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Iranian Path to Sovereignty
00:14:10
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| Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Israel's bombing intensifies in Gaza as a nation marks one month since the Hamas terror attacks. | |
| Is the Middle East at risk of all-out war? | |
| I'll talk live and exclusively to the exiled Crown Prince of Iran. | |
| Anti-Semitic attacks have soared since the war began, but with calls to ban pro-Palestinian marches, are we putting fundamental rights at risk over so-called hate speech or debate? | |
| And Shani Luke was the dancing tattoo artist who became a tragic symbol of Hamas's brutality on October the 7th. | |
| With her death now confirmed, tonight, her father has a powerful warning for the West. | |
| Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored. | |
| Good evening from London. | |
| Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored. | |
| Today marks one month since Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and butchered more than 1,400 people. | |
| Now, October the 7th is destined to become a date we never forget. | |
| Like 9-11, its morbid memories will echo through history. | |
| But as Israelis today look back in anger and in grief, the rest of the world is beginning to contemplate what else that date will come to represent. | |
| Will it plunge the Middle East into a deadly, wider crisis? | |
| Will the simmering racial resentment cause bitterness and bloodshed across the world? | |
| Will it nail the coffin of a two-state solution? | |
| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given his first answer to the big question of what happens to Gaza when the war is over. | |
| And frankly, it's a major cause of concern. | |
| Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility. | |
| This means Netanyahu plans to effectively occupy Gaza completely for an indefinite period, long after the bombing and bloodshed is done. | |
| That, to me, is a massive error of judgment. | |
| Hamas says more than 10,000 Palestinians are already dead since October the 7th. | |
| There's 10,000 grieving families who will blame Israel and Netanyahu for destroying their lives. | |
| And as the bombing intensifies, their fury and malice will surely spread. | |
| There will be no safe or fair way for the Palestinian people to live under an Israeli heel. | |
| No path to peace. | |
| Netanyahu must surely know this. | |
| Last night I asked the Israeli President Isaac Herzog if Netanyahu himself is now a barrier to peace. | |
| He gave a diplomatic answer that was, I would say, far from a ringing endorsement. | |
| 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. | |
| And I get it. | |
| Israel's focused on wiping out Hamas after what they did to their people on October the 7th. | |
| But what happens next will change the course of history. | |
| Palestinians need new leaders who accept a Jewish state. | |
| Israel needs a new leader who recognizes that Palestinians too deserve a state and the same human rights as Israelis. | |
| Netanyahu has honestly divided to rule. | |
| He propped up Hamas to split the Palestinians with now catastrophic consequences. | |
| Now he's making ascendary calls for more lengthy occupation when tensions couldn't be higher. | |
| I don't know, frankly, who should control Gaza when Hamas or if Hamas is wiped out, but I do know it can't be Benjamin Netanyahu. | |
| Well, my first guest tonight was a guest of Promiser Netanyahu in Israel earlier this year when he was fated as the most prominent Iranian to visit Israel in history. | |
| The exiled Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Hahlavi, joins me now from Washington, D.C. Great to see you, Crown Prince. | |
| I really appreciate you joining the program. | |
| I've interviewed you several times over the years in different circumstances. | |
| So it's great to have you on Uncensored for the first time. | |
| First of all, your reaction... | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| Sorry, good to talk to you again, Pierce, after about 12 years, I think, last time we spoke. | |
| It is. | |
| It is. | |
| It's good to see you. | |
| Let me ask you first of all, your reaction. | |
| We're a month in now to the Israel-Hamas war. | |
| What is your reaction to what has been going on? | |
| Piers, I think that the world cannot ignore the elephant in the room, and that is since the rise of radical Islam as a result of the Iranian revolution that took my country hostage to begin with and has since fomented this kind of antagonism, regional instability, warmongering, supporting terrorist groups and what have you. | |
| We should not really be surprised that at the tail end we are faced with this kind of rises in tension. | |
| And I think it's telling that we have to cure the disease ultimately. | |
| And until and we don't put an end at the ideology itself, I don't think we can really be hopeful to have legitimate peace in the region for the best interest of the people living there. | |
| And of course, beyond our region, how it impacts the rest of the world. | |
| Yesterday I interviewed the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog. | |
| I know you met him as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu on your historic visit to Israel. | |
| And he said this about Iran. | |
| There's an empire of evil from Tehran emanating with a whole culture of hate to eradicate all of us. | |
| Would you agree with that? | |
| Look, I think President Herzog, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and I think along with that, many leaders and beyond leaders, people in the world who by now have hosted in their respective countries in the West and elsewhere, Iranians who were forced to flee the country as a result of this regime to understand that what the Iranian people are like and want is totally different than the regime in Tehran. | |
