| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Public Support Evaporates
00:09:33
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|
| If you're clearing out an entire people based on their ethnicity from where they live, that to me is a form of genocide. | |
| The Israelis, including the highest levels of the Israeli government, they just speak out of both sides of their mouth the whole time. | |
| And so it's like, which argument are we even taking on? | |
| The disgusting situation that we are now left with, the fact that people like the two of you will continue to put out this false information to perpetuate this conflict. | |
| I didn't think anyone could be more disingenuous than the UK ambassador. | |
| I've got to say, Natasha, you've got right up there. | |
| You've crossed that little bar. | |
| If the United States pulled its aid and suspended its arms sales, Israel's war on Hamas would end very quickly. | |
| That's one of the reasons why debates matter. | |
| A collapse in public support is usually a big part of how wars come to an end. | |
| American voters used to be steadfast in their support for Israel, but that support is now fading quickly. | |
| There's a growing consensus that Israel's war in Gaza is, to quote former Israeli Prime Minister Ehu Barak, indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal. | |
| The UK, France, and Canada, all allies of Israel, now say it's intolerable, unacceptable, and wholly disproportionate. | |
| Debate has moved a long way beyond Israel's right to defend itself and is increasingly centered on whether it's committing war crimes and whether the United States should wield its influence and power to make it stop. | |
| And in the court of public opinion, it's as much about morality and humanity as it is about legal expertise. | |
| Well, my next two guests have been hugely influential advocates for either side. | |
| Dave Smith is a libertarian commentator, a comedian, and the host of the Part of the Problem podcast. | |
| Natasha Hausdorff is a barrister, international lawyer, and a passionate supporter of Israel. | |
| Well, let's welcome you both to Uncensored. | |
| Dave Smith, I finally lost it really with any attempt to try and defend what Israel was doing, having been a pretty steadfast defender of its right to defend itself from what happened on October the 7th. | |
| But when you launch a blockade for three months at an already utterly tormented civilian population who are already struggling to eat, and you can see from the scenes that we've seen in the last 48 hours that they are starving people prepared to risk death to get their hands on meagre amounts of food. | |
| When a government like Israel does that, at the same time as it's simultaneously bombarding those people night after night after night, albeit with the crucial caveat they always put in that they are targeting Hamas solely and that everything around Hamas is collateral damage. | |
| But to me, this reached a point where it became clearly disproportionate. | |
| And that's a view that clearly the UK has reached, the French have reached, many people in America have reached. | |
| You certainly haven't come to that thought process in the last few months. | |
| You've been saying that for a long time. | |
| The question I have for you, what happens though, now we are where we are. | |
| Netanyahu and his government are in charge. | |
| Nobody seems to be stopping them. | |
| What happens? | |
| No, that is a good question. | |
| And I don't know for sure what the answer is. | |
| By the way, it's been great to watch your evolution on this topic, Pierce. | |
| It's good that you joined us later is better than you. | |
| Just to clarify, I would say this. | |
| I don't want to join a side. | |
| I was in the Middle East last week by chance. | |
| A lot of people came up to me and going, thank you for switching sides. | |
| And I said, I haven't switched sides. | |
| I've always tried to be a fair-minded, impartial journalist doing the job a journalist should do, which is challenging everybody. | |
| I think I've had more guests on from both sides actually and held more debates than any other show in the world of this kind. | |
| So, you know, I do think it's important. | |
| I don't want to be seen as taking a side. | |
| What I feel now though, or what I feel, I think it's an important clarification, but what I think is important now is that this has gone too far. | |
| And I can see that very clearly. | |
| Yes. | |
| Okay. | |
| So I didn't mean to box you into a side, just making the point that you have come to the conclusion that what Israel is doing is indefensible. | |
| And I thought it was fascinating and shocking watching you grill the Israeli ambassador who simply cannot tell you or even ballpark how many kids they have killed in this whole thing. | |
| Yeah, look, I mean, I think what Israel, you know, to your broader question of where does this all end up going, there's almost two kind of simultaneous wars in a sense that are going on. | |
| There's the actual, you know, control of power, in which case Israel's done phenomenally well over the last couple of years. | |
| I mean, Israel still has the support of the most powerful governments in the world, damn near unconditionally, if not purely unconditionally. | |
| They've been very successful in terms of taking out Hezbollah leaders. | |
| They've been very successful in terms of destroying the Gaza Strip. | |
| They've been successful in getting the regime change that they've wanted for many years in Syria. | |
| However, simultaneously, while that's going on, global opinion has drastically changed of Israel to a degree that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. | |
| And despite whatever arguments might be made for whether this meets a genocide or doesn't meet a genocide, or whether, you know, as two former Israeli prime ministers who have come out recently and said that war crimes are being committed, wherever you fall on that, the fact is that the debate is now over whether Israel is committing a genocide or not. | |
| And that is something that all of us should take a step back and appreciate how profound it is, especially amongst young people. | |
| In the future, I don't believe Israel will ever be viewed the same as it was by my parents' generation. | |
| And so what does that mean? | |
| You know, as you mentioned earlier, Piers, that's right. | |
| This is a big part of how wars end is when public support evaporates. | |
| We will see where all of this goes, but it is a very dangerous situation. | |
| And it is certainly profound to the degree that it has changed the impression of Israel on the global stage. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Natasha, look, if I was an Israeli, a regular Israeli, I would be pretty concerned that people like me have come to the place we've come to in this debate. | |
| You know, I've been harangued by pro-Palestinians for a long time for being too supportive of Israel's right to defend itself. | |
| Haranged, abused, mocked, threatened, all of the things that come with that in a war. | |
| But I just felt I couldn't do anything else to speak out. | |
| When you launch a three-month blockade against a people already suffering in the way that these Palestinians have been suffering, and I'm not talking about Hamas, I'm talking about the innocent civilians in Gaza. | |
| It's a population of 2 million with half of them under 18. | |
| More than 20,000 children have been killed, even if the UK ambassador has no idea what that number is, but knows exactly how many Hamas terrorists have been killed, oddly. | |
| I would just be concerned if I was an average Israeli, that people that supported us after the horrors of October the 7th are now beginning to go against, certainly in my case, the Israeli government, not the people of Israel, not Jewish people. | |
| They will always have my support. | |
| But this Israeli government is out of control. | |
| We saw and heard from the words of Smodrich last week, the finance minister, a very clear mission statement to clear out all the Palestinians from Gaza. | |
| That is a form of genocide. | |
| Whatever, you're a lawyer, you'll probably tell me it doesn't meet the exact legal criteria of the word genocide. | |
| But if you're clearing out an entire people based on their ethnicity from where they live, that to me and most people around the world who don't have a horse in this race is a form of genocide. | |
| What do you say to that? | |
| Well, Piers, I'm particularly glad of the opportunity to come on not before time and address so much of this misinformation, which seems to be at the core, not just of your shift, but what is a marked shift in the public discussion of this topic. | |
| And it is, of course, because of the abuse, the haranguing, the mockery, and the threats and the intimidation that so many people are falling into the easy line. | |
| Well, that's not, that's not why I've changed my mind. | |
| I don't give a damn about who threatens me or how they threaten me or how they mock and abuse me. | |
| Listen, I was getting all that long before this war. | |
| So I get it on pretty much any debate I ever had. | |
| That's fine. | |
| I'm a big boy. | |
| So please don't misconstrue anything that I have done in terms of a pivot in the way I view this with anything to do with being threatened into it, bullied into it or cajoled into it, because that would be ridiculous. | |
| Because you've been clear that this is because of the change in the narrative around this. | |
| And I hope I'll have the opportunity and you'll allow me the opportunity to address some of this false information. | |
| And there is a great deal of it. | |
| It starts with this notion that Israel imposed an entire blockade on aid, which is being put forward without the context of the fact that in the hostage release deal, which preceded it immediately, there were 25,000, over 25,000 trucks of aid that were facilitated into the Gaza Strip by Israel. | |
| The estimates that I have seen is that that should have been a stockpile of between five to six months of food and humanitarian assistance. | |
|
Addressing False Information
00:08:09
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| Some estimates are in the region of eight months. | |
| Where did that aid go? | |
| That is the question I would expect reasonable people without an agenda here to be asking. | |
| Where did that aid go if all of these claims of starvation are to be taken seriously? | |
| The reality here is that there is no Israeli-imposed starvation on the Gaza Strip, that there has been facilitated over the course of this. | |
| But that is simply not true. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| No, hang on. | |
