All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
Oct. 25, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:32
20231025_piers-morgan-uncensored-yuval-noah-harrari-judge-j
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Genocide Accusations and Intent 00:14:30
Live from New York, this is Piers Morgan uncensored.
Good evening from New York City and welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was crystal clear tonight.
A ground invasion is coming and coming soon.
He said thousands of terrorists have been killed already and that's only the beginning.
The months ahead will clearly be grim.
The war in Israel is already inciting visceral emotions across the world and they're in danger of boiling over.
From vile anti-Semitism on our streets, leaving many Jewish people feeling unwanted and unsafe, to grief and fury over the catastrophe now escalating in Gaza.
There's genuine anger on both sides and it's very understandable.
For Israelis, this was about the brutal massacre on October the 7th and defending their country from people who simply don't believe they have a right to exist.
For the Palestinians and their supporters and many Muslims around the world, this is about the agony and anguish that began 56 years before the Hamas attacks with Israeli occupation.
That's a point that Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, tried to make when he said this.
It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
The problem with that framing is that there's no way of really qualifying what happened on October the 7th.
There's no historic intellectual or spiritual justification for deliberately murdering babies in their cribs, burning families alive, kidnapping Holocaust survivors.
This was the furious response of Israel's ambassador to the UN.
Hamas, as the minister explained, beheaded babies, burned families, raped women, abducted kids, babies, Holocaust survivors.
And the SG is blaming the victim.
You are blaming Israel?
This is a pure blood libel.
This is a pure blood libel.
And I think that the Secretary General must resign.
Yes, Palestinians and their supporters are justifiably furious about the way they've been treated historically.
They have legitimate heartfelt grievances that go back decades.
But October the 7th was unequivocally evil.
It did happen in a vacuum.
We've seen nothing like this because there's no way that ordinary Palestinians, I don't believe, supported what they did that day.
I can understand why Palestinians are angry.
They can be disgusted as we are by Hamas while still feeling aggrieved at their own suffering doesn't get the same level of attention.
Egyptian podcaster Rachma Zain caught the world's attention with this passionate explanation to CNN.
When 8,000 plus Palestinian babies die, you don't feel the same.
You don't feel the same as when I tell you one of your own has died.
But these are our own.
And it is unfair and Egypt won't stand with Palestine.
The United Nations standing for Israel.
All these international institutions are standing for Israel.
Who's in for the Palestinians and don't call it a war?
The jargon is even more infuriating.
It's not a war.
They're not on an equal footing.
I've been criticized over the last two weeks for asking Palestinian supporters if they condemn the Hamas terror attack.
I do it precisely because of the deadlock in this debate.
If Israel supporters can't accept that Palestinians need and deserve better, and Palestine supporters can't accept that those attacks were evil, then we're stuck.
We're stuck in an intractable and deadly conflict that will continue to rage and simmer for many years to come, costing countless more innocent lives.
Queen Rani of Jordan gave a powerful interview today in which she called out the double standard, as she sees it, over Israeli engine deaths.
And she ended by saying this.
There can never be a resolution except around the negotiating table.
And there's only one path to this, and that is a free, sovereign, and independent Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the state of Israel.
Well, on that point, I think she's right, and so does President Biden, who came out and said the same thing today.
There have to be concessions and compromise on both sides to get there.
That's basically where I am on all this.
I'm not a Middle East expert.
I don't have any personal skin in the game.
I lament the loss of every innocent life on both sides.
I think we have to unite around our basic human compassion before we can move forward.
Well, I'm joined now from Cairo by Rachma Zain, whose powerful message has gone viral online.
Rahman, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
We've got a slight delay in the connection between us, so I'm going to ask you questions and give you time to answer them rather than try and talk over you because that isn't going to work given the delay.
So let me just ask you first of all, you were on CNN.
I know Clarissa Ward, the correspondent that you were very passionate towards, in my opinion, having worked at CNN, she is one of the best foreign correspondents in the world.
And I felt absolutely has tried to straddle this very tricky line of reporting fairly and accurately on what is a horrendous conflict.
