Piers Morgan, Bassam Youssef, and Jeremy Boring dissect the October 7th Hamas attacks, comparing them to 9/11 while debating the morality of Israel's disproportionate response amid over 3,000 Palestinian deaths. The conversation scrutinizes conflicting reports on a hospital strike, accusations of war crimes involving white phosphorus, and Ben Gvir's controversial stance against humanitarian aid. Guests clash over whether defeating nihilistic terror justifies collective punishment or if such actions risk becoming a long, deadly war akin to Afghanistan, ultimately questioning the role of international law versus political expediency in preventing a second Nakba. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Parallels Between 9-11 and October 700:15:28
Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan uncensored.
Well, good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan on Censor.
The parallels between 9-11 and last week's atrocities in Israel are painfully obvious.
These were murderous terrorists, religious fanatics who killed with barbaric impunity on sovereign land.
As I said yesterday, the proportion of the Israeli population murdered in these attacks was equivalent to 30,000 Americans being killed on U.S. soil.
There's no wonder Israelis expect a strong response.
And Israel, as I keep saying, has every right to defend itself from Hamas going forward.
But the aftermath of 9-11 taught us some tough lessons too.
Across the Western world, there was a fervor for revenge.
President Bush spoke for many when he said this.
I can hear you.
I can hear you.
The rest of the world hears you.
And the people and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
It was popular rhetoric, but that yearning for justice took America and its allies, including Britain, into a trap.
First came the war on terror in Afghanistan, lasted 20 years, cost more than $2 trillion to countless lives, and ultimately ended with the Taliban back in charge of the country.
Next came the illegal invasion of Iraq, which had nothing much to do with bin Laden or al-Qaeda and turned into a disaster.
More than a million died.
Iraq became a breeding ground for ISIS, and the spurious excuse for the war that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction turned out to be a credibility-slaying lie.
Well, the situation is very different, but the potential perils are the same.
There's no dispute that Hamas committed these attacks because they've repulsively boasted about it and threatened more.
But a full-blown invasion of Gaza will be horribly difficult to execute.
Retired General David Petraeus, who commanded Allied forces in Iraq, describes it like this.
I almost can't imagine a more challenging contextual set of circumstances here than what they face.
There are tunnels, there will be rooms that will have improvised explosive devices.
You have to clear every building, every floor, every room, every basement, every tunnel.
Civilian losses are inevitable and tough Israeli losses lie ahead as well.
Well, civilian deaths are sadly inevitable.
That is the grim reality of war.
If Israel gets this wrong, it could turn into a long, deadly, and much expanded war, which fuels the next generation of terrorists and unleashes chaos across the whole region.
Palestinian authorities already say that more than 3,000 civilians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since last week.
Tonight, the Hamas-controlled authorities in Gaza say a hospital has been blown up in what they say was an Israeli airstrike and that up to 500 people could have died.
If it turns out to be true, and there are conflicting reports as I came on air that it may have been a misfired Hamas rockets and we'll have to wait for verification on this, then it could be a massive turning point in this war.
Every day now, the civilian death toll is going to climb.
It will skyrocket, of course, with any ground invasion.
And every image like the ones we're seeing tonight will pile more pressure on Israel to show restraint, to be proportionate.
I'll be honest, I don't know what a proportionate response is to what happened on October the 7th.
How can anything be proportionate to the murder of babies in their beds, to the slaughter of 260 people in a music festival, to the kidnapping of a Holocaust survivor and 198 other hostages, to the burning alive of innocent families together in their homes?
I honestly don't have the answer to that question.
But it's one that Israel will have to ask itself and soon.
Well, joining me now to discuss the conflict in Israel and Gaza as a TV host and satirist, Bassam Youssef.
Bassam, it's great to have you back on the program.
I wish it was under different circumstances.
First of all, what is your reaction to what happened on October the 7th?
Oh, it was terrible, of course.
I mean, we kind of get our news kind of also secondhand because, you know, my wife's family, they live in Gaza.
They have cousins and uncles there, and their house also was bombed.
We haven't been able to communicate with them for the past three days.
Communication are lost.
So we don't know actually what is the, how is like how they're doing, but you know, we're used to that.
I mean, it's just like it's very repetitive.
We're used to that.
We're used to them being bombed every time and moving from one place to the other.
You know, it's just like those Palestinians, they're very dramatic.
Ah, Israel killing us.
But they never die.
I mean, they always come back.
You know, they're very difficult to kill, very difficult people to pill.
I know, because I'm married to one.
I tried many times, couldn't kill her.
I mean, there's a dark humor there, and I understand why.
No, it's not dark humor.
I really, I try to get to her every time, but she uses our kids as human shields.
I can never take her out.
Again, I understand the humor, but to be serious, Bassam, about this, tonight there is...
I will be serious.
I will be serious.
I was watching your interview with Ben Shapiro, and I will tell you one thing.
I think that Ben Shapiro is one of the smartest people who ever walked this earth.
He's very, very smart.
I follow him, and I believe everything he said.
And when he came on your show, his solution was, and I quote, his solution was that the solution for this is for Israel to annex Gaza and to kill as many son of bitches as possible to make sure that this will never happen again.
And anyone, anyone who called for a ceasefire will be a terrorist sympathizer.
So God forbid, I don't want to be labeled as a terrorist sympathizer.
So I agree with Ben Shapiro.
I think we should kill as many son of bitches as possible.
Well, let me ask you.
But Bassam, let me...
