'In War There WILL Be Casualties' Israel Strikes Lebanon To Target Hezbollah | With Naftali Bennett
Most of the world’s eyes are on Iran, but Israel is waging a major second front of this war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.More than 1,000 have been killed there and over a million have been displaced from their homes. Defence minister Israel Katz said Israel intends to occupy southern Lebanon and the BBC reports that Israeli forces have been ordered to destroy homes if necessary, using Gaza as a blueprint.Add all of this to Donald Trump’s anger over unsanctioned Israeli strikes on Iran’s biggest gas field, as well as the US condemnation of settler violence in the West Bank, and the differences in their national interests become very clear.Joining Piers Morgan to discuss is former Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, professor at Lebanon’s Université Saint-Joseph, journalist at Breakthrough News, Rania Khalek, and The Young Turks’ founder Cenk Uygur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Israel's Nuclear Program Remains00:09:54
Is the fact that America wanted to get out an indication that Israel wanted to get out?
Let there be no mistake, there will be inevitably a lot of civilian casualties when those horrible people in Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas, place those weapons within homes, within hospitals, within kindergartens.
We are officially and irrevocably done as Lebanese people of our land being used for proxy wars.
Some of your viewers might not know that from simply navigating X the entire day and listening to ideologue.
You mentioned over a million displaced.
That's 25% of Lebanon.
And Israel is responsible for doing this.
But if you look at a Hezbollah statement, it was a response to Israeli ceasefire violations.
Even I was worried about you.
It looked like every blood vessel was about to erupt and your screen was going to collapse in front of me live on uncensored.
I love that I yelled at Ben Ferguson.
He had it coming.
Your viewers loved it.
Everybody in America loved it.
And I'll do it again.
I think everybody should be as angry as me.
Much of the debate about the Iran war is centered on whether Israel is responsible for President Trump starting it.
It may very soon become a question of whether Israel is the barrier to ending it.
The U.S. president is talking about the prospects of a peace deal at the same time as deploying 3,000 paratroopers in readiness for a ground operation.
They're going to make a deal.
They're going to make a deal.
They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually.
They gave us a present, and the president arrived today.
And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money.
And I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize.
And they gave it to us and they said they were going to give us.
So that meant one thing to me, we're dealing with the right people.
Is it nuclear related?
No, it wasn't nuclear related.
It was oil and gas related.
And it was a very nice thing they did.
But what it showed me is that we're dealing with the right people.
Well, for his part, Iranian officials are still denying that any talks have taken place and that any big presence have changed hands.
An Iranian military spokesman said that Trump is negotiating with himself.
And amid the confusion, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear this week that Israel will decide when Israeli forces are done.
There is no indication that they are anywhere close to being done.
Most of the world's eyes are on Iran, but Israel is waging a major second front of this war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
More than a thousand Lebanese have been killed.
More than one million, almost a quarter of the entire population, have been displaced from their homes.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel intends to occupy southern Lebanon.
The BBC reports that Israeli forces have been ordered to destroy homes if necessary, using Gaza as a blueprint.
And Mr. Katz himself said yesterday, Israel's policy in Lebanon is clear.
If there is terrorism and missiles, there are no homes and no residents.
Add all of this to the U.S. President's anger over unsanctioned Israeli strikes on Iran's biggest gas field, as well as the U.S. condemnation of settler violence in the West Bank.
And the differences in their national interests become very clear.
President Trump ended the 12-day war between Israel and Iran last summer after sending U.S. forces to bomb its nuclear sites.
Netanyahu told his people that two existential threats have been eliminated, both the nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
He said, and I quote directly, this victory will stand for decades.
But as the two sides traded bombs just hours after the ceasefire, Trump said this.
We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
Do you understand that?
Well, it might not be long before we hear the same profanities again.
Returning to Uncensored Now is the former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Mr. Bennett, thank you very much indeed for rejoining me.
Yeah, great to be here.
Here's the big question.
Donald Trump clearly is trying to get out of this war.
All his talk is of it's over, we've won, we've destroyed their military, they want to do a deal, they're giving us presents, etc., etc.
All of which remains unconfirmed by anyone in the Iranian regime.
But putting that to one side, is the fact that America wanted to get out an indication that Israel wanted to get out, or would Israel potentially just continue?
Well, we have to achieve our objectives, and we set one major objective, which is to dismantle the nuclear program, the ballistic program, and the regional terror.
We've had the neglect for decades now, allowed this huge monster to envelope us and surround us with proxies.
And it's very painful to dismantle this, but we have to do it if we want to survive.
Okay, that's not an answer to my question, though.
Yeah, I like doing that, Piers, from time to time.
I've noticed.
Look, we're going to have to continue until we reach our objectives.
I'm not privy.
I'm not the prime minister today.
I can say from our perspective, if we finish the war without dismantling the nuclear program and the ballistic missile program, then we've not met our objectives as Prime Minister Netanyahu defined it, and we failed.
So we'll see.
So, Prime Minister Netanyahu, he said on the record a few days ago, it's impossible to win this war purely from the air, indicating that at some stage ground troops have to be deployed.
And many people believe that the reason he said that is because Iran has a lot of enriched uranium, enriching to the point where it's getting close to building a nuclear weapon, but that it's buried away and that the only way to actually get at that enriched uranium would be through ground forces.
A, do you agree with that assessment?
And B, if there are ground forces committed, that is clearly a major escalation in a war that Donald Trump wants apparently to be de-escalating.
Well, there's a few ways you can get the uranium out.
One is that Iran understands that it has to remove the uranium, hand it over to, say, America or some international organization if they want the war to end.
So you can do it in a mix of action and kinetic action and diplomacy.
That's also another option.
And as you suggested, there always is the land forces option, and I guess a few others.
Would Israel commit its own ground forces?
We have to do everything to remove this threat.
We have a very unique and strange situation that I think no other country in the world has.
You've got a country that explicitly says it wants to annihilate my country.
I don't think there's another case right now in the world, at least I can't recall, that one country says we are going to destroy, totally destroy another, and they act towards building it.
And now we saw that they actually mean it because they've shot at our country hundreds and hundreds of ballistic missiles, and we know they have a very advanced or had a very advanced nuclear program.
So from our perspective, we have to remove it.
We have to put in place a permanent structure that will prevent them from rebuilding it.
Now, how we get there, there's many options, but ultimately we have to do it.
We have no choice.
Wouldn't you do that?
Well, I think my confusion is that Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said after the 12-day war, you'd already done it.
You had removed the nuclear and ballistic missile capacity and threat.
And so the world breathed again.
It was all over in 12 days.
It seemed very quick, very successful.
Everyone patting each other on the back.
And yet here we are, less than a year later, and we're being told the mission of this entire war is to do exactly what we've been told had been done last summer.
So hence the confusion.
No, that I have to agree with you.
I think when Netanyahu declared victory in all kinds of places, sometimes it's premature.
You have to get the job done, really get the job done, and I would have less major declarations and more results.
So I definitely agree with you.
The result has to be that Iran cannot nuclearize itself again.
If the Iranian regime remains intact at the end of all this, wouldn't that be a failure, given all the rhetoric at the start of this war about removing the regime?
If they remain intact and the IRGC remains in control, doesn't the threat that you were trying to eliminate remain?
