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May 8, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
39:48
20240508_israel-begins-rafah-offensive-feat-avi-hyman-abby-
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Killing Civilians vs Terrorists 00:11:14
We're keeping the pressure up, the military pressure on Hamas.
You're an official spokesman for the Israeli government and you have no idea how many civilians you've killed.
No, you're not foggy when it comes to killing terrorists.
You're only foggy, it seems to me, when it comes to killing civilians.
Israel needs to be stopped before they continue this horrific onslaught, Piers.
This is war!
In war, people die!
Abby does not have the authority.
She's just a self-appointed, low-grade journalist.
You're fighting for Israeli collagen.
Do you agree with the principle that Palestinians should be entitled to exactly the same human rights as Israelis?
Israel is fighting for its very existence.
It's been a dramatic 24 hours in Israel's war on Hamas.
First, Israel said it was finally preparing to enter Rafah, the southern Gazan city, which has become a refuge to a million and a half Palestinians.
Allies have warned against it, fearing catastrophic civilian impact.
But Israel says that Rafah is also the refuge for the remaining Hamas battalions.
Last night, Hamas announced it and accepted the terms of a ceasefire proposed by intermediaries, but Israel rejected it.
And overnight, it seized Rafah's crossing with Egypt, a key entry point, the vital humanitarian aid, and began attacking the east of the city.
In a moment, I'll talk to Abby Martin and Mossad Hassan, Yussef.
The first from Jerusalem is Israeli government spokesman, Abi Haim.
Mr. Hammond, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
Why did Israel reject this apparent offer of a peace deal from Hamas that they'd agreed to?
Hi, Piers.
Thank you so much for having me on.
I'm not sure what Israel has rejected.
I know that Hamas put out a statement that they had accepted some kind of a proposal.
It's somewhat unclear to us what proposal they accepted.
This was obviously, as my Prime Minister said in the last hour, a way of trying to torpedo our entry into Rafah.
And as you said, the last four battalions of Hamas are in Rafah.
Our war aims remain the same, to destroy Hamas, bring home the hostages, and ensure that Gaza doesn't pose a threat to us.
As the Prime Minister said, with or without a deal, we're going to need to go into Rafah.
So we entered Rafah.
We're keeping the pressure up, the military pressure on Hamas.
That's what worked last time when we got about half of the hostages released.
And that's what we're doing now.
We will keep up the pressure and explore all of the diplomatic channels.
But at the moment, Hamas's position is far, far away from ours, sadly.
How many civilians in Rafah of the one and a half million people there is Israel prepared to view as collateral damage to eliminate the remaining Hamas terrorists?
Piers, as you know, the IDF does our absolute utmost to avoid civilian casualties.
Just in the first day of the operation, we've taken 100,000 citizens, civilians from Rafah out of Rafah.
Well, that leaves 1.4 million.
Okay, and it's a work in progress.
So I guess...
Well, my question, you know, my question is that you're trying to eliminate Hamas completely.
But in the process, already you've pretty much destroyed most of northern Gaza.
You've already killed up to 40,000 people, depending on whether you accept the Hamas-run health authority numbers.
Obviously, a number of those people are Hamas, and a large number are innocent civilians, women and children.
And if you go into someone like Rafah, which has a million and a half people who've been told to go there by Israel, who've been displaced from their homes, which have been destroyed in the main, and gone to this refugee camp, how many could die before Israel says we can't continue this operation?
Piers, we're fighting against Hamas, a genocidal terror organization.
I've seen your coverage, your tremendous coverage of what Hamas did to us on October 7th.
You and I know they want to do it again and again and again.
That's their words, not mine.
Now, we'll do what we have to do to go after Hamas, to avoid civilian casualties, something that we have successfully done.
Out of that Hamas number that you just gave, more than 14,000 are terrorists that we took out.
There's more than 25,000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.
How many civilians do you believe you've killed?
We don't have exact figures.
As you know, it's the fog of war.
But you've got exact numbers for Hamas terrorists you've killed.
Why wouldn't you know how many civilians you've killed?