So far, 3,500 people were killed, including 5,000 son of bitches in the bombing of the Baptist hospital as we speak right now.
One-third of those 3,500 were children.
So my question to Ben Shapiro is, how many more son of bitches do we need to kill so Ben Shapiro is happy?
Because it changes so much.
I'm sorry that...
Please, I'm really at a disadvantage here.
I'm looking at a camera.
I don't see you.
I can hear you on my phone.
The reason I'm interrupting is that.
I think you're conflating different interviews with Ben Shapiro.
He didn't use the phrase sons of bitches with me.
Let me play to you what he actually said on my show.
He did.
He did.
Go back to your interview.
No, he didn't.
That was another interview.
But let me play what he said to me here.
Well, frankly, I don't believe in proportionate response to terrorism.
I believe that the way that you stop terrorism is with wildly disproportionate response.
That doesn't mean in terms of targeting civilians.
It means in terms of killing as many terrorists as humanly possible and allowing them to dictate the terms of engagement by hiding behind civilians in areas that they're supposedly responsible for means that the only option for Israel is to surrender to Hamas's hatred of its own citizens, its willingness to use its own children as human shields.
No country worth its salt could ever do that.
Now, that is substantively different to what you said he said, right?
He's talking there specifically about Hamas.
I agree with him.
The thing is, the question is, what is a proportionate response?
Because it has been different from one tier to another.
So if you look to this graph, for example, this is the death of Israeli and Palestinians.
And it's changing from one year to year.
It's fluctuating like crypto.
So my question is today, what is the going rate today for human lives?
I mean, 2014 was a great year for Ben Shapiro.
88 Israelis were died, and there was 2,329 Palestinians killed on the other side.
That is one Israeli for 27 Palestinians.
That is a very good exchange rate.
What I'm saying is, what is the exchange rate for today so you guys will be happy?
That's my question.
Well, it's not me, guys.
It's not me, guys.
I'm not on either side.
No, no, no, not you.
Like, when I say you guys, I say like people on the other side of that.
Okay, I know that you don't think like that, Pierce.
You're one of the good guys.
But let me tell you something.
I mean, the reason that I'm using this is that, I mean, I can't remember what happened in 2014, and there was no music festival, but there must be something.
I mean, they must do something.
It is their fault.
It has to be something.
I mean, in 2018, 300 Palestinians died.
Ah, who's counting?
So the thing is, my question is, let's find what is the exchange rate for human life today so we know, expect the future death of Palestinians, and we'll be happy to it.
My response to that would be this, Bassem.
I thought carefully about this, because I think it's very tricky for people like me to immerse ourselves into a conflict where we're not directly involved.
And I thought carefully about what I feel about this.
I feel that the scale of what Hamas did on October the 7th supersedes anything else I've seen in this conflict, really ever.
The savagery, the butchery, the slaughter of 1,300 people, the shooting of babies, the kidnapping of grandmothers, and so on.
So if we can agree on that, which I think is inarguable, then the question then becomes, again, about proportion.
I don't disagree that there's been a lot of bad stuff on both sides going back historically for decades.
But if we agree that this was on a different level altogether, quite deliberately by Hamas, designed to be a problem.
Designed to provide.
Let me ask you a question.
And the question was, you raised it earlier about proportion.
I honestly don't know what the proportionate response is.
I honestly don't.
I don't.
I've been watching the airstrikes for the first time.
What's your question?
Well, I would ask you, if you were Israel, what would you...
If you were Israel and that had happened to you, what would you think would be the appropriate way for the country to respond?
I would do exactly like Israel did, kill as many people as possible since the world is letting me do it.
I mean, I can do it because I can, you know?
But the thing is, you know what?
I agree with you.
And you know what?
I'm going to be even ahead of you because I see the question coming.
Do you condemn Hamas for the atrocity?
Yes, I condemn Hamas.
I condemn Hamas.
I condemn Hashem.
Hamas is the source of all evil.
There are a reason for Israel.
And you know what?
Let's for a minute imagine a world without Hamas.
What will this world look like?
Let's give this world a name and let's name this world the West Bank.
Hamas has absolutely no control in the West Bank.
And since the beginning of this, only through August, 37 Palestinian kids were killed.
No music festival, no paragliding, no Hamas.
Since the occupation of the West Bank, 7,000 Palestinians were killed.
No music festival, no paragliding, no Hamas.
I can go on and on and on and on.
No, no, but you don't.
Because in a way, you're preaching to the choir.
I follow this crisis.
Oh, no, you're not preaching.
So the thing is, like, I don't know.
Well, in the sense that I know that what you're saying has validity, of course.
Piers, Piers, by the way, Piers, Piers, Piers, I am at a disadvantage here.
I can hear you.
I cannot see you.
I am in a oxrophobic room.
So please cut me some slack and don't interrupt me and interrupt my point.
Sure.
Because this has to be fair.
Because if you want to only hear your opinion, I can just condemn Hamas and go home.
I can do that.
So do you want to do that or do you have a much more nuanced conversation?
No, I absolutely want to have a nuanced conversation.
I wasn't aware I was interrupting you.
I thought I was at least.
Amazing.
So let's, I mean, I mean, I would say, I would say I really applaud Israel for doing one thing that no military force in the world does.
Because I heard Ben Shapiro and I heard Ron DeSantis, and they said, they said, Israel is the only military force in the world that warns civilians before bombing them.
I mean, how fucking cute.