In a sense, it does, but that depends really on what parameters we have on the nuclear program.
Because if, for instance, there's an agreement where 460 kilograms of highly enriched uranium are taken out of Iran and there's verifiable verification that they dismantled all of the system and inspections under international systems and we can verify that that's a reasonable way to know that they're not progressing on the nuclear program.
Targeting Residential Terror Areas00:15:06
Let's turn to the Lebanon because several days after the attacks on Iran, Israel attacked the Lebanon.
Lebanese authorities say over a thousand people are sitting there.
No, Piers, I have to correct you.
Just so you get your facts right.
That's not what happened.
Sorry, let me rephrase my.
No, you're right.
I know what you're going to say.
I know what you're going to say, and let me rephrase that.
Hezbollah launched strikes against.
That's what I'm going to say.
It's just a fact.
It's just a fact.
I am uniquely self-correcting myself before I even let you answer to correct me, which is probably the first time I've done it.
Just to rephrase my inaccurately phrased question.
That's because you're a decent guy.
Even if we disagree, at least you listen and you look at the facts as they are.
Do you know what?
I'd like to be fair and I'd like to be accurate.
And if I get accused of being inaccurate and unfair, it doesn't work.
Exactly.
So several days after the attacks on Iran, Hezbollah launched strikes against Israel and Israel then responded.
And as with Gaza and the attacks on Hamas, I don't think people have a problem with Israel defending itself.
They simply have a problem with the scale of the defense and how it is executed.
And the Lebanese authorities say at least 1,000 people have been killed and nearly 3,000 injured in Israeli attacks since March the 2nd.
More than a million people dispersed.
And the major charity Oxfam has now said that Israel is deploying the Gaza Genocide Playbook in Lebanon and says its analysis shows that Israeli forces are also destroying water and sanitation infrastructure.
Has damaged at least seven critical water sources, including reservoirs, pipe networks, and pumping stations, and destroyed electricity networks and bridges, cut off vital supplies and services for entire towns and villages, which, in many people's eyes, would cross a lot of red lines when you are engaged in military action.
What is your response specifically to what Oxfam say about you deploying the genocide playbook that was done in Gaza as they see it?
They're full of you know what.
Look, here's the deal: here's where we stand.
We have a major and big terror organization that says we want to destroy Israel.
They attack Israel, they build many, many rocket launchers and disperse them across Lebanon, including in houses.
Let me tell you a personal story.
In my previous life, before entering politics, I was a reservist, a commander in a special unit, and I commanded operations, search and destroy missions on rocket launchers in Lebanon of Hezbollah.
I was an expert.
If you ever need that service, give me a call.
And one day I came into a town in southern Lebanon into a house.
There's a living room, a parents' room, kids' room, and a freaking rocket room.
There was a rocket launcher in the house with a movable ceiling.
So when we attack that rocket launcher, obviously that house will be destroyed.
But who's responsible?
Of course, it's Hezbollah responsible and the stupid family who places a rocket in their home.
Would you place a rocket in your children's room?
Well, no, no, I wouldn't, but I think the issue becomes.
Well, they do, and if you do, if you place a rocket launcher in your home, your home will be destroyed.
That's sort of one of the things that you're doing.
But what about all the homes?
But here's my point, though, Natalie Bennett.
I understand that, but here's the problem.
In big built-up residential areas, if you target one home for that purpose and it has got a rocket in it, therefore you have justification because they're clearly planning to use that, we would assume, to attack you, then you have a lot of other residential homes around there that won't have rockets that have completely innocent civilians in it.
So Israel can say we never deliberately target civilians, but what you are doing is deliberately targeting residential areas where you believe, often with good reason, that there are terrorists or people supporting terrorists with arms.
And in the process of taking them out, you're killing a lot of civilians as well.
And that is the problem that you've had, I would say, in the PR that surrounded the war against Hamas, is that so many civilians were killed in the process.
And it seems to me you're going to face the same problem in Lebanon here, where it's not when you say, look, if we target this house and blow it up because it has rockets aiming at us, people say, fair enough.
But when you take out 20 homes around it and none of those have rockets in them and they're just innocent civilians, and that adds up and adds up and adds up, eventually you get to a position rather like with Gaza where you're leveling vast swathes of the Lebanon, displacing a million people, maybe more, attacking water supplies, sanitation supplies, all the rest of it.
And just in the end, the totality of what you do is deemed to be disproportionate.
Well, war is a bad thing.
War is a bad thing.
And when we have, we target threats.
We don't target civilians.
We target threats.
The responsibility lies only and exclusively at the hands of those who place those threats and embed them within neighborhoods.
We send text messages.
We evacuate people, what you've suggested.
We sometimes even send pamphlets.
We bend over backward to reduce those casualties.
But let me be clear.
In war against terror, there will be casualties.
Now, here are the we basically have three options.
One is say, look, you know, Piers Morgan says this is really complicated and it's improportional, so let's just let it be and they'll shoot rockets and kill my family.
Option A, bad option.
Option B, let's bomb the heck out of everywhere and, you know, just put huge bombs and incinerate the whole area, kill hundreds of thousands of people.
We don't want to do that.
That would be easy, by the way, and it would be less costly from our perspective.
And then we have option C, which is the only one possible, to do our best to remove the threat while minimizing, as best as we can, civilian casualties.
But let there be no mistake, there will be inevitably a lot of civilian casualties when those horrible people in Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas, place those weapons within homes, within hospitals, within kindergartens.
Option D, if anyone in the world has some beautiful new idea of how to solve this problem in a different way, let me know.
I'll be the first to adopt it.
But I would say, I would argue that option B is pretty much what you operated in Gaza.
I mean, you've leveled 75% of the people.
Oh, come on, Peter.
Well, let me explain why.
Let me explain why.
No, Piers, Piers, hold on a minute.
You haven't let me explain why.
Hold on.
Well, at least let me explain why.
But look at the numbers, my son.
Look at the numbers.
There would have been a million dead civilians.
10 or 15,000.
You afford me the respect to explain why, which is you have leveled about 75% of Gaza.
Leveled it.
You agree?
We have leveled the infrastructure because they placed tunnels.
Okay, but you don't dispute warehouses in almost every house in the world.
But if you decide to turn into a huge terror base, then it's no longer a city.
It is a terrible base and a terror base.
That's what you would do.
Hang on.
You talked earlier about facts being important.
They are.
You seem to have just confirmed that 75% of Gaza has been leveled, right?
We can agree that.
No, I don't know the numbers.
That's a number you said.
I have no idea, but I do know what we're doing, and we're leveling places that are used against us as terror bases.
I understand.
But my point being, you said that option B. You said option B was indiscriminate bombing, right?
Raising that place to the ground.
And many people believe that in Gaza, if you level 75% of the entire Gaza, having displaced millions of people, then you are, that's option B, right there.
That's what you're doing.
No, option B is bombing them like Britain bombed Dresden, is bombing it with the people inside.
We did something that I think very few armies do.
We tell them we're about to bomb the terror base in that building.
Get out of the building.
Who does that?
We do that.
If you're not going to not do it.
But Natalie, I mean, that's a big difference.
Listen, for what it's worth, I have condemned what happened in Dresden.
I thought it was outrageous.
And it's one of the reasons.
I don't.
It's one of the reasons that after World War II, whole new rules of engagement were implemented through the Geneva Convention.