| And I've always asked for the world community, including media, when they talk about Iran, to specify that they are talking about the regime in Iran, not the people of Iran. | |
| So when we say Iran, I want to make clear that this is not the Iranian people you're talking about, but the regime. | |
| That's very important as a distinction, because I think that while the problem correctly emanates from Tehran, and I've been saying this all these years, that the eye of the octopus is in fact in Tehran and we are busy fighting the tentacles without putting out the beast itself. | |
| Of course, in that statement, I think he's correct. | |
| The question, however, is how can this change come about? | |
| And there's a lot to discuss about this matter. | |
| Well, there is, and of course, central to this right now, is the war against Hamas, a terror group who've been in charge of Gaza for 17 years or so, really ran a repressive regime of their own against their own people, continued to treat Palestinian civilians as just some kind of military capital that can be expended on a whim, it seems. | |
| And everyone who saw what happened on October the 7th, who has an ounce of humanity, will completely understand why Israel is going so hard now for Hamas. | |
| But the problem for the wider world and certainly for the wider Arab community is that in trying to eradicate Hamas, who live amongst civilians, there are thousands and thousands of completely innocent, often children, half of the casualties are reported to be children, being killed in the process. | |
| Is there a moral equivalence here? | |
| Is there a line that Israel shouldn't cross? | |
| Or is this idea that they should be proportionate just for the birds if you're in a war and you're trying to wipe out a terror group? | |
| Well, again, the principal funding and the principal support that comes to these groups must have a money trail and a source in terms of what's keeping them going. | |
| It's not a secret that the regime in Tehran has been behind most of these groups, has financed them, has armed them, has used them at proxies to advance their agenda in the region with the ultimate goal of exporting an ideology and force the world into assimilation under a modern caliphate. | |
| This is not simply in the region, Piers, mind you. | |
| Today we hear this ominous sound of radical Islamists who are trying to shape a different future for countries even in Europe, hoping to gain a majority and force the laws to change in the way they want to see the world govern under this kind of caliphate. | |
| This is really a challenge that faces all of us. | |
| It's not just an issue to Israel having to deal with the problem of having been attacked by a terrorist group. | |
| It is the nature of the beast itself. | |
| As I said, it's a disease that needs to be cured. | |
| And while you can deal with the symptoms, if the cure is not found, and in my opinion, the cure is to put an end to what is the source behind this extremism, this radicalism, the problem will never dissipate. | |
| One has to do what they have to do, sometimes wrong, sometimes it's a moral issue, as you pointed, but that doesn't solve the ultimate problem. | |
| I believe that the sooner we solve the root cause of the problem, all of these issues will ultimately find a way to find a proper resolution with every interest of humanitarian and liberties of all people, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, Iranians, and the whole world. | |
| We have to work together with the problem and not kick the can down the road and hope that by miracle the problem is going to dissipate. | |
| It's not going to. | |
| Do you have any doubt that Iran was behind what happened on October the 7th in terms of the scale of it, in terms of the quantity of firepower that they took over the border? | |
| I mean, does it look to you like a new Iran-sponsored operation? | |
| Well, I think that hours after the attack, there were already some Palestinian banners that were hanging on some public buildings in Tehran and a short visit thereafter of Iran's officials with Hamas representatives. | |
| This simply is not a coincidence. | |
| It must have been in some form or shape planned or anticipated. | |
| And in fact, they haven't denied the fact Hamas itself has had thanked officially one of their representatives. | |
| I saw a clip somewhere where he actually acknowledges the support coming from Tehran. | |
| So they're not denying it. | |
| And I think that's a fact that is hardly contested by anyone who understands enough about the quagmire in the Middle East and Iran having been the godfather of terrorism all these years. | |
| Final question. | |
| We've seen ISIS pretty well wiped out. | |
| We've seen al-Qaeda severely diminished in its ability to operate. | |
| If Israel was to be successful in eradicating Hamas and effective regime change in Gaza, could you see this spilling over potentially to regime change in Iran? | |
| And if it did, would you be keen to go back there and assume the power that was removed from you in 1979? | |
| Well, Piers, my formula for change in Iran is, of course, based on popular sovereignty and the free will of the Iranian people that can only choose their future once liberated from this regime that denies them the right to freely choose or elect whoever they want in the future. | |
| My process for change in Iran is to make sure that we have a democratic transition post-regime collapse, that we can have a constituent assembly when people's representatives will debate what will be the best course for the country in the future, to offer the Iranian people by referendum a chance to ratify the proposed constitution, hopefully based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which clear the separation of church from state. | |
| And it is for the Iranian people to ultimately voice their choice. | |
| I'm not running for any office or have any other ambition in mind other than to serve that process and be a facilitator for that process and speak on behalf of all Iranians for their right to choose and freely determine their future. | |
