Scott Adams applies persuasion and mental models to the Israel-Palestine conflict, sidestepping religious claims about God-given land. He notes Israel's government owns roughly 80% of land and leases it, and Palestinians can buy or lease in Israel. He reframes the dispute as fundamentally economic, suggesting one-state solutions or economic remedies might resolve what looks like a religious or nationalist problem.
Chapters
Good morning, everybody. Come on in. Grab a seat. We still have some space here a little bit over there. Over here. All right. It's filling up fast. And I think for the early birds, it's time for the morning simultaneous sip. Grab your beverages. I hope it's coffee. Now, admit it, it tastes better when you do it at the same time. You know it does. All right. I would like to start today's discussion with a confession and an apology. I confess that I am completely ignorant about events in the Middle East. Completely ignorant. I apologize for all the things I'm going to say wrong about the Middle east and for all the things I have said wrong about the Middle East. The only thing that's different between me and everyone else in the world is that sometimes the other people in the world don't realize that they also don't know anything about the Middle East. So I'm kind of way ahead of most of you in the sense that at least I know I don't know enough to really understand the region. But that said, there are some things I do understand in the world in general. And persuasion is one of those things that my special hobby. And so let's talk about the persuasion, psychological, mental part of the Middle east and see if we can get any, you know, maybe a little greater insight. Maybe some of you will get up to speed, learn a little bit about the area. Here's the thing that's been bugging me lately. What does it mean that God said you own the land? Let's say you had two groups. Let's call them the Jews and the Muslims. Let's say that God said this land is yours and the Jews thought that meant them, and the Muslims thought that meant them. So let's say you have a situation where they both think that they own the same land and that land is now called Israel. What does it mean when God gives you land? What does that mean? Let's say God gave the land in the Middle east to blonde white guys with glasses. Let's say, and I'm bald at the moment. Let's make that bald guys. Let's say God gave the land in the Middle east to bald guys with glasses who wear blue shirts. Does that mean that I personally own some land in the Middle East? No, doesn't work that way. Even if God said I give this land to bald guys with glasses who have a blue shirt, do I go over there and build my house? I do not. Do you know why? Because another bald guy with glasses and a blue shirt already owns that land. I can't build a land where he already built his house. So if God says, I give this land to Muslims, does that help Bob, the Muslim people? He doesn't get any land. Other Muslims have it. So the first thing you have to understand is that giving land to your people doesn't help you at all, right? Unless there's some reason you can't own any land there. Now, if you're prohibited from having land, well, then that's a problem, right? If God said you can have this land, and then somebody like Israel says, no, you can't have this land, well, then that's the problem. But is that the situation? I'm looking at Quora, and I'm reading a little bit about Israel land rights, and the question was, are Palestinians allowed to buy land in Israel? Do you know the answer to that question? No. Googling. Before. Before I tell you the answer. Are Palestinians allowed to own land in Israel? Go. Now look at the answers going by. You've got some yeses. Now that would be unusual, wouldn't it? And you've got a bunch of no's, but most of them are yes. The answer is yes. The answer is yes. If you're a Palestinian and you have money and you are not a resident of Israel, you can buy real estate in Israel. Moreover, 80% of all the land in Israel is owned by the government of Israel, and apparently it will lease this land. Now, if you're a Palestinian, can you lease land the same as an Israeli citizen can? The land that's owned by the government? Yup, you can. So what is the difference between a Palestinian who lives anywhere and an Israeli citizen in terms of owning the land that God gave them? What's the difference? Now some would argue that no, that's not good because the government of Israel is who owns the land, and the government of Israel is sort of controlling it. But what's a government? A government isn't a person. Government can't really own land the way a person does. And when God said, I give this land to whoever you think they gave it to, can't each individual have as much a right to the land as any other individual? Yes, they all have access to the land. Now, of course there's a financial difference. The financial difference is that there might be more money with Israelis, et cetera. But imagine if you could translate the problem over there from a religious whatever problem to