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Nov. 6, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:09
20231106_piers-morgan-uncensored-isaac-herzog-exclusive
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Israel's Unique Duty and Hard Choices 00:04:09
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Israel faces growing demands for a ceasefire as death and destruction in Gaza intensifies.
How can it eradicate Hamas without killing many more innocent people?
How far can it go without losing international support?
What happens to Gaza if it wins?
These are big questions.
Tonight I've got a big guest who needs to have some big answers.
I'll talk to the Israeli President, Isaac Hersok, one-on-one.
Well, good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
With every Israeli airstrike and hail of bullets on Gaza, with every devastating image of death and destruction, the calls for a ceasefire grow louder.
Fury at Israel's response to the October 7th terrorist attack is spilling onto our streets.
Anti-Semitic attacks have skyrocketed.
Many of those marching for Palestine believe they're marching for peace and they have every right to protest peacefully.
But plenty among them are using these demonstrations as cover for deeply unsettling views, and the rest of us have every right to feel uncomfortable about scenes like this.
Well, more than 9,700 Palestinians have been reportedly killed since October the 7th, including up to 4,000 children.
That's according to the Hamas-run authorities in Gaza.
Whatever the exact number, it's clear that Israel is inflicting monstrous civilian casualties.
The ground invasion and the Israeli blockade of fuel, clean water, and food threaten the lives of many thousands more.
Statements like this from a now suspended minister in Netanyahu's government make it sound like the ground offensive is more about vengeance and security.
Mr. Minister, in your opinion, there are no innocent people in Gaza.
Therefore, humanitarian aid should not be provided for them.
That is one option.
The other is to check what is important to them.
What scares them?
What will create the next deterrent for them?
The fact that you kill them and they are not afraid of death.
We must remember that.
The Gazans can go to Ireland or deserts.
The monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.
These are all powerful arguments for a ceasefire, but the bitter truth is that Israel must defend itself.
When Israelis talk about an existential threat, they mean it literally.
Hamas wants to wipe Israel from the face of the earth.
From the river to the sea, they chant.
They couldn't be clearer.
Israel has a unique duty to its people, something the rest of us can only try to understand.
Jewish people have faced centuries of pogroms, persecution, displacement, and the Holocaust.
The state of Israel exists to provide a land where Jewish people know they can live safely and without fear of being murdered for their faith.
But Hamas has proven that it will murder Israelis with impunity, knowing full well that many Palestinians will die in consequence.
And it's been chillingly clear that it won't hesitate before doing so again.
The existence of Israel is what causes all the pain, blood and tears.
It is Israel, not us.
We are the victims of the occupation period.
So peace with Hamas is impossible.
Israelis will never feel safe again.
That unique duty to the Jewish people is existentially compromised.
It will strike Gaza whenever it feels at risk.
And as it's doing now, Hamas will hide its leaders among civilians and fire rockets from mosque schools and water plants.
Palestinians will be radicalized and the cycle of violence and tragedy will continue.
Israel needs to destroy Hamas, but it also needs to build the foundations for something new.
That means recognizing that Palestinians deserve a state too.
It means curbing Israeli settlers in the West Bank, recognizing the long oppression of the Palestinian people.
It means new leadership on both sides.
I support Israel's right to self-defense.
I also believe Israel needs to win this war against Hamas.
But how it wins the war matters deeply.
The people of Gaza need proper aid and real safe zones.
The rest of the world needs proof that Israel can do this without catastrophic civilian deaths and by obeying international law.
Saving Families from the Holocaust Shadow 00:08:07
Right now, it's facing more questions than it has answers.
Well, tonight, I'm putting those questions to Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, who I interviewed earlier today.
It's a powerful and at times emotional interview with a head of state who doesn't mince his words.
And I'm joined now by the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog.
Mr. President, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
I appreciate you're obviously very busy at the moment and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.
Let me start by taking you back to October the 7th, the day that was a catalyst for this new war.
Where were you that day and when did you hear about what had happened?
