It's my honor to introduce Ben Shapiro. Now it seems like you know who he is, but I will do my best to introduce him. So in the past decade, Ben Shapiro has become one of the most eloquent and influential voices in the American right.
He's a broadcaster, a widely popular podcast host, a columnist, an author, and a debater who never backs down from a challenge. As the founder of a media powerhouse, Ben has brought conservative ideas to tens of millions of Americans. But for us, what truly stands out of his fearless and unwavering support of Israel Ben doesn't just advocate for Israel in friendly environments, he will walk into the most hostile college campuses and defend Israel with unmatched clarity and passion. And if that is not impressive enough, Ben is also a master of balancing work and family.
He's never shy about saying when I call him in crazy hours. I'll get back to you after I'm done with my kids. That's a very conservative argument.
Please join me in welcoming the one and only Ben Shapiro. Thank you so much. That's very kind of you.
Thank you. Folks, it's an honor to be back here. I want to start by first saying thank you to you.
Seriously, thank you to you, not just for being here, obviously. Thank you on behalf of Western civilization for fighting the fight, the rest of the fight, that the West should be fighting. As a Jew, as an American, as a member of Western civilization, honestly, I want to thank all of you.
There's something that we do very often in the United States when we do events, and it's always moving and it's always special, but I think it has a different impact here. I've never seen anybody do it because it's so obvious, because you're all living it. In the United States, the percentage of people who serve in the military is extremely low.
The percentage of people who actually know somebody who's serving in the military is exceedingly low these days in the United States. That obviously isn't true here. And so, I want to ask, if you've served over the course of the last year, please stand up.
And now, please stay standing. Please stay standing. If you are a member, if you're a family member... Brother, sister, husband, wife, of somebody who's serving, please stand up also, if you're a family member.
The reason I think that that's so important for you to recognize sometimes is just how different that is. That's unique. It's something that doesn't exist in the West anymore.
The West was built on a tradition of what Victor Davis Hanson, the historian, calls civic militarism. The idea of free people who band together to defend themselves, defend their property, defend their honor against people who would seek to destroy it. Israel may be the last and best example of civic militarism in the West these days and serves as an example over the course of the last year for the rest of Western civilization.
My family and I, we were in Israel just before October 7th. We actually left right before the last Chag. We were here for the Chagim, we left on October 6th, we got back to the United States, and of course we started hearing via my security team in the United States what had happened on October 7th. And like everybody else, I mean, we were very far away, but like everybody else we were shocked and we were perturbed, and we were disturbed at the deepest level. Because it didn't feel just like a massive terror attack.
which of course it was, or an act of war, which of course it was, or an attempted act of genocide, which of course it was. It felt like it struck at the heart of what Israel was, at the heart of Israel's hopes, at the heart of its aspirations. And the mark of a great civilization is not that it is never surprised, is not that it is never damaged, is that when it is surprised, and when it is damaged, and when it is hurt, it roars. And what we have seen from the state of Israel, from you, is precisely that. The most astonishing military operations in the history of modern warfare.
Yes, in Gaza. Yes, in Lebanon. A social fabric that just moments before October 7th seemed to be fraying at every corner, suddenly coming together and proving itself more durable and stronger than the social fabric of pretty much any other nation on the planet. People who five minutes ago were fighting each other in the streets, suddenly side by side, from every walk of life.
It was unbelievable. Now why is that important? Why is that important to the West? Why does the West care so much would be a good question. I spent a lot of this last year doing something much less important, talking.
I go to a bunch of colleges and universities, or I'm debating people in the media about what's going on here. And the real question I think that needs to be asked is why anyone cares? Seriously, why does anyone care? It's a pretty important question. After all, for those of us in the United States, it's 8,000 miles away.
In the scale of global conflict, it's actually a fairly small global conflict. There are multiple global conflicts that are currently taking place that have a higher dead toll than what's currently going on in Gaza or in Lebanon. And yet it's at the front of everybody's mind. Why is that? And the reason is because it's indicative.
of a far larger battle that's taking place across the West. A battle that I've characterized as the battle between lions and scavengers. Lions are people who want to build. Lions are people who believe that they have a duty to themselves, to their families, and to their civilization to build, to make life better for people around them, to innovate, to build social fabric, to defend themselves and their families. Those are the lines.
