is unconditional surrender. Is that what Israel is aiming for here? I suppose that is a question that I get a lot on campus. What does success look like? Because I think we could all agree a long war is not good for Israel. A long drawn out war and we're now ending we're coming towards two years uh in about a month. So it's been about 23 months. So what does ultimate success look like in the Gaza Strip?
So my my main critique of the Netanyahu administration and Israel Netanyahu government is they didn't move faster. I think this should have been a much more accelerated process. Israel set out at the beginning of this war with two goals as articulated by the Israeli government. Goal number one was to get as many hostages out as humanly possible to free the hostages and second was to win the war. In many ways, those are mutually exclusive goals because if you actually wish to win the war, then you have to do things militarily that are going to involve actual movement on the ground. And meanwhile, kamas is attempting to basically use the the hostages a as its own form of human shields. They've used their own civilians as human shields. They're also using the hostages as a form of human shield. And so, as you came to the end of the war, this is always going to be the question is how the war kind of came to its final terminus. the the priorities that that Netanyahu has laid out publicly include essentially basically it's let the hostages out and there can't be a future military threat to Israel. Those are if you had to sum it all up those are the two things. How that materializes in my opinion is likely to be an Israeli military occupation of large swasts of the Gaza Strip. The setting up of humanitarian areas particularly on the coast and in Rafa in which humanitarian aid is provided a pathway out for people who actually want to leave. is the only conflict of which I'm aware on planet earth in which there are outside countries telling people who would like to leave that they literally cannot. The Trump administration has been trying to facilitate the ability of people who want to leave to do so and has also been trying to facilitate the entry of not only humanitarian aid but investment into the areas that have been cleared of terrorists and then you can see some sort of kamas free rebuilding. That would be the goal of the end of the war. Now, my understanding is that the the sort of last untouched area of the Gaza Strip in terms of Israeli serious military operations is Gaza City. It's why there's been so much focus on Gaza City. Last I heard, Israel already controls something 40 to 50% of the territory in Gaza City. They've been warning people to get out for at least a couple of weeks now. Hamas has been stopping people at checkpoints and turning them back and shooting them if they don't stay in the city to be used as human shields by Hamas. So, that's the current situation on the ground.
What other feedback or criticism would you have about this situation? I I know that it's impossible for anyone to listen to everything that you ever say, but looking at this from a American perspective, what else would you say things could have been handled differently? Maybe on the PR front, maybe also just on a a conduct front. where where would you say as an outsider w would things that could have been handled better um more efficiently or with more precision?
So number one there's there's no such thing as a perfect war. So obviously in any war there going to be things that happen that are ugly and that are terrible and that is why war is is a terrible thing. As far as a sort of operational front again I've spent an awful lot of time in Israel. I've watched tape of operations happening drone operations. Uh, I've met with an enormous number of Israeli soldiers, young men and women, people who are 18, 19, 20 years old, who have had legitimately their limbs blown off going house to house in an area where they didn't have to. Uh, the charge that Israel has been indiscriminate in its use of force in the Gaza Strip is an absurdity on its face. Israel has complete air superiority over the Gaza Strip. If it wanted to level the place and turn it into a parking lot October 8th, it certainly had the military capacity to do so. It has not done that. Instead, it has sacrificed legitimately a thousand of its own young men, particularly in these areas, and thousands more who are wounded for the rest of their lives, going house to house in an attempt to prevent all that. And is currently shipping in 4,400 calories per day per person into the Gaza Strip, much of which is then stolen by Hamas. So, that that is not to say that any that any war is perfect. This war has been conducted in about as meticulous way as any urban war in history. Just because war is ugly doesn't mean that it's being fought wrongly. And I think that that the the main mistake that Israel has made is misunderstanding how how public relations works in the sense that they couldn't have presented this war in a better kinder way that people would have loved. What they could have done is move faster. And and the reality is that the American way of of doing war is to win as fast as possible. And we don't like long drawn out occupations. We don't like long drawn out military operations. That's true in Iraq. It's true in Afghanistan. It's true in Ukraine. It's true in the Gaza Strip. And so the kind of things that that we Americans like to see are for example the operations againstah that took about 3 weeks to 5 weeks or the operation against Iran which took about 12 days. Right? Those are operations that any ally of the United States can sustain. Long operations like the one that Israel has been performing in the Gaza Strip are inherently very very difficult uh from from PR level. I'm not sure, to be frank, that there is a way for Israel to quote unquote win the PR war in the middle of a very long war against an intrigent terrorist enemy that legitimately embeds itself in in the most damaging places.
