Good evening, and welcome to the final event of the INRAN Institute's 2002 lecture series. My name is Mark Chapman, and I'm the vice president of development for the Institute located here in Irvine, California. The INRAN Institute is a nonprofit organization, and all of our programs are funded by private donations from corporations, foundations, and by through the generosity of many individuals located around the United States and throughout the world. Tonight's lecture has been made possible by these contributors, and with this continued support, we look forward to offering many more of these lecture events. If you enjoy tonight's lecture, and you see the value in promoting the Institute's position on the Middle East conflict to an ever-widening audience, please consider making a contribution on your way out tonight. Thank you. Now a few brief announcements before we begin tonight's lecture. At the back of the room, we have information about the Institute's programs, as well as free literature on a number of topics for you to take home and read at your leisure. We have an extensive selection of INRAN's books and other publications available for purchase, including videotapes of our previous 2002 lectures, and you can pre-order a videotape of tonight's talk. You can also find out about how to have one of INRAN's speakers at your event, and you can sign up for an introductory evening course on INRAN's philosophy. Finally, we're pleased to announce that our lecture series will continue next year. The first lecture in the 2003 series will begin in February, and we encourage you, if you haven't already done so, to register in the back, and then you'll be on our mailing list, and we'll let you know about the next event when the date becomes available. Our speaker tonight is Dr. Yaron Brooke, President and Executive Director of the INRAN Institute. As a nationally recognized expert on current events, including foreign policy issues such as terrorism and the Middle East conflict, Dr. Brooke is regularly interviewed by the print, radio, and television media. He also lectures on terrorism and issues related to the Middle East at college campuses throughout the United States, including recent talks at Harvard, Columbia, and UCLA. Prior to coming to the United States, Dr. Brooke served in the Israeli Armed Forces, including assignments as a member of the Israeli Army Intelligence. He was also an award-winning university professor at Santa Clara University before coming to the INRAN Institute in 2000. Tonight's lecture is entitled, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, What is the Solution? We will hear from Dr. Brooke on whether Israel has a moral right to exist, on what the solution is to the conflict, and on which side of the battle America should stand. At the end of the lecture, Dr. Brooke will take questions from the audience, so please step up to the mic located here in the center of the room, if you have a question at that time. And now please join me in welcoming Dr. Yaron Brooke. Thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Can I be heard in the back? Great. Immediately after September 11th, many Arab and American commentators began blaming the attack on America's support of Israel. Our support, they have said time and again, has caused many in the Arab world to hate us. That hatred is justified, we are told, because America has been unfair in its dealings with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have sent the Israelis aid and sold them weapons, which they used to victimize the Arab population. We've been helping the Israelis oppress the Palestinians. For these sins, the argument runs, we are feeling the retribution of the Arabs. And before we deal with Iraq, we must first resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they say, lest we inflame the Arab world. Now, I believe that there is indeed a connection between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and September 11th. But that the common explanation that we just heard is false. Yes, America has indeed incited terrorists to attack us, but for reasons other than those commonly offered. I also believe that in our battle against terrorism and against Iraq, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is crucial. But again, not in the way that these pundits suggest. Now, this is the topic for tonight. What is the appropriate solution for this conflict? Now, as you will see, I do not advocate compromise. I do not advocate appeasement. On the contrary, if America is serious about its war on terrorism, it must encourage Israel to take a first step towards resolving the conflict by destroying Palestinian terrorism once and for all. Now, to understand why I advocate this and what it means in practice, we will first discuss the nature of this conflict. Now, many people understandably are confounded by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the key to understanding this issue is to grasp the importance of morality. I believe that the immoral is impractical, that no practical solution can be divorced from morality. Thus, this conflict cannot be understood and no solution can be proposed without identifying the moral character of each party and treating it that party accordingly. Therefore, I want to step back from the endless newspaper headlines and dig deeper into the conflict. I want to begin by asking the question, who is wrong and who is right? Whom should America support? Having looked at both parties, we then have to evaluate the solution that is being tried today, the so-called peace process. It hinges on the demand that Israel broke a diplomatic deal with its professed enemies. Considering that the peace process started nearly a decade ago and considering the fierce violence that has ensured since then, one has to ask, why has the peace process failed? Now, many commentators claim that the peace process is good in theory. It's a noble approach they say. But that one side or another, depending on where your sympathies happen to lie, has failed to show the requisite commitment to it. I will argue that the failure of the peace process is inevitable and that if we continue to follow it, the conflict will only escalate. This will ultimately mean suicide for Israel and long-term suicide for America. What happens in Israel has dramatic effect, dramatic impact on the United States and the way we deal with it will significantly impact our own security. As the commentator Daniel Pipes wrote before September 11th, quote, Israel's perceived weakness is now an American problem and the aggressive euphoria being expressed by the Arab-speaking masses poses a direct danger to the United States, unquote. Now, we saw the magnitude of that danger on September 11th. We see it in the weekly suicide bombings on the streets of Israel. So to begin tonight, I want to expose and consider the premise at the heart of the peace process, the premise behind the demand that Israel and the Palestinians sit down together at a negotiating table. That premise is that Israel and the Palestinians are morally equal. But are they? So let's begin by looking at the conflict and specifically the moral character of each party involved. In this conflict, which side should America take? Whose right? In essence, does Israel have a right to exist? The answer to that is yes without question. Now, let me be clear here. Israel's right to exist has nothing to do with ancient or biblical history. It has nothing to do with religious or so-called collective rights. There is no such thing as collective rights, Jewish, Palestinian, or any other. Israel's right to exist lies in that Israel created itself out of nothing.  Israel's right to exist is based on its moral standing as a free state. Now, when the first Jewish immigrants came to Palestine, it was a barren, uncivilized place. As Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867, wrote, Palestine was, quote, a desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over holy to weeds. A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with a pump of life and action. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country, unquote. Indeed, at the end of the 19th century, the population was sparse, swamps were everywhere, and over half the territory was desert. The new immigrants bought land and on that land, they built cities. They dried swamps and they cultivated desert. They brought in irrigation, grew crops, and in general conquered nature for their own ends. They reclaimed land, built villas, swimming pools, and modern sanitation. They built universities, upper houses, and theaters to an area of nomadic tribes and subsidence farmers, the Jews brought industries, libraries, hospitals, art galleries, higher education, and the rule of law. In short, they brought western civilization to a mid-eastern hellhole. They transformed Palestine from backward and sparsely populated piece of land into a thriving, relatively western, civilized place. Like 19th century homesteaders in American West, Israel's founders earned the right to the land. They supported themselves. They created a society in which life was not merely a struggle for survival, but one in which men could live in freedom and prosper. It was a society, despite some flaws, that built the foundations that protect and sustain human life. Thus it was in essence a moral society. Now what was the reaction of the inhabitants in the area who witnessed Israel's flowering? How did the Arabs of the Middle East respond? For the most part, with violence. Instead of thanking these new inhabitants for the economic prosperity and political freedom that they brought for the hospitals and universities that they built from very early on, the Arabs harassed, attacked, and tried to rid themselves of these new immigrants. Now you might suppose that they had legitimate grievances, such as the widely believed story that the Israelis who came to Palestine before 1948 displaced the Arab population. Now this is false. Israelis bought the lands they developed or settled an unclaimed land. Indeed before Israel's founding in 1948, there was an influx of Arabs into Palestine drawn there by the unmatched jobs and standard of living, generally drawn there by the economic opportunities available in the developing state. With the drying of the swamps, the establishment of utilities, and the building of hospitals, in addition to employment opportunities, the quality of life of the Arab population improved and with it, there was a significant increase in life expectancy. To the extent that the Arab population in Israel has been willing to accept the values that these Westerners brought with them, they have thrived and succeeded. The material evidence of this is visible in the relatively high standard of living to be found in many Arab villages in Israel. And by the fact that many Arabs, when they return from visiting their relatives in Syria, Egypt, or Jordan, bless Allah for being born in Israel. These Arabs are far freer in Israel than in any Arab country. They vote, they serve in parliament, they even serve in the Israeli cabinet. Some serve in the Israeli army fighting to preserve their freedoms. Yet this makes no difference to the rest of the Arab world. In spite of being offered a Palestinian state as part of the United Nations resolution that established Israel, the Palestinians joined the armies of seven Arab states in war, invading Israel the day it declared its independence in May of 1948. Since then Israel has been under constant attack from its Arab neighbors.  Now given that the Arabs are far better off under Israeli rule than in any other Middle Eastern country, given that they have no real objective historical grievances against Israel, why do they not try to emulate Israel's success instead of attacking it? What is their motivation? When a person sees that a different culture can produce a much better life, greater knowledge, greater comfort and security, greater respect for the individual than his own culture, he has two choices. He can adopt the new culture as a blessing or he can seek to destroy it and ultimately destroy himself. The Arabs are guilty of what Ein Rand called hatred of the good for being the good. As she wrote in another context, quote, they do not want to own your fortune. They want you to lose it. They do not want to succeed. They want you to fail. They do not want to live. They want you to die, unquote. If you've ever wondered about the motivation of a suicide bomber, well there you have it. As the commentator, Dr. Edwin Locke writes, the Palestinians, quote, hate the Israelis not because of their vices but because of their virtues, their ability to better their lives by embracing reason, science, technology, and individual rights. Israel, despite its own growing crop of religious mystics, represents the triumph of secularism and freedom in the Middle East. Israel stands for the principle of progress of life itself, unquote. This is what makes Israel a moral country. It's pro-life, pro-freedom, pro-reason, essential nature. And this is also the reason for the fierce hatred against it. Now according to the ethics of Ein Rand's philosophy, the philosophy of objectivism, a good man is one who lives by the guidance of reason. He lives for the sake of his own happiness, achieving his own ends by his own effort, neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself. A moral state is one that protects a man's right to pursue his own ends, that secures his freedom to act and that protects his property.  