Because obviously our focus is to go after the Hamas terrorists.
I mean, that does imply that you're putting a bigger premium on killing Hamas terrorists in terms of numbers and accountability than you are on innocent civilians.
That can't be right, surely.
If you know exactly how many Hamas terrorists you've killed, you must know how many civilians you've killed.
Otherwise, you're prioritizing the lives of terrorists over innocent people.
Piers, with respect, don't put words into my mouth, please.
I didn't say exactly 14,000.
I said around 14,000.
Whereas Hamas will come out with precise numbers that statistically.
It's a lot of ballpark numbers for civilians.
Well, you can use the ballpark as far as the Hamas figures, which I reject as being false.
Well, if they're false, why would you give me those?
I gave you the numbers that I had.
You've told me you know how many Hamas terrorists you've killed, but you don't have any idea how many civilians you've killed.
I'm just bemused.
Why wouldn't you keep count of both?
I don't have that information to give you, Piers.
If I did, I wouldn't.
You have literally no idea how many civilians you've been killing.
I can tell you definitively that our aim is to go after Hamas.
We've done it.
I'm sorry to push you on this.
That's quite extraordinary.
You're an official spokesman for the Israeli government and you have no idea how many civilians you've killed.
I thought you just told me that you were particularly careful about not killing civilians.
But if you don't know how many you've killed, how can you say that with any certainty?
Because even if you were to go by a ratio of the Hamas figures, we would still be far ahead of any of them.
That wasn't my question.
You know it wasn't my question.
I don't have the information.
You literally have no idea how many civilians you've killed.
It's not that I don't know.
I'm not authorized to give the information.
I don't have the information.
That's complete nonsense.
Why are you authorized to give me the number of terrorists you've killed, but not a number of civilians?
I don't understand.
Can you explain?
Piers, we will go after Hamas.
We will ensure that we...
You want me to believe you're being incredibly careful about how many civilians you're killing, and you have an amazing exemplary record, but you don't know how many civilians you're killing.
So how do I know you've been careful?
Piers, when the dust settles, we will come out with the proper numbers.
Hamas runs to the press daily.
When the dust settles, a lot of people will have died.
And you know how many Hamas you've killed, but you don't know how many civilians you've killed.
And I'm just asking you why.
Why is it you've kept a record of one, but not the other?
I personally don't have that information to give to you.
You can ask me over and over.
I'm not going to come up with more information.
I don't know.
You don't know.
I don't have that information for you.
But you're an official government spokesman for the Israeli government and you have no idea.
Piers, I came on here to focus on what's going on with the war.
Well, actually, you came on here to answer my questions, I think.
Yeah.
And I don't have an answer for you to that.
And I didn't intend to press you on this point because I assumed that you would not respond the way you have.
But I've never had an Israeli spokesman who simply said, I have no idea.
Particularly after you boasted about the fact that you've been very smart in the way you've avoided killing civilians.
How do you know if you've got no idea how many you've killed?
Because I know the way in which the IDF operates.
I know the way in which we go after the terrorists in the best possible way.
It's not what I've said.
It's what General Petraeus has said.
It's what John Spencer from West Point has said.
It's what multiple British generals have said.
Israel goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties.
That's what we'll do.
If you can point to me to another conflict by which they have evacuated, got out of harm's way civilians to the extent that Israel has done, then fine.
Sorry, with respect, Mr. Hyman, how can you possibly expect me to accept any comparisons to any other conflict or war, given that you do not know how many civilians you've killed?
Piers, you understand that I can't prosecute the war over the media.
I'm just asking you for basic information.
I'm just absolutely honestly, I'm not trying to trap you and I'm not trying to unfairly harangue you.
I think people are watching this and they'll make their own conclusions.
I just find it astonishing that the moment I asked you how many Hamas you killed, you could tell me immediately.
And the moment I ask you about civilians, you haven't got a clue, literally, that you're not even prepared to issue a ballpark number.
And I think people will find that staggering, particularly given that you are insistent that you're doing everything you can to avoid killing civilians.
