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Nov. 28, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:23
20231128_piers-morgan-uncensored-hamas-hostage-sunak-snubs-
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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The Elgin Marbles Debate 00:03:12
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensor, more anguish for families of the Hamas hostages as the clock ticks down on Israel's temporary ceasefire.
I'll talk to a daughter of a man still being held captive by the terrorists after her mother was released.
Rishi Sumak sums a Greek prime minister as an ancient row over the Elgin marbles becomes a modern-day diplomatic spat.
Is it time we just let them back?
We'll debate.
And Dr. Gabor Mate is the infant Holocaust survivor.
His powerful take on the Gaza war has won applause across the world.
He also says he bitterly regrets and regrets ever interviewing Prince Harry.
I'll find out why.
From the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
The debate about whether the Elgin marbles should leave or remain is almost as old as the marbles themselves.
Those who want them to stay in the British Museum are worried it'll open the floodgates.
They say countries around the world will begin demanding the return of all our colonial treasures, even the British Museum looking like Tottenham Hotspur's trophy cabinet.
I've sympathised with that opinion in the past.
But for me, what it came down to was this argument from the Greek Prime Minister at the weekend.
This is not, in my mind, an ownership question.
This is a reunification argument.
Where can you best appreciate what is essentially one monument?
I mean, it's as if I told you that you would cut the Mona Lisa in half and you would have half of it at the Louvre and half of it at the British Museum.
Do you think your viewers would appreciate the beauty of the painting in such a way?
Well, this is exactly what happened with the Parthenon.
Sometimes somebody makes a point that's so compelling that it compels even people like me to change my mind.
Greece has built a spectacular museum to show off the Parthenon marbles, as they call them, but with plastic casts of the marbles where the real ones really ought to be.
They were brought to Britain by Lord Elgin, who paid a fortune to extract them and later sold them to the government after a very expensive divorce.
He always claimed he had the permission from the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Athens at the time.
But as the Greek PM says, it's not really an argument about whether a British aristocrat filled out the right paperwork.
The British Museum can still own the marbles, but also loan them back to Greece, as it does with many thousands of other artefacts every single year.
Britain's always said these treasures should stay here where they're safe.
But that's an argument that's become a lot less sturdy since the museum admitted it's lost more than 2,000 treasures worth several million pounds.
How safe is that exactly?
Well now it's become a full-throttled diplomatic spat after our Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with his Greek counterpart at the last minute, seemingly angry about what he said on the BBC at the weekend.
This seemed a pretty churlish, if not petty, attempt to pander to his base and not a good look for either the Prime Minister or our country.
Greece is one of our allies.
They're friends.
They gave us feta cheese, olive oil, Stavros flatly.
It's time we gave them our marbles in return.
We'll be debating that later in the show.
Hostage Family Trauma 00:15:23
But first tonight, despite the release of more than 60 hostages, the harrowing wait goes on for many families awaiting news of their loved ones.
Israel says that its youngest hostage, shamefully, a 10-month-old baby, has been handed to another terror group, meaning Hamas is no longer in control of that poor child's fate.
Well, Jakoved Lifshitz was abducted by Hamas for 16 days, later released on October the 23rd, memorably shaking hands with one of her captors.
However, her husband, Oded Lifshitz, remains in captivity.
And their daughter, Sharon Lifshitz, joins me now.
Sharon, thank you so much for joining me tonight.
I really appreciate it.
First of all, let me just say your story has been one of the stories out of this hellish situation that's touched me the most.
I think anyone who has parents are still alive will have, I think, had their hearts just wrenched by what's happened to you.
The idea that on that awful day, October the 7th, you lost both of them and had no idea what had happened to either of them.
And then you have the joy of your mother returning, but you have the despair of still not knowing where your father is.
So first of all, let me just say my heart goes out to you and to your family for what you've had to go through.
It is an unrelenting horror and it must have been incredibly stressful.
But second, let me just take you back to October the 7th.
Let me just ask you, when was the first you knew about what was happening that day?
I was, we got up early with my son and my husband to go up north to York.
We live in London to pick up a puppy actually that we've been planning for months.
And I opened some news outlet and saw that it flared up.
I called my mum as I always do and I couldn't get hold of her.
I then called my brother and he told me that there's been a barrage of missiles and now they broke the fence.
