Juno News - May 19, 2021


DEBUNKED： The biggest myths about the Israel⧸Hamas conflict


Episode Stats

Length

23 minutes

Words per Minute

158.1276

Word Count

3,717

Sentence Count

180


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
00:00:30.000 Thank you.
00:01:00.000 Thank you.
00:01:29.980 is Malcolm. I'm a Canadian journalist and political commentator. I write for the Toronto Sun and I am
00:01:36.140 the founder and editor-in-chief of True North. I want to do a video today because I want to talk
00:01:41.740 about the conflict going on in Israel, frankly because I see a lot of misinformation, a lot of
00:01:47.940 propaganda, and a lot of myths when it comes to this conflict and to Israel more broadly. Just
00:01:55.080 first things first, I will put all of my biases out there. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Muslim. I don't
00:02:01.040 really have a dog in the fight, other than the fact that I believe Israel is an ally to Western
00:02:06.960 countries like Canada and the United States. I think that Israel has the right to defend itself
00:02:12.640 against terrorist insurgencies and against adversarial actors that are in the region.
00:02:18.960 And I think that Israel is really a shining example of a pluralistic, peaceful, free society in the Middle East. One of the very few, if not the only examples of a peaceful and free society in the Middle East.
00:02:34.460 So I think that Israel is admirable in many ways.
00:02:38.700 But I also say that I don't think it's anti-Semitic to criticize Israel.
00:02:43.280 I think just like any government, it's fair game to criticize politicians, to criticize policies, and to criticize government in Israel.
00:02:52.260 And I'm also very sympathetic to the people of Palestine, the Palestinian people, the Arabs living in the area.
00:03:00.220 You know, everybody wants there to be a peaceful solution.
00:03:03.040 I had the opportunity to visit Israel and the West Bank and speak to Israeli Arab Israelis, to speak to Palestinians when I was there back in 2015.
00:03:17.340 And I was there as a working journalist.
00:03:20.060 And, you know, basically what I heard from people is a little bit different than what you hear in the media.
00:03:26.000 I spoke to Israelis, Jewish Israelis who hate their government.
00:03:29.840 They're not, you know, they're not big fans of Netanyahu.
00:03:33.860 They think that he's corrupt and, you know, they don't like his domestic policies.
00:03:38.580 The reason that he's so popular is because he is strong.
00:03:42.820 He's willing to fight fire with fire.
00:03:45.800 He wants to decimate the terrorist insurgencies.
00:03:49.260 And I think that resonates with a lot of Israelis who just want this to be over with.
00:03:53.500 They've tried, you know, a lot of different ways to negotiate, to try to make peace deals,
00:03:57.660 to try to make a two-state solution.
00:03:58.920 nothing has worked and they're just fed up uh tired of the fighting tired of the war tired of
00:04:04.100 you know having loved ones be killed and so they just want a strong leader that will end it um on
00:04:10.480 the other side i also spoke to many uh palestinians uh what i heard from them a lot was actually a bit
00:04:16.780 more surprising um i heard people that were very very criticism critical of mahmoud abbas the
00:04:23.280 palestinian leader um they said that he's corrupt that he refuses to hold elections that he's weak
00:04:28.420 that he bows down to the terrorist insurgencies. And so, you know, I don't think it's this black
00:04:35.420 and white. I think you have Jewish Israelis who are critical of their own government. You have
00:04:39.680 Palestinians who hate the leadership and the people that are making decisions on their side.
00:04:44.620 And, you know, both sides just want this to end. They just want to find peace. They want to live
00:04:48.460 side by side. And, you know, they're not really being very well represented by their leaders.
00:04:55.720 So today I want to take a few minutes to go through some of the biggest myths that I am
00:05:00.180 seeing when it comes to the current clash, this one right now in May 2021.
00:05:04.440 So I had my friends over at True North come up with a couple of examples of these myths
00:05:09.020 and I'm going to go through them for you right now.
00:05:11.960 Myth number one, Palestinians were peaceful and unarmed and it was the Israeli forces
00:05:18.120 that instigated this fight and Palestinians were just defending themselves.
00:05:23.080 Well, this is just not true.
00:05:24.220 So basically what happened was that there was a riot at Temple Mount.
00:05:30.280 This was clearly pre-planned.
00:05:32.100 You can see, you know, so Temple Mount is the holiest place in the Jewish religion.