It was 6.30 in the morning.
I was planning to wake up at around 7.30 because it was a holiday, a Saturday and a vacation.
Actually, the entire week before was a national vacation because it was the Feast of Tabernacles.
And I was planning to go to the synagogue to celebrate the new opening of the Bible as we read each week a portion of the Bible.
So it was Genesis.
And sirens broke.
The silence in the entire neighborhood were torn to pieces by immense sirens and then booms and booms and booms.
We immediately realized that we are under missile attack.
It was a huge missile attack.
In hindsight, we know that there were well over 2,000 missiles launched at all of Israel from Gaza.
And the shock was huge, but we thought we ran to the shelters, but we didn't know whether there was anything else.
We assumed, okay, missile attack for some reason.
I was telling my wife there's a missile attack.
And then we opened the TV and started getting the news, endless news, about atrocities all throughout our southern border, about people being locked in in shelters and burnt and under attack.
And they call the emergency services, they call the studios of television.
They speak to the anchorman who's on TV saying, save us, help us, help us.
We're under attack.
We're being butchered.
We heal the enemy.
We hear Arabic behind the door, etc., etc.
And all hell broke loose.
We've gone through the worst atrocity as a nation since the establishment of the state of Israel, the highest amount of Jews killed since the Holocaust, about eight or nine times 9-11 in terms of our national proportion of casualties.
But it doesn't end.
The cup is filled with poison.
It doesn't end.
We meet families all the time.
You know, I met the Almogh Goldstein family.
You have three generations, grandparents, parents, children, and many abducted and also killed and missing.
And it goes on and on and on all the time.
You wrote a piece in the New York Times about this, and you talked about going to one of the kibbutz which were attacked and how you had to wash blood off your shoes and how the meetings you had with the families of those who've been taken hostage were the most difficult meetings of your life.
Tell me about that.
In Beri, when I went in to see the havoc, the atrocities, the burning homes, in one of the homes, when I walked in, there was a pool of blood still drying.
There were sculpts.
There was a woman's sculpt with a rake holding it.
That shows how atrocious these people were, how villains they are, how crazy, animalistic, and barbaric and sadistic they are.
And you walk and the house is totally ruined, but you see a picture of grandparents and parents and children hanging on the security room where they had their shelter.
And the shelter was, of course, totally burnt.
And I assume they're one of the burning bodies there.
I mean, families were tied up in barbed wires and burned together.
I could only think what they said to the Almighty before they parted earth.
And then I went and since then I keep on meeting families of the hostages.
Endless stories.
Why would Kfir, a nine-month-old baby, be hijacked?
Now he's already ten.
His grandmother told us, sorry, he's ten months old.
Okay?
Why would Leah, three years old, be hijacked where all her family is being killed?
They just took her.
And so forth and so on, endless stories of atrocities on the one hand.
And the worst of all is not knowing the fate of your loved one on the other hand.
A clear crime against humanity, clear genocide took place in that area.
Incidentally, the biggest peace-loving area in Israel, where the center of the peace movement was.
Your father, Haim, who later became president of Israel, and in fact you're the only father and son to ever achieve that highest office, he was in the British Army in World War II as an intelligence officer in the armored formations.
He fought the Nazis.
He took part in the Normandy invasion.
He helped liberate Holland and Belgium, amongst other things.
He helped capture Heinrich Himmler, one of the main architects of the Holocaust.
He took part in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
And he talked about, when he was at Belsen, telling the survivors he was a Jewish officer from Palestine and how they burst into tears at this.
And you have said before, I'll never forget how he described to me the horrors that unfolded before his eyes as one of the first liberators of the death camps, including Bergen-Belsen, the human skeletons in the striped pajamas, the hell on earth, the stench, the heart of darkness.
And you were asked once what advice you thought your father would give to future generations.
And you said, never take the state of Israel for granted.
Did you ever imagine when your father was telling you these stories that you yourself would walk into a scene like you did in that kibbutz, which was so reminiscent of the horrors of the Holocaust?
