The Megyn Kelly Show - What's Happening in Israel and Gaza, Today and Throughout History - With Alan Dershowitz and Shadi Hamid ｜ Ep. 104

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.980 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.300 Oh, we have a great show today.

00:00:16.860 Have you been confused at all about what we've been seeing out of the Middle East?

00:00:20.380 Or even when I say the Middle East, if you're like, 1.00

00:00:22.700 It hurts my head.

00:00:25.340 Welcome to this show.

00:00:26.720 Have I got the show for you.

00:00:28.460 What I wanted to do is explain this thing to people in a way that we could all understand.

00:00:34.300 I wanted to sort of get into the history 101 and then take it up to 501 when we get into the politics of what's happening in the current battle.

00:00:41.460 And I think we nailed it, if I may be so bold.

00:00:43.700 I think we nailed it.

00:00:44.400 And we have two great guests who agreed to debate.

00:00:47.120 So, you know, strong guys, intellectually strong, right?

00:00:50.440 When you're willing to real-time debate the other person as opposed to do it sequentially, which sometimes we have to do.

00:00:55.060 That's fine.

00:00:55.640 I love it because today they went together and they got to interject and it was really illuminating.

00:01:01.080 And our guests are one man you know very well, Professor Alan Dershowitz.

00:01:05.240 He's Professor Emeritus of Harvard Law School, where he was for like, I don't know, 50 years.

00:01:10.940 I had something crazy and one of the most respected lawyers in the country and just an honest broker when it comes to, I think, analysis of legal situations and certainly a big friend to Israel.

00:01:21.080 And he's been on the ground as this whole conflict has been unfolding for his entire life.

00:01:25.160 He's like, wait until you hear, he's like, Waldo, he's been everywhere.

00:01:27.780 I was there too.

00:01:29.980 And we also have a guy you're going to like named Shadi Hamid.

00:01:33.140 Now, Shadi is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, also contributing writer at The Atlantic.

00:01:37.580 He hosts a podcast called The Wisdom of Crowds and very respectful guy in terms of his debate and his approach.

00:01:44.320 And I just thought the two of these guys were great.

00:01:46.620 And just to set it up for you, what you're going to talk about, you know, in the Middle East right now, it's a hot mess between Israel and Palestine.

00:01:53.620 Things have gone from bad to worse.

00:01:56.040 Hamas is in power there. 0.96

00:01:57.480 And that's we've labeled them a terrorist group for very good reason. 1.00

00:02:01.180 And the Israelis are trying to defend themselves. 0.76

00:02:03.060 But there's more to it than that.

00:02:04.640 There has not been peace in this region for 75 years, at least.

00:02:08.740 And all attempts to create it have failed.

00:02:10.600 They've fallen apart and they've been utterly feckless in solving just the deep seated animosity in the region.

00:02:16.040 Right. The Palestinians feeling that they've gotten the short end over and over, that they've been displaced, that they've been controlled, that they've been rendered unable to live freely versus the Israelis desire to A, exist, B, live in peace and C, defend themselves, even if it's not always perfectly proportional when they are attacked.

00:02:36.020 Right. Hamas is a terrorist organization and they are in control in Gaza.

00:02:40.480 And it's always the same. Right. 0.99

00:02:42.100 When it comes to Hamas, they always have a pernicious refusal to engage in reason or respect. 0.98

00:02:46.640 They are like, let's kill. Let's launch rockets. 0.95

00:02:49.220 But there is more to the story about how they came to power and why they've been allowed to remain there.

00:02:53.860 So what is Israel to do? What would we do?

00:02:56.460 That's what Israel always asks. 0.98

00:02:58.320 What would we do if somebody kept launching rockets into the United States?

00:03:01.580 Right. What did we do during the Cuban Missile Crisis when we were threatened?

00:03:04.840 What do we do after 9-11? I mean, Israel's effectively got Gaza surrounded and under its thumb, but that does not stop the attacks. 0.71

00:03:13.580 And Hamas is not likely to let up now. 0.82

00:03:15.760 Neither is neither is Israel. Right. 0.95

00:03:17.560 The whole two state solution thing that that gets pushed around.

00:03:21.680 Well, Hamas, they want they want borders. 0.78

00:03:24.480 You know, they don't believe in Israel's right to exist. 0.92

00:03:26.220 But but some now over there are calling for borders that ignore the many wars fought and long since settled divisions.

00:03:32.260 And reason does not seem ready to prevail.

00:03:35.560 So now things are fired up again.

00:03:37.340 Politics around it feel a little different this time to me.

00:03:39.620 Joe Biden is projecting Team Israel.

00:03:42.140 He just came out and said he supports a ceasefire, but he reiterates that Israel has a right to defend itself.

00:03:49.880 And he stopped short of publicly calling on Israel to change its approach.

00:03:54.900 Right. So so far, he's still as the United States has always been a pretty strong Team Israel.

00:03:59.640 But his left flank are very loud right now.

00:04:02.080 You know, the squad, that's his left flank and they are loud and getting louder.

00:04:05.860 And look, it's ongoing and it doesn't seem to be waning.

00:04:09.700 So we got to talk about it now.

00:04:11.580 How do we get to this place?

00:04:13.860 What does it mean for the United States?

00:04:16.480 And will this thing ever be solved?

00:04:19.360 You're going to love this talk.

00:04:20.820 That's in one second.

00:04:27.160 Shadi, it's a pleasure.

00:04:28.900 Thanks so much for having me.

00:04:30.160 Thank you for doing this.

00:04:31.360 And, Professor, great to have you as well.

