around the world with Douglas Murray uncommon knowledge [Music] now welcome to uncommon knowledge filming today in F Italy I'm Peter Robinson educated at Eaton and modlin College Oxford Douglas Murray is a journalist based in New York his books include the best sellers the strange death of Europe and The Madness of crowds earlier this spring earlier this year I should say he spent a month in Ukraine and six months in Israel Douglas thank you for joining me pleasure to be with you six months in Israel let's begin there what surprised you most I suppose two things
stand out uh I got to Israel as soon as I could after the atrocities of the 7th October um spent the next six months there um I suppose I one thing about the terrorists and one about the victims about the terrorists I would say that although I've covered quite a lot of conflicts and seen quite a lot of human evil uh what the Hamas terrorists did on the 7th of October was a level of depravity which shocked me um how many died remind me oh it was 12200 people were murdered on the day um more
than 300 taken hostage into Gaza um when I say the level of depravity it's partly the fact that the not just the atrocities they committed I mean the kots the villages communities on the Gaza border and at the Nova party where hundreds of young people were murdered um there's something about I've seen all the atrocity videos not just a 47 minute video that I saw pretty soon after but a lot of people have shared with me other things that are unpublishable un un broadcastable and I've heard a lot of testimony from survivors and others and
I think that apart from the sheer physical violence of barbarism the rapes the shooting women in the genitals of the party the the the the beheadings the uh cutting off people's heads with Cleaver and so on I think aside from that the thing that strikes me struck me is that they were proud of what they were doing now that that is something that that an awful lot of people have done an awful lot of evil things I've very rarely seen one so proud of their evil as they're carrying it out the terrorists of the 7th
broadcast GoPro videoed a lot of what they did and they were high on evil I mean some people have heard the tape probably of the young man young terrorist who calls his parents in Gaza and says father father I've killed 10 Jews with my own hands get mother on the phone I think it's hard to think of many cases in history where people actually not just carried out atrocities like that but Absol jubilant about them two boys whose father was killed in front of them in their safe room and they one of the boys lost
his ear and the other an eye and they were staggering around the room and the terrorist who just killed their father comes in and takes food out of their fridge and one of the boys says to the terrorists that's my mother's food and the terrorist said where's your mother I want her too um so a level of evil which is something that has to be thought about and of course dealt with I suppose the second thing I'd say is the remarkable response of the Israeli public um Israel isn't like Britain or America it's its threats
are awfully close maybe always always were but the the the the the First Responders the people caught up in it in the day were not just victims but a lot of them were extraordinary Heroes I'm thinking of people who dropped everything drove South picked up some guns and fought for the next 48 hours friend of mine who left a farewell message to his wife and his two children on the way South CU he was sure he wouldn't survive and he saved a lot of lives um people of all ages and indeed all backgrounds a Muslim
doctor I've spoken to who was personally held as a human shield by Hamas personally held as a human shield and who saved lives uh I think of the Drews men I spoke with who were at the party serving food and who managed because they could understand the Arabic they could overhear exactly what was happening they're remarkable men and the country is filled in my view with remarkable people um so those are the two things that stand out most I've been in Gaza fair amount and seen the response of the IDF and the attempt to get
back the hostages and to capture or kill all the heads of Hamas and uh I've watched the world lose sympathy with Israel but they lost sympathy from about day one all right I want to come back to that you've answered the question about the moral calculus over and over and over again but I must ask the question because it is a mandatory question MH if the Israelis lost 1,200 what is the number at which they really may not pursue the war any further it feels in the response to Israel the dis let's put it this
way the international response with the ICC the international criminal court naming charges against benig counts and the Prime Minister Netanyahu for atrocities I don't know what the numbers actually are because the Press oddly enough unreflectively unchallenging seems to be giving us um Hamas wered numbers for the but it's it's thousands of mhm people who've been killed in Gaza who are civilians rather than Hamas all right just state it one more time the moral calculus well the first thing is I refute the idea that uh war that is started by an enemy like Hamas can only
be responded to to a certain level of casualties all right I refute the idea I don't think it's something which Britain or America has been expected to abide by in our past I don't think it's something we've been expected to abide by in our present not many years ago when we helped to flatten most of mosul in order to get Islamic State out of mosul the French British and American forces involved did not worry about the number of casualties and nobody counted the casualties right we do not know to this day how many people were