That is so nice of them.
Because with this logic, if Russian troops started warning Ukrainians before bombing their houses, we're cool with Putin, right?
I mean, okay, Habibi, you have warned them, go invade.
It's fine.
You have done your job.
I mean, the thing is, and I understand all, and I also heard Ben Shapiro talking about human shield.
So you remember my wife's family?
They live in Gaza.
So I asked them.
I told them, when Israel gives you the nice warning, the cute warning, does Hamas force you to stay in your home so you can be bombed and use as human shield?
You know what Hassan, my wife's cousin, he's a loser, you know.
He told me, you know, when I asked him, does that happen?
He told me, no.
The lying son of a bitch lied to me.
I told him, you don't understand.
Ben Shapiro and Ron DeSantis keep saying that Israel warned you and Hamas asked you to keep to stay put.
So I told you, he's a loser.
He never kept a job.
He even failed in all of the interviews to become like a human shield.
I would believe Ben Shapiro.
Let me ask you this question.
So let's go with that.
No, no, no.
Let's, no, no.
Let me ask you.
But at some point, I must better ask you questions.
It's not a problem.
If we agree, if we agree that for the 14,000 casualties, I mean, who's counting?
Our human shield.
Does that mean that every single one of those civilians was standing, obscuring a military target behind them?
Because that's a lot of weapons.
I mean, Hamas is packing.
No, of course it doesn't.
Look, you know.
So there's some collateral damage, lots of collateral damage.
Yes.
It's fine.
You kill some to save some and then kill some more.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, let me ask you this.
Again, it comes back to proportionate response.
When the world decided it had to get rid of ISIS because of the appalling butchery they were carrying out, it did so by also killing, very sadly, a lot of civilians along the way by doing airstrikes against places which are killing civilians are inevitable.
It's inevitable.
But once Israel has decided that they want to get rid of Hamas and Hamas is embedded with civilian population, I'm very concerned about what's going to happen next.
I've written a column tonight saying I remember the Iraq war, which I opposed, right?
I remember all this.
So my question for you is...
I know.
What would you think would be an appropriate response by Israel to what happened?
Well, these are years of disproportionate responses of Israel.
Did it solve the solution?
Did it solve the problem?
Did it work before?
What will be the surprise this time?
What will be the twist that will make this work this time?
What?
What will be different this time?
Seriously, I mean, like, this is only the last 15 years.
I mean, because it's too many papers.
I just got this.
But how will this be different?
And the thing is, I am so glad in the introduction that you mentioned the Iraq war.
I applaud you, Piers, for saying that, because you were honest about it.
You said that spreading lies, like WMDs, made people look at those people as less of humans, and they would accept the death of a million Iraqis, whether by Shanks' extensions or by invasion, right?
You are a good man.
This is amazing.
And you know what is similar?
Is when you spread the lies of 40 decapitated babies, although it was refuted.
So what happens when people hear that?
You know, killing babies is horrible.
But when you say decapitated 40 babies, you are planting a certain image in people's mind.
Israel Wants You to Believe They Are Victims00:15:19
Who has said that?
Who has said 40 degrees?
Who has said that?
Who has said 40 decapitated...
Who has said that?
You have repeat.
No, no, I haven't.
What?
I've never said that.
You haven't said on your show 40 decapitated babies?
Never.
Ben Shapiro didn't say it?
No.
Ron DeSantis didn't say it?
Nobody has said it.
Nobody said it?
No.
Oh, okay.
Okay, maybe I am wrong.
Decapitated.
You're wrong.
I've never said it.
No, you're wrong.
But the thing is, when Iraq, the thing is, the same thing is happening in Iraq.
Ben Shapiro once tweeted, not even about Gaza, about the West Bank, when Israel continued to build the illegal settlement.
He said, 2017, Israel likes to build things, and Arabs, not Palestine, not Hamas, Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.
Yeah, I thought that was very, very clear.
The Israeli defense, the Israeli defense minister, he said, those are human animals.
And the thing is, Ben Shapiro should know better because, you know, long before the Holocaust, before Jewish people were thrown in the gas chambers, the Nazi propaganda called them rats.
Now, as a human being, I will never accept that another human being being thrown into a gas chamber, but a rat, kill 10, kill 1,000, 3,500.
They are son of a bitch.
They are human animals who live in open sewage and decapitate babies.
And because of that propaganda, Mr. Morgan, that guy in Illinois, the 71-year-old guy, he killed, stabbing the six-year-old Palestinian kid in Illinois 26 times.
And he used to play with him.
They used to be friends.
But he went in, marching into their apartment, stabbing his mother and killing him, shouting, all Muslims could die.
It took you 80 years to change one word from Jewish to Muslim.
And then you transferred your guilt to us and took away our land.
Let me ask you a question.
That deal sucks, man.
Let me ask you a question.
How do we get from where we are now to peace?
Well, first of all, you need to change the perception.
Nikki Haley, the American presidential candidate, said, we are in Israel in this because it's a fight between good and evil.
Now, if you already decided someone is good, he can do no evil.
And if you decide that someone is evil, it's good to kill them.
Killing them is good.
You see, the thing is, it is not like something new.
I mean, I look at history and I see, I'm sorry to say, and I'm sorry to say this, but Westerners has always dealt like this with indigenous people.
You first treated them like savages, you know, Native American, First Nation, Aboriginal.
They're savages.
Kill all the savages.
And then when they're almost extinct, you start feeling sorry for them, you know, like animals.