And then there's a scavenger mentality. And this is what's so important about what's going on. The scavenger mentality.
has now become not just common, but de rigueur among a huge percentage of the left in the West. And the scavenger mentality goes something like this. If you are successful in life, it is because you have victimized somebody else. If you are a failure in life, it's because you have been victimized by somebody else. This is a pernicious and evil idea.
In fact, it's an idea that goes all the way back to Cain and Abel. And the basic idea of Cain and Abel is that Cain isn't actually victimized, but treats himself as a victim and therefore takes it out on Abel. And the message of that story, obviously, is the Musser.
that God gives to Cain, where he says to him that sin crouches at your door, but you have the capacity to overcome it. Well, that is a lesson that the left not only refuses to learn, but believes is wrong. They believe that the world can be divided into oppressor and oppressed, and that the way you can tell whether somebody is an oppressor or whether they're oppressed is by their failure in the world.
When grafted onto the current conflict in the Middle East, what that amounts to is that the single most unsuccessful people in the region, the people who decided to elect Hamas, who decided to spend billions of dollars building terror tunnels, who decided to spend all of their lives and the lives of their children in pursuit of death, of a more successful people, that those people are actually victims. And the people who innovate, the people who have built an enormous tech sector, the people who have built a workable economy, despite all of the obstacles, which I'll get to in a moment, despite all of the ridiculous obstacles of being a tiny state in the midst of a great wave of areas that are not particularly friendly to our Jews or freedom or decency. That despite all that, Israel thrives.
That is precisely its sin. When Israel says, why won't you leave us alone because we're successful? The answer is, you won't be left alone because you are successful.
If you were a failure, they would leave you alone. If you were a failure, they would think that you were one of them. But you're not.
You decide that instead, success is worth the price. Because guess what? There's a moral obligation to succeed.
So, in this nation of lions, I've suggested that there... effectively three categories. They're innovators or hunters, people who are out there creating new products, goods and services. The innovation that you see in the Israeli military is beyond parallel.
There's nothing else like it on the planet. Israel has bootstrapped its way into military dominance despite all of the internal obstacles, again, in an area where the Jewish population of the state of Israel, number somewhere between 7.5 and 8 million people, surrounded by 400 million people who believe something very, very different. Israel has somehow emerged as a militarily dominant player because of innovation.
And obviously, when it comes to business, when it comes to tech, there is no place on planet Earth that has a higher rate of startups, that has a higher pace of innovation than Israel. This is a state, this is a nation that is made up of innovators and hunters. And then there are, of course, the warriors. We spoke about them a minute ago.
The people who are out there on the front lines, willing to undergo tremendous sacrifice. In order to make sure that the home front is safe. Fighting for friends, fighting for family, fighting for their land. And then there are the weavers, the people who are in the family.
That's why I asked people in the family to stand up, because they've undertaken an unbelievable sacrifice this year as well. While people are out on the front lines, you have wives and mothers who are at home taking care of the kids, making sure that everything still runs on time, the kids are still being educated. You have business people who are still going to work, making sure that the economy...
still functions. You have people who are ensuring the social fabric is still held together. That is a major burden.
It is a thing that only a robust people can undertake. Israel, I think, over the last year has proved what is best about Israel. And now it's time to take that to the next level. It's time to take the ethos that we've seen over the course of the last year and extend that to the next hundred thousand years of Israel. So what does that mean?
Well, it means removing the obstacles to the things that make Israel great and that make the West great if the West would follow the example of Israel over the course of the last year. That means that in terms of innovation, Israel has to completely restructure its economy. If you wish to be a strong nation, a strong state, the economy of the state of Israel has to be built around innovation.
It cannot be built around redistribution. It cannot be built around taking other people's wealth and using it for your own purposes. The ethos of a civic militarism requires that everybody put in their two cents and that everybody be able to retain that which they have built. and then build for the future. Everybody.
Not some. Everybody. I don't just exist, obviously, in the media world.
I also exist in the business world. And you have no idea, truly no idea, how many people I speak to, billionaires, investors, tech bros, who are dying to invest in Israel, and it's very difficult to invest in Israel. It's very difficult, not because of the geopolitical situation.
They're sanguine about the geopolitical situation. It's because it's actually quite difficult to invest. The regulations in the red tape here are insane and they need to be done away with. You don't need to have a cousin in one of the Misrad in order to actually get something done in a functional state.