When you look back at yourself in that exchange with Clarissa, how do you feel about the way that you addressed her?
Do you have any regret?
Or do you feel you could have expressed yourself differently?
Or do you feel it accurately represented how you were feeling?
I'm not going to waste my time talking about the report with Clarissa because this takes away from the point you've mentioned before there was a deadlock in the debate.
There's no deadlock in the debate.
There is terror in the debate.
You are unable to debate with Israel because what's happened so far is we're witnessing the sick relationship between the United States and Israel, where basically the United States has given a permission for Israel to have genocide on ground.
And what's happened is we're seeing no one can say no to Israel.
The United Nations isn't able to say no to Israel without repercussions.
Media figures aren't able to say no to Israel without repercussions.
So what ends up happening is that you're basically raising a spoiled brat you're unable to say no to that has now grown up to be a sociopath.
And let me reiterate that the relationship between the United States and Israel is putting the world in jeopardy.
So what we're witnessing now is a serious issue where both parties need to reassess their relationship.
I understand that Biden, because he's pitted his own people against each other and wasted billions of dollars giving them to Israel instead of looking at his own homeless, his own medical care issue, his own student loans issue.
So a lot of American people are also extremely angry and they're also looking at unfair coverage.
The reason this video has gone so viral, one, it's alarming that it's gone so viral because what should be going viral is the footage that we are witnessing out of Palestine, out of the occupied territories, of children being massacred.
It's not a war.
A war assumes that both parties are on equal footing.
Okay, I hear you.
What I would say in response to that is that on October the 7th, Hamas, who are the ruling authority in Gaza, committed an act of such heinous terrorism, killing 1,500 people, including 260 people in the United States.
In 1948, let me finish, Rachman.
Let me finish.
What happened?
No, no, you have to let me ask a question.
I've been very polite to you and respectful.
I've let you have your say.
I'm going to say something now to you, and you can respond.
Bear in mind, there's a delay, so this isn't exactly the easiest debate to have.
Well, that's why I said at the start, why don't we let me ask questions, you answer them, and that's the way this can proceed in a respectable manner.
I would simply say to you that I've had a number of pro-Palestinian voices on this program in the last two weeks and a number of pro-Israel voices.
Many of the pro-Palestinian people I've had on have been very quick to condemn what Hamas did on October the 7th.
Some have not.
What's your position?
Before we get to what you just said to me about what Israel has done and what America is doing and so on, what is your view as someone in Egypt about what happened right on your border there in Gaza by Hamas against Israel?
It's a very fair question.
But the thing is, maybe I have a privilege being so close to the border, having many Palestinian friends, knowing more history, that I understand that once you oppress a people, and again, I'm not justifying what happened.
The killing of civilians on both parts ought to be condemned.
But the danger in you starting an interview asking me to condemn Hamas then pours into Israel's blind defense of its own state, which ends up killing over 5,000 Palestinians, over 700 dead.
And going back to the report that you were discussing at the beginning with the CNN reporter, the issue with that is everything is always taken out of context.
And this is the issue we have with Western media.
Had the journalist been there on ground with the volunteers that night, as for example, I was, she would have listened to the bombardment of Israeli bombs that start from 2:30 a.m. and do not stop.
She would have also witnessed the fact that we would get an okay from Israel's side.
I'm not done.
From Israel's side, that the supplies would go in, and then it's like they toy with your morale so that you for hope from both sides is stopped.
The narrative has got to change.
I, for example, I don't have the PR of Israel.
I don't have the money to hire the Justin Beavers of the world and have them say pray for Israel and whatnot.
But what I do have is the truth.
And the reason this video has gone so viral is because people felt it.
People felt that.
Let me ask a question, Rahma.
So my question is this.
When Hamas did what they did on October the 7th, they will have known, absolutely known, that Israel's response would have been this.
And it would have involved the deaths of many thousands of innocent people in Gaza as a consequence of going after Hamas.
They will have known that.
So my question for you, again, a difficult question.
I appreciate this given that you're right there in the middle of all this.