Now in essential terms, Israel is such a country and therefore has a moral right to exist. Yet many of the Arabs in Palestine and the surrounding areas, particularly the Arab leadership and the Arab intellectuals, hated these Westerners and the values that they represented. They objected, as they still do today, to the very formation of an Israeli state. Now although the Arabs are the aggressors, they portray themselves as the victims. I say no, regardless of its victories. Israel is in the right. It is the victim. It has always been the target of aggression. The wars it has waged and the territories it has conquered were consequences of active aggression against it, consequences of Israel acting in its own self-defense. But the problem here is not merely that the Arabs claim to be the victims, it is that America, like many other countries, accepts that Israel and her aggressors are morally equal. That in this conflict, both sides have legitimacy. Now I have argued that Israel is a moral party that is a state that protects individual rights and freedom. It alone is entitled to invoke the right to exist. American foreign policy should reflect this fact. Now while Israel's right to exist and its position as a moral country are valid, in the interest of objectivity, I should say that I have many reservations regarding the state of Israel. Briefly, as I mentioned, there is no collective right to a state. And as a consequence, it is a mistake for Israel to identify itself and consider itself a Jewish state. Indeed, Israel's biggest flaw is its lack of complete separation between state and religion. In addition, its socialistic policies violate the individual rights of its citizens and have driven many Israelis to leave the country and obviously held it back economically. However, these detriments by no means undercut Israel's value as a country or the morality and righteousness of their position in the Middle East. And this is especially true when compared to their neighbors. So to sum up here, Israel is the victim. It has earned the right to its land by establishing an outpost of Western civilization in a wasteland. Israel is a free country that created itself out of nothing. And from the start, the Arabs have been their aggressors. Now given that as our context, how should we view the Palestinians? And particularly, they claim that they, not the terrorized Israelis, are the victims. Well, let's consider the evidence. What can be said of their supposedly historical grievances against Israel? Despite their claim that they are the victims of a Zionist plot to strip them of their land, the Palestinians were their aggressors in the 1948 war, they turned down the offer of establishing their own state alongside Israel, a larger state, by the way, than that which they demand today for themselves. Rejecting that offer, they opted to join Israel's enemies in the goal of erasing it from the map. When the Arab armies invaded Israel in May of 1948, the Palestinians joined them. At the time, what they sought was not the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. What they sought was the destruction of Israel. A secretary general of the Arab League, Azam Fasha, made clear in 1948, quote, the Arabs intend to conduct a wall of extermination and momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades, unquote. So the fact that there is no Palestinian state today is not the fault of Israel. Rather, by rejecting the offer of establishing a state in 1948 and then initiating force against the Israelis, the Arabs negated whatever rights they might have had to a state of their own. Now, what about the claim that the Palestinians were displaced, turned into refugees by the Israelis in the 1948 war? A large majority of Palestinians fled out of fear of the violence their own leaders were initiating. Many, particularly the community leaders, the rich and the intellectuals, fled before any hostilities begun. It was not necessarily the Jews they feared, but the conflict itself. In some cases, Palestinians left their home because of coercion by their own leadership. While Israel did occasionally drive out small numbers of Palestinians, this was due mainly to unplanned military considerations. Indeed, the dominant attitude among Palestinians at the time in the late 1940s, early 50s, was that they had been victims of their own leadership, who had deserted them and had promised them a quick return home, rather than victims of Israeli hostility. As the historian Yoshua Parat writes, quote, the 1948 war was launched by the Arabs who rejected the United Nations partition solution. Those who begun the war are responsible for its consequences, including the expulsion of Arabs from places where their continued presence could have constituted a mortal danger to the young state of Israel fighting for its survival, unquote. Also note that Israel offered to take back 100,000 Palestinian refugees in 1949, but that offer was rejected by the Arab states. Since then, these same Arab states have done nothing to help these refugees. They have treated them poorly and used their existence as a political tool and for public relations. If the Palestinians had accepted the founding of two states in Palestine, or if they had not fled their homes, no refugee problem would have arisen. Indeed, the Jewish leadership based all their ensuing decisions, based on their assumption that the Palestinians would remain equal citizens in the Jewish state. As David Ben-Gurion, who would go on to be Israel's first prime minister, told the leadership of his party in 1947, quote, in our state, there will be non-Jews as well as Jews, and all of them will be equal citizens, equal in everything without exception. That is, the state will be their state as well. So by looking back at history, we see that the Arabs have been the aggressors. They have been the initiators of force. But some people argue that that was the past, and the Palestinians have suffered enough, and they have changed, and now they deserve a state. Well, let's go back to the evidence. In what way have they changed? Do they now recognize the right of Israel to exist? Have they accepted the fact that the initiation of force is not a means of negotiating? Absolutely not. The Palestinians have chosen the worst, most lowly form of violence to pursue their cause, indiscriminate terrorism. And for their leaders, they have chosen some of the bloodiest terrorists in history. Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization have a long history of terrorism and violence. Over a span of 35 years, Arafat and the PLO have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israeli, American, Lebanese, and Palestinian civilians. Arafat has orchestrated the kidnapping and murder of Israeli schoolchildren, the hijacking of airliners, countless car bombings, and death squad killings. In recent years, Arafat has been using Hamas and Islamic jihad as the arms of terrorism, while he has pretended to be a peacemaker. Every Israeli compromise has been met with more violence. Violence used as a tool to pressure Israel to make even more concessions. Indeed, a Palestinian state under current conditions spells doom for Israel, because any such state will serve as a beachhead for terrorist activity against it. Arafat's ultimate goal is not a small Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, Arafat aims at the whole of Israel. A Palestinian state is just a first step. The desire of the Palestinian leadership not to make peace with Israel but to erase it from the map is made further evident when one listens to the radio stations sanctioned by the Palestinian authority or when one reads the textbooks from which the Palestinian children are being taught. As a commentator, Daniel Pipes has observed, quote, school curricula, camp activities, TV programming, and religious indoctrination all portray Israelis in a Nazi style way as subhuman beings worthy of killing, unquote. As illustration in a televised public sermon in June of 2001, a Palestinian religious leader declares, quote, God willing, this unjust state of Israel will be erased. This unjust state of the United States will be erased, unquote. It is well documented that the textbooks used in Palestinian schools are filled with vile anti-Semitism. They are also filled with the rejection of any legitimacy for the state of Israel and that to quote such a book, quote, there is no alternative to destroying Israel, unquote. Or in a fifth grade Arabic language text, quote, remember, the final and inevitable result will be the victory of the Muslims over the Jews, unquote. And on a popular children's TV show on Palestinian TV, a little girl sings in Arabic, quote, oh sing my sister constantly about my life as a suicide warrior, unquote. As a teacher cheers on, bravo, bravo. Now these are a few of the many, many examples of the fierce hatred with which the Palestinian schools indoctrinate their youth. No surprise that Hamas and Islamic jihad have an easy time finding young Palestinians willing to give up their lives to make these ideas come true. Thus there is every reason to believe that the Palestinian leadership views a state in the West Bank and Gaza as just one step towards the complete annihilation of the state of Israel. Indeed, Arafat himself has repeatedly said to his own people that any compromise with Israel is just one step towards the ultimate goal of an Arab Palestinian state that replaces Israel. His continued sponsorship and use of terrorism and rejection of any deals proves, I think, his ultimate goal. By choosing the road of violence against peaceful free countries and preaching the virtues of violence to young Palestinians, Arafat and his regime has forfeited any legitimacy, any claim they might have had to a country. Only a morally bankrupt world would grant such a man the Nobel Peace Prize as they did in 1994. But some say that the violence is all the result of the occupation. If given a state of their own, things would be different. Well, what can we expect if they have their own sovereign state? Can we expect a peace-loving, freedom-loving Palestinian country? Will it share the West's respect for the rights of its own citizens? Well, let's consider the track record of the current Palestinian Authority, the temporary governing body of the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories. Arafat is dictator of the Palestinian Authority in everything but title. Palestinians live in constant fear of having their property arbitrarily confiscated by Arafat's corrupt police. Laws prohibiting free speech are common and are enforced brutally. To silence those who oppose them, Arafat shuts down radio and TV stations. Indeed, Palestinian media that was free to express itself under Israeli rule is now forced to toe Arafat's party line. When Palestinian journalists stray, they are detained, tortured, and sometimes murdered. Hundreds of dissenters of all stripes have suffered such a fate under Arafat's regime. In recent reports, the media have finally focused on another form of barbarism that the Palestinian Authority is engaged in. The torture and murder of so-called collaborators. Just a couple of months ago, a middle-aged mother of six and her niece were brutally tortured and murdered by the authorities for supposedly collaborating with Israel. How did they know that this woman was a collaborator? Because a relative under extreme torture accused these two women. Now, this has been going on for over 10 years in the West Bank and Gaza, where even selling land to a Jew is reason for execution. Arafat's current regime is barbaric and oppressive, when can logically predict that conditions in an independent Palestinian state would be worse than they presently are, since they will not be under such fierce international scrutiny. Viewed in this context of dictatorial rule, the alleged right of Palestinians to self-determination is groundless. No group has a right to its own state if what it seeks is a dictatorship. Arafat's Palestinian self-determination really means more of Arafat's despotism. It means granting legitimacy to a state that is utterly hostile to its own citizens. As Ein Rand wrote, quote, the right of the self-determination of nations applies only to free societies or to society seeking to establish freedom. It does not apply to dictatorships. The only, unquote, the only legitimate reason to found a new state is to escape tyranny and secure freedom. That's America's founding fathers rightly fought for independence from England's oppressive rule. The United States was founded on the recognition of individual rights. What