Kevin Duffy comments on Ben Shapiro's selective history of the Arab-Israeli conflict

Well done, Mr. Shapiro, except you forgot to mention a few details: 

• Before WWI, Palestine region was 14% Jews, 10% Christians, 76% Muslims; the early Zionist claim of "a land with no people for a people with no land" was always a lie
• Promise made by the British during WWI to Arabs: if they help the Turks, they get their independence (Damascus Protocol, 1916)
• Contradictory promise to the Zionists to have their own state (Balfour Declaration, 1917)
• Promise made again by the British in WWII to abandon partition and advocate for one state under Arab and Jewish rule (govt white paper, 1939)
• Rise of the Irgun and Stern Gang, considered to be terrorist organizations (Deir Yassin village massacre and bombing of the King David Hotel in 1948)
• Most of the "War for Independence" was fought on Arab lands according to the UN partition plan; 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees
• Herut party, which morphed into current Likud party, was founded in 1948 by Irgun leader Menachem Begin; when Begin visited the U.S. seeking support, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt were outraged, signatories to a scathing letter to the NYT
• Six-Day War (1967): Israel was the aggressor, i.e. if the neighboring Arab countries were preparing to attack, why were they surprised? Another 300,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees
• In 1967, Arabs accounted for 36% of total population. In pre-1967 Israel, Arabs gained citizenship; in newly acquired Gaza and West Bank, they received occupation
• PLO emerges (secular), adopts terrorist tactics modeled after Irgun; crushing of Egypt frees up long repressed Muslim Brotherhood (fundamentalist), gives up violence in the 1970s; Ahmed Yassin set up an Islamic charity in 1973, recognized by Israel in 1979
• Israel never had any intention of giving up the West Bank, supported fundamentalists like Yassin as counterweight to PLO
• Yassin founded Hamas in 1987; Israel provided financial support until 2020 (Hamas served two purposes, preventing a leader emerging to negotiate Palestinian statehood and proving to the world that the other side were evil terrorists); as late as 2019, Netanyahu claimed that Hamas served a purpose and bragged that Israel controlled "the height of the flame"
• Israel poured gasoline on the fire with Gaza (home of Hamas) economically, building a security fence in 1994 and imposing a land, air and sea blockade in 2007, turning the Gaza Strip into a seething snake pit (Israeli per capita GDP is $55,000 vs. $1,250 for those living in Gaza, one of the starkest economic contrasts in the world next to the North Korea Demilitarized Zone)
• Using Israeli proper, where Arabs make up 21% of the population and three-quarters have citizenship, to claim there is no apartheid is a straw man. The critics are referring to the West Bank, where there are two systems of justice: civilian for Jews (Israeli citizens), military for Arabs (non-citizens). According to Addameer, 40% of Palestinian men in the West Bank have been prisoners in Israel's jails.
• In the ongoing conflict since about 2000, Palestinian deaths have outnumbered Israeli deaths 21-to-1

~ Kevin Duffy, comment, "Here’s THE TRUTH About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (A Comprehensive History)," Ben Shapiro, June 5, 2021

Ben Shapiro on the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict

The time for half measures has passed...  Some have rightly suggested that Israel be allowed to decapitate the terrorist leadership of the Palestinian Authority.  But this, too, is only a half measure.  The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership...

Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper.  It’s an ugly solution, but it is the only solution.  And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum...

The Jews don’t realize that expelling a hostile population is a commonly used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements.  There are no gas chambers here.  It’s not genocide; it’s transfer...

It’s time to stop being squeamish.  Jews are not Nazis.  Transfer is not genocide.  And anything else isn’t a solution.

~ Ben Shapiro, "Transfer is not a dirty word," Narkive, August 27, 2003

Ben Shapiro calls for legislation to prosecute critics of the Iraq War for sedition (2006)

It is now considered bad form to criticize those who commit seditious acts against the United States.  Challenging the patriotism of a traitor draws more ire than engaging in treasonable activities.  Calling out those who undermine our nation creates more of a backlash than actually undermining our nation.

[...]

At some point, opposition must be considered disloyal.  At some point, the American people must say "enough."  At some point, Republicans in Congress must stop delicately tiptoeing with regard to sedition and must pass legislation to prosecute such sedition. 

"Freedom of speech!" the American Civil Liberties Union will protest.  Before we buy into the slogan, we must remember our history. President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and allowed governmental officials to arrest Rep. Clement Vallandigham after Vallandigham called the Civil War "cruel" and "wicked," shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, and had members of the Maryland legislature placed in prison to prevent Maryland's secession.  The Union won the Civil War.