So maybe, maybe the solution is that we kill as many Palestinians as possible so the few of them that remains do not bother you.
And you keep looking at for another hundred years.
And he will campaign for preserving the three people.
You keep talking about Westerners like me.
Okay, so let me return the favor.
Okay?
Hamas is dedicated to the complete eradication of Jewish people.
I am not the spokesman for Hamas.
I'm not saying you are.
Why do you keep your spokesman?
You're talking to me.
What Hamas?
You are.
Are you happy?
You're missing my point.
You're talking in a generalized way about people in the West who always talk about Arabs as savages.
I don't.
No, no, no, I'm talking about Hamas.
You actually led the campaign.
I led the media campaign in this country against the Iraq war.
Okay, so I don't.
I don't see people in the Middle East as savages.
No, I would say the good ones.
But what I would say is I'm talking about you.
You're great.
No, no, it's not about me.
You're amazing.
We love you.
It's about the way Hamas behaved on October the 7th was like savages, like a pack of savages.
It was the worst atrocity against Jewish people since the Holocaust.
There has to be.
Of course.
There has to be a response.
My question to you is killed and delivered.
Understanding the history, Basim, what is the proportionate response?
But I don't know, but there's no Hamas in the West Bank and they're still dying there.
So what's your excuse?
I don't have any excuse.
Okay, what's your explanation?
Sorry, sorry, my earpiece went down.
Listen, I don't make any pretense that this hasn't been a massive problem.
Okay, between Palestine and Israel going back to the mid-40s.
We all know this, right?
Yeah, Piers, Piers, Piers, listen.
I'm not saying that you're making an excuse, but if you are adopting a certain point of view, you have to at least defend it.
I'm telling you, there is no Hamas in the West Bank.
What is the excuse?
Not your excuse.
What is the excuse to kill those people?
Well, listen, this question of proportionality is one that...
No, no, no, answer my question.
I've been answering your question.
You answer mine.
It's actually not my job to answer your questions.
It's not.
Okay, not your job.
I agree with you.
I'm more interested in you, who has family in Gaza.
Who's an Egyptian in the Middle East, right?
I'm more interested in what you have to say.
Okay, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I think Hamas is the problem, okay?
Right now, let's agree.
Hamas is removed.
Let's Hamas.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm agreeing with everything.
You want me to damn Hamas?
I will condemn Hamas, Homus, Hassan.
Everybody.
Guys, say, wait.
I can't hear you.
The earpiece.
Damn.
Okay.
Oops.
Okay.
Yeah.
I do need to.
Just go back.
Is he there?
You go back.
You go.
Can you hear me?
Okay, go.
Thank you, guys.
Can you hear Basil?
Yeah, yeah, now I can hear you.
So here's the thing.
Can you hear?
Okay, so Isaac, let's say, for example, Hamas ceased to exist.
Okay?
Do you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah, Hamas ceased to exist today.
Now, right now, in Palestine, in West Bank and Gaza, 20% of Palestinians go through Israeli prison system, whether imprisonment, whether interrogation, whether torture.
And the rest of them, they live a life of daily loss of land, of homes, of life, and they are suffocated by this.
So let me ask you something.
If you are a Palestinian living in these conditions for decades, would you sympathize with your oppressor or sympathize with the people who claim they resist them even if they are terrorists?
I have made no secret that I think the conditions Palestinians have had to exist under are completely unacceptable.
I've said that for years.
So the question then becomes: how do you forge peace between two warring parts of that region who for decades have approached peace, in my view, with mutual sledgehammers, with no actual desire to have peace?
And I think it comes down in the end to great leadership.
And I don't think there's great leadership.
I don't think, well, hang on, let me make my point.
I don't think there's great leadership on either side.
Where is the Nelson Mandela figure here to come through all this?
Nelson Mandela?
Yeah, where is that?
Nelson Mandela actually have criticized Israel for being a horrible state.
All of the South African activists have actually criticized Israel.
My point is about how he responded to a country that was so divided.
I don't know.
It's a template for how you get to peace, isn't it?
I haven't met Nelson Mandela, so I wouldn't know.
But there is a point.
There's a very important point here.
I want to understand what is the logic of Israel carpet bombing Gaza.
I mean, if there's a logic, if this will make Israel safe, I want to hear the logic.
So if they continue bombing, what are they hoping to achieve?
We know what their stated aim is.
Their stated aim is to eradicate and wipe out Hamas.
They believe Hamas are living predominantly in northern Gaza.
They also are aware they're living amongst civilians.
So it's an incredibly difficult thing.
As I said in my book, it is very, very difficult to see if I can do this without massive collapse.
If I can manage.
So if I can understand this correctly, basically Israel is doing this to pressure the Palestinian community in Gaza to turn against Hamas.
Is that right?
I'm sure that's part of it, yes.
So this is exactly what terrorist organizations do, because terrorist organizations would have no chance beating a whole nation in battle.
So they terrorize and they kill the civilians in order to spread fear and terror so they can turn against their government to change their policy or to resign.
You have just compared Israel with ISIS.
No, I haven't.
I don't see any comparison between Israel.
It's going to be the headlines tomorrow.
Piers Morgan.
Israel is ISIS landscape.
Only amongst people who weren't listening.
The comparison which is more apposite is ISIS and Hamas.
They are both nihilistic terror groups intent on killing as many Jewish people and others as they can possibly kill.
And you can't.
You know what?
You can't get peace with people like that.
