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Oct. 17, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
49:06
20231017_piers-morgan-uncensored-mohammed-hijab
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Tragedy Exposes True Colors 00:02:11
Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan, Uncensored.
Good evening from London.
Welcome to Piersborg and Uncensored.
Sometimes it takes a tragedy to expose people's true colours in their lurid detail.
The conflict in Israel has certainly done that.
The men, women and children butchered by Hamas had barely been zipped into body bags before many people started using a terrorist attack as grist for whatever politics they'd already had.
The blood Hamas spilled had barely dried into the dirt before the streets of Western cities filled with flag-waving supporters of Palestine demanding restraint and de-escalation.
Some even showing Hamas flags.
Protests this weekend in London, other major cities weren't a good look.
To be clear, they've got every right to peaceful assembly.
Not to wear badges celebrating the Hamas paragliding terrorists.
Not to threaten and abuse people or disagree with them like this.
Well, the man in the centre of that scrum says he was threatened with a knife.
Reports say protesters chanted, from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free, which is nothing if not an incitement to violence.
It's divisive, hateful.
It undermines the argument that this was a march for peace and Muslim solidarity, if that's what it's about.
It's worth asking, where were all these people when China's genocide against the Uyghur Muslims was being exposed?
It's worth asking, what is it about Israel specifically that brings them to the streets?
Israel seems to be the only country in the world that's expected to respond magnanimously to a massacre of 1,300 of its people by child-killing extremists who let's not forget, want to wipe it from the face of the earth.
What if this had happened in Britain or in the US?
Proportionally, this attack was equivalent to 30,000 Americans being slaughtered on American soil.
Would we really be in any mood for restraint if this had happened here in Britain?
At the same time, we shouldn't be celebrating the response.
Britain's Worst Nightmare 00:03:47
We can't pretend that many innocent Palestinians, some of them bitterly opposed to Hamas, won't be killed in the retaliation and the attempt to get back the hostages.
Israel has every right to respond.
Let me make that crystal clear.
And I get, but it's in no mood for lectures after the barbarism of last weekend.
But the punishment cannot be just as wicked as the crime.
Civilians in Gaza, they need water, they need food, they need humanity.
Israel had the high moral ground and it has it today, but it needs to stay there.
Starving civilians and fueling the next generation of terrorists will not be the way to do it.
And as Israel prepares a massive ground operation in Gaza, it must remember the Israelis taken there as hostages by Hamas and get them back if they can.
Innocent people like Shani Luke, whose brutal kidnapping from a music festival became a powerful symbol of the brutality inflicted on her country.
We don't yet know her fate.
At least 199 Israelis are still being held by Hamas, their families paralyzed by fear.
Forget the ugly tribalism.
All of these innocent people, whatever their religion or nationality, deserve our sympathy and our prayers.
Well, joining me now is Shani's mother, Ricarda Luke, from a village near Tel Aviv.
Thank you so much for joining me tonight.
I've been thinking about you and your daughter and the others who were taken hostage since last weekend.
I can't imagine the horror, the pain, the agony that you're going through.
But you believe that there may be a glimmer of hope that your daughter may still be alive.
Tell me about that.
Yes, we hope that our daughter is still alive.
We got some reports from an information that she is held in a hospital and she's injured badly on the head.
So we still do have hope even after this horrific video seeing her on the truck.
I mean the world watched this video of your daughter.
Everybody assumed that she must be dead.
I can't again begin to imagine what it must have been like for you, her mother, to have seen that video.
How has this been for you?
I mean other than hellish, how are you coping?
At the beginning it was really horrible.
I mean they sent it through social media to my eldest son and he started crying and screaming and he said that's Shani, that's Shani, that's her and we didn't understand what's happening and we saw this movie lying on this pickup truck, seems unconscious with blood and people around her and spitting on her and humiliating her.
You just can't imagine it as a parent.
It's so, I don't know, it breaks you completely at this moment.
You don't know how could this happen?
How can this happen to me?
It's the worst nightmare.
Yeah, I mean it's the worst nightmare for any parent.
I have three sons and a daughter.
When I saw that video, not even knowing obviously you or your family or your daughter, it was horrifying.
Absolutely horrifying.
And what has gone on since, although it's given you hope, it's also horrifying in the sense that there have been text messages sent from Shani's boyfriend, Orion, I believe his name is, text messages from his phone to various people on his contacts with phrases like, I spit on you and God damn you, others expressing a vow to liberate Palestine from Zionists.
The German Government Shock 00:02:34
Obviously, I would imagine the fact they're able to do this may give some hope that they're both still alive.
But the extraordinarily vile nature of these messages sent in this manner, it's another blow, isn't it?
It's another way to degrade you as a family.
Yeah, it's all humiliation, brutality, and it's just inhuman.
I can't explain this behavior.
Anything can justify this.
I mean, that's just not normal.
You've been appealing to the German government for help in trying to get your daughter back.
Are you having much success in dealing directly with the German government about this?
We're dealing.
I have a direct contact person.
They're always available for me and we are feeding them any information that we get, that we collect.
We do our own research all the time, trying to find more clues and feed them back to the Israeli government and the German government.
But, you know, you don't get anything in return.
Like, you don't know what's going on behind the scenes, if there are discussions, negotiations or something.
We don't know.
I mean, the Foreign Minister of Germany came and met us in Israel.
And tomorrow we have a Min May meeting with a councillor, with the Prime Minister of Germany in Israel, which is also a nice gesture to meet.
