Making Sense - Sam Harris - December 12, 2023


#344 — The War in Gaza


Episode Stats

Length

58 minutes

Words per Minute

165.86179

Word Count

9,731

Sentence Count

508

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

105


Summary

The problem with what Elon is doing at X is not that he is a so-called "free speech absolutist." The problem is that his behavior is impulsive, unprincipled, and narrowly self-serving while being colossally self-destructive. I mean, how's this for free speech? Here is a free market billionaire raging against people for not buying his defective product. Literally threatening them with reputational and material destruction if they fail to do so. And then he welcomes Alex Jones back in a safe space on his own version of X. So X is a safe space for tyrants, and there is no free speech here at all. What Elon has become is not a courageous defender of free speech, but a conspiracist and a provocateur, and a thoroughly Trumpian attention monster. He s at the center of a personality cult, and the experience is clearly harming him, and it has certainly broken his ethical compass. I m reasonably sure that if Elon polled his fans on X, asking whether he should kick the Jews off the platform, he would get an impressively positive signal. It might even be a majority that would even be in favor of such a decision. I'm not even sure how I would interpret such a result. But rather, it might not even be much of a decision at all, given what he s been up to these past few weeks, and what he has been doing with Alex Jones and the rest of the alt-right in the past few months. and the fact that he seems to think it might be a good idea, and that it s not even a good thing at all And I m not sure if it would be a bad thing, but it s better than not even if it s good at all . or not at least it s a good one at least in the long-term in the first place not bad at least it s a good thing right? well, maybe not even better than what he would do if he s just a little bit better than a lot but not much better than he s doing is better than the other thing he s supposed to be doing that he s right that s doing . and he s not doing in this case what he says does he s really doing or isn t


