This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

Today we're discussing This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

Today we're discussing the horrifying terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas in Israel.

I'm your host Tom Church, and I'm talking to the Libertarian Professor Richard Epstein.

Richard here at the Hoover Institution is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow.

At NYU, he's the Lawrence Attish Professor of Law, and at the University of Chicago he is a senior lecturer.

Now on October 7th Israel suffered the most catastrophic attack in its history

when Hamas fighters invaded from Gaza and went on a murdering spree.

And I say murdering because among the now 1,200 people confirmed dead in Israel, many,

of them were just civilians. Women and children, the elderly, the unarmed.

Hamas live streamed their heinous acts, they took prisoners, and now they're going to

suffer the consequences of being truly at war with Israel.

Richard five days into the conflict Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Gaza.

It's killed an estimated 900 people there.

I think many more will die. It's just the beginning and it is not conducting limited military operations like it has in previous flare-ups in the last 15,20 years. This is war and I think Hamas is over. But the

thing is, Richard, Hamas cannot defeat Israel's military. We all know that. It

cannot hold territory. It doesn't have a chance of

doing what it says it wants to do. So why, Richard, why in the world did they choose

this course of action? What is their objective?

So complicated to say, but let me tell you what I think is happening. I think they were relying on some kind of a domino theory. They believe that if they struck a deadly blow, the deep

resentments that Arabs throughout the world have against the state of Israel

would lead them to mobilize and to join them. They hope that there would be

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