| I do, however, believe that the solution in Iran is regime change and this regime will never change its behavior, which is why in 40 years of trying, the biggest problem and flaw in Western policy, foreign policy vis-a-vis Iran was an expectation of behavior change. | |
| This regime's DNA doesn't go along with the values that Iranians cherish that is also cherished in free countries, human rights, equality, putting an end to any form of discrimination. | |
| So at the end of the day, we need to make sure that people in the world, if they truly want to help the process of stability and democracy and freedom, to be on the side of the Iranian people and forget about continuing to negotiate with a regime that has never had any intentions to reform itself. | |
| The time has come for change at the ask of the Iranian people. | |
| And therefore, I think the world has a golden opportunity to use the best allies they have in the process as the instrument of change, the Iranian people themselves. | |
| But they cannot fight alone. | |
| We need to have support from the coalition of the willing in free societies and people who do champion democracy and human rights. | |
|
Condemning Hamas Violence
00:15:23
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| One word answer. | |
| If you got the opportunity democratically, would you go back and lead Iran? | |
| I will help my fellow competitors as much as I can with no personal ambition. | |
| I don't think that the issue for me is anything beyond helping the creation of the kind of institutions well beyond the constitutional government, because civil society is the ultimate watchdog for society and we need to strengthen this institution to make democracy a lasting system in the country. | |
| Okay, I'll take that as a yes, not 76 words, Rosa. | |
| No, I will. | |
| I will help any way that I can, of course, if the opportunity presents itself. | |
| It's good to talk to you again. | |
| Thank you very much indeed for joining me. | |
| Reza Hallavi, thank you very much. | |
| Thank you, Piers. | |
| The exiled crown prince of Iran. | |
| Fascinating stuff. | |
| On census of next, reports of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have soared since the war began, but are these claims being used to stifle legitimate criticism of both Israel and Hamas. | |
| We'll debate with a very eminent panel. | |
| Well, welcome back. | |
| Reports of anti-Semitism have soared in both the UK and the US and indeed around the world since the Israel-Hamas war began. | |
| Many pro-Palestine supporters, however, believe that criticism of Israel is being censored by the claims of hate speech. | |
| Last night, Israeli President Isaac Huzog told me that a pro-Palestine march planned on the UK's armistice day should be banned. | |
| So are claims of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia being used to stifle legitimate criticism and indeed free speech or rather tensions on our streets in real danger of boiling over. | |
| Well here to debate all this is the founder of the end Jew hatred movement, Brooke Goldstein, the host of System Update, Glenn Greenwald, and the author of Go Back to Where You Come From, commentator Wajahat Ali. | |
| Welcome to all of you. | |
| Let me start with you, Brooke. | |
| I want to read you what you tweeted me recently, because I think this will set the tone for this debate. | |
| You said, Piers, I've been on the show. | |
| I know you to be a fair journalist, but I don't understand why you're giving these Islamo-Nazis such a large platform over and over again to spread their venom. | |
| There comes a point when you have heard their message and you've done your duty. | |
| Would you likewise host every single member of the SS in Nazi Germany for the sake of debunking? | |
| I hate to say you're not doing a good job at it. | |
| Their lies and propaganda are so carefully crafted that the more you put Hamas apologies on, the more effective they become. | |
| Asking people to debate them, to debate how many babies were killed, whether it's by beheading or by stabbing or by burning babies alive, is tasteless and disgraces the memory of the innocent Jewish people who've been killed. | |
| At what point does your journalism become a propaganda tool for terrorism? | |
| They send their best and brightest to you to engage in mental masturbation, acrobatics, and they're running circles around you. | |
| With all due respect, enough in the battle between good and evil, there is no journalistic obligation to continue to put evil on a platform to be debated. | |
| So, I mean, that seems to me a pretty strong way to start this debate, because what you seem to be saying is that so long as I have pro-Israeli voices, that's fine. | |
| As long as I have a lot of people like you who just have one view of this, then I'm a fair journalist. | |
| But the moment I stray into people who are pro-Palestinian in a very passionate manner, then somehow I'm failing in my journalistic duty. | |
| And I would say that that right there is part of the problem, Brooke, because I have tried to turn this show into a genuinely fair platform for all sides, all arguments, all voices. | |
| And I think we've been getting the audiences that that reflects, which is people like it. | |
| They like to hear both sides. | |
| Why don't you? | |
| So, Piers, thank you for bringing up that tweet. | |
| First, I want to say that's not what I'm saying at all. | |
| There's pro-Palestinian, there's pro-Israel, but you've been having pro-Hamas people on your platform, and you're giving them an opportunity to spew their virulent anti-Semitism and their propaganda that justifies Hamas terrorism. | |
| It's one thing to call issues of geopolitics and nationalism. | |
| Brooke, can you name one of them? | |
| Right in front of me, I can't. | |
| I was replying to something that I had someone on that I was talking about. | |