killed in mosul or in Northern Iraq to and the borders of Syria to get Isis we simply wanted to get them because they' carried out the batter Clan Massacre and much more only Israel seems to be expected to to act by this strange standard of what's often called proportionality I like to think I shot down that idea at the beginning of the war when a journalist asked me about that before Israel had even done anything and I said you know if you believe in this idea of proportionality it means that the IDF should be allowed
to go into Gaza and kill precisely the number of children that Hamas killed and rape precisely the number of women that Hamas raped and so on would that be acceptable no would the Israelis abide by such a grotesque idea of course not what then is the acceptable calculus as you say most of the international media have been relying on Hamas figures there's a reason for that by the way which is that no Western media are in Gaza R we'll come to that as well they're not in there they they lie to their viewers they FIB
they cover up for their own journalistic failings it's not even a failing I don't blame a lot so let's come to that right now why is the reporting so it runs from thin to biased to non-existent I think back to the Iraq War the when when we went into Iraq John Burns the great journalist wrote From The New York Times he was on the ground he was writing it was military reporting you understood any reader of the times understood the objectives understood the progress week by week by week no such journalism exists why well there
there's only two ways to be in Gaza one is to be embedded with the IDF as I've been and the other is to have the permission of Hamas Hamas are not very good hosts and uh they're untrustworthy hosts and so most of the western media rely on journalists who are gazans all of whom are operating under Hamas restrictions at best and most of whom are going to be Hamas supporters and Hamas as a result has got out its figures it came out with this figure of 30,000 people some months ago and then they said that
uh this was a number of casualties they produced no evidence for it and the world just repeated this figure that figure by the way has been hared has it yeah in the last few weeks more more official figures better figures have come out from a range of sources we say that the 30,000 figure was never true but anyway what if you follow the idf's figures on the number of Hamas terrorists that they've killed inside Gaza and the number of innocent civilians killed if you take even the Hamas figures you're dealing with roughly and this is
a horrible calculus but this This Is War you're dealing with roughly one terrorist killed to one civilian uh America in the field in Afghanistan managed something like one terrorist to three or four civilians we don't really know in fuia how did we do not as well as the Israelis so so that bears that bears lingering on for a second but the second thing is that the reporting as I've seen too many times now the reporting is so ignorant because people repeat what hamaz has said within seconds uh at the near the beginning of the conflict
there's a place called The shifa it's sometimes called the shifa hospital it should be better known as the shifa hamad's command headquarters it's a place we know from video footage ccdv they took some of the hostages on the 7th and they didn't take them to the shifa hospital to treat them um the shifa had a rocket land in its car park some months ago and hamaz immediately announced that it was an Israeli rocket that had hit the hospital and killed five 00 people note by the way that the Israelis have taken it took months to
work out the exact number of figures from the 7th of October who' been killed in Israel because it's extremely hard I've been to the morgs I've seen the bodies I've seen the CH remains it takes a long time to work out who's who's dead in a burned out house MH magically hamz can do it like that and can come up with a round figure oh but after the world has said that the Israelis fired a rocket at a hospital and killed 00 people after some time sure as anything we discover the rocket was an Islamic
Jihad rocket fired from inside Gaza which landed in the car park of the shifa compound and may have killed some people not 500 this is the day in day out reality of reporting on that conflict just before we're sitting here the Israeli uh Defense Forces are in Rafa operating in unbelievably complicated situations very very intense fighting uh to get the last remaining hostages out and to find senoir the architect of the 7th who's almost certainly hiding in the tunnels under Rafa uh just before we're sitting here there's an outrage around the world claiming that the
Israelis have been indiscriminately bombing a tent encampment of Palestinians now already after that lie has gone around the world we discover what happened was that just yesterday or the day before Hamas fired Rockets from between the tents in one of the civilian areas and they fired them at Tel Aviv now the Israelis located the launch pads and they fired and it seems that what happened was ammunition of hamas's arms exploded as a secondary explosion now whose fault is that all of these deaths are in my mind very clearly the fault of Hamas there is a
cost to starting a war and there is no law of war that I know of that says you're allowed to start a war Massacre civilians in their homes and then when you start to lose the war you started say this is unfair we would accept this un under no other situation in no other circumstances but it's the Jews so it's different so from what you saw in Israel to American campuses to American we had a congressional hearing with the president of Harvard the president of Penn the president of MIT and all three of them refus
