Howdy, welcome back. It's me, your host, Alex Hopper, and I'd like to welcome you back
to Policies, Problems, and Progress. Boy, ladies and gentlemen, do we have a show for
you today. I'd like to go ahead and apologize for my voice. I am currently fighting some
bronchitis after being in the hospital for four weeks after breaking my knee into six
pieces and undergoing surgery to put them all back onto my tibia. So it's just been
a great month for me, but the show must go on, so I'm happy to be back here with y'all.
So if I sound nasally or scratchy throughout this episode, you'll have to forgive me. Now
I promise that this show is not always about war. It just so happens that we have had two
sets of American interventionism in the last recent memory, both being Ukraine, which was
covered in the last episode, and this episode, which is Israel. Now for those of you who
have listened to the show before, you know that we cover both sides of every argument,
and we try to meet in the middle where we can or see one side in a different way. However,
this is going to be different. We will be strictly talking about the two sides of whether
America should be involved or not. We will not even for a second theorize if any action
of terrorism against women, children, and other civilians is ever okay because it is
not. Anyone advocating, approving, or supporting this is a shameful person who has no spine
or empathy for any other human being. Slaughtering of children and civilians is always wrong,
horrible, and awful and should never be approved in any form whatsoever. And we will not be
doing that on this show. That being said, there is still a conversation to be had about
our role in this as Americans, or at least as our government and industrial war complex.
And that is what we're going to be covering. The people who say that we should be intervening,
and the people who are saying that we should not. No one on this show is ever going to
be allowed to speak about supporting the deaths and torture of civilians. I have to make that
very clear because for some reason in mainstream media that got really popular, which is extremely
shameful. Now normally this is where I would go into the arguments, but due to the nature
of this conflict, I feel that some amount of a history lesson is due, so please bear
with me. I'm a history buff and can rant sometimes, but I'm going to do my best to get you just
the need to know knowledge right now. Now, the Middle East has been home to conflict
since the beginning of time. If we were to take the time to speak about every single
conflict that happened in the Middle East, this show would be so long that my computer
would not be able to store it. And it currently has 205 hours of free disk space. So we're
going to go to quote unquote recent memory beginning in 1516. Now in 1516, the Ottoman
Empire seized control over most of the Middle East, including Jerusalem. And they held onto
it until 1917, except for a nine year period whenever Egyptian governor Muhammad Ali seized
control over Palestine, but it was lost again to the Ottomans in 1840. Now in 1917, whenever
the Ottoman Empire was destroyed, Jerusalem was seized by the British. And in 1922, there
was an international mandate that made Britain the minister of the area in the Middle East.
Now this mandate lasted until May 14th, 1948. And whenever it expired, David Ben-Gurion,
the head of the Jewish Agency established what we know today as modern Israel, which
was recognized by the US president, Harry S. Truman, and was made a new nation the exact
same day. Unfortunately, this led to the 1948 Arab Israeli war, which was fought between
the Arabs and the Israelis for control of the region. Now after this conflict, Israel
gained some territory and Egypt was given the Gaza Strip while Jordan was given the
West Bank. And these lines were held until 1967. However, in 1967, there was the Six
Day War whenever Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and came to occupy the Sinai Peninsula,
the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Throughout this conflict,
funny enough, the US called for a ceasefire trying to prevent Soviet intervention in the
area. As the Wilson Center put it, the war transformed Israel from a nation that perceived
itself as fighting for survival into an occupier and regional powerhouse. And since then, there
have been many more conflicts in the region between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Even outside the region, the most famous one that comes to mind is the Munich Massacre,
where during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, Palestinian terrorists killed
Israeli Olympians and took hostages in the city. And that brings us almost to today.
Like I said, there are so many more conflicts that went on in the area, but those were the
founding wars that led us to the repeated border conflict that we have today in the
region. So we'll start with the people who want the US to intervene in Israel. And they
are really in two camps. One is purely political and humanitarian, and the other is theological
extremism. There are a few times on this show where we're going to get into theology, because
normally whenever you talk about the Bible and people who follow the Bible, even if they
are in different sects of Christianity, they usually stand on the same side of a problem.
And you don't have to go deep into theology to see why two different groups stand on two
different sides of it. But this one is different. For those of you who have never heard of premillennialism,
there are Christians in this country who believe that Jesus will come back and establish a
kingdom on earth and reign for a thousand years where everyone who is a good Christian
will be raptured, but those who weren't are left behind to fight in the war between God
and Satan. So they believe that establishing the Holy Land, building the temple, and protecting
it until God gets here is very important and demand that we keep an ally ship with Israel
in this country and do everything we can to protect them. These beliefs come from whenever
Paul had to write certain letters to different churches in code while he was in prison by
the Romans, because the guards read his letters every time they came through. So he had to
write things such as buzzwords you've probably heard before, such as the anti-Christ and
other things like that. So people have taken this and deduced that Jesus is coming back
and we have to protect the Holy Land for God because God isn't able to. But I'm not going
to argue here or there on that. I'm just going to tell you what I believe on this because
I happen to be a Christian, but I also happen to study a bit more and be able to see where
things are aligned with history. The time that Jesus referenced whenever he died, as
well as Paul spoke about in his letters in code, was whenever Nero was taking over the
Roman Empire and had a crusade against Christians and was killing them in mass. This was the
anti-Christ. As a matter of fact, the temple at Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD by a power
vacuum that was left after Nero died. But many modern Christian apocalypse cults, because
there's no other word for it, believe that every time that there is a conflict in Israel,
that we are days away from rapture, that all-out war is about to break out, God's going to
come back, but God can't protect Israel by himself so we need to do it. The problem is
that there have been wars in Israel forever and Israel already fell many millennia ago.