And that was how it started.
And they didn't just break the fence, they've caused attack to a number of kibbutzis, including near Oz, where your parents lived and had lived for a very long time.
When was the moment that you discovered that they had both disappeared, been taken?
So it's been a long day and we were on WhatsApp group with other members of the kibbutz.
People were desperately trying to help each other to devise a way to contact other people.
We were on the news.
It was a horrific day.
About an hour and a half later, I saw the El Jazeera clip with a journalist saying about the fact they are occupying the kibbutz and this was actually just behind my parents' house.
And so by that point I knew that things are never going to be the same.
But then we had many hours hearing so many rumors and hearing stories from people and about eight o'clock in the evening it took eight hours for the army to arrive in the kibbutz and not one shot was really shot at the terrorist.
They came in, they did what they wanted, they went as far as they could and then they left.
So we heard about eight o'clock in the evening that my parents were missing from the room.
In retrospect we know that the whole house was burning but we were spared that knowledge at the time.
Absolutely horrifying.
It turned out your mother, who's 85 years old, had been kidnapped by Hamas gummun on motorbikes and taken into what was described as a spider's web of tunnels underneath Gaza.
Did you have any knowledge about where she'd been taken or what was happening to her?
Well, my mum and dad were in the bedroom.
It was quite early in the morning.
They arrived late.
My father didn't feel well.
So they basically had the terrorists.
The last my father spoke was to a friend and he said, I can hear them speaking Hebrew.
I can hear many shootings.
And shortly after that, we lost connection with them.
Then we know now.
We knew afterwards that there were shots in the door.
At that time, we thought they were taken together.
At that time we were just desperate, thinking they probably didn't survive or their health is too frail.
And when my mom came out of the ground, it was like a miracle because we really didn't know that she was alive.
And just seeing her face, seeing her gesture.
And then she told us that our father was shot and that he was injured.
And so my mom was very pessimistic.
And so for the last months, we've just been really so pessimistic about the chance of somebody as old and frail and with complicated medical needs to survive this ordeal.
And then about three or four days ago with the first women and children that came, one of the hostages actually told us that she was with my father in the same space for several days, that he was injured in his legs from being drugged, you know, when he was being pulled, that he was injured in his hand, but that he was alive.
And that's really the first time we heard he's alive.
At the same time, we're also hearing more and more and more stories about the horrific conditions that they are subjected to.
And so many of them did not receive medicine, even simple medicine that over 50-something days can really cause huge medical problems.
Everything is a problem there.
There's levels of torture.
To think that they are on a holiday camp is part of the psychological warfare being waged against us.
It's mind-blowing to me what you're having to endure here, along with all the relatives, of course, of all these hostages, because the people that were taken were, in the main, either elderly or they were children, babies in some cases.
It's beyond horrific.
But I guess that you've had some great news, obviously, that your mother came out, and you've also had some great news.
At least you know that as of several days ago, your father's still alive.
That must be a huge comfort to you, notwithstanding the fact he's still trapped inside Gaza.
Well, we know he was alive about over a month ago.
That's where we estimate that they cross path, that hostage that returned, and my father.
So we do not know.
And the situation is absolutely desperate.
Absolutely horrific.
I think that Alma Abrams that came, she came back in a really bad condition just purely due to neglect for the fact she was not getting her medicine.
These are innocent people that were elderly people that were dragged from their home, that saw their families being murdered.
These are people that are coming back to such a complicated, altered reality.
You know, we are uprooted, our homes are destroyed, people coming back, but they don't know their brother or their son was murdered.
You know, it's wonderful to have them back.
They are our light at this great darkness.
Your father was a very well-known peace activist who would drive sick Palestinian children to hospitals in Israel.
He spent his life in the peace movement.
This is what he wanted, was to have two nations living peacefully side by side.
And he believed you would make peace with your enemies.
This has been what his life's been about.
And yet there he is now in Gaza being held by terrorists, and you've no idea what may happen to him.
Yeah, I think my father story complicate the situation for people who would like to just cheer for one team.
And I think that in this part of the world there are many people that realize that our capacity to live peacefully is only if we find a way to live peacefully alongside our neighbours.
Sharon, I'm so sorry for what you're going through.
I said it at the start, I'll say it again now.
