Author and columnist Douglas Murray has spent much of the past few years reporting from battlefields in Ukraine and Gaza. His reporting on the harrowing conditions in those wartorn locations make his journalism a must-read. In this wide-ranging conversation, Murray describes what he has witnessed, why the West must ensure victories in both wars, and his reaction to the campus protests across the United States, as well as his views on the upcoming British elections.
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Around the World with Douglas Murray.
Uncommon Knowledge, now.
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
Filming today in Fiesole, Italy.
I'm Peter Robinson.
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Educated at Eton and MaldonCollege, Oxford, Douglas Murray
is a journalist based in New York.
His books include the bestsellers,The Strange Death of Europe
and The Madness of Crowds.
Earlier this spring, earlier thisyear I should say, he spent a month
in Ukraine and six months in Israel.
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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.
I got to Israel as soon as I could afterthe atrocities of the 7th of October.
spent the next six months there.
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I suppose I One thing about theterrorists and one about the victims.
About the terrorists, I would saythat although I've covered quite a
lot of conflicts and seen quite alot of human evil, I What the Hamas
terrorists did on the 7th of October wasa level of depravity which shocked me.
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How many died?
Remind me.
Oh, it was 1, 200 peoplewere murdered on the day.
more than 300 taken hostage into Gaza.
when I say the level of depravity,it's partly the fact that the, not
just the atrocities they committed.
the kibbutz, the villages, thecommunities on the Gaza border and
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at the Nova party where hundredsof young people were murdered.
there's something about, I'veseen all the atrocity videos,
not just the 47 minute videos.
I saw.
Pretty soon after.
But a lot of people have sharedwith me other things that are
unpublishable and unbroadcastable.
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And I've heard a lot of testimonyfrom survivors and others.
And I think that apart from the sheerphysical violence of barbarism, the
rapes, the shooting women in the genitalsof the party, the beheadings, the,
cutting off people's heads with them.
Cleaver and so on.
I think, aside from that, the thingthat strikes me, struck me, is that
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they were proud of what they were doing.
Now that is something that, thatan awful lot of people have done
an awful lot of evil things.
I've very rarely seen one so proud oftheir evil as they're carrying it out.
The Terrorists of the Seventh broadcast,Go Pro videoed, a lot of what they did.
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And they were high on evil.
some people have heard the tape,probably, of the young man, the young
terrorist, who calls his parents inGaza and says, Father, father, I've
killed ten Jews with my own hands.
Get mother on the phone.
I think it's hard to think of many casesin history where people actually not
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just carried out atrocities like that,but were absolutely jubilant about them.
There were two boys whose fatherwas killed in front of them.
In their safe room and they, one of theboys lost his ear and the other an eye
and they were staggering around the room.
And the terrorist who just killed theirfather comes in and takes food out of
their fridge and one of the boys says tothe terrorist, That's my mother's food.
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And the terrorist said,Where's your mother?
I want her too.
so a level of evil, which issomething that has to be thought
about and of course dealt with.
I suppose the second thing I'd say is theremarkable response of the Israeli public.
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Israel isn't like Britain or America.
it's threats are awfully close.
Maybe always were, but the firstresponders, The people caught up in it
in the day were not just victims, but alot of them were extraordinary heroes.
I'm thinking of people who droppedeverything, drove south, picked up some
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guns and fought for the next 48 hours.
A friend of mine who left a farewellmessage to his wife and his two
children on the way south, becauseHe was sure he wouldn't survive,
and he saved a lot of lives.
people of all ages, andindeed all backgrounds.
The Muslim doctor I've spokento who was personally held
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as a human shield by Hamas.
Personally held as a humanshield, and who saved lives.
I think of the Druze men I spokewith who were at the parties
serving food and who managed becausethey could understand the Arabic.
They could overhearexactly what was happening.
They're remarkable men.
And the country is filled inmy view with remarkable people.
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so those are the twothings that stand out most.
I've been in Gaza a fair amount andseen the response of the IDF in the
attempt to get back the hostages and tocapture or kill all the heads of Hamas.
And, I've watched the world losesympathy with Israel, but they
lost sympathy from about day one.
I want to come back to that.
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You've answered the question aboutthe moral calculus over and over
again, but I must ask the questionbecause it is a mandatory question.
If the Israelis lost 1, 200, whatis the number at which they really
may not pursue the war any further?
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It feels, in the response to Israel,that this is, Let's put it this way,
the international response with the ICC,the International Criminal Court, naming
charges against Benny Gantz and thePrime Minister Netanyahu for atrocities.
I don't know what the numbers actuallyare because the press, oddly enough,
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unreflectively, unchallengingly seemsto be giving us Hamas laundered numbers
for the number, but it's thousandsof people who've been killed in Gaza
who are civilians rather than Hamas.
All right, just state it onemore time, the moral calculus.
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the first thing is I refutethe idea that a war that is
started by an enemy like Hamas.
Can only be responded to acertain level of casualty.
I refute the idea.
I don't think it's somethingwhich Britain or America has been
expected to abide by in our past.
I don't think it's something we've beenexpected to abide by in our present.
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Not many years ago, when we helpedto flatten most of Mosul, in order
to get Islamic State out of Mosul.
The French, British and Americanforces involved did not worry
about the number of casualtiesand nobody counted the casualties.
We do not know to this day how many peoplewere killed in Mosul and northern Iraq
and the borders of Syria to get ISIS.
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We simply wanted to get thembecause they'd carried out the
Bataclan Massacre and much more.
Only Israel seems to be expected toact by this strange standard of What's
often called proportionality, I liketo think I shot down that idea at the
beginning of the war when a journalistasked me about that before Israel had
even done anything, and I said, if youbelieve in this idea of proportionality,
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it means that the IDF should be allowedto go into Gaza and kill precisely
the number of children that Hamaskilled, and rape precisely the number
of women that Hamas raped, and so on.
Would that be acceptable?
No.
Would the Israelis abideby such a grotesque idea?
Of course not.
What then is the acceptable calculus?
As you say, most of the internationalmedia have been relying on Hamas figures.
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There's a reason for that,by the way, which is that no
Western media are in Gaza.
That, Rory, we'll come to that as well.
They're not in there.
they lie to their viewers.
They fib.
They cover up for theirown journalistic failings.
It's not even a failing.
I don't blame a lot of them.
So let's come to that right now.
Why is the reporting so It runsfrom thin to biased to non existent.
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I think back to the Iraq war.
When we went into Iraq, JohnBurns, 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 understoodthe objectives, understood
the progress week by week.
No such journalism exists.
there's only two ways to be in Gaza.
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One is to be embedded withthe IDF, as I've been.
And, the other is tohave permission of Hamas.
Hamas are not very good hosts.
And, they're untrustworthy hosts.
And so most of the Western mediarely on journalists who are Gazans.
All of whom are operating under Hamasrestrictions at best, and most of
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whom are going to be Hamas supporters.
And Hamas, as a result,has got out its figures.
It came out with this figure of30, 000 people some months ago.
And then they said that, thiswas a number of casualties.
They produced no evidence for it.
And the world just repeated this figure.
That figure, by the way, has been halved.
Has it?
Yeah.
In the last few weeks, more, moreofficial figures, better figures have
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come out from a range of sources.
Which say that the 30,000 figure was never true.
But anyway.
What, if you follow the IDF's figureson the number of Hamas terrorists that
they've killed inside Gaza and thenumber of innocent civilians killed.
If you take even the Hamas figures,you're dealing with roughly, and this
is a horrible calculus, but this is war.
You're dealing with roughly oneterrorist killed to one civilian.
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America in the field, in Afghanistan,managed something like one terrorist
to three or four civilians.
We don't really know.
In Fallujah, How did we do?
Not as well as the Israelis.
So that bears, lingering on for a second,but the second thing is that the reporting
as I've seen too many times now, thereporting is so ignorant because people
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repeat what Hamas has said within seconds.
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 theShifa Hamas Command Headquarters.
It's a place we know from video footage,CCTV, they took some of the hostages
on the 7th and they didn't take themto the Shifa Hospital to treat them.
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the Shifa had a rocket land, Inits car park, some months ago.
And Hamas immediately announced thatit was an Israeli rocket that had hit
the hospital and killed 500 people.
Note, by the way, that the Israelishave taken, took months to work out the
exact number of figures from the 7thof October who'd been killed in Israel.
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Because it's extremely hard.
I've been to the morgues.
I've seen the bodies.
I've seen the charred remains.
It takes a long time to work outwho's dead in a burned out house.
Magically, Hamas can do it like that.
And can come up with a round figure.
Oh, but after the world has saidthat the Israelis fired a rocket at a
hospital and killed 500 people, aftersome time, sure as anything, we discover
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the rocket was an Islamic Jihad rocketfired 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 realityof reporting on that conflict.
Just before we're sittinghere, this The Israeli, defense
forces are in Rafa, operating inunbelievably complicated situations.
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very intense fighting.
to get the last remaining hostages outand to find Sinwar, the architect of
the Seventh, who's almost certainlyhiding in the tunnels under Rafa.
Just before we're sitting here, there'san outrage around the world claiming that
the Israelis have been indiscriminatelybombing a tent encampment of Palestinians.
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Now already, after that lie has gonearound the world, we discover what
happened was that Just yesterdayor the day before, Hamas fired
rockets from between the tents.
and it seems what happened was amunition of Hamas arms exploded
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as a secondary explosion.
now, who's fault is that?
all of these deaths are in my mindvery clearly the fault of Hamas.
There is a cost to starting a war.
And there is no law of war that I knowof that says you're allowed to start
a war and massacre civilians in theirhomes, and then, when you start to lose
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the war you started, say this is unfair.
We would accept this under no othersituation, in no other circumstances.
But it's the Jews.
So
it's different.
So from what you saw in Israel toAmerican campuses, to American, we
had a congressional hearing with thepresident of Harvard, the president
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of Penn, the president of MIT, and allthree of them refused to say in a simple,
straightforward, forthright way, allmoral codes prohibit advocating genocide.
Exactly.
All right.
We have that.
We have pro Palestine from theriver to the sea is the chant.
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Demonstrations and encampments onone elite campus after another.
Earth is going on.
let me do this in the briefest way I can.
The people who are currently atencampments in support of Hamas, which
is what it is, I've seen those things.
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I've heard what they say.