00:05:37.580 It's also the third holiest place in the Muslim religion, which is why a lot of this conflict begins, because these two groups share a holy land, basically, and they both want to control it.
00:05:48.140 So Muslims were there, they were praying, and all of a sudden it devolved into a riot.
00:05:55.100 Well, the problem is that we saw some pictures here that show that this riot looked like it was pre-planned.
00:06:01.220 There were giant slabs of concrete and rocks that were placed everywhere to sort of encourage Palestinian protesters to get violent.
00:06:09.520 There were reports of rioters that were throwing Molotov cocktails, which are basically just firebombs.
00:06:15.180 So they're throwing firebombs, they're throwing fireworks, they're really agitating the Israeli
00:06:20.940 police and kind of just encouraging the police to overreact.
00:06:24.540 And we saw that a little bit with, you know, the same kind of riot control that you would
00:06:28.720 see in a North American city during an Antifa riot, you know, using tear gas and trying
00:06:34.220 to just clear the area and move people out.
00:06:37.520 Well, that was sort of the origin of this battle.
00:06:40.280 And then Hamas began firing its rockets.
00:06:42.660 So first it fired rockets into Jerusalem, even though it's supposedly the holy city of Jerusalem. Hamas is firing rockets into Jerusalem. And that is what prompted this entire battle. Israel didn't respond for hours later.
00:06:59.900 and so the idea that somehow that somehow Israel started this is just it's just not true the facts
00:07:06.820 are on the other side and so you know that's that let's go on to the next myth number two Israel is
00:07:15.800 an apartheid state we saw a couple of Green Party MPs tweeting this of course in the U.S. AOC said
00:07:24.100 that it was an apartheid state let's just be clear about something okay the definition of apartheid
00:07:28.720 most people, when they think of apartheid, they think of South Africa, where there were separate
00:07:32.480 laws, separate institutions, separate public availability for white South Africans versus
00:07:38.980 black South Africans. So separate, separate system of law. So the definition of apartheid is a policy
00:07:45.900 or system of segregation or discrimination on the grounds of race. Well, that's just simply not the
00:07:52.660 case in Israel. There are no separate laws for different races. There aren't even separate laws
00:07:57.180 for different religions, about 20% of the population of Israel is made up of Arab Israelis.
00:08:03.380 So Arabs who live in Israel, I'm not talking about the disputed territories, not Gaza,
00:08:08.100 not West Bank, but the actual territory of Israel, about 20% of the population is Arab
00:08:13.520 and they have full access to every institution the same way as a Jewish Israeli or a Christian
00:08:19.980 Israeli or any other religion of Israelis.
00:08:22.920 So the idea that there's separate systems of government simply isn't true. There are Arabs that are represented in the parliament in Israel. You see Arabs in positions of power as judges, as justices, elected officials, teachers, police officers. They're positions throughout society.
00:08:43.580 So the idea that somehow there's like separate buses and separate schools and separate restaurants for Arabs versus Jews is just not true.
00:08:52.600 That's not what it's like in Israel.
00:08:55.440 I think a lot of people who push this out there are just sort of playing on emotions.
00:09:01.720 And also maybe they're talking about the Arabs who live in the disputed territories.
00:09:06.920 Well, that is separate.
00:09:08.480 But the idea here is that both sides want a two-state solution.
00:09:11.520 So, you know, the territories that are disputed, like Gaza, is governed by Hamas, and the West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority. So they have their own governments, which are Arab. And so, you know, the idea that they would be held under Israeli law, that doesn't really go in line with the two-state solution.
00:09:34.960 So the idea of apartheid is just a myth. Let's go to number three, which is that Israel is guilty of war crimes. We hear this a lot that Israel targets civilians, that Israel kills children. This simply isn't the case. It's actually Hamas. It's Hamas who fires its rockets indiscriminately into Israel, hoping to hit civilian targets.
00:09:59.860 When Hamas fires thousands of rockets in one night, the whole point is to overwhelm Israel.
00:10:06.000 Israel has the Iron Dome program, which is something really remarkable.
00:10:09.240 It is actually a very cool piece of technology that when Hamas shoots a rocket towards civilians