But the difficult question is: how do regular Palestinian people feel that their ruling authority commit an act of terror so heinous and they must have known how Israel would respond and they must have known that many thousands of innocent Palestinians would die as a consequence of that terror attack?
How do they feel about that?
Are they comfortable with Hamas continuing to be the ruling authority in Gaza?
Or is it actually an act of such appalling atrocity that Hamas should no longer be there?
And if the answer is the Palestinian people don't want them to be there anymore, then how do you get rid of them?
Unfortunately, the Palestinian people don't have the luxury of the time to think of Hamas.
The voice notes we're receiving from our Palestinian brothers and sisters from under the rubble, from mothers who've lost their children, from home families that have been eradicated.
The sentiment we're getting from the Palestinian people is: do they see us?
If the United Nations, that's whole premise was to avoid this kind of genocide, was created to avoid this kind of humanitarian crisis, cannot stand up to one spoiled brat of a fascist organization, then where are we in this world?
And what's sad is that it's a top-down movement.
You have the United Nations unable to speak to Israel.
You also have the people at work who cannot hold the Palestinian flag, who get fired on the spot.
I've had people who work in New York text me and tell me that they've been fired on this.
What else I've had that I unfortunately cannot show?
Screenshots, and last thing, screenshots of emails from prominent news channels where anchors, where younger people are emailing, producers begging, are emailing one another, begging, why aren't we showing the other side?
Why aren't you showing the other side?
Because what's happened is that Israel has given you a brand book where you can, so that you can be prim and proper in front of your people.
I have to be able to respond about their intent.
They've been very clear since the Haggades.
You have to let me respond now.
Okay?
I'm listening to you respectfully.
I am not the media.
I've given more of a platform to pro-Palestinian people, including yourself, than any other show in the world.
So I resent the suggestion that I'm just like everybody else.
Which is in itself a problem.
I have deliberately given large chunks of my show each night to voices like yours to tell the side of the Palestinians.
But again, I come back to this.
You talk about genocide by Israel against Palestinian people.
What do you call the Hamas' stated intent?
They've made no secret of it.
It's their stated intent to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, to kill all Jews.
And that's exactly what we saw them try to do on October the 7th.
Hamas Stated Goals Explained 00:05:36
What do you call that if it's not genocide?
But you've seen that from the other side.
You know, it's interesting because this point brings one to be called and dubbed anti-Semitic.
You know, I believe that Israel is the most anti-Semitic entity ever.
We used to live with our Jewish brothers and sisters here in the Middle East and in Palestine.
And the creation of Israel on a racist premise differentiated because you had, you didn't have Jewish Arabs or whatnot.
You just had Arabs.
They were Christian.
They were the people of Palestine.
You're not answering my question.
They were Muslim.
They were Jewish.
I don't need to because the problem is the Baltic.
Why are we having a debate?
Is it not to solve?
Or is this for another sensational interview?
Is this a sensational interview?
It's all about sensation.
To solve.
I am not afraid of the people who are in the world.
You've accused Israel of genocide.
Because the world is in danger.
I have accused Israel of genocide.
I am accusing Israel.
And I'm simply saying it is a genocide.
And I'm simply saying that it's a genocide.
Rahma, I hear you.
And you're perfectly entitled to that view, although Israel would contest that characterization of what they have been doing.
But many would agree with you.
But I simply say, what is Hamas waging against Israel?
I would love if they would contest with evidence rather than terror.
But do you not agree with me that what Hamas is doing is clearly...
Do you not agree with me that clearly what Hamas is waging against Israel is also genocide by your criteria?
I am, I am, you know what's again, again, this is a dangerous debate because what you're trying to put me in is once I condemn this, once I condemn these people, what that then means, why is this dangerous for me?
Because what that then means is that you can then answer me and tell me that Israel has the unequivocal right to defend itself, which what that means is that they eradicate a people.
No, no, you're wrong.
No, no.
So why not put a stop to this?
Let me clarify.
They're not on equal footing.
Let me clarify.
Israel, like every country in the world, has an absolute right to defend itself.