They're for Hamas.
Even I, with my often jaded glanceat the disintegration of thought in
the West, was slightly surprised.
At the speed with which adults onAmerican campuses were able to rush
straight into the arms of Hamas.
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But fine, there they are.
I would put out this question.
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.
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Wow.
Believe All Women turnsout to have a border.
Turns out to have a cordon around it.
It turns out to have an exception.
It has a subclause.
The subclause is, Accept Jewish women.
Some of those students, 10 yearsago maybe, when was it, 2014, Chibok
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schoolgirls were stolen from northernNigeria, where I've also been.
And, Hollywood celebrities, students,Michelle Obama, bring back our girls.
Hashtag bring back our girls.
Tell me where the demonstration has beenanywhere in America, from the campuses to
Hollywood, bring back our Jewish children.
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There's a reason there is no such hashtag.
There's a reason whythere is no such campaign.
Jews don't count.
Not in the eyes of these pervertedminds on American campuses, Now they
don't know that they're bigots, andthey may not know that they're racists,
but we've been here before, many times.
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A lot of people don't mean to be evil.
They don't mean to supportevil, but they support evil.
And that's what the students at Columbiaand endless numbers of other universities
across America have been doing.
All right, it looks to me, this is avery rough cut, I'm just telling you, I'm
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speaking now just as somebody who readsthe newspapers and looks at the news,
Presidents of universities andboards of trustees have figured
out how to respond, or figured outat least that they must respond.
So now, encampments are being rolledup, or they're being very tightly
limited, we have, oh, here's an example,we have the University of Texas.
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There was some sort of protest.
The president of the University ofTexas let it go on very briefly.
They were in violationof university rules.
He called in the police and had it ended.
With what result?
That more than 700 members of thefaculty of the University of Texas
signed a statement protestingthis brutal treatment of students.
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Dartmouth College, wherethere's a new president.
I follow that situation closelybecause I went to Dartmouth.
The new president gets aprotest on the green in Hanover.
The protesters are inviolation of college rules.
The president has the police comein and take the protesters away.
The president receives a vote of censurefrom the faculty of Dartmouth College, the
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first time any president in the more thantwo century history of Dartmouth College
So what I'm saying is it feels asthough the kids will get sorted
out sooner or later by reality,the job market, their parents.
Presidents and boardsunderstand the need to respond.
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But you've got embedded faculties,large proportions of whom are
simply, of course and because oftenure, they're just there to stay.
But what I don't understand is, what isthe intellectual transmission belt here?
How do you go from the, senior membersof faculties on the great universities
today are people who trained in the 60s?
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How do you go from antiVietnam War to pro Hamas?
What is the intellectual progressionthat gets you from there to there?
there's an intellectual explanation,there's just also an obvious moral one.
The intellectual one is that a lotof these people think their job is to
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educate students into becoming radicals.
I see,
alright.
Now, a lot of American, I would likeclearing out of American academia to
such an extent that the job market wouldbe unavailable to them in the future.
A lot of these people have nothing to add.
They've never had anything to add.
They teach grievance studies.
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And I always hoped, like a lot of peopleof my inclination, that these people
would discover, the graduates woulddiscover, that there was no, there
were no jobs for them after learninghow to be bitter and stupid at the
cost of about 60, 000 bucks a year.
But the, the faculty encouragedthem the idea that first of
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all, their opinions matter.
And secondly, that they're informed.
I will say this as strongly as I can.
These students are narcissistsof the worst kind because
they're not just narcissists, butthey're ignoramus narcissists.
Who thinks that the Israeli War Cabinet,after a massacre of its people, should
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alter its war policy because of a bunch ofignoramuses in Colombia who've never seen
a war and never lost someone in a war.
Why would any government alter itswar plan and get its generals to
stop its war to get its hostages backbecause of some students at Berkeley?
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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?
Do they have any idea how toget the remaining hostages back
without any civilian casualties?
Are they able to clear large areasof ground with a tunnel network
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wider than the London underground?
Do they know how to find tunnel shafts?
Do they know how to discern thedifference between a tunnel shaft which
is booby trapped and one which is not?
None of these things.
They've thought of none of them.
So that's the narcissism thing andthe ignorance thing, but the evil
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thing, Is that instead of beingsome banal peacenik saying something
like, Why can't they just have peace?
It's brilliant insight.
Brilliant.
No Israeli ever thought of that.
instead of that, they actually runall the way to supporting evil.
But we've seen this before, Peter.
We saw this in the 60s.
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We saw it in the 70s.
There were previous generations of peoplein Germany, across Europe, and in America
who had one idea of what not to be.
Don't be a Nazi.
That was their one politicalphilosophy after 1945.
And it's not a bad place to start.
Not a bad place to start.
Don't be a Nazi.
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These people even now call themselvesquite often anti Nazis, anti fascists.
in 60s, a lot of the people who orientatedthemselves that way, in that way
alone, found themselves, for instance,supporting the PLO, the PLA, the PFLP,
even when they were hijacking planes.
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And some of the people, very interestingbook about this, by Paul Berman, some
of the people involved in that, whoseone orientation had been, don't let's be
Nazis, don't let's do what our parentsdid in Germany, ended up separating
Jews from non Jews on hijacked planes.
So when these students today atAmerican campuses who believe they're
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anti fascist, they believe they'reanti racist, this is their one idea.
And they behave as if it'san extraordinary idea and
available only to them.
When they decide that in order tobe anti Nazi and anti oppressor
and anti white colonialist and muchmore, end up supporting or covering
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for or trying to ignore the rape andmassacre of Jews, they're the Nazis.
Europe.
Ukraine.
Again, I'm just going to give you alayman's reaction from California.
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I'm as far away from Ukraine as can be.
You were there.
very hard to see how to get Russia outof the roughly one sixth to one fifth
of the country that Russia has taken.
Yeah.
And every day the war continues,even with American armaments.
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More and more of Ukraine gets smashed.
They're able to do a little bit ofdamage to Russians here and there.
They send in a drone, they attack aship, I think they've bottled up the
Russian Black Sea Fleet, that's fine.
But Russia continues to live, moreor less, As it was before the war.
Whereas Ukraine, city by city, theRussian population, I confess that I don't
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understand the Russian chain of command,how they can squander so many men.
It wouldn't be the first time inRussian history that the people
in power haven't cared how manyof their own citizens they killed.
that is true.
But it looks to That'sthe Russian way of war.
but even at that, even atsquandering, they still have
that much larger a population.
They can afford to get ground downat a faster rate than the Ukrainians
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because they can replace their numbers.
It's the
same plan as Stalin had.
all of that, grind down theUkrainians, all of that.
Shouldn't Ukraine simply cutthe best deal it can right now?
It worked out all rightover time to be South Korea.
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You take the bit of thecountry that you can.
You integrate entirely into the West,you establish free markets, you permit
foreign investment, and 10, 20, 30 yearslater, you become a model to the world.
isn't some option like that availableto Ukraine and oughtn't they to take it?
it's not for me to advise them, I,keep out of giving advice like that.
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because they've got, of course,more skin in the game than I do.
That's true,
but now you're talking to, andthis is, they have far more
skin in the game than I do.
I do, but they rely on American aid,which is another question we can come
to, which is why Europe hasn't steppedup more, but they rely on American aid.
So America has some role to play here.
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All right.
But what is your judgment?
What is your, answer that thought.
I
find it difficult.
I find it, let me say it, but Ifind it painful because I was with
the Ukrainian army when they retookMikhail and Kirsan from the Russians.
The morale was soaring.
The morale was soaring.
Yes.
They surprised
the world.
I.
I really did think then, ifthey can keep pushing like this,
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I might get to marry a Pole.
The spring offensive last year did not.
It just didn't work.
Didn't work.
And, there's a lot of self searchingmilitary responsibility and much more.
I would think at this point, and I don'twant to betray my Ukrainian friends who,
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many of whom just say, it's not goingto stop until we get everything back.
Nevertheless, I pretty much agree with youthat at some point there will have to be a
negotiation because the counter offensivehas just not been successful enough.
And at the moment, the, Russianforces are still laying siege in a
very brutal way to Kharkiv and, the,energy seems to be on their side.
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the point you make, I would agree with,but there's a proviso Which is the
thing that the Ukrainians understandbetter than either of us, which is,
it's not clear that any settlementthat was made and any new carve
up that was agreed to wouldbe agreed to for very long.
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Because we don't know with 100percent certainty how much land
Vladimir Putin wants to take.
He has said he wants all of Ukraine.
And he's made an awful lotof running to try to get it.
Killed a lot of young and oldUkrainians, a lot of young Russians.
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But we don't really know, in my view,with enough certainty, how hungry
he is for the rest of the region.
I've been to Moldova.
The Moldovans seem to be very agitated.
I was in the Baltic states last year.
They're very worried.
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Now, my impression is, probablylike yours, surely Vladimir Putin
wouldn't break into NATO countries.
I don't know.
I was in Georgia some yearsago, and of course, he was
happy to invade Georgia in 2008.
So when people say things like, thisis, there are some people, particularly
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on the right in America, who say thingslike, he doesn't do this sort of thing.
I've seen him do it before.
yes.
so yeah, he does do this kind ofthing, but the question of, is it,
would West and East Ukraineremain I don't know, West and East
Germany or North and South Korea?
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Or would he settle there andthen move on and then move on?
He wouldn't move on if therewere an American guarantee or if
the Europeans pulled themselvestogether and provided a guarantee.
If Germany showed.
I'm putting this inthe form of a question.
I'm saying something that youmay find completely outrageous.
So respond.
Don't say.
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Yes, of course.
Shy.
You can rely on me.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
But if the Germans pulledthemselves together to demonstrate
half the seriousness that the Poleshave demonstrated, half the seriousness
small country have, half the seriousnessthat the Estonians have demonstrated,
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that the Finns have demonstrated.
The Swedes.
That the Swedes of all people.
Who imagined that?
Yeah.
That the Swedes have demonstrated.
Then if Europe stood up for Ukraine andsaid, that's it, Vladimir, that's it.
He would have no choice, orat least we'd have, okay.
So the question then is,why hasn't this happened?
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Olaf Scholz, Putin invades Ukraine,Olaf Scholz, the new chancellor of
Germany, gives remarkable speechesthat shock all of us in the Thrill
all of us in the United States.