So that's the whole point of what happened post-the World War II was a lot of stuff happened people felt was beyond the pale and shouldn't happen again.
Mosul, let's say that's the same thing.
I would categorize the leveling of Dresden as one of those things.
But I just want to talk about the targeting, as the Lebanese see it, of their medical facilities.
They say that you've hit 128 medical facilities and ambulances across South Lebanon, killing 40 healthcare workers and wounding 107.
Is that accurate?
I have no idea.
I don't know every fact that you're reciting.
I can tell you how we operate because I'm a major in reserve.
I was a defense minister of Israel and I was prime minister of Israel.
So I know how we operate.
We never deliberately target civilians, period.
Full stop, never.
We never deliberately target hospitals.
We do destroy terror bases that are embedded anywhere.
And I don't care where they're embedded.
If you, Hamas, or you, Hezbollah, decide to convert a hospital into a terror base, we will destroy it and you are responsible, not us.
If everything you're doing lives up to your self-styled claim that many Israelis have said on this show that you're the most moral army in the world, then why don't you lift your ban on international journalists going into Gaza, say, so that they can see for themselves?
That ban is still in place.
No, I don't know that.
That's a fair question.
And I'm not running Israel now from my perspective.
We have nothing to hide.
And I'm proud of being Israel.
And, you know, the most moral, the second most moral, all I know is that we are in the toughest circumstances on earth.
No other nation, no other democracy with decent people.
The people out here are just good people.
If you meet Israelis, by and large, most of them are good, decent people that just want to live our lives.
We didn't choose to be surrounded by radical Islamists that want to kill me, my kids, and they say it and they do it.
So we're doing our best to defend ourselves the most moral way possible.
But it's not going to be sterile.
It's not going to be beautiful.
It's war.
War is a horrible thing.
I think the question I would ask is whether...
It's their decision.
Yeah, and listen, I agree with you.
If there's nothing to hide, why not let the journalists in?
No, I don't disagree with you.
Maybe there's some consideration I'm not aware of, but by and large, I'm not a sure person.
You can understand why, given there's supposed to be a ceasefire there, you can understand why the continued ban on journalists going into Gaza is making people deeply suspicious about what has been done there.
Well, those same people are very adept at being suspicious and anti-Israel with or without this decision.
But granted, I don't disagree.
Final question.
I'm not sure I've asked you this before, but there's been a growing sense that if you criticize the Israeli government and its actions or decision-making, automatically you're anti-Semitic.
What do you feel about that?
Because I feel it's ridiculous in the same way that when I opposed the Iraq war in 2003 as editor of a big newspaper in the UK, it didn't mean I was anti-the British people or my country.
Why should it follow that if you criticize Israeli actions, military actions, which everyone should be entitled to do, de facto you're an anti-semi?
No, I agree with you, Piers.
It's totally fair and legitimate to criticize the Israeli government.
I criticize the Israeli government.
Heck, I'm trying to replace the Israeli government.
I intend to be the next prime minister of Israel.
I'm full of criticism.
That's what a democracy is about.
So that's totally legit.
I'll tell you what's not legit.
It's to have double standards towards Israel and to not look at the big picture and just claim that Israel wants to swallow all the territory around and not look at the basic fact, which is we're a democracy.
We're not looking to conquer Jordan or Lebanon or anywhere.
We're happy.
We're content with Israel.
But we're being threatened by these crazy nuts that want to kill us.
And it's hard to say.
We're talking about crazy homicidal nuts who want to do bad things to people.
Let's just end with what is happening on the West Bank with some appalling incidents involving extremist settlers there receiving global condemnation.
Another former prime minister of your country, Ehud Olmer, said this week there should be an ICC intervention.
There's been a new report come out that no prosecutions have happened in Israel for settler killings in the past decade.
There have been some appalling scenes in the last week.
Ideological Fantasies vs Reality00:08:22
Can you condemn those?
Of course.
I didn't wait for you.
I condemn it in Israel.
So did the prime minister.
But I'll tell you: look, we are a country with rule of law.
In Judea and Samaria, there's half a million, 550,000 Israelis and roughly two, two and a half million Palestinians.
And there must only be rule of law.
Wherever there's crime and any sort of violence, I have zero tolerance for that.
Many Jews have been murdered by Palestinians.
And if there's violence from Jews towards Palestinians, that's totally unacceptable.
And we have to use all our tools to take care of that, no question.
Natalie Bennett, I always appreciate you coming on.
We always have a robust conversation, which is important.
And I thank you.
Robust is the good word.
Thanks, Piers.
I appreciate it.
And it's always a pleasure being here.
Thank you very much.
A little earlier, I got a passionate view from Inside Lebanon from Dr. Salah Makhnouk, professor at the University of St. Joseph in Beirut.
Welcome to Ancensu.
Thank you for having me, Pierce.
I think what's getting lost in the last three weeks or so is what has been happening in Lebanon.
That's why I wanted you on.
A mutual friend sent me a clip of you talking very passionately about what has been going on in Lebanon.
Now, for those who've not been following it as closely as they're following what's happening in Iran, just summarize what is going on.
Piers, first, I'm incredibly grateful to be here, and I'm thankful for you for allowing a voice of the Lebanese people who for 57 straight years have been reduced to footnotes in a variety of regional conflict, ideological conflict, more recently, Gaza and Iran, where we are treated, all five million of us, either as data by people counting the number of casualties or simply as a natural consequence or extension of some ideological war.
First it was the Palestinians in the 60s and then it was the Egyptians and then it was the Syrians and then it was Hezbollah and now it's the IRGC and its proxy.
You know, Piers, since 1969, since 1969, one delusional militia after the other has drawn Lebanon to war against the will of its own people.
I am 42 now.
This is the sixth war in my lifetime.
So what I want to say using your platform is that we are officially and irrevocably done as Lebanese people of our land being used for proxy wars.
And when I say we, I speak not only in my name, but in the name of millions of Lebanese, an absolutely astounding majority of which refuse to be part of this conflict.
Now, some of your viewers might not know that from simply navigating X. the entire day and listening to ideologue, but I brought with you, I brought to you today a poll conducted by Gallup, one of the most respectable U.S. institutions conducting polls in Lebanon.
And what does the poll say?
The poll say when they asked, do you believe that the Lebanese army should be the only group, only group that bears weapons and not the militias, 79% of Lebanese said yes.
Only 19% of Lebanese said no.
The poll asks again, in your opinion, do you favor Lebanon supporting Palestine in each of the following ways or not?
When asked about engaging in military conflict with Israel in the service of other causes, 86% of Lebanese said no.
Only 10% said yes.
So our message today is very clear to the world.
This is not our war.
This is not a war of the Lebanese people against Israel.
This is not a war between Lebanon and Israel, between the government of Lebanon and Israel.
This is a proxy war fought by the IRGC and its proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Israeli government.
And we are simply all five million of us, just pawns and hostages in for the millionth time in this regional equation.
And we hear constantly and constantly, Piers, from people in the West living comfortably in their living rooms, lectures in morality about resistance and about aggression.
You know, when Hezbollah launched these rockets against Israel on March 2nd, you know what they got from the Iranians?
They got a thank you from Mustafa Hemea himself.