To which, again, I just simply ask, how do you know?
If you don't know how many you're killing, how can you possibly be sure that you are A, doing better than other people waging war elsewhere, or B, that you have any idea how many you're killing?
You don't, clearly.
The IDF monitors every single action that it takes.
It weighs out the options.
It doesn't tell you, the official spokesman.
And it avoids civilian casualties in the best possible way.
How do you know?
Even if you were to take it, please, even if you were asking.
You, sorry, with respect, you come on here as the official Israeli government spokesman.
And you don't want to be asked how many you've killed because you don't know.
And yet you want us to draw comparisons to other conflicts in a positive way for Israel.
And you want to tell me that IDF make a record of every single thing they're involved in, but they don't give it to you, the government spokesman.
So that when I ask you, you have no idea.
Do you understand how ridiculous that sounds?
With respect.
With all due respect, I've told you that even if you were to use the Hamas figures, the ratio would still be better than any other army.
And that's where the comparison can be done.
However, we know above and beyond that that the Hamas figures are not accurate.
And we know from former conflicts that Hamas throws in anyone that's, you know, someone could have passed away from a heart attack.
Someone could have...
So why is it that Israel actually after previous death tolls have been released by Hamas through the Palestinian Health Authority, they've actually turned out to be ones that Israel has concurred with in the main?
Can you not count either?
Piers, we're in the fog of war.
We're fighting for our very existence.
No, you're not foggy when it comes to killing terrorists.
You're only foggy, it seems to me, when it comes to killing civilians.
We're fighting as a terrorist organization that's spent the last 16 years embedding itself underneath and within a civilian population.
They're fighting from mosques, from hospitals, from UN facilities.
I don't know if there's a comparison of any war in modern history in which a terrorist organization has embedded itself the way that Hamas has in Gaza.
We are doing our very utmost to go after Hamas.
And like I said, when the dust settles, you will see that.
Existential Threat to Israel 00:15:16
Okay.
Avi Hyman, the Israeli government spokesman.
Thank you very much.
Well, I'm joined now by the pro-Palestine journalist and commentator, Abi Martin, and by Mossab Hassan Youssef, the son of Hamas' founder and former leader, author of a new book, From Hamas to America.
Welcome back to both of you.
Abby Martin, I found that, I've got to say, a quite extraordinary interview.
To be an official government spokesman and admit you have no idea how many civilians you've killed whilst trying to simultaneously compare yourself favorably to other civilian death ratios in war seemed to me staggering.
Indeed, I mean, especially since we have seen the comparison as the dust has been settling real time on our phones, we see Israel has committed, in fact, some of the most heinous war crimes in modern history, Piers.
And as we're seeing the invasion now of Rafah cutting off the last vestige of escape for Palestinians, the last vestige of aid delivery, 1.3 million Palestinians, including 600,000 children, with nowhere left to go.
This is what Palestinians were told was a safe corridor.
That is why they all fled to Rafah.
Rafah has been bombarded for the last several weeks, killing dozens of people every day.
So I think at this point, six months into a genocide, to be deliberating whether or not Israel should continue with this onslaught, this military operation that will result in mass slaughter to continue their ethnic cleansing of Gaza is frankly absurd, patently so, considering what we've seen them do just in the last several weeks, peers.
Evidence of summary executions of doctors, evidence of mass graves, hundreds of bodies bound, dozens of men, women, and children bound.
Evidence, according to the UN, of Palestinians buried alive, using drones to lure out Palestinians with sounds of crying children so they could be shot and killed.
I mean, this is unparalleled in modern history, actually.
And the devastation that's occurred in the Gaza Strip, according to the UN, will take 80 years to rebuild without conditions.
So at this point, Israel needs to be stopped before they continue this horrific onslaught, Piers.
Mossab, I'll get you to respond to what Abby just said, but just your response to that interview with an Israeli government spokesman, because I got to say, I found that pretty stunning, that he would be so certain how many Hamas terrorists the IDF have killed, but admit he had no idea how many civilians have been killed, given that it's the deaths of the civilians that is getting Israel so much unpopular reaction around the world.
