Lex Fridman: commitment

Transcript context

…-state terrorism. Terrorism has often worked for people. I think the thing… Early Yasser Arafat I know was very influenced by the Algerians who successfully kicked the French out, embracing terrorism. And it was almost like the major miscalculation of those Palestinian Arabs who did embrace terrorism, was that this isn’t the French hanging out in some colony with their home country back home where maybe a few acts of violence could work enough to… The liberal population back home is like, “Oh, I really didn’t like the response to that terrorism. We killed so many people. Forget it. This is too much of a headache. Let’s get out of here.” The Zionist settlers were there to stay. They weren’t going anywhere. They weren’t going back to Eastern Europe. You know what I mean? And so it’s a tragedy that this whole thing went the way it did. But you always… Whenever you’re talking about a conflict like this, the person who has… Or the party who has the power is the one who needs make concessions, and it’s just indefensible that the status quo of the Palestinian people having no rights, literally no rights, being ruled by a government that they do not get to vote for or against, no right to do commerce with the outside world, no freedom of travel, no freedom of movement, no basic property rights, you can be kicked out of your home at any time, no right to a fair trial, no right to a lawyer, no right to a jury of your peers, I mean, the fact that that has been the status quo since 1967 is just indefensible. And then in the context that that has been the status quo, I guess I’m just not, even though I’m against it, it’s like when you’re just lecturing about the way in which they resist this. I think it’s very tough to be on a strong moral footing. Yeah, you have to really empathize with decades of suffering in the region. I suppose my question was grounded in how can the Israeli government, how can the world help the Palestinian people flourish? So you suggested allowing reputable aid organizations in, but that’s kind of almost patching, just helping humans who are suffering. But that’s not how you have a nation flourish. You have to build up the infrastructure. You have to build up a culture, the education system, the democratic processes of electing and regular elections so that the people are represented. And you have to form partnerships, friendships, normalization of relations with the Arab world, with Israel. You can travel back and forth and lessen the chokehold, the security chokehold, that you could say is justified in a militaristic situation, but why is it a military situation? The question is there, where do we go from here? If we… We will talk about Netanyahu some more. He is very criticized inside Israel as well. Yeah, for sure.…

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