And even when the Foreign Minister came here, she was really...
I mean, she made a tour through the south of Israel and she was in shock and she heard the stories of we were many German families that were talking to her and it was just a shock.
It's unimaginable.
I don't think people really realize what's going on here and this massacre and of young and innocent people and babies captivated and grandmothers kidnapped and it's all around us.
It's families here in my town.
I mean it's not stories, it's not fiction, it's real.
I mean I have I've been already to two funerals and there are little babies here that they killed their parents very cruelly and it's it's all around us.
Global Community Targets Children 00:14:38
It's such a small country and it's it's really about survival now.
How can this happen and how will it not get worse here?
And yeah.
I believe that another glimmer of hope is that you've been contacted by your daughter's bank to say that her credit card has been used in Gaza and the significance of that may be that she would have had to have somehow given over her PIN number which would indicate that potentially she might still be alive.
Yeah, I don't think I think you can do with the phone or something you can already move some money.
I don't know.
It was a small amount and we know that they tried to pick it out in the Gaza Strip in a shop.
Yeah, we hope we just try to catch every little piece of information to get new hope.
Yeah, but that's what I mean out so far.
Shani was a peace campaigner, a conscientious objector to military service.
What kind of woman was your daughter?
She was a very lively person.
She liked to dance.
She likes to go to festivals with her boyfriends.
He was a festival organizer and she helped him and he traveled in Europe a lot.
She was the last year all the time traveling.
And she was a to-do artist, very happy, very lively, peace with everyone.
She really had many friends all over the world.
And yeah, that was just her living life and peace on a great festival.
Everybody had fun there and then it just turned into a nightmare, into a horror movie.
Ricardo, it's beyond a nightmare.
I can't, like I say, even begin to comprehend what you're going through.
It's every parent's ultimate nightmare.
All I can do is join in in praying that your daughter is found alive, that she's returned back to you.
I hope that happens for you so much, along with all the other hostages whose families must be all going through what you're going through.
It's unconscionable what happened last weekend.
I'm very grateful to you for joining the program tonight, but more importantly, I just hope you get some good news soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, I'm joined now by Israel's ambassador to the UK, Zippy Hotovli.
Ambassador, thank you for coming in.
I mean, it's heartbreaking.
It is.
Just to hear one mother.
I mean, there are so many.
There are hundreds and hundreds of...
Just 199 of the people are now kept hostage in Gaza and I'm thinking about young children.
I'm thinking about a girl that has autism and she's disabled.
I'm thinking about Holocaust survivors.
I think we've never experienced anything like that as the Israeli people.
We experience wars, we experienced terror attacks.
Never since Israel was established we experienced anything that was as barbaric as this human.
Where were you when you heard what happened?
I was in Israel.
I was staying at my parents-in-law's house and six o'clock in the morning when the first alarm came.
We woke up and I think it was 8.30 when the second alarm came in a small city next to Tel Aviv.
And I told my husband, this is serious.
And from an instinct feeling, because of the sirens going up and down, I had a feeling something really bad came up.
And I turned my phone on Shabbat and I realized this is a war.
And I wanted to tell to everyone who listens and follows Israel for many years, I think we never had such a clear event that every country should protect its people.
I mean, you said it in your great opening, and I want to echo that.
This is one of those moments in a nation's life that a country cannot carry on without providing the very basic obligation that every country has to its people.
We need to protect our children.
We are out there in Gaza, not in order to revenge, not in order to punish.
I don't agree with any of those.
It is partly that, though.
Let me just say why we're doing that.
We're doing that to make sure that my children, my friend's children, and every child in Israel will be protected.
After we've seen what happened to our border, after we've seen those barbaric terrorists from Hamas came in and they beheaded babies' heads.
I mean, the fact that those small babies, you know, we saw in the telegraph wrapped in those bandages.
I mean, this is something that breaks the heart of every parent.
And you cannot see that.
And the horrific photographs and everything documented by Hamas, the fact they put children together and burned them alive, the fact they wanted to choke people in their homes by putting them on fire, those type of barbaric actions.
And I'll tell you more than that.
After identifying, unfortunately, 1,300 Israelis that were brutally murdered, the people were recognizing the bodies.
They said, 80% of the bodies being tortured.
And our president just exposed a booklet that basically showed that it was part of their way of action, that they wanted to torture the people.
It was part of their terror actions, raping innocent young women, taking hostage, a Holocaust survivor.
I mean, this is really...
I saw the footage of that woman who'd survived the Holocaust, being taken away.
And all I was struck by was she was completely calm.
She was staring ahead and she wasn't giving them a second of her own feelings in that moment.
I thought that was just extraordinary, given what she had obviously gone through as a young person.
But let's join all the international community, including Prime Minister Sunak today in Parliament, that said all those people kept in hostage must be released now.
And I think this is Israel's demand and this is one of the aims of this war, is to bring them back home.
1990.
And let's also not be afraid, as the BBC is seemingly afraid to do, to call this what it is, an act of terror.
These are terrorists.
I think we were very vocal about what we were doing.
What do you feel about the BBC refusing to call them terrorists?
So I think if the BBC stands for accuracy and if the BBC stands for the truth, it's very simple.
I mean, this is what terrorism is, and you cannot find any better example of terrorism.
So I really think everyone should call it by its name and its terrorism.