Because we cannot send the Israelis to Rafah and to dangerous zones to collect statistics and count the numbers.
It's a very dangerous zone.
Israel is looking from the outside.
And also, who said that Israel is only responsible for the killing of Gazans?
Mostly Hamas responsible.
First of all, for taking human shields.
Second, they're booby traps.
How could you differentiate the death that was caused by an airstrike or by a Hamas death trap?
How do we know the difference?
Well, yeah, but people die.
Listen, listen to me.
All this moral...
Piers, no, listen to me.
Listen to me.
All this dilemma, you know, you're going with your whatever morality.
This is war.
In war, people die.
You need to wake up to this reality, accept it.
Stop this denial.
We are in the face of savages who hijacked an entire society.
This is a very difficult war.
No other army can do the job.
And I'm not willing to risk thousands of lives of foot soldiers to deal with this type of savages who hijacked the entire society.
100,000 people could have died.
Israel is doing everything they could.
Don't reduce it to the point.
Do you have statistics?
Who cares?
Well, actually, no, I think they're missing my authority.
Jordan.
The Arab world don't want Hamas at whatever cost, whatever it costs.
We want to remove Hamas from power.
Okay, I understand that.
That's a different question.
My point is, why...
Do you?
Well, why does...
My question is this for you.
Why is it that if as you say, Israel has no way of working out who's being killed here, and I know all about war.
My brother served in wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan.
My brother-in-law served in wars.
My grandfather served in wars.
My uncle served in wars.
I don't need a lecture about what warfare is, but I do find it surprising that Israel's official spokesman, months and months into this war, is able to tell me immediately how many Hamas terrorists have been killed by Israeli forces, but admits he hasn't got a clue how many civilians have been killed.
And I'm sorry, I think most viewers...
Because they can't.
Most viewers will find that forces all over the world.
So they seem to have a way of checking how many Hamas they're killing, Mossad.
Listen, it's Israel's responsibility to know the death of their own citizens.
This is their responsibility.
I don't think, I think your question was absurd.
This is why you put him on the spot.
He was not prepared to win.
But this is not politicians.
The reality on the ground.
The reality on the ground, Hamas must go.
The only side want Hamas to stay is the Iranian ayatullah.
And for some stupid reason, Karen in America wants Hamas to stay.
But the Arab world, let me tell you something.
Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the majority of the Arab world, we are Arabs.
I am Arab.
We are not Palestinians.
We don't want Hamas.
We don't want Islam.
We want Islamists out of power.
It's as simple as that.
They have been killing Jewish and Arab children.
This is not your game.
This is not her game.
It's not about stepping.
It's about doing the correct thing of removing Hamas from power.
Mossad.
Let me interrupt, because you quoted Saudi Arabia in your rant there.
So let me read you a statement from the Saudi foreign ministry.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's warning of the dangers of the Israeli occupation forces targeting the city of Rafah as part of a systematic bloody campaign to storm all areas of Gaza Strip and displace his residents towards the unknown in light of a lack of safe zones after the massive destruction caused by the Israeli war machine.
The ministry affirms the kingdom's categorical rejection of the occupation forces' continued blatant violations of international resolutions calling for the cessation of these massacres and their violation of international law and international humanitarian law without deterrence, which exacerbates humanitarian crisis and limits international peace efforts.
The ministry renewed the kingdom's demand for the international community to intervene immediately to stop the genocide carried out by occupation forces against offences civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories.
So when you say all Arabs agree with you, Mossad, actually they don't.
That is the Saudi foreign ministry saying they want it to stop right now.
As we speak, the intelligence services of the Arab world, all of them, in a joint operation room with Israel to rid of Hamas.
I don't care about some politician trying to make a political statement.
It's false.
The reality on the ground, we don't want Hamas.
We don't want Islamists.
We don't want this anarchy, this revolution without a moral compass.
We don't want to globalize it.
We don't want to bring it to the United States.
The game is over.