A claim I receive often, and we're starting our campus tour tomorrow, is that Israel is committing genocide. How do you respond to that, Ben?
There there is literally no definition of genocide by which Israel is committing a genocide. Typically, a genocide involves the the targeted killing of the vast majority of the population or at least an attempt to do so. that there has never been a genocide attempted in world history in which the the food that was being shipped in was more than the daily caloric intake of the average American into the areas where you're supposedly attempting to genocide the population. The total population loss in the Gaza Strip thus far has been 3%. During the Holocaust, just to take a reference, it was 50%. During Rwanda, it was significantly higher than 3%. You don't issue leaflet warnings to people. You don't go house to house in a genocide in an attempt to reduce civilian casualties. I I understand that people use genocide at this point to just mean thing I don't like and I get that. I understand nobody likes war. Nobody wants war. Certainly not the Israelis who are not at war on October 6th. Uh, the the fact is that that every Israeli family has to send their 18-year-old son or daughter off to the military with the possibility that they're going to get blown up in Gaza. That is not something that that any Israeli wants, right, left or center. The the real question is whether the accusations are accurate. They they certainly are not again by any stretch of the imagination.
author Ben Shaper, author of uh Lions and Scavengers. We're going to get to that in a second. I have one or two other questions on Israel. I think it's very important for our audience to hear this though because there is a an incessant campaign and one thing a friend said to me interestingly, which is okay Charlie, we've push back against the media on COVID, on lockdowns, on Ukraine, on the border, on it's like maybe we should also ask a question. Is the media totally presenting the truth when it comes to Israel? just a question, you know, that maybe we shouldn't believe everything the media says because I know I've been conditioned to ask a lot more critical questions over the last couple of years.
So, Ben, some people would accuse Israel of wanting to ethnically cleanse. Some people in the Israeli government are saying, again, it's all over the place, right? You have opinions all over. In your opinion, what would a good outcome five years from now be? And how does one respond to the claims of ethnic cleansing?
So, ethnic cleansing, the idea presumably that that population movement is equivalent to ethnic cleansing. I think ethnic cleansing is a term that that's been fairly recently coined to describe population movement during war. And the reality is that's been ongoing for literally all of human history. Uh the idea that that Israel is quote unquote forcing people out of the Gaza Strip, that is not the stated policy of the Israeli government. The idea is if people want to leave, they can, but they're not being forced to leave. Uh, again, moving people out of heavily urbanized areas that are honeycombed with terrorist booby traps pretty much everywhere is not the same thing as quote unquote ethnic cleansing. And I think that ethnic cleansing is is very often used as sort of a a softer form of of the genocide attack. The idea being that Israel is trying to kill everyone, which of course is not true.
As far as your earlier question about what we believe from the media, one of the things that I find kind of astonishing in in some of the folks on the right who are highly critical of Israel is actually the lack of cred, the lack of skepticism when it comes to legacy media. Legacy media are radically anti-Israel overall. The New York Times can can certainly not be accused of being a pro-Israel outlet. It' be very difficult to make the accusation that the Associated Press, which has worked hand glove with Kamas for years, or Reuters, that the these are these are wildly pro-Israel outlets. And yet, when it comes to the reporting, it seems to be sort of the the opposite.
So, the the perception the legacy media is like owned by the Jews. And I was going to say, Ben, come you Jews own the media, Ben. So, I mean, come on. As you could tell by all the wonderful headlines you guys get.
Well, I mean, dude, the accusation that that we own the media has not prevented, you know, the Daily Wire from from employing people who radically disagree with me on all of these matters. I mean, I don't agree with Matt Walsh on foreign policy. Matt obviously is a major host over at Daily Wire. And that's just my shop. And I'm I'm overtly pro- Israel, right? I mean, I'm not making any bones about this. I'm a Jew and I'm a Zionist. I'm not going to pretend that that to to say otherwise would be absolutely silly. to to suggest that that a some sort of atheistic Jewish person by birth who does not care about Judaism or Israel owning the New York Times means the New York Times is pro-Israel is to ignore literally every bit of coverage they have ever done for my entire lifetime.
Uh, we we're running out of time here, but just la last question on this Ben. I know this might be a tougher question, but BB said, quote, I didn't like he said this. I'll be honest, you can't be MAGA if you're anti-Israel. I don't like it for a couple reasons. How how did you how did you analyze that statement from BB?