And I think one more thing we need to say at this time, because Israel is now in one of its, I would say this is not an existential threat, but this is a war on existence, because we cannot exist if our children cannot be safe in their homes.
Israel has decided, and people will absolutely understand this, that Hamas has got to be eradicated in the way that ISIS was eradicated.
But ISIS was eradicated in a process that also involved a lot of innocent people getting killed on the way.
Clearly, in what is coming now in Gaza, a lot of innocent people on the Palestinian side are going to die as well.
How many is too many?
And I don't have the number.
I just talk about this debate about proportionality.
I'm struggling to see what is proportionate that meets the scale of what happened last weekend.
Let me make that clear.
I don't have the answer here, but there's a fine line that Israel is going to tread between doing what it can to get the hostages out, paying back revenge, retaliation, whatever you want to call it for what has happened.
I call it defense.
I call it defense.
Defense.
I mean, whatever you call it, obviously that's part of the motivation too.
And ultimately, you want to get rid of Hamas, but Hamas are embedded with civilians.
We know this.
So the civilian death toll is going to be very high.
And the question for the international community is at what point does the high moral ground, which I think Israel has at the moment, because of the scale of what happened last weekend, at what point could you risk losing that?
So first of all, Israel is a moral country, works according to the international law, and according to the international law, we are allowing all the Palestinians to go to the south area of Gaza in order to make sure they'll be safe, including creating shelters for them with the international community organizations to make sure they will be safe.
Let me ask you on this side.
Just one side, let me just finish.
The only thing that stands as a barrier from those Palestinians to get into a safe place is the fact that Hamas is preventing from its own population to get to a safer place because it doesn't care about its people.
He's using international support, not in order to give them, as you said, water and electricity, but actually in order to fire on Israel.
And as we speak, you know, everyone is talking about this horrific massacre.
But sometimes we forget that fighting from Hamas carries on.
As we speak today, parliament being evacuated, the center of Israel being bombarded by those rockets.
And we keep having over 6,000 rockets just in the last week.
So think about it.
It needs to have electricity and all those manufacturing.
What do you think supports that?
So it's Hamas basically taking from its own population and using it against Israel.
I heard you.
So blame Hamas.
I hear you.
Blame Hamas.
I hear you.
But I also heard you this morning saying there's no humanitarian crisis here by any definition of a humanitarian crisis.
Let me explain that.
That is happening.
I mean, you may apportion blame to Hamas on your side.
Let me explain.
I don't think you can deny there's a humanitarian crisis.
Let me explain that.
I'm a woman.
I'm a mother.
I have a sympathy to any innocent child, any innocent person in the world.
We don't want to harm any innocent people.
We want to target the militants.
We want to target those terrorists.
We want to target the facilities, the capabilities.
This is what we want to do.
And the reason I said that, because at the moment, in Gaza, you have supplies of water, you have supplies of food, and unfortunately, wait a second, some of it being...
Some say the water has run out in many areas.
And I want to explain why.
90% of the water in Gaza is not supplied by Israel.
This is like a myth.
Israel has just 10% of this.
90% of it is based on their aquifers, and they're doing that by using machines.
And the machines basically need electricity that are being abused at the moment by Hamas in order to fire my own hometown.
And this is what happens.
I understand this.
Just think how irrational it is that the international community, knowing that Hamas started this war, is blaming Israel for what it didn't start it.
I'm not blaming Israel.
No, no, all I'm saying is...
I understand the scale of what happened last weekend means that there must be an unprecedented response.
Exactly.
I think any country in the world that suffered what Israel suffered last weekend would launch an unprecedented response.
I understand that.
But I also understand in my modern history that after 9-11, America launched a series of unprecedented responses.
It invaded Iraq, which I felt at the time was an illegal invasion.
That caused ISIS to grow in huge amounts of power and then kill many, many people.
Afghanistan was a huge mess and continues to be a mess and is now back in the hands of the Taliban and so on.
There's not a lot of evidence that a big invasion of a place like Gaza will do anything other than potentially make the situation worse.
That's my concern.
So can I give you my answer?
Life is about choosing between alternatives.
If you have a perfect alternative, you would have gone for the perfect alternative.
But going back even for British history, I mean, you don't want to go back to American history by attacking Mosul and killing so many civilians.
And I personally think fighting ISIS is a justified cause because ISIS didn't do any good for civil society.
And going back to your own history, when you fight Nazi Germany, you knew that there were many, many civilians got attacked from your attacks on German cities.
Dresden was a symbol, but you attacked Hamburg, you attacked other cities, and altogether it was over 600,000 civilian Germans that got killed.
And was it worth it in order to defeat Nazi Germany?
And the answer was yes.
Let me ask you this.
Just to finish, my point is we don't target civilians.
We definitely give them an alternative and a place to find a shelter.
And we are trying to minimize casualties because our target is just to remove Hamas from our border in order to have my children to sleep peace and quiet in their bedroom.
I understand, but it is also true that nearly three times as many Palestinians have died in the last week than were killed in the outrage on October the 7th.
And then that number is going to go much, much higher.
This is exactly why I think it's unmoral equivalence because those people got killed in Israel, children, women and men, were brutally targeted and murdered in the most barbarous.
I agree with you.
No, no, but the people got caught in a crossfire in Gaza are people we didn't want to kill.
Some of them are terrorists.
You need to remember that.
And we are targeting those cruel people that are based in schools, based in hospitals.
And according, by the way, to the international law, Israel is allowed to launch a military attack every time there is a place that puts Israelis in danger, which it is.