00:10:14.980 and neighborhoods in Israel, Israel has the capacity to shoot that rocket down.
00:10:19.560 And the reason that Hamas fires so many at once is because the Iron Dome is only capable
00:10:24.440 really of firing down about 90% of those rockets.
00:10:28.280 So the other 10% go through. So just through sheer numbers, Hamas tries to overwhelm the system,
00:10:35.000 firing at civilian targets. They actually don't even care whether they hit Arab Israelis or Jewish
00:10:40.400 Israelis. They don't even care if they hit Gazans. A lot of times these rockets fall short and they
00:10:46.260 actually end up landing in Gaza, killing kids and families, which is partially why the death count
00:10:51.980 is so disproportionate. People think that the fact that a lot of people are dying in Gaza and not a
00:10:57.160 lot of people are dying in Israel you know we have dozens on one side and hundreds on the other
00:11:01.440 it's not simply because Israel's dropping more bombs it's partially because Gaza's just so
00:11:07.980 reckless that many of its own rockets land on its own people and then as far as the war crimes of
00:11:13.780 Israel look this is very well known and well documented that Hamas is a terrorist insurgency
00:11:19.700 and they use the people in Gaza as a human shield and you probably heard this term before human
00:11:25.640 shield. Basically, Hamas hides among civilians. They fire their rockets from the streets in
00:11:31.460 densely populated neighborhoods. Their rockets are getting launched from, you know, a small area
00:11:36.200 between two apartment buildings. And so it makes it really, really hard for Israeli troops to fire
00:11:42.280 back and to try to kill the operatives who are firing the rockets because they're hiding among
00:11:47.120 civilians. And so Israel goes to great, great efforts to try to stop this when they're going
00:11:54.020 to bomb a known asset, a known Hamas asset. They give advance notice, they give warning,
00:12:01.280 they send text messages, they drop leaflets, they're pleading for citizens to leave. They
00:12:06.380 want people to leave. They are begging for families, you know, mothers, families, children,
00:12:12.180 get out. We're going to be attacking this building because Hamas are operating here. Get out. The
00:12:17.900 reason that many people stay is because of the intimidation by the terrorists themselves. They
00:12:22.680 encourage people to stay. They tell them not to leave. They want them to stay, to act as a human
00:12:27.300 shield so that Israel cannot bomb. And then if Israel does bomb, they get the bad, horrible
00:12:33.780 publicity and the blood on their hands of killing families and kids. It's horrible. You know, the
00:12:39.500 reality of any war is that it's horrendous. And by nature, you know, sides are killing each other.
00:12:44.520 People are getting killed. People are getting blown up. Sometimes civilians get caught in the
00:12:49.140 crossfire. The difference is that Israel tries really, really hard to minimalize this, whereas
00:12:53.880 Hamas does the exact opposite. Here's an example of Israel, you know, they were trying to shoot
00:13:00.600 down a Hamas asset, and they realized that there were kids there, and so they abort the mission.
00:13:05.400 Here's what that looks like.
00:13:19.140 and so again israel is making every effort it can not to commit war crimes whereas again on the
00:13:27.840 other side of the equation is hamas who is committing war crimes because they are intentionally
00:13:32.400 aiming at civilians in israel and it's also worth noting that you know it's not just that they fire
00:13:39.080 their rockets from amid civilian areas they also plant their headquarters beneath a hospital a
00:13:45.420 civilian hospitals so that Israel can't bomb it without you know blowing up this hospital
00:13:49.760 tunnel entrances it's well documented that an entrance to a tunnel which is where the Hamas
00:13:55.400 leaders will use to sneak underground and go into Israel the tunnel entrance will be right next to a
00:14:01.340 mosque right next to a school right next to a kindergarten making it again really really hard
00:14:05.500 for Israel to try to take that out without having these mass mass casualty situations and so Israel
00:14:11.520 kind of has its hands tied making it harder to combat Hamas and then if it ever does you know
00:14:17.220 having to deal with the bad press so so again it's just a myth that Israel is committing war crimes
00:14:22.880 next myth that we hear is that Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing again this is just not true
00:14:30.780 so the definition of ethnic cleansing is the mass expulsion or killing of members of one ethnic or