00:04:33.440 Thank you for having me.

00:04:34.320 All right. So let me start this one with you, Shadi.

00:04:37.340 Before 1948, before 1948, who controlled and lived in what was then known as Palestine?

00:04:45.180 Before Israel's founding, it was a mix of Arab and Jewish citizens, although they weren't really citizens because they were under British colonial rule.

00:04:55.160 This was the League of Nations mandate after World War I, which started around 1920.

00:05:03.420 And there was various there was increasing Jewish immigration during that period.

00:05:10.420 So the population balance was shifting in various ways.

00:05:15.320 And it also depended on where in Palestine we're talking about.

00:05:19.040 But in some sense, it became a kind of demographic contest of who could sort of assert their control and create facts on the ground.

00:05:27.480 And obviously, there were tensions between Arabs and Jews.

00:05:31.660 I mean, we shouldn't overstate it.

00:05:32.800 But at various points, there were riots and there were clashes under British rule.

00:05:38.960 There was also a sort of Jewish militant struggle against the British authorities.

00:05:46.460 And that intensified over the course of the 1940s.

00:05:50.420 OK, so more and more Jewish people started to pour into the area in the 1940s for all the obvious reasons. 1.00

00:05:57.880 And the Brits were still in control and nobody much like that.

00:06:01.520 No one wants to be controlled by the British. 0.99

00:06:03.000 We in America can relate to that.

00:06:04.860 And but but the Palestinians who were there didn't really like any land grabs.

00:06:09.780 And the Israeli or the Jewish people who were there didn't much like land grabs going the other way.

00:06:13.780 And so there were tensions even back then.

00:06:16.700 And then a war was fought.

00:06:18.980 I'll give this one to you, Alan.

00:06:20.060 And a war was fought.

00:06:21.560 And on May 14th, 1948, the Jewish state came about.

00:06:26.120 How did that happen exactly?

00:06:28.160 Well, in 1947, the United Nations finally decided to do something about the conflict that was going on in the Middle East.

00:06:35.600 And so they proposed a division into two states, a Jewish state and an Arab state.

00:06:41.900 And the Jewish state would have a Jewish majority.

00:06:44.160 It was largely along the Mediterranean coast from Haifa down to the end of the Gaza Strip with Jerusalem being internationalized.

00:06:53.660 And therefore, there would be a Jewish majority in what became the state of Israel and an Arab majority in what should have become a Palestinian state.

00:07:02.920 And the Jews who were living in the areas that ultimately would become part of a Palestinian state were exiled, were thrown out.

00:07:12.400 Basically, Jews lived in a place in various places in what is now the West Bank, Karzion, the Zion area.

00:07:22.160 And they were thrown out.

00:07:24.780 Israel accepted the division into two states.

00:07:28.520 And had the Palestinians and the Arabs accepted it, there would be a small Israel along the coastal area with a majority of Jews and a large Palestinian state. 0.83

00:07:38.100 Israel also controlled the Negev, which was barren. 0.53

00:07:40.780 And David Ben-Gurion insisted that he could make the desert bloom.

00:07:45.140 Nobody really cared about the Negev, except the Bedouins, obviously, who lived there, and some Jews who lived in there, Sheva, and other places.

00:07:52.060 But the Israelis accepted the two-state solution, as they had in 1938.

00:07:56.800 And they did in 1947 and 1948.

00:08:00.020 And then all the Arab countries combined attacked Israel, tried to destroy it. 0.50

00:08:04.340 As a result of that, 700 or so thousand Arabs left Israel.

00:08:09.300 Many of them were forced to leave.

00:08:11.320 Many of them left on their own, hoping to come back triumphant.

00:08:14.660 Israel didn't let them back. 0.97

00:08:16.800 At about the same time, 700,000 Jews either left or were forced out of Arab countries, from Morocco to Egypt.

00:08:23.840 There was essentially a population switch of about three-quarters of a million people.

00:08:28.240 And it could have been peaceful.

00:08:30.040 There could be a Palestinian state.

00:08:31.660 But then the Jordanians occupied the West Bank.

00:08:34.640 The Egyptians occupied the Gaza Strip.

00:08:36.900 And between 1967 and 1948, there was an occupation that nobody complained about.

00:08:42.400 Because the occupation wasn't being done by Jews over Arabs.

00:08:45.880 It was being done by Arabs over Arabs. 0.51

00:08:48.020 But it made the two-state solution impossible.

00:08:50.780 And Israel has offered the Palestinians a two-state solution in 1938, 1948, 1967, 2000, 2001, 2008.

00:09:00.540 And every time the Palestinians have said, no, the Grand Mafia of Jerusalem told the Peel Commission, we don't want a Palestinian state. 0.91

00:09:07.840 We just don't want there to be a Jewish state. 1.00

00:09:10.420 So it's been a conflict now for many, many years.

00:09:13.720 Look, it goes back well before 1948.

00:09:17.060 But 1947, 1948 was a crucial time in which the Palestinians could have had a state and didn't accept it.

00:09:23.920 So you can see I'm going to get shoddy.

00:09:25.740 I'm definitely going to get you to react to that, shoddy. 1.00

00:09:27.800 But I just want to say for the audience, you can see how already this is fraught, right?

00:09:31.940 It's like two different peoples, different cultures, different backgrounds.

00:09:35.100 They're living together.

00:09:36.100 Now they've got to find a way to create two states.

00:09:38.100 You're going to live there.

00:09:38.760 I'm going to live here.

00:09:39.320 Oh, but wait, a lot of your folks are in my territory.