It must be agony for you.
And I hope your father is released very soon, that your family can be reunited.
But as you say, it's so much more than just them.
You know, they lived in a kibbutz with 400 people.
80 at least were killed in the most barbaric manner.
These are people they've known sometimes for decades, close friends.
And the horror of that, well, I'm sure will live with all of them, the ones who survived for a very long time.
Yeah, you know, it's amazing how when your life is kind of torn apart so much, you realize the kind of fabric and what it is made of, and how the love that we share, the way you overcome petty fights you used to have over little things.
And in a way, in all this darkness, it's these people, some of them, you know, I lived in London for 30 years, I went really far and I see people I haven't seen for 20 years and there's a bond and you know destiny has brought us back together and I think that that's something that really carries us through it,
the feeling that we are part of this extended community even if we're very far away.
And I think also you know people have shown great generosity and kindness towards us and in a way that also makes me feel that you know that we will have to find a way forward to this, the legacy of these events and we are learning every day new things.
We are learning about rape and we are learning about beheading and we are learning there's thousands of stories and the ordinary stories are just things that would have you know been covered in the news for weeks for one of them and there's thousands and thousands of these stories.
The scale of it is overwhelming.
There were 240 hostages.
We're now down to 166.
Many of them are connected to other hostages, to people that were murdered.
My heart is with all of them, with the fathers who are there.
So there's children who came back to find that their parents were murdered.
There's children who came back knowing that their father is still there and they don't know when they will see him.
There's such a huge level of trauma.
There's such a complicated situation that unfolds here.
Sometimes it makes you feel really so desperate and yet, you know, I know because I'm a parent myself that we have to come out of it and let it be the catalyst for more than just more war.
Sharon, this is a difficult question, but I'm curious what you feel about this.
Obviously Israel's response has been militarily overwhelming in Gaza.
A lot of destruction, many homes wiped away.
Tens of thousands now of Palestinians have been killed, including thousands of children, obviously had nothing to do with any of this.
What do you feel about the Israeli response?
As a human being, I find a loss of life and I spend quite a lot of my time reading about it and trying to educate myself about it.
I find this loss of life horrific.
I also find that there was a very frail coexistence that was shattered on the 7th of October.
And it's really hard to understand to me at this moment what is a good response and what isn't.
I think that we are dealing with a horrific terrorist organization that is worse than ISIS, it's worse than Boko Haram.
And so it's very easy to just say don't do anything.
But I don't know then what do you suggest?
One thing I know for sure is that it cannot possibly be that the people who have come to us and raped and slaughtered and murdered us and trained for it and premeditated every element of it.
I cannot believe that these people come back home and are kind to their own people.
So I think that the Palestinian people deserve better than Hamas too.
And I think that that is something I'm sure about it.
I'm not a military strategist and I'm running on the pitch like hell trying to save my life, my loved ones.
So it's not the best moment for me to kind of think about what is the best strategy for it.
I lament tremendously the loss of life.
I believe still that we will have to make peace with our enemy one way or another.
I believe that my people have endured such a horrific trauma that I, you know, we cannot contain it.
We cannot contain it.
We cannot contain the mass rapes.
We cannot contain the killing of babies, the tearing out of babies out of their mothers.
We cannot contain it.
So at this point, it's really hard for me to tell you what will be a good strategy.
You know, I don't know.
I know what I want.
I want nobody to suffer from this ever.
Yes, I completely agree with you.
And you say it so eloquently and so powerfully.
Just finally, Sean, how are you doing?
This must have been the worst time of your life, of course, but how are you coping?
Are you sleeping?
Are you getting enough support?
I feel very surrounded by love.
I spend a lot, a lot of time with my mom.
My mom, you know, life has changed so much.
We're just trying to relocate her and find our feet.
You know, my parents' house was the center of our world.
All of us are all of a sudden on the world stage playing, you know, to the audience.
I don't know how to say it.
And it's just been really, really exhausting.
And it feels that we need so much strength.
We also know that we have found our voice and strength in the last 53 days in a way we could never foresee.
Understanding Collective Pain 00:15:53
And I think that we are carried by the sheer fact that we have to do it, as well as by the fact that something should come out of it.
We owe it to the people that are there.
And I think the fight is working.
This deal is the most important thing.