I mean I think that there is the ungenerous way of interpreting that and then the generous way of interpreting that. So the ungenerous way is to suggest that you have to hold a particular position on every Israeli governmental activity in order to in order to be MAGA which of course is not true. I mean you can disagree from the right or from the left with with BB's policies and and you can still be plenty MAGA. I think the idea that that BB is putting out there is that if you are taking Hamas's side against Israel in a conflict, it is very difficult to align that with the with the stated positions of the Trump administration or what President Trump himself is doing right now. And that much you cannot look I I think you can have disagreements on Israel and still be MAGA. Obviously, you should be America first, but if you're pro- Hamas, you're something darker and and we shouldn't put up with that.
Ben, tell us about your important new book.
So the basic idea in Lions and Scavengers is that inside every human heart, and this goes back to the book of Genesis, that there really is the the dutiful part of you that wants to engage in what God made for you, that this this incredible rationalistic world in which you can mostly understand what's going on and you have a duty to do the moral thing. You get up every morning, you try to build something, you try to be innovative and risk-taking. You you try to defend your civilization, you you try to build the social fabric. And then there is the part of us that's driven by envy. And that part of us just looks at our problems and immediately attributes it to some shadowy force outside of our control and tries to rip down the very systems that actually provide prosperity, tries to rip down the lions out of pure envy. Here, think Zoran Mani. And you know that that exists in all of us, but it exists civilizationally as well. And when you look at at the sort of activities that were taking place on college campus last year and you see the the weird elomeration of causes that all come together under varying banners. Sometimes it's hating President Trump over immigration. Sometimes it's on Israel. Sometimes it's on LGBT, but it's the same exact people all marching together. And you wonder yourself, what do these people have in common? And the answer is pretty much nothing except they really really don't like our civilization and see the fundamental basis of our civilization as evil and wrong and and believe that it needs to be torn out by the rooe. This is to take the most obvious example, queers for Palestine. Everybody's been puzzling over what the hell is that, right? Queers in Palestine get thrown thrown thrown off buildings. So what is the answer is that the radical LGBTQ group doesn't have much in common with the pro kamas group except that both really really hate the west and believe that the traditional values of our civilization need to be destroyed in order that they can live more fulfilling lives in some way.
What would you say is the missing component for those of us in the west to stand up against these forces? What would you say we're doing well and that we need to do more of?
I mean, I I think that what we lack, and I think we're starting to see a restoration of it, is the courage to actually stand up on our hind legs and and say no. I think that good people tend to be introspective. We tend to think, "Okay, what did I do wrong? How do I fix that?" We tend to apologize when we do something wrong. Bad people tend to take an apology and then grind your face into the dust over it because they're not engaged in guilt cultures. They're engaged in what are called shame cultures where the most important thing is not to be made to feel shame. And it is to shame others. And so I think that we, you know, those of us who who consider ourselves part of Western civilization, you know, we need to recognize that a constant self-abnigation, a constant attempt to tear ourselves down out of a misguided sense of humility in the face of people who are happy to just destroy our civilization from without and within. That is a gigantic mistake. And it is totally fine to say to people who wish to destroy our civilization, no, your values suck and they don't belong here.
Where does all this resentment come from? It comes from a wide variety of places, but it tends to come in general from a feeling of frustration and innovation. And so I think that that you you can get that from people who believe they have been marginalized. You can get that from people who believe they deserve more. You see it a lot actually with university students who seem to believe that they deserve a $250,000 salary for a gender studies degree because they've been taught that they ought to be getting more and then they don't get it and then they're angry at their parents for for not having put them in a position to do that. and they rebel against everything that they've been taught and or and everything they haven't been taught. I also think it comes from a board population. Very often you have people who grew up without any sense of external threat and they think that pretty much everything that's good in life is the baseline that that's just normal and that you can tear away everything without the the baseline falling away. That of course is just false. So some of it comes from ignorance, some of it comes from envy. The reality is that gratitude as a as a characteristic of human beings has to be cultivated. It's something you have to teach your kids gratitude. Envy is totally natural, right? Envy, envy is easy to do. You see, you see it with small children, right? I have four and it's very easy to see kids envy each other and get on each other's case. Being grateful for what they have is a very difficult thing. You have to teach your kids to say thank you. You don't have to teach your kids to say no.
Ben, thank you for your time and thanks for uh going through all the questions on the very important topic today. Lions and Scavengers is the book. Thanks so much, Ben.
Thanks, Charlie.