to say in any simple straightforward forthright way all moral codes prohibit advocating genocide exactly all right we have that we have Pro Palestine from The River To The Sea as the chant uh demonstrations and encampments on one Elite campus after another what on Earth is going on um let me do this in briefest way I can the people who are currently at encampments in support of Hamas which is what it is I've seen those things I've heard what they say they for Hamas even I with my often jaded glance at the disintegration of thought in
the west was slightly surprised at the speed with which adults on American campuses were able to rush straight into the arms of Hamas but fine there they are I would put out this question I I suspect you'd agree with me Peter that the women in particular protesting there on these campuses probably a few years ago were holding up signs that said believe all women do you remember believe all women I remember that wow believe all women turned turns out to have a border turns out to have a cordon around it it turns out to have
an exception it has a subclause the sub Claus is except Jewish women some of those students 10 years ago maybe when was it 2014 the chabok school girls was stolen from northern Nigeria where I've also been and Hollywood celebrities students Michelle Obama bring back our girls # Bring Back Our Girls Tell me where the demonstration has been anywhere in America from the campuses to Hollywood bring back our Jewish children there's a reason there is no such hashtag there's a reason why there is no such campaign Jews don't count not in the eyes of these perverted
Minds on American campuses now they don't know that they're bigots and they may not know that they're racists but we've been here before many times a lot of people don't mean to be evil they don't mean to support evil but they support evil and that's what the students at columia and endless numbers of other universities Across America have been doing all right so it looks to me this is a very rough cut I'm just telling you I'm speaking now just to somebody who reads the newspapers and looks at the news presidents of universities and Boards
of Trustees have figured out how to resp or figured out at least that they must respond so now encampments are being rolled up or they're being very tightly limited uh we have univ oh here's here's an example we have at the University of Texas there was some sort of protest the president of the University of Texas Let It Go on very briefly they were in violation of University rules he called in the police and had it ended with what result that more than 700 members of The Faculty of the University of Texas signed a statement
protesting this brutal treatment of students Dartmouth College where there's a new president I follow that situation closely because I went to Dartmouth the new president gets a protest on the Green in Hanover the protesters are in violation of college rules the president has the police come in and take the protesters away the president receives a vote of censure from The Faculty of Dartmouth College the first time any president in the more than two Century history of Dartmouth College has ever been censured so what I'm saying is it feels as though the kids will get sorted
out sooner or later by reality the job market their parents presidents and Boards understand the need to respond on but you've got embedded faculties large proportions of whom are simp well of course and because of tenure they're just there to stay but what I don't understand is what is the intellectual transmission belt here how do you go from the the senior members of faculties on the great universities today are people who trained in the 60s how do you go from anti- Vietnam War to pramas what is the what what is the intellectual progression that gets
you from there to there I mean there's an nether there's an intellectual explanation there's just also an obvious moral one the intellectual one is that a lot of these people think their job is to educate students into becoming radicals I see all right now a lot of American I mean I would like clearing out of American Academia to such an extent that the job market would be unavailable to them in future a lot of these people have nothing to ask they've never had anything to add they teach grievance studies and I always hoped like a
lot of people of my inclination that these people would discover the graduates would discover that there was no there were no jobs for them after learning how to be bitter and stupid at the cost of about 60,000 bucks a year but the uh The Faculty encouraged them the idea that first of all their opinions matter and secondly that they're informed I will say this as strongly as I can these students are narcissists of the worst kind because they're not just narcissists but they're ignoramus narcissists who thinks that the Israeli War cabinet after a massacre of
its people should alter its War policy because of a bunch of ignoramuses in Colombia who've never seen a war and never lost someone in a war why would any government alter its War plan and get its generals to stop its War to get its hostages back because of some students at Berkeley it's Preposterous what do they think they're doing who do they think is listening to them why do they think they're important do they know how to clear house to house in Rafa do they have any idea how to get the remaining hostages back without
any civilian casualties are they able to clear large areas of ground with a tunnel Network wider than the London Underground do they know how to find tunnel shafts do they know how to discern the difference between a tunnel shaft which is booby trapped and one which is not none of these things they' thought of none of them so that's the narcissism thing and the ignorance thing but the evil thing the evil thing is that instead of of being some banal peace niic saying something like why can't they just have peace right brilliant inside brilliant no