00:09:42.320 My folks are in your territory.

00:09:43.460 And they don't really get along.

00:09:45.240 And you've got to get out.

00:09:46.520 Or you're going to be displaced.

00:09:48.200 700,000 Palestinians.

00:09:49.660 It's like Pakistan and India. 1.00

00:09:51.760 Like the same thing, very similar thing at about the same time happened in Pakistan and India.

00:09:55.760 It was divided into two states.

00:09:57.620 The Pakistanis accepted.

00:09:58.760 The Indians accepted.

00:09:59.820 Many, many Pakistanis lived in India.

00:10:02.160 And they left.

00:10:03.140 Many, many Indians lived in Pakistan.

00:10:05.160 And they left.

00:10:06.060 But they managed to resolve it.

00:10:07.960 But it wasn't resolved in the Middle East.

00:10:10.740 Yeah, as we know, I mean, to this day.

00:10:12.580 So go ahead, Shadi.

00:10:13.540 Yeah, so I mean, a couple things.

00:10:14.900 I mean, first of all, in retrospect, perhaps Arabs would have done something different when 0.96

00:10:21.100 they, in the 1940s.

00:10:23.580 At the time, however, there were a clear majority of Arabs in the area that today is known as

00:10:29.860 Palestine and Israel, late 19th century into the early 20th century.

00:10:35.620 So it's understandable that Arabs were a majority and aren't used to a large Jewish presence.

00:10:42.020 And, you know, we might wish it otherwise.

00:10:44.840 But when new groups come in, there is tension.

00:10:47.760 And it's not necessarily easy to welcome new people in when they're challengers for land

00:10:53.400 and control and so on.

00:10:55.140 So the fact that this was traditionally, this had been primarily Arab and Muslim.

00:11:02.160 And before the British mandate, it was under technically Ottoman rule, even as the Ottoman

00:11:07.880 Empire was declining.

00:11:10.120 So to kind of blame Arabs and say, well, they should have taken what they were offered and

00:11:16.300 they made all these mistakes is something that we can perhaps say now, knowing how bad

00:11:21.300 things have gotten for them.

00:11:22.680 But at the time, there were legitimate reasons to not want to accept a division of this area.

00:11:30.200 But let's clarify just one point about demography.

00:11:32.320 For example, in Jerusalem, since 1848, the first census, there was a very substantial majority

00:11:38.080 of Jews in Jerusalem.

00:11:40.400 And remember, too, that the Arabs were divided between Christian Arabs, of which there were

00:11:44.980 many, many Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs.

00:11:48.460 And, of course, the Christian Arabs, most of them have now been forced to leave the Middle 0.99

00:11:52.940 East and do not live in harmony with in Lebanon.

00:11:56.420 And in fact, the only place they live in harmony is Israel. 0.86

00:12:00.960 And up in Nazareth and Nazareth, Christian Arabs live in peace, both with Muslim Arabs and Jews.

00:12:07.840 But in the rest of the Middle East...

00:12:09.080 But wait, what's your point?

00:12:10.120 What is the point of raising that?

00:12:11.960 The point is that the conflict is between Muslims and Christians, Muslims and Jews.

00:12:19.040 It was turned into a religious conflict by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

00:12:22.240 It didn't needn't be a religious conflict. 0.96

00:12:25.220 It could have been a land conflict, and you can solve land conflicts.

00:12:29.320 Remember, too, and this is the important point that wasn't responded to, that the original

00:12:33.920 Israel that was established by the United Nations, a majority of the inhabitants in the

00:12:39.680 original Israel were Jewish.

00:12:41.660 They purposely did it that way so that, yes, the majority of people in what was called Palestine

00:12:47.460 were Arabs, but the majority of people in the area, the sliver of land along the coast

00:12:53.320 and the Negev, was Jewish.

00:12:55.140 So you'd have a Jewish majority controlling Jews. 0.96

00:12:58.180 It was a national liberation movement.

00:13:00.680 I got it.

00:13:01.020 Go ahead, Sean.

00:13:01.340 And just to fast forward, because obviously that's a very fraught period, and history is

00:13:06.740 important.

00:13:07.200 But if we kind of move a couple decades later on, then we get into—so Alan mentioned the

00:13:15.080 so-called wonderful peace deals or peace offerings.

00:13:20.220 There is a lot of debate about that, and maybe we'll get into this in some more detail.

00:13:25.140 But there's a so-called famous, quote-unquote, generous offer of 2000 with Bill Clinton and

00:13:35.360 Ehud Barak in the Camp David efforts at that point.

00:13:39.620 And from a Palestinian perspective, that was not considered generous.

00:13:44.380 And there have been accounts in a lot of detail.

00:13:47.460 Alan, I'm sure that you're familiar with Rob Malley's documentation of why this wasn't

00:13:53.800 generous to the Palestinians, it wasn't going to be viable, contiguous, and sovereign.

00:14:00.320 There wouldn't be full control over their own borders.

00:14:02.980 There wouldn't have been even symbolic right of return, so on and so forth.

00:14:07.680 East Jerusalem, there's still issues that had to be worked out there.

00:14:11.660 So there is this kind of, I think, this trope of the Palestinians never miss an opportunity 0.89

00:14:19.060 to miss an opportunity, which I think is problematic on its face because it's

00:14:23.460 suggests that Palestinians should be blamed for their own terrible situation, that if only 0.90

00:14:30.020 they were smarter, more rational, and better people, they would have made better decisions.

00:14:34.660 No, better leaders, better leaders, not better people.

00:14:38.080 They're wonderful people.