We need to now continue it very, very, very, very carefully, make sure that it's not going to be stopped in the next two days, but that it continues to the full maximum.
And then we have to press on all governments, on the Qatari, on the Egyptian, on NGOs that have failed us miserably on the 7th and since on all these people.
We have to press on them to continue to bring these people back home.
And then we can start really thinking what has happened, what could be done differently, you know, whether Israel later.
Now it's just about returning, returning these people home.
They are in horrific condition.
Their life might end very quickly for all sorts of various reasons.
I call on everybody who can do anything to bring them back home, to end that stage, and then we can look for how to move on.
Sharon, thank you so much for joining me.
I wish you and your family all the best.
I hope and pray your father is home with you soon.
But I thank you for joining me.
I wish you and all the families of all these hostages who are living this unrelenting nightmare.
I hope it is over soon for all of you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, Ancensa next.
He's the Jewish Holocaust survivor whose powerful take on the Gaza war has won plaudits across the world.
Dr. Gabor Mate, who also famously interviewed Prince Harry, a decision he came to regret, joins me next live.
Welcome back to Ancensa.
Dr. Gabor Mate made global headlines earlier this year when he appeared in an interview with Prince Harry, the renowned trauma expert, spoke with the Duke of Sussex about the importance of healing in an interview to promote Harry's memoir.
Well, more recently, Dr. Marte has been winning plaudits for his take on the Israel-Hamas war.
He's an infant survivor of the Holocaust and has been outspoken about both the atrocities of October the 7th and Israel's response.
And Dr. Gabor Marte joins me now.
Dr. Marte, thank you very much indeed for joining me and thank you for your patience.
I know you've been sitting there listening to the interview I just conducted with this poor woman whose parents were both kidnapped.
One has been returned, one hasn't yet.
First of all, what was your response to that interview?
On the human level, I saw a very decent person in evident pain, in grief, obviously deep anxiety about the fate of her father.
I saw somebody trying to make the best out of a really horrific situation and my heart goes out to her.
You specialize throughout your career in trauma, in helping people get through trauma.
You've talked to many people who've been in extreme trauma.
This is a very traumatic situation these last two months for people on both sides, for the people who were on the receiving end of this massacre on October the 7th.
And we've just heard firsthand what that has been like for the people in Israel who suffered that.
But also, of course, what's going on now in Gaza with many thousands of innocent people being killed with Israel's military response, including thousands of children.
What is your overall assessment of where this war is now heading?
For that, you need some historical context.
Now, look, I used to be a Zionist.
As you mentioned, I'm a Holocaust survivor.
Zionism was very important for me as a salvation of the Jewish people until I found out that the state was founded based on the extirpation, the expulsion, and multiple massacres of the local population.
And that's not historically controversial.
So I'm taking a long review of this.
And I'm saying that the present situation cannot be understood without looking at the historical context.
And nor can we move forward if the present occupation and the suppression of the Palestinians continue.
So Sharon, your previous guest, talked about the fragile coexistence.
There was no coexistence.
There was oppression, periodic massacres, land occupation in the West Bank, the continuous expulsion of the population from their homes.
I visited the occupied territories three times now.
The first time, back during the first Indifada peers, I cried every day for two weeks at what I saw.
So this cannot go on.
And I saw the news about the Elgin marbles being returned and how you changed your mind about that.
Well, how about returning the land that's been stolen from the Palestinians?
I'm not talking about the state of Israel.
I'm not talking about 1948.
I'm talking about since 1967 and what's going on right now.
So there's got to be some stop to what's going on, and that's how I understand it.
And this is for the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Yes, I completely agree with you.
This is a never-ending cycle.
I guess from the Israelis' point of view, what happened on October the 7th was on such a gigantically horrific scale.
I do get a sense that Israel is in a collective sense of trauma and that they are determined that Hamas should not be allowed to perpetrate such a massacre again.
And they are on record, Hamas.
Just two weeks ago, their spokesman are saying they would do it again and again and again if they can.
So that represents a clear existential threat to the security of people in Israel.
So I guess my question for you is what should Israel's response be?
Everyone is increasingly concerned about what is going on in Gaza.
Clearly the loss of civilian life is on a catastrophic scale.
Nobody thinks this is right.
But at the same time, I think many would share my view that Israel has a right to defend itself.