Israeli ever thought of that um instead of that they actually run all the way to supporting evil but we've seen this before Peter we saw this in the 60s we saw it in the 70s there were there were previous generations of people in Germany across Europe and in America who had one idea of what not to be don't be a Nazi yes right that was their one political philosophy after 1945 and it's it's not a bad place to start not a bad place to start don't be a Nazi these people even now call themselves quite
often anti-nazis anti-fascists well in the 70s and the 60s a lot of the people who orientated themselves that way and that way alone found themselves for instance supporting the PLO the pla the pflp even when they were hijacking planes and some of the people very interesting book about this by Paul bman some of the people involved in that whose one orientation have been don't let's be Nazis don't let's do what our parents did in Germany ended up separating Jews from non-jews on hijacked planes so when these students today at American campuses who believe they're anti-fascist
they believe they're anti-racist this is their one idea and they behave as if it's an extraordinary idea here and available only to them when they decide that in order to be anti-nazi and anti- oppressor and anti-white colonialist and much more end up supporting or covering for or trying to ignore the rape and Massacre of Jews they're the Nazis they're the Nazis Europe Ukraine again I'm just going to give you a Layman's reaction from from California as far away from Ukraine as can be you were there um very hard to see how to get Russia out
of the roughly one sixth to one5 of the country that Russia has taken yeah and every day the war continues even with American armaments yeah more and more of Ukraine gets smashed mhm they're able to do a little bit of damage to Russians here and there they send in a drone they attack a ship I think they've bottled up the Russian Black Sea Fleet that's fine but Russia continues to live more or less as it was before the war whereas Ukraine city by city by City the Russian population I confess that I don't understand the
Russian chain of command how they can squander so many men it wouldn't be the first time in Russian history the people in power haven't cared how many of their own citizens killed true that is true but it look Russian way right so but even at that even at squandering they still have that much larger a population they can afford to get ground down at a faster rate than the ukrainians because they can replace their numbers it's the same plan as Stalin had yeah all of that all of that grind down the ukrainians all of that
shouldn't Ukraine simply cut the best deal it can right now it worked out all right over time to be South Korea you take the bit of the country that you can you integrate entirely into the West you establish free markets you permit foreign investment and 10 20 30 years later you become a a model to the world well isn't some option like that available to Ukraine and oughtn't they to take it I mean it's not for me to advise them I I I keep out of giving advice like that um well cuz they' they've got
of course more skin in the game than I do that's true but now you're talking to and and this is they have far more skin in the game than I do but they rely on American Aid which is another question we can come to which is why Europe hasn't stepped up more but they rely on American Aid so America has some role to play here all right but but what is your judgment what is your answer that that find it I find it difficult I find let me say it but this I find it painful
because I was with the Ukrainian Army when they retook MC and Kon from the Russians and the morale was soaring the morale was soaring they surprised the world I I really did think then if they can keep pushing like this they might get to Maria pole and so on the spring offensive last year did not it just didn't work didn't work and uh there's a lot of solar military responsibility and much more I would have think at this point and I don't want to sort of betray my Ukrainian friends who you know many of whom
just say you know it's not going to stop until we get everything back nevertheless I pretty much agree with you that at some point there will have to be a negotiation because the counter offensive has just not been successful enough and the moment the uh Russian forces are still laying Siege in a very very brutal way to khah and uh the uh energy seems to be on their side um the the the point you make I would agree with but there's a there's a provisor which is the thing that the ukrainians understand better than either
of us which is uh it's not clear that any settlement that was made and any new carve up that was agreed to would be agreed to for very long right because we don't know with 100% certainty how much land Vladimir Putin wants to take he has said he wants all of Ukraine and he's made an awful lot of running to try to get it killed a lot of young and old ukrainians a lot of young Russians but we don't don't really know in my view with enough certainty how hungry he is for the rest of
the region I've been to mova the movans seem to be very agitated I was in the Baltic states last year they're very worried now my impression is probably like yours surely Vladimir Putin wouldn't break into NATO countries I don't know I was in Georgia some years ago and of course he was happy to invade Georgia in 2008 so when people say things like well this is you know there are some people particularly on the right in America who say things like well he's he doesn't do this sort of thing I've seen him do it before
yes yes uh so yeah he does do this kind of thing but but the question of it would West and East Ukraine remain like I don't know West and East Germany or North and South Korea or or would he settle there and then move on and then move on he wouldn't move on if there were an American guarantee or if the Europeans pulled themselves together and provided a guarantee if Germany showed I'm putting this in the form of a question I'm saying something that you may find completely outrageous so respond yes of course shy yes