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| Now, on with the show. | |
| When the Israeli government, let me phrase that correctly, when the Israeli government ordered three months ago a blockade of food and aid going into Gaza, that is a deliberate state-sponsored form of starving a population. | |
| No, it is not because it was... | |
| That's exactly what happened. | |
| That's why they look like they're starving. | |
| That's why they're risking deaths to get to scrabbling bits of food. | |
| Forgive me, you've asked me on here to answer these questions. | |
| I can challenge you. | |
| And I just explained that that blockade, which was imposed in order to prevent Hamas continuing to fuel its war machine by selling additional aid, that it was diverting, and we'll come on to the way that diversion is going to be prevented in the future, I hope. | |
| But the fact of the matter is that this blockade was instituted in the context of there being five to six months, maybe even eight months of aid that was facilitated into the Gaza Strip. | |
| And throughout, if you'll allow me to finish this point, throughout the war, the volume of aid that Israel has facilitated into Gaza, and this is not being reported by the international media, but it is available, publicly available information published by COGAT, over 1,700,000 tons of aid, which has been facilitated into the Gaza Strip, which is more than required for the civilian population, the study that was conducted. | |
| Why are they so hungry then? | |
| The study that was conducted. | |
| May I finish this point and I'll come on to answer this question. | |
| Why are they so hungry? | |
| Well, let me... | |
| Why are they stampeding over each other, risking death to get at scraps of food? | |
| I don't understand. | |
| If they're all so well-nourished and Israel's behaved so impeccably properly in terms of supplying enough food for months on end, why do they all look like they're starving to death and are prepared to risk actually dying to get at food? | |
| What you are basing your assessment on, I'm afraid. | |
| It's what I'm seeing with my own eyes. | |
| Which is Hamas propaganda, which you must accept as a result of the... | |
| No, no, it's actually footage. | |
| I'm watching news footage of thousands of people fighting with each other to get at food. | |
| Some of whom ended up dying, some of whom ended up being shot. | |
| The IDF says it wasn't them and it was Hamas. | |
| We don't know who did it because, as you know, the Israeli government has banned all international journalists from being anywhere near this to verify what is actually happening. | |
| Here's Morgan. | |
| You're not allowing me to answer a single question. | |
| I am. | |
| And then when you say something that I don't agree with, I'm challenging you. | |
| I'm sure I'm going to say a lot that you don't agree with because unfortunately your assessment is being based on misinformation, like these false reports we've had today of Israel shooting 31 Palestinians attempting to get to food. | |
| That was run, and Ambassador Mike Huckabee has criticized this resoundingly in a statement just now. | |
| That was run in the context of the Associated Press, CNN, many, many media outlets. | |
| And it was entirely false because it is, as has been the case previously. | |
| Hang on. | |
| The Israeli government says it was entirely false. | |
| What we have had... | |
| Sorry, just to correct. | |
| It's not just the Israeli government. | |
| Sorry to jump in again. | |
| No, it's also the Gaza humanitarian government. | |
| Israel has somewhat of its own reports because journalists aren't allowed to verify this independently. | |
| So Israel investigates itself and has decided it did nothing wrong. | |
| Hang on. | |
| What we do know is that a number of doctors and hospital spokesmen and charity spokesmen have all said that there were many people killed and many more people wounded taken to hospitals and they saw the bodies and they saw the wounded. | |
| So somebody was killing and wounding a lot of Palestinians. | |
| You say it was Hamas. | |
| Hamas say it was the IDF. | |
| We, the international media, cannot verify this because Israel doesn't allow us in to do our job. | |
| That's not why this reporting has been conducted on such a false basis. | |
| It's because nothing coming out of the Gaza Strip is able to be reported without Hamas control. | |
| And you, as part of the international media peers, will know this. | |
| I also know that historically Israel has accepted that the health authorities' numbers, historically before October the 7th, that they have been broadly accurate. | |
| That is the historical position. | |
| But you must also know that the assessments of Hamas casualty figures by experts and statisticians have found them to be preposterously inaccurate, fabricated. | |
| Well, let me ask you a question. | |
| Let me ask you what I'll see about it. | |
| You're not allowing me to finish a single question. | |
| Well, I can actually conduct this interview anywhere I like. | |
| Well, then the viewers aren't going to get any benefit of it. | |
| The viewers can make their own mind up about what they're hearing and seeing. | |
| When I interviewed the UK ambassador to the UK, she was able to tell me definitively that 30,000 Hamas terrorists had been killed. | |
| I think it was an estimate. | |
| Let's be clear. | |
| But she had absolutely no idea, estimate or otherwise, how many children had been killed in the process. | |
| Do you know? | |
| There's a very simple logical explanation for that, which is Israel is targeting Hamas and Palestinians. | |
| Do you know how many children Israel is killed in the process? | |
| There is a very simple explanation for the reason that we do not know. | |
| Because you only count the terrorists it killed, not the children. | |
| I can't hear the explanation. | |
| Well, I just ask you, just to be clear, are you saying that the IDF only counts the bodies of terrorists it kills, not innocent children? | |
| Well, the IDF has not been, and this is a shift now, as you would have heard from Jonathan Conricus, has not been in control of any significant part of Gaza to be able to conduct that analysis. | |
| How does it know how many terrorists are killing? | |
| Because it is striking them with clear intelligence and targeting those strikes deliberately. | |
| So it counts the bodies of the terrorists, but not the children it kills in the process. | |
| I'm sorry, this is perfectly logical. | |
| It's actually not logical at all. | |
| It can. | |
| To anyone watching this, they're thinking, what on earth are these Israelis saying? | |
| First, the ambassador, now you, what you're saying is that you only count the terrorists that are killed. | |
| You don't count the children that are killed in the process of killing the terrorists. | |
| No, I can provide you with some additional analysis. | |
| Why? | |
| If you'll allow me to answer the question, I'll provide you with some additional analysis, which is in relation to the casualty ratios that have been projected. | |
| How do you know the ratios? | |
| I'll explain. | |
| The casualty ratio throughout the first period of the war, phase one, was generally put at between one to one and 1.5. | |
|
Casualty Ratio Analysis
00:02:20
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|
| 10 to 1. | |
| I'll explain. | |
| Since then, in phase two, because of a very different type of fighting that we're now seeing, there are some estimates that it may have gone up to 200. | |
| How do you know? | |
| Very simply, that Israel has been able to establish... | |
| How do you know if you're not counting? | |
| May I answer the question? | |
| Well, you're not counting the civilians you're killing. | |
| So how do you know the ratio? | |
| If you're not going to allow me to count it. | |
| You talk about logic. | |
| Let me go to... | |
| I want to bring Dave's. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I've heard you speak for a long time. | |
| Dave is... | |
| You haven't, Pierce. | |
| Well, I have, and I'll let you speak again. | |
| We've got plenty of time here. | |
| I'm sorry, but... | |
| There's no question. | |
| No, I'm sorry. | |
| It's my show. | |
| I'm going to go to Dave. | |
| Dave, I'm told I'm lacking logic here. | |
| Is there anything logical about what we're hearing about how they apparently know the exact ratio of terrorists they're killing to civilians, but they don't know how many civilians they're killing? | |
| How do you know the ratio? | |
| Pierce, it's just too ridiculous. | |
| And as you know, Pierce, and look, I know that you've been, I think, very, as you said before, I don't want to put you on either side of this debate because I think actually people who are hardcore on either side of this debate probably see you as someone on the other side. | |
| Yeah, they all aim me. | |
| The extremists also. | |
| I didn't mean to say they all aim. | |
| They do. | |
| They actually do. | |
| They actually do. | |
| The ones who are to the extremities on both sides, they all aim me. | |
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|
International Law Misinformation
00:07:59
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|
| But I think one of the things that any honest observer has noticed since the very beginning of this conflict is that the Israelis, including the highest levels of the Israeli government, they just speak out of both sides of their mouth the whole time. | |
| And so it's like, which argument are we even taking on? | |
| I mean, they'll sit here and say from the very beginning that the goal is just to get the hostages back and to defeat Hamas, while their finance minister is openly talking about how the goal is to cleanse the entire state. | |
| He's not even hiding that. | |
| He says it. | |
| Yes, yes. | |
| He literally says it in front of the world. | |
| Yes. | |
| And we see them now putting this into like plans into action to do this. | |
| So how are we to judge this? | |
| They'll sit here and say that they've taken painstaking efforts to make sure that they limit the number of civilians that are killed, while also saying they have no idea how many civilians are being killed. | |
| And they don't count the number because that's not who they're targeting. | |
| You'll sit here and say, we're only targeting Hamas, or that's that we're only intentionally targeting Hamas. | |
| And at the same time, think about the argument they're even making as Smotrich is out bragging about how not one grain of wheat will get into Gaza for this three-month period that you're referring to. | |
| But they'll say, hey, look, they have stockpiles of aid that had gone in there previously. | |
