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Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 2,000 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the Chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month and according to Axios, he is one of the "top 10 most engaged" Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.
Ben Shapiro Breaks Down Israel's Strike on Qatar and the Battle Against Civilization's Scavengers
Ben Shapiro provides an in-depth analysis of Israel's operation targeting Hamas leadership in Qatar, explaining the diplomatic chess game between Qatar, Hamas, Israel, and the Trump administration. He addresses accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, examines what victory looks like in Gaza, and explores why skepticism toward legacy media coverage of Israel matters. Shapiro then discusses his new book Lions and Scavengers, revealing the fundamental divide between those who build civilization and those driven by envy to tear it down, from college campuses to international conflicts.
Israel conducted a strike in Qatar targeting top Hamas leadership, flying ten F-16s across the Middle East to hit specific terror targets in Doha. Ben Shapiro explains that understanding this operation requires context about Qatar's role in the conflict. Qatar has provided billions of dollars in material support to Hamas, allowing Hamas leadership to live in five-star hotels for years while pressing Hamas's priorities in negotiations without putting significant pressure on the terror group to release hostages or end the war.
As Israel approached what it considers the final phase of the war in Gaza City, the Trump administration put forward a final offer: Hamas should release the remaining 48 hostages, consisting of 28 dead bodies and 20 alive hostages. In return, the United States would guarantee through honest brokerage an end to the war resulting in the disarming of Hamas and movement of the Gaza Strip to a coalitional government supported by regional states, along with rebuilding of the area. Despite Qatar pushing this offer, Hamas rejected it in Arabic that morning, a fact Shapiro notes was not widely reported by media.
President Trump issued a statement via Truth Social calling this Hamas's last chance, warning that bad things would happen if they refused. Shapiro argues that Israel's ability to fly ten F-16s across the Middle East to strike a specific terror target in Doha without American knowledge defies imagination. He suggests it would not be improbable if Qatar itself knew the strike was coming. The operation aimed to change the negotiating status, sending the message that Hamas leadership is safe nowhere until the war ends.
What Does Victory Look Like for Israel
Israel began this war with two goals: freeing as many hostages as humanly possible and winning the war. Shapiro acknowledges these goals are in many ways mutually exclusive, as military operations necessary to win the war conflict with Hamas's use of hostages as human shields alongside their use of civilians in the same capacity.
Netanyahu's publicly stated priorities include getting the hostages out and ensuring there cannot be a future military threat to Israel. Shapiro believes this will likely materialize as an Israeli military occupation of large swaths of the Gaza Strip, with humanitarian areas established particularly on the coast and in Rafah where aid is provided and pathways created for people who want to leave. He points out this is the only conflict he's aware of where outside countries tell people who want to leave that they literally cannot.
The Trump administration has been facilitating the ability of people who want to leave to do so while also facilitating entry of not only humanitarian aid but investment into areas cleared of terrorists, enabling Hamas-free rebuilding. The last untouched area of the Gaza Strip in terms of serious Israeli military operations is Gaza City, where Israel already controls 40 to 50 percent of the territory. Israel has been warning people to evacuate for weeks, but Hamas has been stopping people at checkpoints, turning them back and shooting them if they refuse to stay and serve as human shields.
Shapiro's Main Critique of Netanyahu's Approach
Shapiro's primary critique of the Netanyahu administration is that they didn't move faster. He believes this should have been a much more accelerated process. He argues that while no war is perfect, this war has been conducted in about as meticulous a way as any urban war in history. Israel has complete air superiority over the Gaza Strip and could have leveled it on October 8th if indiscriminate force was the goal. Instead, Israel has sacrificed a thousand of its own young men going house to house to prevent civilian casualties, with thousands more wounded for life, while shipping in 4,400 calories per day per person into the Gaza Strip, much of which is stolen by Hamas.
The main mistake Israel made, according to Shapiro, is misunderstanding how public relations works. They couldn't have presented this war in a kinder way that people would have loved. What they could have done is move faster. Americans don't like long drawn-out occupations or military operations, as seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Gaza. Americans prefer operations like those against the Taliban that took three to five weeks or operations against Iran that took about 12 days. Those are operations any ally of the United States can sustain from a public relations perspective.
Responding to Genocide Accusations
Shapiro states there is literally no definition of genocide by which Israel is committing genocide. Genocide typically involves targeted killing of the vast majority of a population or at least an attempt to do so. There has never been a genocide attempted in world history where food being shipped in exceeded the daily caloric intake of the average American into areas where genocide was supposedly being attempted.
Total population loss in the Gaza Strip has been 3 percent. During the Holocaust, it was 50 percent. During Rwanda, it was significantly higher than 3 percent. Nations don't issue leaflet warnings to people or go house to house attempting to reduce civilian casualties during a genocide. Shapiro understands people use genocide to mean thing they don't like, acknowledging nobody likes war or wants war, certainly not Israelis who were not at war on October 6th. Every Israeli family must send their 18-year-old son or daughter to the military with the possibility they will get blown up in Gaza, something no Israeli wants regardless of political position.