These, we're going to get serious.
There's an emergency additionto the defense budget.
We're going to increaseour defense budget.
I,
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some years ago, I was ata conference in Berlin.
It was a sort of trilateral.
I think it's an, it's, Long enough inthe past that I can tell this story.
It was an off record.
Your secret is safe with me.
Exactly.
It was an off record thing, but therewas a German minister who gave rather
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encouraging speech in which he said, andof course none of us hear this sort of
rhetoric without a certain amount of chillin our spine, but nevertheless he said,
Europe and Germany will have to at somepoint realize, we have enemies and we have
to at some point be able to get to thestage where we not only are willing to die
for our way of life, but to kill for it.
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And I went up to this minister afterwardsand I said, I wonder if, if you don't
mind, I could quote you on that.
Without attribution, obviously.
But I said, if I could just,he said, absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
Terror in his eyes.
And I said, let me get this right.
There are values you're wishing,willing to kill for, to die
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for, but only off the record.
look, a Ukrainian told me when I was therethat they use the same number of bullets
every day as France makes in a year.
there is a global problem,a Western problem.
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of arms supplies.
This is a case Israel.
It's a case for Ukraine.
They fire both conflict.
They are firing with extreme precisionand care, not just because they certainly
in the case of Israel particularlywant to minimize civilian casualty,
but because they don't have
that much skit.
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So the reason I mentioned this is becauseevery country, Apart from America, even
America, look at Russia, Russia is onwar footing like it was in the 40s.
It has turned around its economyonto a wartime economy footing,
which means it can do what itwants for as long as it wants.
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America, to be an ally of Americatoday is a, is not that easy a thing.
And the Europeans, you I'm afraidthat we in Europe are, to an
extent, like the kids in Berkeley.
We can no longer fathom the idea of war.
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We can't believe
it.
Oh, okay, again, here'syour American cousin.
This is the way it looks to me.
Europe has two problems.
One of them is Vladimir Putin.
Poles, good looking,the Poles, the Baltics.
Amazingly enough, the Swedes.
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But Germany can't move without, I begyour pardon, Europe can't move without
Germany and France and, alright.
So that's one problem.
The second problem is the one youwrote about in The Strange Death
of Europe, which has not abated.
Europe is depopulating very rapidly.
Every country in Europe, everysingle nation in Europe is well
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below replacement birth rate.
And at the same time the Muslim populationrises and illegal migration rises
and the society changes all the time.
correct.
The statistic I read the other day thatjust shocked me is that by 2050 the
population of Africa, some, hard to knowhow much of this is a Muslim population,
but probably 60 percent of the gain, isprojected to rise by 1 billion people.
(33:34):
There are going to be many emptyvillages in Italy and France that
look very attractive to poor people.
From Sub Saharan, well fromany foot anywhere in Africa.
Are there not?
This is predictable.
It's in the press.
Vladimir Putin is there.
(33:55):
we have to make some decisionsabout how to protect our culture.
Is it worth protecting?
How do we handle immigrants?
What are the correctness?
And I just don't see.
None of them
are serious.
None
of
them are serious.
So, here I had a, to me, a shockingconversation with an, I will then shut
up because this is for you to speak andnot me, but this one just startled me.
(34:18):
And I'm wondering if itwas a representative.
I had a conversation with anIrish friend and I said, what?
I put all this to him.
What about immigration?
And the reply was,
El Andalus wasn't so bad.
When the, in the Muslim kingdomof Granada, when they ruled
(34:39):
the Southern third of Spain,the Christians lived in peace.
The Jews were permitted to live there andthe Muslims ran a rather tolerant society.
And maybe that option will be open to us.
So
has elite European opinion alreadyin effect surrendered to its own?
(35:00):
All right, so what's going on?
What is going on?
you can tell your Irish friendthe following message from me.
If he doesn't mind it so far, turnhim to focus on some of the negatives.
Let me give one negative.
(35:20):
The Muslim migrant to Irelandwho, last year, tortured and
beheaded three gay men in Ireland.
Ireland has often In the Republic?
In the Republic.
Ireland has had a fair shareof violence in its time.
(35:41):
If it wants to import more, it shouldtell the public that's the aim.
And your friend might say, onthe one hand, you get a bit of Al
Andalus, good luck with that dream.
And by the way, it wasn'ta good dream anyway.
Al Andalus was not greatfor Christians and Jews.
We were second class citizens.
Yes.
(36:02):
but okay.
If you're happy to live as a second classcitizen in your own country, do just
explain to the public that every nowand 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 andbe a man and say it.
He should say, we get such great thingsfrom diversity, we get more beheading
(36:23):
than we used to have in Ireland,but, swings and roundabouts, chaps.
Britain.
I'm leaving, I'm treating Britainseparately from Europe, which should
please you in the first place,because after Brexit, it is at
least formally separate from Europe.
Fourteen years of a Tory government.
(36:46):
There's going to be anelection this summer.
The present Prime Minister,Rishi Sunak, who is the How many?
David Cameron Bor One, two, threeThe fifth Tory in Fifth Tory
Prime Minister in these fourteenyears has called an election.
I put it to you, my Tory friend.
Careful.
Smallty conservative.
(37:07):
Do not Stick me with the grotesquething that is the Tory party.
Oh, is it that A That the Toryswon two historic victories.
They got Brexit throughand then they returned.
They went to the country and returnedwith a majority of, what was it, 88 seats?
80,
yeah, 80 seats.
Boris Johnson, Madison, 2019.
(37:28):
Yeah.
And after four.
And they had not the slightestidea what to do with either one.
And after 14 years, even everyTory, I know it can't be every Tory
full stop, but every Tory I knowis sick of the Tory government.
And willing to take a chance on labor,which is, whatever else it is going
to be cooler toward free enterprise.
(37:50):
We can't expect great leaps andbounds in the British economy.
We can't expect Britain to ascend tonew heights in its role in the world.
The United Kingdom isabout to go into a boom.
Deep freeze.
Is this fair?
Yes, it's generous.
the Labour Party is led by,Kirstein, a man whose idea of
(38:15):
leadership is to say he's a leader.
His, deputy Angela Rayner.
Remind
me never to cross you.
His deputy Angela Rayner isa person of zero distinction.
his shadow cabinet includes peoplelike David Lammy, the shadow
foreign secretary at the moment.
Might be foreign secretary.
Some years ago on a chat show, on a quizshow, David Lammie was asked who, I think
(38:38):
I've got this right, which monarch, hewas asked which monarch succeeded Henry
the fourth, and he said Henry the third.
So he has a problem even understandingwhich direction history goes in, and
in an interview on the radio lastyear he said that he understood that
it was possible for a man to becomea woman because of A man could, with
(38:58):
the right medical help, grow a cervix.
we are not dealing withthe brains of Britain here.
And, in fact, there's nobodyof distinction that I can see
in the shadow cabinet that'sabout to become the cabinet.
Every country in Europe, and maybeAmerica, is moving to the right.
And particularly in Europe,inevitable, with the immigration.
The one exception is Britain, and theone exception is Britain because for
(39:22):
14 years the Conservative Party hasmade a great horlicks of government.
the contempt, the loathing, thatmany people who ought to have the
Conservatives, sorry, who oughtto be supporting the Conservatives
actually have the Conservativesis not possible to exaggerate.
(39:44):
they wasted their time.
I said in an article in theSpectator recently that, Boris
Johnson reminded me of Dr.
Faustus in Christopher Marlowe's version.
Because Dr.
Faustus, if you remember,after selling his soul to
Mephistopheles, wastes his time,
pinches the nose of the Pope, andplays practical jokes on Japes.
(40:08):
And then your time is up, and you go.
Sells
his soul to the devil for nothing.
For nothing!
Why did Rishi Sunak Climbedthe greasy pole of politics.
Stabbed Boris Johnson, just as BorisJohnson has stabbed other people,
and Theresa May has stabbed people,and Liz Truss has stabbed people,
and David Cameron, and everyone else.
Why did Rishi Sunak climb throughpolitics, become Prime Minister,
(40:35):
in order, as far as I can see, hisflagship policy is to ban vaping?
I like to think that a countrycould have more ambition than that.
Alright, Douglas, theUnited States of America.
It was a dozen or 15 years agothat Mark Stein wrote a book.
(40:55):
Entitled, America Alone, and I confess,although the book was brilliantly
written and quite tightly argued, Ithought, and, Mark, we did an interview
on the show about the book, and, but Ithought, oh, this is a little bit, you're
being a provocate, a provocateur here,
(41:15):
but that's what it comes down to.
I, you tell me if I'm right or wrong,but we have China, we have Putin, we
have who knows where this is going to go.
In the Middle East, the ultimateproblem is not in Rafah, the
ultimate problem is in Tehran.
Yes.
(41:37):
Europe is in disarray, not all ofEurope, and not probably permanently.
You just said yourself the electoralsituation has to change, the
continent is moving to the right.
Goethe Wilders
is the most popularpolitician in the Netherlands.
Alright, there you have it.
The polls are, we've alreadybeen through this, the polls,
there are impressive governments.
France, Germany, France, Spain, alright.
(41:58):
So what do we make of the presentstate of American politics?
I think a lot of what you've justdescribed in the world is, I'm
sorry to say this, but is theabsence of American leadership.
Not a total absence, it has to be said.
I'm not the greatest fan of JoeBiden, but Joe Biden has armed his
(42:24):
allies and has occasionally madestrong noises on the world stage.
However, I think it's without doubtthat neither Vladimir Putin nor the
mullahs in Tehran fear Joe Biden.
Not really.
Before Joe Biden came to office,Donald Trump had almost completely
bankrupted the Iranians.
(42:44):
And Joe Biden has brought them backin, they've been flushed with cash,
sometimes literally, with the cash.
And, that's why they can afford to playwith their proxies like Hamas and things
like the 7th of October can happen.
Funded, armed, trained by Iran.
Why has Southern Lebanon got 15, or150, 000 Iranian rockets pointed at
(43:07):
Israel because after the 2006 conflict,which I was there for then as well,
the, UN Security Councilpassed a resolution 1701.
Which said that the area in thesouth of Lebanon that Hezbollah
were in, they must retreat fromand take their rockets with them.
And for the whole 18 yearssince the rockets have just come
(43:29):
back, they've just built up therocket supply and it's deadly.