exactly exactly but if the Germans pulled themselves together to demonstrate half the seriousness that the polls have demonstrated half the seriousness small country yeah half the seriousness that the estonians have demonstrated that the fins have demonstrated the swedes that the swedes of all people yeah that the swedes have demonstrated then it that if Europe stood up for Ukraine and said that's it Vladimir that's it he would have no choice or at least we'd have okay so the question then is why hasn't this happened Olaf Schultz Putin invades Ukraine Olaf Schultz the new chancellor of Germany
gives remarkable speeches that shock all of us in the thrill all of us in the United States the we're going to get serious there's an emergency addition to the defense budget we're going to increase it and of course nothing happens I am some years ago I was at a conference in Berlin it was a sort trilateral one I I think it's it's long enough in the past that I can tell this story right it was an off record your secret is safe with me exactly uh it was an off record thing but there was a
German Minister who gave rather encouraging speech in which he said and of course none of this hear this sort of rhetoric without a certain amount of chill in our spine but nevertheless he said Europe and Germany will have to at some point realize you know we have enemies and we have to at some point be able to get to the stage where we not only are willing to die for our way of life but to kill for it and I went up to this Minister afterwards and I said I wondered if uh deay I could
quote you on that without attribution obviously but I I just he's absolutely not absolutely not Terror in his eyes and I said uh let me get this right there are values you're wish willing to kill for to die for but only off the Record um look you know a Ukrainian told me when I was there that that that they use the same number of bullets every day as France makes in a year um there is a global problem well a western problem of arms supplies this is a Case for Israel it's a case for Ukraine
they fire both conflict they are firing with extreme precision and care not just because they certainly in the case of Israel particularly want to minimize civilian casualties but because they don't have they don't have back that much skit so the reason I mentioned this is because every country apart from America but even America look at Russia Russia is on war footing like it was in the 40s it has turned around its its economy onto a wartime economy footing which means it can it can uh do what it wants for as long as it wants America
to be an ally of America today is a is not that easy a thing and the Europeans I'm afraid that we in Europe are to an extent like the kids in berley we can no longer fathom the idea of War we can't believe it oh so okay again here's your American cousin this is the way it looks to me Europe has two problems one of them is Vladimir Putin polls good look the poles the baltics amazingly enough the swedes but Germany can't move without I beg your pardon Europe can't move without Germany and France and
all right so that's one problem the second problem is the one you wrote about in the strange death of Europe which has not abadh Europe is depopulating very rapidly every country in Europe every single nation in Europe is well below replacement birth rate and at the same time the Muslim population Rises and Rises and illegal migration Rises Rises and The Society changes all the time correct the statistic I read the other day that just shocked me is that by 2050 the population of Africa some hard to know how much of this is a Muslim population
but probably 60% of the gain is projected to rise by 1 billion people there are going to be many empty villages in Italy and France that look very attractive to poor people from subsaharan well from any anywhere in Africa are there not this is predictable it's in the Press Vladimir Putin is there we have we have to make some decisions about how to protect our culture is it worth protecting how do we handle immigrants what are the correct and I just don't see none of them are serious people none of them are serious so so
here I had I had a to me a shocking conversation with an i I will then shut up because this is for you to speak and not me but this one just startled me and I'm wondering if it was a representative conversation I had a conversation with an Irish friend and I said what I put all this to him what about immigration and the reply was well well Eland deloose wasn't so bad when the in the Muslim Kingdom of Granada when they ruled the southern third of Spain the Christians lived in peace the Jews were
permitted to live there and the Muslims ran a rather tolerant society and maybe that option will be open to us so has Elite European opinion already in effect surrendered to its own all right so what's going on what is going on well you you can tell your Irish friend the following message from me if he doesn't mind it so far tell him to focus on some of the negatives let me give one negative the Muslim migrant to Ireland who last year tortured and beheaded three gay men in Ireland Ireland has often the republic or in
the republic Ireland has uh had a fair share of violence in its time if it wants to import more it should tell the public that's the aim and your friend might say well on the one hand you get a bit of Al andalo I mean good luck with that dream and by the way it wasn't a good dream anyway and and was not great for Christians and Jews we were second class citizens yes um but okay if you're happy to live as a second class citizen in your own country do just explain to the public