Thank you for reminding this to me.
It's quite moving for me because my dad always spoke about these moments.
My father joined the British Army in order to fight the Nazis.
He was a student at Cambridge and the war broke out.
He also served in the blitz within, you know, in London as guarding the streets.
He always spoke about the immense resilience of the British people under constant attacks.
And then, of course, wrote to his parents that he's joining the British Army to fight the Nazi enemy and save Jews.
And his experience in Bergen-Belsen, which was one of the greatest horrors of humanity, there were piles of bodies, of skeletons, dead skeletons there.
as he depicted the awful smell of the atrocities at Berken-Belsen and the fact that when he walked in, truly the survivors, they thought that he's a Nazi perpetrator.
And he had to turn to them in Hebrew and Yiddish, which is a Jewish German language, to tell them I'm a Jewish officer from the land of Israel coming to save you.
Students Protest Jewish Safety Globally 00:04:06
And there are still Jews in the world.
So that's why it was imprinted in his being.
And that's how he passed it on to me and to our families.
Never take the Jewish state for granted.
This is our safe haven.
That's where Jews from all over the world, from well over 100 countries, came forward and reestablished their ancient homeland.
And the lesson I took from my father is never, never again.
Jews will not accept, the Jewish state will not accept these atrocities within its borders, killing its citizens.
And we have complained and said and mentioned endlessly to the world that we are under terror attacks constantly.
Almost 10,000 missiles were launched at us since we pulled out of Gaza in 2007, all from Hamas.
We've alerted the entire universe and the family of nations that there's an empire of evil from Tehran emanating with a whole culture of hate to eradicate all of us.
And I say to my friends all over the world, especially in Europe, guys, if it weren't for us, Europe would be next.
Because the culture of hate that these guys have brought forward, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis in Yemen, and their entire culture of hate simply wants all of us out.
They don't accommodate Jews, Christians, or even moderate Muslims.
They are seeing the inclusion of Israel in the region, a vision of peace which we all believe in, as a threat to them.
And most importantly, all they want is to chop our heads and get to you guys next.
This is the real challenge of the world today.
One of the most extraordinary things to witness as a non-Jew, I'm an Irish Catholic looking at all this, but within hours of what happened, there were mass protests all around the world, from New York to Sydney, where there were people chanting gas the Jews in Sydney, one of the great cities of the world.
In London, there were protests in my high street up near the Israeli embassy, mass protests with many people celebrating what had happened.
And I found that unconscionable, that any human being's first reaction to this appalling terror attack would be one of jubilation.
We then saw US professors at American universities, one at Cornell, caught on camera saying how exhilarated he felt by what had happened.
We've seen students again at American universities beaming pro-Hamas rhetoric onto campus walls.
We've seen Jewish students barricading themselves in libraries for fear of their safety from chanting mobs.
And in these protests in London and New York and others, many, many people there, pro-Palestinian protests, chanting jihad and from the river to the sea.
When you see all this as a reaction to this appalling attack on Israel, how does that make you feel?
You know, I was talking to my wife the other day.
I still remember September 93.
In September 1993, 13th September, there was a ceremony at the White House lawn where Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin and the leader of the Palestinian National Movement, Yasser Arafat, shook hands under the auspices of President Clinton and signed the Oslo Accords or started them.
And the entire nation was watching it.
Oslo Accords and Fighting Evil Today 00:09:28
And I was telling then my wife, we had a baby, we had two babies.
This, you know what?
Perhaps our children will not have to fight.
Well, that reality has been shattered long ago.
And we understand that we always will have to fight.
And as opposed to previous generations, we have now the state of Israel.
And we have the tools to fight.
And Jews can fight all over the world.
Jews are threatened.
I have friends from all corners of the earth, people I grew up with, I studied with, they are extremely frightened.
And I had friends, including one of your most distinguished colleagues who was in Israel last week, told me I feel much safer in Israel.
He's Jewish.