I've seen many of these rockets beingshot 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.
As one, Israeli said to me,Israel and Hezbollah are on a
tandem bicycle going downhill.
(43:50):
And the question isn't when,isn't whether we crash, but when.
Now, this would not have happenedif America in particular had
put its foot down with Iran.
And you're telling me that what weAmericans are raised with, or what
we used to be raised with, what mygeneration was raised with, which is
(44:11):
that the world Needs a strong America.
Oh, you are telling me it's
true.
It's true.
It's lethal without, and even, theisolationist Republicans in America,
I have great criticisms of yes, but itdoes interest me that they both want
nothing to do with the world and yetto be the dominant power in the world.
(44:34):
Even the sort of Republican that is
the position I'd like myself,I don't think it's available,
but it's not available.
It's not
available.
the you can't do it.
Other people step in.
Okay.
Look at, look at the fact in thelast four years, Russia, Iran, and
China have stepped in everywhere.
(44:54):
And I'm not just talking militarily.
look at the way thatAfrica is being brought up.
Look at the way in which mineralresources are brought up across Africa.
The Americans on top of that are theEuropeans to anything like the stent.
The Chinese are, no, we'renot on top of any of this.
and this goes back to this centralthing, which is do the students
on American campuses realize?
(45:15):
That whilst they are being expensivelyeducated into idiocy and uselessness, for
each of them, there's a dozen studentsin China working their socks off to get
a lifestyle that these kids in Americaseem to think is their birthright.
It ain't their birthright.
It's not inevitable.
(45:35):
They only have these rights becausebetter men than them fought for them.
And if this generation of Americanswant to sit out The world.
Ha!
They can ask the people of Israel whathappens, what it's like when reality
comes and hits you as hard as anything.
(45:59):
Let me ask you one last questionabout the United States.
And, but give me a moment to set it up.
We, the United States,used to have armed forces.
It used to be American militarydoctrine that we ought to be able to
fight in two major theaters at once.
Jim Mattis, Secretary of State, Secretaryof Defense in the first couple of years
(46:21):
of the Trump administration recognizedthat 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, Ukraineand the North Atlantic.
Theater two, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon,and the Eastern Mediterranean.
(46:46):
Theater three, China,Taiwan, and the Pacific.
All of this could go bad very fast.
That's item one.
Here's item two.
I've done, I'm going to tryto be non partisan here, but
correct me if I move in one.
We have oddly enough, two incumbentsin some strange way running.
(47:09):
President Biden in his eighties,
let's put it as charitably as possible.
He's not quite as quick off themark as he was some years ago.
It's sad.
Your word.
And then we have Donald Trump who'sbeen indicted in one jurisdiction after
(47:32):
another, who is himself 77 years old.
And who seems erratic,unpredictable, all right.
But these seem to be the twelvewho you could, if you want
to toss in Robert Kennedy Jr.
there is this strange, I feel,
(47:53):
there's a kind of free floatinganxiety in the United States.
This is a really dangerous Moment.
Yeah.
And these are the choices.
wait, let's, withdraw from theworld and get, just get rich.
Oh, there are all kinds of strange.
let's find some third party camp.
So what would your word be?
(48:15):
As we enter the presidential?
This is springtime.
It'll be summer.
The election is in the autumn.
what would, what advice wouldyou give to American voters?
How should they weigh the reality asyou see it and make their decisions?
Yeah, I don't I don't like advisingpeople in countries I don't have
a vote in about how to vote.
(48:35):
there are some of us who hope that's onlya matter of time before you apply for
your, you apply for your citizenship.
But go ahead.
Yeah, I came as a signer.
I take the point.
but, there's one thing I justmentioned beforehand that you're,
completely right about these.
The idea that there could be threetheaters of operation in the coming years,
that, that is when American dominanceis completely tested and America has
(48:59):
to decide whether or not it's serious.
And there are a lot of people inAmerica who are not serious, left
and right, Republicans and Democrats.
But there's one other thing that hasto be said about that, which is a
lot of the energy on the right now istaken up by people saying, why can't
we even secure the southern border?
And why don't we do that beforelooking after other countries borders?
(49:19):
And I actually think, althoughit's a cheap rhetorical trick,
nevertheless, there's something in it.
There's something in it.
And I sometimes refute them by saying,do you honestly think that if America
weren't supporting our allies inUkraine and Israel, the money would
be going to the southern border?
(49:40):
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 Deathof Europe, which is, of course, not
just about Europe, but also aboutthe whole of the developed world.
Which is that the great challenge ofthis century will be precisely what you
(50:00):
referred to earlier, which is billionsof people who do not have our lifestyle,
they do not have our advantages.
They come from countries which arevery badly run, horribly run, corrupt,
impoverished, violent, and much more.
Not all of them, but that's prettymuch the norm in the developing world.
(50:21):
And they would like tolive in our countries.
Can we say no?
Now, Europeans are notvery good at saying no.
In the last 14 years, the ConservativeParty came to power in 2010 with a
promise from David Cameron that hewould bring the hundreds of thousands
of migrants a year, net, coming intothe UK, down to the tens of thousands,
(50:45):
which shouldn't be impossible.
It was where we were in the 1990s.
And you are an island, after all.
We're an island.
It's not as if we don't havesome natural advantages.
Yes.
and, I The immigration figures forlast year, in the last year of a Tory
government, were almost a million, net.
Fourteen years later.
Fourteen years later.
They were off by scales.
(51:07):
And, it's the same in America.
And people don't, a lot of people outsideAmerica don't understand this, but I
understand it inside America, as I knowyou do, and I think a lot of Americans do.
People coming across the southern border,flooding across the southern border,
millions of people coming to Americaillegally, is responded to with the
(51:34):
same inevitability, as Europe has done.
And it'll lead to the same thing.
It's
completely divorced from reality.
And it's
it's not just weak, what the politiciansare letting happen to our societies.
(51:58):
It's positively treacherous.
Because what they're doingis setting up an ever more
unstable society for their successors.
And some of the Democrats have saidto me, the people coming from Central
and South America are very like us.
(52:20):
They're Christians.
You want to see the footage?
Thank you.
Of who's coming acrossthe southern border now.
I was watching the other day andI was going through one of the
photos and everybody here seemsto be a Sub Saharan African.
the whole world is what I it's cheaperto get into America from Sub Saharan
Africa today, illegally, than itis to get illegally into Europe.
(52:42):
If you take a flight to Mexico fromAfrica, that's maybe a thousand bucks.
Maybe you spend 5, 000 bucks to a cartelto get you over the southern border.
That's a bargain.
And you're in America.
And America seems to be weaker thanEurope even now on the illegal migration.
(53:03):
So it's cheaper.
It might be 10, 000 to go to Europe.
So
is America to stealChris Caldwell's title?
Is America going to be the samewith different people in it?
you all just hope yes.
And the problem about that, it'slike the old, the old fallacy
of the, turkey, The turkey is,
(53:28):
had a good life and enjoys itselfin the field, wanders around.
One day after the next, seems charming.
People come and feed the turkeyand the turkey has a good life.
And then one day it's Thanksgiving.
And, so when, people say tome, and I've got to hear these
incredibly self satisfiedpeople all the time.
(53:52):
When they say thingslike, it's inevitable.
Or, It's just going to be thesame as what it was, Douglas.
What you're saying is alarmist, likewhat Mark Stein has said was alarmist.
It's just all going to be the same.
One day, it's Thanksgiving.
Last question.
The last time we recorded a program,just the two of us, we were talking
(54:17):
about the strange death of Yoruba,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, generallyfor 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
(54:40):
disruptions of artificial intelligencethat are going to be barreling at us.
How does one lead a good life?
I think I answered that beforein this very room by saying by
leading what was regarded asbeing a good life until yesterday.
And I would repeat that.
I'd add something to it.
I've changed a bit in the lastsix months, and some of my viewers
(55:04):
and readers have noticed it.
And I've changed because of what I'veseen in Israel, and the response,
and specifically the response ofyoung Israelis who have, there was
a sort of view among older Israelisthat the young generation was a bit
(55:25):
weaker, a bit soft, the years of peacehad done what years of peace always do.
And, they want to just party in Tel Aviv.
They want to go out to the clubs.
They want to be on Instagram andTikTok and that sort of thing.
And,
when the moment of test and trial came forthat generation, as it did on the seventh.
(55:53):
They'd be magnificent.
Magnificent.
I've seen them up close,I've seen them in the field.
I've seen people who've just lost,their comrades and they go straight
from the battlefield to a funeraland straight back to the battlefield.
These are remarkable young men and women.
Now, they understand something,which is very important.
(56:15):
And I said this a few weeksago at a speech in Manhattan.
But life, isn't just given to you.
Life is something you have to fight for.
You have to fight for the rightto be at the club in Tel Aviv, or
somebody else has to fight for you.
If you want to live a goodlife, either you fight for it,
(56:37):
or you expect somebody else to.
I believe very strongly today thatpeople in America, Europe, Britain,
the rest of the West, are goingto have to get serious very fast,
(56:58):
because something is going to happen.
I don't know what.
But something is going to happen inmy lifetime that is going to bring
the kind of reality that the peopleof Israel saw on the 7th to the
people of America, to the people ofEurope, to the people of Britain.
And we should prepare for that, andwe should prepare a generation for
(57:19):
that, and we should encourage them,not, they've got to break out of the
thing they're in, these ignoramuses,the narcissists, the navel gazers.
We've got to tell them thatthe age of grievance is over.
(57:39):
The age of grievance will be overwith an age of heroism and courage.
And we should encourage that, everybody.
And if these other people who want tohold us all back and want to make us
talk about things that are so banal andboring, like gender woo and I'm feeling
(57:59):
non binary, no, don't have time for you.
Get out the way.
Life's too serious.
Douglas Murray, thank you.
Thank
you.
For Uncommon Knowledge, the HooverInstitution, and Fox Nation,
shooting today from Fiesole,Italy, I'm Peter Robinson.
Around the World with Douglas Murray.
Uncommon Knowledge, now.
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
Filming today in Fiesole, Italy.
I'm Peter Robinson.
(00:20):
Educated at Eton and MaldonCollege, Oxford, Douglas Murray
is a journalist based in New York.
His books include the bestsellers,The Strange Death of Europe
and The Madness of Crowds.