Israel has a right to defend itself.
The question now is what is...
Women and children?
Let me finish my point, Rahman.
Look at the evidence.
Let me finish my point.
How many Palestinians have died?
If you're not going to let me finish my point, you're not going to hear what I have to say.
Israel has a right to defend itself, but the longer this war goes on, the more that people are saying to Israel, what is proportionate?
How can killing many thousands of Palestinians, innocent women and children, how can that be right?
If what happened October the 7th is wrong, how can this be right?
And it's a very fair point to make.
But my point about all of this is you want peace, I want peace.
The President of the United States and Queen Rani and others saying we've got to get to a two-state solution.
To do that, you've got to have leadership which can be trusted by the other side.
There is no way that Israel will ever trust any leadership involving Hamas.
And I would say the same, by the way, about the Palestinian view of Benjamin Netanyahu.
I don't think they trust him either.
I think you need new leadership on both sides.
And that's where the conundrum is going to be.
How do you get to that place where it's no longer Hamas controlling Palestinians and no longer Benjamin Netanyahu in charge of the Israeli side?
Excellent question.
You apply international law.
You apply international law.
You allow the United Nations to do its job.
When the Hamas situation happened, for example, it was supposed to be the Red Cross to go and negotiate.
Israel is stopping all of that.
On top of that, it's also terrorizing the media.
On top of that, it's also terrorizing individuals.
On top of that, it has money being poured in from the United States.
On top of that, it has the backing of the European Union.
On top of that, it has the backing of Britain that started this whole farce.
So what ends up happening is who's speaking for the Palestinian people?
So for a solution to happen, you need to empower the United Nations so that Israel is not making a mockery of the United Nations.
How am I needing to reiterate this more and more?
I am giving you a solution.
Rahma, you're giving me your solution.
So you're still telling me Hamas.
Rahma, you just give me.
If you occupy a people, let me just finish this point.
Let me just finish this point.
If you occupy a people, if you occupy a people, if women in labor are having to give birth at checkpoints, if you're having people imprisoned, if you're having this merciless bombardment of Palestinians, you are going to breed Hamas.
It starts with the stronger party.
Rakma, I've given you a long amount of time.
And this is why the jargon is dangerous.
Okay, I hear you.
And I respect your right to your opinions.
And I've given you the platform to air them.
And I appreciate you coming on the programme.
Thank you very much.
That's not my job.
My job is to try and interview people at the center of this.
You may not like that, but it is.
But I appreciate you coming on the program.
Thank you.
Free Elections and Hamas 00:09:26
It wasn't sensational.
It wasn't.
But thank you very much.
Welcome back to Once Censored Life from New York City.
Last time I spoke to my next guest, it was just two days after the horrific mass killings on October the 7th.
Millions saw that interview and many praised his pragmatism about the crisis ahead.
Guards are facing catastrophe and on the brink of an Israeli grand invasion.
I'm about to be back to assess what happens next.
I'm joined from Ramallah by the Palestinian National Initiative leader, Mustafa Barghuti.
Mr. Balghuti, thank you very much indeed for rejoining me.
A lot has happened, obviously, since we last spoke.
What is your assessment of where we are in this war?
We are in a very terrible position and situation because the Israeli attacks on Gaza continue.
I mean, at this moment, they're not losing Israelis.
All the victims are Palestinians.
What we see here is after the process of dehumanization of Palestinians, they are in the act of annihilation of Palestinian people.
Massacres after massacres after massacres.
Up to now, almost 7,000 people have been killed in Gaza, mostly civilians.
And out of that, about 2,700 children have been killed.
These are not just numbers.
Moments ago, one of our colleagues and your colleague, the main journalist in Gaza, the correspondent of Al Jazeera, lost his wife and his daughter and his son, lost his family in an airstrike on an area which was supposed to be a safe place according to Israeli instructions.
They forced people to come from the north to the south, and his family was bombarded and killed.
And nobody can say that they were human shields for Hamas, this big lie that keeps repeating.
Today we were in a demonstration in solidarity with Gaza.