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
00:00:23.420 This is Sam Harris.
00:00:26.040 A little housekeeping here.
00:00:27.520 A couple of recent events that have converged on the topic of free speech,
00:00:32.720 which I should probably say something about.
00:00:34.960 We had those university presidents testifying before Congress
00:00:39.600 about whether calling for a genocide of the Jews violated their school policies.
00:00:45.520 And then we had the continuing saga of Elon Musk
00:00:47.880 and what he imagines to be his own efforts to protect the free speech rights of Earth
00:00:52.980 on his private platform, X.
00:00:56.040 What do these two things have in common?
00:00:59.720 Well, they both appear to have provoked a fair amount of outrage and confusion,
00:01:05.140 mostly from the right and left, respectively.
00:01:09.000 People don't even seem to know the principles they want to defend here.
00:01:13.840 And the truth is, both of these cases have almost nothing to do with free speech,
00:01:19.120 despite what everyone claims.
00:01:20.920 The real problem with both Elon and the university presidents
00:01:24.480 is that everyone involved has been displaying extraordinary levels of hypocrisy
00:01:29.880 and moral confusion.
00:01:31.940 I guess I'll start with Elon.
00:01:34.380 The problem with what Elon is doing at X
00:01:36.840 is not that he is a so-called free speech absolutist.
00:01:40.940 He's nothing of the kind.
00:01:42.480 The problem is that his behavior is impulsive and unprincipled
00:01:47.620 and narrowly self-serving while being colossally self-destructive.
00:01:53.660 I mean, how is this for free speech absolutism?
00:01:57.160 Threatening to sue advertisers for declining to advertise on X.
00:02:02.560 In fact, referring to them not giving him money as blackmail.
00:02:07.740 Calling for CEOs like Bob Iger to be fired immediately
00:02:11.720 for not wanting the brand damage or the brain damage
00:02:15.860 that comes with being associated with all the chaos that Elon has created on X.
00:02:21.420 I mean, how's this for principles?
00:02:24.180 Here is a free market billionaire
00:02:26.400 raging against people for not buying his defective product.
00:02:33.480 Literally threatening them with reputational and material destruction
00:02:38.620 if they fail to give him money.
00:02:42.140 I mean, who in their right mind would advertise on X at this point?
00:02:47.020 And how does their declining to amount to censorship, much less blackmail?
00:02:52.420 They're deciding where to advertise is their own freedom of speech and practice.
00:02:56.400 Right?
00:02:57.860 So Elon's tirade at the New York Times Dealbook conference
00:03:01.380 was fairly bonkers, at least on this topic.
00:03:05.780 Not to mention that the actual policy of X
00:03:08.580 with respect to free speech globally
00:03:10.940 is to abjectly comply with the demands of every theocracy
00:03:15.220 and dictatorship that actually wants to stifle free speech
00:03:18.940 on its own version of X.
00:03:21.040 So X is a safe space for tyrants.
00:03:23.520 There is no free speech absolutism here at all.
00:03:28.360 What Elon has become is not a courageous defender of free speech,
00:03:33.400 but a conspiracist and a provocateur
00:03:36.520 and a thoroughly Trumpian attention monster.
00:03:41.740 He's at the center of a personality cult,
00:03:44.180 and the experience is clearly harming him.
00:03:47.060 It has certainly broken his ethical compass.
00:03:49.500 Reinstating Alex Jones on the platform,
00:03:53.100 as Elon did this week,
00:03:54.560 wasn't a principled stand on anything.
00:03:57.840 It was the quintessence of audience capture.
00:04:01.280 Elon literally put the decision to a vote on X,
00:04:04.920 and he let his dumb fans,
00:04:07.020 most of whom now live in Conspiristan,
00:04:09.560 simply tell him what to do.
00:04:10.940 And then he welcomes Jones back in a Twitter spaces,
00:04:14.960 along with Andrew Tate and Jack Posobiec of Pizzagate fame.
00:04:20.560 This is a guy who openly collaborates with neo-Nazis.
00:04:24.720 And there was Vivek Ramaswamy and Matt Gaetz.
00:04:29.180 I mean, it was an absolute clown car.
00:04:32.160 And then you have alternative media people
00:04:33.920 who can't seem to understand how perverse all this is.
00:04:37.840 It's all just about freedom and resisting global tyranny
00:04:41.420 and becoming a space-faring civilization.
00:04:45.560 No, it's not.
00:04:47.340 It's about the absolute nullification
00:04:49.540 of every sane, ethical, intellectual, or journalistic standard
00:04:54.660 that we can rely upon to form our view of the world.
00:04:59.720 I'm reasonably sure that if Elon polled his fans on X,
00:05:04.380 asking whether he should kick the Jews off the platform,
00:05:07.840 he would get an impressively positive signal.
00:05:11.540 It might even be a majority that would say,
00:05:13.940 go for it.
00:05:15.280 I'm not even sure how I would interpret such a result.
00:05:18.540 It might not be all or even mostly anti-Semitism.
00:05:22.000 He's being followed by millions of people
00:05:24.640 who just want to see shit break.
00:05:27.960 It's like that show Jackass.
00:05:29.780 But rather than being rolled down a dangerous hill in a trash can
00:05:32.960 or drinking a gallon of hot sauce,
00:05:35.120 Elon is just fucking around with the levers of democracy.
00:05:38.920 And of course, he can do whatever he wants with X.
00:05:41.560 But it's the hypocrisy and incoherence
00:05:44.840 and recklessness and grandiosity that are so appalling.
00:05:49.860 It's the pretensions of self-sacrifice,
00:05:52.280 all the while desperately seeking self-aggrandizement.
00:05:56.000 It's the contradictions that are sickening
00:05:58.920 and the total lack of self-awareness.
00:06:00.960 He claims to be saving the world
00:06:03.060 when he is just spinning out of control.
00:06:06.060 He's using his immense reach to promote people
00:06:09.080 like Alex Jones,
00:06:11.260 along with random trolls and lunatics
00:06:13.540 who no one would know about but for his influence.
00:06:16.900 He is laundering the reputations of psychopaths
00:06:19.820 and he just doesn't care.
00:06:22.300 He apparently has all the time in the world to do this,
00:06:25.240 but he can't take a moment to figure out
00:06:27.000 whether he's raising the profile of a professional anti-Semite
00:06:30.000 or some imbecile who became famous for promoting Pizzagate.
00:06:33.860 So the problem with Elon
00:06:34.880 is not that he is overly committed to free speech.
00:06:38.320 It's that he's apparently happy to function like a megaphone
00:06:40.980 for people who want to make the world safe for Vladimir Putin
00:06:44.000 and render American society ungovernable.
00:06:47.080 And this is how he imagines
00:06:48.360 he's improving our information landscape.
00:06:51.000 It's the lack of ethical principles
00:06:53.120 that is so disturbing.
00:06:55.080 His fondness for Tucker Carlson
00:06:56.440 is actually diagnostic here.
00:06:58.320 Tucker is a person who boosted Trump for years.
00:07:02.280 He probably aired 500 episodes of his show
00:07:05.060 stoking the fires of Trumpism.
00:07:07.860 And yet now we know from his private texts
00:07:10.220 surfaced in that Dominion lawsuit
00:07:12.300 that he considered Trump a, quote,
00:07:14.460 demonic force
00:07:15.560 and despaired of his influence on American politics.
00:07:19.360 That level of hypocrisy and dishonesty
00:07:22.600 and disregard for the consequences of one's actions
00:07:25.440 is evil.
00:07:27.660 Tucker is not a person to collaborate with.
00:07:30.900 I have no idea why Elon or the people around him
00:07:34.300 can't see that.
00:07:35.600 Or seeing it don't care.
00:07:38.340 And speaking of failures of ethical coherence,
00:07:41.320 we have the presidents of Harvard and Penn and MIT
00:07:44.400 demonstrating all that is wrong
00:07:46.660 with the diversity, equity, and inclusion apparatus
00:07:49.620 that has been so carefully calibrated all these years
00:07:52.980 by one grievance entrepreneur after the next.
00:07:57.060 And we've got people like Ibram X. Kendi
00:07:59.000 and Ta-Nehisi Coates
00:08:00.480 making sure that the tiniest gears
00:08:02.980 responsive to the least offenses
00:08:05.160 are well-oiled and free to spin.
00:08:07.860 And you pick the wrong Halloween costume
00:08:10.740 or use the wrong pronoun
00:08:12.500 and this machinery whirls into action
00:08:15.880 and inscribes the judgment against you
00:08:18.680 on the fucking foundations of the world.
00:08:22.360 And yet somehow,
00:08:23.560 in the aftermath of the most seismic atrocities
00:08:25.900 against Jews since the Holocaust,
00:08:28.560 the whole apparatus seizes up
00:08:30.880 and becomes this useless pile
00:08:32.920 of pseudo-intellectual junk.
00:08:34.900 And we all watched it happen
00:08:37.320 in real time before Congress.
00:08:41.360 Almost everyone has commented on this,
00:08:44.120 on the ghastly performance
00:08:45.680 of these college presidents.
00:08:47.580 And I don't think I have much to say
00:08:48.980 that is new.
00:08:50.880 I would just reiterate
00:08:51.600 that it's not the policies,
00:08:53.600 but the inconsistency.
00:08:55.320 Again, the hypocrisy
00:08:56.460 that got under everyone's skin.
00:08:59.020 Harvard can have any policy
00:09:00.420 around offensive speech that it wants.
00:09:03.040 What it can't have
00:09:04.180 is a policy that punishes microaggressions,
00:09:07.940 that gets people fired or deplatformed
00:09:09.980 for believing that there are only two genders
00:09:12.500 or that meritocracy is worth defending,
00:09:15.380 while simultaneously allowing angry crowds
00:09:18.480 to call for the murder of Jews.
00:09:21.680 It was the obvious inconsistency
00:09:23.840 that drove everyone crazy.
00:09:26.560 I mean, we watched this
00:09:27.500 hair-splitting testimony
00:09:28.980 in defense of the time-honored freedom
00:09:31.520 of calling for the eradication of the Jews,
00:09:34.900 while absolutely knowing
00:09:36.480 that had those students been calling
00:09:38.200 for the murder of black people
00:09:39.520 or trans people,
00:09:41.540 Harvard and Penn and MIT
00:09:43.280 would have immediately reacted
00:09:45.620 to prevent that speech.
00:09:47.400 And the offending students
00:09:48.640 would have been expelled
00:09:49.560 from those institutions
00:09:50.660 without apology.
00:09:52.200 It's the hypocrisy.
00:09:55.180 And I'll tell you what I think
00:09:55.780 these colleges should do.
00:09:57.760 They should be extremely tolerant
00:09:59.540 of controversial speech.
00:10:01.860 Whether you're a student
00:10:02.780 or a professor
00:10:03.480 or a visiting scholar,
00:10:05.100 I think you should be able
00:10:05.780 to explore literally any ideas
00:10:08.340 in a civil way.
00:10:10.200 You should be able to play devil's advocate
00:10:11.920 about absolutely anything.
00:10:14.240 And you should be able to invite
00:10:15.460 the devil himself
00:10:16.660 to speak on campus
00:10:18.280 if you want to.
00:10:19.140 But these institutions
00:10:20.500 should be very controlling
00:10:22.040 of protests.
00:10:23.620 You don't have the right
00:10:24.540 to mob people.
00:10:26.400 You don't have the right
00:10:26.940 to physically intimidate them.
00:10:28.800 You don't have the right
00:10:29.400 to block their movements.
00:10:31.240 You don't have the right
00:10:31.820 to pound on their doors.
00:10:34.040 You shouldn't have the right
00:10:35.040 to stop an event
00:10:36.160 from proceeding as scheduled.
00:10:38.860 That's where these institutions
00:10:40.220 should hold the line.
00:10:42.540 And I think they should all
00:10:43.480 get out of the business
00:10:44.280 of commenting upon
00:10:45.340 everything that happens
00:10:46.400 in the world.
00:10:47.100 The problem with what
00:10:48.920 they didn't say
00:10:49.880 in response to the atrocities
00:10:51.480 of October 7th
00:10:52.760 was that their silence
00:10:53.920 and their subsequent
00:10:55.000 mumbling evasions
00:10:56.540 were deafening
00:10:57.820 by comparison to all
00:10:59.520 that they had so effortlessly said,
00:11:01.940 the absolute Vesuvius
00:11:03.800 of howling sanctimony
00:11:05.700 they produced
00:11:06.600 over far more ethically
00:11:08.680 ambiguous events
00:11:10.020 in the past.
00:11:11.640 And the killing of George Floyd
00:11:13.160 and the subsequent protests
00:11:14.380 being the clearest example.
00:11:15.800 I think every university
00:11:18.040 should take this opportunity
00:11:19.740 when we are safely
00:11:21.160 between catastrophes
00:11:23.020 to say we're not issuing
00:11:24.560 any more proclamations
00:11:25.660 about events
00:11:26.340 that all decent human beings
00:11:28.600 should agree about.
00:11:29.880 Whenever innocent people
00:11:31.080 are killed
00:11:31.620 in horrible ways,
00:11:32.900 you can rest assured
00:11:34.140 that we object to that.
00:11:36.080 And now we're going to go back
00:11:37.020 to the job of educating people
00:11:38.480 who have paid us
00:11:39.460 a lot of money
00:11:40.340 to do so.
00:11:41.460 Okay, well today
00:11:45.400 I'm doing something
00:11:46.340 a little different.
00:11:48.460 This could be a one-off
00:11:49.520 or I might do this occasionally.
00:11:51.920 This is not a replacement