00:14:39.820 The Palestinians I know are incredible people.

00:14:42.140 And if they could make peace with Israel, it would help the world so much.

00:14:45.540 The Palestinian technology is amazing.

00:14:47.960 I'm invested in companies now that only have joint Israeli-Palestinian leadership

00:14:54.520 and investments.

00:14:55.820 So it's the leadership that has abandoned the Palestinian people.

00:14:59.960 Sure, the 2001 awful was not perfect for the Palestinians, but it gave them the entire 1.00

00:15:06.480 Gaza Strip, more than 90 percent of the West Bank.

00:15:09.860 Some people say 95.

00:15:10.960 Some people say 93.

00:15:11.980 Everybody acknowledges 95.

00:15:13.340 And yes, it would have been a demilitarized state.

00:15:16.420 They couldn't have an air force.

00:15:18.100 That's what happens when you lose a war.

00:15:19.980 That happened in Germany.

00:15:21.060 That happened in Japan.

00:15:22.320 Over time, you earn your right to have a military, but you don't, when you have a peace treaty

00:15:27.740 after you've lost a war, you don't get a military right away.

00:15:31.140 The Palestinians, if you've been to Ramallah, it is a Palestinian state.

00:15:35.400 You don't see a single Israeli soldier.

00:15:37.020 You don't see a single Israeli policeman.

00:15:38.880 It is a beautiful city.

00:15:40.380 I've had dinner there, lunch there.

00:15:42.800 I've met with the prime minister.

00:15:44.080 I've met with the president, Abbas.

00:15:47.040 It's what the Palestinian state could look like.

00:15:49.760 No, it wouldn't be perfect.

00:15:51.400 But compromise is the essence.

00:15:53.440 And the Palestinians have thus far refused to compromise.

00:15:57.280 I think it's clear they could have had a state.

00:15:59.140 Would it have been their state of choice?

00:16:00.780 No.

00:16:01.400 A point of clarification, though.

00:16:02.680 I mean, it is not a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

00:16:05.620 And this goes, this brings us back to 1967.

00:16:08.020 The West Bank is still under Israeli occupation.

00:16:11.940 So when we're talking about the historical roots of the crisis, the occupation, in my view,

00:16:17.300 is one of the original sins that we've never been able to recover from.

00:16:21.660 And again, if you talk to Palestinians, the vast majority across the ideological and political

00:16:26.780 spectrum will emphasize this particular point.

00:16:29.520 It's fundamentally about an occupation.

00:16:32.260 Wait, let me stop you there.

00:16:33.140 So let's talk about, because that word gets thrown around, the occupation.

00:16:36.880 I mean, where we last left off, there was a creation of Israel in 1948.

00:16:42.100 Some Palestinians were upset.

00:16:43.500 Some Israelis were upset.

00:16:44.720 But and hundreds of thousands on both sides were displaced because they were Palestinian

00:16:48.880 stuck in Israel or vice versa.

00:16:52.060 So tense, not perfect.

00:16:53.960 But and in certain cities like Jerusalem, we're under under the control of Jordan for reasons

00:16:59.840 we don't need to get into.

00:17:01.140 And another one is under control of Egypt.

00:17:03.620 Right.

00:17:03.780 So so you got a couple of cities there which don't don't belong to either side.

00:17:08.200 And that will become relevant to the property dispute that sort of helped kick off today's

00:17:11.960 fighting.

00:17:12.380 This this East Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan.

00:17:14.900 And Jordan made a bunch of promises that it didn't live up to.

00:17:17.240 And it continues to cause havoc.

00:17:19.080 What are we talking about when we're talking about occupied land back then, after right

00:17:23.260 when it was created?

00:17:24.480 OK, 1967, I was actually involved in helping to draft 267, the Security Council Resolution,

00:17:31.060 which was essentially the peace treaty.

00:17:33.140 Israel accepted it. 0.64

00:17:34.160 The Palestinians went to Khartoum and they issued their famous three no's, no negotiation, 1.00

00:17:38.680 no peace, no recognition.

00:17:41.080 They could have had no occupation.

00:17:43.020 There would have been some minimal changes under 267.

00:17:46.360 Of what areas?

00:17:47.400 Occupation of where?

00:17:48.240 There would have been no West Bank occupation.

00:17:50.940 There would have been no Gaza occupation.

00:17:52.680 The resolution of the United Nations Security Council said Israel has to give back territories,

00:17:58.600 not all the territories.

00:18:00.040 There was an agreement.

00:18:00.820 There'd be some territorial adjustments that there would have been no occupation at all.

00:18:06.160 No occupation of Ramallah, no occupation of the large cities of the West Bank, no occupation

00:18:11.160 of Gaza.

00:18:11.640 If the Palestinians hadn't gone to Khartoum and said, no, no, no, when Israel accepted 242.

00:18:19.440 And so the fault of the occupation lies squarely with the Palestinian Arab leadership, which refused

00:18:27.580 to accept the UN Security Council resolution, which would have mandated Israel giving back territories,

00:18:34.020 not all, but the vast majority of territories, all of the Gaza and the vast majority of the

00:18:39.280 West Bank, in exchange simply for peace.

00:18:42.660 And the Palestinians said, no peace, no negotiation, no recognition.

00:18:45.940 There's no way around that.

00:18:47.360 So, okay, that's a particular interpretation of what happened.

00:18:53.780 I mean, the bottom line is that it's Israel that hasn't respected the UN Resolution 242.

00:19:02.140 I mean, so basically, no one knows what that is.

00:19:05.960 Okay, okay, fair enough.