| It's like, okay, Piers, so then logically, can't we deduce you're not starving Hamas? | |
| They've got plenty of food. | |
| Then who is the additional blockade supposed to impact? | |
| It's the civilian population. | |
| And so listen, I'm sorry. | |
| This is just anybody with just common sense and a basic understanding of logic could tell you that none of these defenses make any sense. | |
| And instead, I think it's reasonable for us to say that we're going to judge the Israeli government. | |
| And I like that you were precise about that. | |
| We're talking about the government of a foreign country, not people who believe in Judaism across the world, and not even necessarily the people of that country. | |
| But when I'm judging the Israeli government, I'm sorry. | |
| I'm going to judge them based off what their actions are. | |
| And I'm going to judge them based off what their motives are when they admit the truth. | |
| And so you could sit here and say, oh, we're doing everything we can to prevent the children who, the number of children dying, and then brag about the ratio, but at the same time, tell me you don't even know the number of children who are dying. | |
| The bottom line here, and this is why global opinion is turning against Israel, is the level of human suffering that is being inflicted by Israel on the people of Gaza is evil. | |
| It is pure freaking evil. | |
| And it doesn't need to be done this way. | |
| And if you think you can get away with this with a decentralized media and with smartphones and with 4K high-def images and with the ability through social media today for people to communicate in a non-controlled environment, good freaking luck, man. | |
| This is going to end up so bad for everyone. | |
| It's already ended up so bad for the poor people of Gaza. | |
| But I just can't, I'm truly stunned, Pierce, and I'm sure you are too. | |
| I am stunned by the lack of rational self-preservation on the part of the Israelis. | |
| Like read the room here. | |
| You are turning the entire world against you. | |
| And I do not understand why they would choose to do this. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, look, Natasha, I was editor of the Daily Mirror 20 years ago when we launched a long campaign to stop this country, the UK, going to war in Iraq, which I thought was an illegal invasion of a sovereign country. | |
| And it may be very unpopular with the then Labour government, led by Tony Blair, because we were the Labor-supporting newspaper. | |
| My point being, my argument then was not with the people of the United Kingdom. | |
| My argument was with the government of the United Kingdom making a decision which I felt was illegal and wrong, probably constituting war crimes. | |
| And it turned out to be a complete unmitigated disaster that led to 20 more years of mayhem in the Middle East, including the rise of ISIS and all the hell that they brought with them. | |
| So let's be clear again. | |
| I do not have an argument with Jewish people or with Israelis. | |
| I totally understand why after October the 7th, so many people in Israel felt so vulnerable, felt so angry, felt so distressed, so heartbroken by the devastating loss. | |
| 250 odd people kidnapped and taken hostage, including babies and Holocaust survivors. | |
| Over 1,200 people murdered, 7,000 wounded by 3,000 terrorists breaking over a border to attack anyone they got their hands on. | |
| I don't need reminding of what happened that day. | |
| That is why I defended Israel's right to defend itself so staunchly. | |
| But I cannot defend what is happening now. | |
| What is happening now is militarily inexplicable to most people I've spoken to in the military. | |
| I have a lot in my family. | |
| Nobody understands what Israel's goal is here, other than flattening Gaza and kicking off. | |
| Well, hang on. | |
| As Modric has said, it is to take over and clear out Gaza of all the Palestinians. | |
| That is genocide, isn't it? | |
| I mean, you're a lawyer. | |
| You tell me. | |
| Israel's war aims have been clear from the outset, which is the destruction of Hamas. | |
| They haven't done that. | |
| And the return of the hostages. | |
| Well, because the war's not over yet. | |
| You haven't done either of those things. | |
| All you're doing is killing more and more civilians. | |
| And you've been starving them. | |
| Well, who's you? | |
| Forgive me. | |
| I'm here as a lawyer. | |
| The Israeli government, and you're here to defend it, right? | |
| No, I'm here to defend the rule of law and the weaponization of international law, which has been consistent throughout this process. | |
| The propaganda that we're discussing right now, which is clearly what has shifted your position and perspective on this. | |
| It's completely dangerous. | |
| Calling Israel a committer of genocide or saying that it is starving to the government. | |
| Well, actually, the people alleging that Israel is committing war crimes are two former Israeli prime ministers. | |
| They have their own political agendas here. | |
| Let's see. | |
| How convenient the two former prime ministers of the country have said that you are committing as a government, not you, but the government is committing war crimes. | |
| And you dismiss it as just a bit of internal politics. | |
| Well, no, it's a very serious matter that the misinformation that I would like to be able to come on to address is now also being propagated by two very sore individuals, Prime Minister Olmert, because he also served a prison sentence and has had his entire proposed peace framework, that of essentially creating a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, turned upside down by the realization. | |
| And he hasn't had, unfortunately, the temerity after the 7th of October to recognize the risk that he would have put Israel to in light of the Hamas taking. | |
| And when you see, as we saw last year, I was answering the previous question. | |
| Okay, let me just on the point of legality. | |
| Actually, it's very productive. | |
| On the point of legality, only last week, the Israeli government announced new settlements, 22 settlements. | |
| Well, no, can we pause? | |
| Well, hang on, hang on, hang on. | |
| On the West Bank, 22 settlements, which the international community views as illegal. | |
| They announced 22 new settlements. | |
| As a lawyer, given your adherence to the point of law, presumably you would condemn that. | |
| Well, this is exactly why we need to be clear about how international law applies and why the notion of these so-called illegal settlements is a misinformation. | |
| You don't think they are? | |
| It's not a legal term. | |
| It's a political term and it is part and parcel of a misapplication of international law to the status of the territory. | |
| These blood liabels, occupation, ethnic cleansing, alone. | |
| Do you think the settlements are not illegal? | |
| And the best planned genocide are all part and parcel of the propaganda which I would like to be able to come on to because all of the evidence goes in completely the opposite direction in terms of Israel's compliance with the laws of armed conflict and its amount of steps that Israel takes, unprecedented in the history of armed conflict and military. | |
| That's just a load of bullshit. | |
| I'm sorry, it just is. | |
| Which other army is which other, which other war in recent times where you have you had half the population is under 18 and you killed 20,000 kids? | |
| Those figures are Hamas figures that you are. | |
| Give me an example of where this morality has been played out elsewhere. | |
| I was explaining earlier that the Hamas figures are inflated, that there are internal influences. | |
| How convenient for you? | |
|
Hamas Figure Inflation
00:02:38
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|
| But you don't know what the figures are, so how do you know? | |
| Because there have been independent samples. | |
| How do you know how many figures are inflated or otherwise? | |
| You don't know how many have been killed. | |
| No, Hamas lies. | |
| It is an internationally prescribed terrorist organization. | |
| Some I think you're lying because you say on one hand, I don't know how many children have been killed, but on the other hand, and there's a blood libel if you say we've killed any of them, but on the other hand. | |
| That's not what I said. | |
| No. | |
| But on the other hand, you know all about the ratios and you know how humane Israeli forces are being killing. | |
| Because even on Hamas figures, which we know to be false, which do not make distinctions, we do because they're... | |
| How do you know they're false? | |
| You don't know how many have been killed? | |
| Because Hamas has even itself revised those figures down and acknowledged that they are false. | |
| And the UN is still touting. | |
| So how many children has Israel killed? | |
| If we go back to the... | |
| Can you answer my question? | |
| If you go back to the ratio... | |
| Do you know my witness? | |
| No, but I can tell you the ratio, even on the basis of Hamas figures. | |
| You can tell me the ratio without... | |
| But how do you know if you don't know how many kids? | |
| You can't tell the ratio even on the basis of the false Hamas figures. | |
| You've no idea how many have been killed, but you can tell me the ratio. | |
| I can tell you the ratio. | |
| You're a smart lawyer. | |
| Do you not understand how ridiculous that's listening to people? | |
| If you were in a courtroom now, you would be demolished by a fellow lawyer. | |
| They would say, what are you talking about? | |
| Piers, this is not how courtroom etiquette is conducted, I'm afraid. | |
| I would be permitted to. | |
| Actually, some of my favourite lawyers conduct something exactly like that. | |
| I would be permitted to finish a sentence. | |
| The reason we can say that the ratio before the ceasefire was one to one or 1.15 to 1 is on the basis even of Hamas figures. | |
| 1 to 1 or 5 to 1. | |
| Which one was it? | |
| 1 to 1 to 1.5 to 1. | |
| At different points in that period, those were the two separate estimates. | |
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| That's getjacked up.com. | |
| And that is on the basis of... | |
| To know that, you'd have to know how many information is that. | |
|
Lebanon Conflict Accounts
00:15:25
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|
| No, that is on the basis of the false Hamas figures. | |
| So the reality is that the expectation would be the ratio of the... | |
| You don't believe that. | |
| So what is the number? | |
| The reality is that the expectation would be the numbers are even less than that. | |
| That in any event is unprecedented in the history of urban armed conflict. | |