the Palestinians desire, however, is the right to be rightless serfs in a state run by a ruthless dictator. Nobody, nobody has the right to create such a state. Palestinians will be better off staying under Israeli rule, as some Palestinians admit when safe to do so, where their rights are protected to a much greater extent than under the Palestinian Authority's authoritarian regime. Indeed, Palestinians rely on the relative economic freedom and prosperity offered in Israel to make a living. They protest every time Israel closes its borders and they are out of work. In contrast to what is what has been achieved in Israel, the Palestinians have created nothing, not under Jordanian rule, pre-1967 and not since. Israel offers Palestinian more precious values than economic ones. What Arab country? What Arab country gives its inhabitants the liberty to protest, to publish articles and books opposing the government, as many Jews and Arabs do? What Arab country has free elections or judicial system in which all are treated equally before the law? In what Arab country can so-called occupied people rely on the law and protest their fate all the way to the Supreme Court, as those Palestinians and Israeli control still can? No Arab country does these things. In Israel, Palestinians have more freedom and more economic opportunities than in any Arab country in the world. And then they could possibly expect in a future Palestinian state run by the PLO or some other dictatorial group. If the choice is between a Palestinian state run by terrorists like Arafat and remaining under Israeli rule, the latter is by far the better option. If Palestinians were serious about having their own free state, they would start by deposing and arresting Yasir Arafat for his crimes against his own people. In place of the terrorists now representing them, Palestinians would send to the negotiating table representatives who believe in and honor individual rights, leaders who plan to establish a free, civilized country where violence is at horde and suppressed. Palestinians should treat Israel as an older and wiser neighbor from whom they have much to learn, rather than as an enemy to be destroyed. Only when Palestinians are willing to negotiate with Israel on such terms will they have earned the right to a state of their own. Of course, at that point, it's unclear that they really need one. To summarize, the Palestinians have no right to a state. Since they have not created one and when one was offered to them on a silver platter, they rejected it. They have resulted in violence against a free and civilized country repeatedly as a means of attaining their goal. They still pursue the complete destruction of Israel. A Palestinian state would be nothing but a brutal dictatorship, a horrible outcome for Palestinians and a base for terrorism against Israel and the United States. Now, we've looked at both sides of this conflict. Before asking how it should be resolved, let's turn to the solution that is now being tried. That is the so-called peace process. It should be no surprise that it has been a complete disaster. Just as the moral is practical, so the immoral is impractical, at the heart of the peace process is the destructive premise that there is a moral equivalence between Israel and its enemies. But as we have seen Israel and the Palestinians are not moral equals. Israel is in the right. The Palestinians are the aggressors. And any compromise between good and evil means bleeding the good and feeding the evil. Although the land for peace doctrine, which is the essence of the peace process, seems to offer a mutually advantageous settlement. It is a deception. A necessary condition for peace is the cessation of Arab violence, particularly terrorism. But to attain it, Israel is supposed to surrender territories crucial to its continued existence. Territories that were won in a war instigated by the Arab countries in 1967. To attain land, however, the Arabs are supposed to concede nothing. They need only withdraw the use of force. Like any aggressor, they are in essence holding the Israelis hostage. And like any victim, Israel, by paying the ransom, gains no value that it did not already have a right to. The implication of such a so-called trade, sanctioned by both America and Israel for 30 years, implicit in this idea is that Israel is in the wrong, that it is the aggressor, and that it owes restitution to the Arabs. Now here again, we see the moral inversion of having the victim pay the aggressor. Far from securing peace, compromises only weaken Israel and embolden its enemies. When Nazi Germany was appeased in 1938 by being allowed to claim Czechoslovakia as part of the Aryan people's homeland, just an earlier version of land for peace, the result was to encourage Hitler to start a world war. Thirty years of the land for peace doctrine have left Israel in an undeclared war with the Palestinians and their supporters. Since Arafat was invited back into the West Bank and Gaza in 1994, Israel has seen nothing but an intensification of violence and hatred against it. Two years ago, Israel's prime minister was invited by President Clinton to Camp David to seek a peace with Yasser Arafat. Israel caved. It offered Arafat 97% of the land that he demanded. Arafat flatly rejected Arafat, and shortly thereafter, we saw a massive Palestinian uprising that shows no sign of stopping. Since then, Israel's 6 million citizens have suffered over 12,500 terrorist attacks. They have buried more than 500 victims of per capita death toll, more than six times that of America on September 11th. Escalation of violence is the consequence of dealing, negotiating, compromising with terrorists. It is a consequence of rewarding violence, the consequence of the peace process. Since the start of this process, Israel has appeared and acted weak. It has dealt with the Palestinians with kid gloves. It withdrew in humiliating fashion from Lebanon. It has shown ever-weakening moral assuredness in its cause. How many last opportunities has Israel given Yasser Arafat? How many times has it sworn to end Palestinian terrorism? Israel's concessions, Israel's weakness rather than discouraging hostility have indeed made it worse and done Israel a great harm. Now, much of this harm, much of the compromise, much of the appeasement has been at the urging of Israel's number one so-called ally, the United States. It was America that prompted Israel to begin negotiating with Arafat in 1993 and since then, it has pressured Israel to give more and more, culminating in the complete Israeli capitulation in Camp David two years ago. Over the last two years, every time Israel has acted in itself defense against the Palestinian Authority, it is the Bush administration that keeps holding them back and forcing them to retreat. This in spite of the fact that every such retreat only emboldens the terrorists and there's an immediate spike in the number of suicide bombings. It is outrageous that in the midst of its own war on terrorism, the U.S. is forcing Israel to negotiate and compromise with arch terrorists. In spite of the fact that when Israel is tough terrorism against the declines, America continues to rebuke Israel when it acts in self-defense. Note how the U.S. has pressured Israel into withdrawing from Arafat's compound twice during the last year. Or notice the scandal over Israel's assassination of Hamas terrorist leader Salah Shadida. The Palestinian Authority refused to arrest him, even though he was responsible for organizing and funding suicide murders. The scale of his evil is comparable to that of bin Laden. As Israel rightly pointed out, it was acting to protect its citizens from this wicked man. The day after the bombing, which killed Shadida and 14 others, Israel called the mission a success. President Bush, however, sharply condemned it as heavy-handed and a barrier to peace. Bush was not alone in his condemnation, echoing him with the leaders of Europe, the U.K. included, and the U.N. General Secretary. The British called it unacceptable and counterproductive. 48 hours later, Israel issued a mealy-mouthed apology for the attack. Now, that, I submit, is not the face of a country, certain of its own moral right to defend itself, nor is such criticism from the U.S. the action of a true ally. Now, not only is America doing an enormous injustice to Israel, but it is also committing an enormous injustice to its own citizens. By weakening Israel, America has damaged its own national interest. America has been popping up regimes around the Middle East that have supported terrorism and anti-American actions. It has done nothing in response to Islamic terrorism against U.S. interests. And how could it? When, for years, it has been telling Israel that it had no right to do the same. The U.S. has sacrificed its Western ally, the one island of civilization in the Middle East, in the name of what? In the name of appeasement, in the name of short-term pragmatic gain. America has hoped for decades that if it is nice to the Arabs, they will support America. They have hoped that by being in pressure on Israel, by arming the Egyptians, the Saudis and the Jordanians, that they would gain friends in the Middle East. They hoped that this will secure the oil supply and reduce the threat of terrorism. Well, this has failed. The tragic fact is that America's relationship with Israel did make September 11th possible. Evident in our advice to Israel, in our advocacy for the peace process, in our endless calls for Israel to appease its enemies. Evident in America's actions is our own moral weakness. Bin Laden had ample evidence to believe that the U.S. would not retaliate in any significant fashion. After all, haven't we for decades told Israel to appease a terrorist regime? If Arafat, the father of international terrorism, could be invited to the White House, what would America possibly do to other terrorists? If America stopped Israel from retaliating against Arafat, how could it morally justify retaliating against its own terrorists? If Israel is unjustified in assassinating Hamas terrorist leaders, how can America justify assassinating its own terrorist nemesis? This hypocrisy, this double standard, can only weaken America's moral confidence in its war on terrorism and embolden its enemies. American pressure on its Western ally to compromise and appease can be interpreted in only one way, that America holds compromise and appeasement as supreme, that if attacked, it is likely to negotiate rather than retaliate. Indeed, just as we forbid Israel to retaliate against terrorist attacks, so we have done nothing in response to Islamic terrorism against U.S. interests for decades. Do you recall what we did in retaliation for the attacks on the USS Cole, or the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or the bombing of the Marine barracks in Saudi Arabia, or the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, or the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, or the suicide murder of 244 Marines and their barracks in Beirut in 1983? Do you recall what we did? Or probably you don't, because we did nothing. That's not only is America seen to be a paper tiger. Based on its actions, in fact, it is a paper tiger. As the commentator, Norman Port Horitz writes, quote, the sheer audacity of what bin Laden went on to do on September 11th was unquestionably a product of contempt for American power, a persistent refusal for so long to use that power against him and his terrorist brethren reinforced his conviction that we were a nation on the way down, destined to be defeated, unquote. Bush's announcement after September 11th that he supports a Palestinian state further undermines his credibility in the fight against terrorism. How can he, on the one hand, reward an arch terrorist and create a new terrorist sponsoring state, and on the other hand, claim to seek the eradication of all terrorism from the world? Now, this hypocrisy is not missed on the Arab world or by people like bin Laden and is viewed as further evidence of American weakness and corruption. A year ago, President Bush proclaimed an ultimatum to the world, either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. Although Israel is clearly with us, we have all too often treated it as if it were against us. America's critics say, oh, September 11th to its support of Israel. Yes, America short-sighted, unprincipled support of Israel has in fact done untold harm to Israel and untold harm to American interests, both abroad and at home. A failing was not. A failing was that we did not provide Israel the true victim in the conflict with enough support. A failing was that we were moral cowards. We feared declaring one side of the conflict evil and the other side good. Being moral cowards in politics means that we counsel and practice appeasement towards our enemies. Terrorists can smell our weakness. If they struck us as no surprise, our failings have invited such attacks. There is no such thing as a peace process. Peace cannot be achieved by the just compromising with its enemies. Peace requires that the perpetrator of violence, the initiator of force, stop all acts of aggression and prove over time and with unequivocal evidence that it has truly forsaken violence. Only then can peace be discussed. Every attempt in history to circumvent this requirement has landed in disaster. Now I want to turn now to what I think is a principled rational solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We've seen how by weakening Israel, by repeatedly forcing Israel to appease Arafat, we broadcast loud and clear that terrorism can bring America to its knees and in fact terrorism did that on September 11th. Indeed, we must recognize that our war today is the same war that Israel has been fighting for 50 years, that Israel's fate and ours are inextricably linked. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become a dress rehearsal for a wider global conflict. The proper approach for America and for Israel is sweeping retaliation against terrorism, retaliation that must be principled and consistent, retaliation that must grind to dust whoever dares threaten our lives, retaliation that must broadcast loudly that violence does not pay, that we stand tall for our values and that we have the courage to defend our own self-interest. To achieve that practical end, we must adopt the following principles as guides to our actions. First, let's look at what Israel should do and then at the U.S. Israel must recognize the morality of its cause, the fact that it is the victim, that it is in the right. It must recognize that the current Palestinian leadership is evil, that it seeks death and destruction, that there can be no compromise with such men. Thus Israel must cease all negotiations with the Palestinians. Compromise between the good and evil means that the good is sacrificed to the evil, that the innocent are blood to feed the guilty. We see the consequence of such compromises daily in the blood that flows in Israel's streets. Just as it would be suicidal for America to compromise with bin Laden by letting him achieve a partial destruction of the United States, so it is suicidal for Israel to compromise with the Palestinians. Israel must recognize its right to defend itself in this conflict that is acting in self-defense against a brutal enemy. It has the moral right and obligation to use whatever force is needed to quell the violence and neutralize the dangers from the Palestinians. One cannot reason with someone bent on a suicide bombing. One has to destroy him before he causes harm. The U.S. must allow and encourage Israel to destroy Palestinian terrorism once and for all. Israel must recognize that it is the Palestinians that initiated the force, that they are the villains, and that Israel owes them nothing. Whatever right the Palestinians might have had to a state of their own, they have negated by their own actions. If the Palestinians are serious about peace, they must prove it, not only in words but in action. They must mature politically. They must show that they respect individual rights. The Palestinians must demonstrate that they are capable of peaceful coexistence with Israel, not merely for seven days as some of the peace process advocates used to hope for. No, the Palestinians must demonstrate their long-term commitment to peace. And so far as the Palestinians demonstrate their willingness to live in harmony with Israel, to respect the rights of its citizens, and to abide by the rule of law rather than the rule of the jungle, only to that extent should Israel contemplate negotiations. Negotiations are appropriate only when both sides agree on the basic premise that persuasion, not force, is the proper means of dealing with men. Only when they aggressors the Palestinians have shown a well-founded, unqualified commitment to peace will it be appropriate to consider them as negotiating partners. But to do all this, Israel needs America's support, not financial or military, but moral and diplomatic. This is necessary for Israel, but equally necessary for America in its war. Ultimately, a strong, confident Israel is vital to U.S. interests in the Middle East. It is crucial to the battle against terrorism, to the elimination of unconventional weapons in the hands of despots like Saddam Hussein and to the protection of the flow of oil from the Middle East. America's unequivocal support of Israel will send a message that we support our allies in deeds, not just in words, that we support the Western values that our allies share with us. More fundamentally, by supporting our allies on principle, we broadcast loudly that we oppose terrorism absolutely on principle and in action. The U.S. must make it clear that it is not view Israel in its Arab neighbors as morally equal. Israel is a free, western, and peaceful state, and as such is America's only true ally in a region dominated by despotism. Only Israel shares America's values and can be counted on in a true crisis. The quality of our alliances with such countries as Saudi Arabia and Egypt is now being made clear during this current crisis. These are regimes we cannot trust. These are regimes that have been turning a blind eye to Islamic terrorism against the West, and in some cases are actually financing that terrorism. America's moral evaluation must be made explicit and clear. America should also make sure that Israel maintains its military superiority in the area. This can be achieved by eliminating the military assistance America provides Arab countries like Egypt. It is important to the U.S. that Israel be perceived by the Arab world as strong, indestructible, and supported 100 percent by the United States, especially after September 11th. America must assert itself in the Middle East. As part of our war on terrorism, the United States must, at a minimum, seek out and capture and kill terrorist leaders wherever they might be hiding. America must take out regimes that support, sponsor, and finance militant Islamic terrorists. They should start with Iran, the ideological bastion of militant Islam, and the number one supporter of terrorism in the world today, and also a country by the way where there is a pro-Western revolution in the making. But regimes in Syria and Iraq must also be dealt with. They must either stop supporting terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction or suffer the consequences. And even Saudi Arabia, America's so-called ally, must be confronted and forced to halt its financing of terrorism. Where possible, pro-Western and if possible representative governments should be encouraged to replace these regimes. A U.S. that unequivocally supports Israel and that pursues its interests confidently and forcefully in the Middle East will gain respect in the Arab world. It will be perceived as a power that should not be fooled with. It will show the world that we are committed to the values of Western civilization, that we will defend them to our last breath, and that we will not yield. Such uncompromising commitment to freedom and to Western values is our most powerful weapon, ultimately. Peace will come to the Arab world, to the Middle East, only when they adopt Western values. The values of reason, individual rights, and freedom. Until the Arab populace is free, free of political enslavement by their own governments, and free from the mysticism of Islamic fundamentalism, no peace is going to be possible. Only when the Arab world experiences the equivalence of the Renaissance, a rediscovery of reason will it rise above its Middle Ages culture. Whether they like it or not, the solution to Arab poverty, to Arab political plight, to Arab frustration is the West, and what it represents. Not the West's destruction, as Bin Laden suggests, but the West's victory, the adoption of the West by the East. For this to happen, we in the West must first believe in our own values. If we continue to reject our own Western heritage, we can expect little from the rest of the world. A rediscovery, a renaissance of reason is first needed here. We must rediscover our values and reignite the just pride we once had in them. The future of the world depends on it. Thank you. I'll now take questions. My name is Jacob Saber. I am a victim of Israel. My town is Liddah, which is now Liddah. Yes, the Israeli invaded my town in 1948 in July, and they took me for three days to work with the army. And then when I come back to my home, I didn't find my family. They all being evacuated. Then I told the officer, yes, I want to stay here. Where is my family? They told me, we want your home for the Jews. We don't want you. Therefore, I am victim of the Israelis. Now you mentioned all the Israeli what goods. Who bombed the King David Hote? Who killed Count Bernadotte, the peacemaker? Who killed 29 warshipers in Hebron Mosque in Rabadan, Goldstein, and you called him a hero. You didn't mention these. Only you mentioned. Sure. I'd be happy to mention all of them. I want you to be true. Absolutely. I don't want you to be one-sided. Well, but the truth is one-sided. Yes. Yes. By July of 1948, seven, let me finish. I let you speak. Now let me finish. Seven Arab armies that invaded Israel. Israel did not, did not start this war. In 1947, in November of 1947, when the partition plan was announced by the UN, the Jews danced in the streets. The Arabs met to devise a plan to eliminate the Jews, to drive them into the sea. The people who started the war in 1948 are the Arabs. That is undisputable history. The people who start a war are responsible for its consequences. The people who start a war cannot later claim to be the victims because they started the war. Now I know that not all the Arabs in Palestine wanted that war. There were many Arabs, primarily what I would call the common man. We're not interested. They were friendly with the Jews. They didn't want this war, but they suffer the consequence of their leader's actions. And when you start a war, you suffer the consequences. Now King David Hotel. The King David Hotel was at the time the headquarters of the British occupying army in Palestine who was not leaving. It was bombed after a phone call was made to the hotel, telling them there was a bomb in the hotel and asking them to evacuate. The, what else did you mention? A chevron, Goldstein or whatever his name was, is a criminal and sits today in jail in Israel and I wish they would execute him. No, he's not a criminal. He was killed in the, that's right. He was killed. If he hadn't been killed, what would have happened to him? He would have been, he would have sat in Israeli jail and if Israel had the death sentence, he would have been killed.  He gives them awards and he gives their families money to compare the Israeli government that is protecting the Palestinians from some very small number of Jewish fanatics who would murder them in a mosque, which I condemn. Israel protects the Arabs from those fanatics. Yasser Arafat funds the fanatics. He helps them, he sends them on. The Palestinian Authority from 1930 to this day has been intent on massacring Jews, has been intent on violence, has been intent on destroying any, any Jewish settlement in Palestine. So it is unequivocal, it is unequivocal that one side is right here and one side is wrong. And yes, there are so-called innocent victims on the Palestinian side, but they are the victims. If you have a claim against somebody for the loss of your home and Israel kicking your family out, it is against your own leadership. You should be, you should be attacking the Palestinian leadership who started this war. Excuse me, now I am a United States citizen. I can't go and claim my home.  When you start, when you start violence, you forfeit it, you forfeit the right to your own land and home. Okay, therefore you justify pumping King David because it was occupier. Therefore you don't justify the Palestinians for your occupation? No, because Israel is not occupying the Palestinians. The Palestinians started a war. Israel took over that land as an act of self-defense. There's a big difference. There's a fundamental moral difference between starting a war and being engaged in a war as an act of self-defense. And you have to get, you know, Israel is not on the same moral status as the Palestinians. The Palestinians started it. That's it. Okay, now you didn't answer Count Bernadotte. Let somebody else ask a question. And also the assassination of Ishak Rabin, who assassinated him. Let me take another question. Let me just add that I'm not going to stand here and justify every act that every Jew in history has committed. Some of them are right and some of them are wrong. But to compare a few atrocities that might have happened in the hands of Jews to the hundreds and to the thousands of murders, brutal massacres and murders that the Palestinians have committed is just ridiculous. Yes. My name is Stefan Robel. I'm a junior at UC Irvine and I actually have a question regarding your consideration of terrorism as our enemy. I realize what you said about the Palestinian state being a supporter of terrorism and the fact that we should support Israel in their war on terrorism. However, I fail to see how there's any way that we can wage a war on terrorism itself as it's more of an ideology than a nation that we can point a finger at. And actually, since it seems to be fed on our reactions to it, it seems that we're giving them what they want by bringing war to these countries. And why would it not be more strategic to starve them of this attention that they crave in bringing these terrorist attacks on us instead of... It's a good question. I spent a whole... I spent a whole hour discussing this in a talk I gave a few months ago. Let me start by agreeing with the fact that I don't think our war is against terrorism. Our war is against a particular ideology, I think, in particular militant Islam. That is what the war is about. And I wish the Bush administration had the guts to say that. The way you fight an ideology is by destroying its leaders. The way you fought... We didn't fight Germany in World War II. We fought the Nazi ideology.  