He thanked them in a letter for entering a war, and I quote, in defense of Iran, despite local obstacles, local obstacles being the Lebanese people.
You know what we Lebanese people got?
Not just bombs, a million displaced, over a thousand dead, mayhem all over the country, billions of dollars in losses.
No, we got lectures, lectures in morality from pundits and intellectuals and academics living comfortably in the West who want to use our suffering as Lebanese people for their ideological fantasies.
And I want to say today that I want these people to leave us alone to find other venues where they can express their ideological fantasy because this conflict is not about their problem in America with Donald Trump.
It's not about their views in Gaza, some of which might be right.
It's not about the reductive worldview of good and bad.
And it's not about some idea that they want to change the world through using Lebanese lives.
These ideologues, woke leftists, want to use our suffering for their ideological fantasies because these people, Piers, are the objective and reasonable allies of the worst elements of Israeli society, the worst elements of the Israeli right.
You remember very well since 1993, when Hamas was bombing the buses and an extreme lunatic fanatic from the Israeli society killed Ishaq Rabin.
Since then, these two powers of ideological woke left, Hezbollah, and the extreme right-wing elements in Israel have been fighting it out at the expense of people in this region.
And especially in Lebanon, where it is the will of the Lebanese people and the Lebanese government to put an end to this war, we want these people as well as the militias, as well as the IRDC to all leave us alone to let us live in peace and prosperity.
I mean, incredibly powerful and eloquent statement there.
In the context of what you said, do you think there is a justification for what Israel and the United States are now doing in Iran?
Do you believe that Iran has basically been propping up Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas for decades, and that until that gets dealt with, there can never be proper peace in the region?
Part of what we stand for as Lebanese peers today is to make sure that these regional conflicts, no matter their righteousness or lack thereof, are not extended into Lebanon at the expense of the Lebanese people.
Now, if you ask me as an analyst and as Lebanese, we've seen nothing from the IRGC except assassinations, bombings, radicalization of society, increasing sectarianism, and never-ending wars.
So, yes, if you ask me, would I like to see the Iranian regime fall down?
Would this solve the problems of Lebanon?
I would say absolutely yes.
But my main concern is not supporting or not supporting the war of Israel in the United States against Iran.
My main concern is Lebanon and what is said in particular, Pierce, if you allow me, by Western pundits about Lebanon.
I've seen a lot of pundits, some of which were guests on your show, all the way from the Conference of America, 7,000 miles away from here.
The likes of Mr. Ugur, I've seen him, and the likes of Mr. Hassan.
I've seen them speak about Lebanon.
And I would like to ask them a question right here from Beirut.
If you allow me: How many Lebanese need to die so you can say, so you can satisfy your ideological cravings?
How Many Must Die00:05:19
How many?
We keep being pontificated at as if we are children who are unable to decide their own fate and their own national interest.
Chalas, as we say in Lebanon, khalas.
We want them to leave us alone.
I've heard the argument that, you know, Israel is attacking Lebanon and the Lebanese army need to stand by with Hezbollah to fight Israel, as if this is the national interest of the Lebanese.
This is not only idiotic, Pierce, and shameful, it's counterproductive.
And you know how I know that it's counterproductive?
Because unlike them, I rely on facts, research, and history to prove my point.
We know from history when Lebanon was attacked and when Lebanon was not attacked.
If you allow me to show you this study I did, if we can take it on camera for just two seconds, I will tell you about these numbers.
We know in Lebanon very well, 80% of us, that for 20 years between the armistice agreement of 1949 and the beginning of PLO attacks against Israel in 1969, for these 20 years, we know what happened between Lebanon and Israel.
We know that in this 20-year period, do you know how many times Israel violated Lebanese sovereignty in a 20-year period?
Tell me.
82 times, Pierce.
82 times in 20 years.
Do you know how many Lebanese people died in 20 years as a result of skirmishes between Lebanon and Israel on the Israeli-Lebanese border?
In 20 years, 15 people died.
Do you know how many people were injured in 20 years?
In a whole 20 years, 16 people were injured.
That's in a whole 20 years.
Why?
Because there were no militias in South Lebanon and the state owned the monopoly of arms.
Now, if you compare that very quickly to the era that is often praised by some of these pundits, the era where the resistance was fighting against Israel and protecting Lebanon.
In this period, between 2006 and 2026, a perfectly comparable period in terms of time frame, the number of Lebanese deaths, 6,152 people.
The number of Lebanese injured, 23,056 people.
The number of Israeli violations to Lebanese sovereignty that the resistance was protecting, 62,150 violations.
That's a 410 times fold in dead people and 756 times fold in violations.
So the math is clear, Piers.
We knew when we were a jewel of the Mediterranean in the Middle East and why that is.
We know these facts.
We need them to stop lying because of their ideology at our expense.
We also know, by the way, Piers, speaking of occupation and aggression, by certificate of the UN Secretary General in April 2000, that Israel had exited, left its occupation of every single inch of Lebanese territory.
Today, because of the wars of liberation for Gaza and for Iran, about 25% of our territory is not occupied.
We also know, as a matter of historical fact, that for 78 years of existence of Lebanon and Israel, despite 20 years of military occupation of the South, not one Jewish settlement, not one Jewish settlement was put in South Lebanon.
So save us your buzzwords about expansionism and colonialism and settlements, etc.
We know our history, and we don't need people blinded by ideology to tell us that we need to stand with an illegal sectarian fundamentalist militia and fight Israel.
We don't need to do that.
We need to stand with our army to establish Lebanese sovereignty, after which Israel would not be able or willing to attack Lebanon and thousands of people would not die.
Salah El Makhnouk, I really appreciate coming on Uncensored.
We've run out of time.
I could have talked to you for a lot longer.
Please come back again because I think...
Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
I think you're a very speaker as a Lebanese.
I appreciate it.
You're very powerful and very eloquent.
And I can feel your passion.
And I can tell you, you know, you've gone back in history and you've thought about this very carefully.
And I appreciate that.
I appreciate you coming on.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Piers.
Well, joining me now is the Lebanese American journalist, Rania Kalik.
Rania, welcome to Uncensored.
Rania, what is your response to what we just heard from Dr. Salah?
Well, I got a chance to view some of his interview.
And I mean, he definitely represents certainly a segment of Lebanese, a tiny segment, I would say, who seek to normalize with Israel and who see Hezbollah as the bigger threat.
And Lebanese, you know, Lebanese have different opinions about this.
It's a very polarized society.
But one thing I will say is there is this sentiment among people who have his views that maybe this is an opportunity for the Israelis to take out their political opponent being Hezbollah in Lebanon, which I would kind of equate to like if the Democrats were kind of cheering on China to invade the U.S. and remove the Republicans from power or something.
Hezbollah As A Protector00:05:38
But beyond that, Piers, I just want to add some context that I think was missing from what he said.
Because yes, there's a horrific war on Lebanon.
I saw you in your earlier segment mentioning some of the toll of that war, which I appreciate.
Over a thousand have been killed.
We're in week four.
118 of those killed have been children.
40 medical workers, some of them killed in double tax have strikes.
You've got 128 health facilities targeted.
And on and on and on, you mentioned over a million displaced.
That's 25% of Lebanon.
And Israel is responsible for doing this.
I want to add some context, though, to how this happened.
