This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution. I'm your host Tom Church and I'm joined as always by the Libertarian

Professor Richard Epstein. Here at Hoover, Richard is the Peter and Kirsten

Bedford Senior Fellow. He's also the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at

at NYU and he is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. Now Richard

let's get right into it. We're still talking about Israel and Hamas, not just because there is a large ground

offensive coming up, hasn't commenced yet, but it looks like the IDF will be going into Gaza very soon.

But because there are, I I think continued protests and media covers that baffle the mind, baffled my mind at least with looking at these protesters, their appreciation or support of Hamas and its targeting of civilians and its methods of attack and they're

like I said receiving a lot of media coverage and you wrote something which I appreciate

which is that the struggle here in Gaza is as much about words as it is about hostages, guns, and rockets.

And that's because there is political will that needs to happen for, I guess, continued action or for Israel to accomplish its goals of

or its goal of rooting out Hamas entirely. Now Richard there are many claims

about Israel and about its behavior that I'd like to get some responses from you on

because there are allegations or I guess pro I don't want to say pro Hamas supportersamais supporters because it really is pro-Palestinian people who I think

unfortunately end up on the side of Hamas because that's their side. But they make allegations.

So I'd like to make a couple of them to you and have you give me your responses.

Sure.

Yeah, the first one I often hear is that this action is justified because Israel is a

a colonizer or a colonial nation and I hear that I think mostly justified

because of not even in Gaza but in the West Bank because of continued expansion

or support for settlements there so how am I to understand or to answer

allegations that Israel is a you know they're colonizers? The way in which you

start to think of a colonized nation is somebody comes in from the outside and takes over a particular place, even though they have no long-term or indigenous presence at.

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