Absolutely.
You know what?
I'm going to do something that nobody done on your television.
You know what I'm going to do?
On your episode?
I'm going to pretend that I'm an Israeli citizen.
I'm going to put myself in the place of an Israeli settler in the kaputz.
And I want to speak to my prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Binyamin Netanyahu, I have voted for you because you have promised us peace and prosperity and security.
On the 7th of October, those son of bitches, Hamas, they went into defense that is regularly heavily guarded.
Usually if there's like a dove that comes close to it, it will be shot.
Those people went in and they went for six hours before IDF forces was deployed, killing our friends, our families, kidnapping our grandmothers and babies, and went in.
I want to ask you, Mr. Prime Minister, after you have fractured the Israeli community and you have fucked our courts, our Supreme Courts, what are you doing with the money being given to you to the United States?
Also, you are carpet bombing Gaza with absolutely no regard to our hostages, our people.
I heard a rumor in the kiputz that you're doing that as an equal, you let that happen as an excuse to carpet bomb Gaza, so you push them into Sinai.
And I didn't believe that.
That's like not my prime minister.
He can never do that.
And then I watched an interview for Danny Ailon.
He was your chief advisor.
He was also the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
And you know what he said, Mr. Prime Minister?
He said that the solution for those Palestinians is to go into a vast land of Sinai and live into tent cities temporarily, temporarily, wink, wink, until we build Gaza again, and then we invite you back.
Acha, Yani, Obtachna, Ba, Yani, Famili, we've seen this movie before.
So, when I saw this, I couldn't explain to my fellows in the kiputz how come our Israeli government is trading human lives for another piece of land.
So, as an Israeli citizen, I need to hold my Israeli government accountable.
And as an American citizen, I want to know all of these money that we are giving to Israel.
We're giving them $4 billion every year.
Joe Biden said it's the best investment America ever done.
Well, if I am in the place of Joe Biden, I would say, sorry, don't speak.
I would say if I was Joe Biden, I would go down and whisper in the ears of Netanyahu and tell them I hate bad investment.
They haunt me, you know, like Little Finger in Game of Thrones.
But the thing is, the thing is, this is the problem.
Israel always victimizes itself, and I have never seen a victim putting their oppressor under siege and bombing them 24-7.
Israel wants you to believe that they are the victim.
Dealing with Israel is so difficult.
It's like being in a relationship with a narcissistic psychopath.
He fucks you up, and then he makes you think it's your fault.
Look at Israel as superman, but they're really homelanders.
They are like there.
They are shooting.
Basam, I want to say one thing.
And they are annoyed with the splashes.
Basim, I want to say two things.
One, if you could just slightly mound your language, we are uncensored, but if you keep swearing, I'm very sorry.
We have to apologize to viewers who may be offended by that.
I apologize.
But I understand passions run high, so let's not get too bogged down about the odd swap.
I apologize to the viewers.
I apologize to the viewers for my language.
My second question is this: after the break, we have the managing director of the Daily Wire, which is Ben Shapiro's company.
We were going to interview him on his own, but he's happy to come on and talk with you directly if you are prepared to stay.
Welcome back to Uncle for more on this situation in Israel.
I'm joined now by the CEO and co-founder of the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro's partner, Jeremy Boring.
Jeremy, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
I'm sorry we demoted you earlier to mere MD.
You are the CEO and co-founder.
You know Ben Shapiro better than anyone, really.
I did a big interview with Ben, obviously, the other night, which went around the world and has sparked a big reaction, including from our guest, Bassam Youssef, who's still with us.
First of all, you've been listening to Bassam and what he's been saying.
What's your response?
Well, first of all, I make it a point not to speak for Ben Shapiro.
He's got 20 IQ points on me and speaks for a living professionally, so he's much better prepared to defend himself.
But as his business partner, as his best friend, I do feel like I have to respond to the things that Bassam was just saying.
First of all, the question of how many sons of bitches have to be killed in order to end this conflict.
I suppose that the answer is as many of them as it takes.
That doesn't mean that I or Ben or any decent person in their right mind is happy with the killing of civilians.
I posted at the very beginning of this conflict that a woman or a child blown apart in Gaza is just as tragic as a Jewish baby killed in one of the settlements.
That doesn't mean that Israel's actions and the actions of Hamas are morally equivalent.
You know, the tragedy is the tragedy, but the moral equivalency is nonsense.
If you entered Israel with the express purpose of targeting and murdering civilians with your own hands in cold blood, that is not comparable to Israel bombing targets in the Gaza Strip and killing civilians as a terrible, tragic consequence.
War is terrible.
War is an awful thing.
That's why decent people don't lightly engage in war and why Hamas should not have incited this war.
You know, we can talk about the history of the Israeli conflict.
I'm not a professional political commentator.
I'm a CEO.
I'm a screenwriter.
And I'm certainly not Ben Shapiro.
I'm not here to discuss the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we all saw what happened on October 7th.
And the idea that Israel was not going to react severely to that or that Israel should not react severely to that is ludicrous.
Jeremy, let me ask you, Ben Shapiro should be a moderating voice, that Ben Shapiro should be, what, saying, no, Israel should not respond in this situation.
That's nonsense.
Let me ask you, though, Jeremy, the question, which I think is the big question: what is a proportionate response to that outrage on October the 7th, which is the worst attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust?
The Lie of Post-War Consensus on Victory00:02:41
What is proportionate?