| So it puts the lie to all of these accusations that we have been hearing. | |
| And the reason, let me finish this sentence, if you will. | |
| The reason that it is so terrible, that it is so dangerous that these lies are being spread about Israel, that even you and other respected international journalists have begun to propagate them, is that it is having a direct impact on the safety of Jews around the world. | |
| We've seen the impact of 14,000 babies in 48 hours when two Israeli staffers were murdered, executed on the streets of DC. | |
| Only yesterday we saw a fire. | |
| What was the link there? | |
| Are you saying that? | |
| The fact that two days after the... | |
| Are you saying the person that perpetrated that appalling murder was actually even aware of the story you're talking about? | |
| You're drawing a directan that committed that murder shouted free Palestine, and this is for Gaza. | |
| You mentioned something about 48,000 people. | |
| Two days after that full story went around the world. | |
| It was a full story because the idiot that came out with it should have known better. | |
| I didn't promote that in any way at all other than to say. | |
| But you are promoting false allegations to starvation and targeting. | |
| No, I'm promoting the fact that Israel's government launched a three-month blockade, which has led to the city. | |
| Without context, of 25,000 tons of trucks of energy. | |
| Let me bring down that. | |
| Dave. | |
| That's without context are misleading. | |
| All right, Dave. | |
| We're a bunch of deluded clowns who are being misled. | |
| Israel's government is telling the whole truth here. | |
| Everyone else is lying or being taken in by lies. | |
| Yeah, it's just like, look, the and we're putting Jews in danger by promoting these lies. | |
| You're a Jewish guy. | |
| Yes, I am. | |
| And maybe I'll respond to that. | |
| Well, first of all, I'll just say that even the idea, like, as you hear these arguments, Pierce, where they'll say, like, well, we know these numbers that the Gaza Health Ministry puts out are lies because we know Hamas lies. | |
| And look, the proof of that is that they revised their numbers down at one point. | |
| But doesn't that just kind of lead to the question, Pierce, then? | |
| Like, why would they revise their numbers down? | |
| Why wouldn't they double? | |
| Like, why? | |
| Yeah, right. | |
| Why wouldn't they just stick with the original numbers that they should have? | |
| That's exactly the buzzword of the debate. | |
| It's what always happens with the pro-Israel people is like they use what is a point on my side as a point on theirs. | |
| And by the way, I wouldn't trust Hamas as far as I could bloody throw them. | |
| They're a bunch of despicable death cult murderers, right? | |
| Just to be crystal clear. | |
| I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. | |
| And yet historically, their figures through this health authority in this conflict going back decades have turned out to be reasonably accurate. | |
| I know that because Israel has accepted them over the years. | |
| And Pierce, as you know, as you know, because I've been coming on your show for a long time now, you know, I've always said the same thing too. | |
| I also don't really trust the Gaza Health Ministry. | |
| I'm just making the point that them revising the numbers down would be a point of evidence that they're being honest, not a point of evidence that you can't trust them. | |
| But look, I will just say this, okay? | |
| And Pierce, again, because I've been coming on your show, I've done a lot of these debates that, you know, over the last year and a half or so. | |
| I would never, like, if you remember, there was this example of the guy in Florida who is being charged with attempted murder right now because he shot two people who he thought were Palestinians. | |
| Turned out they weren't. | |
| He was wrong. | |
| But I would never use that as an example in one of these debates and say, aha, pro-Israel person, you're responsible for that. | |
| I'm a free market libertarian, free market capitalist guy. | |
| There was a Bernie Sanders fan who shot up a congressional baseball game several years back. | |
| I would never use that in an argument and say, you're responsible for that because it's the cheapest, lamest form of argument. | |
| You are not responsible if you're telling the truth as you see it for some crazy person committing a horrific act of violence. | |
| By the way, we're talking about ongoing innocent people being killed for over 20 months at this point now. | |
| So like that's what the whole conversation is about. | |
| But the idea that any of us are responsible. | |
| Look, here's the bottom line, Pierce. | |
| I understand Natasha wants to sit here and say, the reason you've changed your mind is because you've fallen for the propaganda. | |
| You've fallen for the lies. | |
| The reason why everyone is so outraged is because they're falling for these propaganda. | |
| The truth is that the reason why Pierce and so many people around the world are saying, are turning on what the Israeli government is doing is because it's just so freaking horrible. | |
| Because we're seeing images every day of children suffering through an ungodly fate. | |
| We all sit there and think, my God, if those were our kids. | |
| It's a pure reaction to witnessing evil. | |
| And you've got to sit here and spin the fact that this is all propaganda or it's all lies. | |
| I mean, look, I admire you being a lawyer and trying to defend your client. | |
| I guess that's what lawyers got to do, no matter how guilty your client is. | |
| Pierce, if I'm ever charged with murder, get this lady to represent me. | |
| So that's who I want on my team. | |
| But the bottom line is that two former Israeli prime ministers are not falling for propaganda. | |
| And you know what, Dave? | |
| You know what? | |
| One of them. | |
| You can't deny it. | |
| Right. | |
| And one of them, Ehud Omar, he said to me that he thinks Netanyahu, A, should have resigned by now, but B, will be in The Hague one day being held accountable for these war crimes. | |
| And I mean, I guess my question for you, Natasha, you're a lawyer. | |
| Would you be prepared to defend him if Netanyahu appeared at The Hague? | |
| We're talking about the International Criminal Court. | |
| Would you be prepared to defend him? | |
| No, well, let me be clear about the context, because this is important. | |
| We're talking about the International Criminal Court, which has no jurisdiction in this matter because Israel is not a party to the ICC and Palestine is not a state. | |
| It clearly made significant errors on prior determinations of jurisdiction on the basis of an accession document supposedly by the Palestinian Authority, which was never circulated. | |
| That was one of the primary planks of its decision in 2021, which has fallen away. | |
| It is proceeded on this basis in contravention of its own rules, that of complementarity, and on an entirely false basis. | |
| So my organization, UK Lawyers for Israel, has put out a review of Karim Khan's application for warrants, which demonstrated that every phrase of every sentence of that document was false. | |
| In that context, we're not seeing an international criminal court anymore. | |
| We're seeing a political body which is seeking to rehabilitate itself by going after the leaders of the world's Jewish state because of its ability to... | |
| Is there anyone who criticizes the Israeli government that you don't think is doing so for political reasons or because they're being deluded by the government? | |
| Oh my goodness, yes. | |
| In other words, is anybody actually acting, do you think, with any integrity when they criticize the Israeli government? | |
| Within Israel. | |
| Because you make it sound like everyone's either stupid, deluded, or politically motivated. | |
| Within Israel, there is the most vibrant political debate and criticism that you will see anywhere. | |
| What I'm calling out are the lies and the falsehoods and the blood libels that are being propagated. | |
| I was told by the ambassador to the UK it was a blood libel for me to suggest that Israel had killed children. | |
| No, I don't believe that was the case. | |
| No to do with targeting children. | |
| There is a difference. | |
| Right. | |
| Because we are hearing that Israel is targeting children and that couldn't be further from the fact that. | |
| Well last week, nine out of ten children in one home where two doctors reside were killed in an airstrike. | |
| What was that? | |
| That's remarkable. | |
| But what was that? | |
| That has been based only on the basis of hearsay. | |
| You don't believe that story. | |
| I want these stories. | |
| Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait a minute. | |
| You don't believe that those children were killed? | |
| I have seen conflicting accounts and I want that story to be properly investigated before the international media runs with it. | |
| I have a question. | |
| Do you think those two parents, one of whom I think, operated on one of the children? | |
| I have a question. | |
| Do you think that those two doctors, the parents, they just made it up that nine of their ten children had been blown to pieces by an Israeli airstrike? | |
| If this is true. | |
| You don't believe it. | |
| Well, why on earth was artificially generated imagery used to promote this story when it first happened? | |
| I've got to say, Natasha, I think what you've just said about that family is despicable. | |
| We've seen times. | |
| I'm sorry, it's despicable. | |
| You talk about blood libel, like Dave said, you talk about blood libel. | |
| You talk about lies. | |
| You talk about promoting propaganda. | |
| And here you sit here as a lawyer and you say that you do not believe those nine children were killed. | |
| I didn't say that. | |
| You're putting words in my mouth. | |
| Do you believe it or not? | |
| Do you believe it? | |
| And it needs to be investigated. | |
| Do you believe it? | |
| I thought you would be... | |
| The parents said nine of their ten children were killed. | |
| Do you believe that or not? | |
| Or did those two doctors make it up? | |
| They haven't said that directly as far as I have seen. | |
| I have seen second-hand accounts and hearsay, but it's important to ask, why are these civilians still there? | |
| Why is it that they're not? | |
| But you know, it's important to ask whether you believe that family have lost nine of their ten children. | |
| I want to know why the international journal. | |
| You don't. | |
| And this goes to the point that I would say about Israel generally now in this war now. | |