00:11:53.240 for my own podcast,
00:11:55.080 but something I'm adding
00:11:56.200 to the feed here.
00:11:57.420 I recently discovered
00:11:58.580 another podcast
00:11:59.440 that I think is great
00:12:00.580 and want to promote.
00:12:02.200 And that podcast
00:12:02.960 is Call Me Back,
00:12:04.880 whose host is Dan Sinor.
00:12:07.220 Dan is a co-author
00:12:08.080 of the new book,
00:12:09.120 The Genius of Israel,
00:12:10.380 which is a New York Times
00:12:11.720 bestseller.
00:12:13.240 He also wrote
00:12:13.840 Startup Nation,
00:12:15.040 the story of Israel's
00:12:15.960 economic miracle,
00:12:17.180 which has been translated
00:12:18.060 into more than 30 languages.
00:12:20.720 Previously, Dan served
00:12:21.860 in various foreign policy positions
00:12:23.480 in the U.S. government,
00:12:25.360 including in Iraq
00:12:26.380 for over a year
00:12:27.340 during the Bush administration.
00:12:30.300 Anyway, since October 7th,
00:12:31.540 his podcast has been,
00:12:34.020 I think, entirely focused
00:12:35.700 on conversations
00:12:36.880 with Israeli journalists
00:12:38.360 and officials
00:12:39.020 and other experts.
00:12:40.520 And he recently had my friend
00:12:41.680 Douglas Murray on the show.
00:12:44.340 And that's the episode
00:12:45.100 I want to bring you now.
00:12:47.200 Douglas has been on my podcast
00:12:48.600 several times.
00:12:50.280 He is an associate editor
00:12:51.260 of The Spectator
00:12:52.040 and written several books,
00:12:54.100 including The Strange Death of Europe,
00:12:56.400 The Madness of Crowds,
00:12:57.860 and The War on the West.
00:13:00.180 I wrote a blurb
00:13:01.380 for The Madness of Crowds
00:13:02.820 back in 2019.
00:13:03.920 I'll remind you of that.
00:13:06.640 This is what I wrote.
00:13:08.320 We live at a time
00:13:09.100 when many of the luckiest people
00:13:10.460 on earth
00:13:11.060 declare themselves
00:13:12.260 among the most oppressed
00:13:13.300 while seeking to oppress others
00:13:15.160 in the service
00:13:15.840 of a paradoxical new faith.
00:13:18.360 And no one is so beloved
00:13:19.660 or immaculate
00:13:20.920 that he or she can't be dragged
00:13:22.780 before the altars
00:13:23.780 of this cult
00:13:24.480 and offered up
00:13:25.360 as a fresh sacrifice.
00:13:27.100 In The Madness of Crowds,
00:13:29.020 Douglas Murray shows
00:13:29.780 how the apparent virtues
00:13:30.920 of social justice,
00:13:32.580 intersectionality,
00:13:33.880 and identity politics
00:13:35.100 have begun to stifle
00:13:36.780 honest thinking
00:13:37.480 on nearly every topic.
00:13:39.200 In the process,
00:13:39.840 he displays more courage
00:13:41.080 and wit
00:13:41.540 and basic decency
00:13:42.680 than can be found
00:13:43.860 anywhere among the woke.
00:13:45.740 The book is simply brilliant.
00:13:47.340 Reading it to the end,
00:13:48.520 I felt as though
00:13:49.040 I had just drawn
00:13:49.760 my first full breath
00:13:51.280 in years.
00:13:52.560 At a moment of
00:13:53.140 collective madness,
00:13:54.540 there is nothing more
00:13:55.220 refreshing,
00:13:56.060 or indeed provocative,
00:13:57.600 than sanity.
00:13:58.300 And I stand
00:14:00.760 by those words.
00:14:02.340 Douglas is always
00:14:03.080 a breath of fresh air
00:14:04.180 and basic sanity.
00:14:06.720 There might be
00:14:07.460 some daylight
00:14:08.060 between us
00:14:08.800 on certain
00:14:09.820 political questions.
00:14:11.300 I don't know.
00:14:12.360 I should have him
00:14:12.840 back on the podcast
00:14:13.760 at some point soon
00:14:14.920 to explore that.
00:14:16.260 But on the issue
00:14:17.060 of Israel
00:14:18.220 and Hamas
00:14:19.500 and related matters,
00:14:21.380 there really is none.
00:14:23.960 And so I now bring you
00:14:24.880 Douglas Murray
00:14:26.020 talking to Dan Senor.
00:14:28.300 about the war in Gaza.
00:14:35.180 I'm pleased to welcome
00:14:36.320 to this podcast
00:14:37.120 for the first time
00:14:38.540 my long-time friend,
00:14:40.700 best-selling author,
00:14:41.700 columnist,
00:14:42.460 and public commentator
00:14:44.300 Douglas Murray,
00:14:45.620 who I normally speak to
00:14:46.720 or see in the UK,
00:14:48.800 but has been in Israel
00:14:49.940 for the last four weeks or so,
00:14:52.740 doing some extraordinary work
00:14:54.040 and joins us today
00:14:55.000 from Israel.
00:14:55.720 Douglas,
00:14:56.080 thanks for being here.
00:14:56.820 It's a great pleasure
00:14:57.860 to be with you
00:14:58.360 and your listeners.
00:14:59.620 Thank you for being
00:15:00.220 in Israel.
00:15:01.320 I know it's been difficult,
00:15:02.660 but your observations
00:15:03.980 and analysis
00:15:04.760 and your responding
00:15:07.460 to some rather inane
00:15:08.700 questions from the media
00:15:09.840 for all of us
00:15:10.540 to watch and marvel at
00:15:11.720 has been a real
00:15:12.880 public service.
00:15:13.960 Before I get into
00:15:15.400 the specific topics
00:15:17.620 and subtopics
00:15:18.300 I want to hit
00:15:18.920 with you today,
00:15:19.640 can you just
00:15:20.260 give us a snapshot
00:15:21.360 of you're in Israel
00:15:22.540 during this traumatic time,
00:15:24.160 and then just
00:15:25.660 when you think
00:15:25.980 it couldn't be
00:15:26.560 more of an emotional
00:15:27.240 rollercoaster,
00:15:27.840 you're there
00:15:28.140 for the return
00:15:28.940 of these hostages,
00:15:29.700 which you've been
00:15:30.140 covering quite closely.
00:15:31.940 What's the mood?
00:15:32.760 How does it feel to you?
00:15:34.520 I'd say the mood
00:15:35.580 in general
00:15:36.100 is apprehensive.
00:15:38.540 The hostage deal
00:15:39.660 is,
00:15:40.140 as all hostage deals
00:15:41.320 involving Israel,
00:15:42.360 are wildly
00:15:43.820 traumatic
00:15:45.240 and unfair
00:15:46.580 and unequal
00:15:47.900 and filled
00:15:49.180 with mixed emotions.
00:15:50.340 all Israelis
00:15:51.660 want the hostages
00:15:53.400 back.
00:15:54.760 I spend a lot of time
00:15:55.520 with the families
00:15:56.160 and indeed the whole
00:15:57.100 nation knows about
00:15:58.000 the families now.
00:15:59.660 Every billboard,
00:16:00.640 every illuminated
00:16:02.320 sign that would have
00:16:04.400 an advert for beer
00:16:06.380 or something in the past
00:16:07.680 or a new type
00:16:08.900 of washing powder
00:16:09.820 has the photos
00:16:11.580 of the hostages.
00:16:14.560 And we've had
00:16:15.440 weeks of hearing
00:16:17.100 from the families,
00:16:18.440 hearing from the parents
00:16:19.300 in particular
00:16:19.880 of the missing children
00:16:20.900 and abducted children,
00:16:22.760 the stolen children.
00:16:24.440 And so everybody
00:16:25.060 wants some home
00:16:26.080 and there's
00:16:28.100 enormous trepidation
00:16:29.280 of course
00:16:29.840 and a great fear
00:16:30.700 about the state
00:16:31.900 that some of them
00:16:32.500 are in.
00:16:32.900 And indeed,
00:16:33.440 if all 240 hostages,
00:16:35.560 how many of them
00:16:36.060 are alive?
00:16:36.940 Which is a sort of
00:16:37.800 conversation people
00:16:39.040 have in private
00:16:39.680 but don't like
00:16:40.240 having in public.
00:16:41.660 And then there's
00:16:42.560 the whole issue of,
00:16:43.540 yes,
00:16:44.020 everyone wants some home
00:16:45.000 but look at the price.
00:16:46.960 The price,
00:16:47.560 for instance,
00:16:48.160 is three terrorists
00:16:49.640 criminals
00:16:50.780 from Israeli jails
00:16:52.220 released for every
00:16:54.080 Jewish child.
00:16:56.200 Not the worst deal
00:16:57.920 that Israelis have ever done
00:16:59.100 in terms of
00:16:59.940 person-for-person
00:17:01.060 swapping
00:17:01.720 but there's one other thing
00:17:03.700 I should,
00:17:04.100 you know,
00:17:04.420 stress at this point
00:17:05.180 which is that
00:17:05.900 there's an awful lot
00:17:07.040 of added trepidation
00:17:09.440 because
00:17:09.920 in perhaps
00:17:11.200 the most
00:17:11.960 unequal
00:17:12.760 swap
00:17:13.700 of all time,
00:17:14.780 the Gilad Shalit
00:17:15.680 swap
00:17:16.140 more than a decade
00:17:16.960 ago,
00:17:17.940 more than a thousand
00:17:19.060 Palestinian prisoners
00:17:20.460 inside Israel
00:17:22.220 were swapped
00:17:23.560 for,
00:17:24.020 of course,
00:17:24.300 one Israeli soldier,
00:17:25.960 Gilad Shalit,
00:17:27.120 and one of the people
00:17:27.900 swapped out
00:17:28.580 was Sinwar,
00:17:29.980 who is the Hamas
00:17:31.820 leader in the Gaza
00:17:32.800 now,
00:17:33.600 who planned the
00:17:34.600 October the 7th
00:17:35.420 massacre.
00:17:35.900 So it's not like
00:17:37.920 the Israelis
00:17:38.780 are releasing
00:17:39.300 from prison,
00:17:40.380 you know,
00:17:41.380 shoplifters
00:17:42.140 or something.
00:17:43.560 Yeah.
00:17:43.840 They're releasing
00:17:44.600 the people
00:17:45.040 who could be
00:17:45.400 the next Sinwar
00:17:46.300 and this is just,
00:17:49.820 yeah,
00:17:50.180 it's a horrible
00:17:50.920 mixture of emotions.
00:17:52.500 As you mentioned,
00:17:53.220 I was at the,
00:17:54.780 I've been around
00:17:55.480 many of the kibbutzim
00:17:56.440 and the massacre sites
00:17:57.620 since I've been here
00:17:59.260 and I know
00:17:59.900 personally some
00:18:01.280 of the families
00:18:01.800 and I know their stories
00:18:02.780 and as I say,
00:18:03.920 we all do.
00:18:04.540 But,
00:18:06.120 you know,
00:18:07.180 when I was at
00:18:08.160 the children's hospital
00:18:08.980 on Friday night
00:18:09.720 for the first children
00:18:11.080 to be helicoptered in
00:18:12.220 from the swap
00:18:13.940 in the south of Gaza
00:18:16.260 and then Egypt
00:18:16.900 and then from
00:18:17.900 to an Israeli base
00:18:19.020 and from there
00:18:19.500 to the hospital,
00:18:21.020 you know,
00:18:21.320 the whole of
00:18:21.760 central Tel Aviv
00:18:22.360 shut down,
00:18:23.080 all the streets
00:18:23.540 around the children's
00:18:24.260 hospital and people
00:18:26.120 just got out
00:18:26.720 of their cars
00:18:27.620 on the streets
00:18:28.580 and started singing
00:18:29.620 and just showing
00:18:31.600 support for the children
00:18:32.740 as they came
00:18:33.400 came back home
00:18:34.660 and it's extremely hard
00:18:38.260 I think for most Israelis
00:18:40.380 as it is,
00:18:41.340 I mean,
00:18:41.620 it's hard just for somebody
00:18:42.940 to watch it
00:18:43.600 but the mixture of emotions
00:18:45.700 because it's this,
00:18:47.120 yes,
00:18:47.580 every one of these lives
00:18:48.620 is priceless
00:18:49.300 that Israel is getting back
00:18:51.360 but they know
00:18:52.480 the price is going
00:18:53.200 to be huge.
00:18:55.080 Is there a sense,
00:18:56.020 I mean,
00:18:56.480 some Israeli journalists
00:18:58.300 and officials
00:18:59.300 I've spoken to
00:18:59.980 believe that,
00:19:00.940 yes,
00:19:01.080 the price
00:19:01.600 is potentially huge
00:19:03.080 on the one hand,
00:19:04.700 on the other hand
00:19:05.480 because of the strength
00:19:06.640 of the Israeli response
00:19:08.060 since October 7th,
00:19:10.380 it's because of that
00:19:11.480 that they've been able
00:19:12.140 to get these hostages back,
00:19:13.380 that Sinoir
00:19:14.020 had to really start negotiating
00:19:16.300 because of the pressure
00:19:18.160 Hamas was under.
00:19:19.100 This is not
00:19:19.720 how Hamas
00:19:21.240 would have wanted
00:19:21.980 to get a pause
00:19:23.520 implemented
00:19:24.180 from the IDF
00:19:25.440 might being unleashed.
00:19:27.040 I don't know about that.
00:19:28.140 I mean,
00:19:29.000 there's one,
00:19:29.760 that's a positive spin on it.
00:19:31.880 A more negative view
00:19:33.120 might be,
00:19:33.740 well,
00:19:34.900 of course,
00:19:35.500 this is exactly
00:19:36.020 what Sinoir must have expected.
00:19:37.300 He must have expected
00:19:38.120 after the scale
00:19:39.020 of the battalion-sized
00:19:40.500 attack on Israel
00:19:41.840 on October 7th,
00:19:43.420 he must have known
00:19:44.040 the Israelis would respond.
00:19:46.160 I actually think
00:19:46.900 there's among many problems,
00:19:48.840 I don't want to be
00:19:49.380 an armchair analyst
00:19:50.340 about this,
00:19:50.840 but I mean,
00:19:51.720 the aim of Israel
00:19:53.400 as expressed
00:19:54.380 by Benjamin Netanyahu
00:19:55.520 is to destroy Hamas.
00:19:58.020 Simultaneously,
00:19:58.780 they have to negotiate
00:19:59.620 with Hamas.
00:20:01.100 I see these two aims
00:20:02.940 as being,
00:20:03.840 obviously,
00:20:04.440 at some levels,
00:20:05.480 contradictory.
00:20:06.960 Why would Hamas
00:20:07.760 give back
00:20:08.400 all the hostages
00:20:09.260 if they know
00:20:10.300 that the hostages
00:20:10.980 are their golden tickets
00:20:12.160 to survive?
00:20:13.760 I mean,
00:20:14.160 why would Israel
00:20:14.860 not go in even harder?
00:20:17.200 The point of clearing
00:20:18.500 the north of Gaza,
00:20:20.720 making sure
00:20:21.400 that civilians
00:20:22.080 all moved south,
00:20:23.260 instructing civilians
00:20:24.060 to move south,
00:20:25.140 was to have fights
00:20:26.400 with Hamas,
00:20:27.080 and that happened.
00:20:28.560 But the Hamas leadership
00:20:30.000 moved south,
00:20:30.880 and the hostages
00:20:31.540 are clearly moved south.
00:20:34.060 So,
00:20:35.020 the war continues south.
00:20:37.520 And,
00:20:37.940 I think most people