Earlier this spring, earlier thisyear I should say, he spent a month
in Ukraine and six months in Israel.
(00:40):
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.
I got to Israel as soon as I could afterthe atrocities of the 7th of October.
spent the next six months there.
(01:05):
I suppose I One thing about theterrorists and one about the victims.
About the terrorists, I would saythat although I've covered quite a
lot of conflicts and seen quite alot of human evil, I What the Hamas
terrorists did on the 7th of October wasa level of depravity which shocked me.
(01:28):
How many died?
Remind me.
Oh, it was 1, 200 peoplewere murdered on the day.
more than 300 taken hostage into Gaza.
when I say the level of depravity,it's partly the fact that the, not
just the atrocities they committed.
the kibbutz, the villages, thecommunities on the Gaza border and
(01:52):
at the Nova party where hundredsof young people were murdered.
there's something about, I'veseen all the atrocity videos,
not just the 47 minute videos.
I saw.
Pretty soon after.
But a lot of people have sharedwith me other things that are
unpublishable and unbroadcastable.
(02:14):
And I've heard a lot of testimonyfrom survivors and others.
And I think that apart from the sheerphysical violence of barbarism, the
rapes, the shooting women in the genitalsof the party, the beheadings, the,
cutting off people's heads with them.
Cleaver and so on.
I think, aside from that, the thingthat strikes me, struck me, is that
(02:39):
they were proud of what they were doing.
Now that is something that, thatan awful lot of people have done
an awful lot of evil things.
I've very rarely seen one so proud oftheir evil as they're carrying it out.
The Terrorists of the Seventh broadcast,Go Pro videoed, a lot of what they did.
(02:59):
And they were high on evil.
some people have heard the tape,probably, of the young man, the young
terrorist, who calls his parents inGaza and says, Father, father, I've
killed ten Jews with my own hands.
Get mother on the phone.
I think it's hard to think of many casesin history where people actually not
(03:22):
just carried out atrocities like that,but were absolutely jubilant about them.
There were two boys whose fatherwas killed in front of them.
In their safe room and they, one of theboys lost his ear and the other an eye
and they were staggering around the room.
And the terrorist who just killed theirfather comes in and takes food out of
their fridge and one of the boys says tothe terrorist, That's my mother's food.
(03:48):
And the terrorist said,Where's your mother?
I want her too.
so a level of evil, which issomething that has to be thought
about and of course dealt with.
I suppose the second thing I'd say is theremarkable response of the Israeli public.
(04:10):
Israel isn't like Britain or America.
it's threats are awfully close.
Maybe always were, but the firstresponders, The people caught up in it
in the day were not just victims, but alot of them were extraordinary heroes.
I'm thinking of people who droppedeverything, drove south, picked up some
(04:32):
guns and fought for the next 48 hours.
A friend of mine who left a farewellmessage to his wife and his two
children on the way south, becauseHe was sure he wouldn't survive,
and he saved a lot of lives.
people of all ages, andindeed all backgrounds.
The Muslim doctor I've spokento who was personally held
(04:53):
as a human shield by Hamas.
Personally held as a humanshield, and who saved lives.
I think of the Druze men I spokewith who were at the parties
serving food and who managed becausethey could understand the Arabic.
They could overhearexactly what was happening.
They're remarkable men.
And the country is filled inmy view with remarkable people.
(05:16):
so those are the twothings that stand out most.
I've been in Gaza a fair amount andseen the response of the IDF in the
attempt to get back the hostages and tocapture or kill all the heads of Hamas.
And, I've watched the world losesympathy with Israel, but they
lost sympathy from about day one.
I want to come back to that.
(05:38):
You've answered the question aboutthe moral calculus over and over
again, but I must ask the questionbecause it is a mandatory question.
If the Israelis lost 1, 200, whatis the number at which they really
may not pursue the war any further?
(05:59):
It feels, in the response to Israel,that this is, Let's put it this way,
the international response with the ICC,the International Criminal Court, naming
charges against Benny Gantz and thePrime Minister Netanyahu for atrocities.
I don't know what the numbers actuallyare because the press, oddly enough,
(06:20):
unreflectively, unchallengingly seemsto be giving us Hamas laundered numbers
for the number, but it's thousandsof people who've been killed in Gaza
who are civilians rather than Hamas.
All right, just state it onemore time, the moral calculus.
(06:40):
the first thing is I refutethe idea that a war that is
started by an enemy like Hamas.
Can only be responded to acertain level of casualty.
I refute the idea.
I don't think it's somethingwhich Britain or America has been
expected to abide by in our past.
I don't think it's something we've beenexpected to abide by in our present.
(07:03):
Not many years ago, when we helpedto flatten most of Mosul, in order
to get Islamic State out of Mosul.
The French, British and Americanforces involved did not worry
about the number of casualtiesand nobody counted the casualties.
We do not know to this day how many peoplewere killed in Mosul and northern Iraq
and the borders of Syria to get ISIS.
(07:25):
We simply wanted to get thembecause they'd carried out the
Bataclan Massacre and much more.
Only Israel seems to be expected toact by this strange standard of What's
often called proportionality, I liketo think I shot down that idea at the
beginning of the war when a journalistasked me about that before Israel had
even done anything, and I said, if youbelieve in this idea of proportionality,
(07:45):
it means that the IDF should be allowedto go into Gaza and kill precisely
the number of children that Hamaskilled, and rape precisely the number
of women that Hamas raped, and so on.
Would that be acceptable?
No.
Would the Israelis abideby such a grotesque idea?
Of course not.
What then is the acceptable calculus?
As you say, most of the internationalmedia have been relying on Hamas figures.
(08:06):
There's a reason for that,by the way, which is that no
Western media are in Gaza.
That, Rory, we'll come to that as well.
They're not in there.
they lie to their viewers.
They fib.
They cover up for theirown journalistic failings.
It's not even a failing.
I don't blame a lot of them.
So let's come to that right now.
Why is the reporting so It runsfrom thin to biased to non existent.
(08:29):
I think back to the Iraq war.
When we went into Iraq, JohnBurns, 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 understoodthe objectives, understood
the progress week by week.
No such journalism exists.
there's only two ways to be in Gaza.
(08:50):
One is to be embedded withthe IDF, as I've been.
And, the other is tohave permission of Hamas.
Hamas are not very good hosts.
And, they're untrustworthy hosts.
And so most of the Western mediarely on journalists who are Gazans.
All of whom are operating under Hamasrestrictions at best, and most of
(09:11):
whom are going to be Hamas supporters.
And Hamas, as a result,has got out its figures.
It came out with this figure of30, 000 people some months ago.
And then they said that, thiswas a number of casualties.
They produced no evidence for it.
And the world just repeated this figure.
That figure, by the way, has been halved.
Has it?
Yeah.
In the last few weeks, more, moreofficial figures, better figures have
(09:35):
come out from a range of sources.
Which say that the 30,000 figure was never true.
But anyway.
What, if you follow the IDF's figureson the number of Hamas terrorists that
they've killed inside Gaza and thenumber of innocent civilians killed.
If you take even the Hamas figures,you're dealing with roughly, and this
is a horrible calculus, but this is war.
You're dealing with roughly oneterrorist killed to one civilian.
(10:01):
America in the field, in Afghanistan,managed something like one terrorist
to three or four civilians.
We don't really know.
In Fallujah, How did we do?
Not as well as the Israelis.
So that bears, lingering on for a second,but the second thing is that the reporting
as I've seen too many times now, thereporting is so ignorant because people
(10:27):
repeat what Hamas has said within seconds.
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 theShifa Hamas Command Headquarters.
It's a place we know from video footage,CCTV, they took some of the hostages
on the 7th and they didn't take themto the Shifa Hospital to treat them.
(10:47):
the Shifa had a rocket land, Inits car park, some months ago.
And Hamas immediately announced thatit was an Israeli rocket that had hit
the hospital and killed 500 people.
Note, by the way, that the Israelishave taken, took months to work out the
exact number of figures from the 7thof October who'd been killed in Israel.
(11:07):
Because it's extremely hard.
I've been to the morgues.
I've seen the bodies.
I've seen the charred remains.
It takes a long time to work outwho's dead in a burned out house.
Magically, Hamas can do it like that.
And can come up with a round figure.
Oh, but after the world has saidthat the Israelis fired a rocket at a
hospital and killed 500 people, aftersome time, sure as anything, we discover
(11:33):
the rocket was an Islamic Jihad rocketfired 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 realityof reporting on that conflict.
Just before we're sittinghere, this The Israeli, defense
forces are in Rafa, operating inunbelievably complicated situations.
(11:57):
very intense fighting.
to get the last remaining hostages outand to find Sinwar, the architect of
the Seventh, who's almost certainlyhiding in the tunnels under Rafa.
Just before we're sitting here, there'san outrage around the world claiming that
the Israelis have been indiscriminatelybombing a tent encampment of Palestinians.
(12:18):
Now already, after that lie has gonearound the world, we discover what
happened was that Just yesterdayor the day before, Hamas fired
rockets from between the tents.
and it seems what happened was amunition of Hamas arms exploded
(12:41):
as a secondary explosion.
now, who's fault is that?
all of these deaths are in my mindvery clearly the fault of Hamas.
There is a cost to starting a war.
And there is no law of war that I knowof that says you're allowed to start
a war and massacre civilians in theirhomes, and then, when you start to lose
(13:02):
the war you started, say this is unfair.
We would accept this under no othersituation, in no other circumstances.
But it's the Jews.
So
it's different.
So from what you saw in Israel toAmerican campuses, to American, we
had a congressional hearing with thepresident of Harvard, the president
(13:27):
of Penn, the president of MIT, and allthree of them refused to say in a simple,
straightforward, forthright way, allmoral codes prohibit advocating genocide.
Exactly.
All right.
We have that.
We have pro Palestine from theriver to the sea is the chant.
(13:50):
Demonstrations and encampments onone elite campus after another.
Earth is going on.
let me do this in the briefest way I can.
The people who are currently atencampments in support of Hamas, which
is what it is, I've seen those things.
(14:13):
I've heard what they say.
They're for Hamas.
Even I, with my often jaded glanceat the disintegration of thought in
the West, was slightly surprised.
At the speed with which adults onAmerican campuses were able to rush
straight into the arms of Hamas.
(14:35):
But fine, there they are.
I would put out this question.
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.