And one of the other journalists, his name is Mohammad Farah, suddenly collapsed because he got the message from Gaza that his sister and all her family were killed.
Just like that.
He did not have the chance to meet his sister for 24 years.
You know why?
Because Israel would not allow his sister to come from Gaza to the West Bank and would not allow him to go from here to Gaza.
For 24 years he did not see his sister and now she is killed with her children, with her husband.
This is unacceptable.
Palestinians are human beings and these are not just numbers.
No, I completely agree with you.
And every innocent life is being lost is a catastrophe in this war.
War is a catastrophe.
Let's be completely straight about this.
I know that you're not associated with Hamas.
Hamas, when they launched this appalling terror attack on October the 7th, they will have known how Israel would respond.
How can it be right?
How can it be good for the Palestinian people that they continue to have Hamas ruling them in Gaza when they've committed a terror atrocity which they knew before they enacted it would spark this kind of response from Israel?
Not to defend what Israel is doing, but they knew this is how they would respond.
They knew thousands of Palestinians would be killed.
How can that be what is good for the Palestinian people?
There are two answers to your question.
The first answer is that what the General Secretary of the United Nations said yesterday in the Security Council, which is that history did not start on the 7th of October.
He said what happened did not happen in a vacuum.
He condemned the attacks on Israelis, of course, but he said that this did not happen in a vacuum.
It was a result of the fact that we have been under Israeli military occupation for 56 years.
That it's a result of the fact that 70% of the population of Gaza, like most Palestinians, have been evicted from their land by Israel back in 1948 in an act of ethnic cleansing, where 520 Palestinian communities were erased to the ground and where 52 huge massacres took place.
He reminded the world that there is a context of what's happening, and he reminded the world of the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And what did he get?
Mr. Baguio, witch hunting by Israel.
Hang on.
No, let me finish.
I want to say that.
No, I want to take your response to the answer.
No, no, no, either.
Mr. Gotwitch hunting by Israel.
He is witch-hunted now by Israel.
I understand why Israel's been so angered by what he said.
Because what he was trying to do was offer some kind of justification to something which is completely unjustified.
You cannot in any context say that this terror attack, series of terror attacks.
But he didn't say that October the 7th was anything other than pure evil terrorism.
And the moment you try and equivocate, the moment you try and bring in historical stuff to try and explain why this may have happened, there is no justification, surely, for what happened.
I hope that you will make your questions a bit shorter because you have to give me some time to respond.
First, no, I don't think he did anything wrong, and now they're witch-hunting him.
They say he should resign.
You know what?
You, as a journalist, would agree with me that any person who is not part of this situation should try to be balanced, right?
Should not take one side and not the other.
But what the Israeli Foreign Minister Cohen said yesterday, that from now on, nobody should be allowed to be balanced.
It's either you are with us or you are our enemy.
They're witch-hunting not only Goterish, you know, even the Israeli woman who was a prisoner in Gaza, who was released, they accused her of being a liar just because this old lady, who's 85 years old, dared to say that she was treated properly, that they took care of her, that they didn't beat her, didn't torture her.
And then Israelis themselves called her a liar.
This is unacceptable.
And by all means, what is happening are collective punishment against Palestinian people, acts of ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
By which law, by which law, the world accepts that Palestinians are deprived of fuel in Gaza when children are dying in incubators because they cannot get electricity?
By which law in this world, 120 Palestinians who are in emergency, in urgent need for kidney dialysis, will die because they cannot get kidney dialysis, including 20 children.
But I didn't respond, I didn't finish the response to your question about Hamas.
My answer to you is we should have free democratic elections and we should have the chance to elect our leadership freely and democratically.
Had we had elections in 2021, we would not be in this situation because all the polls showed that neither Hamas nor Fatah will get absolute majority.
We would have had a pluralistic democratic system.
Who was against our elections?
Israel.
Who was against our elections?
The United States of America, the great democratic country, which is the president of which, unfortunately, is hurting his own credibility now by repeating Netanyahu's lies one time after the other.