00:20:39.600 are also aware
00:20:40.100 that Hamas is playing
00:20:41.080 not just the Israelis,
00:20:42.360 but the international media
00:20:43.720 and international opinion.
00:20:45.660 They eke out
00:20:46.940 these offerings
00:20:48.420 of, you know,
00:20:49.040 now maybe 15 people a day.
00:20:50.960 They didn't abide
00:20:51.580 by the agreement
00:20:52.220 yesterday on the day
00:20:53.240 we're speaking.
00:20:54.640 They delayed.
00:20:55.700 Looked like they might
00:20:56.360 delay again tonight.
00:20:57.420 They haven't,
00:20:58.100 but they haven't stuck
00:20:59.680 to their side of the bargain.
00:21:01.060 There were children
00:21:01.600 they were meant to release
00:21:02.220 with their mothers,
00:21:02.860 and they haven't done that.
00:21:04.260 They're deliberately
00:21:04.900 splitting up families.
00:21:06.340 They're making sure
00:21:06.920 the hostages who come back
00:21:08.140 have a family member
00:21:09.440 still in captivity
00:21:11.100 in order to ensure
00:21:13.480 the hostages
00:21:14.120 can't speak
00:21:15.000 once freed
00:21:16.160 with any kind of freedom,
00:21:18.160 or at least
00:21:19.160 will probably
00:21:19.840 almost certainly feel
00:21:20.860 they can't speak negatively
00:21:21.900 about their captors.
00:21:23.380 There's a lot of things
00:21:24.300 going on,
00:21:25.420 and a lot of
00:21:26.820 concern that Hamas
00:21:28.500 is controlling the thing.
00:21:31.480 Yeah.
00:21:31.900 There is the sense
00:21:33.040 that Sinwar
00:21:33.920 and Dave,
00:21:35.060 the architects
00:21:36.020 of October 7th
00:21:37.680 seem to have
00:21:38.400 gotten at least
00:21:39.640 some control,
00:21:40.400 if not total control,
00:21:41.680 back of the clock.
00:21:43.460 You know,
00:21:44.120 before the,
00:21:45.160 yeah,
00:21:45.520 that the IDF
00:21:46.720 had control of the clock,
00:21:47.620 and now
00:21:48.080 if they can
00:21:49.080 drivel out hostage
00:21:50.280 releases,
00:21:51.520 it gives them
00:21:52.000 some control
00:21:53.020 of the clock.
00:21:53.700 Yeah,
00:21:53.900 and at this rate,
00:21:55.600 they could keep
00:21:56.500 extending the ceasefire
00:21:58.240 for weeks,
00:22:00.340 if not months.
00:22:01.400 Yeah,
00:22:02.020 unless the IDF
00:22:03.160 says,
00:22:04.160 I mean,
00:22:04.400 not to digress
00:22:06.360 down this topic,
00:22:07.020 but it sounds to me
00:22:07.780 like at the cabinet meeting
00:22:08.800 when the security leadership
00:22:09.680 was briefing the cabinet,
00:22:11.200 the War Council,
00:22:12.340 the security cabinet,
00:22:13.060 and the full cabinet
00:22:13.640 the other night,
00:22:14.720 they argued that
00:22:15.420 a four or five day pause
00:22:16.640 or even maybe
00:22:17.180 even a few days longer
00:22:18.040 won't really
00:22:18.800 set the military effort
00:22:20.300 back that much,
00:22:21.560 which was persuasive
00:22:22.580 to most members
00:22:24.880 of the cabinet.
00:22:26.100 The question is,
00:22:27.200 is there a limit
00:22:27.820 to which the security apparatus
00:22:29.180 could make that argument?
00:22:30.280 Is there a limit
00:22:30.740 where they say,
00:22:31.280 look,
00:22:31.680 you know,
00:22:31.920 five,
00:22:32.260 six,
00:22:32.580 seven days is one thing,
00:22:33.620 but many weeks
00:22:34.800 is an entirely different thing
00:22:36.160 that were just
00:22:36.800 wouldn't hold up.
00:22:37.720 That's not undermining
00:22:38.660 the overall effort
00:22:39.420 to eradicate Hamas.
00:22:41.200 We'll see.
00:22:41.740 I mean,
00:22:41.920 as I say,
00:22:42.600 it feels already
00:22:44.060 like the momentum
00:22:44.760 of the operation
00:22:45.480 is being lost.
00:22:47.080 Okay.
00:22:48.200 You write a lot
00:22:49.060 about history.
00:22:49.960 You've covered events
00:22:51.100 in this region
00:22:51.600 and specifically Israel
00:22:52.480 for a long time
00:22:53.300 and you have been sparring
00:22:54.960 with many members
00:22:56.000 of the mainstream media,
00:22:57.460 particularly from your
00:22:58.160 home country,
00:22:58.920 from the UK,
00:23:00.200 over the last number
00:23:01.160 of weeks.
00:23:01.760 And I want to go through
00:23:03.040 with you,
00:23:03.460 as I mentioned,
00:23:04.100 a few mentioned to you
00:23:05.540 before we recorded this,
00:23:07.220 a few of the most common
00:23:09.220 canards out there
00:23:10.800 about how we got
00:23:11.820 into this mess
00:23:12.940 and basically what I see,
00:23:15.580 you know,
00:23:15.680 the kind of the list
00:23:16.360 of lies is what
00:23:17.180 I'd call them.
00:23:18.300 Okay.
00:23:18.700 So the first one
00:23:19.600 that I hear all the time
00:23:20.740 is the war against Israel
00:23:22.960 by Hamas
00:23:24.160 is the inevitable response
00:23:26.420 to colonization
00:23:27.900 that Israel is part
00:23:30.140 of an extension
00:23:30.900 of the Jews
00:23:31.780 in Israel
00:23:32.620 are part of an extension
00:23:33.700 of colonization
00:23:35.080 and what on earth
00:23:36.100 do you expect
00:23:36.700 the Palestinians
00:23:37.320 to do in response?
00:23:39.560 Yeah,
00:23:39.800 that is,
00:23:40.800 of course,
00:23:41.060 just the laying over
00:23:42.060 of a form
00:23:42.560 of social justice theory
00:23:43.760 that has infected
00:23:44.920 the minds
00:23:45.460 of many Americans,
00:23:47.300 most of whom,
00:23:48.040 I'm afraid to say,
00:23:48.720 know nothing
00:23:49.200 about history in general,
00:23:50.600 let alone the history
00:23:51.300 of this region,
00:23:52.320 who simply have
00:23:53.440 this interpretation,
00:23:54.600 which is colonized,
00:23:56.060 colonizers,
00:23:56.960 oppressed,
00:23:57.440 oppressor,
00:23:58.540 indigenous peoples,
00:24:00.300 interlopers,
00:24:01.720 and I mean,
00:24:02.620 they've got everything
00:24:03.220 upside down,
00:24:04.040 even if it was
00:24:04.600 a useful paradigm
00:24:05.640 in which to look
00:24:06.620 at everything in the world,
00:24:07.500 which it isn't.
00:24:08.600 Of course,
00:24:09.420 there's no colonization
00:24:10.780 in Gaza
00:24:12.240 other than by Hamas.
00:24:14.620 All of Gaza
00:24:15.220 was given over
00:24:16.000 by the Israelis
00:24:16.760 in 2005.
00:24:17.780 I was speaking
00:24:18.120 to a commander
00:24:18.600 in the IDF.
00:24:19.200 I said to him,
00:24:20.120 have you been here before?
00:24:21.800 He said,
00:24:22.140 yes.
00:24:22.460 I said,
00:24:22.760 when were you last
00:24:23.360 here,
00:24:23.820 he said,
00:24:24.160 in 2005,
00:24:25.920 tearing out
00:24:26.660 family friends
00:24:27.460 from their homes
00:24:28.280 so that there
00:24:29.340 wouldn't be any Jews
00:24:30.100 in Gaza
00:24:30.600 and we could hand it
00:24:31.400 over to the Palestinians
00:24:32.360 and 18 years later,
00:24:34.680 here I am back.
00:24:36.660 So,
00:24:37.300 it's true that Gaza
00:24:38.080 has been colonized,
00:24:38.820 but it's colonized
00:24:39.340 by Hamas.
00:24:40.660 Admittedly,
00:24:41.180 they were voted in
00:24:41.840 by the Palestinians
00:24:42.860 and so,
00:24:44.320 to that extent,
00:24:45.100 of course,
00:24:45.520 Palestinians in Gaza
00:24:46.840 do have some
00:24:47.620 responsibility for Hamas.
00:24:49.620 But,
00:24:50.120 no,
00:24:50.520 the idea that
00:24:51.460 it's a word
00:24:51.980 colonization
00:24:52.780 only really works
00:24:54.420 and the people
00:24:54.980 who use that terminology
00:24:56.320 really mean
00:24:57.120 all of Israel.
00:24:59.600 And,
00:24:59.700 if you believe
00:25:01.260 that all of Israel
00:25:01.980 is colonized
00:25:02.760 by these
00:25:03.600 usurping Jews
00:25:05.840 who,
00:25:06.680 weirdly,
00:25:07.480 have colonized
00:25:08.600 a land of people
00:25:10.280 whose religion
00:25:10.860 was invented
00:25:11.600 several millennia
00:25:13.320 after Judaism
00:25:14.160 came about,
00:25:15.820 then,
00:25:16.380 you know,
00:25:16.820 you sort of
00:25:17.360 haven't got any history
00:25:18.180 right.
00:25:18.900 But,
00:25:19.760 plenty of people
00:25:20.520 talk that language
00:25:21.720 and,
00:25:23.420 it's just something
00:25:23.980 that doesn't fit here.
00:25:25.660 The whole idea
00:25:26.760 of colonizer colonized,
00:25:28.420 I mean,
00:25:28.740 Well,
00:25:29.940 what about that point,
00:25:30.880 though,
00:25:31.020 that Israel,
00:25:31.960 leave Gaza out of it,
00:25:33.140 that Israel
00:25:33.800 is a colonized state,
00:25:36.940 was created by colonizers.
00:25:39.280 Yeah,
00:25:39.580 I mean,
00:25:40.080 to believe that,
00:25:40.760 you basically have to agree
00:25:41.760 that everything in the world
00:25:42.780 is colonized.
00:25:43.820 I mean,
00:25:44.320 by the way,
00:25:44.700 if people want to care
00:25:45.380 about indigenous peoples,
00:25:46.600 I mean,
00:25:46.740 first of all,
00:25:47.120 the Jews are the oldest
00:25:48.000 continuous group of people
00:25:49.660 who lived in these lands.
00:25:51.840 The Palestinians
00:25:52.460 as a people
00:25:53.100 weren't even mentioned
00:25:53.960 until some decades ago.
00:25:55.360 were there a sort of
00:25:56.040 recent invention
00:25:57.660 as a people.
00:25:59.140 If you went back
00:26:00.220 a couple hundred years
00:26:01.560 and said Palestinian,
00:26:02.860 nobody would know
00:26:03.420 what you were talking about
00:26:04.020 particularly,
00:26:04.480 whereas if you said Jewish,
00:26:05.400 they certainly would.
00:26:06.880 And by the way,
00:26:07.600 you can tell the recentness
00:26:08.920 of it,
00:26:09.240 because if you ask people
00:26:10.440 the name of the famous
00:26:11.320 Palestinian,
00:26:12.420 including Palestinians,
00:26:13.620 they can usually come up
00:26:14.660 with Yasser Arafat
00:26:16.100 and then they draw a blank.
00:26:17.920 That's not the case
00:26:18.680 with Jews.
00:26:19.220 You'll notice that you
00:26:19.980 can name an awful lot
00:26:21.020 of Jews in history.
00:26:23.000 And so,
00:26:24.260 the Palestinian
00:26:24.940 claims are pretty thin.
00:26:27.960 If people do want
00:26:28.940 to do the whole
00:26:29.500 indigenous peoples thing,
00:26:31.540 then at least
00:26:32.180 don't be selective about it.
00:26:33.920 Talk about the indigenous
00:26:34.740 rights of the British
00:26:35.820 or the French.
00:26:38.060 I mean,
00:26:38.240 go on,
00:26:38.660 try it.
00:26:39.900 You know,
00:26:40.100 if you want to play that game,
00:26:41.180 play it everywhere.
00:26:42.040 Don't play it
00:26:42.560 in selective places.
00:26:44.560 Well,
00:26:44.680 when the UN was formed,
00:26:45.940 when the UN Charter
00:26:46.760 in 1945,
00:26:48.020 there were,
00:26:48.720 I think,
00:26:49.480 something like 50
00:26:50.140 to 52 countries.
00:26:51.340 30 years later,
00:26:52.040 there were 170 countries
00:26:54.300 today
00:26:54.760 192,
00:26:56.200 193 countries.
00:26:58.440 So,
00:26:58.540 presumably,
00:26:59.240 the majority
00:27:00.180 of those countries
00:27:01.100 after 1945
00:27:02.540 were just
00:27:03.420 made out of thin air.
00:27:05.160 I mean,
00:27:05.480 they were just like
00:27:06.100 created.
00:27:07.460 And I mean,
00:27:07.880 I'm just sort of...
00:27:08.760 It's just interesting
00:27:09.120 that everyone's focused
00:27:09.840 on Israel.
00:27:10.680 Well,
00:27:10.780 I also think
00:27:11.500 that in general,
00:27:12.120 the idea that Israel
00:27:13.100 lacks legitimacy
00:27:14.060 despite coming about
00:27:15.220 by a vote
00:27:15.880 at the United Nations,
00:27:16.960 the idea that anyone
00:27:18.920 is still having
00:27:19.600 this debate
00:27:20.080 seems to me
00:27:21.320 to be like
00:27:23.440 having a debate
00:27:24.520 about the most
00:27:25.420 basic mathematical
00:27:27.080 theorems.
00:27:29.400 Pakistan was created
00:27:30.820 within the same year
00:27:31.900 as Israel,
00:27:33.400 and not even the most
00:27:34.440 fervent Indian nationalist
00:27:35.780 says that Pakistan
00:27:37.020 should be abolished,
00:27:38.700 or the peoples of Pakistan
00:27:39.780 should just be moved out
00:27:41.040 because they have no right
00:27:41.940 to be there
00:27:42.300 because they're a
00:27:43.240 colonial construct,
00:27:44.520 which, by the way,
00:27:46.080 Pakistan was.
00:27:47.900 And Pakistan has
00:27:49.400 territorial disputes.
00:27:51.240 Pakistan is accused
00:27:52.560 of oppression.
00:27:53.780 I mean,
00:27:53.900 it has all these frames
00:27:54.960 that are applied to Israel,
00:27:56.080 yet no one's suggesting
00:27:57.180 that Pakistan is...
00:27:57.200 Oh, you can do it
00:27:57.580 on any country.
00:27:58.820 I mean,
00:27:59.160 when you and I
00:27:59.800 were growing up,
00:28:00.620 if you wanted to signal
00:28:01.500 some kind of virtue
00:28:02.580 in the international arena,
00:28:04.060 you'd do free Tibet.
00:28:05.820 Does anyone remember
00:28:06.580 free Tibet?
00:28:07.700 Tibet remains doggedly
00:28:08.920 unfree
00:28:09.400 because it turns out
00:28:10.020 the Chinese Communist Party
00:28:11.060 doesn't give much of a damn
00:28:12.140 about a sandal wearer
00:28:13.280 in Brooklyn
00:28:13.740 trying to signal decency.
00:28:15.780 But, unfortunately,
00:28:16.820 when you're dealing
00:28:17.200 with the world's democracies
00:28:18.120 like Israel,
00:28:18.860 they do actually listen
00:28:19.640 to international opinion
00:28:20.720 and international pressure,
00:28:22.240 and they don't like
00:28:23.220 being misrepresented.
00:28:25.020 So, yeah,