By destroying the Nazis. How do you destroy militant Islam? Well, you start with the countries that are ruled by militant Islamic leaders. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and others. You start by attacking them. And then you attack those regimes that support terrorism, whether it be Iraq or Syria or other countries.  And it's not hard to do. It is false to assume that terrorists do what they do for the sake of attention. These are not spoiled little three-year-olds that you should ignore because they're having a tantrum. These are bloody murderers who are not bent on achieving world attention, but are bent on destruction of their enemy. The suicide bombers in Israel are not doing it for the press. They are dying. They are doing this to kill as many Israelis as they can, to demoralize Israel systematically, and to bring about the defeat of the state of Israel. That is their purpose. The purpose of the people of the monsters who flew those airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon September 11th was not to be the headline of the New York Times. Their purpose was to destroy the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and ultimately to destroy the United States. And they counted on the fact that the United States would not retaliate because we'd never retaliate for the USS Cole. What did that get us? We didn't give them any attention. We buried it in page three after a while. They got no attention. What did they do? They came right back and did something bigger. We didn't do anything about the bombing of the embassies. We ignored that. So did they stop because they weren't getting attention? No. They came and did something bigger. Every time you ignore this, it'll get worse and worse. And indeed, in my opinion, we have done very little in response to September 11th. Our response has been pathetic. And what we are doing in response to September 11th will only encourage much larger acts of terrorism against the United States. And if we continue to ignore Islamic militant terrorism, we will be like Israel 10 years from now. We will have morals blowing up. We will have airplanes blowing up in the air randomly across the country. If that's what we want, then we should sit back and ignore them and let them have their tantrum. But these are not, these are moral monsters. These are villains. These are people that need, I'm talking about the Islamic terrorists. These are people that need to be eradicated.  There's no difference. Thank you. There's a line. It's not fair to the people standing in line. Thank you, Dr. Burke. To what extent are those identifying themselves as Palestinians, perhaps victims themselves, are being manipulated by the various tyrannies or tyrannical regimes of the Arab states? I'm curious your opinion on that. Well, there's no doubt that they have been. I mean, the Palestinians who left Israel either after the 1948 war or after 1967 war have been used as political tools, as media propaganda puppets by the Arab states. And they have been kept in adjunct poverty. If you take Lebanon, for example, they have no rights. They can't get a driver's license. They're kept in squalor and poverty in these refugee camps. The Arab world does nothing to help them. So, you know, I feel sorry for these people. It's clear that the Arab regimes around the Middle East are the brutal party. They are the ones that are responsible for the plight of the Palestinians. They're the ones who started the war in 1948, together with some of the Palestinian leadership. And the Palestinians have been victims of their own leaders and their despots, running Egypt and Jordan and Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and all these countries. To what extent, if any, is that because the tyrannical regimes want to keep the people occupied with another enemy to prevent their own overthrow? Yeah, there's no doubt. Well, I don't have to prevent their overthrow, but it's a nice convenient excuse. I mean, it's a nice convenient excuse. Why is the Middle East in poverty? Why are Arab states unfree? Why is there so many poor people in the Arab states? Why is this the poorest part of the world other than certain portions of sub-Saharan Africa? Well, of course, because of the Israelis. There's a great scapegoat there. And that's what they, that's, that's how they use the conflict. Let me also note that Jordan occupied the West Bank up until 1967, and Egypt had the Gaza Strip up until 1967. There was no talk of Palestinian state back then. There was no concern. Indeed, when the seven Arab states invaded Israel in 1948, the Jordanians, the Syrians and Egyptians certainly didn't want a Palestinian state. Syria wanted a greater Syria. Jordan wanted a port of the Mediterranean, and Egypt just wanted more land. Yeah. We know that Saddam Hussein promised and is paying probably $25,000 to families of each suicide bomber, and we condemn him. We know that Saudi Arabia pays money, although they denied it, but it's a fact that they pay money to suicide bombers, and we condemn them. However, we know also that the European Union, with the United States collectively, even Israel contributes annually, pay over $300 million to the Palestinians. And knowing that this is, these are the territories controlled by the territory of Arafat, I assume that the majority of money would go to his surrounding pockets and to basically to feed, to support terror. And even if not to support terror, say, if the money go through him, he gives money to a poor Palestinian for food, he would be considered, oh, the king, you know, that they would obey and do whatever he would say. So that's, what do you think should be done for the people there who are illiterate and low educated to understand who is the head that gives them the food, not Arafat, that these are other people? I think the best thing that could be done for not just the illiterate, but for the common Palestinian man in the street is for Israel to reoccupy the territories. Those people had more freedom, they had more economic opportunities, they had more individual rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of press, under Israeli occupation during the 1970s and 1980s than they do today under Arafat, the standard of living was significantly, significantly higher during the 1980s than it is today. Why? Because then they could travel into Israel peacefully and work in Israel and go back home and take care of their families and take care of their kids and raise families. Today, they are being brutalized by their own leadership. And the only way for them to, you know, I think they realized that. I think that if they could on the side quietly, they would tell you that they prefer the days when Israel just ruled over those territories and when Yasser Arafat was in Tunisia. So the only thing that we could right now, let me also add with regard to the European money and the America's money, the worst enemy of the West is the West. The worst enemy that Israel has are the Israelis, particularly the intellectuals that teaching in Israeli universities. They are the most anti-Israeli people on the planet. So just like the worst anti-Americans that exist today on American universities teaching. So it should be, it should be no surprise that America and the Europeans are funding the Palestinians, are funding terrorism themselves because, because we don't, we don't have, you know, we don't have any values. I mean, the administration and, and, and much of the intelligentsia in this country has no values. Yes. You alluded in your talk to Israel's kind of demoralizing withdrawal from Lebanon. And I was wanting to ask you about your position in regard to the moral, was it proper morally for Israel to help the Lebanese Christians against Arafat when they attacked? Are they moral equivalents, the, the Lebanese Christians and the Israelis? And also, what should the Lebanese Christians do now in their self-defense? I think it turned out to be a strategic mistake for Israel to support the Lebanese Christians for various reasons. But I think it was completely moral. I think it was a moral obligation for Israel to invade Lebanon in 1982. And I think where Israel failed is by listening to the administration of Ronald Reagan in 1982. When Ronald Reagan stopped Israel from going into Beirut and catching Yasser Arafat and thousands of his terrorist brethren who were trapped, who were surrounded by Israeli troops in Beirut. If you remember, the U.S. sent troops to help escort Yasser Arafat to a U.N. ship that then took him to Tunisia. That was a vital strategic mistake. The whole history of the Middle East would have been different if Israel had been allowed to take out Yasser Arafat in Beirut in 1982. It was completely moral and justified for Israel to go into Lebanon because Lebanon was being used as a staging ground for terrorism against Israel on its northern border. Daily attacks from that border into Israel by Palestinian terrorists, bombing by Khachusha rockets into Israeli towns on the northern borders. Israel acted in complete self-defense by, by going into Lebanon. And I think staying in Lebanon was also justified because the country was in complete chaos. There was no government and the only way Israel could protect itself was by staying there. Again, the problem was that America stopped Israel from doing what was necessary. What was necessary in 1982 was to kick the Syrians out of Lebanon, which Israel did not do because America didn't let it. It was to take out Yasser Arafat, which Israel didn't do because the Americans wouldn't let it. It was to eradicate the threat of terrorism, to eliminate the Palestinian liberation organization, which was then stationed in Beirut and Sidon north of Beirut, which the Americans didn't let it. Again, the whole history of them at least would have been completely different if Israel would have been allowed to finish what had begun in 1982. So, yes, I think it's completely legitimate. I don't want to get into the, you know, the details of the, of the Lebanese civil war. I will say this, that the Lebanese civil war to a large extent was instigated by the arrival of Yasser Arafat in 1971, early 1971, to Beirut after he was kicked out by whom? By King Hussein of Jordan, who had enough of him because he was instigating civil war within Jordan. So, the civil war in Lebanon is the fault of the Palestinian leadership. The Lebanese, you know, I think have a just claim against Yasser Arafat. It is tragic that they are not supporting him. And I think that that is what really instigated the hatred and the civil war between the Muslims and the Christians after, you know, a long time of relative peace in that country. And, you know, people who visited Beirut in the 50s and 60s rave about this country that was the Switzerland of the Middle East and this beautiful city. And it was a beautiful city. Thank you. The United Nations has chronically provided a political flak jacket for thug regimes and movements around the world. How do you believe the United States should address that issue in the United Nations and that imbalance? It should start, it should start by asking it to leave New York. It should continue by withdrawing from the United Nations completely. Stopping at support and stopping any activities in the United Nations. The idea that the United Nations, every member has a vote. The United States and some of the most brutal, horrific regimes in the history of man, the United States has the same vote as they do. They're equal partners in this idea. The idea that a country like the United States is an equal partner in organization as a country like it used to be the Soviet Union or today China or Syria which sits on the Security Council. Syria, one of the most brutal regimes in the 20th century, sits on the Security Council side by side with the United States. The United States has to ask the Syrian permission to go to Iraq to act in its own self-defense. I think it's abomination. The United States should withdraw from the United Nations and I think the idea that an American president goes to the