I watched an interview of Israel's leader on this YouTube channel called Triggernometry, a right-leaning but I would say very fair and informed podcast. They don't do sensationalism, reactionary, clickbaity stuff, nor ask gotcha questions, and that's the kind of thing I can get behind whatever side of the political spectrum one decides to align with.

And to be honest, they must be doing something right because they landed a 45 minute conversation with one of the most controversial men on earth right now, a man in the middle of a war, or if you're of the proclivity, invasion/genocide.

Now, I have literally zero opinion on this guy personally, other than I think he has a great voice; deep and booming, confident. I think he would be a great singer (Dear god it's raining outside for the first time in forever. It's been weeks of 37-38C. Praise the Lord! Yeah, you thought this parenthesis would be related. It ain't). I'd say I'm as skeptical of everything he says as I am Trump or Starmer or any other of these elite class.

But I wanted to watch anyway because I find I always learn something. Overall, it was a good interview but there's three main takeaways for me that aren't even related to the questions or how he handled them.

History, History, History

This was his answer to 'what's the one thing we're not talking about which we all should be as a society'. And I'm just like hell yeah!

He goes on to elaborate but he was totally right when he said something like 'If their knowledge of history goes back as far as breakfast, you'll be lucky'.

I wouldn't say I'm anywhere close to being a pro or even well-informed about things that I ought to - I have large gaps of historical knowledge of both the UK and China. But either way, I am a history nerd. I love it, I listen & watch all things about it, and I truly think it's extremely underrated. I have this video lined up for later today:

Time and time again, we see a failure in historical knowledge by our leaders, and as we all know, if you don't learn from it, you're doomed to repeat it. I'm happy for Israel that they have a historically informed leader, something I fear will never happen in the UK beyond the time we had Boris Johnson, whose historical knowledge seemed to range between the start of Churchill to the end of Churchill.

Podcasts are bigger than we think

When Trump was doing his campaign, I think his son or grandson told him to go on podcasts, it's the new thing. And so he did. Suddenly I couldn't get away from his mugshot because he was appearing all over YouTube. He most famously appeared on Joe Rogan and nobody can deny he did a great job, even if you fundamentally disagree with every word. He sat there for hours chatting, responding quickly, making quick witted jokes, no bathroom breaks for an 80-year old, too. I also saw him on some random bro-zoomer podcasts. And, well, he won the election.

The fact that Netanyahu is choosing a random YouTube podcast instead of, say, a mainstream News Channel, speaks powerful volumes about how the political landscape is changing. And to be honest, I'm all for it. I vastly prefer an hour-long sit down giving these people a chance to actually talk, defend, be challenged and respond naturally. All this pre-scripted, highly edited, 5-minute soundbite-ism is kind of insufferable to me nowadays.

AI has its uses

Another benefit to the podcast is, rather than just appearing on TV in the moment then vanishing, you can pause, go back, check and scrutinise. With AI so readily available now, it's a seamless process to briefly pause, fact check, and continue, as compared to the days where you have to Google, fish through sponsored content, find the most recent, matching, unbiased results, open about 4 of them and read through.

For example, Netanyahu said Gazans are now fighting against Hamas, losing their lives in the fight alongside him. This made me skeptical. I had seen some anti-hamas protests by Gazans, but nothing about any violent revolts or laying their lives down. It appears there's no direct evidence of what he claimed so far, so I take that with a grain of salt and move on.

It's a vastly superior combo action to gain knowledge even if it's not 100% foolproof - nothing is.

So what do I actually think about the whole conflict?

Honestly, If I had to have strong opinions on the whole thing, I'd lean towards Israel's favour.

I am not convinced of any genocide. The UN has yet to declare such a thing, too.

People ignore the reality that, regardless of how awful a war is, genocide has a specific definition related to intent. You could kill 100% of a population and it still not be considered genocide, if this was as a result of perpetual conflict without intent to kill 100%. It's ugly to discuss such semantics, but important.

Do I think they've gone too far? Probably. Again though, the fog of war makes it impossible to know for sure. On one day you see a video of a child utterly emaciated in starvation. The next day you find the boy wasn't even in Gaza, but Sudan. One day you see another emaciated starving child, and the next day you find out the kid was a sufferer of cerebral palsy. Oh, and AFP Fact Check found it was again sourced from elsewhere, Syria in this case. While the broader context is very real, it's foolish to jump on the emotional bandwagon from either side's propaganda efforts.

Hamas, however, take it to a whole new level, actively killing their own people, and, quote from a Hamas spokesperson:

We are facing [Israel] with our bare chests.

Meanwhile, the Hamas leader himself described the people as a human shield of faith. They all encourage this for martyrdom.

That being said, how much of that is also a fog-of-war error? I've literally no idea. For all I know, Hamas ceased to exist a year ago and Israel are just trying to flatten the whole area to give room for a Trumpian holiday resort.

I genuinely don't care about this conflict anymore than you care about the civil war and famine in Sudan, Yemen, Haiti, Myanmar, or the mass open slave markets in Libya, Somalia, Syria, and more. Nobody cares, even though millions upon millions are dying and starving across the land. It's not fashionable to care about these places.

This map springs to mind:

Or the Chinese version:

For me, England is suffering its own problems now. We are declining on a trajectory to become something of a broken, impoverished civilisation. If we spent more time focused on preventing that than we do getting involved in Ukraine and the Middle East at the cost of billions, we might actually be better off by now.

When we have enough money we don't know what to do with, then we can maybe focus on international morality about the war between Cuba and Japan or whatever conflict happens to be going on in that distant future.