Now, this is unacceptable because history teaches us that anti-Semitism is always the beginning, but the tragedies unfold to all other human beings.
This is the greatest disease of humanity.
Anti-Semitism is the greatest disease of humanity.
What these people are chanting is not only immoral and unjust, but it's a reflection of their own knowledge of things or their own moral compass.
How could you justify, truly, how could you justify chopping children's heads?
How could you justify burning entire families?
How could you justify raping women of all ages and taking them hostage?
How could you justify tearing off people's women's and men's scalps?
How could you justify these horrific atrocities, broadcasting, broadcasting live, how you carry out these atrocities?
Taking a mother's iPhone and broadcasting to the entire her entire WhatsApp group, how you are torturing her husband, killing her daughter and her young children.
And this goes on and on and on.
This is a test for humanity and a moral call for moral clarity.
And human beings and leaders must be outraged and understand that when you give a nation the right for self-defense, it has a right for self-defense.
The American congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, tweeted, from the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.
What is your response to that?
She simply, above everything else, I mean, all these atrocious comments, all this terrible view of things, she simply doesn't know history.
The world recognized the Jewish state's rights for independence in November 1947 in a UN General Assembly.
The Family of Nations accepted.
Our borders were, of course, agreed.
That border was violated by this terror attack.
And we've strived for peace all throughout since then.
We've extended our hands for peace.
We signed peace agreement.
We defended ourselves.
We fought for peace.
We were willing to go for peace.
But unfortunately, the entire culture of hate, the culture of jihad, jihad, may I remind you about John the Jihadist, who simply would show the entire world how he takes a prisoner and cuts his head.
That's what jihad is all about.
When people chant a revolutionary moment, when people chant from the river to the sea, what does that mean to you?
That means annihilating Israel because we have the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
This is, of course, a call to annihilate the state of Israel, the only nation-state of the Jewish people on earth.
The Jewish people have founded this state after returning to their ancient homeland, rebuilding it, and being recognized by the international community, unfortunately, following the worst atrocity of humanity,
which is the Holocaust, where six million of our people were burnt, gassed, killed, and tortured and killed by all sorts of the most terrible means in the most violent attack humanity has seen,
whereby the forces of good led by the United States of America, by the British, the United Kingdom, of course, by the USSR in those days, they all, and together with all other nations, had to fight the Nazis and their allies and liberate Europe.
And that brought the change in the world.
That brought the creation of the United Nations.
That led to the Human Rights Charter.
That brought to the definition of what genocide is all about and crimes against humanity.
Well, the new world order was created.
Well, the world order has been challenged and challenged dramatically.
And this is the real challenge in facing all leaders of the world, guys.
Don't be mistaken.
You have to be tough and strong to fight this evil.
On Saturday, it's Armistice Day in the UK, a very important day where we obviously commemorate and honor those who sacrificed their lives in the wars.
Your father undoubtedly would have lost people that were close to him when he served in World War II.
How do you feel about the fact there is a pro-Palestinian march, a big one, planned to take place on Saturday on Armistice Day in London?
There are calls here from many people now for this march to be banned, because many of the people marching in these marches have been chanting jihad from the river to the sea and other things like that.
It's a atrocious and hypocritical, and I call upon all decent human beings to object to the march and ban it because, Because the symbol of that day is a symbol of victory and it's a symbol of doing good, because when you fight evil, sometimes you have to fight.
You have to fight evil in order to uproot evil.
Unfortunately, we live with evil throughout the ages.
And what we are seeing constantly is unbelievable evil.
Unbelievable evil.
We've seen terror.
We've been harassed by terror all our lives.
Terror is what stopped the Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Terror is what undermines peace.
We were in a historic process for the last 50 years of inclusion of Israel in the region, of peace agreements with Egypt, with Jordan, the accords with the Palestinians, the Abraham Accords, which of course four other Arab nations signed with us, the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Morocco, and Sudan.
They all signed with us agreements.
We were moving forward.