(14:56):
Wow.
Believe All Women turnsout to have a border.
Turns out to have a cordon around it.
It turns out to have an exception.
It has a subclause.
The subclause is, Accept Jewish women.
Some of those students, 10 yearsago maybe, when was it, 2014, Chibok
(15:18):
schoolgirls were stolen from northernNigeria, where I've also been.
And, Hollywood celebrities, students,Michelle Obama, bring back our girls.
Hashtag bring back our girls.
Tell me where the demonstration has beenanywhere in America, from the campuses to
Hollywood, bring back our Jewish children.
(15:42):
There's a reason there is no such hashtag.
There's a reason whythere is no such campaign.
Jews don't count.
Not in the eyes of these pervertedminds on American campuses, Now they
don't know that they're bigots, andthey may not know that they're racists,
but we've been here before, many times.
(16:04):
A lot of people don't mean to be evil.
They don't mean to supportevil, but they support evil.
And that's what the students at Columbiaand endless numbers of other universities
across America have been doing.
All right, it looks to me, this is avery rough cut, I'm just telling you, I'm
(16:25):
speaking now just as somebody who readsthe newspapers and looks at the news,
Presidents of universities andboards of trustees have figured
out how to respond, or figured outat least that they must respond.
So now, encampments are being rolledup, or they're being very tightly
limited, we have, oh, here's an example,we have the University of Texas.
(16:49):
There was some sort of protest.
The president of the University ofTexas let it go on very briefly.
They were in violationof university rules.
He called in the police and had it ended.
With what result?
That more than 700 members of thefaculty of the University of Texas
signed a statement protestingthis brutal treatment of students.
(17:13):
Dartmouth College, wherethere's a new president.
I follow that situation closelybecause I went to Dartmouth.
The new president gets aprotest on the green in Hanover.
The protesters are inviolation of college rules.
The president has the police comein and take the protesters away.
The president receives a vote of censurefrom the faculty of Dartmouth College, the
(17:38):
first time any president in the more thantwo century history of Dartmouth College
So what I'm saying is it feels asthough the kids will get sorted
out sooner or later by reality,the job market, their parents.
Presidents and boardsunderstand the need to respond.
(18:00):
But you've got embedded faculties,large proportions of whom are
simply, of course and because oftenure, they're just there to stay.
But what I don't understand is, what isthe intellectual transmission belt here?
How do you go from the, senior membersof faculties on the great universities
today are people who trained in the 60s?
(18:21):
How do you go from antiVietnam War to pro Hamas?
What is the intellectual progressionthat gets you from there to there?
there's an intellectual explanation,there's just also an obvious moral one.
The intellectual one is that a lotof these people think their job is to
(18:41):
educate students into becoming radicals.
I see,
alright.
Now, a lot of American, I would likeclearing out of American academia to
such an extent that the job market wouldbe unavailable to them in the future.
A lot of these people have nothing to add.
They've never had anything to add.
They teach grievance studies.
(19:03):
And I always hoped, like a lot of peopleof my inclination, that these people
would discover, the graduates woulddiscover, that there was no, there
were no jobs for them after learninghow to be bitter and stupid at the
cost of about 60, 000 bucks a year.
But the, the faculty encouragedthem the idea that first of
(19:24):
all, their opinions matter.
And secondly, that they're informed.
I will say this as strongly as I can.
These students are narcissistsof the worst kind because
they're not just narcissists, butthey're ignoramus narcissists.
Who thinks that the Israeli War Cabinet,after a massacre of its people, should
(19:50):
alter its war policy because of a bunch ofignoramuses in Colombia who've never seen
a war and never lost someone in a war.
Why would any government alter itswar plan and get its generals to
stop its war to get its hostages backbecause of some students at Berkeley?
(20:12):
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?
Do they have any idea how toget the remaining hostages back
without any civilian casualties?
Are they able to clear large areasof ground with a tunnel network
(20:36):
wider than the London underground?
Do they know how to find tunnel shafts?
Do they know how to discern thedifference between a tunnel shaft which
is booby trapped and one which is not?
None of these things.
They've thought of none of them.
So that's the narcissism thing andthe ignorance thing, but the evil
(20:56):
thing, Is that instead of beingsome banal peacenik saying something
like, Why can't they just have peace?
It's brilliant insight.
Brilliant.
No Israeli ever thought of that.
instead of that, they actually runall the way to supporting evil.
But we've seen this before, Peter.
We saw this in the 60s.
(21:18):
We saw it in the 70s.
There were previous generations of peoplein Germany, across Europe, and in America
who had one idea of what not to be.
Don't be a Nazi.
That was their one politicalphilosophy after 1945.
And it's not a bad place to start.
Not a bad place to start.
Don't be a Nazi.
(21:40):
These people even now call themselvesquite often anti Nazis, anti fascists.
in 60s, a lot of the people who orientatedthemselves that way, in that way
alone, found themselves, for instance,supporting the PLO, the PLA, the PFLP,
even when they were hijacking planes.
(22:00):
And some of the people, very interestingbook about this, by Paul Berman, some
of the people involved in that, whoseone orientation had been, don't let's be
Nazis, don't let's do what our parentsdid in Germany, ended up separating
Jews from non Jews on hijacked planes.
So when these students today atAmerican campuses who believe they're
(22:21):
anti fascist, they believe they'reanti racist, this is their one idea.
And they behave as if it'san extraordinary idea and
available only to them.
When they decide that in order tobe anti Nazi and anti oppressor
and anti white colonialist and muchmore, end up supporting or covering
(22:44):
for or trying to ignore the rape andmassacre of Jews, they're the Nazis.
Europe.
Ukraine.
Again, I'm just going to give you alayman's reaction from California.
(23:06):
I'm as far away from Ukraine as can be.
You were there.
very hard to see how to get Russia outof the roughly one sixth to one fifth
of the country that Russia has taken.
Yeah.
And every day the war continues,even with American armaments.
(23:27):
More and more of Ukraine gets smashed.
They're able to do a little bit ofdamage to Russians here and there.
They send in a drone, they attack aship, I think they've bottled up the
Russian Black Sea Fleet, that's fine.
But Russia continues to live, moreor less, As it was before the war.
Whereas Ukraine, city by city, theRussian population, I confess that I don't
(23:54):
understand the Russian chain of command,how they can squander so many men.
It wouldn't be the first time inRussian history that the people
in power haven't cared how manyof their own citizens they killed.
that is true.
But it looks to That'sthe Russian way of war.
but even at that, even atsquandering, they still have
that much larger a population.
They can afford to get ground downat a faster rate than the Ukrainians
(24:16):
because they can replace their numbers.
It's the
same plan as Stalin had.
all of that, grind down theUkrainians, all of that.
Shouldn't Ukraine simply cutthe best deal it can right now?
It worked out all rightover time to be South Korea.
(24:36):
You take the bit of thecountry that you can.
You integrate entirely into the West,you establish free markets, you permit
foreign investment, and 10, 20, 30 yearslater, you become a model to the world.
isn't some option like that availableto Ukraine and oughtn't they to take it?
it's not for me to advise them, I,keep out of giving advice like that.
(25:03):
because they've got, of course,more skin in the game than I do.
That's true,
but now you're talking to, andthis is, they have far more
skin in the game than I do.
I do, but they rely on American aid,which is another question we can come
to, which is why Europe hasn't steppedup more, but they rely on American aid.
So America has some role to play here.
(25:24):
All right.
But what is your judgment?
What is your, answer that thought.
I
find it difficult.
I find it, let me say it, but Ifind it painful because I was with
the Ukrainian army when they retookMikhail and Kirsan from the Russians.
The morale was soaring.
The morale was soaring.
Yes.
They surprised
the world.
I.
I really did think then, ifthey can keep pushing like this,
(25:47):
I might get to marry a Pole.
The spring offensive last year did not.
It just didn't work.
Didn't work.
And, there's a lot of self searchingmilitary responsibility and much more.
I would think at this point, and I don'twant to betray my Ukrainian friends who,
(26:08):
many of whom just say, it's not goingto stop until we get everything back.
Nevertheless, I pretty much agree with youthat at some point there will have to be a
negotiation because the counter offensivehas just not been successful enough.
And at the moment, the, Russianforces are still laying siege in a
very brutal way to Kharkiv and, the,energy seems to be on their side.
(26:38):
the point you make, I would agree with,but there's a proviso Which is the
thing that the Ukrainians understandbetter than either of us, which is,
it's not clear that any settlementthat was made and any new carve
up that was agreed to wouldbe agreed to for very long.
(27:01):
Because we don't know with 100percent certainty how much land
Vladimir Putin wants to take.
He has said he wants all of Ukraine.
And he's made an awful lotof running to try to get it.
Killed a lot of young and oldUkrainians, a lot of young Russians.
(27:25):
But we don't really know, in my view,with enough certainty, how hungry
he is for the rest of the region.
I've been to Moldova.
The Moldovans seem to be very agitated.
I was in the Baltic states last year.
They're very worried.
(27:46):
Now, my impression is, probablylike yours, surely Vladimir Putin
wouldn't break into NATO countries.
I don't know.
I was in Georgia some yearsago, and of course, he was
happy to invade Georgia in 2008.
So when people say things like, thisis, there are some people, particularly
(28:07):
on the right in America, who say thingslike, he doesn't do this sort of thing.
I've seen him do it before.
yes.
so yeah, he does do this kind ofthing, but the question of, is it,
would West and East Ukraineremain I don't know, West and East
Germany or North and South Korea?
(28:28):
Or would he settle there andthen move on and then move on?
He wouldn't move on if therewere an American guarantee or if
the Europeans pulled themselvestogether and provided a guarantee.
If Germany showed.
I'm putting this inthe form of a question.
I'm saying something that youmay find completely outrageous.
So respond.
Don't say.
(28:48):
Yes, of course.
Shy.
You can rely on me.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
But if the Germans pulledthemselves together to demonstrate
half the seriousness that the Poleshave demonstrated, half the seriousness
small country have, half the seriousnessthat the Estonians have demonstrated,
(29:08):
that the Finns have demonstrated.
The Swedes.
That the Swedes of all people.
Who imagined that?
Yeah.
That the Swedes have demonstrated.
Then if Europe stood up for Ukraine andsaid, that's it, Vladimir, that's it.
He would have no choice, orat least we'd have, okay.