that every now and then one of them will be beheaded okay deal is he going to be happy with that maybe if he is happy with it he should say it he should stand up and be a man and say it he should say we get such great things some diversity we get more beheading than we used to have in Ireland but you know swings and round about chaps um Britain I'm leaving I'm I'm treating Britain separately from Europe which should please you in the first place because after brexit it is at least formally separate
from Europe 14 years of a Tor government there's going to be an election this summer the present prime minister Rishi sunak who is the how many uh David Cameron b one two three the fifth Tor in fifth Tory prime minister in these 14 years has called an election I put it to you my Tory friend careful SMY conservative do not stick me with the grotesque thing that is the Tory party oh is it that or a that the Tories won two historic victories they got brexit through and then they returned they went to the country
and returned with a majority of what was it 88 yeah 80 Johson man 19 yeah and after for and they had not the slightest idea what to do with either one and after 14 years even every Tory I know it can't be every Tory full stop but every Tory I know is sick of the Tory government and willing to take a chance on labor which is whatever else it is it is going to be cooler toward free enterprise we can't expect great Leaps and Bounds in the British economy we can't expect Britain to ascend to
new heights in its role in the world the United Kingdom is about to go into a deep freeze were they any is this Fair it's it's it's generous um the labor party is led by uh k starma a man whose idea of leadership is to say he's a leader his deputy and remind me never to cross you his Deputy Angelo R is a person of zero distinction uh his Shadow cabinet includes people like David Lamy the shadow foreign secretary at the moment might be foreign secretary some years ago on a chat on a quiz show
David Lamy was asked who I think I've got this right which monarch he was asked which monarch succeeded Henry the 4th and he said Henry the third so he has a problem even understanding which direction history goes in and uh in an interview on the radio last year he said that he understood that it was possible for a man to become a woman because you a man could with the Right medical help grow a cervix so we are not dealing with the reins of Britain here and in fact there's nobody of Distinction that I can
see in the shadow cabinet that's about to become the cabinet every country in Europe and maybe America is moving to the right and particularly in Europe inevitable with the immigration the one exception is Britain and the one exception is Britain because for 14 years the conservative party has made a great HX of government uh the contempt the loathing that many people who ought to have the conservatives or sorry who who ought to be supporting the conservatives actually have the conservatives is is not possible to exaggerate um you know they wasted their time I said I
said in an article in The Spectator recently that Boris Johnson reminded me of Dr Fus in Christopher Marlo's version because Dr Fus if you remember after selling his sold to mephistophiles wastes his time he pinches the nose of the Pope and plays practical jokes on Japes and then your time is up and you he sells his soul to the devil for nothing for nothing for nothing why did Rishi sunak climb the greasy pole of politics stab Boris Johnson just as Boris Johnson stabed other people and Theresa M stab people and Liz TR stab people and
David Cameron and everyone else why did Rishi sunak climb through politics become Prime Minister in order as far as I can see his Flagship policy is to ban vaping I like to think that a country could have more ambition than that all right Douglas the United States of America it was a dozen or 15 years ago that Mark Stein wrote a book entitled America of alone and I confess although the book was brilliantly written and quite tightly argued I thought and and and and Mark we did an interview on the show about the book and
but I thought oh this is a little bit you're being a provoc a provocator here but that's what it comes down to I you tell me if I'm right or wrong well but we have China we have Putin we have who knows knows where this is going to go in the Middle East the ultimate problem is not in Rafa the ultimate problem is in ton yes Europe is in disarray not all of Europe and not probably permanently you just said yourself the Electoral situation has to change the continent is moving to the right G Builders
is the most popular politician in the Netherlands all right there you have it the polls are we've already been through this the polls the ball there there are impressive governments but Germany France Spain all right so what do we make of the present state of American politics well I think a lot of what you've just described in the world is I'm sorry to say this but is the absence of American leadership not a total absence it has to be said um I'm not the greatest fan of Joe Biden but Joe Biden has armed his allies
and has occas made strong noises on the world stage however I think it's without doubt that neither Vladimir Putin nor the mullers in tan fear Joe Biden not really before Joe Biden came to office Donald Trump had almost completely bankrupted the Iranians and Joe Biden has brought them back in they've been flushed with cash sometimes literally literally with the cash and uh that's why they can afford to play with their proxies like Hamas and things like the 7th of October can Happ happen funded armed trained by Iran why is Southern Lebanon got 15 150,000 Iranian
Rockets pointed at Israel because after the 2006 conflict which I was there for then as well uh the res the UN Security Council passed a resolution 1701 which said that the area in the south of Lebanon that Hezbollah were in they must Retreat from and take their Rockets with them and for the whole 18 years since the Rockets have just come back they've just built up the rocket Supply and it's deadly I've seen many of these Rockets being shot over Israel in recent months I've been up to the northern border a lot there's a lot