The Ethnic Cleansing Accusation
Regarding accusations of ethnic cleansing, Shapiro notes the term has been fairly recently coined to describe population movement during war, something that has been ongoing for all of human history. The idea that Israel is forcing people out of the Gaza Strip is not the stated policy of the Israeli government. If people want to leave, they can, but they're not being forced to leave. Moving people out of heavily urbanized areas honeycombed with terrorist booby traps is not the same as ethnic cleansing. Shapiro sees ethnic cleansing used as a softer form of the genocide attack.
He envisions a good outcome five years from now involving people who want to leave being able to do so, humanitarian aid and investment flowing into cleared areas, and Hamas-free rebuilding of the region.
Media Skepticism and Israel Coverage
Shapiro finds it astonishing that some on the right who are highly critical of Israel lack skepticism when it comes to legacy media coverage. Legacy media are overwhelmingly anti-Israel. The New York Times, Associated Press (which has worked hand in glove with Hamas for years), and Reuters cannot be accused of being pro-Israel outlets. Yet when it comes to Israel reporting, skepticism seems to disappear among those who question media on COVID, lockdowns, Ukraine, and the border.
He addresses the perception that Jews own the media by pointing to the terrible headlines Israel receives. Even at his own company, the DailyWire+, major host Matt Walsh radically disagrees with Shapiro on foreign policy matters. Suggesting that an atheistic Jewish person by birth who doesn't care about Judaism or Israel owning the New York Times means the newspaper is pro-Israel ignores literally every bit of coverage they have done for Shapiro's entire lifetime.
Netanyahu's MAGA Statement
When asked about Netanyahu's statement that you can't be MAGA if you're anti-Israel, Shapiro offers both ungenerous and generous interpretations. The ungenerous interpretation suggests you must hold a particular position on every Israeli governmental activity to be MAGA, which is not true. People can disagree from the right or left with Netanyahu's policies and still be MAGA.
The generous interpretation, which Shapiro believes Netanyahu intended, is that if you're taking Hamas's side against Israel in this conflict, it's very difficult to align that with stated positions of the Trump administration or what President Trump himself is doing. You can have disagreements on Israel and still be MAGA and America first, but if you're pro-Hamas, you're something darker that shouldn't be tolerated.
Lions and Scavengers: The Battle Within Every Heart
Shapiro's new book Lions and Scavengers explores the idea that inside every human heart exists two competing forces, tracing back to the Book of Genesis. There is the dutiful part that wants to engage in what God designed, understanding the rationalistic world and having a duty to do the moral thing. This part gets up every morning trying to build something, be innovative and risk-taking, defend civilization, and build social fabric.
The other part is driven by envy. This part looks at problems and immediately attributes them to shadowy forces outside of control, trying to rip down the very systems that provide prosperity and tear down the lions out of pure envy. Shapiro sees this dynamic existing not just individually but civilizationally as well.
Looking at activities on college campuses, he observes a strange agglomeration of causes coming together under varying banners—sometimes hating President Trump over immigration, sometimes Israel, sometimes LGBT issues—but always the same people marching together. What these groups have in common is not policy agreement but a deep hatred of Western civilization, viewing its fundamental basis as evil and wrong and believing it needs to be torn out by the roots.
Understanding Queers for Palestine and Civilizational Hatred
Shapiro uses queers for Palestine as an obvious example of this phenomenon. While it puzzles people since queers in Palestine get thrown off buildings, the answer is that radical LGBTQ groups and pro-Hamas groups share nothing except both hate the West. Both believe traditional values of Western civilization need to be destroyed for them to live more fulfilling lives.
What the West Needs: The Courage to Say No
The missing component for those in the West standing up against these forces, according to Shapiro, is courage to stand up and say no. Good people tend to be introspective, thinking about what they did wrong and how to fix it. They apologize when they do something wrong. Bad people take apologies and grind faces into the dust because they're not engaged in guilt cultures but shame cultures where the most important thing is not to be made to feel shame but to shame others.
Those who consider themselves part of Western civilization need to recognize that constant self-abnegation and attempts to tear themselves down out of misguided humility in the face of people happy to destroy civilization from without and within is a gigantic mistake. It is totally fine to tell people who wish to destroy Western civilization that their values are wrong and don't belong here.
The Origins of Civilizational Resentment
Resentment comes from a wide variety of places but tends to stem from feelings of frustration and lack of innovation. It comes from people who believe they have been marginalized or deserve more. Shapiro sees it frequently with university students who believe they deserve a $250,000 salary for a gender studies degree because they've been taught they should get more. When they don't, they become angry at their parents for not putting them in position to achieve that, rebelling against everything they've been taught or haven't been taught.
Resentment also comes from a bored population. People who grew up without any sense of external threat think everything good in life is the baseline, just normal, and that you can tear everything away without that baseline falling. This is false. Some resentment comes from ignorance, some from envy.
Gratitude as a characteristic of human beings must be cultivated. It's something parents must teach children. Envy is totally natural and easy. Small children naturally envy each other and get on each other's case. Being grateful for what they have is very difficult. Parents must teach children to say thank you. They don't have to teach children to say no.