| Israel says they don't believe anything. | |
| Everything every story that comes out about the deaths of civilians in Gaza someone will pop up representing the Israeli government saying, ah, it's propaganda. | |
| It's not true. | |
| I've heard it's not right. | |
| I've heard it didn't happen. | |
| And the reason you can get away with it, frankly, is because you won't allow, the Israeli government won't allow. | |
| I keep, I don't want to keep putting you in the government, but you defend them. | |
| The Israeli government refuses to allow international journalists to get in there and do their job and verify whether any of these things are actually happening. | |
| I have been there. | |
| When you say they didn't happen. | |
| I can help you with why. | |
| I've been there in September and seen a great deal of the Hamas terror infrastructure with my own eyes, including the fact that when we were in Rafah, every second building was being used. | |
| Have you seen any dead children? | |
| No, and this is the important factor. | |
| Why do you think that our movements are not? | |
| Is that because there aren't any or because you were being given a sanitized little tour? | |
| No, we weren't. | |
| Which didn't involve seeing the bodies of dead children. | |
| We were very restricted because of the nature of the battlefield in Lebanon. | |
| What right does the IDF have to restrict journalists doing their job? | |
| In every other war I've ever been involved in, including sending my Daily Mirror journalists to cover the Iraq war in Baghdad, where they rang me at midnight to ask if they should leave or stay in a hotel, the Baghdad Hilton, I think it was called, before shock and awe arrived. | |
| So huge responsibility on my shoulders then about the lives of my journalists, but they were prepared to risk them to report the truth to the wider world. | |
| Israel has decided no journalists from outside can go in and make that assessment themselves. | |
| Yes. | |
| What right does Israel have to do that? | |
| For three reasons. | |
| Will you allow me to finish? | |
| Well, there are no reasons. | |
| But it's none of your business whether the journalists view their safety as being at risk. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| You haven't heard the reasons yet. | |
| The first, of course, is the safety of the journalists, and I appreciate you don't accept that. | |
| I think it's a load of nonsense. | |
| The second is the safety. | |
| The idea you're doing is out of some quaint concern for the safety of journalists is bullshit. | |
| That was reason number one. | |
| Reason number two. | |
| Reason number two is the ability to get to the point of view. | |
| It's better yet better. | |
| Is the ability of IDF soldiers to be able to conduct this war against Hamas without the journalists getting in the way? | |
| No, without... | |
| By the way, they've killed more journalists in Palestinian journalists than in any war. | |
| Hamas members wearing press vests are not journalists. | |
| And reason number three. | |
| So none of them are journalists. | |
| And reason number three. | |
| So just to be clear, none of the Palestinian journalists who've been killed are actually journalists. | |
| Is that right? | |
| Hamas members. | |
| Are they all Hamas? | |
| Those that are. | |
| Every single dead Palestinian journalist is a member of Hamas. | |
| Is that your position? | |
| Listen, I appreciate Pierre's assistant. | |
| That is also bullshit. | |
| But misrepresenting everyone. | |
| No, let me bullshit. | |
| Misrepresenting everybody. | |
| So that's two out of two. | |
| What's the third reason? | |
| Our mutual friend Douglas Murray was embedded with the IDF in Lebanon. | |
| You said the words yourself. | |
| I love Douglas, but he was embedded with the IDF. | |
| He's unbelievably pro-Israel. | |
| Let me finish. | |
| So of course he was going to write what he witnessed while embedded with the IDF. | |
| Let me finish what his experiences there were. | |
| The difference between you have to tell me. | |
| No, there is something I think that you won't have heard. | |
| The IDF are able to allow journalists into Lebanon. | |
| He wasn't the only one. | |
| There were many other international journalists. | |
| Tiny. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Again, other international journalists with him. | |
| Bullshit. | |
| There have been a tiny handful of journalists led in by the IDF in tightly controlled environments to witness what the IDF were prepared to let them see. | |
| And do you know what that is? | |
| Actually, what it needs is war to stop the bullshit, which is out of control, by the way, in this last three minutes, is to let international journalists go in and do their jobs. | |
| And they will worry with their networks or organizations about their safety, but they should be allowed to do their jobs. | |
| And there's only one reason why the Israeli government doesn't want international journalists crawling all over Gaza. | |
| It's because they do not want them reporting what they will find. | |
| Which, by the way, will include... the bodies of thousands of children who you on the Israeli side are not counting as you count the terrorists you kill, but who journalists would. | |
| Reason number three is that those journalists that were in Lebanon said that they had to be very careful about what they reported because of what Hezbollah would do to their colleagues in Beirut. | |
| The fact that international journalists have sunk to this level that they would allow their reportage to be controlled by terrorist organizations, Iranian proxies, Hamas al-Hezballah included, is despicable. | |
| That is the real issue here that has driven. | |
| The real issue is terrorist organizations. | |
| Actually, it's not. | |
| Let me bring David. | |
| Let me bring David. | |
| But you will not allow me to answer a single question. | |
| You know what? | |
| You've made all your points and they all. | |
| I haven't. | |
| I certainly don't. | |
| It turns out to be bullshit. | |
| So let me bring in Dave. | |
| Hey, I'm Caitlin Becker, the host of the New York Postcast, and I've got exactly what you need to start your weekdays. | |
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| Hey, look, I don't like to keep saying the word bullshit, but when you hear a lot of bullshit, you have to call it for what it is: bullshit. | |
| And the truth is, particularly on the journalist front, there is a very simple way that all this fog of war confusion could be resolved, and that is to let the journalists in. | |
| And there's a very simple reason why they're not. | |
| They don't want the journalists to report to the world what is actually going on. | |
| Otherwise, they'd let them in. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, listen, I understand, Natasha, that you're upset that Pierce isn't letting you finish your thought, but the idea that the number one reason you gave is that what Israel just values the sanctity of life so much that they're so worried about these journalists, it's just so ridiculous. | |
| Especially if you're not sure if it's not the basic smell test. | |
| Yes, it's offensive to think that that level, you know, you talk about propaganda being spread. | |
| That is just pure propaganda. | |
|
Nuclear Weapons Silence
00:13:33
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|
| It is obvious. | |
| It is obviously the reason who's going to be blamed? | |
| Sorry, Natasha just said, who will be blamed for the journalists' deaths? | |
| A, a recognition that yet more journalists would be killed, because I think it's well over 100 Palestinians who you think are all Hamas members. | |
| But you know what? | |
| It's not your job to worry about the safety of international journalists. | |
| They've all been to many, many war zones. | |
| That's extremely important. | |
| Marissa Ward at CNN. | |
| Jeremy Dolan and BBC. | |
| I know a lot of these people myself. | |
| You let the journalists do their job and you do yours. | |
| And the IDF can do theirs. | |
| They don't seem to have this concern about being blamed for slaughtering the children of Gaza. | |
| They don't admit they're killing anything. | |
| They need to stop that. | |
| Right, exactly. | |
| Right, right. | |
| As every time you hear, it's either, oh, this is propaganda, this is Hamas propaganda, those kids weren't intentionally killed, all this stuff. | |
| But look, like we said at the beginning, this is just, it doesn't meet the basic smell test, the basic human test. | |
| If you're telling me, as you said, Natasha, that Hamas has locked up all of the aid that's gotten in there. | |
| So who are you targeting when you don't let further aid in? | |
| It's the civilian population who's not getting it. | |
| Now, you could sit here and say Israel isn't targeting them, meaning I blow up a building that I know has little children in it, but I'm claiming I'm targeting the bad guy. | |
| But you know that in effect, your action is going to, in effect, destroy the civilian population. | |
| I'm sorry, this is a distinction without a difference. | |
| And I don't care about your appeal to international law. | |
| Look, I'm Lysander Spooner on this issue of international law. | |
| I think either international law allows what Israel is doing to Gaza, or it's been powerless to stop it. | |
| So either way, it has not been effective enough. | |
| By the way, it does seem like it's the latter, not the former, seeing as how there is criminal warrants out for Netanyahu for committing war crimes. | |
| But regardless of that, the bottom line here is that Israel is doing this to the civilian population of Gaza. | |
| And nobody, nobody who's being honest, doesn't believe that the only reason Israel won't let journalists in there is because they don't want the world to see what they're doing to these people. | |
| Period. | |
| That's the reason. | |
| And everybody, including you, knows it. | |
| The problem here is that you're not allowed to tell the truth. | |
| You're Israel's lawyer and you've got to defend them no matter what. | |
| Natasha, does Israel have nuclear weapons? | |
| Sorry, I'm an independent English bar. | |
| Yes, that's a good question. | |
| Yes or no? | |
| Yes or no, Natasha. | |
| Do they have to do that? | |
| Does Israel have nuclear weapons, Natasha? | |
| Why do you think I would know any better than Lucas? | |
| You do know the truth, and so you won't say it. | |
| But I'm not here, Pierce. | |
| Well, let me just say, it's disqualifying to this conversation. | |
| You're playing a different game than me and Pierce are. | |
| We are having a conversation about what's actually going on. | |