We had serious deliberations about the possibility of signing the peace agreement with Saudi Arabia and normalization.
Well, this attack is part of a grand scheme to undermine this process of inclusion, doing peace, and turn the region into a region of war.
And that is why the world community has to be forceful and strong and oppose all these efforts and move strongly towards the inclusion of Israel in the region while giving security to Israel and all its neighbors.
I commend world leadership.
I commend President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Rishi Suna, and the opposition leader Starmer and Prime Minister and President of France Macron and many others, of course, who've stood up with us against this process of evil.
And this is the test of humanity and the entire world community these days.
Let's talk now, Mr. Prince, about Israel's response, because I wanted to give you enough time to really explain how you feel as the president of a country that suffered that terror attack, and you've done so very evocatively and very powerfully.
But as you know, there is mounting concern over the scale of Israel's response to what happened.
Many people talking and asking the question, what is proportionate?
In your mind, is there any response that could be deemed proportionate?
Or will you do whatever it takes as a country to eradicate Hamas?
Money Flowed to Hamas Cruelty Machine 00:02:37
So first, let's understand the rules of international law, because most of nations tell us you have the right to defend yourself.
We are speaking about almost 20 years of bombardments from Gaza, on and off, ceasefires, agreements, operations, wars, whilst looking for ways and means to change the equation toward peace.
Gaza was taken over in 2007 by a brutal coup of Hamas.
It was taken from the hands of the Palestinians, Palestinian Authority, which is controlled by the Fatoh movement, and they literally butchered their family members and took over Hamas and leading it into a platform of war by Iran.
They filled it up with ammunition.
Rather than doing anything possible to help their own people and upgrade their living standards, they kept on fighting and fighting.
In the last two years, there was progress.
Israel agreed for the first time to open up Gaza for Gazan employees to come to work in Israel.
Tens of thousands of Gazans were employed in Israel and money flowed in.
They broke bread and money flowed in and the economy grew.
Little did we understand, naively, that many of those working in Israel also collected and gathered information about their employees, had given information to Hamas as to where each house is, where to land with your gliders, how to break into your fence, and how to get to the cities and towns in which they worked in.
And the money that they took and all the income from your taxpayers' money for international projects in Gaza was basically used and taken by Hamas to build this machine of cruelty and barbarism.
So, Mr. President, let me just say.
Let me just say, Mr. President, I completely agree that Hamas should be eradicated.
I think most right-minded people can understand that there can never be peace now after what Hamas did on October the 7th.
But like I say, many people are looking at Israel's response now.
Nearly 10,000 Palestinians have been killed since October the 7th.
These are figures, I must say, which are reported by the Hamas Control Palestinian Health Ministry.
They say nearly 4,000 children have been killed.
Cabinet Blame and Humanitarian Crisis 00:15:29
We know that on Saturday night, the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, which is just to the south, was bombed.
Reportedly, 50 people.
Well, let me ask you on that one specifically, because I don't think there's been a response yet by Israel.
Hamas say that was an Israeli airstrike.
Is that true?
And how do you justify bombing somewhere that is known to be a refugee camp?
We don't, I'm not aware of this at all.
And there's a lot of fake coming out of Hamas information channels.
But first, let me explain to you what's happening.
When you have the right for self-defense, you have the right for self-defense.
We have been attacked from people's homes.
We have been attacked from schools, from mosques, from shops, and people's living rooms.
Now, you or your viewers, do they have a bomb?
Do they have a missile?
Do they have a mortar in their living rooms?
There are missile launchers that send missiles 200 kilometers.
That must be a huge missile.
I yesterday tweeted as our forces have walked into a theme park and a playground for children where they found launchers in the ground ready to launch missiles on our children.
And I say it specifically: if they are ready to launch missiles on our children, we must go and eradicate that site.
Same goes for the houses.
Now, how do we behave according to international humanitarian law?
We alert the citizens.
We tell them in your home, there's a missile launcher.
Get out of your home, go down to the safe zone in southern Gaza where you are getting enough humanitarian aid and we will eradicate that infrastructure of Hamas.