The facilities of Hamas are based in civilian facilities.
Do you feel?
You talked about being a mother, a parent.
Do you feel on a personal level genuine sympathy with the innocent Palestinians who are getting caught up in this?
Absolutely.
I mean, my thoughts are to every single individual that is caught in a war zone.
But you need to understand every country has first and foremost responsibility to its own people.
So if Israel will fail to defend my children and other people's children, like we've seen those parents that had to be in a shelter, hearing other...
I will never forget this video that you hear parents that hear one of their children get executed.
I mean, those are things that are totally horrific.
So when this is the reality, you need to understand there was a misconcept of the understanding that Hamas can be a tiger, can live by you.
No, this tiger, it went out of the cage and it did what it did.
And it's a barbaric action.
How do we get to peace after this?
So that's a great question.
I think you cannot have peace.
I mean, this, again, going back to your history, you cannot have any type of negotiation with this type of barbarism that is based on jihadi ideology.
Gaza Without Israeli Control 00:03:01
Hamas Charter is calling to annihilation of Israel and total destruction.
So it has no political vision.
So we need to have, from the other side, we need to have people want to live peacefully with Israel.
We've seen the Arab Bulb opens the gate to Israel.
We've seen the Aberham Accords.
We've seen Saudi wants to normalize with Israel.
I believe the future can be better without terror organizations.
And this is why Israel is fighting this war.
By the way, for the West as well.
This is not just Israel's fight.
This is the Western world's fight.
Just like you had your attacks in 7-7, the Manchester Arena.
It's the same type of ideology that attacking innocent people.
We need to fight it together.
It is inarguable, finally, that before this attack, the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza was completely unacceptable.
Many will see the control that Israel has wielded in the last week as evidence that it's an unhealthy control over the people of Gaza and indeed potentially of the West Bank as well.
My next guest will certainly be arguing that very strongly, that until what they see as the oppression of the Palestinian people is properly dealt with, that there will always be this kind of, I mean, you can call last weekend what you like, to me it's a disgusting abomination, but there will always be angry people in Palestine wanting to break out of what they see as oppression.
What do you say to that?
Let's just check the facts from 2000.
Actually, Gaza was the case study for how the world will look without Israeli control on Palestinian area and territory.
2005 Israel withdraws to the international border and people believe that Gaza will become a Middle East Singapore.
And look what happened.
So actually it's the other way around.
From 2005, Israel doesn't have any settlements, doesn't have any territorial demands from the Palestinians.
Instead of turning Gaza to a flourishing city, they took all the international support and there was massive support and they took it to build this underneath tunnel city that became a terror city, an evil city.
We saw the results and its ugly face on last Saturday.
And you wouldn't deny that the living conditions of people in the Gaza Strip, for example, have been completely unacceptable.
And Piers, who should we blame for that?
Israel doesn't control the Gaza Strip city.
But is Israel blameless?
I would say that Israel after...
It's not blameless.
I would say Israel, no country in the world is perfect.
But after 2005, you need to blame the effective control of Hamas that abused the population, that kept on using all the international support just for one cost, to harming innocent Israelis, to fire all those rockets that have been fired on our cities for years by years.
And this is where every civilized person should stand and to say, we saw the real face of Hamas on Saturday.
They are there to kill innocent Jews in their beds.
And we need to support Israel in this justified fight because Hamas is bad both to Israelis but also to Palestinians.
Is Israel Blameless 00:02:02
Ambassador, thank you very much indeed for coming in.
Thank you very much.
And just going back to what happened last weekend, it was horrific.
And when I saw that the instant reaction on the streets of this capital city, London, were thousands of people out in the streets celebrating, some of them with Hamas flags, I was revolted that that was happening in my country.
And the only correct response to what happened then was outrage.
And it's been disgusting to watch people celebrating what happened to your people.
So thank you for coming in.
I appreciate it.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
Last week, I'm interviewing the Daily Wise Ben Shapiro on the crisis in Israel.
This powerful emotional analysis made headlines around the world.
Five million people have watched that interview so far, a measure of the enormous emotion and division this conflict has awoken.
Well, among those viewers was Mohammed Hijab, the controversial pro-Palestine influencer with nearly a million YouTube subscribers of his own.
Here's what he had to say about him.
Do you think Piers Morgan, on fair grounds, would try and speak to me about an issue like this?
Or Ben Shapiro when they know what I'm going to come with?
Absolutely not.
Don't pretend you don't know who I am.
You've been watching my videos.
You know what I'm about.
Your silence is deafening.
And your cowardice is apparent.
Well, Mohamed Hijab joins me now.
Mohamed, thank you very much for coming in.
I hadn't actually watched your videos.
I have now.
I've watched a few of them.
I'm aware you've got a massive following.
You've got nearly a million YouTube subscribers.
You're an influential person.
And you have a lot to say about this issue, obviously.
So I thank you for coming in.
But I'm not too cowardly to talk to you.
I don't have a horse in this race.
I think I've tried to straddle... a divide of being fair-minded with all sides.
I've had all voices on the show.
I commend you for that, actually, to be honest, for bringing me on, but do realize I did caveat that with unfair grounds.
So let's hope that this interview is conducted.
I intend to be completely fair.
Yeah, sure.
I promise you, because all I want to get to here is a real sense of what is going to happen.
We can all look back at all that peers.