Because yes, on March 2nd, Hezbollah escalated against Israel by firing rockets, none of which did any damage, but did fire rockets after the war with Iran started.
But if you look at Hezbollah's statement for why they did that, in their statement, they say it was a response to Israeli ceasefire violations.
There has been a ceasefire in place for 15 months since the war in November that ended in November 2024 between Israel and Hezbollah.
In those 15 months, Israel violated the ceasefire over 15,000 times.
That's according to numbers collected by the Lebanese government and the UN.
And those ceasefire violations included nearly daily bombings.
You know, I live in Lebanon.
I've seen it happening.
It included the killing of 370 people in Lebanon in those 15 months.
And the Israelis never withdrew from the eight to nine points that they had occupied strategic points in the border areas of southern Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah held its fire for those 15 months and abided by the ceasefire.
The Americans were supposed to oversee that ceasefire, but of course, did nothing to make Israel abide by it.
All that's to say, Hezbollah was responding to that and I guess found the time, you know, the war in Iran appropriate to do it because the Israelis would have to fight on two fronts.
But I think that context is really important because it goes back to, I would love to have a national army that can protect this country from aggression from outside.
The unfortunate fact of Lebanon is that the Lebanese army is not capable of doing that because it's dependent on hand-me-down weapons from the Americans.
The Americans give the Lebanese army weapons that could never be used to challenge the Israelis, and most of them are broken.
And they're dependent on donations from the Gulf monarchies.
So because of their donors, they are actually not able to even respond to Israeli aggression.
In fact, in this war, Piers, the Israelis have killed several Lebanese army soldiers, and there has been no retaliation from the Lebanese army because they literally cannot retaliate.
So all that's to say, we don't have a national defense strategy in Lebanon.
The government has done nothing to protect the people of the South who had been being bombed and having their land occupied for the last 15 months.
So as a result, it's that vacuum with which you have a non-state actor like Hezbollah coming in, stepping in, and they're a part of the South, they're of the South, and protecting their villages and people from Israeli aggression, which I would also add has taken on, I wouldn't even call it a new element because Israel has always had an ambition to occupy southern Lebanon since even before Israel was created.
You heard Israeli leaders like Ben-Gurion stating that the Latani River is the natural border of Lebanon.
The only reason they haven't been able to take Lebanon is because of fierce armed resistance in the South that even preceded Hezbollah, but that's what Hezbollah grew out of is Israel's many invasions.
Okay, but let me ask you, how would you categorize Hezbollah?
Because many people categorize them as terrorists in the same way that they view Hamas as terrorists.
They view the Houthis as terrorists.
And the common theme, the link, is they've all been funded and armed by Iran.
And that is, of course, the main reason why Israel in particular wants to go after Iran, because they say it's been a constant war of attrition through proxies, including Hezbollah.
You've described Hezbollah as strategic deterrence.
That's a long way from calling them terrorists.
What do you feel about Hezbollah themselves?
They may have come out of, as you say, a vacuum.
And, you know, your argument about the army and so on is a legitimate thing to raise.
But the way that Hezbollah goes about his business is that of a terrorist organization.
Well, I mean, Piers, that's according to the view of Western states, which don't make up the whole world.
I mean, Hezbollah has a political wing in this country.
And they're actually like, you know, Israel likes to call itself the only democracy in the Middle East.
And in those elections, Hezbollah is elected to power by their base.
They actually are a part of the biggest parliamentary bloc in Lebanon.
So they're not some fringe organization, right?
Like they have, and they have that support from their base, mostly in the South, because again, people see them as a protector that they don't get from the Lebanese government.
But I want to just add something here.
This is Israel's seventh invasion of Lebanon since 1978.
Seven invasions, right?
Some of those invasions preceded Hezbollah's existence.
Hezbollah grew out of Israel's 1982 invasion and occupation of Lebanon.
Because if you occupy, Piers, if you occupy or if you invade and occupy any country, there's going to be local resistance to that occupation.
And people are going to take arms from whoever they can.
In the case of Hezbollah, they took arms and funding from Iran.
That's absolutely true.
And they did that to fight off an Israeli occupation that they eventually pushed out in 2000 and again in 2006.
And there was an invasion in 2024 and there's an invasion again.
So I just also want to say something else here is, you know, I'm speaking to you from Lebanon, right?
I'm a Lebanese woman.
Yeah.
I'm in Beirut right now.
Condemn Atrocities On Both Sides00:15:05
And I am well aware that a few weeks ago, the Israelis acquitted five of their soldiers who were caught on camera gang raping a Palestinian prisoner, okay?
On camera, on CCTV footage.
You probably know this story.
They were acquitted and then embraced afterwards by several Israeli government officials and the media and the public as heroes.
There was even protests and rallies in Israel against their prosecution.
And that is not an isolated incident.
Human rights organizations, including Israeli human rights organizations, have documented systematic sexual violence against Palestinians by the Israeli military.
And I raise that just to say this military, some might call it an army of rapists in this case, is currently invading my country.
And the only thing standing in the way of me and this army of rapists is this group fighting in the south of Lebanon.
So it's hard for me to sit here and abide by categorizations that people in Washington are making when I know, again, that is the only obstacle between me and Beirut and this army that has raped, has killed tens of thousands of children, recently, recently tortured a child in Gaza.
All right, so would you stick by?
Okay, listen, I hear you.
So would you therefore also condemn what Hamas did on October the 7th?
Well, Piers, we've had this conversation before.
This is so last season, the condemnation game.
I'm going to stick by this answer every day.
Those people are still dead, sadly.
So let me just ask you to.
I'm going to stick by the answer I already gave you.
I don't, I'm not going to condemn people who are living under annihilation and genocide for resisting their gender.
No, it's fine, but you're condemning the actions of the IDF.
And yet, as you know, as you know, and I know, and the world knows, on October the 7th, 3,000 Hamas terrorists poured over the border in three different waves.
They attacked innocent people at a music festival.
They attacked innocent people in kibbutz.
They murdered indiscriminately people.
They killed 1,200.
They kidnapped over 250, including a baby and Holocaust survivors.
They did despicable things all day that day.
And yet you are very, very quick to condemn the IDF.
And trust me, no one's been more condemnatory of IDF actions when I think they're wrong than I have.
But you won't condemn Hamas.
And that's been my problem and why I've always asked that question of people who come on like yourself, because the reluctance to condemn terrorism when it's clearly terrorism and it's the indiscriminate, brutal killing and murder of innocent people.
Well, you can smile.
I don't find it funny.
I'm not, Piers, I don't find anything funny.
I'm in a war zone right now.
Explain why you find why you so here's my question, Ron.
Roni, here's my question.
Here's my question, Ronier.
My question is this: Why are you so quick to condemn the IDF for their atrocities, as you see it, but so reluctant to condemn the same kind of atrocities from Hamas or Hezbollah or Dahoutis?
What's the difference?
Atrocities are atrocities.
They should all be condemned, shouldn't they?
In Lebanon, as a Lebanese person, under the situation I'm in, to condemn resistance to a brutal supremacist settler colony is like asking an Austrian Jew in the 1940s to condemn resistance to Nazi Germany because atrocities.
That's all I'm hearing from you, because my entire life, my family has been subjected to constant aggression and war crimes by Israel.