We sent millions of leaflets.
We called and sent texts and messages and WhatsApps and SMSs and phone calls by 10 million numbers.
But Mr. President, just a thousand people go down.
So at the end, at the end, we have to go out and we have to go in and eradicate that infrastructure.
Of course, we check ourselves with lawyers and jurists.
We try to make as safe as possible not to hurt civilians.
And believe me, and I say it outright from the bottom of my heart, we care for every civilian in Gaza.
I care.
And I can tell you stories about me helping Gazan citizens all throughout my career.
But with all due respect, there comes a moment where you have no other choice.
Because if we will recur again, we'll go through the same atrocities again.
But I understand it must be clean, eradicated.
As I said, I absolutely support Israel's right to defend itself.
In fact, I think you have a duty as a country and a responsibility to your people to try and stop Hamas doing again what they did.
And only last week, a Hamas spokesman said that they would try again and again and again to replicate what happened on October the 7th.
So you don't need to keep telling me how bad Hamas are.
I get it.
And they have to go.
It's just how you do this.
And that is what is coming under criticism.
Queen Rania of Jordan has called for an immediate ceasefire in a new interview.
She says there has to be a collective call for a ceasefire.
I know some who are against a ceasefire, arguing it will help Hamas.
However, in that argument, they are inherently dismissing the deaths and, in fact, endorsing and justifying the deaths of thousands of civilians.
That's not just morally reprehensible, short-sighted, and not entirely rational.
If Israel, she says, managed to eliminate all of Hamas, the root cause of this conflict is its illegal occupation and routine human rights abuses, illegal settlements, disregard to UN resolutions and international law.
If we do not address the root causes, you can kill the combatant, but you cannot kill the cause.
What is your response to Queen Rania?
I don't intend to start arguing with Queen Rania because I know exactly the considerations and the limitations of the Jordanian regime under the circumstances, but I would expect a much better understanding of this situation on the ground.
First of all, there must be no justification under any circumstances, none whatsoever, to the atrocities that we have seen and gone through.
And no justification to terror, none whatsoever.
By the way, this hate regime that attacked us, the first thing they'll do, unfortunately, they'll try to attack Jordan as well.
We're all in this together.
They'll try to attack other regimes as well.
They're all in this together.
We're all in this together.
We are all nations who want to move to peace.
And we're attacked by this philosophy of hate of al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Jihad, and the rest.
They want all of us out of here, and they want all of us wiped off.
And they want a major Islamic fundamentalist regime throughout the Middle East.
That's the real story.
And that's the real challenge.
With all the respect regarding settlements and all the, these are issues that have been discussed in a peace process.
They should be discussed in a priest process.
There are many ideas to have peace between us and the Palestinians and how to move towards solutions such as the two-state solution.
But it cannot happen if you support or if you give any credit in any way, directly or indirectly, to Terror.
We cannot accept Terror.
We have to fight Terror.
And then, when we fight Terror, we can sit down and talk.
We tried sitting down and talking for decades already.
Like I said, remember in the 1990s, Piers, in the 1990s.
I remember.
In the 1990s, Terror suicide bombers killed the process.
That's the same like now.
That's their tactics.
That's how they do it.
But there are many entire region to fight Terror.
I understand that.
And like I say, I agree with the mission statement to get rid of Hamas.
But I share people's concern about the sheer scale of what is going on in Gaza, not least the mounting humanitarian crisis.
You have over a million people whose homes have been displaced.
Angelina Jolie, the actress, is also a special envoy to the UN High Commission for Refugees.
She said this: This is the deliberate bombing of a trapped population who have nowhere to flee.
Gazra has been an open-air prison for nearly two decades and is fast becoming a mass grave.
40% of those killed are innocent children.
Whole families are being murdered while the world watches.
And with the active support of many governments, millions of Palestinian civilians, children, women, families are being collectively punished and dehumanized, all while being deprived of food, medicine, and humanitarian aid against international law by refusing to demand a humanitarian ceasefire and blocking the UN Security Council from imposing one on both parties.