| Name one guest I've had in a month. | |
| You know, I don't have anything. | |
| I'm not going to be coming right now, but I can name someone. | |
| No, but hang on, Brooke right now. | |
| With all due respect, Brooke. | |
| With all respect, you tweeted this lengthy attack on me and my journalistic race. | |
| But I'm simply asking you to call the people you have on right now. | |
| Hang on, Brooke. | |
| Hang on. | |
| If you're going to do that, I don't think it's unreasonable to say who, which of my pro-Palestinian guests expressed support for Hamas? | |
| Because I must have missed that. | |
| Wajahat Ali, who is on the show right now with us, for example, has deep connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. | |
| The Muslim Brotherhood is the mother of all terrorist organizations. | |
| It spawned Hamas, a designated terrorist group, which is currently killing both Gazan and Israeli civilians. | |
| Wajahat Ali, who is on the platform with me right now, and your audience needs to know this, sat on the board of the Muslim Student Association, which is widely known to be a Muslim Brotherhood entity. | |
| He also has writings that are cross-posted on the English language website of the Muslim Brotherhood. | |
| He has cross-posted authors who call for the eradication of the Jewish state. | |
| He's a leading writer at CAP, the Center for American Progress, which also has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. | |
| He has criticized cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. | |
| And of course, he just published an article saying that he's against Hamas because it's politically uncomfortable. | |
| Okay, so Brooke. | |
| But he is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. | |
| That's who you have on yourself. | |
| So before I go to him, you've just said he'd just written a piece condemning Hamas. | |
| So you kind of kill your own argument. | |
| Let me go to Jahar. | |
| Well, he's sucking and blowing at the state of the world. | |
| Okay, let me go to the man you just, what do you say to that? | |
| Well, first of all, excellent pronunciation of my name, Brooke. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Also, it's pretty amazing that for a human rights lawyer, you really don't seem to care much about human beings who happen to be Palestinians or Muslim or Arab. | |
| It's like a fireman who's actually an arsonist, but thank you. | |
| I risked my life to make a movie about Arab children. | |
| I risked my life to make a movie about Arab children and was given an award by the United Nations for my advocacy work for Palestinian children. | |
| Let him answer you. | |
| Good job on doing your research. | |
| Let him answer you, please. | |
| You are the hero and you are the victim. | |
| But let me say the following. | |
| Let me say that. | |
| Well, the person who accused me of being the Muslim Brotherhood and the person who's accused us, anyone who's pro-Palestinian, of being a Nazi, which is, by the way, what Brian Mas said, a Republican. | |
| He said there's no such thing as Palestinian civilians because they're just like Nazis, right? | |
| But anyway, let me say this, because Piers, I've seen your show. | |
| I appreciate it. | |
| Brooke, can you let Rajah speak, please? | |
| Let me say this. | |
| I'm going to go a step forward. | |
| Look at this. | |
| This is what I'm going to do, because I've seen people with my melanin on Pierre Show. | |
| I've proactively been asked to condemn Hamas. | |
| I condemn Hamas. | |
| I condemn Hezbollah. | |
| I condemn Islavic Jihad. | |
| I condemn Muslim Brotherhood. | |
| I condemn chocolate Hammas. | |
| I condemn anti-Semitism. | |
| I condemn Islamophobia. | |
| I condemn white supremacy. | |
| I also condemn Israel's occupation. | |
| I condemn settler violence against Palestinians that have killed over 100 people on the West Bank. | |
| I condemn Netanyahu using dehumanizing language that you use, such as calling every Palestinian Amalek. | |
| I condemn the heritage minister saying that he wants to drop a nuke, a nuke on Gaza. | |
| I have condemned all of that. | |
| Do you, Brooke, join me in condemning everything that I have condemned? | |
| Because I think as a human rights lawyer, anyone who cares about humanity, they should condemn everything that I have condemned. | |
| Brooke. | |
| 100%. | |
| So why if you condemn the Muslim Brotherhood, are you publishing with the Center for American Progress, which is strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood? | |
| And why do you allow your papers to be cross-posted on Muslim Brotherhood websites? | |
| Why have you denied Jewish indigenuity to Judaism? | |
| Okay, you know what, Brooke? | |
| I'm going to get it. | |
| I'm going to jump in here. | |
| I'm going to jump in here because we're straying. | |
| How can you say these things on television, but you write the exact opposite? | |
| Yeah, Brooke, I'm going to jump in and come to Glenn. | |
| He's been waiting very patiently as you guys have been going at it. | |
| Glenn, in a way, this kind of is reflective of the debate I thought we should be having. | |
| Because it seems to me that a lot of people are simply not prepared to tolerate other views, generally, in society. | |
| We've got to a place where people get canceled if they don't toe the line, don't have the opinion that a certain group of people have decided is the only opinion that's allowed. | |
| How have we got there? | |
| How has it been through this war? | |
| I mean, to me, watching Twitter X as it now is in this war is like this terrible assault on the brain. | |
| It's just people screaming in a self-righteous, often fake news-oriented way, trying to scream their opponents into submission. | |
| Where is honest democratic debate gone? | |
| What do we do about this? | |
| Yeah, I think you're right that Brooke, your first guest, is a perfect reflection of what has gone so wrong with this discourse ever since October 7th. | |