Sorry, if you want to say fair grounds, you introduced me as a Palestinian controversial.
I actually corrected myself.
Demanding Sources and Proof 00:15:51
Right.
I said pro-Palestinian.
I meant to say pro-Palestinian.
So why did the word controversial come into play?
I think you're controversial.
So are you.
Yeah.
I wouldn't have.
So is the ambassador.
Why didn't you introduce her in that manner?
I'm happy to say that to many people, her views would be controversial.
So why didn't you introduce me as the Oxford graduate?
Do you want to be introduced as that?
Yes.
Okay.
You're an Oxford graduate.
Go ahead.
Okay.
No problem.
You can be introduced as anything you like, Frank.
It makes no difference to the debate.
Let me ask you this.
Where were you when you heard about what happened on October the 7th?
I was at home.
What was your reaction when you heard?
I was actually very sickened by it.
And this is something I do want to put on the table because I think it's fair for people to know this.
In our religion, we do not believe, okay, as a Muslim, I am a Muslim, and I do not believe in the killing of any man, woman, or children, non-combatants.
That is not despite the religious teachings.
That is because of the religious teachings.
So in terms of condemning Hamas and just jumping straight into it, I condemn not only Hamas, but any other entity, okay, wherein it's proven that this has been done, that the killing of combatants has been done.
Therein, I condemn any party that does it.
Any party that kills people or strikes at people where it's more probable than not that it will hit a civilian target, I condemn them.
And that's why I condemn the IDF.
Because when they strike, they know that it's more probably than not going to hit civilian targets.
They know that the majority of civilians or the majority of people that are going to be affected are civilians.
We know that from the various operations that have been conducted.
We know that because now in Gaza, you find that there is a blockade, as you know, for 17 years, but also they're stopping them from electricity, water, which is a war crime under Geneva 4 of the Geneva Convention, Protocol 4 of the Neva Convention.
So this is something I'm surprised you didn't actually mention to the ambassador.
I did mention it.
You didn't say it's a war crime.
Well, I think it's an arguable point whether it's a war crime.
Okay, let me ask you now, then.
They are saying at the moment, Israel is Adam.
They are not breaching war crimes, right?
It will be determined.
Well, it will be determined whether that's the case.
No, no, sorry, sorry.
What is it?
Mohamed.
Mohammed, let me just make a point to you back on that.
I think surely we can agree that what happened on October the 7th was a war crime.
I mean, when people are taking grandmothers and executing them, kidnapping young children, when they're killing babies in their cribs, we can agree that's war crime, right?
Okay, babies in the war.
Can we?
Surely, of course, 100%.
Right.
But babies in the crib.
Sorry, what's the evidence for that?
You don't believe that happened.
Sorry, CNN, the White House, Sky News, which you work for, all say something.
I don't work with Sky News.
Well, you're thinking.
I did work at CNN.
I saw one reporter who retracted it because she wasn't sure about the source.
It's unconfirmed by the White House.
But then the Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post and other sources then did publish pictures.
Which indisputably showed babies have been killed.
No, it showed one baby who has been charred and that picture has been put up on Twitter and has been refuted by many people saying that it's actually AI.
That's completely untrue.
No, what's your source?
Mohammed.
There's been a thorough investigation into the claim that was put up there by some rogue person on Twitter that it was AI.
It has been completely disproven.
That picture which was published.
Is a genuine literature?
What is your source?
Are you seriously arguing that babies weren't killed?
No, I didn't say that.
What are you saying?
I am saying, give me a source.
You know full well you've been fired from the Daily Mirror for fake images.
So you know full well about the...
I didn't accept they were fake.
Exactly.
The UK government did.
Yeah, they did.
Uh-huh.
Because the UK government, just to be clear, had waged, in my view, an illegal war in Iraq.
So you're allowed to go against the government?
Hang on, I'm not allowed to go against the Israeli government.
Of course you're allowed to.
So tell me now, what's the source?
You seem to be making a lot of presumptions about me, Mohammed.
Yes, I'm a softball question.
I was the editor.
No, they weren't.
I put all the questions to the ambassador.
I was editor of the Daily Mirror when we opposed the Iraq war on the grounds that I believed it was an illegal war.
I still believe that to this day.
I think it stained this country.
Fantastic.
I don't think you even knew that.
I did know that.
Right.
But that's not the point I was making.
I was making the point that if you're allowed to go against the government in their classification of an image, then if you have pro-Palestinian activists who are saying, actually, we need to see a source, shouldn't they be entitled to that?
The Daily Telegraph published on page three.
Should they be entitled to the picture, Mohammed?
No, excuse me.
If you're saying that they're wrong, primary source in academia, I know you've done a journalism degree, which is, well, frankly, it's not relevant to what we're talking about here anyway.
Probably is to journalism, yeah.
No, it's not to this conflict, but we academics require primary source evidence in order to make it the Daily Telegraph said they verified the picture.
That's a second resource.
That's the second resource.
You may say.
That's a second resource.
Well, you may say you don't think it's genuine.
I don't agree with you.
But the wider point.
That was my point.
I want a source.
I'm not seeing what we're arguing about here.
You're not contesting that babies were killed.
No, I'm saying I want to see the evidence.
So why are you picking on the semantics of the Rastiv One picture, which has been verified by British journalists?
Why are you picking on that?
Some examples that somehow this wasn't as bad as it seems.
British journalists are not an academic authority.
You know that full well.
You've been fired from Daily Mirror for that very purpose.