If it's true, as reports are suggesting tonight, that there may have been a hospital hit by an Israeli strike and up to 500 people or more have died.
That would seem to me, if that is verified, and it's not verified yet.
We don't know exactly what has happened other than there's been a hit on this hospital.
But if that is verified to have been an Israeli strike, that will strike many people as disproportionate.
Certainly.
Well, first of all, I don't know what a proportionate response is or why we would want it.
I suppose a proportionate response would be for 3,000 Israelis to go through the fence, gun down innocent Palestinian women and children, burn their bodies, burn them alive, take hostages, rape their women.
No one wants a proportionate response.
No moral person could possibly call for a proportionate response.
The purpose of war is to defeat your enemy.
The West has, in my lifetime, forgotten the purpose of war because the true cost of war is so terrible.
The last time the West engaged in war and won it was World War II.
And they did it through incredible brutality.
They did it by bringing their enemies to heel.
That is not a thing to, that's not a thing to rah-rah about.
That's not a thing to look forward to.
As I said, all decent people should... avoid war.
But I think the sort of lie of the post-World War II, the post-war consensus lie, is that somehow war in which you kill a bunch of people and don't secure victory is morally superior to war where you do secure victory.
I would say that the only way to morally justify a war is to win it.
Otherwise, the very argument that brought you into the war, this enemy must be defeated, ends up being proven a lie.
I mean, Afghanistan, I think America had every right to go into Afghanistan.
The Taliban was harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda flew planes into buildings in the United States, killed thousands of our citizens, brought the nation into untold agony, pain, and horror.
America had every right morally to go in and destroy the Taliban and destroy Al-Qaeda.
But I would argue that.
But the Taliban now, but the Taliban now rules war was not won.
But that's my point, actually.
I've done a column about this tonight for the sun here in the UK, which is I was editor of a newspaper when the Iraq war happened.
I opposed it very aggressively as the editor of the paper.
And sadly, we were borne out by events.
It was a complete disaster, the Iraq war, in my view.
It was illegally contested, I think.
And the consequences were appalling in terms of loss of life, a million people, in terms of ISIS being allowed to breed and create their merry hell around the world, in terms of complete dismantlement of Iraq itself as a functioning country.
And I think Afghanistan, again, 20 years of attacking an enemy, which is now running the country again, seemed to me, again, to be kind of pointless.
Appropriate Response for Israel Discussed00:03:02
And I do wonder whether Israel, in its blind fury, which I completely understand, has thought through the consequences of actually launching a full air, ground and sea offensive into Gaza as to actually what happens at the end of that.
Well, I suppose Israel wasn't really given the opportunity to fully contemplate what the consequences of that action might be because Israel didn't instigate this war.
This war was instigated by a horrible terrorist attack on Israel and a state is put in a position where it has to respond.
Now, one might argue that the very fact that Israel has yet to actually launch their ground invasion means that they are actually making a calculation about what the cost will be, what victory looks like.
Any rational person, any decent person can engage in a conversation about what is the appropriate response for Israel.
Of course they can.
But this sort of moral equivalency thing, I don't think is a sign of decency to engage in a conversation about moral equivalency.
Let me bring Bassim back in.
You've been listening to this, Bassim.
What's your response to what Jeremy's been saying?
I'm sorry, I didn't catch the gentleman's name.
It's Jeremy Boring.
He's the chief executive of The Daily Wire and co-founder with Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire.
Hi, Jeremy.
Please say hello to Ben Shapiro and please tell him that I do think he is the smartest person to ever walk the earth.
Thank you so much.
So as a response to Jeremy, I agree with everything you said.
I mean, what is disproportionate?
I mean, he just used the examples from Second World War and America showing that civilian casualty is, I mean, I heard his voice.
He was very sad.
And he, as he was telling us, it is so inevitable to kill so many civilians because it's something that we cannot avoid.
I hear the sadness in his voice.
And I know that it's a very difficult decision to kill all of these civilians because that's for a higher cause.
And I understand.
But my question, I have two questions.
The question is, how can you justify the killing in the West Bank where Hamas does not exist?
And if the disproportionate response during the overall of these years have actually worked, what will be new this time that did not happen before?
I just want to...
That was my question.
Okay.
That was my question.
I'm going to...
Okay.
So now, if I ask the question, can I say something on my side?
With respect to the person who is not going to be able to do it.
A little bit personal?
Basam, with respect, I gave you half the show to have your side.
Jeremy's had a lot less time.
I'm going to have to.
Do you want me to leave?
I'm going to have to let you go because we've been on there with you for 40 minutes.
Oh, okay.
Bye-bye.
But listen, bye-bye.
I'm glad to talk to you again, and thank you for joining the program.
I appreciate it.
By the way, my wife's family is all right, and they sent us a house.
It's bombed.
It's beautiful.
It's going to be a good Halloween theme.
Well, I'm very sorry for what your family are going through in Gaza.
And I mean, they're very sensitive.
By the way, I don't know him, by the way.
I haven't actually met them.
They didn't even come to my wedding.
They couldn't because they are stuck in Gaza.
And she never saw them because, you know, Gaza is not a destination.
Childhood Distorted by Farce in America00:04:21
We hear their voices.
They die.
It's fine.
It's fine.
Basam, I wish your family all the very best.
Thank you for joining me.
I appreciate it.
I don't.
Thank you.
Welcome back to what says.
Well, still with me is the CEO and co-founder of Daily Wire, Jeremy Boring.