| She did two things that has been really pathological in terms of how we're trying to conduct discourse about a very serious issue. | |
| Number one, she equates every person who criticizes Israel or who defends the Palestinian cause of being an Islam and Nazi or somehow being associated with terrorists, as she did with Wajahat, with whom I have a lot of differences, but he has never done anything like that. | |
| The idea that the Center for American Progress is the Center for American Power Progress. | |
| You must let her crypto-terrorist group, but in fact, it is the most mainstream Democratic Party platform that hosted Benjamin Yet Nahu that completely supports Israel, just like the Democratic Party does, is derangement. | |
| And this attempt to accuse everyone of being a bigot or an anti-Semite, the minute they express any criticism of Israel, I think is very toxic. | |
| But the worst thing, Pierce, is that ever since a month ago when this started, we have had a spate of censorship throughout the West aimed only at one side, which is the pro-Palestinian side. | |
| France banned all pro-Palestinian protests. | |
| You can have pro-Israel protests. | |
| You can go and say you think Gaza should be flattened, that all Gazans should be eradicated, like many people say. | |
| What you can't do, though, is march in opposition to the French policy. | |
| The British Home Secretary said waving a Palestinian flag may be a crime in the U.S. They're banning pro-Palestinian groups. | |
| So we can have our differences. | |
| Obviously, this is a very inflammatory issue. | |
| But what we should not do is try and suppress healthy debate through state censorship, through banning one side from expressing themselves, or accusing everybody of being a terrorist and a Nazi because they express criticism for the Israeli government, something which many Jews like myself and many Israelis do as well. | |
| Okay, let me go to Brooke. | |
| I want to ask Brooke. | |
| Brooke, I want to ask you a question. | |
| I'm actually... | |
| Is this pro-Palestinian? | |
| Okay, Brooke. | |
| The murder and bludgeoning of a Jewish man at a pro-Hamas rally? | |
| These are not pro-Palestinian rallies. | |
| What is banned is pro-Hamas in Europe. | |
| Hamas is a designated terrorist group, and you should understand the difference between that. | |
| When you lock students in a library at Cooper's Union and bang on the door and threaten them with violence, that is not free speech. | |
| When you beat up Jews because you are projecting your hatred of a foreign government on somebody because of what they look like or what their religion is, that is bigotry. | |
| That is not free speech. | |
| And your other two-year-olds are not going to be able to do it. | |
| I always say violence is a crime. | |
| Don't speak at once. | |
| I want to bring in Majahat, please, to respond to that. | |
| Brooke, you can't just keep talking. | |
| You've made a powerful point. | |
| Let me go to Majahat for a response. | |
| This is the big difference between you and me, Brooke, and there are many differences, that I have the capacity to empathize with the suffering of the Jewish people and with Palestinians. | |
| That when I see anti-Semitism, when I see Jews were afraid in Europe and in America, I condemn it. | |
| When I see Muslims afraid of Islamophobia, I condemn it. | |
| When I see Wadia, who was a six-year-old boy, murdered, murdered simply because he's Palestinian American, I condemn it. | |
| When I see this man, the 69-year-old man, and they're researching it right now to see whether or not it was a hate crime, I will condemn it. | |
| The difference between me and you is that when I see dead children, when I see 4,000 Palestinian kids who are killed, it horrifies me. | |
| As a human rights lawyer, I am amazed. | |
| Why this does not horrify you. | |
| When you see 4,000 kids killed, this does not shock you. | |
| For you, it's collateral damage. | |
| Right now, the IDF civilian. | |
| The IDF yesterday said, Can I finish? | |
| The IDF yesterday said, The IDF yesterday said, stop interrupting me. | |
| Please. | |
| IDF yesterday said that of the 10,000 people killed, only 60 were Hamas operatives. | |
| So that means that means that 10,000 people were killed by Israel in the past month. | |
| 4,000 children, more kids killed in the past month than in the past three years of all war zones, the conflict zones combined. | |
| I say it's inhumane and indecent. | |
| Do you condemn the 4,000 kids that have been killed? | |
| And as of yesterday, the IDF said only 60 people were Hamas operatives. | |
| Human rights lawyers, do you condemn it? | |
| The pro-Israel pro-so-called Hamas Palestinian movement is that we mourn the death of all civilians, where the pro-Palestinian Hamas protests after October the 7th were out on the street celebrating the death of dead Jewish civilians. | |
| That is the difference. | |
| And the other difference between Israel isn't a fault. | |
| You fail to understand the concept of carbon. | |
| It remains my show at the moment. | |
| All right, Brooke, that's enough for now. | |
| I want to bring Glenn in. | |
| Brooke, you've had a chance to respond. | |
| International laws are not available. | |
| Brooke, you've had a chance to respond, please. | |
| Other panelists. | |
| Glenn, yes. | |
| I want to bring Glenn in. | |
| Glenn, so I just. | |
| Let me let me ask you. | |
| Glenn, you're a yeah, Glenn. | |
| You're a Jewish man. | |
| When you look at what is going on here, I will be completely candid. | |
| I said this to other guests in the last couple of weeks. | |
| I've found what happened on October the 7th to be an unbelievable scale of barbaric terrorism beyond anything I've seen in my lifetime, to be honest with you, the way it was done. | |
| And I completely understand Israel's not only right, but duty to defend itself. | |
|
Moral Limits of Retaliation
00:02:23