00:19:08.360 So 1967, there was something called the Six-Day War.

00:19:12.560 Um, we don't have to go into the belligerence and how exactly that turned out.

00:19:18.600 Suffice it to say that the Arab armies were routed.

00:19:22.580 And that's why it's called the Six-Day War, because it was an utterly humiliating defeat

00:19:27.640 for the Arab armies.

00:19:29.520 Um, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the big Arab nationalist leader, um, a leader of Egypt, he, um, his,

00:19:35.960 that was the largest army at the time that was fighting against Israel, obviously not very

00:19:40.820 effectively.

00:19:41.340 Um, so in that war, Israel was able to gain control of the West Bank and Gaza.

00:19:49.220 Now, you're not supposed to acquire, uh, according to, um, UN norms and according to this specific

00:19:56.300 UN Security Council resolution, you're not supposed to take land through the acquisition

00:20:01.080 of force.

00:20:02.200 Except every country has done so.

00:20:04.200 After the Second World War, Konigsberg, adjustments in the German boundaries, always are territorial

00:20:10.700 adjustments after the end of a war.

00:20:12.920 It's just routine and common.

00:20:15.220 When you start a war against a country and you lose, you're going to lose some land.

00:20:18.680 And that's what happened.

00:20:19.580 Nazis, the Germans lost a lot of land.

00:20:21.740 Look at Konigsberg.

00:20:22.760 It was a city completely, completely of Germans.

00:20:26.080 The Russians came in, ethnically cleansed the city, got rid of every single German, moved in 1.00

00:20:31.660 over a million Russians and not a people in the world, not a UN resolution, not a college

00:20:37.220 demonstration, nothing.

00:20:38.440 So the world has always recognized territorial changes and Israel offered minimal territorial

00:20:44.360 changes after winning an overwhelming war in which their own existence was threatened.

00:20:49.820 So, so here's the thing though.

00:20:51.300 So 1967, um, to have the broader sweep instead of getting into the details of what happened right

00:20:56.940 after the war.

00:20:57.700 Um, so from 1967 until today, 2021, there has been an ongoing uninterrupted occupation.

00:21:06.220 And by occupation, what is meant is that in the West Bank, uh, Palestinians don't have,

00:21:13.020 uh, control over their, there there's different sections of the West Bank.

00:21:17.260 And so in some places, Palestinians do have, um, autonomy and don't have much intervention

00:21:25.320 from, from Israelis or other parts of the West Bank where Israel basically retains the

00:21:30.500 right to control various aspects of daily life.

00:21:33.780 It controls, um, movement.

00:21:36.500 And one of the biggest issues is that if you're in the West Bank, it's, it's quite hard to get

00:21:41.040 around because Israel has checkpoints throughout the territory.

00:21:45.020 So it's not as if Palestinians, even to this very day, have the ability to move in their

00:21:51.580 own territory.

00:21:52.660 So we can say that the Arabs have been, the Arab armies and the Arab governments have been

00:21:57.780 at fault at various times.

00:21:59.200 I'm not going to pretend here that Arab Arab regimes care about Palestinians.

00:22:03.740 I would actually argue the precise opposite that they've used the Palestinian cause for their

00:22:09.020 own advantage.

00:22:10.340 But at the end of the day, they don't actually care about Palestinians.

00:22:13.780 Palestinians and they've treated this as a kind of political football that they can benefit 0.97

00:22:18.300 from.

00:22:19.460 But I don't know why Palestinians who are in those territories now have to pay the price 1.00

00:22:24.720 for the mistakes of countries.

00:22:26.800 They're not even part of, I mean, Palestinians are not Egyptian Palestinians are, I mean, and

00:22:31.940 this is another thing where sometimes you'll hear Israeli officials again, to this day saying,

00:22:36.940 why don't we basically expel Palestinians and why don't they just go live in Jordan? 1.00

00:22:44.020 Arabs have 20, 21 states. 0.99

00:22:47.020 Jews only have one state. 0.96

00:22:49.020 Why can't they go over there?

00:22:50.660 And obviously that's quite offensive because-

00:22:53.240 Look, I agree.

00:22:53.780 I agree.

00:22:54.460 All Arabs are interchangeable. 1.00

00:22:55.720 But Palestinians have a distinctive national identity and they've had to live without self-determination,

00:23:02.500 without being able to have control over their own affairs from 1967 until 2021.

00:23:10.380 That and-

00:23:10.860 I agree.

00:23:11.340 I agree.

00:23:11.800 I would argue that if you're trying to understand the source of the Gaza crisis today, the violence

00:23:17.660 that we're seeing, the violence that we saw in 2014 and 2009, this keeps on going on.

00:23:22.700 We have to address the fact that Palestinians don't have control over their own lives, their 1.00

00:23:28.960 own destiny, their own borders.

00:23:31.240 They don't have freedom of movement, so on and so forth.

00:23:34.220 Coming up in one minute, we're going to talk about how did Hamas come to power?

00:23:37.800 How did the Palestinians put this terrorist organization in charge, which has led to a lot 0.99

00:23:42.800 of the problems over the past decade plus?

00:23:45.180 We'll talk about it in one minute.

00:23:47.220 First, this.

00:23:47.720 As of 1967, after Israel won that war and Jordan kind of sculched away and Israel took

00:23:58.880 control of places, as I understand it, like East Jerusalem, where are the Palestinians at

00:24:06.000 that point after Israel wins in 1967?

00:24:08.820 Because I hear the term Arab Israelis, so they're in Israel proper. 1.00

00:24:13.480 But then where are the Palestinians?