00:14:37.400 religious group in one area by another area. So it's not quite as bad as genocide, but it's almost
00:14:43.680 there. It's kind of like right next to genocide in terms of forcibly removing one ethnic group
00:14:48.420 or killing them all. That's a very, very harsh accusation to be made. And again, there just
00:14:55.500 really isn't evidence of that. So, you know, when it comes to people who get moved, you know, this
00:15:02.280 this whole thing we hear a lot about the evictions that were happening at Sheik Jara. Basically this
00:15:08.460 is a legal dispute that has been in the court for decades and so they're using a legal mechanism
00:15:14.380 according to the rule of law to lawfully evict squatters who live in six houses and we're told
00:15:21.640 that this process somehow equates to ethnic cleansing. It's just not true. The reality of
00:15:27.260 course is the exact opposite. Jews and Christians have been the victims of ethnic cleansing
00:15:32.080 throughout the Middle East for over 100 years.
00:15:34.820 There have been sustained campaigns of ethnic cleansing against Jews,
00:15:38.500 targeting Jews to leave their homes and to move.
00:15:41.340 The reason that so many people have moved to Israel in the last 70 years
00:15:45.900 is because Israel is a safe haven.
00:15:47.920 Israel is where Jews can go when they get kicked out and they get pushed out
00:15:51.880 and they get victims of these barbaric regimes in neighboring countries.
00:15:56.800 And you can just look at the population changes throughout the Middle East
00:16:01.360 since the middle part of the last century. So as an example, in Egypt in 1956, the Egyptian
00:16:09.660 government declared all Jews the enemy of the state and immediately began a systemic expulsion.
00:16:15.940 Again, that is ethnic cleansing. Similar things happened in Iran, in Iraq, in Syria. This is a
00:16:22.120 report from the Jerusalem Post that says exactly what I'm saying. It says in 1948, the year Israel
00:16:28.500 was declared a state, 265,000 Jews lived in Morocco, 150,000 lived in Iraq, 140,000 in
00:16:36.480 Algeria, 100,000 in Egypt, 100,000 in Tunisia, 55,000 in Lebanon, 40,000 in Libya, 30,000 in
00:16:44.480 Syria, and thousands more throughout the Middle East and North Africa, for a grand total of 880,000.
00:16:51.140 Shortly thereafter, over 850,000 Jews were expelled from the very countries they called home.
00:16:56.760 the Arab League rejected the establishment of the state of Israel and ultimately decided in
00:17:02.160 forcing out the absolute majority of Jews from their countries. Nearly one million Jews were
00:17:07.500 forcibly banished from their homes. So the reality of the state of Israel is that yes Jews have been
00:17:15.020 living in this region for thousands of years it's been very well documented but during the second
00:17:20.760 half of the last century they started getting removed from their countries kicked out of their
00:17:25.040 countries, the victims of ethnic cleansing. So all of these people came to Israel to find a peaceful
00:17:30.820 place that they can live, where they can pray, where they can practice their religion without
00:17:34.680 persecution. And that is the modern story of Israel. People go there for safe haven and know
00:17:40.900 they're not practicing in their own sort of ethnic cleansing. You can be of any religion and live in
00:17:47.280 Israel, aside from being a Mecca for persecuted Jews from the region. It's also where persecuted
00:17:54.720 minorities from other religions. So you have Christians that live there, Baha'is, you have
00:17:59.260 lots of persecuted gays, people who can't live peacefully in other parts of the Middle East
00:18:03.480 go to Israel to live there. And it doesn't force non-Jews to leave. That's just not true. And that
00:18:10.220 myth kind of goes hand in hand with the next one that we see a lot, which is that Israel is the
00:18:15.660 creation of settler colonialism, that it's a white oppressor, oppressing, you know, sort of
00:18:23.640 brown-skinned people who live in the area. Again, when you go to Israel, you realize that the
00:18:29.280 Israelis that live there are Middle Eastern. They're not European Israelis. You know, when
00:18:34.440 you think of Jews, you might think of someone like Seth Rogen or Ben Shapiro, who sort of look
00:18:39.660 European. When you're in Israel, what you see is that most of the people that are there are Middle
00:18:44.400 Eastern. They had either been there for hundreds or thousands of years, you know, their families
00:18:49.560 have or like I said the people that were persecuted and forced to leave Iran forced to leave Morocco
00:18:55.040 forced to leave these other countries but they're Middle Eastern so the whole idea that somehow it's