Why don't they allow us to have democratic free elections?
That is the response to the United States.
Mr. Barghuti, I think the concept of free election will be total anathema to Hamas, but I appreciate you have that opinion and I appreciate you coming on the program again.
Thank you very much.
Obviously, my next guest is an Israeli academic.
His best-selling books like Sapiens explore the human condition from the dawn of history to today.
So his take on the current conflict is worth hearing.
He says, as well as winning the military war, Israel needs to win the war of his own humanity by treating Palestinians with dignity and providing them with a future.
I sat down with Yuval Noah Harari to find out more.
Well, I'm joined now by Yuval Noah Harari.
Yuval, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
I wanted to start on a personal note.
I understand that you had family members at the kibbutz when these horrors were unfurling on October the 7th.
How are they?
And tell me about what they experienced.
Well, my aunt and uncle live in Kibbutz Beri, which is one of the communities that was attacked and occupied by the Hamas terrorists.
Gaza Civilians and Peace Deals 00:06:12
My aunt and uncle, who are 100 years old and my aunt is 90 years old, they hid in their house as terrorists went systematically from house to house in their kibbutz and tortured and executed and murdered people, their neighbors and friends, in the most horrific ways.
They somehow survived and they and tens of thousands of other Israelis from the border region are now refugees inside in Israel.
I mean a horrific experience as so many experienced on that day.
I've been debating on this show ever since about what constitutes a proportional response by Israel.
I'm sure that you've wrestled with that too.
What have you concluded?
What is the correct response here for Israel to retaliate or exact revenge or just to defend themselves, however you want to categorize it?
What is the best way for Israel to do this?
We need to look to the future.
And in the present circumstances, this means that on the one hand, Israel must defend its citizens and must disarm Hamas and end the Hamas control of the Gaza Strip,
not just so that my family and tens of thousands of other Israelis could go back to living next to the Gaza Strip, but also Hamas is intentionally destroying any chance for future peace.
You know, the reason this attack was launched now, the reason for the timing of the attack was that Israel was very close to signing a historical peace treaty with Saudi Arabia, which was supposed not just to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world, but also to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and to include concessions that will alleviate the suffering of millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
And the aim of Hamas was to foil this peace treaty.
Even those interested in peace must be in favor of disarming Hamas.
At the same time, Israel should remain committed to international law and to the future chances for peace.
There will not be a peace just by disarming Hamas.
We also need to give a future to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank so that they can live dignified lives in their homeland.
But how do you dismantle or eradicate Hamas, given there are terror groups that live amongst the civilian population?
We know this.
And if you need the population to come with you on this process of removing Hamas, surely what is going on at the moment is having the opposite effect.
If thousands and thousands of Palestinian civilians who had nothing to do with it are being slaughtered on a daily basis, it seems, and if that escalates through a ground invasion, then surely it will have the opposite effect, won't it?
I mean, you may well end up dismantling a lot of Hamas terrorists, but if you also kill tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of civilians, you are surely going to alienate those people from wanting any form of deal with anybody after this.
Absolutely.
And this is why Israel should be very careful about the way it operates.
Israel is not a terrorist organization like Hamas.
It is not aiming to kill as many civilians as possible.
It is very difficult, of course, to fight a terrorist organization which is hiding inside a civilian population.
Ideally, there should be a way for civilians to move out of the combat zones.
Egypt, that shares a border with the Gaza Strip, should be willing to accept Palestinian civilians for the duration of the war in order to protect them.
I would say that even Israel should explore the possibility of receiving at least women and children from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, you know, maybe allow the Red Cross or some other international organization to build temporary safe havens for Gazan civilians on Israeli soil for the duration of the conflict.
If Israel wins the war against Hamas without providing for an alternative future for the Palestinian civilian population, we will only get something even worse than Hamas a few years down the line.
You're a historian, as you said earlier.
This has been going on now for over 70 years, this conflict.
It flares up every few years, it seems, with some new form of hideous warfare.
When you chart back to the very start of all this, which many people are trying to do to try to explain how we've reached this place, what's the big mistake in the first place, the displacement of several hundred thousand Palestinians?