Under the Espionage Act of 1917, opponents of World War I were routinely prosecuted, and the Supreme Court routinely upheld their convictions.  Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rightly wrote, "When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."  The Allies won World War I.

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans, as well as allowing the prosecution and/or deportation of those who opposed the war.  The Allies won World War II.

During the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld the free speech rights of war opponents, whether those opponents distributed leaflets depicting the rape of the Statue of Liberty or wore jackets emblazoned with the slogan "F--- the Draft."  America lost the Vietnam War.

This is not to argue that every measure taken by the government to prosecute opponents of American wars is just or right or Constitutional.  Some restrictions, however, are just and right and Constitutional -- and necessary.  No war can be won when members of a disloyal opposition are given free reign to undermine it.

~ Ben Shapiro, "Should We Prosecute Sedition?," February 15, 2006

Brianha Joy Gray on Ben Shapiro's extreme Zionist position

Ben Shapiro is a noted, very insistent Zionist.  He has gotten in trouble in the past for saying things that have been interpreted as at best disrespectful to Palestinian lives, at worst fully Islamophobic.  He tweeted, of course famously, in 2010, "Israelis like to build, Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.  This is not a difficult issue.  #settlementsrock."  The settlements in the West Bank are, of course, illegal.  It's individual citizens of Israel and sometimes the United States who are literally armed by the Israeli government to expand that territory, which again, they're illegally occupying.  And there've been almost 200 documented killings in the West Bank, where there is no Hamas, even since the events of October 7th.

~ Brianha Joy Gray, "FIGHT: Ben Shapiro ATTACKS Candace Owens On Israel/Palestine; ‘Absolutely Disgraceful’," The Hill, 4:45 mark, November 15, 2023

Ben Shapiro on Israel's response to the October 7 Hamas attack

Frankly, I don't believe in proportionate response to terrorism.   I believe that the way you stop terrorism is with wildly disproportionate response.  It doesn't mean in terms of targeting civilians.  It means in terms of killing as many terrorists as humanly possible.   And allowing them to dictate the terms of engagement by hiding behind civilians in areas that they're supposedly responsible for means that the only option for Israel is to surrender to Hamas's hatred of its own citizens, its willingness to use its own children as human shields.  No country worth its salt could ever do that.

~ Ben Shapiro, interview with Piers Morgan

Bill Maher on how Gen Z sees socialism

When I hear people nowadays, fact-free, if you look at Gen Z, a lot of them think "maybe communism, be good to give that another try."  They just don't understand, because they have this idea in their head that if something happened before they were alive, what does it matter?  It didn't really happen.  But stuff did happen.  Stuff did happen.  I know you weren't around for it, but it really did and other people noticed it and we learned that lesson.  Communism doesn't work and it makes people very cynical.

~ Bill Maher, "Here's Why Russia Invaded Ukraine, w/ Bill Maher and Ben Shapiro," The Ben Shapiro Show, 9:50 mark, March 14, 2022

Ben Shapiro on the new puritanism (cancel culture)

The new puritans are great with porn and very bad with political dissidence.  If you disagree with them, then you must be burned at the stake.  But if you want to simulate lesbian sex acts on stage in front of millions of people, not only is that good, that is wonderful for our culture.

~ Ben Shapiro, "Leftists OUTRAGED Over Bill Burr Jokes at 2021 Grammys," YouTube, 1:20 mark, March 15, 2021

Ben Shapiro on the progressive worldview of wealth, inequality, virtue and evil

No one is a better person just because they're poor.  By the way, no one's a better person because they're rich.  All that wealth is is a measure of voluntary exchanges you engaged in in a free market.  That's all that wealth is.  But the idea for the Left is that all inequality is evil, therefore the people who are unequal at the top are evil and the people at the bottom are virtuous.  Which is why you'll hear people on the Left say things like they like small business, but they hate people who are big business like the Wal-Mart family, the Walton family.  They're terrible.  Well were they terrible when they were just a family living in the middle of nowhere?  When exactly did they transition over into evil?  When they became successful enough.  Because their success meant, by necessity, according to the leftist worldview, they were depriving others of their fair share.

~ Ben Shapiro, "Ben Shapiro EDUCATES College Professors in an Epic Q & A," YouTube, 18:38 mark, before 2016 presidential election (posted July 24, 2019)