World leaders are complicit in these crimes.
So she's saying that you are committing war crimes here.
What do you say to that?
That I totally reject her claims.
I think she's never been in Gaza.
She's never been here.
She never went to visit and see the facts on the ground.
With all the respect, people in Gaza know there is war, but there is no humanitarian crisis that does not enable them to survive.
On the contrary, there is a safe zone which was agreed by the international community in Israel in the south part of Gaza in order to move the citizens to that zone to take full care of them.
There's a major dramatic increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza, which Israel has supported dramatically in conjunction with the United States and the United Nations and many other nations.
The Gazan people can move there so that we uproot this terror regime.
This is what we know.
Angelida Joli does not offer the Israeli people any ability to defend themselves by saying what she is saying.
And may I speak about her comment that Gaza is a jail?
Gaza is a jail not because of Israel.
Israel pulled out of Gaza to the last inch.
Gaza is an Iranian base filled with terror, smuggled with tons and tons and tons of ammunition.
This is the tragedy that has befallen the Gazan people.
Perhaps the outcome of this war will enable the Gazan people who deserve decent good life to enjoy it under a different regime that will enable movement towards peace.
So part of the problem is further.
Wait, wait, wait.
I have to clear this point with all the respect.
Yes, of course.
It was the Hamas who destroyed the electricity lines of Gaza by shooting these missiles.
It was Hamas who destroyed the water infrastructure of Gaza by shooting these missiles.
Israel is supplying water.
Israel is enabling humanitarian aid, despite the fact that not one detail came about the hostages who are there now in Gaza.
240 of them.
Not one.
Just to give you a moment.
So many people are asking themselves time and again, how come, with all these hypocrites all around the world, how come none of them bother to say, you know what?
Humanitarian aid, give information about the hostages, release the hostages.
It can't go this way.
You'll tell me, of course, you know, the civilians are not to blame.
Fine, if the civilians are not to blame, then please enable Israel to uproot these terrorists.
Will there be any ceasefire or humanitarian pause if the hostages are not released?
So, first and foremost, you know, I'm a head of state, I don't enjoy any executive powers.
This is all of this, including the war cabinet, is under the domain of the government, the emergency cabinet, the United Cabinet of National Unity under the leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
They are discussing all of this, including with our friends and allies all throughout the world, who understand the tragedy, understand the challenge, and understand the ideas of how do we aim to get out of it.
But we are not dealing with rational enemies.
It's not an enemy that you have certain rules of the Geneva Convention.
You're dealing with psychopaths.
You're dealing with a psychopathic leader who has driven his people into the abyss.
Unfortunately, it's extremely painful.
Let me tell you, I care about Gazan children.
I truly do.
But with all due respect, first and foremost, I have to defend our people.
We have to defend the Israeli nation.
We've gone through atrocities.
This war was coerced upon us.
We did not want to go to war.
We are not a warmongering nation.
We're a peace-loving nation.
We present our hands again and again.
And we get missiles on our head, any particular comments by leaders from all around, or all sorts of figures from around.
But there is never been here one day, never looked in the eyes of families who've gone through the worst of atrocities.
Let me throw this back at you, which is the comments of Amihai Eliyahu, a far-right minister in the Israeli government, who's just been suspended after suggesting Israel may use nuclear weapons against Gaza.
That's one way, he said.
That's an option.
He also said there are no non-combatants in Gaza and the Palestinians should move to Ireland or the desert.
Those are incredibly incendiary and inflammatory remarks.
And if you're a Palestinian or if you're an Arab and you hear a member of Israel's government talking about nuking Gaza, then you think that there is a callous disregard for human life in Gaza, don't you?
So that's words of rubbish by someone who has no authority, no knowledge, and no involvement in the real decision-making process.
It is very regrettable, and Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately denied it and took action towards this minister and called him now to a call where he's going to explain to him how wrong he is.