And what we know as Israel today was only established in 1948. But since this is a theological
approach, it deserves a theological response, which is the only reason I have gotten into
the weeds on this. The more I speak, the more I feel the weeds brushing past me. Because
whenever people speak with theological reasons for doing things like this, there really is
no other way than debating it with theology. Also, I don't normally immediately dispute
a viewpoint. I usually wait until the other side. But I would like to try to keep all
this theology stuff in one spot, for those of you who would rather skip it, and also
so I don't have to deal with all of this again later. So, you're welcome. That's that done.
We're not going to talk about it again. Here's something a bit more concrete. Humanitarianism
and politics. It's always a fun thing to talk about, at least in comparison to before. It's
simple enough. There are people who believe that whenever something is going wrong in
the world, that the United States has a responsibility to be at the beck and call. From anywhere
throughout the Middle East, to Europe, to Vietnam, we have to be there on the spot,
ready to deal with all the world's problems. As facetious as I made that sound, it is a
noble thing, in theory. A belief of responsibility to do good in the world and try to protect
as well as be that force of good in the world is a great thing and has motivated a lot of
good things. And then there are those who believe we simply have a responsibility to
be there, since Israel is a listed ally of this country. And whenever our allies are
invaded, we have to be there to defend them. Both of these viewpoints are simple enough.
And the last one that I forgot to mention earlier is the belief that it's going to come
here. There's always this belief whenever anything happens around the world, from Vietnam
to the Middle East, is if we don't go and stop it there, it will come here. That has
been very prevalent since 9/11 due to people believing that that was us not doing enough.
And I'm not going to get into the political debate about why 9/11 happened to this country,
but it is reasonable for these people who have witnessed 9/11, as well as other tragedies
that have been driven here by conflict, to want to end them there before they become
any sort of threat on the homeland here at home.
Time for two rebuttals and a third viewpoint on why we shouldn't invade that I don't agree
with, but we're going to have to talk about. It's such a complicated issue that you can't
just have one side, because I believe we shouldn't be fighting over there, but there are people
who I don't agree with on why we shouldn't be fighting over there.
So as far as humanitarianism and politics go, I don't believe that any good for any
humanitarian can come from American intervention. It's going to be bloody, it's going to be
awful and it will cripple any economy that's involved. Whenever we already have so many
problems we're dealing with in this country, as well as a depleted arsenal because we have
sent everything we have to Ukraine to where we are struggling to get enough tax dollars
to replenish our own arms and our own military. The only people that a humanitarian aid effort
are going to be helping is the military industrial complex in this country and making them richer
and diverting more tax dollars towards them while the rest of us become poorer and poorer
through the inflation from the government printing money for these companies.
As far as the politics goes, we should never be in any position to put America at risk
financially, economically, or even as far as our own safety. If we have made agreements
in the past that we have to uphold that would put us in that position, we have to back out.
Simple as. We cannot help people if we are broken. You cannot pour from an empty pitcher.
So we have to keep ourselves strong so that maybe someday we can help somebody else, but
we're not in that position right now. And the third viewpoint, which I do not share,
is this idea that Palestine needs to be allowed to drive out, quote unquote, all the Israelis
from Israel, which is basically up to this point been terrorism, mass genocide, murder
of children and women, which is horrible. But there is, if not, a ounce of truth where
Palestinian people have been misplaced, if not by the fault of the Israelis, of the British,
who are notorious for drawing lines in countries they take over that later cause race wars.
Just look at Ireland and Northern Ireland, for example, where there is still an apartheid
today. There should be peace and people should be free. But the murder of innocent people,
civilians and children is not the way to achieve something like that. I believe everyone should
be free. I'll give them that. But I do not believe in anyone who is doing what they are
doing right now is doing it for freedom. They are doing it to satisfy their blood lust.
And it is a shameful thing to see. And then for my opinion, my opinion is basically the
response to the humanitarian aid and the political aid. And also just the fact that any point
in history past World War II, where America has been involved in other people's conflicts
that has not gone well, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan. I mean, the Middle East has been at war since
the beginning. Just look at whenever the Russians invaded them in 1978 and all that fun that
was had there. It's all just too much. And we cannot effectively help anybody. American
interventionalism only brings more suffering, more division and more pain to these countries.
We just make it worse and make the explosives a whole lot larger. I want peace. I want freedom.
I want innocent life to be protected. But in all of this, there seems to not be a middle
ground. And that is rare for anything. Normally you can find a middle ground, but in this
conflict there is not. One side wants blood and the other wants their land. And it's going
to be an awful thing to watch happen. And we should play no role in anything coming
from this. Now this is a shorter episode, but this is only a recent conflict. I'm sure
I'll be covering it again in the future whenever it grows worse and worse and more politicians
come out with more reasons why we should or shouldn't be over there. But all I can say
is to all of you is keep yourself safe. Don't murder innocent people. And for the love of
God, love who you got while you got. Because if this shows anything in the day that all
of this turned into hell, you never know what tomorrow is going to be like. Today can be
peace and tomorrow can be war. And that is the unfortunate, horrible world that we live
in. But take advantage today of the peace that you have because you may not always have
it. Love all you. Remember, turn off the gas stove before you go to bed. Good night.
Algid Productions LLC Outro. Thank you for listening!