Hamas is out and their death warranty has been issued.
It's a finished job.
And we are going to Rafah and we are going to eliminate every last one of the people.
Okay, let me bring in Abby.
Abi, you've been listening to this.
I mean, fundamentally, I understand why Israel and Israelis want to eliminate Hamas completely, because this is a terror group who are wedded to the eradication of Israel and everybody in it.
In fact, they have reiterated publicly through their official spokesman a desire to commit as many October the 7th as they can.
So I completely understand why Israel wants to get rid of these terrorists.
The question is how do they do that without killing many, many more civilians?
And as we saw from the Saudi statement, there are many Arab countries now in the region increasingly concerned that if there is a full attack on Rafah, which has a million and a half people, a lot of civilians are going to die.
Right.
And, you know, to your point before, I think the death toll is actually vastly undercounted, considering how we have not even began to excavate the bodies under the rubble.
So I would say that the death toll is a vast undercount.
As far as Mossab's point about Hamas, I think that Mossab is the Palestinian who hates Palestinians.
He's developed a lucrative career, being able to lie about basic facts about this conflict.
And so when he says Palestinians or Hamas, what he really means is all Arabs and all Muslims.
In fact, I've seen that plain as day in his social media and talks.
He thinks that all Muslims are terrorists.
And so, I mean, this is credited to the point that he is actually credited to jailing what is called the mandela, the Palestinian Mandela, Marwan Barghudi.
This is a guy who he put in prison 20 years ago who was marching side by side with Israeli peace activists denouncing Hamas killing civilians.
So again, I mean, when we're looking at someone who's worked for Israeli intelligence who spouts the same rhetoric as Israelis, who say Hamas, but what they really mean is all Palestinians.
I mean, it's really hard to debate someone on the fundamental reality and the principles of, you know, the facts of this conflict.
Now, to your point, Piers, about what should they do about Hamas, I reject the premise of Israel's genocide.
I'm not going to sit here and say, yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization and they need to be eradicated.
Of course, that's not true.
And I think that we can both agree.
It's not true that something needs to be done about Hamas.
I don't agree with that framework and the parameters of that debate.
Why?
Because Israel's been, because Israel's been committing ethnic cleansing and genocidal policies against the Palestinians for 70 years.
But Hamas literally has a chance to reiterate that.
Yeah, but Abby, hang on.
Hamas literally has a stated charter of the elimination of Israel.
That is the purest personification of a publicly stated policy of genocide.
I can imagine.
That's not true.
Their revised charter says that they actually recognize the existence of the Israeli state among 1967 borders.
That's the revised charter.
And they actually make a political differentiation between Zionism and Judaism.
When their official spokesman is pointing to us, you keep pointing to a random spokesperson.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, he's actually, he's not random.
He's the official spokesman for Hamas.
And he said, literally two weeks after October the 7th, we are going to do this again and again and again.
That is an existential genocidal threat to the existence of everyone in Israel.
Clearly.
Said publicly on camera.
He's brazen about it.
Look, I think that when you're comparing one guy and his statement to literally genocidal statements.
Okay, but look at the official spokespeople of Israel, Piers, and look at the outside they're committed.
You cannot compare.
You cannot compare the two.
It's a complete false equivalency.
One guy is saying one thing.
The other dozens of Israeli ministers and cabinet officials and public media personas on TV are saying one thing and actually doing it on the ground.
You would allow Hamas to stay in power?
It's not up to me, Piers.
Hamas is representative of a large state.
They've been expressing many Marmon Barghoudi.
Marmon Barghudi is the most popular unifying figure in Palestinian society.
He would resoundingly win in an election against Hamas.
So what this is about, this isn't about Hamas.
This is about eliminating every faction of non-resistance, peaceful or not.
It is not about Hamas.
It's all about what Hamas did on October the 7th.
But Piers, I think we both know it's not.
Because what is the military occupation founded upon?
When did Hamas come into power?
We know that this isn't just about Hamas.
What was Israel doing in the West Bank the year prior to October 7th?