00:28:25.340 but I mean,
00:28:25.580 the colonizer-colonized thing
00:28:26.900 is, I'm afraid,
00:28:28.200 an invention
00:28:28.760 of a particularly stupid
00:28:30.920 form of American pseudo-academia
00:28:32.980 from the last few decades,
00:28:34.280 which is mainly done
00:28:35.460 by people who do
00:28:36.180 sort of social studies.
00:28:38.120 Everything has studies
00:28:38.960 after it,
00:28:39.480 which, of course,
00:28:39.860 means it's not a study
00:28:40.660 of any kind.
00:28:41.300 And the next lie
00:28:43.160 or canard goes,
00:28:44.080 the October 7th attack
00:28:45.160 was a response
00:28:46.200 to genocide.
00:28:49.020 Well, of course,
00:28:49.940 if there was a genocide
00:28:51.380 in Gaza,
00:28:52.720 it would be the only genocide
00:28:53.700 in history
00:28:54.280 in which the population
00:28:56.100 massively boomed.
00:28:57.840 I mean,
00:28:58.140 most genocides involve
00:28:59.260 an attempt to eradicate
00:29:00.540 a race of people,
00:29:01.800 and the population
00:29:03.760 of Gaza
00:29:04.220 has boomed
00:29:04.940 in the last 18 years.
00:29:06.900 So, if you say
00:29:08.300 there has been a genocide,
00:29:09.400 either you've got to say
00:29:10.420 there has been
00:29:11.540 an attempted genocide
00:29:12.360 and the Jews
00:29:12.940 are no good
00:29:13.440 at committing genocide,
00:29:15.220 that there would be
00:29:16.020 genocidists,
00:29:16.940 but they're just
00:29:17.440 really bad at the job,
00:29:19.180 or, more likely,
00:29:21.120 you're trying to wound
00:29:21.940 the Jews.
00:29:23.300 And that's all
00:29:23.840 that's happening.
00:29:24.900 Notice that all
00:29:25.660 of the accusations
00:29:26.280 against Israel,
00:29:26.920 all the most vicious
00:29:27.700 accusations,
00:29:28.960 involve attempts
00:29:29.720 to draw a parallel
00:29:30.660 between the behavior
00:29:31.600 of the Israelis
00:29:32.220 and the behavior
00:29:32.840 of Nazi Germany.
00:29:34.580 Genocide,
00:29:35.620 concentration camp,
00:29:37.180 ghetto,
00:29:38.020 like the Warsaw ghetto,
00:29:39.600 like the concentration camps,
00:29:41.180 et cetera, et cetera.
00:29:42.280 Hitler-like behavior.
00:29:43.420 Now,
00:29:44.160 there are several ways
00:29:44.960 you can interpret this.
00:29:46.040 You could say,
00:29:46.600 well,
00:29:46.820 that's the response
00:29:48.320 of having a public culture
00:29:50.020 in America
00:29:50.560 and the wider West
00:29:51.300 that knows nothing
00:29:52.260 of history in general,
00:29:53.840 and only knows
00:29:54.660 one bad thing
00:29:55.600 from history,
00:29:56.140 and that's the Nazis.
00:29:57.780 And so,
00:29:58.220 therefore,
00:29:58.520 whenever you reach
00:29:59.160 for any historical analogy,
00:30:00.280 you will always reach
00:30:01.720 for the Nazi analogy,
00:30:02.680 whereas plenty of analogies
00:30:04.540 historically could be
00:30:05.480 much more relevant.
00:30:06.800 You could say that.
00:30:08.320 Actually,
00:30:08.760 I think it's worse than that.
00:30:09.900 I think that it's
00:30:10.560 a deliberate attempt
00:30:11.600 to wound and hurt Jews.
00:30:14.200 But,
00:30:14.920 moving on from that,
00:30:16.920 when people talk
00:30:17.720 in this language
00:30:18.460 about genocide
00:30:19.780 and ghettos
00:30:21.600 and concentration camps,
00:30:23.720 that Gaza
00:30:24.300 was a concentration camp,
00:30:25.200 by the way,
00:30:25.680 unlike concentration camps
00:30:27.240 from Nazi Germany,
00:30:28.060 you'll notice
00:30:28.500 that there are shopping malls
00:30:29.700 in Gaza,
00:30:30.600 beaches,
00:30:32.240 you know,
00:30:32.520 relative freedom of movement
00:30:33.500 are much more...
00:30:34.180 Office buildings,
00:30:35.320 billions of dollars
00:30:36.140 being sent in
00:30:36.920 from the Sunni Gulf.
00:30:37.760 Yeah,
00:30:38.020 I don't remember
00:30:38.740 the Jews in Auschwitz
00:30:41.320 being given billions
00:30:42.760 of dollars in aid
00:30:43.720 by the international community
00:30:44.960 to do with what they will,
00:30:46.680 and then deciding
00:30:47.520 just to enrich themselves
00:30:48.440 and then go to the beach.
00:30:50.020 So,
00:30:50.820 it's,
00:30:51.520 again,
00:30:51.860 only the product
00:30:52.560 of people
00:30:52.960 who either are
00:30:53.560 fantastically ignorant
00:30:54.480 or just want to wound Jews.
00:30:56.260 And as for the sort
00:30:57.560 of ghetto comparison,
00:30:59.780 to claim that
00:31:00.420 the 7th of October massacre
00:31:01.460 were a result
00:31:02.520 of intolerable
00:31:04.380 Warsaw ghetto-like conditions
00:31:06.380 within Gaza,
00:31:08.540 you would have to,
00:31:09.440 first of all,
00:31:09.980 not know
00:31:10.960 that the Egyptians
00:31:11.820 have a border
00:31:12.700 with Gaza as well
00:31:13.560 and have kept it
00:31:14.200 doggedly closed.
00:31:16.000 So that,
00:31:16.400 just for our listeners,
00:31:17.240 so that's the border
00:31:18.220 on the other side
00:31:19.260 of Gaza.
00:31:20.300 So there's the
00:31:20.820 Israel-Gaza border
00:31:22.020 and then there's
00:31:22.540 the Gaza-Egyptian border
00:31:24.560 that no one
00:31:25.220 ever really talks about.
00:31:26.580 I mean,
00:31:27.180 the kibbutzim around
00:31:28.480 Gaza were,
00:31:29.520 of course,
00:31:30.160 hiring,
00:31:30.700 and there was meant
00:31:31.140 to be an increase
00:31:31.700 in the hiring of
00:31:32.520 and the movement
00:31:33.020 of passage of
00:31:33.960 Palestinian workers
00:31:35.240 from Gaza
00:31:35.880 into Israel
00:31:36.680 until the 7th of October massacre
00:31:38.500 when we discovered
00:31:39.100 that many of the Gazans
00:31:40.020 who were working
00:31:40.580 inside the kibbutz
00:31:41.580 were actually feeding back
00:31:42.560 the information
00:31:43.060 of door-to-door
00:31:43.720 of how to kill who
00:31:44.780 and the people
00:31:45.700 from Hamas
00:31:46.340 who were found
00:31:46.820 dead and alive
00:31:47.500 had maps
00:31:47.980 on their bodies
00:31:48.640 which showed
00:31:49.600 that the Gazan workers
00:31:51.440 who these
00:31:51.940 mainly peacenic
00:31:53.160 left-wing Israelis
00:31:54.100 were employing
00:31:54.940 were actually
00:31:55.820 acting as spies
00:31:56.740 who led to the
00:31:57.480 direct murder
00:31:58.380 and massacre
00:31:59.320 of the people
00:31:59.940 who were trying
00:32:00.340 to help them.
00:32:01.240 But let's put that
00:32:01.780 aside again
00:32:02.360 for a moment
00:32:02.920 and just restate
00:32:04.680 the fact that,
00:32:05.480 again,
00:32:06.220 if it was a ghetto-like
00:32:07.680 condition in Gaza,
00:32:09.140 you would have to live
00:32:10.200 under the impression,
00:32:11.180 if you had this
00:32:12.000 as a justification
00:32:12.620 in your head,
00:32:13.820 that the Warsaw ghetto
00:32:15.040 was filled with Jews
00:32:16.920 who were oppressed
00:32:17.740 and who,
00:32:19.140 when they broke out,
00:32:20.880 just immediately
00:32:21.960 helped themselves
00:32:22.920 to some rape
00:32:23.840 and beheading.
00:32:25.380 Does anyone know
00:32:26.600 that that happened
00:32:27.540 or think that happened
00:32:28.760 or imagine that happened?
00:32:30.740 Of course not.
00:32:32.440 What a sinister
00:32:33.360 and sick argument
00:32:35.340 that is.
00:32:36.600 The Palestinians
00:32:37.240 couldn't help themselves.
00:32:38.640 They broke out
00:32:39.280 and immediately,
00:32:40.680 inevitably,
00:32:41.420 went to a music party
00:32:42.580 of young people
00:32:43.360 where they gunned
00:32:44.300 people down,
00:32:45.200 raped women,
00:32:45.860 and shot them in the head
00:32:46.740 and continued raping them.
00:32:48.380 It's how all oppressed
00:32:49.240 people behave.
00:32:51.060 The population size,
00:32:52.240 just to put a sharper
00:32:53.460 point on it,
00:32:54.080 when Israel took over
00:32:55.140 the Gaza Strip
00:32:55.900 and the West Bank,
00:32:56.580 there were something
00:32:57.120 like 1 million Palestinians.
00:32:59.840 Today,
00:33:00.140 there were over
00:33:00.600 5 million Palestinians.
00:33:02.220 So, to your point,
00:33:03.040 if it was a genocide,
00:33:04.720 it was...
00:33:05.160 The least effective
00:33:05.700 genocide in history.
00:33:07.400 Right.
00:33:07.840 Most bungled
00:33:08.400 genocide in history.
00:33:10.220 Why?
00:33:10.560 I mean,
00:33:10.800 I want to stay
00:33:11.400 on this point for a moment
00:33:12.080 because the speech
00:33:13.360 deed with which
00:33:14.020 October 7th happens
00:33:15.220 and there was
00:33:17.400 maybe a day,
00:33:18.680 I'll give it a day
00:33:19.260 at most,
00:33:19.860 two days,
00:33:21.040 before there was
00:33:22.360 this blowback
00:33:23.520 in all these major cities,
00:33:25.180 not all,
00:33:25.540 these many major cities
00:33:26.400 in Europe
00:33:26.760 and the United States,
00:33:27.640 certainly on college campuses,
00:33:29.240 going right for genocide.
00:33:31.660 The outrage
00:33:32.040 wasn't being directed
00:33:32.940 at Hamas.
00:33:34.720 The outrage
00:33:35.080 was being directed
00:33:36.160 at Jews
00:33:37.320 for objecting
00:33:38.220 to being slaughtered.
00:33:39.500 Yes.
00:33:39.960 Again,
00:33:40.320 the outrage
00:33:40.700 was directed
00:33:41.760 at Jews
00:33:42.300 who objected
00:33:42.980 to genocide.
00:33:43.840 The speed
00:33:44.360 with which
00:33:44.840 so many people
00:33:46.580 in our most elite institutions,
00:33:49.340 in our most
00:33:49.860 cosmopolitan geographies
00:33:51.640 in the world,
00:33:52.300 geographic centers
00:33:52.920 in the world,
00:33:53.760 went right
00:33:54.520 to Israeli genocide.
00:33:56.400 Oh, yeah.
00:33:56.700 This is Israeli genocide.
00:33:57.960 I mean,
00:33:58.200 you wrote a lot
00:33:58.760 about this
00:33:59.880 in your last book,
00:34:00.600 but sometimes
00:34:01.020 these things
00:34:01.420 are so in excess
00:34:03.340 that we become numb
00:34:04.420 to them.
00:34:04.980 Yeah.
00:34:05.760 Me too.
00:34:06.280 I'm just used
00:34:07.080 to Jews
00:34:07.940 being accused
00:34:08.460 of genocide
00:34:09.040 on October 8th
00:34:10.040 or October 9th
00:34:10.880 as opposed to
00:34:11.480 like saying,
00:34:12.080 whoa.
00:34:12.640 On October 8th,
00:34:13.420 as you know,
00:34:13.820 I live in New York
00:34:14.800 or in America
00:34:15.580 most of the time.
00:34:16.880 On October 8th,
00:34:17.700 I went down
00:34:18.060 to Times Square
00:34:18.660 to the Palestinian
00:34:19.580 protests there.
00:34:21.380 Why were they
00:34:22.040 protesting
00:34:22.440 on October 8th?
00:34:24.040 Israel hadn't
00:34:24.560 done anything yet,
00:34:25.300 hadn't retaliated.
00:34:26.780 Well,
00:34:27.120 some of them
00:34:27.500 were simply there
00:34:28.020 to celebrate
00:34:28.420 the massacre.
00:34:29.540 There was a woman
00:34:30.500 in a hijab
00:34:31.320 waving a placard
00:34:32.820 celebrating the massacre
00:34:34.160 of 24 hours earlier
00:34:35.600 in Times Square.
00:34:36.480 So Americans
00:34:37.760 who think
00:34:38.900 this is someone
00:34:39.400 else's problem
00:34:40.060 should first of all
00:34:40.800 realize that the people
00:34:41.800 who heart
00:34:43.080 the rape,
00:34:44.200 massacre,
00:34:44.640 beheading,
00:34:45.020 and burning of Jews
00:34:46.220 are right in your midst
00:34:48.360 in America
00:34:48.940 and have no fear
00:34:51.380 at all
00:34:52.280 from the authorities
00:34:53.520 or anyone else
00:34:54.580 of showing themselves
00:34:55.700 up in public
00:34:56.440 like that straight away.
00:34:58.260 The second point
00:34:59.320 that needs to be made
00:35:00.040 is I've seen this before
00:35:02.000 as you did.
00:35:03.280 I remember very much
00:35:04.920 that when they were
00:35:06.780 still trying
00:35:07.460 to identify bodies
00:35:08.620 in the rubble
00:35:09.240 of the Twin Towers
00:35:10.400 in 2001,
00:35:12.560 there were people
00:35:13.160 like the sickly academic
00:35:14.880 in the UK,
00:35:16.080 Mary Beard,
00:35:17.280 who wrote in the
00:35:18.080 London Review of Books
00:35:19.020 that it was impossible
00:35:19.840 to keep out of one's mind
00:35:21.060 the fact that
00:35:21.700 to some extent,
00:35:22.520 she said,
00:35:22.960 to some extent,
00:35:23.920 we all feel the same thing,
00:35:26.080 which is that America
00:35:26.900 had this coming.
00:35:28.400 Now,
00:35:29.120 how many Americans
00:35:30.120 want to be talked to
00:35:31.040 in that way?
00:35:31.620 How many Americans
00:35:32.940 within days,
00:35:34.560 if not hours,
00:35:35.840 of a massacre
00:35:36.620 of 3,000 Americans
00:35:38.120 want to hear people
00:35:39.720 telling you
00:35:40.360 you had it coming?
00:35:42.240 I wouldn't like
00:35:42.940 to be talked about
00:35:43.780 or to in that tone of voice.
00:35:46.280 But the Israelis
00:35:47.560 are expected
00:35:48.600 to put up with it.
00:35:50.360 You've got to understand
00:35:51.580 the context.
00:35:53.100 As if there's a context
00:35:54.380 to going to
00:35:56.500 a music festival
00:35:58.420 and gunning down
00:35:59.180 lots of people
00:35:59.960 in their 20s.
00:36:00.980 and tying the women
00:36:02.340 to trees
00:36:02.820 and raping them.
00:36:04.680 And putting live babies
00:36:05.620 in ovens.
00:36:06.060 As if there's a context
00:36:07.160 to going into
00:36:08.060 Béry
00:36:08.520 and near Oz
00:36:10.220 and kibbutz
00:36:11.720 after kibbutz