People, for instance, talk a lot these days and for many years and for good reasons about the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes in 1948.
Few people know that as a result of the 1948 war, also hundreds of thousands of Jews lost their homes in retaliation for the war.
Jewish communities all over the Middle East, in Arab countries, in Egypt, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Syria, who lived there for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years, and had nothing to do with the war, they were driven out.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews, the largest group of people now living in Israel are Jews that were expelled as refugees as a result of the 1948 war.
Now, does this justify what happened to the Palestinians?
Underground Tunnels and Iran 00:09:40
No.
Does this justify the Israeli occupation and the mistreatment of Palestinians there?
Absolutely not.
And we shouldn't use historical injuries to justify more injuries.
If you have to choose between justice and peace, choose peace.
Every peace treaty in the history of the world was based on compromise.
We need some level of justice, of course, but there is never a possibility of absolute justice.
If you pursue absolute justice, you will only perpetuate war indefinitely.
Most people believe there can be no peace deal with Hamas given the appalling terror attacks of October the 7th.
But many people also feel, including many Israelis I've talked to, believe there can't be any peace deal as long as Bibi Netanyahu remains in charge of Israel.
Do you share that view?
Do you think that on...
Well, for many reasons.
One, his attack earlier in the year on the judiciary, on the integrity of the Supreme Court, the social unrest that caused the division in Israel, perhaps even distracted his defense and intelligence people away from what they should have been doing, which may have contributed to the way Hamas was able to execute this attack.
For all these reasons, do you think it would be prudent for Israel to find new leadership?
Absolutely.
I mean, Netanyahu has been ruling Israel for most of the last 14 years.
He has based his political career on dividing the nation against itself.
He has weakened any state institution, including the security forces, that might challenge or limit his authority, as he recently tried to do to the courts and especially to the Supreme Court.
And this is the deep cause of the dysfunction of many governmental systems, not only on the day of the attack, but ever since then.
If Netanyahu really cared about the state of Israel, he should have just taken responsibility for the disaster and resigned and allowed the Israeli people to come together at this very difficult time.
Alternatively, if he thinks he's the only one that can manage this crisis, then he should have said, okay, I'm calling an election in six months, and then I will resign and take responsibility for what has happened.
Well, you can watch a lot more from my full fascinating interview with that fascinating character on the Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube page very soon.
A very smart guy with a very smart take on all this.
Welcome to Uncensored, live in New York City.
I'm joined by Judge Janine Pirra, the co-host of Fox News's channel, the five, Fox News channels, the five, the number one show, cable.
I'm doing it with you this week.
That's right, Judge Janine, and it's great.
It's a great show to be on, and that's why I'm so happy to have you on my show.
Well, I'm delighted to be here.
Thank you.
Give me your overview of where we are with this war.
I think that we're seeing evil play out.
I think that many people never expected that it would be as bad as it was.
When October 7th came about, it was like, you know, this is a revisiting of the Holocaust.
I feel like we're in a pre-World War II moment, that the only thing missing is Kristallnacht, that the lines have been set.
The Jews again are the people that are being attacked, the people that others want to exterminate.
And I have to tell you, Piers, I don't understand it.
I don't understand why, from the beginning of time, have they wanted to erase Jews?
But you know what?
This is where we are.
And we've got the United States that has been funding Iran, at least during the Obama administration, with the love letters, we can do this deal, and you know, let's do it.
Nuclear deal, meanwhile, they're hiding the fact that they're developing the plutonium at Fordo.
And then Trump comes in and says, no way, takes the money away, cuts the deal.
Biden's back, giving them millions of dollars and then allowing them to sell oil on the international market.
What does that have to do with this?
The United States government, for the first week or so, refused to say that Iran was involved.
Everybody else understood that Iran was involved.
Hamas gets its money from Iran.
Hezbollah gets its money from Iran.
And so now we know what the axis of evil is.
And we've got Israel that unfortunately was in a position where they did not live up to their reputation in terms of intelligence, nor did the United States.