They killed 500 Palestinians, 80 children.
This is ethnic cleansing.
This is a military occupation.
As long as you have these policies in place, you will never get to the root of the violence, Piers.
All right, Masab, there was an allegation there that you think all Muslims are terrorists.
What's your response to what Abiy Martin said?
Well, you know, this is Abby's desperate attempt to discredit me.
I am a man of the field.
I fought against Hamas as part of intelligence, legitimate intelligence organization, against savage group that were targeting civilians in suicide bombing attacks, waves of suicide bombing attacks that they killed people indiscriminately.
So Abby today want me for some reason to apologize for saving human life because my truth challenges her convenient truth.
Abby does not have the authority.
She's just a self-appointed low-grade journalist.
How can you be a journalist and you call this a genocide, ethnic cleansing?
And she just keeps repeating ethnic cleansing, genocide, colonialism, etc.
None of it is real, including Palestine.
It's all in your head.
None of it is existential.
Palestine was never born.
How can you free it?
It was never there.
It's just a colonial entity.
And some people choose to make it into a national identity.
And this parrot has been just repeating Hamas propaganda.
Marwan Berghuti that she's talking about, she never met him.
I knew Marwan before he got to power.
He's a criminal.
He killed five people.
He has blood on his hands.
He cheated on his wife.
He has a secret son that he never revealed it to the public.
Of course, I can't criticize him.
And I can't criticize all the criminals that I know personally.
She's been there only for a visit and maybe she had some Falafel sandwich, you know, and she really was blown away of the Palestinian experience.
There is no such a thing as Palestine.
It's about time to retire, find a different job.
You're not a journalist.
You don't qualify even to be a mother.
Wow.
Abby.
Masab, you know, it's usually a public figure, if they were caught lying about half the things that they said, they would be completely discredited and never allowed airtime.
You are spewing such a historical anti-Arab bigotry that not even the fringe of Israeli society would agree with you.
Anti-Arab Bigotry Exposed 00:06:18
I mean, not even Israeli Arab Abelians agree.
I'm not anti-Arab.
I am Arab.
I am Arab.
This is my ethnicity.
Islam is just anti-Muslim bigotry.
I am not a Muslim.
Mashab.
We are Arabs.
Masab.
Okay.
Then anti-Muslim bigotry, which is frankly appalling considering that there's a billion people on the planet who would be characterized you as extremists who need to be used force against, according to you.
But Masab, not even Israeli historians would agree with the fact that you claim that there's no military occupation in the West Bank, that there's no apartheid state.
Israelis at least admit, yes, those things exist, but here's why they're necessary and justified.
They don't even agree with you.
You're so fringe that I don't even know where you're coming from.
I mean, so again, if we can't even agree with the basic facts of the conflict and the reality in front of our eyes, I don't know how we can really even discuss this.
Well, sorry, because you don't qualify.
Well, I think it's politically.
Listen, everyone's entitled to an opinion.
Listen, best case scenario, if there's an occupation, it's between Israel and Jordan, or it's between Israel and Egypt, because it was not an occupation of a country called Palestine.
There was never Palestine in history.
This is not an absurd statement.
It's reality.
Palestine never exists.
It was not a country.
It was not a nation.
It's not an ethnic group.
We are Arabs.
We are the Arabs of Judea and Samaria.
And when I was born, like millions of Palestinians, we had Jordanians' birth certificate.
The people of Gaza were Egyptian with Egyptian birth certificate.
There was no Palestine.
Yasser Arafat created this entity and everybody believed him.
And this lie must die.
This is why I don't like what Abby and her likes doing by trying to delegitimize Israel.
She's trying to discredit me.
Who gave you the authority?
How dare you?
You are a person of Israeli intelligence.
It is not funny.
It's not funny.
Your tale is not funny at all.
Listen, Abby, you are bringing chaos to the United States and you will be held accountable.
You are just a criminal like them.
Sure.
Okay, Masab, you can't be taken seriously and you're not legitimate because you are literally, you have worked for Israel.
But listen, sooner or later, you realize.