an economic problem. Suppose the only problem that the Palestinians had is that they don't have money. Because if they did have money, they could buy land and then they would own the land that God sent is theirs. And they could buy up the Israelis land if they wanted to and they would have the same rights that everybody else does. Now does that for those of you who didn't know, and by the way, I didn't know it, I had to look it up. If you didn't know that Palestinians have the same rights to own land. Oh, and by the way, it gets better. Here's also from Quora. I'll assume that nothing I say is absolute until it's double checked. But it says what? When it comes to residential lands, Arabs often have more favorable terms than Israeli Jews do. In other words, if you're an Arab and you want to buy land in Israel, you often get better terms. I didn't know that. You get better terms if you're leasing it from the government. So in other words, there's already a, can we call it a reparations built into the system. So the government of Israel controls 80% of the land, but they will lease it to both Israeli Jews and to anybody else who's got money. And if you're an Arab and you're buying that land, you get some kind of a discount in many cases, which looks a little like reparations, even though it's not the same people necessarily that were involved with the original dislocation. So that's interesting. Now ask me this or answer me this. Yes, the problem over there. Let me give you some context. When I look at the Palestinians who are protesting the big protests recently, I asked myself, if you were to talk to each of those protesters, would they have the same reasons for protesting and being angry? In other words, are they all out there for literally exactly the same reason? Or if you talk to them, would some of them say it's about economics, you know, Israel is squeezing the life out of us? Or would some of them say it's about God? I don't care about economics, it's just God gave us the land. Or is it because they're mad, revenge wise because Israel did bad things to them, is it nationalism? Yeah. What exactly are their reasons? Because if you don't know their reasons, you don't know how to find an answer. But if the reason is that God gave them the land, maybe we should do a little bit more convincing them that they can have all they want on exactly the same terms. No better terms than an Israeli who lives there. Suppose you had two situations. One is that an Israeli Jew living in Israel can buy land because you know it's their country, they can buy land or they can lease land that the government owns, no restrictions. Now, suppose that you were not an Israeli citizen, but you were a Palestinian or whatever, and you could also buy or lease that same land for better terms. In that case, would you say that God gave it to the people who had the better terms for the land, or did God give it to the people whose government, a theoretical concept, owns it, but the actual Israeli Jews can't buy it at the same price? So there's that. Now the next thing is, I keep hearing that Israel is sort of the Holy Land, but that's just a mistake because it seems to me that the Holy Land is the larger area. I believe it's between the Euphrates and maybe the Nile. Somebody has to give me a little help on the geography. But I believe the biblical Holy Land was sort of vaguely described as between the Euphrates and in some part of Egypt, I think the Nile or something. And Israel's in the middle of that. But it includes a lot of stuff, including everywhere that the Palestinians are outside of Israel proper. So it's all the Holy Land. It's just that the Israeli nation has the holy sites or some of them, but everybody has access to them. So as long as everybody has access to them and everybody can buy land, why exactly would you want a two state solution versus a one state solution? And I'm not saying that as making a point, I'm saying that as displaying my ignorance in this topic, because I don't know exactly what the two world solution versus the one buys you. Because let's say just tomorrow that Israel says, okay, let's not decide who God gave the land to. Let's just not decide that. Let's just say it's all Israel. We'll just expand our border, we'll absorb the Palestinians, will have some kind of, you know, rules in place for who could do what. But it's just all one state. How many problems does that solve? You know, trying to understand exactly what problem you're trying to solve over there might be the biggest. The biggest issue. Yeah. And then there's the issue of what is Zionism versus what is anything else. All right, that's all I have to say for today is that it seems to me there ought to be a solution here because you can work out the God part by the fact that anybody can buy land there. And I think everybody can be. Or to put it another way, yes, as somebody said, you can run both movies on the same screen over there. Pretty sure that both of them can get what they want with a little tweaking. I got to go. Do something else, and I will talk to you later.