I'm joined by my pack, the author and socialist of Chris Blakely, talk-to-view contributor, Paula Ron Adrian, and the journalist and author Hilary Freeman, who I'll come to all three of you in a moment.
Jeremy, I just want to talk to you, spill it slightly.
I read a column in the New York Post yesterday about this kind of farcical situation in America where universities like Harvard, who were literally just named the worst school in America for failure to exercise free speech on campus, now saying that the reason they allowed their students to all sign this absurdly offensive letter in the immediate aftermath of these attacks, effectively siding with Hamas, was because of their devotion to free speech.
And the reason I think it's relevant for you to answer that is I know that you, as a company, you're producing your own children's content to counter the left and woke propaganda and so on.
So it kind of, to me, there's a neat link here.
But what do you make of what's been happening in these universities in America?
I think that the universities are in many ways victims of their own rhetoric.
One of the dangerous things to do in life is to say things out loud because pretty soon you'll have to defend them.
And soon after that, you'll start to believe them.
And Harvard has been preaching this sort of intersectional hierarchy now for at least a decade and maybe more.
The problem with the intersectional hierarchy is that someone has to be on the bottom.
And in the sort of name of equality or fostering some sort of better sense of equality, they've created a situation where people who they see as having been historically in places of power now are at the very bottom and have been completely dehumanized.
And one of the funny quirks is they think that that is sort of anti-majoritarian, anti-patriarchy.
In America, it's anti-Christian white male in particular, and that it protects minorities.
But of course, one of the smallest minorities in the world is the Jews.
And unfortunately, in every other way, they seem to fit more in positions of power.
They tend to excel academically.
They tend to excel in business.
They're disproportionately represented in media, in education, in science, in traditionally white-collar and governmental type roles.
And so the intersectional hierarchy being preached by these schools has left them in a position where the most probably hard done by minority of the 20th and 21st century somehow has been dehumanized by them.
And they don't know how to get out of the way of their own bad thinking on this.
There was actually a professor at Cornell who was called on camera doing this.
I think we have it.
Hamas has shifted the balance of power.
Hamas has punctured the illusion of invincibility.
That's what they've done.
It was exhilarating.
It was energizing.
Exhilarating and energizing.
That's a professor at a top American university.
I found that completely shocking.
A, that he would have that thought process, but B, you would be so brazenly free to do it in public like that.
Well, sure.
I mean, if what that professor had said instead is that gender and biological sex are inextricably linked, he'd be out on the streets by now and never work again.
Instead, he says that it's exhilarating to watch children murdered in their homes because of some sort of bizarre academic theory about power structures.
Here's the thing.
Strength does not necessarily connote virtue, but strength also does not necessarily connote a lack of virtue.
Weakness does not confer upon a person virtue any more than weakness confers upon a person a lack of virtue.
There are wonderful Jews in the world and there are terrible Jews in the world.
There are wonderful Muslims in the world and there are terrible Muslims in the world.
There are wonderful people in positions of strength.
I think the West has done a relatively extraordinary job compared to other societies throughout human history.
And there are terrible people in positions of power.
We need only look to the ruling regime in China, among others, to know that.
Jeremy, what happens when you lose collectivism is you forget about the individual.
Right.
We know a lot of this obviously starts from childhood.
Weakness Does Not Confer Virtue00:08:05
You as a company have decided to take on this, what you see as the indoctrination by the woke left of kids.
Tell me just briefly about that.
Yeah.
Well, I think that one of the things that we at the Daily Wire feel is that childhood has been sort of distorted.
On one hand, we have this university system, as you were just discussing, that infantilizes adults.
We refer to 23-year-olds as college kids, and we treat them like that, like kids who aren't responsible, who have no agency, who can't be held accountable for their own actions.
On the other hand, we have actual children, actual kids, and instead of letting them live in a world of imagination and adventure and joy and wonder, we want to use them as political props.
We want to march them in our rallies.
We want to hold them up as some sort of symbol of the struggle against entrenched power structures or whatever the in-vogue terms are.
And what we believe at the Daily Wire is: actually, why don't we let adults be adults, including 23-year-olds, and why don't we let children be children?
And so we've launched this initiative, Ben Key, which is our new company, our new app, and it's just entertainment for kids.
It's not overtly political.
We're overtly political as a company, of course, but our content at Bentkey is not.
It really is just a place where kids can sit down, actually enjoy entertaining content, and parents don't have to worry about having these sort of destructive ideas of people.
Yeah, you know, Jeremy, I've got four kids, and I say hurrah to that.
Honestly, I do.
I'm sick and tired of these kids getting grabbed by people who think they know what's best for what these kids should be thinking and doing.
It's ridiculous.
I've got to leave it there, Jeremy.
You've been brilliant.
Thank you very much, indeed, for rolling with the punches earlier.
You came on to talk about this, and we then brought you in to respond to what Bass and Musef said.
I think that was important.
And I really appreciate that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay.
Henry, welcome.
First time we've had you on.
Bas and Musev, very fired up.
I mean, a lot of people who are pro-Palestinian historically are very fired up about this.
Tonight, as we came on air, this as yet unverified in terms of who's responsible, but Hamas are claiming that this is an Israeli airstrike in a hospital that may have killed 500 people.
It comes back to proportion for me.
What is the correct response to the outrage of October the 7th?
I don't know what the correct response is, but I don't believe that Israel would be stupid enough to bomb a hospital the day before Biden.