| You're a lawyer who's not allowed to incriminate your client, which is Israel, because you know the answer the same way Pierce knows it, the same way I know it. | |
| Do they have nukes? | |
| Let me be perfectly clear. | |
| I am not in the employ of anyone associated with the people. | |
| What's the name of your organization? | |
| UK Lawyers for Israel began as a voluntary association of lawyers looking for the proper application of law to Israel, Israelis, and combating anti-Semitism. | |
| It is truly remarkable. | |
| We are having a different conversation. | |
| This is a circus, and I am actually seeking to address practical questions, including the disgusting situation that we are now left with, where the international community has said that Palestinian civilians must uniquely be kept in a war zone, may not be permitted to leave. | |
| That is what I am hearing being advocated for consistently, so that they can be continued to be used not just as human shields by Hamas, but as human sacrifices, dragging this conflict out. | |
| The tragedy of this misinformation and this propaganda is not just that Jews are being gunned down and burned in the street. | |
| It is also that Palestinian civilians are continuing to suffer as a result of this war, but also of Hamas suppression, repression, torture, and the stealing of aid, which has been well documented. | |
| The fact that people like the two of you will continue to put out this false information to perpetuate this conflict, to perpetuate Palestinians suffering is truly disgusting. | |
| What have I said that's false? | |
| I didn't think anyone could be more disingenuous than the UK ambassador. | |
| I've got to say, Natasha, you've got right up there. | |
| You've crossed that little bar. | |
| If you can indicate one aspect of what I have said that is incorrect, we will have this conversation. | |
| But so far, you are throwing out appallingly misconceived allegations, which are baseless. | |
| Do you know what? | |
| Notice she couldn't answer the question. | |
| Jonathan Kurick is on it. | |
| He was a former IDF guy, obviously. | |
| And even he was able to admit a lot of what Israel is now doing is wrong. | |
| And it just shouldn't be happening the way that it's happening. | |
| When you blindly don't, I mean, I think that Hamas are blindly ideologically to one side of this. | |
| They're a bunch of genocidal maniacs. | |
| I think people like Smodrich are genocidal maniacs. | |
| And I think anyone on the pro-Israeli side, particularly a lawyer who can listen to what Smodrich said last week and not understand that he is actually promoting war crimes out of his very mouth. | |
| We haven't discussed Smodrich, and I'm not particularly interested in what he has to say because it's... | |
| Well, he's the finance minister of the Israeli government. | |
| He's one of the three most powerful people in the country. | |
| He clearly doesn't have an input to the war cabinet's policy or how this military or how this campaign has been run. | |
| Even you don't believe that if you say it. | |
| Well, I wouldn't be saying it if I didn't believe it. | |
| You don't think the Smodrich has much influence over the Israeli government? | |
| Not on the contrary. | |
| He's done anything about the Israeli government. | |
| Not on the conduct of this. | |
| The Gerbals didn't have any control over policy. | |
| It doesn't matter what he said. | |
| I didn't interrupt, Mr. Smith. | |
| The fact of the matter is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. | |
| Everything that the Israeli army, the Air Force, and the Military Advocate General Corps, which is actually unique in the manner in which it approves strikes and the military tactics that the IDF launched. | |
| In fact, when I was on the ground in Gaza, including with a very senior military official from the UK, Sir John McCall, all of the group remarked that the procedures that Israel had put in place were unprecedented, that it wasn't just adhering to international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict, but in every respect is going far above the requirements, including in taking precautions to prevent civilian conflicts. | |
| How have they been so careful? | |
| Have they managed to destroy 70% of Gaza and killed, I think, it's 50 to 60,000 people? | |
| Those again are Hamas figures, which are not accurate. | |
| What's the figure? | |
| Well, you heard, I think, from the ambassador, 30,000 people. | |
| How many people have you killed? | |
| 30,000. | |
| There you go with you again. | |
| I think there's been some misbriefing in this. | |
| Well, you seem to be speaking on behalf of the government. | |
| No, I'm speaking on behalf of the facts and the proper application of law, which I appreciate neither of you seem to be particularly interested in. | |
| But I will maintain my interest, in particular, the fact that these casualty figures by Hamas do not take account of how these people are said to have died. | |
| We know Hamas are shooting their own civilians. | |
| That false report of Palestinian civilians at aid centers being targeted by Israel, that was in fact Hamas shooting themselves. | |
| You don't know that. | |
| We have the drone. | |
| You don't know that. | |
| And we have consistent accounts. | |
| The investigation is still going on, but of course, it's an Israeli investigation, which will doubtless exonerate the Israeli forces. | |
| We also know that Palestinian civilians are killed by indiscriminate missiles. | |
| Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas rockets, when they fall short in the Gaza Strip, they don't fall with a proportionality analysis. | |
| They don't fall precisely in the way that Israeli strikes are conducted with warnings. | |
| If you're doing everything so magnificently by the book, why is it that so many allies of Israel are now queuing up and former prime ministers of Israel are queuing up to condemn it? | |
| Are they all utterly deluded? | |
| No, there are two particular reasons for this. | |
| The first is what we have seen with the manufacturing of this disinformation that comes out of Gaza from Hamas that is promoted by NGOs formerly respected like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, that is then in turn reported by UN special rapporteurs that finds its way into Security Council resolutions or General Assembly resolutions that then in turn makes it up to institutions like the ICC and the ICJ. | |
| And then once that circle of disinformation is complete, these matters are often re-reported by the NGOs that started this disinformation cycle in the first place. | |
| That's reason number one. | |
| Reason number two is because of the mode in which the international media have conducted their reporting of this conflict. | |
| We have the Al-Ali hospital as a prime example on the 17th of October, 2023. | |
| Immediately it was reported that this was an Israeli airstrike. | |
| That was false, Piers. | |
| Just like the reports of Israel targeting Palestinian civilians trying to get aid were false. | |
| I urge you to use a little bit of logic here to assess what on earth Israel's objective could be, targeting civilians or hitting hospitals like this willy-nilly, which it does not do without good reason because Hamas has used them as command and control centers. | |
| And when it provides warnings to enable civilians to evacuate, why on earth would Israel be targeting Palestinian civilians when it has been seeking from the get-go to evacuate them, to provide humanitarian corridors, which it has defended, even though Hamas has fired onto these civilians as they seek to flee areas where Hamas has embedded its terror infrastructure in these civilian areas, in mosques, schools, hospitals, and every second house when I was in Rafah that we saw. | |
| That is the truth. | |
| How many houses did you see? | |
| That is the truly. | |
| How many houses did you see? | |
| Well, many of them were destroyed. | |
| How many destroyed? | |
| Definitely. | |
| You said every second house. | |
| You saw 10 houses. | |
| No, tens plural. | |
| What does the matter is? | |
| How many? | |
| But Hamas, Hamas. | |
| You said every second house. | |
| Yes. | |
| So how many did you see? | |
| No, every second house. | |
| How many houses did you go into? | |
| It doesn't matter. | |
| It does matter. | |
| You've made a statement. | |
| You said every second house. | |
| How many did you go into? | |
| The houses were not left there to be. | |
| Do you know how many houses you went into? | |
| Tens. | |
| What? | |
| What? | |
| 10, 15, 20? | |
| Piers, you're missing the point here. | |
| No, no, I know the point. | |
| The point is that Hamas have made a claim to simply ask you to give me a number. | |
| Numbers are not your strong point. | |
| I know that. | |
| I beg your pardon. | |
| But I imagine you remember how many houses you went into. | |
| No, we saw destroyed houses in the Rafah area because Hamas has been using these houses as part of its terror infrastructure. | |
| How do you know? | |
| Because they make claims to them. | |
| You said you went into them and you said that. | |
| Again, you're putting words in my mouth. | |
| If you would listen, I think things would be a lot clearer. | |
| Do you know what was inside houses even though you didn't go inside them and they were all obliterated? | |
| Well, you know, I couldn't go inside them because they were booby-trapped by Hamas. | |
| You didn't go inside them and they were all destroyed. | |
| What I did see is you knew they were all full of Hamas stuff. | |
| What I did see is drone footage that goes into these that went into these houses that demonstrated. | |
| You didn't go into the houses. | |
| You didn't see any Hamas stuff in there, but you saw drone footage. | |
| Well, look, I have to make it very clear. | |
| You know, sorry, it's just all in flannel. | |
| You always take Hamas's word for it. | |
| So listen to what they say. | |
| You wouldn't take your word for it. | |
| It sounds like a lot of old bullshit again. | |
| Listen, Piers, as I've dealt with this argument with Douglas Murray and now here today, this is about as serious as Dennis Rodman claiming that Kim Jong-un showed him a supermarket full of food. | |
| I mean, I don't know what to say here. | |
| And it would be equally ridiculous if I went on some Hamas-sponsored tour and then came back telling you that everything they say is correct. | |
| Here's the bottom line. | |
| I have a much more clear logical answer. | |
| The reason why two former Israeli prime ministers, including Omar, who is a right-winger, who was Sharon's guy, this is not as if this is some left-wing anti-war piecenik or something like that. | |