So the question then is,why hasn't this happened?
(29:31):
Olaf Scholz, Putin invades Ukraine,Olaf Scholz, the new chancellor of
Germany, gives remarkable speechesthat shock all of us in the Thrill
all of us in the United States.
These, we're going to get serious.
There's an emergency additionto the defense budget.
We're going to increaseour defense budget.
I,
(29:52):
some years ago, I was ata conference in Berlin.
It was a sort of trilateral.
I think it's an, it's, Long enough inthe past that I can tell this story.
It was an off record.
Your secret is safe with me.
Exactly.
It was an off record thing, but therewas a German minister who gave rather
(30:13):
encouraging speech in which he said, andof course none of us hear this sort of
rhetoric without a certain amount of chillin our spine, but nevertheless he said,
Europe and Germany will have to at somepoint realize, we have enemies and we have
to at some point be able to get to thestage where we not only are willing to die
for our way of life, but to kill for it.
(30:38):
And I went up to this minister afterwardsand I said, I wonder if, if you don't
mind, I could quote you on that.
Without attribution, obviously.
But I said, if I could just,he said, absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
Terror in his eyes.
And I said, let me get this right.
There are values you're wishing,willing to kill for, to die
(30:59):
for, but only off the record.
look, a Ukrainian told me when I was therethat they use the same number of bullets
every day as France makes in a year.
there is a global problem,a Western problem.
(31:22):
of arms supplies.
This is a case Israel.
It's a case for Ukraine.
They fire both conflict.
They are firing with extreme precisionand care, not just because they certainly
in the case of Israel particularlywant to minimize civilian casualty,
but because they don't have
that much skit.
(31:42):
So the reason I mentioned this is becauseevery country, Apart from America, even
America, look at Russia, Russia is onwar footing like it was in the 40s.
It has turned around its economyonto a wartime economy footing,
which means it can do what itwants for as long as it wants.
(32:03):
America, to be an ally of Americatoday is a, is not that easy a thing.
And the Europeans, you I'm afraidthat we in Europe are, to an
extent, like the kids in Berkeley.
We can no longer fathom the idea of war.
(32:26):
We can't believe
it.
Oh, okay, again, here'syour American cousin.
This is the way it looks to me.
Europe has two problems.
One of them is Vladimir Putin.
Poles, good looking,the Poles, the Baltics.
Amazingly enough, the Swedes.
(32:48):
But Germany can't move without, I begyour pardon, Europe can't move without
Germany and France and, alright.
So that's one problem.
The second problem is the one youwrote about in The Strange Death
of Europe, which has not abated.
Europe is depopulating very rapidly.
Every country in Europe, everysingle nation in Europe is well
(33:09):
below replacement birth rate.
And at the same time the Muslim populationrises and illegal migration rises
and the society changes all the time.
correct.
The statistic I read the other day thatjust shocked me is that by 2050 the
population of Africa, some, hard to knowhow much of this is a Muslim population,
but probably 60 percent of the gain, isprojected to rise by 1 billion people.
(33:34):
There are going to be many emptyvillages in Italy and France that
look very attractive to poor people.
From Sub Saharan, well fromany foot anywhere in Africa.
Are there not?
This is predictable.
It's in the press.
Vladimir Putin is there.
(33:55):
we have to make some decisionsabout how to protect our culture.
Is it worth protecting?
How do we handle immigrants?
What are the correctness?
And I just don't see.
None of them
are serious.
None
of
them are serious.
So, here I had a, to me, a shockingconversation with an, I will then shut
up because this is for you to speak andnot me, but this one just startled me.
(34:18):
And I'm wondering if itwas a representative.
I had a conversation with anIrish friend and I said, what?
I put all this to him.
What about immigration?
And the reply was,
El Andalus wasn't so bad.
When the, in the Muslim kingdomof Granada, when they ruled
(34:39):
the Southern third of Spain,the Christians lived in peace.
The Jews were permitted to live there andthe Muslims ran a rather tolerant society.
And maybe that option will be open to us.
So
has elite European opinion alreadyin effect surrendered to its own?
(35:00):
All right, so what's going on?
What is going on?
you can tell your Irish friendthe following message from me.
If he doesn't mind it so far, turnhim to focus on some of the negatives.
Let me give one negative.
(35:20):
The Muslim migrant to Irelandwho, last year, tortured and
beheaded three gay men in Ireland.
Ireland has often In the Republic?
In the Republic.
Ireland has had a fair shareof violence in its time.
(35:41):
If it wants to import more, it shouldtell the public that's the aim.
And your friend might say, onthe one hand, you get a bit of Al
Andalus, good luck with that dream.
And by the way, it wasn'ta good dream anyway.
Al Andalus was not greatfor Christians and Jews.
We were second class citizens.
Yes.
(36:02):
but okay.
If you're happy to live as a second classcitizen in your own country, do just
explain to the public that every nowand 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 andbe a man and say it.
He should say, we get such great thingsfrom diversity, we get more beheading
(36:23):
than we used to have in Ireland,but, swings and roundabouts, chaps.
Britain.
I'm leaving, I'm treating Britainseparately from Europe, which should
please you in the first place,because after Brexit, it is at
least formally separate from Europe.
Fourteen years of a Tory government.
(36:46):
There's going to be anelection this summer.
The present Prime Minister,Rishi Sunak, who is the How many?
David Cameron Bor One, two, threeThe fifth Tory in Fifth Tory
Prime Minister in these fourteenyears has called an election.
I put it to you, my Tory friend.
Careful.
Smallty conservative.
(37:07):
Do not Stick me with the grotesquething that is the Tory party.
Oh, is it that A That the Toryswon two historic victories.
They got Brexit throughand then they returned.
They went to the country and returnedwith a majority of, what was it, 88 seats?
80,
yeah, 80 seats.
Boris Johnson, Madison, 2019.
(37:28):
Yeah.
And after four.
And they had not the slightestidea what to do with either one.
And after 14 years, even everyTory, I know it can't be every Tory
full stop, but every Tory I knowis sick of the Tory government.
And willing to take a chance on labor,which is, whatever else it is going
to be cooler toward free enterprise.
(37:50):
We can't expect great leaps andbounds in the British economy.
We can't expect Britain to ascend tonew heights in its role in the world.
The United Kingdom isabout to go into a boom.
Deep freeze.
Is this fair?
Yes, it's generous.
the Labour Party is led by,Kirstein, a man whose idea of
(38:15):
leadership is to say he's a leader.
His, deputy Angela Rayner.
Remind
me never to cross you.
His deputy Angela Rayner isa person of zero distinction.
his shadow cabinet includes peoplelike David Lammy, the shadow
foreign secretary at the moment.
Might be foreign secretary.
Some years ago on a chat show, on a quizshow, David Lammie was asked who, I think
(38:38):
I've got this right, which monarch, hewas asked which monarch succeeded Henry
the fourth, and he said Henry the third.
So he has a problem even understandingwhich direction history goes in, and
in an interview on the radio lastyear he said that he understood that
it was possible for a man to becomea woman because of A man could, with
(38:58):
the right medical help, grow a cervix.
we are not dealing withthe brains of Britain here.
And, in fact, there's nobodyof distinction that I can see
in the shadow cabinet that'sabout to become the cabinet.
Every country in Europe, and maybeAmerica, is moving to the right.
And particularly in Europe,inevitable, with the immigration.
The one exception is Britain, and theone exception is Britain because for
(39:22):
14 years the Conservative Party hasmade a great horlicks of government.
the contempt, the loathing, thatmany people who ought to have the
Conservatives, sorry, who oughtto be supporting the Conservatives
actually have the Conservativesis not possible to exaggerate.
(39:44):
they wasted their time.
I said in an article in theSpectator recently that, Boris
Johnson reminded me of Dr.
Faustus in Christopher Marlowe's version.
Because Dr.
Faustus, if you remember,after selling his soul to
Mephistopheles, wastes his time,
pinches the nose of the Pope, andplays practical jokes on Japes.
(40:08):
And then your time is up, and you go.
Sells
his soul to the devil for nothing.
For nothing!
Why did Rishi Sunak Climbedthe greasy pole of politics.
Stabbed Boris Johnson, just as BorisJohnson has stabbed other people,
and Theresa May has stabbed people,and Liz Truss has stabbed people,
and David Cameron, and everyone else.
Why did Rishi Sunak climb throughpolitics, become Prime Minister,
(40:35):
in order, as far as I can see, hisflagship policy is to ban vaping?
I like to think that a countrycould have more ambition than that.
Alright, Douglas, theUnited States of America.
It was a dozen or 15 years agothat Mark Stein wrote a book.
(40:55):
Entitled, America Alone, and I confess,although the book was brilliantly
written and quite tightly argued, Ithought, and, Mark, we did an interview
on the show about the book, and, but Ithought, oh, this is a little bit, you're
being a provocate, a provocateur here,
(41:15):
but that's what it comes down to.
I, you tell me if I'm right or wrong,but we have China, we have Putin, we
have who knows where this is going to go.
In the Middle East, the ultimateproblem is not in Rafah, the
ultimate problem is in Tehran.
Yes.
(41:37):
Europe is in disarray, not all ofEurope, and not probably permanently.
You just said yourself the electoralsituation has to change, the
continent is moving to the right.
Goethe Wilders
is the most popularpolitician in the Netherlands.
Alright, there you have it.
The polls are, we've alreadybeen through this, the polls,
there are impressive governments.
France, Germany, France, Spain, alright.
(41:58):
So what do we make of the presentstate of American politics?
I think a lot of what you've justdescribed in the world is, I'm
sorry to say this, but is theabsence of American leadership.
Not a total absence, it has to be said.
I'm not the greatest fan of JoeBiden, but Joe Biden has armed his
(42:24):
allies and has occasionally madestrong noises on the world stage.
However, I think it's without doubtthat neither Vladimir Putin nor the
mullahs in Tehran fear Joe Biden.
Not really.
Before Joe Biden came to office,Donald Trump had almost completely
bankrupted the Iranians.
(42:44):
And Joe Biden has brought them backin, they've been flushed with cash,
sometimes literally, with the cash.
And, that's why they can afford to playwith their proxies like Hamas and things
like the 7th of October can happen.
Funded, armed, trained by Iran.