Because since its existence and founding in this region, as a settler colony, a Jewish settler colony implanted in this region, in a region that's not majority Jewish, so it has to commit constant ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering to exist as a ethno-state, not a normal country, a settler colony, ethno-state.
Just constant aggression and torture and rape and land theft against my people.
They've currently displaced over a million in Lebanon, and they're saying they can't return.
You have Israeli finance minister Bazalel Smotrich saying they're going to annex southern Lebanon, depopulated of Lebanese, and replace it with Jewish settlers, just like they've done in the West Bank.
You're asking me to go to the United States.
Okay, but here's the difference.
The difference between me and you is I am very happy to publicly condemn Smodrich and Ben-Gavir.
I think they're a pair of right-wing headbangers who are doing Israel a massive disservice every time they open their mouths.
And I do think they are pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing.
And the nearest I've seen to genocidal language has come out of their mouths.
So you're not going to get any truck with me.
I'm happy to condemn them.
You know, I just wish that you would be intellectually honest and say, I find all this kind of behavior disgusting from the IDF or from Smodrich and Ben-Guevir or whoever it may be, or the settlers on the West Bank.
I would agree with you, by the way.
I don't think about a lot of what you're saying.
But your abject refusal to condemn atrocities from anyone on your side does you a disservice.
Unlike, Piers, wow.
Listen, you have a very intelligent woman coming to you from Lebanon.
I have such good knowledge of this region.
No, and instead of sitting here, you could learn, you could actually learn some things from me, Piers.
And instead of sitting here asking me about what's happening on the ground, talking to you about the situation in Lebanon, which I can give you a lot of nuance about, you're playing a condemnation game with me that I just don't want to play.
And I've given you the reason why I'm not going to be able to see online.
I'm happy to be wrong on your topic, but I've already made my...
I'm playing a hypocrisy game.
That's all.
A double-standard game.
That's all I'm playing.
I'm asking you to be intellectually consistent, and you're not.
You condemn atrocities on one side, but not the other side.
And that is intellectually dishonest.
I can condemn both happily and loudly.
That's intellectually honest.
And I don't think there's going to be any resolution to any of these big issues in the Middle East until people are genuinely intellectually honest and condemn all atrocities wherever they occur, perpetrated by whomever.
It shouldn't be difficult, but it's all got too, unfortunately, people are too entrenched and they can't be intellectually honest.
But look, I like having you on the program.
Thank you very much indeed for coming.
I appreciate it.
Thanks.
Well, join me now as the founder and CEO of the Young Turks, Chenk Yuga.
Chenk, how are you?
Hanging in there, brother.
I'm worried about you because last week, or whenever the last time you were on, we had a very pretty civilized debate.
And then the last five minutes, you completely exploded in a way that even by your standards, let's just remind viewers of what happened because I was taken aback by it.
Hence why I wanted to get you on one-on-one to discuss things in a slightly calmer manner.
Let's take a look.
The Israeli Edelstons gave Jonathan Pollard a trip on their private jet back to Israel and celebrated him like a hero because they love people betraying America for Israel.
You know, I can prove it.
I can prove it.
I can prove it.
So tell me if we should put American troops or Israeli troops in.
Okay, why are we putting our guys in?
Ben Ferguson, that traitor, said that it was no big deal that 13 Americans died.
It's a huge deal.
Ever said 13 Americans died?
Why do you send your goddamn Israeli friends into a war?
Thanks for it.
Thanks for it.
Now, Cheng, as you know, I like you.
When I come to LA, we meet up, we have great bagels together, we chew the fat.
I'm a big admirer of you, what you do, the young Turks, all of it.
I love you.
Probably one of my biggest repeat guests I ever have on Uncensored.
But even I was worried about you.
Looked like every blood vessel was about to erupt and your spleen was going to collapse in front of me live on Uncensored.
I don't want your body uncensored on my screen.
Why were you so angry?
And do you think it actually is constructive to get that angry when we're trying to debate these things?
Yes, I do.
I don't apologize for it at all.
I love that I yelled at Ben Ferguson.
He had it coming.
Your viewers loved it.
Everybody in America loved it.
And I'll do it again.
No, my health is perfectly fine.
So if I die for any reason, you should ask around.
It is not my heart.
My heart's perfectly healthy.
And in my real life, I'm very optimistic, very hopeful guy.
We literally have a segment called Operation Hope on the Young Turks.
You're very calm.
You're a calm guy.
I'm exercised about this.
When I meet you, you're a calm guy.
Yeah, you're just a chilled-out dude.
That's right.
But you seem to work yourself into this rage.
And I have to say, it is always, it is always.
Look, I would say this.
You said to me you would like to come on and have a one-on-one, a proper discussion between us about all this.
I would say as a dispassionate observer that the rage is invariably fueled by Israel.
So what is it about Israel in particular that makes you so enraged?
Be honest.
Yeah, 100%.
Believe me, I'm going to be honest.
I don't have a problem with that.
So first of all, just real quick on your program and on any program, the only time that I raise my volume is when people interrupt me.
And Israel first has a strategy of interrupting everyone else who talks because they want to monopolize the time.
They want to monopolize the propaganda.
So I don't let them talk over me and I never will.
So they'll always fail at that.
And I don't care how loud I have to get.
And I'm being loud on behalf of the American people.
All right, now to the core of the issue.
Why does Israel enrage me so much?
So there's several issues.
First of all, I remember growing up thinking, I wonder what I would do if I was growing up in the 1930s and 40s.
Would I have tried as hard as I possibly can to fight the Holocaust?
And I always thought I wish I knew and I would hope that I did, right?
Well, unfortunately, we got an opportunity here because there was a genocide in our lifetime.
And so I'm fighting as hard as I possibly can to save as many lives as I can.
And Israel's not finished.
Israel's still bombing Gaza.
They're still trying to annex West Bank.
There is out-of-control terrorism in the West Bank by the settlers, and they just invaded Lebanon and they just caused a war with Iran.
I mean, if you can't get upset about that, you're not upset about fascism, you're not upset about over-the-top terrorism, I think everybody should be as angry as me.
But those are part of the issue.
The other part, Piers, that is so important is that Israel is obviously controlling our politicians and our media here, and the media is gaslighting is unbearable.
Propaganda after propaganda for Israel and always on behalf of Israel.
Like, for example, they asked this silly question: Does Israel have a right to exist?
It's not asked of any other country.
Does Turkey have a right to exist?
Does Greece have a right to exist?
Well, of course, they do.
They already exist.
But they never asked the question of the country that actually doesn't exist, which is Palestine.
Does Palestine have a right to exist?
That is the pertinent question.
It is asked by approximately zero times by cable news anchors in America.
None, never.
And that is a super weird phenomenon where you keep asking if a country should exist that already does and has Iron Dome and nuclear weapons and the biggest military in the Middle East, but you won't ask the obvious question of shouldn't the Palestinians be allowed to exist?
And it's obvious that Israel is not allowing them.
Why do we have this overwhelming propaganda?
Those are very legitimate questions, and those are things that are enraging a lot of Americans.
And I'm just speaking on their behalf.
Okay, so as you know, a lot of people have tried to frame your very regular attacks on Israel as anti-Semitic, a charge that you have always strenuously denied.
And for what it's worth, I have never detected when you've come on my show that what you're saying is driven by a hatred of Jewish people.
