Dave Smith: evaluation

Transcript context

…Let’s talk about it, since you brought it up. October 7th. So what exactly do you think about the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel. Well, I mean, what I just said that it was horrible, and by the same logic that I’m giving you now, it’s always evil to target innocent civilians. I don’t believe civilians can be held responsible for the crimes of their government. This was, by the way, the Osama bin Laden logic, which I think would also be the logic of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Barack Obama. But Osama bin Laden very explicitly said when he was asked, “Well, are you just going to target U.S. military sites or are you targeting U.S. civilians?” It was an interview in the ’90s before 9/11, and he goes, “No, civilians are fair game too because you guys have regular elections, and you guys vote for your government, and therefore you’re responsible for the crimes that they commit.” Now, I think that’s the logic of a fanatic like Osama bin Laden, and that’s not the logic that any of us should follow. It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s not true that people are responsible for the crimes of their government. I think that that same argument is used quite a bit by people on the pro-Israeli side when they say like, “Oh, they had an election in 2005 and Hamas won a plurality, therefore, 20 years later, they have no rights.” I think that’s insane. Okay, so Hamas had no right to go after civilians. It’s horrible, and you see these teenagers being killed, and you see the images of people who were held hostage for all this time. So it’s like your heart breaks for those people. It’s truly tragic. I do think that it was, in many ways, an indictment of so many different things. October 7th happening was an indictment of the entire occupation slash siege of Gaza and the West Bank for that matter. It was, I think… Should have probably forever destroyed the legacy of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is… I mean, this isn’t like George W. Bush was. I mean, he was on the job for almost a year when 9/11 happened, but he was still kind of new. It was still kind of in his first year of being president. Benjamin Netanyahu was the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history, and had explicitly been like, “I’m the tough right-winger who’s going to be tough on these Palestinians, who’s going to move away from the idea of coming to a two state solution, because this is what we need to keep us safe.” The justification is like, “I’m going to be hard on these motherfuckers, because I know what it takes to keep us safe.” And that culminates in the worst massacre in Israeli history. And then, I mean, the other big one is that I mean, and it’s not like a… I wouldn’t even say an open secret at this point. It’s just out in the open. He had this strategy of propping up Hamas for years. And so he had this strategy of propping up Hamas for a myriad of reasons, but a major part of it was that, “Look, man, as long as there’s terrorists in power there, there’s never going to be any pressure on us to give the Palestinians a state, because look, are you telling me I got to negotiate with them? ” He was allowing Qatar money to float.…

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