00:24:15.380 Are they just in Gaza, just in the West Bank?

00:24:17.400 Where else are they?

00:24:18.540 You know, Israel is a country of eight million.

00:24:20.160 Two million of them are Israeli citizens.

00:24:23.320 They are full citizens under the Declaration of Independence.

00:24:26.360 Are they never discriminated against?

00:24:28.500 No, of course they're discriminated against.

00:24:30.120 Every country has discrimination, but they have two political parties, one of which may

00:24:35.700 actually help form this new government.

00:24:38.160 Under the law, they have complete equality, except in two respects.

00:24:41.660 They can't be drafted in the army, and there's no law of return that will allow Palestinians 1.00

00:24:47.320 to come to Israel.

00:24:48.580 There's a law of return for Jews, because it's a nation state of the Jewish people.

00:24:53.260 So they don't have national rights, but they have individual rights.

00:24:55.800 But take Gaza, where the conflict is occurring now.

00:24:58.540 In 2005, the Israelis, over the tremendous objection of many Israelis, completely ended the occupation.

00:25:05.960 They took every soldier out, they took every citizen out, they unburied their dead.

00:25:11.680 They had lived there for 20 years.

00:25:13.400 They knocked down their synagogues. 1.00

00:25:15.520 They left behind hothouses, and they left behind farm implements.

00:25:20.220 They arranged to have a massive marshal plan.

00:25:23.180 And between 2005 and 2007, essentially, there was no occupation at all of the Gaza Strip.

00:25:29.980 Then Hamas militarily took over the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority, killed a lot

00:25:36.160 of the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, and started sending rockets into Israel.

00:25:40.540 At that point, and only at that point, did Israel begin to maintain control over the borders, 0.63

00:25:48.600 build fences, and not allow rockets of the kind that have been sent, or rocket or terror

00:25:53.980 tunnels to be built.

00:25:54.920 So, again, the Palestinians could have built Singapore on the Mediterranean in 2005, when 0.99

00:26:01.340 the Palestinian Authority controlled Gaza, and there wasn't a single Israeli there.

00:26:05.520 And instead of building Singapore on the Mediterranean, a beautiful country in which they could have 0.82

00:26:11.100 helped the Palestinian people, they turned it into a terror base. 1.00

00:26:14.420 And let's get to one more fact, because I know this will be disputed.

00:26:18.300 You hear on CNN and ABC and NBC that Gaza is the most densely populated place in the world,

00:26:24.380 totally false.

00:26:25.920 Tel Aviv is more densely populated than Gaza.

00:26:29.200 Gaza has miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of empty land.

00:26:33.660 Almost every major city in the world is more densely populated than Gaza, for one obvious reason. 1.00

00:26:39.940 New York has high-rise buildings.

00:26:41.560 Gaza has very few high-rise buildings.

00:26:43.640 So the myth that Gaza is the most densely occupied, and that's why the rockets have to be sent from

00:26:49.620 populated areas.

00:26:50.640 Nonsense.

00:26:51.140 I've been in Gaza.

00:26:51.940 I'm sure many have been in Gaza.

00:26:54.340 You know there are miles and miles of empty land.

00:26:56.760 They purposely send their rockets from densely populated areas precisely in order to create

00:27:03.280 a situation where Israel has a choice.

00:27:05.200 Either don't fire back or fire back, and you will inevitably kill some innocent civilians.

00:27:10.860 That's the choice to which Israel has been put by Hamas. 0.82

00:27:14.000 It's a terrible, tragic choice.

00:27:15.720 And Israel, like every other democracy, has opted to defend its own civilians.

00:27:19.920 Go ahead, Shadi.

00:27:21.460 Okay, there's a lot there.

00:27:22.760 So, well, one thing is that, yes, so there are Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.

00:27:31.740 Those are the people who are able to stay in what is today Israel proper from 1948 onwards. 0.79

00:27:39.660 They do have significant rights and significant freedoms.

00:27:43.100 They do participate in politics, but we should judge Israel by its own standards and by all

00:27:49.180 of our standards that it is a democracy, and it's certainly supposed to be a vibrant democracy,

00:27:54.680 and I would argue that in many ways it is to its credit.

00:27:57.200 However, Arab citizens, Arab Israelis or Arab citizens of Israel, depending on how you describe it, do not have equal rights.

00:28:08.040 They're supposed to have equal rights in many of the respects that Alan mentioned, but there's been systematic discrimination.

00:28:13.860 I mean, there's been dozens of studies that go into a lot of detail about whether it's in terms of water access, land access.

00:28:23.760 The Arab population in Israel is living in a much lower standard of living.

00:28:29.820 There is prioritization for Jews in a number of different ways.

00:28:32.920 Alan did mention one of them with the right of return.

00:28:36.060 But also when it comes to, let's say, Jerusalem, and there are Palestinians in Jerusalem who have a sort of complicated status.

00:28:46.720 They aren't necessarily citizens, but they are residents of East Jerusalem.

00:28:52.840 And what there has been over many years now is an effort to basically make Jerusalem more Jewish and less Arab.

00:29:02.200 And there have been far-right settlers who are allied with Benjamin Netanyahu who have been pushing this.

00:29:07.560 And this will become relevant to the story when we talk about why the current crisis is happening.

00:29:12.840 But I think we have to be very careful about this idea that Arabs have a wonderful situation in Israel and that they have equal rights.

00:29:23.320 They are second-class citizens.

00:29:24.820 But the other point on Gaza, Alan, it sounds that you agree with me that there is a brutal blockade.