You can't discredit my reality as well.
You can't discredit my reality as well.
I was in the West Bank.
I had assault rifles pointed at my head, 17-year-old.
That's an occupation.
You are in my domain.
That's a military occupation.
Okay, you are in my domain.
When you come to my domain, you have to pay respect.
You have to respect all the effort that I put to save human lives.
And you cannot reduce that into some propaganda because it's the leader of Fatah.
Masab, you put the most unifying popular Palestinian figure, you are credited to putting him in prison.
This is someone who would win an election against Hamas.
He is a peace activist.
He was fighting for a two-state solution.
This isn't about Hamas, and you know it.
This is about you shutting down, tamping down on all factions of Palestinian society.
And let's be clear: what is Palestine supposed to do?
What are Palestinians supposed to do when in 2018, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza marched peacefully to this fortified perimeter fence that Israeli snipers have authorized themselves to shoot, to kill, and that's exactly what they did.
They massacred over 200 peaceful demonstrators, medics, press, journalists, clearly marked press, disabled people in wheelchairs, and children.
These are all violations of international law in the Geneva Convention.
Israeli snipers perched up behind sand dunes, picked people off one by one in a methodical slaughter over the course of several months.
That's when Palestinians tried to peacefully protest.
So I think the question should be, what should Palestinians do?
Because they're not even allowed to advocate for their legal rights.
They're not even allowed to raise up a Palestinian flag.
I visited a place called Sebastia in the occupied West Bank, and Palestinians were shot and in the hospital for simply erecting a Palestinian flag on a hilltop several days prior.
This is the brutal reality of military occupation in the West Bank, Masab.
I mean, I want the violence to end.
I empathize with the victims of both sides of this.
And that's why I want to get to the root, the root of the conflict.
Yes, I don't go out there and say Jews can't be trusted like you say about Muslims.
I empathize with all civilian life.
I believe in first the sanctity of human life.
And that's why I want to get to the root of the state.
Let me ask Mossab a question.
Let me ask Mossab a question.
Do you agree with the principle that Palestinians should be entitled to exactly the same human rights as Israelis?
Listen, the suffering of the Arabians, again, stop calling them Palestinians.
They are not Palestinians.
We are Arabs.
We are the Arabs of Judea and Samaria and Israel and the Jewish people have been.
The Palestinians call themselves Palestinian of their state.
Well, you gave them that name.
You forced the international community and the rest of the world.
All right, well, let me rephrase the question.
Should the people who live in Gaza and on the West Bank, should they be entitled to the same human rights as Israelis?
If they know, if they have equal responsibility as the decent citizens of the state of Israel, that includes Arabs, Druze, Christians, and all other citizens of the state of Israel, then yes, they have equal rights.
But if they are not taking their responsibility, if they are using violence, sending suicide bombers and killing babies, kidnapping a one-year-old, you know, how do you answer to the mother and to the mothers of the hostages and all those who got killed on October 7?
You know, it's very easy to just try to delegitimize Israel.
No Symmetry in Occupation 00:06:57
This is what Abby and her likes have been trying to do for so long.
But they don't have the moral power to say what Hamas did, all the waves of suicide bombing attacks, October 7, that was a genocide.
That was a genocide.
So stop spreading the false narrative.
Now, regarding to the Arabs who live there, they need a decent police force.
They need a good economy.
They need good education.
And if they are able to integrate, then naturally could be a political entity based on their needs.
But right now, when she say Palestine, who is?
Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Marwan Barghuti, Ismail Haniya, Hamas, Public Front, they are so conflicted.
We don't have even, they don't have agenda, they don't have leadership, they don't have legitimacy.
This is an anarchy that has been going on for about 70 years, and it's about time for it to stop.
Now to transform, to integrate the society, we must protect the children.
And this is a priority number one, before we talk about Palestinian state or whatever name you want to give it, that when we have a savage group, Islamists, by the name of Allah, hijacking and using children as human sheets, their own children, after killing Jewish children, then this is a capital crime.
We cannot blind our eyes.