I'm trying to say Israel has released a statement already saying that they warned civilians to evacuate the hospital.
That has been a problem.
That's not true.
That's been taken down by Al Jazeera already.
It wasn't true.
There's a lot of stuff flying around.
There's a lot of people putting videos.
They claim Hamas misfiring a rocket.
Others are saying it's definitely Israeli.
I think we need to wait for absolute clarity on this.
What is indisputable is a hospital has been hit and it appears hundreds and hundreds of people have died.
It feels to me with President Biden arriving tomorrow, this is a bit of a game changer.
Yeah, yeah, which is why I don't believe it, Mr. Libra, because it just seems, it just doesn't make sense that they would do that.
But is it the kind of thing which you would say that if you're bombing the hell out of Gaza and this happens, is collateral damage and you have to suck it up?
I don't think Israel has ever targeted hospitals.
It would always avoid hospitals if it possibly could.
So, no, of course, I don't think that it's good to.
I mean, Israel has already targeted hospitals by saying that it was shutting off power and water, which resulted in hospitals overflowing with patients that were effectively untreatable.
That was considered a war crime.
Many people have called that out as a war crime.
Just to be clear, the Reuters News Engine is now reporting comments from the Israeli military saying its intelligence shows a Palestinian Islamic jihad group is responsible for the hospital attack that a rocket barrage from Gaza intended for Israel passed near the Gaza hospital and is hit.
We don't know that.
We don't know.
I'm not going to let you know.
Let's talk about what we do know, shall we?
Okay, we know that the Israeli state has committed war crimes.
We know that they have instituted basically a regime of collective punishment.
We know now that they've used white phosphorus in civilian areas, which is considered a war crime.
We know that this comes on the back of the brutalization for many, many years now of the Palestinians.
We also know that 6,400 Palestinians have died in front of the USA with Israeli troops since 2008, including 1,400 children.
We also know that Hamas just perpetrated one of the worst terror attacks in modern history and the worst attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust.
And so I can answer your question, Pierce.
I can answer your question about proportionality because international law tells us what the answer is in relation to proportionality.
It tells us that we have a right to defend ourselves.
It tells us that we have a right, whilst defending ourselves, to ensure that the outcome is ultimate peace.
And that is what, as far as I'm concerned, we have not witnessed even in the minute that we've been on.
And we know that if and if we were to ensure that the rule of law was applied, which is what I hope Joe Biden is going to be reinforcing when he visits and when Mashi Sunak visits, I hope that that's what they're going to reinforce.
This is quite clearly, though, not what many people within the Israeli government want.
One Israeli minister said that he wanted to unleash a second NAKBA.
Do you guys know what that means?
Yes.
You know what the NACBA was, right?
The official position of the Israeli state for a long time has been there was no NAKBA, there was no catastrophe.
This didn't happen.
This foundational act of violence that really led up in many ways to the conflict we're seeing today.
It's important to note that the Israeli minister has said that Israel's minister of national security, Ben Giveer, says that the only thing that should enter Gaza until the hostages are released are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Israeli air force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.
Now, that strikes me as a statement which doesn't care about international law.
Clearly.
Clearly.
Right?
Well, Ben Gavir is appalling.
Isn't that the problem that Nyahu has?
He's packed his cabinet for political self-expediency.
He's packed the cabinet with a bunch of right-wing headbangers to say stuff.
They've been saying stuff like this for a long time this year.
Absolutely.
And that is part of the reason why this has happened.
But you can't blame Israel again for what Hamas did.
It's again, people are trying to draw it.
You just blame Palestinians, all Palestinians, for what Hamas has done.
And that is what many actually we've seen now, IDF soldiers, we've seen people saying this is a war with Palestinians.
Can you agree that Hamas should be removed?
Piers, you know my answer to that question.
And it's so frustrating the way that whenever anyone comes on these shows and talks about the horrendous loss of life that has been inflicted on Palestinians for many, many years, there's this idea that you can ask this question: should we condone Hamas?
Should we condone Hamas Hamas?
And what that does be removed?
Of course Hamas should be a removal.
Nobody seriously doubts.
As soon as you respond to the question, I said, Israel has committed war crimes.
And you respond by saying, Should we remove Hamas?
No, great.
If we all agree that Hamas should be...
I mean, Hamas sympathizes.
My question is.
And how do you remove Hamas?
Okay, well, what do we know about Hamas?
We know that actually Netanyahu has said in the past that he wanted to strengthen Hamas because that was the only way they could ever get rid of the Palestinian state.
He has said that outright.
We have evidence that he knew about these terror attacks.
Shinbet knew about these terrorists.
We have evidence that Shinbet said this was an immense intelligence failure, and there was intelligence that suggested that this was going to happen.
There's no question.
Shabbat would allow this to happen to his people.
There is absolutely no way.
That's a conspiracy theory.
The head of Shinbet, As Khan, said this was an extraordinarily intelligent.
As a Jewish person, this has been a nightmare 10 days.
Yes.
But as a Palestinian person right now in Gaza, they're going through, if they're an innocent Palestinian civilian, they are going through utter hell to them.
I feel absolute empathy for them and all the Jewish people I know.
Nobody wants Palestinian people to suffer.
Nobody does.
We want to get rid of Hamas and we want our hostages back.
And so to answer Pierce's question, how to remove Hamas, is it going to happen by a ground war?
Is it possible to do that?
I think that is the only way you can possibly do it, but the consequences could be disastrous.