00:29:30.360 And, you know, it is a bit of a cliché to say that Gaza is an open-air prison, but I think it's a cliché for a reason because it's somewhat appropriate. 1.00

00:29:39.600 For most, for the vast majority of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, they can't get out. 1.00

00:29:44.660 And that even includes for life-saving emergency medical care.

00:29:48.820 And there's been a number of high-profile cases in this regard where they're basically trapped in this relatively small strip of land.

00:29:56.580 Since when, Shadi?

00:29:57.140 Since when did that start?

00:29:58.220 The blockade, 2006 onwards, give or take.

00:30:03.720 Okay.

00:30:04.320 It's after Hamas took over.

00:30:05.840 Hamas was a terrorist.

00:30:07.060 That's important. 0.93

00:30:07.700 We're going to get to Hamas for sure. 0.78

00:30:08.860 And it's only after they took over.

00:30:10.240 They're up next.

00:30:11.240 But go ahead, Shadi, and then I'll give you the floor, Alan.

00:30:13.860 Yeah, I mean, 2006 is relevant as sort of the starting point because that's when Hamas won elections.

00:30:19.880 So these were sort of hyped up as free and fair elections that the Bush administration supported during its so-called freedom agenda in the 2000s.

00:30:30.300 Hamas won. 0.99

00:30:31.460 And we can talk about maybe why they won later.

00:30:34.820 But when Hamas won, Hamas and Fatah, which is Mahmoud Abbas's faction, which is now basically the Palestinian authority in the West Bank.

00:30:46.460 So they're more secular.

00:30:48.600 Hamas is Islamist. 0.68

00:30:51.200 Hamas won the election. 0.81

00:30:52.240 And just so the audience knows, we don't consider Abbas's group to be a terrorist organization.

00:30:58.500 But we do consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization.

00:31:01.300 Yeah.

00:31:01.500 And so just so people understand, there's a distinction between Hamas and Abbas's group.

00:31:07.760 Yes, exactly.

00:31:08.380 So you have Hamas and Abbas's group.

00:31:11.220 They put a lot of effort into forming a national unity government, a technocratic government where Hamas wouldn't have ministers.

00:31:19.020 Most of the ministers would be independent figures.

00:31:24.060 And that was actually proceeding.

00:31:26.580 Now, there's a lot of complication in between.

00:31:29.360 But generally, there were concerted efforts to undermine this government and to undermine national unity on the part of the U.S.

00:31:39.440 and also on the part of Israel, understandably from their standpoint, because obviously, you know, the U.S.

00:31:44.960 considers Hamas to be a designated terrorist organization.

00:31:48.000 Israel sees Hamas as an existential enemy.

00:31:53.200 So from Israel's standpoint, it would make sense to try to undermine this sort of national reconciliation government.

00:32:00.660 But basically, there was an election that the Bush administration supported.

00:32:05.280 And the problem was that when the results didn't turn out to our liking, and there's this famous story about when Condoleezza Rice found out about the results, she was on her treadmill at like 6 a.m. 0.58

00:32:17.620 And she almost fell off because she couldn't believe that Hamas won. 0.52

00:32:22.020 But this is the problem.

00:32:22.880 If you're going to vigorously support elections and talk about democracy, you have to contend with the results, even if you don't like them.

00:32:30.680 And that didn't happen.

00:32:32.280 There wasn't any attempt to try to see if there could be some accommodation where Hamas could continue staying out of the government and keeping them separate, but continuing the democratic process by having independent figures who represent this national unity government.

00:32:48.000 Anyway, the government fell apart because of increasing tensions between the two factions and because there wasn't international recognition.

00:32:58.720 And that's where there started to be a kind of chokehold on this new government.

00:33:02.820 And the Bush administration refused to do business and was starting to withdraw support from this government.

00:33:09.460 And then it sort of collapses, and then you basically have a civil war between the two Palestinian factions.

00:33:15.380 Hamas ends up having control over Gaza, and Abbas's faction ends up having control over the West Bank.

00:33:23.820 Hamas is in control of Gaza, and that's where the brutal, quite repressive blockade started and continues to this day.

00:33:33.520 Now, we might say, well, that's Hamas' fault, but again, we have to account for the fact that it's collective punishment to say that just because a certain party is in control of a territory, that everyone under them has to suffer for the mistakes of their leaders. 0.66

00:33:50.160 Right, but in a democracy, when you get an election that's won and Hamas wins the election, and there was no repercussions when they won the election. 0.87

00:33:59.020 The repercussions and the blockade began when Hamas then started to send rockets into Israel, declared war in Israel.

00:34:06.280 Remember, the Hamas charter says Israel has no right to exist.

00:34:09.420 It's also very anti-Semitic.

00:34:11.080 It says Jews caused the French Revolution, Jews caused the World War I, Jews of this, Jews of that. 0.96

00:34:16.040 It's a terrible, terrible document, and it's Hamas' charter. 1.00

00:34:21.020 And so, of course, Israel had to take self-defense actions.

00:34:24.080 It had to blockade the country to make sure that rockets don't come in from Iran, because remember, Hamas is a surrogate of Iran, and Iran is sworn to the destruction not only of the little Satan, Israel, but of the big Satan. 0.82

00:34:37.180 But I want to talk a little bit about second-class citizens in Israel.

00:34:40.760 So it's very important to distinguish between Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs.

00:34:44.420 Christian Arabs have exactly the same life as Jews in Israel.

00:34:50.600 They are as wealthy, they are as accomplished, they are as prevalent in the medical professions.