The question is, how do they do that appropriately?
And how do they get rid of Hamas, if indeed you think they should get rid of Hamas?
You're raising many questions and many fair questions.
Now look, I live in Canada, where this country was founded on the suppression and the erasure of the indigenous population and the utter denial of their narrative.
And in Canada, for example, there were horrendous residential schools where a few decades ago, if a native child spoke their tribal language, they'd have a pin stuck in their tongue.
Now, most Canadians are not aware of that history.
Most Israelis are not aware of the history of what the Palestinians have suffered.
They don't know that in 1948 there were multiple massacres of large numbers of people by Israeli forces.
They don't know the history, the subjective experience of the Palestinians.
And in the absence of that knowledge, October 7th would just strike them as another horrific anti-Semitic event.
I understand the desire for defense and certainly even a desire for revenge, but that's in the absence of knowing what the Palestinian experience has been.
And the Western press, and as in all countries where the local population has been displaced, the majority of the population doesn't know the history or the subjective experience.
So if you're asking me how to move forward, let's inform ourselves of the actual experience of both sides, not just one side.
And just as you had this wonderful Israeli woman, Sharon, here, who spoke with such humanity and such poignancy, you might have some Palestinians on explaining their experience of what it's like for them to live under occupation.
And in the absence of that conversation, there's no moving forward.
And that's all I'm asking for.
I've had a number of Palestinians, including a doctor.
Let me say one more thing.
Sorry.
Israel's right to defense.
Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself.
Every country does.
But Israel has no right to impose an occupation on people.
Now look, I was born in Hungary in 1956 when I was 13, studying for Burma Mitzvah.
There was the Great Hungarian Revolution against Soviet occupation.
And it was after that revolution that we became refugees and came to Canada.
Now did Russia have the right to defend itself against the Hungarian revolutionaries?
You know, so and mostly when we talk about Israel's right of defense, we're taking isolated Palestinian actions, but we're not saying that this population also has the right to defend against the occupation.
I'm not justifying the terrible events of October the 7th.
I'm talking in the absence of historical awareness.
It all just looks like Israel defending itself.
But against whom?
Against the population that has been massacring in a number of thousands for 80 years and taking their lands and destroying their homes and jailing their children and torturing them.
That's the history.
Now, unless we know that, it all looks like this poor little country trying to defend itself.
But against whom?
Against people that's been occupying and displacing for 80 years.
That's the history, as Israeli historians have shown.
I don't make this stuff up.
I wish it wasn't true.
I wish I could believe in the dream of the Jewish state.
I love that dream.
Except I found out at what price, at what nightmare, that imposed on the Palestinians.
How do you see this ever getting resolved?
It seems so intractable, but then as I always say, so did the Northern Ireland conflict.
That seemed intractable when the IRA were committing terror atrocities, but they eventually did get to peace.
Can you see a pathway here to peace?
And what does it look like?
What does it look like?
I can.
That's a great question again.
Look, you're going to have Nick Krio with later on, the tennis player.
I just spent a couple of weeks in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia with another tennis player, Novak Djokovic.
They have a foundation that promotes healing and child development and so on.
So they asked me to speak throughout the former Yugoslavia.
You know what horrific atrocities were committed there just a few decades ago.
So I was in Belgrade.
I was in Sarajevo.
I was in Banjaluka.
I was in Ljubljana.
They're living together now.
There are still issues to be worked out.
But the minimum condition is the ending of the occupation and the inhumane siege of Gaza.
And international law has to be respected.
International law is very clear that this occupation is illegal.
That has to be the basis of any future agreement.
If that was agreed on, and if Israel could live within the borders that are internationally recognized, I believe peace is possible.
Now, we keep talking about the Hamash Charter.
Did you know that the Likud Charter, the ruling party in Israel, excludes a Palestinian entity west of the Jordan River?
So let's get rid of both charters.
And let's start with the basis of recognition and peace and the ending of this unspeakably brutal occupation.
Piers, you have to go there to see it for yourself, as I have.
And you would cry every day for two weeks as well.
I'm under no illusion about what the Palestinian people have had to endure.
And I think the oppression of the Palestinian people for decades has been completely shameful.
And it shouldn't have been happening.