What I'm saying to you is this, putting this issue to the side.
I think you're trying to use this as a red herring to move away from the book.
This is a red herring.
This is a red herring because already 1,023 children have been killed in Gaza.
That's why.
And you didn't ask the ambassador that question.
I literally asked the ambassador said 3,000 people have already been killed in a week in Gaza.
But you didn't ask her.
Did you even listen to my interview with the people?
I did listen, but excuse me.
Don't put words in my mouth.
Hold on.
Or say I didn't ask a question.
Hold on, let me ask you a question.
Do you condemn the killing of those children by the IDF?
I'll tell you what I condemn.
Yes or no?
I'm going to answer your question honestly and truthfully.
Sure.
Because I've tweeted about this, right?
I think that what happened on October the 7th was one of the worst atrocities I have ever had to read about or watch on.
It happens every day in Palestine.
No, why do you care about that?
It actually doesn't.
It doesn't.
It does, actually.
No.
No.
The Israeli forces.
I've got the stats for that.
Israeli forces do not go.
Cast-led.
Wait a minute.
Mohammed.
Go and check out.
Mohammed.
Israeli forces.
Cast-led protective aid.
Israeli forces don't go into Gaza on one day and grab grandmothers and kill babies in their beds.
No, no, rape and abuse women.
Is there any evidence for that?
It's been multiple reports.
Multiple mainstream media publications.
Well, you're going to sit here and deny everything.
No, no, I'm not denying anything.
You are.
No, I accept that some civilians have been killed.
I do accept this.
And I already said that.
I don't believe any of the reports that women were raped.
No, I didn't say that.
I said that it's still to be.
Do you think they were raped?
No, I don't know.
It's like the Russell Brown thing.
You said we don't know anything of evidence.
So why did you apply two different standards?
Okay, so it's been reported.
When it's Israel, we know they're raped.
When it's Russian Brown, it's a lot because of your friends.
It's been reported by legitimate newspapers.
When it's Israel, you know they're raped.
But when it's Russell Brand, when it's Russell Brand, you're not.
It's a comparison between Russell Brandon.
What's happening?
It's the same thing.
It's a rape allegation.
Why are you stuttering?
I'm not stuttering.
You are stuttering.
You're contesting every single thing that I'm saying.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
And I'm saying at the end, 1,300 people were broken.
2,000 people have been killed in the other side.
Abused.
2,000 people.
200 people have been killed on the side of the state.
I said that to the ambassador.
Okay, but do you condemn that, yes or no?
I don't think so.
So you refuse to condemn.
No, you do refuse to condemn.
Why are you putting words in my mouth?
Because you're not condemning it, are you?
What do you want me to condemn?
Excellent.
What do I want you to condemn?
Yes.
I want you to condemn the fact that the IDF, knowing that it's more probable than not, pressing buttons from the sky, killing innocent civilians, 1,000 of them children, that that is a war crime and that is not acceptable morally.
Just like you condemn the other one.
Is it condemnable or not?
I believe, given the scale of what Hamas did on October the 7th, Israel is entitled to kill children.
No, that's not what I said.
Go ahead.
They're entitled to defend themselves with force.
Then the question becomes, Mohammed.
There's an interesting debate.
Sure.
If, as it seems to me, you believe too, Hamas are not a force for good.
Do you believe that?
Well, I think that anybody who kills children and those elements of Hamas who are killing children.
Right, so we can agree.
So we agree.
So my point is.
If Israel's purpose is to rid the world of Hamas after the atrocity of October the 7th, how do they do that given that Hamas embeds itself in civilian areas in the way that it does?
Everyone knows that in Gaza.
How do they do that in the surgically clean way that you seem to think they should be doing?
Have you not killed civilians?
Beautiful.
I don't like any civilian death.
Do you mind if I'm not?
I don't endorse any civilian death.
No, no.
Don't condemn it, though.
Hang on.
No, and here's why.
Because I support Israel's right to defend itself.
Beautiful.
Now, can I say this?
No, no, one more point.
Then you can reply.
Sure.
But the question then becomes, what is proportionate?
What is a proportionate response?
I don't have the answer.
Excellent.
Because I don't know what a proportionate response to 1,300 murders is when 260 young people at a music festival, most of them peace-loving people enjoying themselves at a festival, when they get slaughtered by people with machine guns.
I don't know what the proportionate response is.
Pierce, let me respond to that.
But can you tell me?
You spoke about two minutes.
You didn't do that with the ambassador.
By the way, I'm just showing you, you're saying fair, but you're not being fair.
I've said that.
So let me just paint a picture.
I'll be fair.
Sure, sure.
I'm genuinely interested in what you have to say.
All right, excellent.
You're from Irish descent.
You know that there was an IRA in Belfast and so on.
Okay, so let me ask you a question now.
If there was IRA in Belfast and they were occupying council properties and so on, and then we have a plane of RAF going to destroy that council of property, destroy all of Belfast, flatten it, as one representative said, got live.
The IDF said that one of the IDF members said that we will flatten it completely.
That's what we want to do.
We don't care about accuracy, he said.
We care about damage.
That's what he said.
You didn't question her about that.
But anyway, if the RAF were to then go into Belfast and flatten, as the IDF and these guys want to do, if they want to flatten Belfast with all the white people, I'm going to use the term white.
All the white people, council of states living in there, with the excuse that we're doing it because it's proportionate defense to the terrorists.