| The reason why two former Israeli prime ministers have come out and said that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza is because Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. | |
| The reason why Israel will not let journalists into Gaza is because Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. | |
| And the reason why Israel is killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the reason why they're building up more settlements in the West Bank is because, as Smotrich has said, as Katz, the defense minister has said this week, and as Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said for years and years and years, their plan is Greater Israel. | |
| They want Gaza and the West Bank. | |
| They call it Judea and Samaria. | |
| They believe that it's rightfully Israel's. | |
| Benjamin Netanyahu, who showed up to the United Nations a couple weeks before October 7th with a map where it was all Israel. | |
| That's the bottom line. | |
| It's why they've been controlling these territories since 1967. | |
| See, the truth makes a lot more sense. | |
| And by the way, you know that Israel has nuclear weapons, but you won't say it on this program because you're not in the business of telling the truth about this conflict. | |
| You're in the business of defending Israel, which is fine. | |
| That's what you want to do. | |
| But all three of us know they have nuclear weapons. | |
| Maybe we should get into the where does international law stand on the US and the UK being partners with a country who's not in the non-proliferation treaty who has nuclear weapons. | |
|
Blaming Jewish People
00:15:09
|
|
| Maybe we could have a whole conversation on that next time, Piers. | |
| We all know what the truth is, I've actually asked Netanyahu myself that very question and he didn't answer. | |
| So yeah, it'd be a very interesting topic for debate. | |
| We've got to leave it there. | |
| Dave Smith, Dave Smith, Natasha Hausdorff. | |
| Thank you both very much. | |
| Hey, Mike Baker here, host of the President's Daily Brief podcast. | |
| If you want straight talk on national security, foreign policy, and the biggest global stories going on of the day, this is the show for you. | |
| We publish twice a day, Monday through Friday, once in the morning, again in the afternoon. | |
| And on the weekend, we go longer with the PBB Situation Report with excellent guests, including national security insiders and foreign policy experts. | |
| Check us out on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. | |
| Also, on our YouTube channel at President's Daily Brief. | |
| Ahmed Alaugh is a Palestinian journalist and the co-founder of We Are Not Numbers, whose book of the same name tells the story of young Gazans in their own words. | |
| He also has an extreme story of personal loss in this war, and he joins me in the studio now. | |
| Ahmed, it's good to see you. | |
| I was aware of you because you tweeted in April of last year on X. You posted on X. | |
| I blame you, Piers Morgan, me, for their murder and the murder of all innocent people in Gaza. | |
| This came after news of you losing a huge number of your family in an airstrike. | |
| First of all, my deepest condolences to you over the loss of your family members. | |
| And second, I would never judge anyone who fires off intemperate thoughts in a moment. | |
| So I didn't take that personally. | |
| Thirdly, I was getting that from quite a few people. | |
| A lot of those people now are praising me because they think I've switched sides. | |
| And to be clear with you, I don't take sides. | |
| I never have done. | |
| I've tried to platform people on both sides throughout this whole war because I think that's been really important. | |
| But it's good to see you in the studio and to me. | |
| We don't know each other. | |
| First of all, when you posted that to me, why did you post that? | |
| Why did you blame me for what had happened to your family? | |
| Well, thank you for having me, Ferris, and thank you for having so many Palestinians on your show. | |
| I don't think you can blame me for saying this to you, Piers, because you and I are journalists and we know how important the role of journalists in this world is. | |
| And I've known you for a long time. | |
| I have been following you for a long time. | |
| And I have always looked at you as this prominent British journalist. | |
| You're one of the most prominent journalists in the world. | |
| And then October the 7th happened. | |
| And I was watching how you covered the news in Gaza. | |
| And you were very angry at October the 7th. | |
| And that's okay. | |
| You have the right to be angry at October the 7th. | |
| Were you? | |
| Yes. | |
| You were? | |
| Yes. | |
| You were angry at what Hamas did that day? | |
| Yes, I was. | |
| Israeli people. | |
| The slaughter, the mayhem, the murder, the kidnapping of babies, and Holocaust. | |
| This is one of the things I kept asking all the Palestinian guests, which is probably why you had a view that somehow I was against the Palestinian people. | |
| I wasn't, but I was certainly against anyone that wouldn't absolutely, unreservedly condemn what Hamas did that day. | |
| That had to be a starting point for any constructive conversation. | |
| Okay, so you've said that for a long, long time. | |
| We have been talking about that for 20 years. | |
| But why would that be wrong? | |
| It's not wrong to feel angry about what happened. | |
| I wholeheartedly stand against harming civilians. | |
| All of my work, all of my life, all of my principles is against harming any civilians, whoever they are. | |
| I'm against all of that. | |
| But my problem, Piers, is that I have looked a lot for you. | |
| And then for the past 20 months, you have been repeating this over and over and over and over again. | |
| As if October the 7th was the beginning of everything. | |
| And you never looked at what happened before October the 7th and what happened to the people. | |
| Nothing that happened. | |
| The thing is, Ahmed, I never took a view that anything that happened on either side before October the 7th could possibly justify what Hamas did that day. | |
| There is no justification for that scale of terrorist attack. | |
| None. | |
| Nada. | |
| Nothing. | |
| So I wasn't prepared to countenance anyone sitting on that chair or in any other location I was in, who if I said to them, do you condemn what Hamas did? | |
| If they refused to answer, then I would challenge them angrily about that. | |
| As I would do the other way around, as I am now about what Israel's been doing. | |
| So I campaigned against the Iraq war, right? | |
| When I was at the sort of Daily Mirror. | |
| I campaign against things I think are wrong. | |
| And I will challenge and harangue people when I think they're supporting things that are wrong. | |
| I'm just curious, though, why you've made it so personal against me. | |
| Do you blame me for the loss of your loved ones? | |
| I didn't understand that. | |
| Okay. | |
| So everyone appreciates that you stood up against the war in Iraq. | |
| We also wanted you to stand up against the genocide that is taking place in Gaza. | |
| And, you know, you changed your talks recently. | |
| And that's, I appreciate that. | |
| I love that. | |
| But please remember that, Piers, bad journalism kills. | |
| Bad journalism kill people. | |
| You know that Israel could not carry out a genocide in Gaza without the justification of the mainstream media. | |
| And unfortunately, I don't blame you specifically for the murder of my family. | |
| Oh, you did. | |
| I blame all of the mainstream media on the murder of my family. | |
| And you were one of them. | |
| So you blame me personally. | |
| I blame you personally as one of the mainstream media who justified the murder of the Palestinians and dehumanized the Palestinians. | |
| I never justified the murder of Palestinians. | |
| I only said... | |
| Not directly. | |
| I only said that I believed Israel had a fundamental right and duty to defend its people after that appalling attack, a series of attacks, particularly as Hamas, through its official spokesman on camera, had said they were prepared and wanted to do this again and again and again. | |
| You talk about genocide. | |
| That is genocide. | |
| That is actually what genocide is. | |
| When you want to kill as many Jews as you can kill. | |
| That's the problem, Piers. | |
| Yeah, but that is genocide. | |
| That is the problem. | |
| We always say that they want to kill the Jews. | |
| They do. | |
| That is dangerous. | |
| You and I know that. | |
| But they do. | |
| Our problem is not. | |
| They don't make any significant. | |
| No, no, our problem is not with the Jews. | |
| And even Hamas' problem is not with the Jews. | |
| It is with the Israeli. | |
| Why do they kill so many Jews then? | |
| They did not kill Jews. | |
| They killed Israelis. | |
| And I don't justify killing of Israelis. | |
| It's not that I want them to kill Israelis. | |
| What religion do you suspect most of the Israelis were? | |
| It doesn't matter. | |
| It doesn't matter. | |
| No, no, it makes a huge difference. | |
| They were not attacked because they were Jews. | |
| They were attacked because they were Israelis. | |
| It's a huge difference. | |
| How many of the people who were killed were not Jewish? | |
| It doesn't matter. | |
| But would you like consequences? | |
| No, it matters. | |
| Let me ask you a question. | |
| So many Palestinians were killed. | |
| Thousands of thousands of Palestinians were killed. | |
| What do you call Israel killed the Muslims in Gaza? | |
| You would say the Palestinians. | |
| And the Israelis were Israelis. | |
| They were not there as Jews. | |
| They were there as Israelis. | |
| And that is dangerous, Piers. | |
| It's not a religious war. | |
| This is a war between colonization and colonized occupiers and occupied people who live, who have been living under blockade and their siege and their occupation for the past 77 years. | |
| It's not with the Jews. | |
| We never had a problem with the Jews. | |
| We love the Jews as much as we love the Christians. | |
| But you have a problem with Israelis? | |
| Of course we have a problem with the Israelis as occupiers. | |
| How can you say you have no problem with the Jews, but you have a problem with the Israelis? | |
| Given that most of the Israelis are Jewish. | |
| I'm just astonished that you can't make the difference between the Jews and the Israelis, Piers. | |
| Huge difference. | |
| Most of them are Jewish. | |
| Yes. | |
| You know that. | |
| Yes, but they're called Israelis. | |
| I'm astonished you would try and draw a distinction. | |
| There's a huge difference. | |
| Hamas don't give a damn about whether they're Israelis or anything. | |
| They care about killing Jews. | |