I mean, the mere fact that Israel was able after October the 7th to simply turn off the supplies of food and water and fuel and so on into Gaza says it all.
That is an occupation.
That is a controlling force controlling whether people eat or have fuel or can heat themselves or feed themselves.
So I'm under no illusions about that.
I've been very critical of Israel before.
What has complicated things for me morally with this is that the scale of what happened on October the 7th was so disgusting.
And the fact that Hamas has said they will continue to try and do the same thing again is that I absolutely believe Israel has to do what it can to remove that threat.
And how you do that when they are immersed in the civilian population and that population is half children without massive civilian casualties on the scale we're now seeing, I don't know.
I genuinely don't know.
I don't know how they resolve this.
But I hope that better minds than mine can work away through this.
Well, I hope along with you as well.
But again, I'm saying that there's no possibility of that until the international community, and particularly Israel's big brothers, the UK and the US, stop supporting its illegal, brutal, inhumane, and rapacious occupation.
It can't happen without some pressure.
And again, most Israelis are simply not aware.
I've been to Israel, talked to people.
They have no idea what's happening a few miles away from when they're sitting in Tel Aviv having coffee and they have no idea.
Or in Jerusalem, and they have no idea what's happening a few miles away, how those people under occupation are living.
And this has been dog.
It's not that they're not capable of being aware, but like most people, they're just not.
And I'm saying that unless we fully get the Palestinian experience historically and throughout the decades and into the present moment, we can't possibly understand what's going on here.
Now, in 2005, there was a study appeared in the Journal of World Psychiatry looking at traumatized populations under war conditions.
The most traumatized children in 2005, this is before Hamas gained power in Palestine and in Gaza, the most traumatized kids were in Gaza.
This population has been traumatized severely.
Of course, they're full of rage.
I'm not justifying anything they did, but I'm saying what do we expect from this population that's been suppressed and tormented and crucified for decades.
Finding Freedom in Truth 00:06:05
We're going to have a short break and come back.
I'll come back with you after the break.
Welcome back to Ansenson.
Dr. Gabor Marte is still with me.
Dr. Marte, I want to talk to you about something else now, which made you globally brought to the world's attention earlier this year, when you sat down with Prince Harry to talk about his book, Spare.
And it got a lot of attention this.
I just wondered, you've expressed since then regret really that you ever did it.
Why do you feel that way?
I expressed regret not about having done the interview, but the way I agreed that it would be conducted.
What I mean by that is I had a strong sense that this interview should be free for everybody.
It should be a service to the public.
It was a great discussion.
I really enjoyed meeting Harry.
I found him to be humble and sincere and genuinely interested in promoting mental health and looking at the trauma that underlies people's mental health issues.
What was wrong with it is that it was put behind a paywall.
So a lot of people, people had to buy his book in order to watch the interview.
A lot of four million people already had.
They were excluded from watching the interview.
And so that's what I regretted.
I did not regret doing the interview.
I enjoyed it and I thought it was a really good discussion between two people, two flawed people who were willing to look at their flaws.
So I'm glad I did it.
But in retrospect, I would not agree to it unless it was aired freely for the whole world to see.
Harry felt the same way, by the way, afterwards.
We both wanted it released, but the lawyer said that since it was marketed as a pay-for viewing one-time event, we'd be slapped with a clash action suit if we released it.
So unfortunately, a lot of people didn't see it.
Those who did, for the most part, expect a lot of appreciation.
Let me play a clip from the interview you conducted.
I'll come back to you after this.
And then at some point you say towards the end of the book, When is someone in this family going to break free and live?
Have you done that?
I have now.
Yeah.
It was a feeling.
It was great.
I do.
I mean, once the book came out, I felt incredibly free.
I felt a huge weight off my shoulders.
Now, we have very different views about Prince Harry.
I'll lay my cards on the table.
I think he's behaved disgracefully towards his family, particularly when Prince Philip was dying, then the Queen was dying.
The family was in grief, and all he and his wife Megan seem to have done to me is chop flames at the family from abroad and tried to damage them and the institution of the monarchy.
But it's interesting that he believed there, and I recognize you feel differently, that he believed there that he's found freedom.
But in all your experience of talking to people through similar kind of family trauma, if you like, can you really find happiness if your freedom involves disconnecting yourself from your entire family?