00:19:00.140 this like white European country in the middle of the Middle East that have forced all the local
00:19:05.580 people off it's not correct that's not it's not accurate it's sort of using a metaphor of North
00:19:11.240 America trying to apply it apply it onto Israel and it's just not the case I encourage you to
00:19:17.580 look into the history because there is a lot of history but I will just say that Jews have been
00:19:23.040 living in Israel for thousands of years and you know when it comes to the British involvement
00:19:27.940 basically Israel the territory that is Israel today was part of the Ottoman Empire when the
00:19:33.300 Ottoman Empire fell during the First World War the British stepped in with the Palestine mandate
00:19:37.820 they managed it for a while they ended up creating two states so they created an Arab state which is
00:19:43.440 jordan 98 of that country is arab and the other state they created was israel which was governed
00:19:49.600 by jews and so you know the whole idea that that somehow um this is the product of white supremacy
00:19:56.360 or or um you know colonialism it really really just isn't true okay sixth myth number six
00:20:05.880 israel is targeting civilians and that it targeted a media headquarters this is kind of tied to the
00:20:12.080 other myth that I did. And this will be the last myth. I'll leave it here. But the idea that Israel
00:20:18.340 is targeting citizens is just not true. They're targeting Hamas. It's just that Hamas, as any
00:20:23.080 terrorist group, you know, they're plainclothes. They're not soldiers. It's hard to hit military
00:20:27.960 assets because they are hidden amongst the civilians. And Israel does go to painstaking
00:20:33.340 efforts to avoid hitting civilians. It's just being reported that when it comes to this one
00:20:40.780 building that people are upset about. The Israeli defense shared intelligence with the U.S. defense
00:20:47.360 showing why it was a legitimate target, why they had intel showing that Hamas was using it as a
00:20:53.180 base. Regardless, here we have Canadian Joel Simon, who's the executive director of the Committee to
00:20:59.160 Protect Journalists, saying that this attack raises concerns that Israel is targeting the media,
00:21:04.540 trying to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza. He demanded detailed and documented
00:21:10.000 justification for the attack well that justification has been given but again it's really important to
00:21:15.000 understand that Hamas does use a human shield it is very intentional it is part of their strategy
00:21:20.460 and journalists look we know what's going on we know that this is what they do they do it time
00:21:25.020 and time and time again it's been very well documented we shouldn't fall prey to this
00:21:30.280 narrative we shouldn't accept this propaganda and we should criticize it we should lay it out there
00:21:37.080 so that people do understand that israel is not targeting civilians they're targeting terrorists
00:21:41.720 it just so happens that the terrorists are mixed in okay that's it for the myths i'll just finish
00:21:47.240 by saying one thing i said at the beginning this video that it is okay to criticize israel it is
00:21:52.280 not anti-semitic um i will just say that you get into dicey territory and borderline anti-semitism
00:21:58.520 when you go out of your way to demonize israel when you don't think that the only jewish state
00:22:03.720 in the world should have any right to exist or any right to defend itself when you're saying that
00:22:09.240 you know they use disproportionate force well just you know put yourself in their shoes imagine for
00:22:14.600 one second that canada had a neighbor that was run by terrorists that was bombarding us with bombs
00:22:21.200 shooting them into civilian neighborhoods and the stated goal of that terrorist group was to ensure
00:22:27.000 that canada didn't exist the canadians were all killed or removed from it from the area and that
00:22:32.320 was their goal. Imagine how we would react. And so before you criticize Israel, try to imagine what
00:22:38.600 it's like to actually live there. Think about what the people have gone through, the history and the
00:22:42.600 region, understanding, you know, the different aspects at play. It's not a simple oppressor,
00:22:48.400 oppressed narrative that so many on the left love to use. They always just simplify it and try to
00:22:53.920 fit it into their narrow little worldview, but that's not the case. I think that it is important
00:22:58.380 that we dispel these myths in order to have a clearer understanding of what is going on.
00:23:04.220 All right, thanks so much for watching. I'm Candace Malcolm for True North.
00:23:28.380 You