What would you say about that?
Here's what I would say to you.
Is that acceptable or unacceptable?
Here's what I would say to you.
Yeah.
The IRA committed a series of atrocities over numerous decades.
They targeted, in their eyes, military and political targets.
They usually gave some form of warning, not always.
Okay.
They were terrorists.
No, no, they were terrorists.
Sure.
They never ever went out one day and committed the barbaric slaughter of 300.
No, no.
If they did, if they did.
Sorry, if they did.
No, Muhammad.
If they did.
Here's why it's not irrelevant.
They never did.
But if they did, they already have to flatten it.
But by the way, there were outrages committed by the loyalist parliamentary.
My question is acceptable.
They never came close to committing an outrage on that scale.
If they did, it's acceptable.
They never went in and kidnapped grandmothers or killed babies.
If they did, is it acceptable or not?
They believed they were fighting for better or worse, and I believe for worse.
Sure, sure.
So I'm glad peace was found.
They believe they were fighting political and military targets.
You're trying to bring it closer to home to the people.
So you're trying to compare apples and oranges.
No, I'm not.
Yes, you are.
It's you that's doing that.
The only comparison that I would say that we saw from October the 7th and what Hamas did is with ISIS.
Excuse me, because that's right.
No, no, here's what I'm doing.
I'm going to finish.
You did this to Pen Shapiro, which you gave the show to him.
No, no, hang on.
I'm giving you plenty of time.
No, you're not.
You asked about the analogy of a plane flying over, targeting.
But you didn't answer my question.
But that did happen, Muhammad, with ISIS.
Would you accept Belfast to be flattened or not?
Yes, but.
Wait a minute.
It never happened.
So the like for like isn't flat.
No, no, it's a hypothesis.
Hypothetical.
It's not.
It's not.
I don't do hypotheticals.
You don't do hypotheticals.
No, no, let's deal with reality.
Okay, let's deal with reality.
Now, let me finish.
Then you can ask.
You don't want to ask a question.
No.
Here's the reality.
The British Republicans.
Here's the reality.
Right?
Yeah, they can see it.
Don't listen to the debate.
Keep going.
Right?
For what it's worth, I think it's a good debate to have.
These are questions many people on the pro-Palestinian side are having.
I get it.
I get it.
Right?
But you're trying to compare what happened on October the 7th with the IRA.
No, I'm not.
I use a hypothesis.
I'm comparing your question.
I'm comparing it to ISIS.
And the way that the world in the end dealt with ISIS actually was to use airstrikes.
And many civilians work in ISIS.
There's a huge difference.
Many innocent people dying.
But you're not even.
They're not.
You don't understand it because you have no idea of the religious.
What's the difference between what happened on October the 7th and ISIS?
The difference between the Palestinian resistance is the following.
Any kind of thing which has Palestinian resistance attached to it and ISIS, which is a brand of tech fearism, is that ISIS is just one of many brands of tech fearism, which you don't know what it is, which is a kind of excommunication type heresyological Islamic sect.
It's nihilistic mass murder.
That's all they care about.
Listen, I know what you're saying, but I'm saying something else.
You agree with me, don't you?
I do, but of course I do, but you're not understanding what I'm saying, so I'm trying to break it.
I am understanding what you're saying.
What I'm saying is that anything it's...
And I'm not anti-Palestinian, by the way.
Sure, but appears what you're saying.
Over the many years, if you bother to check what I said about it, I have always tried to shine a light on the plight of the Palestinian.
Allow me to speak, please.
Because you're just talking over me.
The difference between the two are the following, right?
Even if we assume that the killing of combatants in most definitions of terrorism is something which is bring someone to be a terrorist, okay?
I would say that if that is the case, then the state of Israel breaks that threshold and meets that condition.
Because Israel is, why is Israel not a state terrorist?
If their highest officials are admitting that we want to damage and we want damage and not accuracy, why answer me this question.
Why is the state of Israel who are illegally occupying, illegally occupying Gaza and the West Bank according to international law?
And even the ICJ said that, okay?
Which is, as you know, an organ of the UN, all right?
So this is international law.
They're occupying, they're seizing, they're bombarding, they're indiscriminately killing, and they're blocking the supply lines.
They're using white phosphorus.
They're doing what you call mowing the grass, which is every couple of years, every few years, they're killing the Palestinian people.
I want to understand what differentiates an Israeli in the sky pressing a button, killing the civilians from somebody in any terrorist organization, shooting the people.
What differentiates it?
Israel will say it has a right to defend itself.
So will the terrorists...
That's what Osama bin Laden said.
And they will.
That's exactly what Salambila is like.
No, it's not, though.
Terror.
Yes, Hamas.
I read this fatwas.
Hamas are.
I read his fatwas.
Hamas aren't defending themselves.
Bin Laden wasn't defending themselves.
Define defense.
Bin Laden was trying to defend themselves.
But how do you define defense?
As many of the enemy as possible.
Let me ask you a question.
How could it be that an occupier is defending itself in the first place?
The notion that Israel is defending itself is as absurd as the notion that the rapist is defending itself from the victim.
Because Israel is the occupier.
You have to say that.
Hold on, hold on.
Excuse me.
Let me finish.
Just let me finish.
An occupier by international law definition means that they are already in an offensive posture.
If they're in an offensive posture, if someone brings you to Pirs Mugdam, grabs you by the thing, throws you into your bathroom, you're in your bathroom, you're screaming and they're eating food, having a good time.