Well, it's a really good question.
My eldest son and I, Daniel, with whom I wrote our book, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, are writing a new book now.
It's called Hello Again, a fresh start for parents and their adult children.
Families are tough.
Families hurt each other.
Children are traumatized in families.
Harry was traumatized in his family, not because his parents didn't love him, but because they were carrying their own trauma and passing it on to the next generation.
I passed on my trauma to my children.
I didn't mean to, but I did.
And so sometimes people can work these things out if there's the willingness on both sides.
And people do make mistakes.
And I do believe Harry made some mistakes.
That goes both ways.
People can work it out and sometimes they can't.
And sometimes people find freedom in having to disconnect.
In the book, The Mythonormal, I talk about this tension that we all have between authentic and belonging, attachment and authenticity.
If we can belong and connect and be our true selves, that's ideal.
But what do we do if in order to be our true selves, our families or our communities won't accept us?
Well, for example, over this Israel issue, I made a decision a long time ago that for me, speaking the truth, which doesn't make me right, but speaking my truth is more important than who likes me and who doesn't like me.
In 1967, I wrote an article after the war arguing by that time that Israel had occupied these territories quite deliberately and then never gave them back.
My father kicked me out of the house.
I accepted that.
Now my father later on came around and actually agreed with me.
But I made the decision that to be myself and to speak my truth, I'm willing to break the contact if that's what it took.
A lot of people in that situation and Harry in that family with a very troubled young mother in a loveless marriage and a father was having an affair before he was born, a family there was not a whole lot of touching and holding.
There's multiple reasons to say that he was a very traumatized child and in order to become himself, he had to distance himself.
Now, did he do it right?
Exactly the ideal way?
Maybe not.
But you know what?
When I look at myself at age 38 or 35, boy, did I make a lot of mistakes.
Returning Stolen Artifacts 00:03:08
So this is all part of the human drama.
And families sometimes work it out, sometimes they don't.
It's true.
It's very true.
Dr. Marty, I've got to leave it there.
It's been fascinating.
Please come back on the show again another time.
I've really enjoyed talking to you.
Likewise, I really appreciate you giving me this listening.
Thank you.
A pleasure.
Thank you very much.
Answer next.
Is it time to give the Elgin marbles back to Greece?
We'll debate.
Welcome back to Ansense.
I'm joining Namo.
I packed talking to the contributor Paul Roan Agent, the former Marine term presenter and conservationist James Clancy and political journalist Ava Santina.
Right, let's talk marbles, Mr. Clancy, because you and I don't agree about this.
I've had a conversion.
The Greek prime minister actually changed my mind.
When he painted this picture, literally, of the Mona Lisa cut in half and said, what would you feel about that?
I thought, he's right.
Surely the right thing to do is to bring the two parts together.
And actually, if you look at the history and you look at where they want to put it, it makes more sense that we just loan it back to them, doesn't it?
I'm not massively passionate about the marbles.
I think the biggest mistake was Rishi snubbing the Greek prime.
That's what's made this much bigger.
I do agree with the government is once you start giving back one artefact, it's like pulling the thread.
We do give a lot of artifacts away.
We do.
We give thousands away all the time.
We lend stuff to museums around the world.
What's the difference?
Yeah, that's the right word.
We're lending things.
But if you saw this year, the Kohi Noor, the diamond in the crown jewels worn by the late Queen Mother, there's now cause for that to be returned to India and thousands of other artefacts.
As soon as you do one, it's going to go on and on and on.
All right, Ava, what's your response to that?
Well, maybe you should.
No, I mean, what's the argument for us keeping hold of it forever?
You know, if I was sitting here wearing, I don't know, one of your jackets, you'd probably ask for it back, wouldn't you?
Well, it depends how you acquired it.
I mean, some of these things, if they're looted, then they're very...
So if you let me borrow it for one minute and I kept it forever, you might have something to do with the money.
I mean, the point about the marbles, which they call the Parthenon marbles, right?
Whatever they call them.
The point about them is there is a dispute over actually the original propriety, right?
We know that one of our articrats bought it back, but that was from the Ottoman Empire at the time, who were the ruling power in Athens at the time.
But that is disputed.
It's not like this is clean cut anyway.
No, absolutely.
And a parliamentary inquiry might have found that he had brought them back, you know, above board.