of activity and it's a powder Kake as one uh Israeli said to me uh Israel and Hezbollah are on a tandem bicycle going downhill and the question isn't when isn't whether we crash but when now this would not have happened if America in particular had put its foot down with Iran and are you telling me that what we Americans are raised with begin well what we used to be raised with what my generation was raised with which is that the world needs a strong America you're telling me it's true it's true it's lethal without and
I mean even you know the isolationist Republicans in America I have great criticisms of yes but it does interest me that they both want nothing to do with the world and yet to be the dominant power in the world even the sort of Republican that is the position I'd like myself I don't think it's available not available it's not available um you you can't do it other people step in okay look at look look at the fact in the last four years Russia Iran and China have stepped in everywhere and I'm not just talking militarily
look at look at the way that Africa is being brought up look at the way in which mineral resources are brought up across Africa are the Americans on top of that are the Europeans anything like the stent Chinese are no we're not on top of any of this and and this goes back to a central thing which is do the students on American campuses realize that whilst they are being expensively educated into idiocy and uselessness for each of them there's a dozen students in China working their socks off to get a lifestyle that these kids
in America seem to think is their Birthright it ain't their Birthright it's not inevitable they only have these rights because better men than them fought for them and if this generation of Americans want to sit out the world they can ask the people of Israel what happens what it's like when reality comes and hits you as OD as anything all right let me ask you one last question about about the United States and uh but give me a moment to set it up we the United States used to have armed forces it used to be
American Military doctrine that we ought to be able to fight in two major theaters at once Jim Mattis secretary of state Secretary of Defense in the first couple of years of the the Trump Administration recognized that we just didn't have the forces to do that anymore so it's now Doctrine one major theater one Minor Theater that's where we are now theater one Ukraine and the North Atlantic theater two Israel Gaza Lebanon and the Eastern Mediterranean theater 3 China Taiwan and the Pacific all of this could go bad very fast that's item one here's item two
I don't I'm going to try to be nonpartisan here but correct me if I move in one we have oddly enough two incumbents in some strange way running President Biden in his 80s let us put it as charitably as possible he's not quite as quick Off the Mark as he was some years ago yeah it's sad your word and then we have Donald Trump who's been indicted in one jurisdiction after another who is himself 77 years old and who seems erratic unpredictable all right but these seem to be the well if you could if you
want to toss in Robert Kennedy Jr so there is this strange I feel there's a kind of free floating anxiety in the United States this is a really dangerous moment yeah and these are the choices well wait let's exactly let's let's withdraw from the world and get just get rich oh there all kinds of strange let's let's find some third party C so what would your word be as we enter the presidential this is Springtime it'll be summer the election is in the autum uh what would what advice would you give to American voters how
should they weigh the reality as you see it and make their decision yeah I don't like I don't like inviting people in countries I don't have a vote in about how to vote well there are some of us who hope that's only a matter of time before you apply for your you apply for your citizenship but go ahead I take the point um but but there's one thing I just mentioned beforehand that you're you're completely right about these the idea that there could be three theaters of operation in the coming years that that is when
American dominance is completely tested and America has to decide whether or not it's serious and there are a lot of people in America who are not serious left and right Republicans and Democrats but there's one other thing that has to be said about that which is a lot of the the energy on the right now is taken up by people saying why can't we even secure the southern border and why don't we do that before looking after other countries borders and I actually think although it's a cheap rhetorical trick nevertheless there's something in it there's
something in it and I sometimes refute them by saying well do you honestly think that if America weren't supporting our allies in Ukraine and Israel the money would be going to a southern border I think not it's not a lack of resources it's a lack of will but that thing of the Southern border by the way is the extension of what I wrote about in the strange death of Europe which is of course not just about Europe but also about the whole the developed World which is the great challenge of this of this Century will
be precisely what you referred to earlier which is billions of people who do not have our lifestyle they do not have our advantages they come from countries which have very badly run horribly run corrupt impoverished violent and much more not all of them but that's pretty much the norm in the developing world and they would like to live in our countries can we say no now Europeans are not very good at saying no in the last 14 years the conservative party came to power in 2010 with a promise from David Cameron that he would bring