00:36:12.660 of left-wing
00:36:14.140 peaceniks
00:36:14.740 in the main.
00:36:16.260 And,
00:36:17.060 as I've seen
00:36:17.840 myself,
00:36:18.920 door after door,
00:36:20.280 ruined house
00:36:20.940 after ruined house,
00:36:22.860 people in their
00:36:23.820 shelters,
00:36:24.480 bomb shelters,
00:36:25.160 because they were
00:36:25.540 used to bomb shelters
00:36:26.740 because they have
00:36:27.580 to be used to the bombs
00:36:28.700 because they come over
00:36:29.500 so used so often.
00:36:30.980 But they didn't know
00:36:32.320 that the people
00:36:33.200 would come door-to-door,
00:36:34.880 4,000 people
00:36:36.240 from Gaza
00:36:37.240 with Kalashnikovs
00:36:39.760 and RPGs
00:36:41.140 and much more.
00:36:43.140 Door-to-door
00:36:43.880 so the safe rooms
00:36:45.760 don't lock.
00:36:47.540 I spoke to one man
00:36:48.880 whose grandsons
00:36:50.420 were in their house
00:36:51.420 on their own
00:36:51.900 because their mother
00:36:52.520 was out
00:36:53.020 when the Hamas
00:36:54.220 death squads came.
00:36:55.320 and he was on the phone
00:36:56.960 trying to tell
00:36:58.080 the boys,
00:36:59.220 I think they were
00:36:59.740 13 and 15,
00:37:01.640 how to hold
00:37:02.540 the safe room door
00:37:03.880 shut
00:37:04.420 when the grown men
00:37:05.840 of Hamas
00:37:06.500 on the other side
00:37:07.460 were pushing it
00:37:08.240 to open the door
00:37:09.140 the other way.
00:37:10.380 And they were abducted.
00:37:11.920 They were stolen.
00:37:12.600 They were kidnapped
00:37:13.200 because they couldn't
00:37:14.600 hold out,
00:37:15.320 not against grown men.
00:37:16.420 And you see
00:37:17.780 the safe room doors
00:37:19.020 in these kibbutz.
00:37:21.420 You know the ones
00:37:22.380 where it was
00:37:23.280 an even worse ending
00:37:24.380 because you see
00:37:25.740 the bullet holes
00:37:26.520 all around the handles
00:37:27.700 because that was
00:37:28.880 a faster way in
00:37:29.880 for Hamas.
00:37:31.220 Now,
00:37:32.100 if anyone wants
00:37:32.980 to tell me
00:37:33.920 that this is
00:37:34.940 a legitimate
00:37:35.640 answer to oppression,
00:37:38.440 I say you are
00:37:39.860 sick in the head
00:37:41.460 beyond comprehension.
00:37:43.740 And you should not
00:37:45.240 presume
00:37:45.980 that the Palestinian
00:37:47.660 peoples
00:37:48.540 are all necessarily
00:37:50.020 and must be
00:37:50.940 for all time
00:37:51.680 as sick
00:37:52.120 as you think
00:37:52.680 they are.
00:37:53.960 It seems that
00:37:54.560 lots of critics
00:37:56.200 of Israel's response
00:37:58.140 argue that
00:37:59.320 Israel has a right
00:38:00.580 to self-defense.
00:38:01.920 The ones that are
00:38:02.560 not as extreme
00:38:03.600 as the ones
00:38:04.300 we're seeing
00:38:04.760 marching in
00:38:05.700 major American cities
00:38:07.040 and European cities
00:38:07.860 and college campuses,
00:38:09.680 the ones that aren't
00:38:10.780 as extreme
00:38:11.220 but still critical
00:38:11.880 of Israel,
00:38:12.360 they argue,
00:38:13.060 look,
00:38:13.300 Israel has a right
00:38:14.280 to self-defense
00:38:15.360 but must be
00:38:16.400 more mindful,
00:38:17.920 more thoughtful
00:38:18.620 in terms of
00:38:19.800 how it wages
00:38:20.940 its war.
00:38:22.020 When people say
00:38:23.040 Israel has the right
00:38:23.720 to self-defense,
00:38:24.880 it's always followed
00:38:25.560 by a but.
00:38:26.640 I don't know why.
00:38:27.680 I don't know any other people
00:38:28.520 who has always a but.
00:38:29.980 But there's a reason
00:38:30.760 for that,
00:38:31.240 which is the people
00:38:31.800 who say that,
00:38:32.420 what they really mean
00:38:33.200 is Israel is allowed
00:38:34.500 to do something
00:38:35.300 rather tokenistic
00:38:36.520 and then it must settle
00:38:37.980 for a draw.
00:38:39.440 I believe that one
00:38:40.200 of the reasons
00:38:40.580 why there's been
00:38:41.260 an ongoing war
00:38:42.280 for so long
00:38:43.320 between Israel
00:38:44.320 and the Palestinians
00:38:45.040 is precisely because
00:38:46.820 the international community
00:38:48.080 and others
00:38:48.460 keep on making Israel
00:38:49.680 fight to a draw.
00:38:51.380 Never is Israel
00:38:52.620 allowed to win.
00:38:54.080 What would winning be?
00:38:55.640 Winning would be
00:38:56.420 in this case,
00:38:57.120 for instance,
00:38:57.500 with Hamas,
00:38:58.520 destroying Hamas
00:38:59.460 and making sure
00:39:00.380 that no Hamas-like organization
00:39:01.880 exists in the Gaza
00:39:03.020 again,
00:39:04.540 that no rocket
00:39:05.680 ever again
00:39:06.460 fires out of Gaza
00:39:07.860 into Israel.
00:39:09.500 That would be winning.
00:39:11.220 Everything else
00:39:11.800 is a draw.
00:39:13.000 And I have very little sympathy
00:39:14.600 for the putative supporters
00:39:17.040 of the Palestinian peoples
00:39:18.200 who, first of all,
00:39:19.880 think that Hamas
00:39:20.560 is the necessary spokesgroup
00:39:22.080 of the Palestinian peoples
00:39:23.300 when they completely ignore
00:39:24.360 that when Hamas
00:39:25.080 was voted in,
00:39:26.340 they promptly made sure
00:39:27.240 there was never
00:39:27.660 another election
00:39:28.500 and killed all of their Fatah
00:39:29.760 and other Palestinian opponents.
00:39:31.560 And by the way,
00:39:32.140 the people who doubt that
00:39:33.120 should even look at
00:39:33.860 very anti-Israel organizations
00:39:35.660 like Amnesty International
00:39:37.060 who nine years ago,
00:39:38.860 in 2014,
00:39:40.060 said that the Shifa hospital
00:39:41.520 in Gaza
00:39:42.160 was the Hamas headquarters
00:39:44.180 and what's more
00:39:45.560 was the main place
00:39:46.600 where Hamas
00:39:47.180 brought Palestinian prisoners
00:39:48.880 and tortured them
00:39:50.160 and killed them.
00:39:51.400 It was known
00:39:52.240 as the interrogation center
00:39:54.020 and torture chamber
00:39:55.020 of Hamas in Gaza.
00:39:56.800 This is what Hamas do.
00:39:59.080 This is what they're like.
00:40:00.180 But if you want to pretend
00:40:02.900 that the Palestinians
00:40:04.160 should live under that,
00:40:05.560 then be my guest.
00:40:06.880 There is no reason
00:40:08.300 why the Israelis
00:40:08.980 should continue
00:40:09.900 to have to live
00:40:10.720 beside a place
00:40:12.820 where endlessly
00:40:14.720 rockets will be fired
00:40:16.120 to the extent
00:40:17.000 that every house
00:40:17.860 is used to them,
00:40:18.620 to the extent
00:40:19.260 that every house
00:40:20.000 has to have a bomb shelter.
00:40:21.140 I mean,
00:40:21.960 to say that Israel
00:40:22.980 has to learn
00:40:23.460 to live without threat
00:40:24.260 is to say Israel,
00:40:25.200 right,
00:40:25.380 it's existential.
00:40:26.620 I speak to endless people
00:40:28.640 who are refugees
00:40:29.580 from these towns,
00:40:30.860 from Ashkelon
00:40:31.440 and places like that.
00:40:32.220 I was speaking to a family earlier,
00:40:33.720 lovely young couple
00:40:34.900 bombed out of their apartment.
00:40:36.440 They were in the safe room
00:40:37.380 in Ashkelon
00:40:39.140 with their three young children
00:40:40.840 and the missile
00:40:43.280 hit their apartment
00:40:44.040 and thank God
00:40:44.580 they were okay,
00:40:46.260 but their apartment
00:40:46.760 is destroyed.
00:40:47.340 How can they move back
00:40:48.460 if you're within missiles?
00:40:50.060 And to be clear,
00:40:50.800 Ashkelon is not even
00:40:51.860 one of the towns
00:40:53.020 that's right on the border
00:40:54.240 with Gaza.
00:40:54.900 I mean,
00:40:55.120 Ashkelon,
00:40:55.920 you're already
00:40:56.340 deep into the,
00:40:58.260 much closer to the,
00:40:59.100 yeah,
00:40:59.320 center of Israel.
00:41:00.200 But the main thing
00:41:01.020 about this thing
00:41:01.800 of the Israelis
00:41:03.240 not being allowed to win
00:41:04.740 is that I think
00:41:06.560 that's intolerable
00:41:07.380 and I think it makes
00:41:08.220 for perpetual conflict.
00:41:09.560 I think conflict's
00:41:10.240 mainly finished
00:41:10.880 when one side wins
00:41:11.880 and one side loses
00:41:12.640 and the side that loses
00:41:14.420 knows that it's lost.
00:41:15.540 But I find this
00:41:17.860 perverse idea
00:41:19.980 that the Israelis,
00:41:21.560 you know,
00:41:22.160 this isn't just
00:41:22.860 with this conflict,
00:41:24.120 but in almost every conflict
00:41:25.380 involving the Arabs
00:41:26.240 and Israel,
00:41:26.780 in fact,
00:41:28.060 every conflict
00:41:28.860 from 1948 up till now,
00:41:31.240 what always happens is
00:41:32.600 the Israelis are hit
00:41:34.140 or invaded
00:41:34.860 and they are told
00:41:36.480 by the international community
00:41:37.420 you can do something
00:41:38.360 in response,
00:41:39.700 but you mustn't win.
00:41:41.060 You mustn't answer a question.
00:41:42.200 I mean,
00:41:42.320 I think the Palestinian question
00:41:43.600 is effectively
00:41:44.160 an insoluble question.
00:41:45.540 At this point,
00:41:45.960 there is going to be
00:41:46.540 no Palestinian state,
00:41:48.080 partly because Fatah,
00:41:49.440 PA in the West Bank
00:41:50.400 celebrates the October
00:41:51.600 the 7th massacres
00:41:52.460 and we saw a couple
00:41:53.560 of days ago
00:41:54.000 with the lynching
00:41:54.440 of two Palestinians
00:41:55.720 by a crowd,
00:41:56.760 all of them,
00:41:57.080 by the way,
00:41:57.600 recorded it
00:41:58.220 on their mobile phone
00:41:58.980 and so these are
00:41:59.460 the peaceful people
00:42:00.140 of the West Bank as well.
00:42:01.640 There's going to be
00:42:02.060 no Palestinian state
00:42:03.040 because the Palestinians
00:42:03.720 have made sure
00:42:04.300 yet again
00:42:05.060 there's just no chance.
00:42:07.240 But I don't see
00:42:07.860 why this insoluble problem
00:42:09.220 of the Palestinians
00:42:09.860 has to be a problem
00:42:10.640 for the Israelis.
00:42:11.580 Giving somebody
00:42:12.220 an insoluble problem
00:42:13.100 and telling them
00:42:13.560 to solve it
00:42:14.120 seems to me
00:42:14.660 to be a kind of
00:42:15.300 unfair and cruel
00:42:16.660 thing to do.
00:42:17.520 Give it to somebody
00:42:18.000 else to solve.
00:42:18.940 Give it to the Egyptians
00:42:19.540 to solve.
00:42:20.420 Give it to the Qataris
00:42:21.760 or the UAE
00:42:23.440 or the Jordanians.
00:42:25.380 Give it to somebody
00:42:25.880 else to solve.
00:42:26.700 Why should it be
00:42:27.240 Israel's insoluble problem?
00:42:29.040 But of course,
00:42:29.520 what happens is
00:42:30.300 effectively that,
00:42:31.980 and it's happening
00:42:32.520 at the moment
00:42:32.960 with Hamas,
00:42:33.840 Hamas is behaving
00:42:34.720 in the way that
00:42:35.840 the thing that's
00:42:36.600 most similar to it
00:42:37.520 would be if you
00:42:38.220 and I were standing
00:42:38.980 at a bus stop
00:42:40.040 and I punched you
00:42:41.520 in the face
00:42:42.100 for no reason
00:42:43.020 or for reason
00:42:44.340 I could say
00:42:44.880 went back to some
00:42:45.680 inherited feeling
00:42:46.940 of oppression
00:42:47.540 and then you
00:42:49.160 turned out to be
00:42:50.300 a jiu-jitsu master
00:42:51.460 and informed me
00:42:53.140 of this fact
00:42:53.860 and I said,
00:42:55.760 oh,
00:42:56.580 can we just go back
00:42:57.520 to the moment
00:42:57.940 before I hit you,
00:42:58.860 would you mind?
00:43:00.020 That's the situation
00:43:01.080 Israel is in with Hamas.
00:43:02.760 Hamas wants to go
00:43:03.540 back to October the 6th.
00:43:06.720 Most of the
00:43:07.260 international community
00:43:08.080 wants to go back
00:43:08.740 to October the 6th.
00:43:10.620 There was a ceasefire
00:43:11.560 of a kind.
00:43:12.900 Hamas broke it.
00:43:14.180 Hamas has to pay the price.
00:43:16.680 The argument
00:43:17.140 of proportionality.
00:43:19.060 Now,
00:43:19.220 there are two versions
00:43:19.980 of proportionality.
00:43:21.000 One is,
00:43:21.640 under international law,
00:43:23.100 when you take out
00:43:23.920 a military target,
00:43:25.320 according to international law,
00:43:26.440 I'm not weighing in
00:43:27.280 all the various interpretations,
00:43:28.580 but at least according
00:43:29.840 to Matthew Waxman,
00:43:31.160 who we had on this podcast,
00:43:32.500 who's a professor
00:43:33.520 of international law,
00:43:34.420 Columbia Law School,
00:43:35.580 is that the collateral damage
00:43:37.980 in going after a target
00:43:39.060 has to be proportional
00:43:39.920 to the military gain.
00:43:41.920 Then there's this sort of
00:43:42.600 media interpretation
00:43:43.560 of proportionality,
00:43:44.440 which is actually not based
00:43:45.660 on the international
00:43:46.480 rules of war.
00:43:47.480 It's a different kind
00:43:48.180 of proportionality.
00:43:49.080 It's like Israel was hit
00:43:50.740 and Israel's now hitting back
00:43:52.380 quote-unquote harder,
00:43:54.180 and that's not proportional,
00:43:56.280 as though it's a math game.
00:43:58.080 First of all,
00:43:58.820 I mean,
00:43:59.060 you should hit back harder
00:44:00.320 if you want to win.
00:44:01.920 When we wanted to win wars
00:44:03.680 in America and Britain,
00:44:04.840 we always hit back harder.
00:44:06.720 Why would you hit back softer?
00:44:08.560 What's the point in that?
00:44:10.020 You have to hit back harder.
00:44:11.700 If you want to destroy