But I mean, how many times have we sat around here and disputed what a parliamentary select committee has had to say?
I mean, we don't necessarily.
Well, let me ask you, I mean, just on a general thing, we were just saying in the break, in the general scheme of things, who gives a stuff about a bunch of marbles, right?
There are wars raging, cost of living crisis.
We've had a pandemic.
Can't we just lend the marbles back to the Greeks?
I thought the Prime Minister of Greece put up a really respectful position.
Dangerous Precedents for Free Speech 00:03:39
And he's right.
We've got two halves of his great work of art sitting in different countries.
They've got to come back together.
And actually, they began there.
Yes, yeah, absolutely.
The problem is they should be returned.
We know they should be returned, but we're fussing over it.
And we shouldn't be fussing over it when there are more serious things to discuss.
And Rishi Sunat shouldn't be snubbing.
I like Rishi, but he shouldn't be snubbing the Prime Minister of Greece.
They're an ally of ours.
This is the problem, isn't it, with this meeting?
Because it wasn't just about the Parthenon.
It was also going to be about Ukraine.
It was also going to be about what was happening in Israel and Gaza.
These are really important issues.
It was also going to be about, you know, the cost of living crisis in terms of oil and gas, et cetera.
So there were issues close to the heart of many of the voters here.
And he snubbed him.
So not just about the Parthenons, but also very serious home issues as well.
Okay.
Let's turn to Conor McGregor.
An unlikely segue, and I didn't think I'd be talking about him in political terms.
But what's going on in Ireland is really quite terrifying.
And he's at the center of it because you're seeing a huge reaction to what happened with this attack on three kids and a woman by someone who's actually a naturalised Irish citizen, but came in as an Algerian.
And this all goes back to this ongoing raging issue of immigration.
Conor McGregor's put himself right in the middle of it.
Basically, he said, Ireland were at war.
What do you make of this?
Well, I mean, Conor McGregor is someone who likes to put himself in the middle of everything.
I mean, he's a pretty abhorrent human being by all standards.
I mean, I think just a couple of years ago, he was filmed punching an old man in a pub who wouldn't accept a shot of whiskey from him.
He's also had many other sexual assault allegations levied at him.
I mean, I don't know what happened to them, but there have been many of them.
He's not been convicted of anything.
The thing that concerns me, though, and this is going to be a deeply unpopular point, but it's that to tweet something and then be investigated for it frightens me because it's setting a quite dangerous precedent.
But I felt the same about Tommy Robinson.
This is what I was going to say to him.
Being arrested at the weekend.
I'm like, what did he do to deserve being arrested?
I mean, James, this is a, you know, you can abhor the people.
I actually like Conor McGregor for what he's worth, but in Tommy Robinson's case, I have no truck with him whatsoever.
And I think he's a pretty poisonous individual.
However, I feel uncomfortable like you did.
Are we overstretching now in the way we police these things?
Yeah, I mean, clearly Ireland isn't at war and he's just thrown himself in, whether he's drunk.
But I'm more concerned about the fact that the police could be knocking at your door for a tweet.
I mean, we all have emotions when they're standing up or turning up at a peaceful protest and being apparently peaceful.
Well, you know, it's not the arrest that concerns me.
The arrest is fine.
What concerned me was the use of, I've forgotten the spray, the pepper spray that was used in his eyes.
That concerns me.
So my understanding in relation to Mr. Lennon, Yaxi Lennon, was that there was a prohibition.
So he wasn't allowed within a particular area and it was understood that he breached that order.
So it wasn't just that he just and he just turned up and oh poor, poor Tommy.
That's not the case.
Secondly, in relation to the police potentially turning up to arrest you for a tweet, absolutely they should have that right to be able to do that.
Because if it was a tweet that incited hatred, incited violence, incited someone to commit a criminal act, of course, you know what you never see police?
You never see anybody on the left arrested for a tweet.
You only ever see people on the right.
Guys, we're running out of time.
I'm not supporting it.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to arrest this conversation.
But it's an interesting debate.
You know, I think how far we go in policing these things is really important, both on social media, the police, protest marches, and so on.
Got to be consistent.
Thank you, Pat.
Appreciate it.
That's it from me.
Whatever you're up to, keep it uncensored.
Night.
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