the hundreds of thousands of migrants a year net coming into the UK down to the tens of thousands which shouldn't be impossible it was where we were in the 1990s and and you are an island after all an island it's not as if we don't have some natural advantages yes um and uh the immigration figures for last year on in the last year of a Tor government were almost a million 14 years later 14 14 years later they were off by scales and you know it's the same in America and people don't a lot of
people outside America don't understand this but I understand it inside America as I know you do and I think a lot of Americans do the people coming across the southern border flooding across the Sou border millions of people coming to America illegally is responded to with the same inevitability yes as Europe has done and it'll lead to the same things it's it's completely divorced from reality it's it's and it's so it's not just weak what the politicians are letting happen to our societies it's positively treacherous because what they're doing is setting up an Ever more
unstable Society for their successors and some of the Democrats have said to me well you know the people coming from Central and South America are very like us they're Christian you want to see the footage of who's coming across the southern border now as watching the other day and I was going through one of the photos I everybody here seems to be a subsaharan African well the whole world is what it's it's cheaper to get into America from subsaharan Africa today illegally than it is to get illegally into Europe if you take a flight to
Mexico from Africa that's maybe a thousand bucks maybe you spend 5,000 bucks to a cartel to get you over border that's a bargain and you're in America and America seems to be weaker than than Europe even now on the illegal migration so it's cheaper it might be 10,000 to go to Europe so um is is America to to steal Chris Caldwell's title is is America going to be the same with different people in it um you all you all just hope yes and the problem about that it's like the old uh the old fallacy of
the turkey you know the turkey is um had a good life and enjoys itself in the field wanders around one day after the next seems Charming people come and feed the turkey and the turkey has a good life and then one day it's Thanksgiving yes and um so when when people say to me and I've got to hear these incredibly self-satisfied people all the time when they say things like it's inevitable or it's it's just going to be the same as what it was Douglas what you're saying is alarmist like what Mark Stein has said
was alarmist it's just all going to be the same one day it's Thanksgiving all right last question the last time we recorded a program just the two of us we were talking about the strange death of Europe and I closed with a question and I'm going to repeat the same question because here we are some years later things have changed generally for the worse but let me ask you the same question in 2024 given the state of the world we haven't even talked about the disruptions of artificial intelligence that are going to be barreling at
us how does one lead a good life I think I answered that before In This Very Room by saying by Leading what was regarded as being a good life until yesterday and I would repeat that I'd add something to it I've changed a bit in the last six months and some of my viewers and readers have noticed it and I've changed because of what I've seen in Israel and the response and specifically the response of young Israelis who have you know there was a there was a sort of view among older Israelis that the Young
Generation was a bit weaker soft it's soft but you know the years of Peace had done what years of Peace always do and uh you know oh they want to just party in Tel Aviv they want to go out to the clubs they want to be on Instagram and Tik Tok and that sort of thing and you know when the moment of test and trial came for their generation as it did on the 7th they stepped up they'd be magnificent magnificent i' I've seen them up close I've seen them in the field I I see
people who've just lost you know the comrades and they go straight from the battlefield to a funeral and straight back to the battlefield these are remarkable young men and women now they understand something which is very important and I said this a few weeks ago at a speech to the Manhattan Institute but life life isn't just given to you life is something you have to fight for you have to fight for the right to be at the club in Tel Aviv or somebody else has to fight for you if you want to leave live a
good life either you fight for it or you expect somebody else to I believe very strongly today that people in America Europe Britain the rest of the West are going to have to get serious ious very fast because something is going to happen I don't know what but something is going to happen in my lifetime that is going to bring the kind of reality that the people of Israel saw on the 7th to the people of America to the people of Europe to the people of Britain and we should prepare for that and we should
prepare a generation for that and we should encourage them not they've got a break out of the thing they're in these nuses the narcissists the naval gazers we've got to tell them that the age of grievance is over the age of grievance will be over with an age of heroism and courage and we should encourage that from everybody and if these other people who want to hold us all back and want to make us talk about things that are so benile and boring like gender woo woo and I'm feeling non-binary no don't have time for
you get out the way life's too serious get ready Douglas Murray thank you thank you for uncommon knowledge the Hoover institution and Fox Nation shooting today from fle Italy I'm Peter Robinson [Music]