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| But is there a line here that Israel shouldn't cross in its attempt to eradicate Hamas? | |
| When you see 10,000 Palestinians killed within the space of four weeks, and we know it's going to get much, much higher, and so many are children. | |
| Is there a moral line that Israel shouldn't cross? | |
| Or is there an argument that they've got to get rid of Hamas? | |
| And in war, you have collateral damage. | |
| And in this case, it's the civilians who are living around Hamas. | |
| And it's awful, but that's what has to happen. | |
| Every decent person found the Hamas massacre on October 7th reprehensible and morally unjustifiable. | |
| The question, though, is, what does that mean that everything that Israel does in response becomes justifiable? | |
| And the answer is clearly not. | |
| Just like everything the United States did in response to 9-11, which was also morally horrific and unjustifiable, killed 3,000 Americans. | |
| Everything that the United States did in response wasn't morally justifiable simply by virtue of the fact that they claimed to be doing it in the name of eventually 9-11. | |
| They tortured people. | |
| There were secret camps in Guantanamo. | |
| They invaded and destroyed Iraq, a country of 26 million people, giving rise to ISIS. | |
| The laws of war were created after World War II, ironically, when the world looked at what happened in World War II, the atrocities there, and said, we know there are going to be wars, but there have to be limits. | |
| You cannot collectively punish a population. | |
| That is a war crime because certain people in that country have done bad things. | |
| You cannot just bomb people indiscriminately without regard to civilian life. | |
| And how many tens of thousands or even 100,000 Palestinians does Israel have the right to kill in the name of trying to destroy Hamas? | |
| Of course, there are humanitarian limits and laws of war that were created after World War II that the Nuremberg Tribunal said apply to every country in the future, no matter how just your cause. | |
| And I thought that was the lesson of 9-11: that just because a country is enraged and acting with a quest for violence doesn't mean that everything they do in the name of avenging that terrorist attack becomes justifiable or morally defensible. | |
| Much of what the United States did wasn't, and much of what Israel is doing isn't either. | |
| Okay, Glenn, powerful words. | |
| Thank you for joining me. | |
| Unfortunately, you know, Mike, we've run out of time, but I will get you back on the program because you've been a terrific guest tonight. | |
| I've enjoyed that debate. | |
| I just want to say, is that Jews have led the protests? | |
| Jews have actually led the protests. | |
|
Light Amidst Tragedy
00:08:16
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| You said it. | |
| You said it, and I appreciate that. | |
| Okay, I've got to leave it there. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| Thank you very much indeed to my panel. | |
| I appreciate you all joining me. | |
| Glenn Brooke, thank you very much indeed. | |
| I'll send to the next. | |
| A powerful interview with the father of Shani Luke, the 22-year-old who was kidnapped and killed by Hamas on October the 7th. | |
| He has a chilling warning for the West. | |
| Welcome back to Pittsburgh on a sense. | |
| The story of Shani Luke is one that will stand as a permanent reminder of Hamas's monstrous brutality October the 7th. | |
| A tattoo artist, aged just 22, was having the time of her life at a music festival when she was kidnapped by terrorists and paraded through the streets on the back of a pickup truck. | |
| Initially, Shani's family received information she might have survived, but last week they were told she was dead by the Israeli military. | |
| Yesterday I recorded an extraordinary interview with Shani's father. | |
| Mr. Luke, thank you so much for joining me. | |
| And please accept at the start of this interview my deepest condolences to you and your family for the appalling news that your daughter was indeed killed. | |
| How are you coping as a family to this news? | |
| It's not easy for a father to lose his child, you know, as a father to father. | |
| And this beautiful girl, Shani, that was dancing and happy and she drove to this party Friday evening just before in the afternoon. | |
| And with all her friends, there were like 3,000 people there dancing together the whole night, drinking and talking and hugging and loving. | |
| And these parties are like crazy because the amount of energy with all the people around is huge. | |
| And they were dancing all night and everything was fine until the morning. | |
| In the morning, they saw the rockets and they heard the booms in the sky and they start leaving the party. | |
| But the psychopath terrorists of the Hamas attacked them on the way and they just killed them on spot. | |
| And for me as a father to see like from one side all this happiness and light and light and beauty and from the other side you see sadness and death. | |
| I think my girl was the symbol because she looked so beautiful and so pure and so nice on one side of the on the main pages all over Europe. | |
| You could see my daughter on the left side, beautiful and shiny, and her name was Shani and happy. | |
| And on the other side of the main paper, you could see the people of the Hamas when they brought in a crazy, sadistic, brutal way, they threw her in the back of a pickup when her legs were broken and she had a wound on her head. | |
| And it was, for me as a father, it was really a crazy thing. | |
| You know, we came into this. | |
| Israel is a great place. | |
| You all must know. | |
| It's a great, great place. | |
| And we are peace seekers. | |
| We never want to fight with anyone. | |
| But, you know, they came into our land and they raped the girls and babies and chopped pieces of the head. | |