And so 1,400 people were murdered barbarically, medieval style.
Horrific.
I mean, you burn babies and girls.
Let me ask you the difficult question.
Everyone with a brain understands Israel is entitled to defend itself and has a duty, actually, a responsibility to defend its people from any further attacks like this from Hamas, who are dedicated to eradicating Israel and Jewish people.
Right.
But when you go in to Gaza and you attack Hamas in the way that Israel's been doing with these airstrikes before there's even a ground invasion, thousands of civilians are going to get killed because Hamas live amongst the civilian population.
Is there a limit in your eyes to the scale of Israel's response here?
No.
Israel is a nation that is surrounded by people who want to kill them.
You know, you've heard the statement, you know, from the river to the sea, you know, just get rid of Israel.
The truth is that Israel faces this existential threat.
And if they don't take care of that threat now, they will never be safe.
The Jewish people, the Israeli people, will die.
So you say to yourself, but you know, it's not fair.
It's not proportional.
What is proportional?
I ask you this.
In World War II, 350,000 to 500,000 Germans were killed.
They were civilians.
They didn't deserve to die.
This is war, Piers.
This is what it calls for.
Those kind of actions, and there's no doubt that they spent two years planning this.
This was very sophisticated.
This was done in a way where the intelligence agencies in the United States and Israel didn't have any clue.
They were using landlines.
How are we going to get it?
I mean, I was a DA.
You got to tap the landline.
You're not going in a tunnel to do that.
Is it lawful what Israel is currently doing and about to do with a ground invasion?
Absolutely.
They have to do it.
They don't have a choice.
This isn't a dance.
This isn't like when he moves his left step, I move my right foot.
That's not how it works.
You've got to destroy the enemy.
The people who are dying, the Palestinians who are dying and will die, are dying because of Hamas.
Hamas will not let them out.
Egypt will not assimilate them.
Jordan says, I've got a red line.
I'm not taking them.
Queen Ranya can talk about it all she wants.
Maybe she ought to talk to King Abdullah and say, you know what, honey, I'm out there promoting the Palestinians.
Why don't you bring some of them into Jordan?
You know, they're all hypocrites.
This is a war.
You put on your big boy pants or your big girl pants and you understand there's a problem.
Now, the hospitals in Palestine, I'll give you an example.
They say that they cannot, they're not operating because they don't have fuel.
You know who has fuel?
Hamas has fuel.
Iran has fuel.
And when they talked about that hostage who was released, she talked about the doctors, how clean it was, how they had food, how even the toilets were.
All underground in these tunnels.
It's all underground.
There are 400 miles of underground tunnels.
We're talking about cities underground.
What do you make of the, in my view, unbelievably grotesque response of students, especially in the United States, who've been launching endless pro-Hamas demonstrations, putting stuff onto buildings, beaming support for Hamas.
What do you make of that?
Well, I think it's been coming for a long time.
I think that the educational system in the United States is on a decline.
I mean, we just talked on the five about the fact that in Oregon, they don't care if you pass.
They're just going to let you leave school and say you graduated.
Look, for the longest time, we've dealt with young people in college.
You know, my feelings are hurt.
I need a corner to cry in.
You need to understand how I feel.
You know, these microaggressions, you know, how I feel, how you make me feel, how you should feel.
It's all about feelings.
Then all of a sudden, when they're confronted with grotesque, inhuman crimes, they're like, I support the other situation.
They have no feelings for the people that suffer at all.
No.
I mean, at all.
And the reason, Piers, that I mentioned the tunnels is that Palestinians are nothing more than pawns to Hamas.
Hamas is living well.
The Palestinians are the pawns in this world.
I think the Palestinian people need to realize how bad Hamas has been.
So did Hamas.
For Palestinians.
Look, Israel said in 2005, we'll give you Hamas.
Judge, I've got to leave it there because we run out of time.
The good news is you and I are going to go and work on the five in an hour's time.
Great to have you.
Please come back again.
I love that.
Whatever it's you're up to tonight, keep it uncensored.
Export Selection