United Nations and grovels before it to ask permission to act in our self-interest. We elected him, not the citizens of 100 or 250 different countries. We elected him. His responsibility is to act in our self-interest and he does not need the permission of the rest of the world to do so. The question here is not does Israel have the right to exist. The question is does Israel backed by the only remaining superpower on this planet have a right to completely suspend habeas corpus, due process, trials and convictions and wantonly annihilate and kill people based on whims which is what we see going on in Israel right now. It's my turn to speak. I've listened to you for over an hour and a half. Let me answer. It's not your turn to speak. It's mine. Let me answer and then you can ask your question. I assume you have one. What is your vision of peace? Israel, let me finish. You can ask that in a second. Israel does not do the things that you've just stated. As I said. I read it every day in the paper. Every single day. There's no due process. First of all, I wouldn't believe what you read in the paper. It is distorted. The U.S. press counts it a popular belief is extraordinarily pro-Palestinian. Let me finish. What's distorted is your views and this venom is what is going to continue to get your people bombed out of existence. If you look at the last 10 years, let me finish. And your solution is to annihilate these people. It's not to annihilate these people. I specifically said who should be annihilated. Right now, there is a trial going on in Israel. A trial. A trial in front of a court of the number one person responsible in the Palestinian Authority for terrorist activities against Israel. A trial. What would happen to that person in Syria or in the Palestinian Authority under Yassar al-Fat or in Jordan? He would have been shot. So there is no suspicion of hobbyist purpose. Now there is to the extent that somebody is a terrorist and an imminent threat. They should be executed or assassinated without trial without due process. That's where we differ. Just as the United States is now systematically assassinating al-Qaeda leaders around the world. And I believe that is wrong. I believe that is an infringement of human rights. I believe that is completely justified. Every citizen of this planet, Americans have to work to extend our rights to all the inhabitants of the planet. What this man is speaking and where he is leading is totalitarianism. And if you look at the settlements that have been built in these areas over the last 10 years. No this is not. Listen. Clearly this is an example of what happens with people who don't respect individual rights, including property rights. This is my event not yours. I paid for this hall. You did not. I did not come to listen to you and neither did these people. Your time is over. No we don't need to moderate it because this is not a discussion. This is not a moderated discussion. I went to this place in order to present my views. That's how it was advertised and that's how it's going to be. I am quite happy to answer any question that you ask. But this is not a form for you to take the stage and make speeches. Yes. Do you support any form of foreign aid from the United States to Israel besides just moral support? Do you support foreign aid from the United States to Israel? I do not support foreign aid to anybody. Any country. I do not believe that's what our tax dollars should be doing. So the answer is no. However, if we're giving money to every two bit dictator around the world then of course we should be giving money to the one country that actually works in our self interest. Now again, I don't believe we should be giving money to anybody. Foreign aid I think is an immoral idea. I don't think our tax money that's how it should be used. It is not the government has no right to do that with our money. Yes. You mentioned in your lecture the moral equivalence. Yes. Yes. And democracy and western value, right? Israel had occupied my country for 35 years. What country? Palestine or whatever. Yeah. During the 35 years or 50 or whatever, what did Israeli promote in the occupied territory? Did they promote the western venue? Did they promote the moral equivalence in the area? Oh, let me ask you. If you go back to Israel in 1948, I have some relatives. They're still in Palestine, you know. They're still in Palestine. Half of my family, they visited us in 1956 when the Suez Canal War at that time during the Suez Canal War. And we saw and they told us and we saw their state in everything, you know. We saw their clothes, we saw their everything. We saw them where they were living.  I was a young kid. I was maybe in the second, in the first high school, you know, or junior, high school junior. I had to supply them with all kinds of food from Gaza Strip because I was living, I took reviews since 1948 in Gaza Strip. Let me answer your question. We supplied them with everything, clothes, food, coffee, you name it. Okay, can I answer? And then in 1967, in 1967, the same thing. Okay, let me answer. I understand what you said. No, I want you. You are talking about the democracy and moral equality. What did the Israelis, since they took Gaza Strip and the West Bank until now? What did they do? Let me tell you. We weren't interested in bringing Arafat back to Gaza Strip. That is true and it is Israel and I condemn Israel for doing that. But bringing Yasser Arafat back to Palestine. After 1948, what the Israelis did for the Palestinians, for the Arabs living in Israel, was give them the right to vote, was give them property rights, was give them equal rights under Israeli law. Let, no, no. You've asked the question. Let me finish, let me finish answer. In 1956, if you had gone to a Jewish family in Israel, you would have had to give them coffee and food and school books and so on because Israel was in great poverty. It had to spend a huge amount of its income to build an army to defend itself because the rest of the Arab world, hundreds of millions of people I should add and in 1956, there were maybe a million Jews in Palestine in Israel, were under attack. They had to spend all their resources protecting themselves. But let me, let me add again that the Arabs in Palestine, in Israel, in the Israel of the pre-1967 borders have more, more rights, more economic opportunities, a better standard of living by any, any objective standard and I, and I, and I challenge anyone to come up with counter statistics than any Arab population anyway in the world with the exception of the United States and Europe. Anyway, and let me, let me add in terms of what Israel did, what did Israel, okay, so what did Israel, 56 and before, let's remember what happened in 56 and before. Here was a young country absorbing a million immigrants from Europe who had just survived the Holocaust. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of Jews coming from Arab countries where they were kicked out of those Arab countries, where they couldn't take their money with them. They had to absorb that entire population. We're talking about a country that had to face all these enemies surrounding it. If the Arab population, which again initiated the force against Israel on 48, if that population suffered from poverty during that time while they were still voting, while they still had all those property rights, then that's unfortunate, but so did the Jewish population. As for the Gaza Strip on the West Bank, Israel did try to instill Western values in those regions. Indeed, well indeed during the 1970s and 1980s, there was complete freedom of the press on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, you can go to the library and pull out newspapers from the West Bank. That criticizes Israel harshly. You can go and find test cases to the Israeli Supreme Court of Arabs who claim that their land is confiscated and it goes all the way to the Supreme Court to be adjudicated. You can find examples if you do the research, if you don't just read what the New York Times has to say, if you do the research you will find countless examples of how Arabs even occupied people in the West Bank and Gaza, had more individual rights, had more property rights than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East. Now Israel did make some crucial, horrific mistakes. For example, just like the United States supported bin Laden in Afghanistan during the 1980s as an antidote, as a counter to the Soviets, Israel actually helped establish the Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the territories as a counter to the PLO during the 1970s. That is a horrific mistake. They should have never done that, because they were promoting non-Western values. Israel did bring Assad al-Fad back into the territories. A horrific mistake which I criticize, spent a lot of time during my talk criticizing. So I'm not saying that Israel by any means is perfect. It is far from perfect. But the solution is not. The answer is not. I gave the solution. The solution is first and foremost. That's right. The solution is not to, but you have to be moral equally to get the moral equivalence. Okay, there's somebody else. There is black and white. Somebody else has a question. Oh, okay. You've described very clearly and starkly the contrast between how the Palestinians were living under Israel and under the PA. And my question is, why has the PA propaganda worked so well to get them all jumping on the bandwagon? I think it was a poll taken by the actual Palestinians who said that over 60% support suicide bombing. So I was wondering if you could comment on the mechanism or the psychology behind why they're so anti-Israel, when a lot of them should remember what it was like before. Well, I mean, first of all, I think you have to be dubious of polls in general, but polls taken under totalitarian regimes in particular. So any poll coming out of the Palestinian Authority is by definition suspect to begin with. But it's a good question because so what is the reason why so many Palestinians buy into this? Why don't they all strive for freedom and Western values and so on? And unfortunately, it has to do with the culture generally in the Middle East. And that is a culture of collectivism. That is the notion that they put the group above the individual. They put the idea of being a Palestinian, the idea belonging to a Palestinian entity, the idea of being an Arab and belonging to an Arab nation above their well-being as individuals. So even if they can say yes in 1985 when I used to go into Haifa and work for a living and made more money, I did well. What's more important to me is my national identity. What's more important to me is my Palestinian national identity, and this is not a new phenomenon in history. This is the phenomena that we saw under Hitler with the Germans. How did that whole population of Germans suddenly become so corrupted? It is these ideas, these insidious, horrific ideas of collectivism, of altruism, and of religious mysticism that are spreading, unfortunately, within the Palestinians that are destroying them. And unfortunately, if I can criticize Israel, it is the collectivism. It is the religious mysticism that will ultimately destroy Israel as well. Follow-up. So if Israel completely reoccupies all the territories, how do you think they would crack this group mentality? That's a good question. It's beyond the realm of philosophy to give the exact details of what should happen, but I'll tell you anyway. I do think Israel needs to reoccupy the territories. I think once it reoccupies the territories, it needs to systematically go after the terrorists and assassinate them, arrest them, do whatever it takes to eradicate terrorism, to eradicate violence from those areas, whatever it takes. I think once it has done that, once it has shown a more commitment to doing that, then terrorism will disappear. You will get a period of quiet in that area, a period of quiet where people have the opportunity, again, to go back to Israel, to get a job, to better their lives, to raise their children, to raise their family. I also think that during this period of quiet, Israel needs to go in and replace the school text from which the Palestinians are studying. I think that what's going on right now is mass brainwashing and mass, so they need to reeducate that population. This is not going to happen quickly. This is a long process, but I do not reject out of hand the idea that one day, the one day, you know, I don't know whose lifetime it will be, but one day the Palestinians will have proven that they are peace-loving, individual rights-loving, that they want a free, their own free country, and that at that point I think there are two solutions. One solution is to negotiate and give them their own state. I don't think that is a bad thing necessarily. The other solution is to incorporate them completely as full Israeli citizens into Israel at the point where they really accept individual rights. As I said in my talk, I don't believe that Israel long-term should be a Jewish state. It needs to be a free