Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…again, and every single time it kills innocent civilians. And then there’s a wedding and you order a drone bomb strike on a wedding. “No, you murdered those people. That’s murder in the first degree. And so yes, whether you say out loud, “Oh, it sure is a shame that we got to kill all these kids.” When you’re doing it over and over, and you know the action you’re taking is going to kill more kids. Yeah, it’s a little bit different, but really not that much. It’s still pretty much a… And then also when you mix in with that, the fact that, I mean, if you go… And I’m not taking an opinion on the word genocide, I don’t even like to get into that conversation. I feel like it just derails it anyway. What Israel’s doing, whether you think it’s a genocide or not, it’s certainly not what most people envision when they hear the word genocide. But if you could look at South Africa’s case that they promoted at the International Court of Justice, the whole thing is just quotes from Israeli leaders. And I’m just saying, by the way, it’s not like they’re always saying, “Oh, it sure is a shame that we had to kill that 8-year-old girl.’ They like half the time they say that when they’re talking to the international community, and then the other half the time they seem to basically be saying, “There’s no such thing as an innocent 8-year-old girl.” And so I guess I just don’t find that argument to be very compelling, especially when the thing has been going on for so long. There is some disagreement I have with you there. I think the thing you’re implying is, whenever they state it’s not quite genuine to some degree. Not [inaudible 01:16:10]- No, I’m saying it might be genuine by some people. I’m not saying it’s necessarily not. I’m saying that when there’s a lot of people who are saying the opposite, it doesn’t seem like it’s consistently genuine from the entire Israeli leadership class. And that even if it is genuine when some people say it, that’s kind of not enough to get away from the fact that… When Tucker was on Pierce Morgan, he said the thing, he goes, “I don’t like my tax dollars being used to intentionally kill children.” And a lot of people really objected to that word, intentionally, because I think so many of the defenders of Israel fall behind this. Like, “No, no, no, that’s not intentional, we’re just trying to kill Hamas.” But again, like I said, we would never accept that standard in a domestic murder case. The thing is that, if you know there are kids there and you know they’re going to die, then that’s intent.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.