We have to deal with priorities.
First, we remove this savage group out of power.
If Abiy's intention were pro-pro-peace, then this is our intention that we should unify our efforts toward this main goal, first goal, priorities.
Then after that, we can talk about the future.
And this criminal, you call Marwan Barghuti in Israeli prison.
How are you supposed to differentiate who is and who is not Hamas when Israeli authorities have literally called almost every entity in Gazan society Hamas, including UNRWA?
They even are calling students on college campuses Hamas.
I mean, there's summary executions of doctors thrown in mass graves because they're called Hamas.
So I'm sorry that this label has been rendered completely meaningless.
And as far as the term human shields, look, there's been no evidence according to Amnesty International during CASLED and the 2014 onslaught and today.
I mean, there is absolutely no evidence provided that Hamas uses human shields and that somehow justifies this heinous slaughter of predominantly women and children in Gaza.
And even if they were literally standing behind hostages, you still can't just kill hundreds of people in a single airstrike because a Hamas commander is right there.
And that's exactly what Israel is admittedly doing through AI.
They're saying that they could kill up to 100 civilians for every Hamas official.
It's absolutely outlandish.
But if a group like Hamas launches a terrorist attack on Israel that kills 1,200 people, they take over 200 more people hostage, including babies and Holocaust survivors, that is a declaration of war, which they knew would lead to the kind of response we've seen from Israel.
And Israel would argue, and they would have some sound argument to this.
If someone declares war on you in that manner and you respond, and in eliminating the terrorists who committed that heinous crime, civilian casualties are incurred, they would say that that is exactly what has happened in any other war in history.
That the principle is the same, that the civilian loss of life is appalling, but that the principle of retaliating against a body of people who have committed one of the worst terror attacks in living memory, that is why they're doing it.
Piers, there's no symmetry between the two sides.
It's complete asymmetrical mass slaughter of women and kids.
You know that.
Well, actually, Hamas did commit a mass slaughter of women and kids.
They did.
You said there's no symmetry.
There's an absolute symmetry.
But there's no symmetry between an occupying colonizing force and the people that they're occupying and colonizing.
You could obviously make the same argument that preempted October 7th, that it was a declaration of war to siege Gaza, to prevent aid from getting in, to shoot people that stray too far out, that are fishing, that can't go get medical aid and are sentenced to death within Gaza.
Is that not a declaration of war?
Is it not a declaration of war to violate international law to maintain a brutal fascist military dictatorship in the West Bank?
These are all, these all preempted October 7th.
So it just keeps going back and back to what is the root of actual violence, Piers.
Okay, Mossad, I'll give the last word to you.
Where do we get peace from all this hell?
Listen, naturally, if the Israeli protocol is not sufficient and it's not satisfactory to the expectations of Abiy and many of her friends, then I say, how about we punish Hamas by their own laws, by the Islamic law?
Why don't we follow the Islamic protocol?
In this case, the Islamic law says, behead all men and take all women and children as booty.
This is their moral stand.
So she says it's asymmetric.
Well, we already know that.
It's a very dirty war.
We are dealing with people with the mentality of the seventh century tribalism.
It's not an easy mission for a democracy, for any country, for any modern army, for any civilized society to deal with this.
So we need to be reasonable.
I understand if people are anti-war and they are pro-children, pro-life, me too.
But sometimes we have to make very difficult choices.
And Israel was really pushed to the corner.
Israel is fighting for its very existence.
I am fighting for my very existence.
I did not kill any Arab.
I did not kill any of their tribesmen.
But they want me to exist.
Why?
Because I criticize their religion.
I criticize their stupid ideas that are leading towards global chaos.
And instead of spreading the narrative, the victim narrative, what we need to do actually, we need to localize it, not globalize it.
And we need to be reasonable of our expectations from a democracy in the middle of crisis.
Okay.
Mossad, Hussain, Yusuf, Abi Martin.
It was a spirited debate.
I think I learned, as I always do from these debates, I learned a little bit more than I knew before.
So I thank you both very much
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