Why has Southern Lebanon got 15, or150, 000 Iranian rockets pointed at
(43:07):
Israel because after the 2006 conflict,which I was there for then as well,
the, UN Security Councilpassed a resolution 1701.
Which said that the area in thesouth of Lebanon that Hezbollah
were in, they must retreat fromand take their rockets with them.
And for the whole 18 yearssince the rockets have just come
(43:29):
back, they've just built up therocket supply and it's deadly.
I've seen many of these rockets beingshot 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.
As one, Israeli said to me,Israel and Hezbollah are on a
tandem bicycle going downhill.
(43:50):
And the question isn't when,isn't whether we crash, but when.
Now, this would not have happenedif America in particular had
put its foot down with Iran.
And you're telling me that what weAmericans are raised with, or what
we used to be raised with, what mygeneration was raised with, which is
(44:11):
that the world Needs a strong America.
Oh, you are telling me it's
true.
It's true.
It's lethal without, and even, theisolationist Republicans in America,
I have great criticisms of yes, but itdoes interest me that they both want
nothing to do with the world and yetto be the dominant power in the world.
(44:34):
Even the sort of Republican that is
the position I'd like myself,I don't think it's available,
but it's not available.
It's not
available.
the you can't do it.
Other people step in.
Okay.
Look at, look at the fact in thelast four years, Russia, Iran, and
China have stepped in everywhere.
(44:54):
And I'm not just talking militarily.
look at the way thatAfrica is being brought up.
Look at the way in which mineralresources are brought up across Africa.
The Americans on top of that are theEuropeans to anything like the stent.
The Chinese are, no, we'renot on top of any of this.
and this goes back to this centralthing, which is do the students
on American campuses realize?
(45:15):
That whilst they are being expensivelyeducated into idiocy and uselessness, for
each of them, there's a dozen studentsin China working their socks off to get
a lifestyle that these kids in Americaseem to think is their birthright.
It ain't their birthright.
It's not inevitable.
(45:35):
They only have these rights becausebetter men than them fought for them.
And if this generation of Americanswant to sit out The world.
Ha!
They can ask the people of Israel whathappens, what it's like when reality
comes and hits you as hard as anything.
(45:59):
Let me ask you one last questionabout the United States.
And, but give me a moment to set it up.
We, the United States,used to have armed forces.
It used to be American militarydoctrine that we ought to be able to
fight in two major theaters at once.
Jim Mattis, Secretary of State, Secretaryof Defense in the first couple of years
(46:21):
of the Trump administration recognizedthat 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, Ukraineand the North Atlantic.
Theater two, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon,and the Eastern Mediterranean.
(46:46):
Theater three, China,Taiwan, and the Pacific.
All of this could go bad very fast.
That's item one.
Here's item two.
I've done, I'm going to tryto be non partisan here, but
correct me if I move in one.
We have oddly enough, two incumbentsin some strange way running.
(47:09):
President Biden in his eighties,
let's put it as charitably as possible.
He's not quite as quick off themark as he was some years ago.
It's sad.
Your word.
And then we have Donald Trump who'sbeen indicted in one jurisdiction after
(47:32):
another, who is himself 77 years old.
And who seems erratic,unpredictable, all right.
But these seem to be the twelvewho you could, if you want
to toss in Robert Kennedy Jr.
there is this strange, I feel,
(47:53):
there's a kind of free floatinganxiety in the United States.
This is a really dangerous Moment.
Yeah.
And these are the choices.
wait, let's, withdraw from theworld and get, just get rich.
Oh, there are all kinds of strange.
let's find some third party camp.
So what would your word be?
(48:15):
As we enter the presidential?
This is springtime.
It'll be summer.
The election is in the autumn.
what would, what advice wouldyou give to American voters?
How should they weigh the reality asyou see it and make their decisions?
Yeah, I don't I don't like advisingpeople in countries I don't have
a vote in about how to vote.
(48:35):
there are some of us who hope that's onlya matter of time before you apply for
your, you apply for your citizenship.
But go ahead.
Yeah, I came as a signer.
I take the point.
but, there's one thing I justmentioned beforehand that you're,
completely right about these.
The idea that there could be threetheaters of operation in the coming years,
that, that is when American dominanceis completely tested and America has
(48:59):
to decide whether or not it's serious.
And there are a lot of people inAmerica who are not serious, left
and right, Republicans and Democrats.
But there's one other thing that hasto be said about that, which is a
lot of the energy on the right now istaken up by people saying, why can't
we even secure the southern border?
And why don't we do that beforelooking after other countries borders?
(49:19):
And I actually think, althoughit's a cheap rhetorical trick,
nevertheless, there's something in it.
There's something in it.
And I sometimes refute them by saying,do you honestly think that if America
weren't supporting our allies inUkraine and Israel, the money would
be going to the southern border?
(49:40):
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 Deathof Europe, which is, of course, not
just about Europe, but also aboutthe whole of the developed world.
Which is that the great challenge ofthis century will be precisely what you
(50:00):
referred to earlier, which is billionsof people who do not have our lifestyle,
they do not have our advantages.
They come from countries which arevery badly run, horribly run, corrupt,
impoverished, violent, and much more.
Not all of them, but that's prettymuch the norm in the developing world.
(50:21):
And they would like tolive in our countries.
Can we say no?
Now, Europeans are notvery good at saying no.
In the last 14 years, the ConservativeParty came to power in 2010 with a
promise from David Cameron that hewould bring the hundreds of thousands
of migrants a year, net, coming intothe UK, down to the tens of thousands,
(50:45):
which shouldn't be impossible.
It was where we were in the 1990s.
And you are an island, after all.
We're an island.
It's not as if we don't havesome natural advantages.
Yes.
and, I The immigration figures forlast year, in the last year of a Tory
government, were almost a million, net.
Fourteen years later.
Fourteen years later.
They were off by scales.
(51:07):
And, it's the same in America.
And people don't, a lot of people outsideAmerica don't understand this, but I
understand it inside America, as I knowyou do, and I think a lot of Americans do.
People coming across the southern border,flooding across the southern border,
millions of people coming to Americaillegally, is responded to with the
(51:34):
same inevitability, as Europe has done.
And it'll lead to the same thing.
It's
completely divorced from reality.
And it's
it's not just weak, what the politiciansare letting happen to our societies.
(51:58):
It's positively treacherous.
Because what they're doingis setting up an ever more
unstable society for their successors.
And some of the Democrats have saidto me, the people coming from Central
and South America are very like us.
(52:20):
They're Christians.
You want to see the footage?
Thank you.
Of who's coming acrossthe southern border now.
I was watching the other day andI was going through one of the
photos and everybody here seemsto be a Sub Saharan African.
the whole world is what I it's cheaperto get into America from Sub Saharan
Africa today, illegally, than itis to get illegally into Europe.
(52:42):
If you take a flight to Mexico fromAfrica, that's maybe a thousand bucks.
Maybe you spend 5, 000 bucks to a cartelto get you over the southern border.
That's a bargain.
And you're in America.
And America seems to be weaker thanEurope even now on the illegal migration.
(53:03):
So it's cheaper.
It might be 10, 000 to go to Europe.
So
is America to stealChris Caldwell's title?
Is America going to be the samewith different people in it?
you all just hope yes.
And the problem about that, it'slike the old, the old fallacy
of the, turkey, The turkey is,
(53:28):
had a good life and enjoys itselfin the field, wanders around.
One day after the next, seems charming.
People come and feed the turkeyand the turkey has a good life.
And then one day it's Thanksgiving.
And, so when, people say tome, and I've got to hear these
incredibly self satisfiedpeople all the time.
(53:52):
When they say thingslike, it's inevitable.
Or, It's just going to be thesame as what it was, Douglas.
What you're saying is alarmist, likewhat Mark Stein has said was alarmist.
It's just all going to be the same.
One day, it's Thanksgiving.
Last question.
The last time we recorded a program,just the two of us, we were talking
(54:17):
about the strange death of Yoruba,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, generallyfor 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
(54:40):
disruptions of artificial intelligencethat are going to be barreling at us.
How does one lead a good life?
I think I answered that beforein this very room by saying by
leading what was regarded asbeing a good life until yesterday.
And I would repeat that.
I'd add something to it.
I've changed a bit in the lastsix months, and some of my viewers
(55:04):
and readers have noticed it.
And I've changed because of what I'veseen in Israel, and the response,
and specifically the response ofyoung Israelis who have, there was
a sort of view among older Israelisthat the young generation was a bit
(55:25):
weaker, a bit soft, the years of peacehad done what years of peace always do.
And, they want to just party in Tel Aviv.
They want to go out to the clubs.
They want to be on Instagram andTikTok and that sort of thing.
And,
when the moment of test and trial came forthat generation, as it did on the seventh.
(55:53):
They'd be magnificent.
Magnificent.
I've seen them up close,I've seen them in the field.
I've seen people who've just lost,their comrades and they go straight
from the battlefield to a funeraland straight back to the battlefield.
These are remarkable young men and women.
Now, they understand something,which is very important.
(56:15):
And I said this a few weeksago at a speech in Manhattan.
But life, isn't just given to you.
Life is something you have to fight for.
You have to fight for the rightto be at the club in Tel Aviv, or
somebody else has to fight for you.
If you want to live a goodlife, either you fight for it,
(56:37):
or you expect somebody else to.
I believe very strongly today thatpeople in America, Europe, Britain,
the rest of the West, are goingto have to get serious very fast,
(56:58):
because something is going to happen.
I don't know what.
But something is going to happen inmy lifetime that is going to bring
the kind of reality that the peopleof Israel saw on the 7th to the
people of America, to the people ofEurope, to the people of Britain.
And we should prepare for that, andwe should prepare a generation for
(57:19):
that, and we should encourage them,not, they've got to break out of the
thing they're in, these ignoramuses,the narcissists, the navel gazers.
We've got to tell them thatthe age of grievance is over.
(57:39):
The age of grievance will be overwith an age of heroism and courage.
And we should encourage that, everybody.
And if these other people who want tohold us all back and want to make us
talk about things that are so banal andboring, like gender woo and I'm feeling
(57:59):
non binary, no, don't have time for you.
Get out the way.
Life's too serious.
Douglas Murray, thank you.
Thank
you.
For Uncommon Knowledge, the HooverInstitution, and Fox Nation,
shooting today from Fiesole,Italy, I'm Peter Robinson.
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