I think it's driven by a hatred, I think it is a hatred, of the way the Israeli government conducts itself.
And we can come to that in more detail in a minute.
But I want to play you a clip, which is what one anti-Semitism campaign group called Canary Mission have highlighted.
They say that you've flopped from calling out anti-Semitic tropes and stereotypes to now perpetuating every one of them against Israel.
Let's take a look.
Oh, who do you think is really the one responsible?
They always say the Jews.
Because they think, oh, they're the puppet masters.
There's anti-Semitic tropes, et cetera, right?
And it's obvious that they control us.
And now Trump is out here like a puppet.
Yes, I said puppet.
You could suck it.
Puppets for Israel.
Puppet regimes.
Israeli puppet.
Yo, you guys like your money.
Abby, you can't get any more anti-Semitic than this.
Owe me more money.
You owe me more money.
Give me money.
Give me $310 billion isn't enough.
The Jews own the media, right?
So that's the anti-Semitic trope.
This is a control of our media by Israeli forces.
The root of all of these theories is always the Jews control the war.
Now, Cheng, when you watch that, there does seem to be shifting sands between what you're saying originally and what you then say.
Absolutely not.
First of all, of course, Canary Mission, I'm really glad you brought them up.
So there are these Israel-first thugs in this country.
And if you've never experienced it, actually now you have.
Before when you were for Israel, you never experienced it.
Now, once you slightly criticize Israel, you begin to experience it.
But what you don't know is that when I go to Muslim American events, they say, we're so happy that you speak out because if we speak out, we get fired from just regular jobs.
Or our businesses get attacked by things like Canary Mission, stopantisemitism.com.
They're not actually trying to stop anti-Semitism.
They're trying to stop any criticism of Israel.
And so that goes to the heart of that clip as well, which is we're not conflating Israel and Jews.
In fact, on the Young Turks, I've literally said hundreds, maybe thousands of times, guys, this is not about religion.
Do not attack Jewish Americans or Jews at all.
This is about a country.
And every country does, and governments do terrible things.
The people who actually conflate Israel and Jews are actually people like Canary Mission and all these Israel first groups.
And what they're doing is they're hiding behind Jewish civilians.
And they're saying, if you criticize Israel at all, that means you hate all Jews.
But wait a minute.
If we played that game with every country, then we couldn't criticize any country.
Oh, if you criticize the Chinese government, you hate all Chinese people.
Stopping Criticism Of Israel00:09:33
Well, that's absurd.
Of course, that's not true.
If you criticize the Turkish government, you hate all Turkish people.
You're anti-Turkist.
Well, of course, that's not true.
So it's not that anybody is picking on Israel, and certainly not on Jewish Americans.
It's that we're saying, can we apply the same standard to Israel?
And when we say that, they go, oh, no, you're not allowed to apply that same standard to Israel because you're all anti-Semites.
And as Brad Schneider, a congressman Democrat, did today to my nephew, Hassan Piker, he said, and this is a very common trick that Israel first does.
Okay, Hassan said things he claims that are anti-Semitic.
That's not at all true.
But he says it.
He says, that's why Abdul El-Saeed, a Democrat running for office in Michigan, is not allowed to campaign with him, is not allowed to support him.
Why do they do that?
Isolate Israel's critics and try to pretend that they're toxic and eliminate them from the national conversation so that no one can criticize Israel.
This is a game that they've done to average Americans, to people in the media even more vehemently, and to people in politics, so that you eliminate all of Israel's enemies and critics and opponents.
And then where is the moral outrage?
The moral outrage should be towards this genocide in Gaza where 72,000 people at a bare minimum have been killed.
Over 20,000 children at a bare minimum have been killed.
But we're not talking about the slaughter of 20,000 children.
Instead, we're talking about, should we condemn the people criticizing the genocide?
Should we condemn the people criticizing Israel starting seven wars, dragging us into a war?
No, all of this is a defense of not Jewish people, but of Israel.
And the reality is, both me and, by the way, wonderful Jewish Americans like Dave Smith, Glenn Greenwald, Ben Cohen, Jeff Cohen, Robert Greenwald.
You can go on and on for hours.
So many young Jewish Americans are actually doing something wonderful, which is they're fighting for peace, they're being principled, and they're on the right side, and they're standing up for America, and they're us.
They're us.
So I say that all the time, but they actually think that the bigger problem is people like us who are not anti-Semitic.
Because it's easy to say, oh, Nick Fuentes, no one should talk to him because he's clearly anti-Semitic and all the other charges, right?
The problem for them is when they can't show that we're anti-Semitic.
So then they take our criticism of Israel and they set up all these landmines, propaganda landmines with tropes.
So here, I'll give you an example.
So blood libel.
Now, blood libel is a terrible anti-Semitic trope from the 18th and 19th century made up about Jewish people drinking the blood of babies.
That's crazy talk, right?
But when we criticize Israel actually killing 20,000 children, they say, oh, that's blood libel.
But wait a minute, that doesn't have anything to do with blood libel.
Nobody's talking about drinking the blood of babies or anything like that.
Oh, you're using it in a very callous and disgusting and immoral way to shield the government of Israel from criticism and thereby endangering Jewish people because when you actually go to criticize Israel, they go, no, all Jews stand for genocide.
That's not true.
That's actually a more anti-Semitic statement.
So all of this is propaganda in order to protect Israel.
Okay, let me play it.
This is a clip from what Douglas Murray has been one of your biggest critics.
What he said on this show, actually, back in December 2023, about you.
You only really get animated if the Jews are involved.
And I can tell that for the following reason.
I mean, your surname's Uyghur, isn't it?
One million Uyghur Muslims in China have been put in concentration camps in the last decade.
And people of your ilk never really care about that, do you?
Because it's not the Jews doing it.
It's the Chinese Communist Party.
At the moment, one million people who are in Pakistan at the moment, who are your fellow Muslims and who happen to be Afghan, and I don't think you care about them, do you?
One million Afghans are currently being forcibly deported from Pakistan to Afghanistan.
You don't care about that.
You're not riled up about that.
You're not riled up about what the jungleweed are currently doing in Sudan, where thousands and thousands of people are being attacked by the Islamist militia there.
You don't care about any of that.
You get exercised and you rile up what little base you have of malcontents because you're riled up when the Jews do anything.
That is what people think.
They think, we watch Chenk a lot, but the thing that really gets him raging is always Israel.
Ultimately, it always comes back to one thing.
And the point they make about the anti-Semitic tropes is simply that as that mashup showed earlier, you used to be one of the people who would be very quick to point out the problem of people falling into the trap of reciting anti-Semitic tropes, blaming the Jews for controlling the media, controlling politicians and so on and so on.
And now you seem to have moved to a place where you're openly doing that yourself with conviction because you presumably believe it to be true.
But I'm not saying I think that.
I'm just saying that's what your critics think.
But in relation to what Douglas said there, there is a clear pattern.
You blow up about Israel.
You don't seem to have the same angry fury and rage about much else other than Israel.
Why is it such a particular thing for you?
Yeah, so I'm glad we're addressing this because when you say a lot of people think that it's that I'm blowing up about Israel because it's related to Jewish people, that's actually not true at all.
Only Israel first thinks that.
The rest of the country doesn't think that at all.