One day you come out of your bathroom, you try and fight one of them.
Who's defending who from who?
Mohammed.
How can we self-defend when you're occupying?
Answer me this question.
Defending Against Fallacies 00:04:53
Let me speak now.
But answer the question.
Let me speak.
Answer the question first.
Fine.
I'm going to speak.
Let me answer.
I believe that Israel's made a number of bad choices.
That's not answering my question.
Wait.
I'm telling you what I think.
You're not answering my question.
Telling you what I think.
Okay.
I don't think Israel's been perfect at all, right?
I had the moral high ground.
I think a lot of the decisions Israel's taken are wrong.
I think Benjamin Netanyahu, by the way, his attempts to usurp the power of the Supreme Court this year in Israel has been a complete disaster.
Do you condemn them from killing civilians or not?
I do not.
I will defend them this week.
Yes or no?
Wait.
I will defend them this week in defending themselves against one of the worst terror attacks ever.
So you can kill civilians for that?
You can target Hamas.
Can you target no, hold on?
And if Hamas, if Hamas is controlling me, body.
Target Hamas.
No, no, but hide.
This is the false public.
This is a false.
But members of the public die.
You're talking about fallacies.
This is called the Mott and Bailey fallacy, which is that you're trying to defend one controversial idea by using another.
It's Martin Bailey fallacy.
You can check it up on your own time.
The point is this.
I'm not asking you whether Israel has a right to defend itself.
We've already said the logical and legal impossibility, the logical and legal impossibility of an occupying power according to international law of action defending itself because it's already in an offensive posture.
Now I'm saying this.
If it is the case, you're just saying it's defending itself against Hamas.
Is the only way to defend itself against Hamas by dropping bombs in the most densely populated area, one of the most densely populated areas in the world?
Is that the only way?
It's a false dichotomy.
You're creating a false dichotomy.
They could do surgical.
They can do it.
They can go in and they can target areas.
I'm going to take a short break.
I actually, I'm going to keep you here.
I want to finish this.
I want to give you the time.
I think it's an important debate, an important conversation.
But you have to answer my questions.
I will.
We'll come back.
Yeah, but actually, you have to answer mine.
It's my show, actually.
I can answer it.
For the record, you can ask me as many questions as you want, but I'll tell you what I think.
I've answered all your questions.
We're going to come back and we're going to finish with a few more minutes, okay?
Ahmed, we've had a look.
We've had a lively debate.
I knew it would be a lively debate.
This is a very important issue.
It's a very, it's a passionate issue.
People on both sides, you know, if I tweet about anything, it doesn't matter what I say.
One side, if I'm even remotely sympathetic to them, the other side, poor abuse and vice versa, and so on.
Let's try and cut through it all and get to what happens here.
How do we find peace in the Middle East?
I've been covering Israel-Palestine since I've been a journalist, three decades.
And it seems to me we're as far away now as we've ever been.
How do you think we get to see it?
You'll be surprised.
Look, even Hamas, some four or five years ago, they even agreed to the 1967 lines, the borders.
And what you have to understand, this cannot be scapegoated on Hamas, because before Hamas's existence, this was still going on.
This was going on before Israel's existence.
But do you believe in a two-state solution?
No, I believe in, look, even Hamas was proposing a two-state solution.
But do you believe in it?
Look, there's advantages and disadvantages.
This is a different...
I don't know.
I mean, it's a difficult one.
Could you imagine two states next to each other living in peace outside Israel?
Look, it's a possibility.
I mean, as I say, even Hamas were saying that that's a possibility.
I mean, this was four years ago.
But what I want to bring to your attention is that nothing can happen if the international body or the UN becomes a toothless agency.
In 2018 to 19, when actually 221 people were killed on a peaceful protest in Gaza, it was called the Great March of Gaza.
220 people died.
Hamas didn't shoot a bullet.
No rocket was launched.
So 220 people died.
And this is even mentioned by the UN and these kind of agencies.
They tried to bring it up, the Palestinian Authority, they tried to bring this up to what you call the ICJ, which is part of the UN.
What happened is the Donald Trump administration, they threatened to freeze the assets of the ICJ, which tells you the following.
What are the Palestinian people to do?
Because the fact of the matter is, if they try and bring it up...
Let me ask you.
Let me ask you.
Let me finish the point.
Let me finish the point.
If they try and bring it up...
We're running out of time.
That's why I'm jumping on.
If they try and bring it up to international law, it's thwarted.
I do think international law.
They're trying to boycott.
International law matters.
Sure.
I just don't believe that any peace can be achieved with Hamas in charge.
Before Hamas.
No, after what happened last week.
Forget about last weekend.
Last weekend is...
Can't forget about last weekend.
No, it's not before last weekend, before Hamas in 1987, this was still going on.
But not on this scale.
Worse.
No, it wasn't as bad as this.
What are you talking about?
What happened on the internet?
Sorry, that shows ignorance.
It was the single worst assault on a populist since 9-11.
It was.
It was 2,600 people died, by the way.
1973.
That's false.
In one day?
In one day, I don't know about 600 people died in one day.
Muhammad.
Harry Roshron said.
I've got to leave it there.
We've run out of time.
I gave you more time than I planned to.
I hope you appreciate that.
Thank you.
And I appreciate you coming in.
That's it for me.
Tomorrow I'll be joined by Dylan Dannis.
Whatever you're up to.
Keep it uncensored.
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