| And really to all my Christian friends in Europe and in England, I would like to tell you that, okay, it happened here in Israel, but it will happen again in the future time all over Europe. | |
| It's only a matter of time. | |
| You know that in the Holocaust, six million Jews went into the concentration camps and they were people that read books and study all days, really. | |
| And after that, what happened is around 60 million people, between 60 to 100 million people all over Europe died. | |
| And I pray to God that it will not happen in Europe because it happened here in Israel. | |
| And these are sadistic people, they are rapists, and they are crazy people. | |
| And, you know, what they did is unforgettable. | |
| And nobody will ever forgive them. | |
| Nobody. | |
| It's very hard as a father to have such a thing. | |
| But from the other end, I'm happy. | |
| And why I'm happy? | |
| Because at least I know that she's dead. | |
| I know that she was dancing all night before and she had the best time of her life. | |
| And a few seconds after, she died, and she's not suffering because I don't want to think what they are doing to these beautiful girls that are there in Gaza. | |
| It's crazy. | |
| And there are psychopaths and there are sadistic people. | |
| And the whole world saw it by their own cameras, not ours, by their own cameras. | |
| So sometimes it's better to know that your daughter is dead and she didn't suffer, even that it's crazy. | |
| At the moment, it's a crazy time than to be there and you don't know what they are doing and what they are not doing to her. | |
| And it's for me, it's so peace and peace of mind. | |
| It's horrific. | |
| I have a daughter myself. | |
| I can't imagine it. | |
| It is horrific. | |
| From father to father and to all the fathers in the world that love their kids and babies and little beautiful girls, it is very, very difficult. | |
| And you must know Europe, it's on the way to you and you just close your eyes and you think, ah, it's far away. | |
| It's in Israel. | |
| It's in the Middle East. | |
| No, it's already in all of Europe. | |
| And it's only a matter of time until that we will come and you'll see it. | |
| And you must do some actions now before it's too late because we really, we really love you. | |
| I've been many times in England and the people there are so nice and so and so beautiful and so happy and your life is really a dream. | |
| But you must take care that because this dream can be gone and it can be so fast that you're not noticed. | |
| And please really do things so your dream will stay and that your country will stay beautiful and that your country will be with a people that love light and happiness and not dark and death. | |
| Mr. Luke, your daughter was a peace activist. | |
| She refused military service. | |
| It makes it all the more senseless that she should be a victim of such brutality and barbarism. | |
| How would you like her to be remembered, Shani? | |
| First of all, as you can see, she's just on the left of me that she's a beautiful girl. | |
| So first of all, her beauty, the way that she was dancing, and she was happy. | |
| And the whole thing of this dancing act is to bring peace in the world. | |
| This was the whole idea of this dancing in the south, to bring peace to the people of the world, to bring happiness and dancing and hugging and loving. | |
| This is Shani. | |
| And okay, so I think that the people of the world, you must know, you must decide on which side you are. | |
|
Context Behind the Conflict
00:05:03
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| Such a powerful interview, and there's more from that interview on the Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube channel, which will be immediately after this show airs. | |
| A lot of people watching that channel now, and you'll want to see that interview because that's a man in the deepest grip of grief and speaking so powerfully. | |
| Uncensored next, a major development after my excuse of interview with the family of Captain Tom Moore. | |
| Welcome back to Uncensored. | |
| I'm joined by my patient, political journalist, Avis and Teen and the Times columnist Matthew Saeed. | |
| Well, welcome to both of you. | |
| Matthew, where's your mind at with this dreadful situation? | |
| Well, I think the key point was made by the Crown Prince of Iran in a brilliant interview earlier this evening where he said that Iran is behind the Hamas attack. | |
| And I think the Iranian regime, these religious fundamentalists, felt that there was a growing accord between Israel and the sunny world, the Abraham Accords, a looming rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. | |
| And they wanted to wreck it. | |
| Well, the vehemence of the attack, the fact that they videoed it, I felt that it was a piece of psychology to inflame an overreaction. | |
| And here's it from Israel. | |
| Right, and here's the point, Avra, I would make to people who don't really want to say anything that remotely sounds pro-Israeli in all this. | |
| Is Hamas knew exactly what they were doing. | |
| And if Iran were pulling the strings, so did they. | |
| When they launched a terror attack of that magnitude, they knew exactly how Israel would respond. | |
| And they knew thousands of innocent Palestinians would die in the attacks that were going to come back. | |
| How is that good leadership for the people of Gaza? | |
| Well, earlier today, I noted that the BBC have now changed their language around this. | |
| So they now say that Israel is at war with Hamas rather than Israel is at war with Gaza. | |
| I think that is a pretty good representation of the conflict. | |
| But what do you buy? | |
| Not all about you, no, no. | |
| I'm just saying that there's been a trend of people on the pro-Palestinian side that they don't even really want to condemn what happened October the 7th. | |
| So they very quickly want to move to criticism of Israel and their revenge attacks. | |