That needs to change and it needs to change radically. And then as for the warriors of Israel, the warriors of Israel have to be protected and they have to be made independent. This is something that you heard Mike speak about just a moment ago.
Israel has to disconnect itself from the rest of the world in terms of aid. As an American, that's what's best for America. And as a member of Western civilization, it is good that Western nations be robustly capable of defending themselves without having to have their leash tugged on by a derelict daughter like Joe Biden. That means changing the supply chains.
That means building domestically. And most of all, that means changing the mentality when it comes to how Israel approaches the rest of the world. You know, what I do is speak constantly about what I think are fundamental principles. I talk for a living, as I say, but when I talk, I can't change the facts on the ground.
Only the people who live and work can change the facts on the ground. And so Israel has spent a lot of time over the course of my lifetime engaging in the game of moral suasion, trying to convince everybody that Israel is right and its enemies are wrong. Well, the problem is, as I've expressed in the dichotomy between lions and scavengers, Israel being right, Israel being good, and Israel being successful are precisely the things that its enemies hate about it.
Every time you talk about how Israel is good, right, and successful, its enemies get angrier. They insist that you are worse. They insist that you are more evil. Your success is a sign of how bad you are. So the world of moral suasion is not where Israel is going to guarantee its future.
The world of independence and strength is where Israel... always has and always will guarantee its future. And once again, that also means calling upon, as I say before, all citizens to get involved in the warrior ethos. All, not some.
Abraham Lincoln suggested that a house divided against itself cannot stand. That is certainly true when it comes to the call to duty that is represented. by IDF service, for example.
And then finally, the weavers. How do we protect the robustness of the nation of Israel? How should the West protect itself when it comes to the weavers, the people who actually build the social fabric?
Israel is an amazing example of this, because Israel is the only country in the West, literally the only one that has above-replacement fertility rates. It is the only Western country on the planet. that is reproducing more than it is dying.
So why is that? Well, obviously it has something to do with the religion. It has something to do with the Bible. It has something to do with the culture.
Because the reality is that even the Chilonim here are more Orthodox than most of the people who are Reform and Conservative Jews in the United States. There's something in the water over here, or something in the relations over here between cousins. Every Chiloni has a Haredi cousin and vice versa. And that means that even people in Tel Aviv are still having three kids, a couple. Hey, that is something that needs to be maintained and it needs to be promoted.
It's something the rest of the West should take note of. A culture that prizes life has more kids. Well, what does all of that mean? It means that you guys, a lot rides on you. A lot rides on your success.
This is the tip of the spear in a civilizational battle. It's why everyone cares so much and it's why you don't have a choice as to whether to succeed. You have a duty to succeed.
Not just on behalf of yourselves, not just on behalf... of Israel on behalf of the West, because as you go, Western civilization goes. You are an outpost of Western civilization, of Judaic values, in a place that is rather inhospitable, and you've built something incredible. And if that flower can grow out of this wilderness, then it can grow anywhere, and should, and the West should take heart from all of that. Now, earlier tonight...
and he's not going to know that I'm going to do this. There's a young soldier who's here who I had the opportunity to meet a few months ago. It was by Shavuot time.
We were here with my family. And Ari, are you here? Ari's in the crowd somewhere. Ari Spitz.
It's a big crowd. It's a little hard for me to see, but Ari is, I believe, 21, 22 years old. Ari was wounded in Gaza. He was gravely wounded in Gaza.
He lost a couple of limbs. And last time I saw him, he was in a mobile wheelchair. And we were coming out of Davaneng on Shavuos, and somebody turned to me, I was walking next to him, and somebody turned to me, and they said thank you to me.
They said, thank you for what you do. And I felt so terrible. Honestly, I felt awful.
Because I'm standing right next to somebody who actually did a thing. Somebody who actually did something. And then, as we're about to get in the Shabbos elevator, Ari turns to me and he says, I just have a quick question.
I want to know what more can I do? What more can I do? That's the ethos that's been uncovered in Israel in the middle of the gravest time in its history. And that's an ethos that needs to be carried forward, not just on behalf of Israel, not just on behalf of Jews who live abroad, like me, on behalf of Americans, on behalf of the West more generally. That ethos, that lion ethos, has to be revitalized, it has to be reawakened, and you in this room, all your family members, all your compatriots, all the people of this country, you're the people to do it.
Thank you so much.