state, a state that represents individual rights, a spec that represents the rights of every individual living in it, and if the Arabs and the Jews are living there and they all share these Western values, then who cares if you're an Arab or Jew or an atheist or Christian or anything else. So that is my long-term solution. The two states, peaceful, western, and by the way, I forgot the settlements because the lady before who was as she was leaving screams something about settlements. Let me say that one of the signs when the Palestinians are truly ready for peace, for negotiations, is the day when they ask the Israelis to keep the settlements where they are and to add to them. The day when the Palestinians say, you know what, when we have our own Palestinian state, we want lots of Jews to come in because they bring jobs and they bring economic opportunities, and we don't care whether you're a Jew or a Palestinian or an Arab, we just want to have a free country in which everybody's treated as individual. So the day when the Palestinians say, not only don't we care about the settlements, we want more of them, that is the day they are ready for peace. First off, I would really like to thank you for coming out here and speaking to us for shedding some light on the truth. Thank you. Secondly, I would also want to know what is your opinion just out of curiosity, if Anne Rand was alive today, what would be her position on the Israel-Palestinian conflict? Well, given that I'm the Executive Director of the Ironman Institute, I very much hope and sincerely believe, I think I know that her view would be consistent with what I just presented. And indeed, in the statements that she did make about Israel during her lifetime, they were all consistent with what I have said. I think after 1967 was one of the few times somebody told me this. Anne Rand ever gave money to a non-for-profitive view? Well, that was to support Israel, one of the few times she ever gave money because of everything that's said. Israel is the only bastion of Western civilization in that region and she respected that about Israel. Not its Jewishness, but its character as a Western country.  I mean, Shrebenica in Bosnia was a massacre. I mean, a couple of people losing their homes and the unfortunate occasion of war is not a massacre, is not genocide. Jews did everything they possibly could to help defend these people and they were stabbed in the back for it. When they took over the West Bank of God's Srip in 1967, I mean, they could have driven out all the Palestinians. They could have burned them out of their homes. They could have killed them and their families and they could have ended the Palestinian resistance once and for all. They didn't do that. They gave you your land. They let you run it. That's not this maker's personal place. Anyways, I would just like to ask that, what do you think is the final, how would you think they should deal with the Palestinian problem if reoccupation doesn't work? Well, I have no doubt that reoccupation will work if it's done right. I don't have... Hey, hey, hey, let me... Well, you're alive, aren't you? Hey, I said I didn't want to get into these debates and I'm asking you not to participate. I do not want to get into the technical details of what will be done. What needs to be done is the eradication of terrorism and the terrorists and the people who fund and support and fuel that terrorism. How that is done in detail is a military political strategic issue that needs to be decided on the spot. It's not for a philosophical organization to elaborate on. May I have a follow-up question? Sure. Some Israeli generals have brought up the plan of forced transfer to the Palestinian population. What would you think about that? I think that people who have expressed or either violent themselves or support and have expressed a willingness to be violent, I think that is a justified response to those people. I don't think at this point it is necessary, and I hope that it is never necessary, to en masse just round up Palestinians and send them over the Jordan River to Jordan. But if you catch a cell of young recruits to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, then that is one option that Israel has among many. First, I want to say that I believe in the right of Israel to cease, but I also believe in the right of Palestinian to cease. I have visited Israel in the last 15 years twice, and I have witnessed a lot of mistreatment and a lot of oppression against the Palestinians. I came here because I saw that I would listen to a different solution. But what is going on now, if it continues, is going to increase the hate against Israel, and there will be more war. Every night before I go to sleep, I pray to God that one day I woke up and I listen to a right solution between Israel and Palestinian. I always believe that the Jews are very humanitarian around the world, but when it comes to Israel, there is blindfold. There is no such thing as a humanitarian war. When you attack your responsibility is to defend yourself at all costs. Humanitarian wars are suicide. Yes, there is a solution, as I've said, and that is to get the people initiating the violence. To stop the violence is only one way to stop violence, and that is to get rid of the people initiating it. There's no other way. You cannot sit down with a murderer who is bent on murdering your children and negotiate a deal. But the people that are dying are also children and human, common beings just like you and me. And I feel for the children, but those children are the responsibility of their parents. Their parents should not be sending their children out into the street to stone Israeli soldiers who are carrying weapons. Well, the oppression, the oppression pushing to that. It is a form of Palestinian propaganda to put children on the front line of demonstrations. If my 12-year-old went out into the street, I would lock them up in their room. Well, oppression can push people to that. But they are not, but they are being oppressed. They are targeting their aggression against not their oppressor, but their potential liberator. Their oppressor is Yasu Arafat in the Palestinian leadership. They are the people oppressing the Palestinians. If anything, the Israelis are their liberators. Yes, doctor. My question is this. I know they've been trying to settle it between when Anwar Sadat and Begin went before the peace, and you had two good men that wanted to settle, and what happened, it blew up. And I know everybody's been asking this, but I couldn't help but ask you. I just want to hear it myself.  Because it's a mess. It's a mess. I'll just say this, and I want to listen. Bush is talking about war because you got Saddam Hussein or Ali, you know, the nutball too. So what can we do? I wish I had a magic bullet, but reality doesn't work that way and wishes a meaningless. The fact is in reality that the only solution is more violence. There is no other solution. Now, if the Palestinians had an Anwar Sadat, and if the Palestinians wouldn't kill Anwar Sadat two years after he signed the peace deal, and if then a lot of things would be different, but those things don't exist. They don't exist. It's not the Israelis who killed Anwar Sadat. It's the Egyptians who killed Anwar Sadat. So what is needed now is more violence, more what is needed is Israel to assert itself, I think. I mean, you hear about all this Israeli brutality and everything. Israel is treating the Palestinians with kit gloves, and every day that it holds back, every day that it doesn't do what is necessary, means more Israelis will die ultimately, and it means more Palestinians will die ultimately. The quicker we get this over with, the fewer, the less blood will ultimately be spilled on both sides. That is also true of America's war on militant Islam. The longer we wait with this to do what is necessary to combat militant Islam, the more Americans are going to die, and the more Muslims are going to die. Nobody benefits when evil is let loose and let free and gets a free reign around the world. Nobody benefits from that. I know. And do you feel that President Bush is going after them slowly but surely?  I just read, I don't know, I just read, I think yesterday or the day before in the Washington Times a story. They're just, you know, I was so angry. It was quoting soldiers in Afghanistan. Right now, you know, commanders of special forces and Marine units in Afghanistan saying that they have a number of times located Mullah Omar. You remember Mullah Omar? Nobody talks about him anymore. One of the guys we were supposed to get, they have located Mullah Omar. They had ambushes ready to go, and the people higher up stopped him. They said it was too risky. We might have body bags. They said that faulty intelligence, we don't want to risk maybe harming some civilians. They said that they know. They know of concentrations of Taliban and al-Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan. And they are prohibited from going after them by American higher command. I also read in a Newsweek article, not long ago, that U.S. soldiers can stand on the Afghan border with Pakistan and see the al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. They can see them, but they are not allowed to cross the border and take those camps out.  It is American civilians. It is American citizens that will suffer the consequences. And of course, my heart goes out to the soldiers, because they are the ones suffering right now. They're not being allowed to do their job, and as a consequence, their life is put at risk needlessly.  And what's stopping them is this administration. This administration is supposed to be tough. These are supposed to be the real tough guys, Cheney and all those guys out here. Yeah. So the ultimate end. The ultimate end is not good. The ultimate end for Israel is if they continue like this, is suicide, is to be wiped out. And the ultimate end for the United States is to be like Israel, where we cannot go to the mall without looking around suspiciously, whether the mall is going to blow up or not. That is what will happen if we don't act. Thank you very much. Sad truth. This is a comment and a question. I agree with many of the things you said, but, you know, the title of your talk is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But I mean, if this talk took place 35 years ago, it was then called the Israeli-Arab conflict. And I really think we are still dealing with the Israeli-Arab conflict. The point is that in your solution, if Israel reoccupies all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and they go house to house to get rid of the terrorists, the terrorists are getting their ammunition from Iran, from Iraq, and from Syria. And I don't think you can have a solution until there's a fundamental change in the 22 Arab countries that surround Israel. Israel has only made peace with Egypt and Jordan, but still this conflict will go on if Israel is still in the state of war with Syria, still live in the state of war with Iran and Iraq. And even now, during the last 20 years, it's not just the 22 Arab countries, but as you mentioned, Israel will have a conflict just as America has now with Islamic fundamentalism, which goes beyond the 22 Arab countries. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, there's no question that the ultimate solution long-term has to involve what I said, the paragraph before last in my speech, and that is that the Western values have to come to dominate the Middle East. And until they do, there will be war in that region nonstop. There's no question about that. However, Israel can create a partial solution, just like it had relative, relative peace or non-hostility after the Yom Kippur War of 1972, because nobody had the guts to fight against it, because they knew the consequences so it can reestablish itself in the future. The Palestinians could not get those arms from Iran and Iraq and these other places if Israel didn't let them. The bridges there on the Jordan River are run by the Palestinians who let that money and that stuff come in. If Israel reoccupied the territories and controlled those bridges, that stuff wouldn't get there. So Israel can do what it can do in order to secure itself. The stronger Israel is, and this is partially the U.S.'s responsibility in helping establish this, the stronger Israel is, the more peaceful the region will be. Anwar Sadat did not come to Israel because suddenly he became a lover of the West. Anwar Sadat came to Israel because he realized, I think he was on the honest side. Anwar Sadat realized that he could not defeat Israel and he realized that the only chance Egypt ever had are progressing beyond the poverty and starvation that many of its millions of citizens suffer from is by doing away with one conflict and by concentrating internally. If he had thought Israel was weak, he would have continued warring with Israel. It's only Israel's strength that permits it to live in relative peace. And the same with Syria. Syria hasn't attacked Israel since 1972 for good reason because they know what will happen. And that's the best it is or can hold for, is to make it clear to the Arab countries, to make it clear to the terrorists the consequences of attacking it. And I wish the United States would do that. I'd just like to know whether or not you would support, and you said you don't support foreign aid of any sort. I was just wondering whether or not you would endorse American troops going and helping Israel to take back these territories that you speak of? No, because I don't think America has to. I don't think it's necessary. If it turns out, again, this I think is a military strategic decision that should be made not by me, and you would need more effect. I mean, if it was in our self-interest to do so. If it was in our self-interest to do so, and it was the only way to do it, then yes, just like we're going to Iraq and other places, we would have to do it. But it's not. We don't need to do it. That's the wonderful thing about having a relationship with Israel. Thank you. Okay, these are going to be the last three questions. It seems to me that the press, the media, the television in this country is biased. Is that a correct assumption? And if so, why is the propaganda on the one side so much better than the propaganda on the other? That's a great question. Absolutely the media in this country is biased, but even more biased are the intellectuals of this country who feed the media. I mean, where do the media go to school? Where do the media get their experts? They get them from Harvard and Stanford and U.C. Irvine. So I've got another edge to U.C. Irvine. I can just imagine what goes on there. I don't know firsthand. So it is the intellectuals who are at root the problem and are at root biased. Why? Well, because they hate the West. Because they reject the notion of the superiority of the West. I mean, what is multiculturalism all about? It's about we're the same as savage tribes in Africa. It's the same thing. There's no difference. There's no difference between slavery and freedom. There's no difference between capitalism and communism. There's no difference between America and Saudi Arabia. We're all the same. Multiculturalism, all cultures are equal. Well, we have to reject that concept. And intellectuals are motivated by hatred of what the West stands for and ultimately, fundamentally, they are motivated by hatred of reason. Now, intellectuals are wind worshipers. And they reject the notion of reason as the only means of gaining knowledge about the world. And once you reject reason, anything goes. Now, there's one other element that motivates them. And you could ask, why are the Europeans so anti-Israel? Well, since you didn't ask them any, I'll answer anyway. And that is the philosophy or the moral code of altruism. And this motivates both our intellectuals and the Europeans. Altruism tells you altruism is otherism. It is the morality of self-sacrifice. It is the morality of putting others concerns above one's own. The standard of the good is other people, not your own well-being. That is the dominant morality today in the world. Altruism tells you, if others are your concern, if being selfish, if pursuing your own self-interest is evil, then being successful is evil. Because how do you become successful by pursuing your own self-interest? So that must be bad. Being strong is evil. Because how do you become strong by pursuing your own self-interest? And that is evil. Having a powerful military is evil. Because how do you get a powerful military? By being selfish, by pursuing your own interest. And that is evil. Notice, and who are the good guys? The good guys are the weak. The good guys are the poor. The good guys are the suffering. Because they clearly didn't do what was in their self-interest. Otherwise, they wouldn't be poor and suffering. Now notice that when the Jews were poor and suffering, and have just suffered the Holocaust, and were starting this country from scratch, Europe loved them. They were the good guys. Right? When did that change? 1967. When Israel proved itself strong and powerful and confident, well, they must have been selfish all those years. And therefore, they are immoral. And therefore, they are the bad guys. And who now is poor and suffering and miserable? The Palestinians. So they must be the good guys, because they haven't been selfish. That is one of the roots of the hatred of the United States. We are successful. Why do Europeans hate us? For the same reason they hate Israel. Because we are successful. We are selfish. We act in our own self-interest. Why don't they want us to tacky rock? Because that's self-interested. You're just thinking about yourselves.  You should be thinking about the world. So, now, you know, Ayn Rand wrote a lot about rational self-interest and altruism. And I'll refer you to her books. But that, to understand the state of the world, to understand Europe, to understand the United States, to understand white people hate us, you have to understand the viciousness of the morality of altruism. Yes? I have a simple question. If you look at the background, I mean, after all, I don't think there's a country in a world like Israel that gave up so much. Number one, Barak, practically gave them the whole state of Palestine. Number two, Arik Sharon, proved the whole world who Arafat is. Time is working against us. What's your opinion about separation with a good PR, not right away, not transfer, but tell them, look, we tried everything we can. And I really feel bad for people like him. I was born practically in an Arab village in Israel. I, we got along with them. We never trusted them, but we got along with them. But it's a truth, unfortunately. That's a different mentality. And I feel bad for the majority, but the minority, which was a leadership, they are suffering because of them. That's why you lost your home. But my question is, if we do PR, a good PR, and tell them, look, we tried everything. We don't have any other way but separation, and not just the world. This is your state. In my opinion, it's Jordan. And if you don't move in the next half a year, and we'll compensate you and everything, we'll have to do it ourselves. We are not Nazi, we're not- Did you mean by separation, putting up, putting up fences? Putting up fences, putting up two different countries. The definition of Herzl, of Zionism, is a small state even, but with Jewish people only. Okay, so let's, let's think about the separation, right? The idea here is they build fences around, I guess, close to the green line, and establish a Palestinian state on the one side and Israel on the other. Tall fences, big, big trenches, and everything. And that will solve the problem. Well, what is biggest separation than the Atlantic Ocean? We, the United States, are separated from the Arab world. Yet, September 11th happened. There is no construction. That you can build on the Israeli-Palestinian border that will stop committed terrorists from coming in and attacking Israel. What will Israel do then? Will it enter a sovereign state of Palestine when it doesn't have the guts today to enter so-called occupied territories? There is no way for a quick and easy solution here. I wish there was, but there isn't. There is no way, I believe, to erect fences. It would be nice, but it's impossible. If they are that committed as to flying airplanes into the World Trade Center, if they are that committed that they are willing to walk into malls and blow themselves up or blow themselves up in buses, they will find ways to get around defense.  Let's also remember that Arafat and his regime's goal is not a small Palestinian state. Their goal is to destroy Israel and they will not rest until they succeed. So unfortunately, I don't think there is a solution. Let me just address the previous question asked about PR. And let me say that the Palestinian PR is much better than the Israeli PR. And the reason is that the Palestinians really believe that they're right. They are morally righteous. And the Jews are apologetic, mealy-mouthed. They have no moral fiber.  And that is what makes the Palestinian PR so much better than the Israeli PR. I did say these were the last three questions. Yes. I'm a little confused. On the one hand, you speak of people who read various periodicals that they should not believe everything they read. On the other hand, you quote from the Washington Times and another publication. So I don't know whether you should believe what you read. That's number one. Number two, you speak disparagingly of intellectualism. Well... No, I didn't speak of intellectualism. I spoke disparagingly of... Intellectuals. Today's intellectuals. Oh, but you are one of... Aren't you one of today's intellectuals? I think there are exceptions to what I mentioned. Unfortunately, not many. Okay, I'll accept that. Okay. I think that was understood. I don't think anybody thought... You also spoke... I'm criticizing all intellectuals. I just gave a speech about the role of philosophy and morality. I don't think anybody could claim I'm against intellectualizing or... Talking about... We're all intellectuals here. We wouldn't be here. That's wonderful. Yes, there's a question. Still, you spoke disparagingly of the socialists and the communals, whatever you want to call them. And I'm wondering, because my memory goes back to who built Israel. And I come up with the Zionists, the socialists, and the Kibbutzim. Now, am I wrong there? So we hold that question for you to answer. Can I answer that and then I'll give you another... Finally, finally. I'll have to remember that. Finally. Your solution is the occupation of the whole West Bank and Gaza by Israeli forces in the hopes that they will then find themselves with a better standard of living, et cetera, et cetera. And I think back to the Pax Romana. Do you remember the Pax Romana? Where Rome conquered. And you know what happened to Rome? That's not why what happened to Rome happened to Rome. Well, in any case, if you will answer all of those, I would appreciate it. Thank you. You want to repeat what was the first question? I'm sorry, it's late. I said there was the last three questions and he was the last in line when I said that. I'm sorry. Yes, it's getting late. What was the first question? I'm sorry. One sentence. Oh, socialism and Kibbutzim. Who built Israel? Yes, it was to some extent. Of course, Israeli history was also written by socialists. To some extent, Israel was built by people who believed in socialism. And socialism, within a narrow context, for a certain period of time, can work to create certain economic successes. It can't work for very long, as every socialist country in the world has seen. The Kibbutzim from very early on were not sustainable economically and were being subsidized either by the Rothschilds early on and later by the Israeli government. And to this day, with a few exceptions, they are still being subsidized and indeed falling apart and disappearing and I expect within 20 years, they won't be Kibbutzim. But they were also, and this is unwritten Israeli history, although it's written some way. They were entrepreneurs who built Israeli utility companies, electrical companies, factories who built housing developments and shopping malls and who bought land. Ultimately, a lot of the immigration into Palestine was funded by people like the Rothschilds who weren't exactly socialists. But yes, a lot of the people, indeed Ben-Guyon, when he was young, was a communist, never mind a socialist. But fundamentally, they believed in Western values. They were wrong in some of their beliefs. And Israel has suffered the consequences of their socialism. We are still, Israel is still suffering the consequences of socialism to this day. Israel would be a healthier, more prosperous, more successful country today if it hadn't been founded by socialists. The second question. The second question. What's that? Rome. Rome did not decline because of its occupation of other countries, of other cultures. Indeed, when Rome was at its peak, when it's indeed brought to those other cultures, the values, the positive values, Rome thrived. Rome rotted from within, for other reasons, the way beyond the scope of this talk. That has to do with ideas. Basically, they abandoned the Greek ideas and started adopting Christian ideas, if you will. And yet the Greek ideas, the great Greek philosophies and the great Greek democracies were all based upon and lived upon the efforts of slave labor. But we'll get into that another time. Thank you. No, the great Greek ideas and philosophies and so on were built upon the concept of reason and individualism. That is what made Greece great. Thank you all for coming. Let me just stop. Let me just make one more pitch for your money. If you like this talk and you'd like to see this talk given on campuses all around the country, which we do, I encourage you in the back of the room to support us financially. Money raised here will go towards taking this talk and talks like it on the Middle East to campuses all across the country. Thank you.