| They made it no. | |
| No, listen, I am the last person on earth to defend Hamas. | |
| But just because I don't like Hamas, that does not make me amplify and exaggerate in what they think and lie about them. | |
| Do you know Ahmad Yassin, the founder of Hamas? | |
| Do you know him? | |
| Not personally. | |
| No, he was the founder of Hamas, and he was known as handicap or Israeli killed. | |
| But anyway, he was once asked, what is your problem with the Jews? | |
| And he said it clearly, and I'm quoting him. | |
| I don't have a problem with the Jews. | |
| If my brother, if my cousin occupied my country and killed me, I would have a problem with them. | |
| The problem with the Palestinians is against Zionism, against Zionism, against Zionists, against Israelis. | |
| Why do they kill innocent Israeli people then? | |
| Innocent women, children, grandmothers? | |
| Why do they kidnap babies? | |
| Why do they kidnap them? | |
| Ask them, don't ask me, I'm not one of them. | |
| You're trying to explain their ideology, and I'm telling you, they are an undisguised death cut. | |
| It all makes sense. | |
| Intent on killing as many Jews as they can kill. | |
| It's dangerous when you make this religious war. | |
| It's dangerous when you try and pretend they're not after killing Jews. | |
| Of course not, they're not, Piers. | |
| Come on. | |
| They're after killing Jews. | |
| Come on. | |
| You don't think Hamas target Jews? | |
| Of course not. | |
| Because they're Jewish? | |
| Of course not. | |
| It's nonsense. | |
| No, it's not. | |
| I'm surprised that you're saying this, Piers. | |
| Genuinely, I'm surprised. | |
| There is a huge difference. | |
| You're surprised that I think Hamas target Jewish people. | |
| Of course. | |
| Of course I am. | |
| I find that staggering, Afghan. | |
| Why? | |
| Because it's obviously a ridiculous thing to say. | |
| Why? | |
| Because obviously they target and murder as many Jewish people as they can get their hands on. | |
| Of course not. | |
| And you say it's because they're Israelis, not Jewish? | |
| Because they're occupiers, because they occupied our country. | |
| And they're Jewish? | |
| No, just because they occupied our country. | |
| Because they're colonizers. | |
| Because they came to our country, kicked us out in 1948, and they killed thousands of Palestinians, including my grandparents. | |
| You know why Israel was set up? | |
| It was set up after World War II, in which Jewish people were the victims of an appalling holocaust by Hitler and the Nazis, where six million of them were exterminated purely because of their ethnicity and being Jewish. | |
| That's correct. | |
| So the Jewish people were given the state of Israel. | |
| My country. | |
| Okay, I understand. | |
| Listen, I understand the argument. | |
| I understand the whole history of the whole argument. | |
| So the Israeli stories are... | |
| But it wasn't Israelis given that place. | |
| It was the Jewish people. | |
| Yeah, but who are you to give the Jewish people my country? | |
| I'm not giving it to them. | |
| I'm not talking about you personally. | |
| I'm talking about those who send the Zionists to come and kill our families and take our lands. | |
| We have a problem with the occupiers, Piers. | |
| We don't have a problem with the Jews. | |
| I can't work with the Jews. | |
| Like, We Are Not Numbers. | |
| The mentor coordinator is Jewish. | |
| Tell me that Jews. | |
| Tell me quickly about your book. | |
| Well, this book, it's called We Are Not Numbers. | |
| It's the same name of my organization. | |
| And in which, in this book, we tell the human stories behind the siege, behind the statistics, behind the numbers that we often see in the news. | |
| It is composed of 74 stories written by young people in Gaza, telling their personal stories to the world in a language that the world understands. | |
| How many members of your family have you lost in this war? | |
| I have no idea. | |
| I swear. | |
| But I just know that. | |
| Tell me some of them. | |
| I will tell you that on October 2023, my family were sleeping in their home. | |
| My father, my two brothers, my three sisters, and all of their children. | |
| 14 nieces and nephews were sleeping, and my cousin. | |
| And Israel just dropped a bomb on my family home, killing all of them. | |
| Killed all of them. | |
| All of them. | |
| My father, who was 75 years old. | |
| My brother, my younger brother, who was 25 years old, and he was so happy at that time he got scholarship to do his masters again in Australia. | |
| My three sisters, one as a computer engineer, another one is an accountant, another one is a teacher. | |
| And 14 kids were slaughtered in my home, Piers. | |
| 14 kids, ranging from 2 to 13 years old. | |
| They all had lives, they had dreams, they had the future ahead of them. | |
| And they did not hurt the Israelis, did not cause them any damage. | |
| They were killed as they were sleeping. | |
| Do you know my brother-in-law when he went to this home to retrieve the bodies of his children? | |
| He told me that he could not recognize the faces of his children because all of them were torn into body parts. | |
| My older sister, who was a computer engineer, they found the upper half of her body thrown in my neighbor's home. | |
| What did she do? | |
| She and all of her children. | |
| My other sister, she and all of her children. | |
| My other sister, she and all of her children. | |
| All of them were killed. | |
| After that, how many cousins did they lose? | |
| I have no idea. | |
| How many people? | |
| Pierce, for the past 20 months, the people in Palestine, in Gaza, they have been besieged from all sides. | |
| They have been bombed day and night without a moment. | |
| I know, and as you know, I've made it clear. | |
| I think this has gone on way too far now. | |
| It's completely disproportionate what Israel's done. | |
| The blockade was shameful, almost certainly a war crime. | |
| This has to stop. | |
| My heart goes out to you genuinely for what's happened to your family. | |
| It's appalling. | |
| And like I say, I don't take it personally that you lashed out at me. | |
| I would question why, but I don't take it personally that you did that. | |
| I'm glad we've met. | |
| I'm very sorry about what's happened to your family. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I would ask you maybe one question, which is simply, do you blame Hamas at all for bringing the onslaught onto the people of Gaza with what they did on October the 7th? | |
| Do you not think that they knew when they did that exactly how Israel would respond? | |
| I have no idea what Hamas thought of when they did the 7th of October. | |
| I just know that Israel killed my family and I know who killed my family. | |
| Israel. | |
| It was an F-16 that dropped a bomb on my family home, killing all my family. | |
| It was Israel who killed my mother five years ago. | |
| Do you know how? | |
| By not allowing her to receive a treatment for her cancer. | |
| They died. | |
| She died waiting to travel to a Palestinian hospital in the West Bank to receive a treatment. | |
| And she died. | |
| I just know that Israel served the rest of the Palestinian people. | |
| I know whose weapons are. | |
| I know these planes, who they belong to. | |
| I know these switches are... | |
| No, I understand it, but I wonder whether you just think that what Hamas did was so heinous on such a spectacular scale that the leaders of Hamas knew, they knew that Israel would have to respond with enormous force. | |
| And they did. | |
| And a lot of your family were killed in the response that came. | |
| I'm not taking a side. | |
| I'm not trying to justify it. | |
| I'm just saying Hamas would have known exactly what was going to come back when they did what they did. | |
| And I just wonder whether, as you blame a lot of people, Israel, me, others, whoever, does any part of you also blame Hamas? | |
| Piers, I don't know what Hamas think thought when they did the 7th of October, but I know who killed my family. | |
| I know who served the Palestinian people. | |
| I know who started all of this problem in the Nakba 77 years ago when they took away my homeland. | |
|
Living in Freedom
00:02:33
|
|
| I'm a refugee, Piers Morgan. | |
| And I know all of the evil in the world starts from the root causes, which is the occupation. | |
| Enough, Pierce. | |
| We need to live in dignity. | |
| I agree with you living in freedom. | |
| Listen, is it too much to ask for a freedom? | |
| I agree with you. | |
| You should have exactly the same rights. | |
| All Palestinians should have the same human rights as Israelis, as me, as anybody else. | |
| I think there should be a two-state solution where Palestine has its own state, exactly as Israel does. | |
| I've said that from the start. | |
| And I hope we get to that place. | |
| And I hope this war and the suffering and the appalling experience that you and your family have had to endure is brought to an end. | |
| And that finally we can get to some peace in this very long-running, awful conflict. | |
| It's very good to meet you. | |
| You speak very eloquently about it. | |
| And I completely understand why you feel so passionately. | |
| I'd feel exactly the same way if it was my family. | |
| I really hope your family and the families of our listeners and viewers don't experience what I have experienced because it is absolutely horrific and no one should ever experience that. | |
| And I really wonder, Pierce, finally, if you were a Palestinian, if you lived under occupation your entire life, if you never had a passport, if you could not have traveled, if there were some foreigners who came to your country, saw it and they controlled your life your entire life, what would you do? | |
| I wouldn't like it. | |
| Because we need help. | |
| I wouldn't like it. | |
| I don't think I would commit a terrorist attack and I think that was an unforgivable act that day by Hamas. | |
| I don't know the answer to that question and it's a good question. | |
| It's an important question. | |
| And I don't know the answer. | |
| I don't think you know until you're in the shoes that the Palestinian people were in. | |
| I do know that what was going on was an oppression of the Palestinian people. | |
| I do believe it was a form of occupation. | |
| I do think it has to end. | |
| And Israel should not be able to exercise that kind of power over what happens to the Palestinian people. | |
| And the Palestinian people should have the same human rights as they do and I do. | |
| I've got to leave it there, Ahmed, but it's good to meet you. | |
| I'm glad you came in. | |
| We did this face to face. | |
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