00:44:12.420 an opponent,
00:44:12.940 you hit them as hard
00:44:13.720 as you can.
00:44:15.200 Now, of course,
00:44:16.200 as is often pointed out,
00:44:18.200 and I've seen it
00:44:19.020 with my own eyes,
00:44:19.940 so I know it's not just
00:44:20.980 an Israeli talking point.
00:44:22.680 The Israelis do everything
00:44:23.660 they can to minimize
00:44:24.740 civilian casualties.
00:44:26.820 Are there civilian casualties?
00:44:28.160 Yes.
00:44:29.000 And it's terrible.
00:44:30.380 I think they're all
00:44:31.140 the responsibility of Hamas
00:44:32.320 for starting a war,
00:44:33.680 but when Hamas
00:44:35.260 spends billions of dollars
00:44:37.140 of international aid
00:44:38.020 from your American taxpayer
00:44:39.240 and from your British taxpayer
00:44:40.440 and great use of our tax dollars,
00:44:42.400 that was,
00:44:43.280 and funnel money
00:44:44.360 to the authorities,
00:44:45.760 the Hamas,
00:44:46.680 you would think
00:44:48.440 that they might build bunkers
00:44:49.480 for their people
00:44:50.100 if they think
00:44:50.620 that they're going to start a war,
00:44:51.540 but of course, no.
00:44:52.460 They have built bunkers
00:44:53.460 for the Hamas leadership,
00:44:54.920 and the Hamas leadership
00:44:55.720 has said that themselves
00:44:56.800 on plenty of occasions.
00:44:58.660 The bunkers,
00:44:59.480 the tunnels,
00:45:00.120 they're for us.
00:45:00.740 The Israelis, of course,
00:45:02.160 do it the other way around.
00:45:03.200 The Israelis use the IDF
00:45:04.820 and the other security agencies
00:45:06.300 to protect the Israeli people.
00:45:08.560 Hamas wanted to kill
00:45:10.160 as many civilians as possible
00:45:11.600 on October the 7th.
00:45:13.180 That's why they chose
00:45:14.100 the softest imaginable targets
00:45:15.900 like a music festival,
00:45:17.740 like small kibbutz,
00:45:19.740 and so on.
00:45:20.780 They deliberately target civilians,
00:45:23.440 and the Israelis
00:45:24.000 accidentally hit civilians,
00:45:25.680 and there's every difference
00:45:26.500 in the world with that.
00:45:27.900 But the proportionality argument is,
00:45:29.680 I mean, first of all,
00:45:30.540 there's an argument
00:45:30.960 I made quite early on
00:45:31.920 in this conflict,
00:45:32.600 which was,
00:45:33.340 if you do actually believe
00:45:34.320 in this thing of proportionality,
00:45:35.600 which I really only hear about
00:45:37.060 involving wars in Israel,
00:45:38.140 I've covered plenty of wars.
00:45:39.620 I was in Ukraine last year.
00:45:41.360 I hear nobody saying
00:45:43.060 that the Ukrainians
00:45:43.920 have to have a proportionate response
00:45:45.660 to the annexation
00:45:47.240 of major parts of their country.
00:45:48.820 They're just,
00:45:49.340 everyone hopes
00:45:49.800 that they can take those parts back.
00:45:51.680 But it's always the Israelis
00:45:52.940 you have the discussion
00:45:53.820 of proportionality with.
00:45:55.380 And if, as I said,
00:45:56.360 if you actually want
00:45:57.020 to follow that through,
00:45:57.760 then proportionality would mean
00:45:59.400 that the Israelis,
00:46:00.580 to the extent they have
00:46:01.340 the right to respond
00:46:02.420 to Hamas's massacres
00:46:03.840 on October 7th,
00:46:04.620 should find precisely
00:46:05.520 the same number of women
00:46:06.600 in Gaza as Hamas found
00:46:07.960 and rape them.
00:46:09.220 They should find
00:46:09.980 precisely the same number
00:46:10.940 of babies that Hamas killed
00:46:12.200 on October 7th
00:46:13.380 and behead and kill them.
00:46:15.260 And stop only
00:46:16.560 when they've killed
00:46:17.220 exactly the same number
00:46:18.580 of people as Hamas killed
00:46:19.860 on October 7th.
00:46:21.720 Now, some people might say,
00:46:22.780 well, the population of Gaza
00:46:23.840 is about a quarter
00:46:24.680 of the size
00:46:25.200 of the population of Israel.
00:46:26.380 So actually,
00:46:27.020 if it was properly proportionate,
00:46:28.500 you would only rape
00:46:29.780 a quarter of the women
00:46:31.160 that Hamas raped
00:46:32.460 and you'd only kill
00:46:33.320 a quarter of the babies.
00:46:34.360 And is that okay?
00:46:35.600 Come on.
00:46:36.280 This is like wildly
00:46:37.660 perverted thinking.
00:46:39.660 Wildly perverted thinking.
00:46:40.840 It's not even thinking.
00:46:42.780 And by the way,
00:46:43.720 I mean, just look at
00:46:44.440 what the US did to ISIS
00:46:45.900 in Raqqa and Mosul.
00:46:48.180 I mean,
00:46:48.920 the idea of proportionality is,
00:46:50.840 and I supported
00:46:51.640 what we did against ISIS.
00:46:53.240 It was the idea
00:46:54.500 that we would talk
00:46:55.180 about proportionality
00:46:56.120 was preposterous.
00:46:57.380 We flattened these places.
00:46:58.900 When France bombed
00:47:00.220 the Côte d'Ivoire
00:47:01.120 in 2003 or 2004,
00:47:03.260 the international community
00:47:04.140 didn't say,
00:47:04.760 don't, you know,
00:47:05.440 don't do this.
00:47:06.040 Don't be, you know,
00:47:06.540 you've got to be proportionate.
00:47:07.660 The French just did
00:47:08.380 whatever they want,
00:47:09.260 as the French always do.
00:47:10.760 It's only Israel
00:47:11.460 that people care about.
00:47:12.180 And that's because most people
00:47:13.120 don't want Israel to win.
00:47:15.000 I mean, as far as I can see,
00:47:15.920 I'm saying most people.
00:47:17.220 I mean,
00:47:18.260 a lot of people
00:47:18.780 are decent in the world.
00:47:20.300 But most critics?
00:47:21.760 Most critics.
00:47:22.480 They just don't want Israel
00:47:23.440 to win.
00:47:24.060 And so they come up
00:47:24.660 with this BS
00:47:25.600 about proportionality.
00:47:27.800 Hamas is an idea,
00:47:29.800 some say.
00:47:30.700 And no matter
00:47:31.060 what Israel does here,
00:47:32.740 it cannot bomb away an idea,
00:47:35.620 many critics argue.
00:47:36.780 And that, you know,
00:47:37.560 your analogy about
00:47:39.080 in this hostage exchange,
00:47:40.580 there may be a future sinwar.
00:47:43.460 Some critics argue,
00:47:44.900 well, in some of the
00:47:45.940 bombed out civilian areas
00:47:47.240 in North Gaza,
00:47:48.140 there are sinwars
00:47:49.540 in the making
00:47:50.080 who otherwise
00:47:50.660 may go another way.
00:47:51.700 They then get radicalized
00:47:53.940 because of Israel's
00:47:55.180 quote-unquote
00:47:55.680 indiscriminate bombing.
00:47:57.800 And you will never defeat
00:47:59.160 an idea
00:48:00.360 that will be so attractive
00:48:01.760 to a vulnerable
00:48:03.400 victim
00:48:04.380 of Israeli warfare
00:48:06.380 that becomes radicalized
00:48:08.260 as a result.
00:48:09.380 Well, it's a very strange
00:48:10.140 argument, isn't it?
00:48:11.020 Because we've destroyed
00:48:11.860 ideas all the time.
00:48:13.340 We destroyed fascism.
00:48:15.160 Right.
00:48:15.560 So, and Nazism
00:48:16.740 was much more robust
00:48:18.100 both financially,
00:48:19.540 infrastructurally,
00:48:20.300 and numerically
00:48:21.360 than Hamas is.
00:48:22.400 Hamas is a pushover
00:48:23.780 compared to Nazism.
00:48:25.080 We destroyed communism.
00:48:26.680 I mean, it's true
00:48:27.300 that it still thrives
00:48:28.320 in Berkeley
00:48:29.360 and various American
00:48:30.240 college campuses.
00:48:31.700 But otherwise,
00:48:32.620 communism
00:48:32.900 is a pretty defunct ideology.
00:48:34.960 Even the CCP
00:48:35.580 sort of steps away
00:48:37.800 from some of it now.
00:48:40.160 Japanese imperialism
00:48:41.560 was a very strong idea.
00:48:42.800 And the Japanese
00:48:44.280 were almost as dedicated
00:48:45.880 as Hamas and ISIS
00:48:47.120 to dying for that idea.
00:48:49.520 But we so destroyed
00:48:50.760 Japan's infrastructure
00:48:52.240 and leadership
00:48:53.060 and indeed cities.
00:48:55.100 And there is no talk
00:48:56.880 these days,
00:48:57.580 no serious talk.
00:48:58.580 I mean,
00:48:58.700 there was some discussion
00:48:59.500 about indoctrination
00:49:00.260 in Japanese schools.
00:49:01.360 Sometimes it comes up
00:49:02.520 about the nationalism
00:49:03.480 that some people feel
00:49:04.980 is always sort of
00:49:06.420 nodded to
00:49:07.200 within Japan's schools.
00:49:08.420 But I don't think
00:49:09.640 there's any serious movement
00:49:10.840 in Japan
00:49:11.880 that is
00:49:12.380 because we
00:49:13.640 were treated like this,
00:49:15.280 we're going to go back
00:49:16.140 to Japanese imperialism.
00:49:17.740 And that's because
00:49:18.260 we bombed the hell out of them
00:49:19.440 and defeated them
00:49:20.800 because otherwise
00:49:21.300 they would have defeated us.
00:49:22.940 And it's a very good thing too.
00:49:24.640 Again,
00:49:25.000 I get back to this point,
00:49:25.980 you have to lose.
00:49:27.240 You have to lose.
00:49:28.980 Your enemy has to lose.
00:49:31.580 And we won't necessarily
00:49:32.300 get unconditional surrender.
00:49:33.760 Israel will not necessarily
00:49:34.720 get unconditional surrender
00:49:35.920 from Hamas,
00:49:37.220 but it could get
00:49:37.780 unequivocal defeat
00:49:39.160 of Hamas.
00:49:39.760 I would like
00:49:40.520 unconditional surrender,
00:49:41.660 but we'll see.
00:49:42.380 Yeah.
00:49:43.480 Douglas,
00:49:43.960 you wrote this book,
00:49:45.560 The War on the West,
00:49:46.280 which was a
00:49:46.920 New York Times bestseller,
00:49:48.420 very provocative book,
00:49:49.600 published long before
00:49:51.160 October 7th.
00:49:52.540 Where does
00:49:53.140 October 7th
00:49:54.400 fit into your thesis?
00:49:55.640 The War on the West
00:49:56.500 is about the
00:49:56.960 anti-Westernism
00:49:57.820 of our time,
00:49:58.520 whereby every single
00:49:59.460 Western country
00:50:00.240 is treated by
00:50:00.820 this bizarre standard
00:50:02.060 where we're all
00:50:03.120 meant to have
00:50:03.640 original sins
00:50:04.460 and we must
00:50:05.880 atone for them.
00:50:06.860 And of course,
00:50:07.300 no other country
00:50:07.860 in the world
00:50:08.260 has the same thing.
00:50:09.080 our history
00:50:10.120 has been rewritten
00:50:10.840 in America
00:50:11.560 and Britain
00:50:12.180 and elsewhere
00:50:13.040 as one of
00:50:13.580 terrible oppression
00:50:15.080 and it's all
00:50:15.960 looked at
00:50:16.420 through this lens
00:50:17.140 of negativity
00:50:17.800 and evil
00:50:18.800 and wrongdoing.
00:50:20.120 And I mean,
00:50:21.080 to put a very
00:50:21.920 long and scholarly
00:50:24.200 book into
00:50:24.860 simplistic terms,
00:50:26.100 I would say
00:50:26.400 it's about,
00:50:27.040 well,
00:50:27.300 it's very strange
00:50:28.120 that this only happens
00:50:29.040 to the world's
00:50:29.600 Western democracies
00:50:30.540 and it doesn't get
00:50:31.460 done anywhere else.
00:50:32.180 I see no one
00:50:32.760 going to Uganda
00:50:33.560 and saying
00:50:34.220 what's their
00:50:34.740 original sin.
00:50:36.400 Most Ugandans
00:50:37.340 would look at you
00:50:37.820 with some confusion
00:50:38.540 if you raise the issue.
00:50:40.180 I don't see people
00:50:41.340 going to Jordan
00:50:42.540 and saying
00:50:43.120 what's your
00:50:43.580 original sin
00:50:44.260 and by the way,
00:50:45.240 guys,
00:50:45.720 you've never done
00:50:46.240 anything good.
00:50:47.760 It's all been horrible.
00:50:49.800 In fact,
00:50:50.140 there are countries
00:50:50.760 in the world
00:50:51.180 that are much more
00:50:51.800 deserving of such
00:50:52.740 an interpretation.
00:50:54.400 But yes,
00:50:55.820 Israel obviously
00:50:56.680 suffers from this
00:50:57.540 as well,
00:50:58.080 this idiot
00:50:58.540 American idea
00:50:59.440 of colonization,
00:51:01.060 of first people,
00:51:02.180 the oppressor
00:51:03.320 are oppressed
00:51:03.880 and so on.
00:51:05.080 This has been
00:51:05.620 transplanted
00:51:06.360 onto Israel
00:51:07.140 as it's been
00:51:07.820 transplanted
00:51:08.500 onto every other
00:51:09.120 Western country,
00:51:10.080 Canada,
00:51:10.680 Australia,
00:51:11.240 we've all got
00:51:11.620 versions of the
00:51:12.300 same virus.
00:51:13.960 And yeah,
00:51:15.060 the response
00:51:15.580 to October the 7th
00:51:17.040 in America
00:51:18.020 in particular,
00:51:19.000 parts of America
00:51:20.120 in particular,
00:51:21.000 is a vindication
00:51:21.680 of the fact
00:51:22.100 that this horrible,
00:51:23.220 horrible mind virus
00:51:24.580 has wrecked
00:51:26.760 the minds
00:51:27.460 of young people
00:51:28.520 in particular
00:51:29.240 to the extent
00:51:30.540 that they don't
00:51:32.060 realize that
00:51:33.000 they are being
00:51:34.180 the Nazis.
00:51:35.880 If they got
00:51:36.980 their wish,
00:51:38.160 and I hope
00:51:38.820 to God
00:51:39.320 they never do
00:51:40.160 for themselves
00:51:41.520 apart from
00:51:42.180 anything else,
00:51:43.240 if they got
00:51:43.840 their wish
00:51:44.540 of the river
00:51:45.800 whose name
00:51:46.500 they don't know
00:51:47.600 to the sea
00:51:49.080 who they couldn't
00:51:50.160 point to
00:51:50.760 on a map
00:51:51.600 being entirely
00:51:53.080 Judenrein,
00:51:54.400 which is,
00:51:55.280 of course,
00:51:55.580 the desire
00:51:56.100 not just of Hamas
00:51:57.200 but of the
00:51:57.600 Palestinian Authority
00:51:58.620 who are meant
00:51:59.040 to be the putative
00:51:59.740 next failed
00:52:00.560 Arab state,
00:52:01.940 they would