| But I just, I, you know, the moral maze for me is I agree that they should get rid of Hamas. | |
| Hamas are openly boasting about attacking them again and again and again. | |
| Only last week they said that, right? | |
| They make no bones about what they want to do. | |
| So Israel has to defend itself. | |
| And how else do you do it, frankly, than going in there and killing them? | |
| That's not something I can solve. | |
| But I mean, you know, you've got to think about the people who are living in the Gaza Strip who are living under the regime of Hamas. | |
| So how else to get rid of Hamas? | |
| Look, that's not for me to answer, but I do think that's the problem. | |
| Nobody who says they don't agree with it has an answer. | |
| But I do think there is a huge argument here for Hamas being, you know, if they are actually sheltering in hospitals and ambulances, as the IDF claim, then the people who are also, the Gazan people who are Palestinian people, excuse me, who are in those hospitals, they are under their rule, right? | |
| Well, so that's a point. | |
| I mean, I think that's an interesting point, Matthew. | |
| I mean, there's no doubt I've seen interviews with Palestinians who are just fearful of saying anything against Hamas because Hamas is a terror group that terrorizes its own people. | |
| They terrorize innocent Palestinians. | |
| You know, they use them as human shields. | |
| They deliberately use mosques and hospitals and schools as places for their operations. | |
| And they don't really care if innocent Palestinians die. | |
| This is true, but it's also worth taking a step back to understand that Iran is part of a rising autocratic axis along with China, Russia, and North Korea. | |
| Iran is sending drones to Putin. | |
| It is selling oil to China. | |
| China's buying discounted oil from Putin, financing his war machine. | |
| North Korea is providing weapons to Putin, getting nuclear secrets in return. | |
| One has to take a step back and understand the broader context in which this is unfolding. | |
| There is war in Europe. | |
| And I think that if China, and it's not impossible, makes a move on Taiwan, there would be war in Europe, there'd be war in the Middle East and in the Indo-Pacific. | |
| It is absolutely vital that Western leaders understand the deeper dynamics around what's happening because one of the things that is unquestionably a consequence of Israel's overreaction is it is polarizing Western societies and our ability to act in a unified way to preserve liberty, which is under threat to the US. | |
| Well, it's talking about this whole debate, for example, about the march on Saturday. | |
| You know, there is a contradiction, you could argue, that a lot of people who shout loudest about free speech want to prohibit Palestinian people, Palestinian supporters, from marching on that day, which was a day which remembers the battle for freedom, including freedom of speech. | |
| Well, hearing everything that Matthew just said there as well, do you not think that perhaps Siwella Braverman trying to curtail the potential marches that are going on this weekend? | |
| I mean, it almost feels quite puerile. | |
| But when you have people chanting jihad and from the river to the sea, and some of them holding pro-Hamas banners, they are actively promoting a terrorist organization. | |
|
Free Speech and Marches
00:02:02
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| There is no argument that anyone holding a pro-Hamas sign is breaking the law and therefore should be arrested. | |
| There is no argument for that. | |
| The question is whether people who are genuinely, who are quite upset or outraged by the scale of the response of the IDF would like to go and march and talk about, you know, children that are dying. | |
| That is a fair humanitarian response for the British people. | |
| Okay, it's an interesting debate. | |
| I want to move just quickly to something else. | |
| The Captain Tom story. | |
| I did an interview with the family of Captain Tom in which they made a number of revelations eventually that they basically pocketed a lot of money, nearly a million pounds themselves from the books and so on, which people would have assumed would have gone to the foundation. | |
| They've just been told today by local planners that the whole building they built, using really fraudulently, I would argue, Captain Tom Foundation as the background to do it, they've been talking to raise it to the ground. | |
| What's your take on this? | |
| I don't have strong emotions mostly. | |
| I was disgusted by this. | |
| The British people, I think, showed incredible generosity during that period. | |
| It was during COVID, wasn't it? | |
| Yeah. | |
| That Captain Dobb did that walking. | |
| And when you have people who leverage the moral kudos of an individual of that kind, so widely respected and revered, and then trash it, it basically undermines people's sense that they want to give to good causes. | |
| And there's nothing the British public hate more than feeling like they've been done over. | |
| And I'm obsessed with the brass neck of all of it. | |
| I mean, it's absolutely incredible, actually. | |
| I think she actually might be an icon. | |
| When they finally confessed to me, after going off camera for half an hour, by the way, to have an argument about it, that all that money, 800,000, had come from the books, which had Captain Tom saying, this is my chance to raise more money. | |
| I mean, it was all there in black and white. | |
| And all those little old ladies who probably gave over their last little bit of cash over to a service, you know, they thought that... | |
| You know what? | |
| In all this, we mustn't lose track of the fact that he did an amazing thing. | |
| That guy was the very best of Britain. | |
| His family, sadly, I think you've let him down. | |
| But thank you both for joining me. | |
| I appreciate it. | |
| That's it from me. | |
| Whatever you're up to, keep it uncensored. | |
| Night. | |