Foreign Policy

Culpability for Palestinian Aggression

When they read about a “wave of knife, gun and vehicular attacks targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians,” most people recognize it as murder or, broadly, terrorism. But in a fascinating report, the Washington Post underscores how “Palestinian society struggles with” how to describe such murderous assaults.
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ARI on YouTube

In case you haven’t noticed, the Ayn Rand Institute has a YouTube channel that we are regularly updating with talks, lectures, debates, interviews, Q&As and seminars.
Foreign Policy

Rethinking the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Two peoples. One piece of land. No wonder there’s a conflict, right? But what if this common perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is wrong? What if this view of the conflict obscures more than it explains? What if it distorts our understanding, rather than helps unravel the conflict?
Foreign Policy

Understanding What Palestinians Believe and Act On

What do Palestinians think of Israel? What do they believe about the legitimacy and efficacy of violent attacks? Daniel Polisar, a political scientist, examined more than 330 opinion surveys, carried out by reputable polling organizations, to find answers. What he pieced together is profoundly unsettling. More so than you might have supposed.
Foreign Policy

Why Americans Struggle to Understand Palestinian Violence

To many Americans, the spate of random stabbings and car-ramming attacks in Israel, often carried out by young Palestinians, seems unfathomable. One significant reason such attacks are hard to understand is that a lot of Americans assume that basically everyone everywhere wants the same things: a good life for themselves, a bright future for their children. But that life-affirming orientation is far from universal. Yet that assumption has shaped the common view of the Palestinian cause. The result: it subverts our ability to understand what animates that cause.
Foreign Policy

Yaron Brook on the Hamas-Israel War

In his regular podcast, Leonard Peikoff addresses questions on how Objectivism applies to your everyday life, and on alternating weeks Yaron Brook sits in as the guest host addressing questions on how Objectivism applies to politics, economics and current events. This week Yaron took on the Hamas-Israel War.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
View Article
Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
View Article