00:52:02.760 be Hitler.
00:52:04.400 What they're
00:52:04.880 chanting for
00:52:05.780 is the final
00:52:07.260 dream of Hitler.
00:52:09.020 So they should
00:52:09.700 know that
00:52:10.260 and wish to
00:52:11.260 God
00:52:11.900 that they never
00:52:12.640 get their
00:52:13.300 chant
00:52:14.240 fulfilled.
00:52:15.860 Yeah.
00:52:16.680 You wrote
00:52:17.460 in the New York
00:52:17.940 Post,
00:52:18.820 you go back
00:52:19.480 to the
00:52:19.960 2014
00:52:21.140 Boko Haram
00:52:22.380 hostage-taking
00:52:24.160 of Christian
00:52:25.660 schoolgirls
00:52:26.380 in Nigeria.
00:52:27.340 You wrote
00:52:27.540 here,
00:52:27.820 and I'm
00:52:28.000 quoting,
00:52:28.380 my mind
00:52:28.900 keeps going
00:52:29.480 back 10
00:52:30.020 years ago
00:52:30.500 to Nigeria
00:52:31.100 in 2014.
00:52:32.100 As some
00:52:32.740 readers will
00:52:33.420 remember,
00:52:34.420 on the night
00:52:34.960 of April
00:52:35.480 14,
00:52:36.740 2014,
00:52:38.120 276
00:52:39.480 mainly
00:52:39.800 Christian
00:52:40.200 schoolgirls
00:52:40.960 were abducted
00:52:41.700 by terrorists
00:52:42.260 from the
00:52:42.540 Boko Haram
00:52:43.120 group.
00:52:43.480 It happened
00:52:43.860 at a school
00:52:44.400 in a town
00:52:44.980 called Chibuk
00:52:46.180 in Borno
00:52:47.180 State.
00:52:48.300 In some
00:52:48.840 ways,
00:52:49.220 it is obvious
00:52:49.960 why there was
00:52:50.620 such international
00:52:51.480 outrage at the
00:52:52.280 incident.
00:52:52.720 After all,
00:52:53.180 this was 276
00:52:55.040 schoolgirls
00:52:55.640 kidnapped by
00:52:56.200 an Islamic
00:52:56.700 terrorist group.
00:52:57.640 Even a world
00:52:58.260 that had seen
00:52:58.940 the Beslan
00:52:59.900 school siege
00:53:00.640 in 2004
00:53:01.460 and was
00:53:02.200 starting to
00:53:02.700 see the
00:53:03.020 workings of
00:53:03.580 ISIS still
00:53:04.260 had capacity
00:53:04.980 to be
00:53:05.500 shocked.
00:53:06.600 So you
00:53:06.920 take this
00:53:07.460 very important
00:53:08.180 snapshot,
00:53:08.880 and let's
00:53:09.080 just,
00:53:09.500 every celebrity
00:53:10.260 would hold
00:53:10.760 up these,
00:53:11.240 you know,
00:53:11.480 signs,
00:53:12.080 hashtag,
00:53:12.740 bring back
00:53:13.140 our girls,
00:53:13.560 including the
00:53:14.060 first lady,
00:53:14.640 including Michelle
00:53:15.140 Obama.
00:53:16.020 So this
00:53:16.460 was widespread.
00:53:17.860 Again,
00:53:18.840 I'm sort of
00:53:20.060 numb to the
00:53:20.740 reaction now,
00:53:21.740 post-October
00:53:22.340 7th.
00:53:22.800 But like,
00:53:23.220 when I read
00:53:23.680 you lay it
00:53:24.160 out like
00:53:24.480 that,
00:53:25.160 it's like,
00:53:25.660 what is
00:53:26.240 going on?
00:53:27.340 It was
00:53:27.740 hip.
00:53:28.220 It was
00:53:28.520 chic.
00:53:29.220 It was
00:53:29.560 in vogue
00:53:30.880 to demand
00:53:31.980 children be
00:53:32.660 returned.
00:53:33.780 Yeah,
00:53:33.940 it was like
00:53:34.860 free to
00:53:35.260 bed.
00:53:36.040 Right.
00:53:36.300 Yeah,
00:53:37.020 it was
00:53:37.480 a cause
00:53:37.820 du jour.
00:53:38.620 Again,
00:53:38.980 it did
00:53:39.240 no good,
00:53:39.980 by the
00:53:40.280 way.
00:53:41.060 I
00:53:41.460 covered
00:53:41.780 the
00:53:41.940 conflict
00:53:42.280 in
00:53:42.460 northern
00:53:42.680 Nigeria
00:53:43.200 in
00:53:43.580 recent
00:53:43.840 years
00:53:44.260 and
00:53:44.740 was
00:53:45.280 in
00:53:45.460 Borno
00:53:45.720 State.
00:53:46.900 I've
00:53:47.340 been to
00:53:47.740 the
00:53:48.000 places
00:53:48.340 the
00:53:48.620 Chibok
00:53:48.980 schoolgirls
00:53:49.820 were taken
00:53:50.260 from.
00:53:50.860 I've
00:53:51.140 covered
00:53:51.600 the
00:53:51.820 massacres
00:53:52.300 of
00:53:52.480 Christians
00:53:52.900 there
00:53:53.180 by
00:53:53.380 Fulani
00:53:53.780 militia
00:53:54.340 and
00:53:54.500 others
00:53:54.820 and
00:53:55.040 know
00:53:55.860 that
00:53:56.140 conflict
00:53:56.580 pretty
00:53:56.900 well.
00:53:57.940 Yeah,
00:53:58.180 it was
00:53:58.400 a cool
00:53:58.980 thing
00:54:00.020 to be
00:54:00.900 on the
00:54:01.160 side
00:54:01.380 of,
00:54:01.660 to
00:54:01.760 say,
00:54:02.180 bring back
00:54:06.300 when you
00:54:06.800 say it
00:54:07.000 had no
00:54:07.240 effect,
00:54:07.620 meaning
00:54:07.780 Boko Haram
00:54:10.720 could care
00:54:11.100 less.
00:54:11.460 First of all,
00:54:12.280 Boko Haram
00:54:12.880 couldn't care
00:54:13.400 less.
00:54:14.220 And our
00:54:14.560 Chinese
00:54:15.400 Communist
00:54:15.700 Party
00:54:16.000 not
00:54:16.260 vulnerable
00:54:16.660 to
00:54:16.860 international
00:54:17.300 pressure.
00:54:18.340 It
00:54:18.420 turned out
00:54:18.720 that a
00:54:18.940 hashtag
00:54:19.300 couldn't
00:54:19.860 stop
00:54:20.120 Boko Haram.
00:54:21.060 Who
00:54:21.180 knew?
00:54:22.200 And
00:54:22.640 secondly,
00:54:23.400 though,
00:54:23.580 of course,
00:54:24.500 the
00:54:24.780 schoolgirls
00:54:25.620 largely,
00:54:26.260 I mean,
00:54:26.520 some were
00:54:27.100 returned in
00:54:28.020 drips and
00:54:29.060 drabs of
00:54:29.600 returnees.
00:54:30.720 The
00:54:30.800 Nigerian
00:54:31.220 military and
00:54:32.720 government
00:54:33.100 was so
00:54:33.460 incompetent.
00:54:34.140 Again,
00:54:34.360 I saw
00:54:34.620 this in
00:54:34.840 my own
00:54:35.120 eyes.
00:54:36.300 One of
00:54:37.000 the
00:54:37.340 schoolgirls
00:54:38.520 was only
00:54:39.100 returned in
00:54:40.160 April this
00:54:40.780 year.
00:54:42.180 So the
00:54:43.040 international
00:54:43.400 campaign was
00:54:44.680 as often
00:54:45.840 noisy and
00:54:46.840 largely
00:54:47.580 ineffective.
00:54:48.320 But it
00:54:48.480 did put
00:54:48.740 some pressure
00:54:49.300 on the
00:54:49.720 Nigerian
00:54:50.220 government,
00:54:51.320 not least
00:54:51.800 to pay
00:54:52.120 PR agencies
00:54:52.900 to try to
00:54:53.460 cover up
00:54:53.880 the fact of
00:54:54.640 their own
00:54:54.960 inadequacies.
00:54:55.840 But that's
00:54:56.260 another story.
00:54:57.700 Yeah,
00:54:58.140 I spent a lot
00:54:59.760 of time with
00:55:00.280 the families of
00:55:01.080 the abducted
00:55:02.020 hostages from
00:55:02.980 October the
00:55:03.520 7th.
00:55:04.160 And I
00:55:05.480 try not
00:55:06.220 to say
00:55:06.580 to them
00:55:06.960 what is
00:55:07.680 always on
00:55:08.040 my mind
00:55:08.420 like this,
00:55:08.920 which is
00:55:09.280 where is
00:55:09.800 the
00:55:09.960 international
00:55:10.500 outcry?
00:55:11.960 And I'm
00:55:12.240 afraid you
00:55:12.680 can only
00:55:12.960 come to
00:55:13.520 the conclusion
00:55:14.220 as we
00:55:14.700 see with
00:55:15.260 the people,
00:55:16.320 particularly
00:55:16.540 women it's
00:55:17.160 noticeable for
00:55:17.880 interesting
00:55:18.520 psychological
00:55:18.940 reasons we
00:55:19.500 can't get
00:55:19.840 into,
00:55:20.220 but who
00:55:20.860 rip down
00:55:21.360 posters of
00:55:22.180 kidnapped
00:55:23.000 Israeli
00:55:23.660 children.
00:55:24.740 One can
00:55:25.060 only come
00:55:25.400 to the
00:55:25.600 conclusion
00:55:26.020 that either
00:55:27.240 internationally
00:55:28.460 people don't
00:55:29.380 care that much
00:55:30.160 about Jews or
00:55:31.480 actively dislike
00:55:32.400 them.
00:55:33.380 Or they
00:55:33.780 think that
00:55:34.240 the stealing
00:55:34.800 of Jewish
00:55:35.480 children and
00:55:37.340 the likely
00:55:37.780 death of
00:55:38.540 some of
00:55:39.380 them is
00:55:40.560 just one
00:55:42.460 of the
00:55:42.740 eggs that
00:55:43.200 needs to
00:55:43.560 be broken
00:55:44.000 in order to
00:55:44.620 make the
00:55:44.980 terrific omelette
00:55:45.680 of the
00:55:45.960 Palestinian
00:55:46.460 state.
00:55:48.140 I think
00:55:49.020 probably most
00:55:49.900 are in that
00:55:50.360 second camp.
00:55:52.200 And all I
00:55:52.660 would say to
00:55:53.200 those people is
00:55:53.840 what George
00:55:54.280 Orwell said to
00:55:55.040 the Stalinists
00:55:55.800 he rowed with
00:55:56.360 in the 1940s
00:55:57.420 who eventually
00:55:58.740 admitted that,
00:55:59.780 okay the
00:56:00.800 show trials
00:56:01.440 of 37
00:56:02.120 may have
00:56:02.520 happened,
00:56:03.020 okay the
00:56:03.340 gulag may
00:56:04.000 be there,
00:56:04.320 okay there
00:56:05.800 might be
00:56:06.100 no,
00:56:06.420 and eventually
00:56:08.340 Orwell heard
00:56:09.620 him say that
00:56:10.220 fatal phrase,
00:56:11.060 you can't
00:56:11.700 make an
00:56:12.000 omelette
00:56:12.220 without
00:56:12.460 breaking
00:56:12.820 eggs.
00:56:13.500 And George
00:56:14.440 Orwell said,
00:56:16.020 where's your
00:56:16.800 omelette?
00:56:18.080 And I would
00:56:18.800 say to the
00:56:19.460 people who
00:56:20.000 say,
00:56:21.000 effectively,
00:56:21.900 you can't
00:56:22.940 make an
00:56:23.280 omelette
00:56:23.540 without
00:56:23.780 breaking
00:56:24.140 eggs,
00:56:24.660 you can't
00:56:25.080 make the
00:56:25.620 Palestinian
00:56:26.060 state or
00:56:26.620 get the
00:56:26.980 Gazans
00:56:27.340 free without
00:56:28.020 breaking
00:56:29.100 heads,
00:56:29.780 and having
00:56:31.340 not only
00:56:31.920 seen the
00:56:32.460 unedited
00:56:33.080 massacre
00:56:33.920 footage of
00:56:34.740 October the
00:56:35.640 7th,
00:56:36.120 but having
00:56:37.020 spent too
00:56:37.780 much time
00:56:38.460 in the
00:56:38.640 massacre sites
00:56:39.260 and indeed
00:56:39.720 in the
00:56:40.020 morgues and
00:56:40.580 the places
00:56:41.000 where the
00:56:41.600 bodies are
00:56:42.120 still being
00:56:42.520 identified,
00:56:43.560 the mortuaries,
00:56:45.540 I would
00:56:45.920 say,
00:56:46.600 go to those
00:56:48.340 places,
00:56:49.600 tell me this
00:56:50.160 is worth
00:56:50.640 anything,
00:56:51.980 and then point
00:56:52.600 to your
00:56:52.920 bloody
00:56:53.280 omelette.
00:56:54.920 Douglas,
00:56:55.460 we will
00:56:55.940 leave it
00:56:57.360 there,
00:56:58.160 very powerful.
00:56:59.780 If you
00:57:00.200 had one
00:57:00.520 impression
00:57:01.100 from your
00:57:01.480 time in
00:57:01.860 Israel that
00:57:03.200 you would
00:57:03.860 like to
00:57:04.240 break
00:57:04.500 through to
00:57:05.580 people listening
00:57:06.080 to this
00:57:06.360 podcast and
00:57:07.220 others that
00:57:07.940 you feel
00:57:08.340 just people
00:57:08.940 don't get
00:57:09.540 after having
00:57:10.220 spent a
00:57:10.600 month with
00:57:11.020 the Israelis
00:57:11.680 during this
00:57:13.120 horrific,
00:57:14.500 traumatic
00:57:15.020 nightmare,
00:57:16.380 what would
00:57:16.700 it be?
00:57:17.820 One of the
00:57:18.360 most powerful,
00:57:19.000 there are too
00:57:19.340 many powerful
00:57:19.860 things to
00:57:20.340 list,
00:57:20.560 but one of
00:57:20.980 the most
00:57:21.240 powerful
00:57:21.600 conversations
00:57:22.160 I had in
00:57:22.780 recent weeks
00:57:23.360 was at one
00:57:24.400 of the trauma
00:57:24.920 hospitals where
00:57:26.340 a father who
00:57:26.940 had been in
00:57:28.560 the safe
00:57:28.920 room and
00:57:29.780 with his
00:57:30.400 wife,
00:57:30.900 daughter,
00:57:31.220 and son.
00:57:32.580 And they
00:57:33.120 were there for
00:57:33.940 hours,
00:57:34.440 they were
00:57:34.640 smoked out,
00:57:35.300 they burnt
00:57:35.700 down the
00:57:36.080 house,
00:57:36.520 they were
00:57:36.740 all suffering
00:57:37.200 from smoke
00:57:37.860 inhalation,
00:57:38.580 and then the
00:57:38.900 terrorists of
00:57:40.300 Hamaz found
00:57:40.920 the window and
00:57:42.200 threw grenade
00:57:42.780 after grenade
00:57:43.420 in and shot
00:57:44.800 into this
00:57:46.160 small room.
00:57:47.440 The father
00:57:47.720 lost both his
00:57:48.420 legs,
00:57:49.840 his wife was
00:57:50.480 killed in front
00:57:51.300 of him,
00:57:51.580 died in front
00:57:52.240 of the
00:57:52.520 children,
00:57:53.440 and then his
00:57:53.880 boy, who
00:57:55.040 had been shot
00:57:55.440 in both sides
00:57:56.020 of his chest,
00:57:56.620 bled out in
00:57:57.240 front of his
00:57:57.660 sister and
00:57:58.120 father.
00:57:58.440 And his
00:58:01.080 father said
00:58:01.700 to me,
00:58:02.260 I've been a
00:58:02.800 leftist all
00:58:03.500 my life,
00:58:04.520 all my
00:58:04.980 life.
00:58:05.820 I want
00:58:06.280 nothing but
00:58:07.020 potato fields
00:58:08.020 from here to
00:58:08.640 the sea.
00:58:09.860 I'm afraid
00:58:10.760 that is the
00:58:11.580 feeling of
00:58:13.120 vast number
00:58:14.100 of Israelis
00:58:14.700 now.
00:58:15.880 Hamaz killed
00:58:17.040 the possibility
00:58:17.980 of peace.
00:58:19.180 People in
00:58:19.660 Israel know
00:58:20.200 that.
00:58:21.160 The wider
00:58:21.580 world should
00:58:22.140 know that.
00:58:23.560 Douglas,
00:58:24.180 thank you.
00:58:25.400 Stay safe.
00:58:26.780 Keep doing
00:58:27.140 what you're
00:58:27.420 doing.
00:58:28.540 Hope to
00:58:29.140 get you
00:58:30.260 back on,
00:58:30.860 but until
00:58:31.200 then,
00:58:31.600 I'll be,
00:58:33.080 I think,
00:58:33.540 like many
00:58:33.920 folks listening,
00:58:34.640 following your
00:58:35.180 reporting and
00:58:35.860 commentary.
00:58:36.880 Thank you
00:58:37.320 very much.
00:58:37.820 Thank you.
00:58:37.900 Thank you.
00:58:38.020 Thank you.
00:58:38.080 Thank you.
00:58:38.520 Thank you.
00:58:39.080 Thank you.
00:58:40.020 Thank you.
00:58:40.080 Thank you.