The rest of the country is perfectly rational and understands that we can criticize the Israeli government like we criticize any other government.
So now, but why do I get so mad about Israel as opposed to the other governments?
First of all, that's what Douglas Murray said about me not being exercised about those other things are not at all true.
He hasn't watched the Young Turks at all.
So for example, my last name is Uighur.
The Uighur people in China are being terribly abused.
And I do talk about it on the show.
In fact, I had the representatives of the Uighur government in exile on the show to talk about it.
They've got them in concentration camps and I can't stand it.
But why do I spend more time railing against Israel than the Chinese, for example, against the Uyghurs?
Well, there's a very good reason for that because we're not funding the Chinese.
We're funding the Israelis.
I could yell at the Chinese and I have, and it doesn't move them at all.
I could yell at Hamas or Hezbollah or Al-Qaeda and they don't care.
It doesn't move them at all.
And it's not the actions of our government.
What I am exercised about, what I'm really mad about, is actions of our government that we can control.
So we're not funding any of the other terrorists or bad nations in the world, but we are funding Israel as they committed genocide.
In fact, Joe Biden and Donald Trump gave them a thank you note along with $30 billion extra they gave them in the middle of a genocide.
So that was saying, hey, genocide, well done.
Here's Jenks' money.
Here's an average American's money.
Here's a family busting their ass can't pay the rent or the mortgage in Missouri.
You're going to take their money and you can use it for a genocide.
You could use it for wars.
You could use it for an endless occupation of the Palestinians and brutalizing all your neighbors.
Well, if you're not upset about that, honestly, I think you're really immoral.
That is an immoral position not to be enraged that they're using our government and our money.
We have to work harder.
We have to go and get a second job, pay more taxes so that Israel can commit more genocides.
China's not doing it with our money.
In fact, we have to borrow money from China to pay Israel for their genocide and their wars.
And then my children and grandchildren have to pay the interest on the money we borrowed from China to give to Israel to commit genocide.
That is insanity.
In terms of the tropes, what's happening, Piers, is that Israel is hiding behind the tropes.
So nobody's saying that Jews control this, that, or the other thing.
We're saying there's a lobby in America.
By the way, there is a lot of lobbies who control our politicians.
So when I say on the Young Turks, as I've said definitely thousands of times, maybe getting into the millions, big pharma, big oil, defense contractors, big banks, et cetera, all completely control our politicians.
And I can prove it.
And in fact, that's what I was yelling on the last time.
I can prove it.
So big pharma says that we're not allowed to negotiate drug prices.
That's insane.
We live in a so-called free market and capitalism, and we're not allowed to negotiate prices.
Why?
Because our politicians are deeply corrupt.
They're 100% corrupt.
So they say, Americans, we don't care if it even kills you.
You will pay whatever the drug companies demand because they don't work for us, the politicians.
They work for the drug companies.
The oil companies are the most profitable companies in the world, but we give them $35 billion in subsidies every year.
By the way, that's nearly 10 times what Israel gets.
So I am very exercised about that, and I'm furious about that.
And I'm not furious at the oil companies in Israel as much as I am furious at our politicians and our media.
So when I question big pharma and how much money they give to the politicians, I get no pushback.
Oil companies, no pushback.
Fighting The Israeli Lobby00:04:16
But when you get to the Israeli lobby, they want special rules.
And they hide behind the tropes.
Are you saying that money controls politicians?
Yes, I'm definitely saying that.
Are you saying Jewish money controls?
No, I didn't say Jewish.
You said Jewish.
No one ever said Jewish.
If, by the way, if the Bolivian lobby was as strong as the Israeli lobby and they had given billions of dollars to our politicians, then I would be living with the Bolivian lobby.
But it's not the Bolivian lobby.
It's not the Malaysian lobby.
It is obviously the Israeli lobby.
And Piers, can you not see that they are asking for special rules that you're allowed to criticize every lobby except Israel's given them.
Look, as you know, for a long time after the start of the war in Gaza, I supported Israel's right to defend itself.
I then became increasingly concerned and critical.
The longer it went on, the more disproportionate I felt Israel's response had become.
Interestingly, I've said that Ben Shapiro, the moment I began to get more critical, refused to come on the show anymore or have anything to do with me.
And the same has happened with Douglas Murray.
He hasn't appeared on our census since I became more critical of Israel.
And I've got a problem with that, with both of them.
I like them both.
I've always enjoyed interviewing them and debating with them.
But I don't see how you can be, as they both are, big supporters and defenders of free speech and sort of self-appointed crusaders of free speech, but shut down debate with people who are becoming more critical of something that you have been supportive of.
So to your credit, you always come on.
And also to your credit, today we've managed to speak for 20 odd minutes and you haven't shouted at me once.
So I think we are moving to a good place here, Chang.
Your spleen has had a better afternoon.
But my point being that you will debate anyone.
That is to your credit.
I don't know why Douglas won't come back on.
I think it's probably for the same reason that Ben Shapiro doesn't.
And it's just they don't like people who are vocally critical of what Israel's been doing in the last three years.
And I don't know anyone who's fair-minded about it or clear-minded about it who can't find things to criticize the Israeli government for.
Whilst at the same time, in my case, supporting Israel's right not just to exist but to defend itself.
I know a lot of Israelis, like them very much as a people.
I know a lot of Jewish people.
And I have to say, all the Israelis and Jews that I know have been saying to me how fair-minded they think this show is, how I get everybody on, they appreciate that.
And they themselves are very critical of what their government's been doing, in the main, of all the people I've met.
So I don't know why people who profess to be champions of free speech are not able to take legitimate criticism of a government, whichever government that is.
So on that point, you and I are totally in agreement.
Look, I've got to leave it there.
I know you'll be back soon.
So can I just say one last quick thing?
You can.
Yeah, one last quick thing.
I just want people to know, look, there's a difference between these three different groups, Jews, Zionists, and Israel First.
Jews are just Americans that live here.
I grew up with a kid whose parents were physics professors.
Mossad never called them.
They never got dialed into any plans of Israel or anything like that.
So please do not believe these ludicrous conspiracy theories about all Jews are this way or that way.
They're regular human beings who have a variety of opinions, obviously.
And a lot of Zionists, yes, they catch flak for some good reason, but a lot of them just want Israel to be safe.
They don't want the genocide.
They don't want the wars, etc.
But Israel First is the group that prioritizes Israel above all.
They're the ones who do the propaganda.
They're the ones who try to eliminate anyone who is opposed to Israel.
So my beef is not with the first two groups.
My beef is with Israel First.
And we are not going to let them say it's anti-Semitic to not give Israel another $300 billion or to start another war with them.
We are going to fight for America and we have every right to.
So, you know, you've seen me ask this question a couple of times.
So we have every right to ask why is it American troops that are being sent into Iran and not Israelis?
Inform Irritate And Entertain00:00:58
Do you know what?
I think people should be entitled to when bombs are flying around, people should ask questions.
It's the first prerequisite of anyone in the media to be loudly asking difficult questions.
Of course, holding all governments to account.
Cheng, I've got to leave it there.
It's been a civilized conversation.
I'm glad we've had it.
It's an important conversation.
I think people who sometimes think all they see is clips of you shouting probably don't realize there's a non-shouty chain.
I do.
And I've enjoyed this conversation.
So thank you.
Thank you, Piers.
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