It is absolutely absurd and nobody really gives any importance to these words of rubbish.
Let's turn to some other words, which I don't think are rubbish, but are certainly worth mentioning to you.
President Obama, the former American president, said the Israeli government's decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population threatens not only to worsen the growing humanitarian crisis, it could further harden Palestinian attitude for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel's enemies and undermine long-term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.
And if you want to solve the problem, he says, then you have to take in the whole truth and you have to admit nobody's hands are clean.
All of us are complicit to some degree.
Do you agree with him?
So President Obama, I don't know when he wrote and made that statement because there is a major supply of food, water and humanitarian aid to Gaza.
It flows in.
It has been increased dramatically.
I met with Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Friday.
He met with the Israeli cabinet.
He discussed it and there is a dramatic increase.
I met with the Under Secretary of the United Nations in my office last week and he thanked Israel for these enormous humanitarian steps forward.
So I think the situation which we monitor on an hourly basis is much more reasonable than you depict it.
And yes, I don't shy away from the pains and sufferings of many people.
But at the end of it all, let's understand the situation.
You cannot enable the Israeli nation, which is in shelters, to return to the same reality which was before the 7th of October.
We cannot.
First of all, people deserve to go back to their homes.
Why would they go to their homes if they know their neighbors wants to swallow them again without, Mr. President?
So the real issue here is that I think the international community needs to tell all the supporters of Hamas, all the Arab nations who express support for Hamas or Arab leaders or other leaders and tell them you are to blame.
You are to blame because you are enabling this evil regime to come back again rather than removing the evil regime finally and enabling a rebuilding of a decent life for the Palestinian people.
Displaced Homes and Tragic Missiles 00:02:21
But you talk about the fact that Israeli people want to go back to their homes and of course they do and absolutely their safety was removed from them.
The depravity of October the 7th has caused huge trauma to not just people in Israel but Jewish people around the world.
I completely get that.
But what do Gazan people do?
Over a million have been displaced from their homes.
If you could just explain to me how do the Gazan people come back to their homes if they've all been obliterated in the north of Gaza?
They will be able to rebuild their homes like in the past.
It's not the first time that they were under war, unfortunately.
It's extremely tragic.
But you don't give me an answer to how exactly am I going to live with the fact that in their homes and they saw these missiles from their homes.
They saw the terrorists coming out of their homes.
They saw the tunnels dug in their homes.
They saw their mosques being filled.
They saw their hospitals, the hospitals which were financed by so many countries, including EU countries and other countries, become the center of command of this terror attack, this terrorist organization, meaning giving no hope to them, to their children and grandchildren.
Hopefully, when this ends, these terrible circumstances end, this horrific circumstances end, we will be able to offer hope to the Palestinians in Gaza to go back, rebuild their homes, and finally have decent lives with a different regime that will enable progress and peace in the region like we all need to have.
Final question.
Many people would agree with you that Hamas has to go before any peace can be achieved.
But many people also, including many Israelis, according to latest polls, believe that it cannot be achieved with Prime Minister Netanyahu still in office either.
Many think that what happened on October the 7th was a catastrophic failure of security and defense and the buck should stop with him.
You yourself have said before about Netanyahu, I'm not sure he has the guts to do it with regards to moving towards peace and a two-state solution.
Should Prime Minister Netanyahu step down?
Prevailing Against Enemies and Returning Hostages 00:00:49
You know, I'm the head of state as president of the state.
The political system has its own processes.
I made clear in a national speech from the parliament that the day after the war will come where all these issues will be discussed.
We are a vibrant democracy.
We don't shy away from anything.
But right now, we're all united.
We're all united in one goal.
We must return the hostages back.
We must overcome and prevail against our enemies.
And we must bring peace and security to our borders and our peoples.
This is my only aim at this point.
Mr. President, I really appreciate you giving me so much time, more than you planned to, and I acknowledge that, and I appreciate it.
And thank you very much indeed for joining me today.
Thank you very much.
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