00:34:55.600 They have—Christian Arabs live better life in Israel than anywhere in the Middle East. 1.00

00:35:00.720 They are completely free religiously.

00:35:02.660 They have their churches.

00:35:04.100 Muslim Arabs are not equivalent. 0.97

00:35:07.580 Muslim Arabs are equivalent economically to Haredi Jews, very, very orthodox Jews.

00:35:13.640 Neither serve in the army.

00:35:15.340 Both have very, very high birth rates.

00:35:18.220 Both have enormous amount of poverty.

00:35:21.600 And there's discrimination against both of them.

00:35:24.520 Of course, the difference is the Haredi Jews and the Arab Muslims are Muslims.

00:35:31.300 But—and there is discrimination.

00:35:33.100 It's much like discrimination all through Europe against Arabs, against blacks, against others.

00:35:39.980 It's a problem.

00:35:40.980 But every time a case comes to the Israel Supreme Court, every time the Israel Supreme Court rules in favor of the Arabs and says you have equal rights, that's what the Declaration of Independence says.

00:35:51.440 That's what the laws say.

00:35:53.180 So Israel is struggling with its Haredi population, which is very, very poor and doesn't want to serve in the army. 0.99

00:36:00.660 And it's struggling with its Muslim Arab population.

00:36:03.460 It is not struggling with its Christian Arab population.

00:36:06.440 Go to Nazareth, and you will see the only place in the Middle East where Christians are absolutely equal is in Israel. 0.96

00:36:15.200 But, Alan, is that supposed to make—is that supposed to make us feel better that—well, the vast majority of Israeli Arabs are Muslim.

00:36:24.220 So, I mean, it shouldn't make us feel a lot better if the minority of Christian Arabs are doing okay, but, I mean—

00:36:30.280 First of all, it's not—it's a very substantial minority, number one, because Israel is the only country that hasn't expelled—

00:36:36.200 Lebanon has expelled its Christian Arabs.

00:36:39.240 Jordan has treated them as fifth-class citizens.

00:36:41.800 They can't live in many countries in the Middle East, but they thrive in Israel.

00:36:47.020 And, in fact, many times Jordanian Christians want to come to Israel.

00:36:52.460 And so, no, it shouldn't make you feel better.

00:36:54.540 It should explain, though, that second-class status is not a function of the law.

00:37:01.840 It's a function of poverty, and it afflicts the Haredi community as seriously as it afflicts the Arab Muslim community. 0.99

00:37:12.060 Israel ought to do better, and it should be better, and it should be criticized for not doing better. 0.86

00:37:17.080 That doesn't justify rockets targeting Jewish hospitals.

00:37:22.000 And the difference, again, is that Israel tries its best. 0.88

00:37:24.960 And Hamas—I mean, you both correctly point out Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist. 0.52

00:37:29.740 So they really are an existential threat to Israel. 0.95

00:37:32.720 And so it was not a good thing for Israel, for Palestine, for the world, certainly not for the United States, when Hamas won that election. 0.59

00:37:39.860 And it's one of the main reasons why the Bush policy has been so criticized as, you know, what were you thinking?

00:37:47.060 Like, this bringing democracy to the Middle East thing is a disaster. 0.98

00:37:50.260 Well, it wasn't only Bush.

00:37:52.200 Wait a minute.

00:37:52.680 I was in Israel with Jimmy Carter.

00:37:55.240 We were together at the Herzliya conference.

00:37:58.240 When this happened, Jimmy Carter invited me to come and watch the election, predicting, of course, the Palestinian Authority would win. 0.95

00:38:06.840 And I couldn't go watch the election because I was watching it somewhere else with friends in Jerusalem.

00:38:12.620 It was a relatively—it looked to me like a fair election, and Hamas did win. 0.83

00:38:17.700 Now, what does that say?

00:38:19.040 It says that the vast majority or the majority of Palestinians vote for a party that doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist.

00:38:26.840 That is significant.

00:38:27.760 But, Alan, you know—I think you're aware of some of the reasons that Palestinians voted for Hamas is because they saw Abbas and the Palestinian elites as completely corrupt, funneling money into their own pockets, including under Yasser Arafat.

00:38:45.720 I agree.

00:38:46.120 He was known as incredibly corrupt.

00:38:48.040 His wife would take trips to Paris and spend, you know, millions of dollars or whatever. 0.99

00:38:52.420 But, I mean, Hamas was seen as a protest vote.

00:38:57.480 They were seen as more competent.

00:38:59.340 They provided more social services.

00:39:01.260 This doesn't justify the terribleness of Hamas and the fact that they have these dark aspects, as you mentioned, in their charter.

00:39:08.760 I agree with you.

00:39:09.480 I agree with you.

00:39:10.060 And all of that.

00:39:10.880 So—but I think there's also the other issue that the Bush administration and also successive Israeli governments have not really encouraged Palestinian moderates.

00:39:21.400 This has always been a criticism.

00:39:23.100 I agree with you.

00:39:23.820 Look, if you and I were to sit down, we could make peace in 10 hours.

00:39:29.100 We have so much agreement in this conversation.

00:39:32.520 You and I could agree on what a West Bank, Palestine would look like, what a Gaza would look like.

00:39:38.560 Reasonable people can agree to a two-state solution.

00:39:42.800 The two-state solution is good for Israel. 0.98

00:39:45.280 It's good for the Palestinian people.

00:39:46.980 It's just not good for the Palestinian leadership.

00:39:49.500 And that's why we don't have it.

00:39:51.740 It may not be good for some of the Israeli leadership, but rational people like you and me, we could sit down and make peace.

00:39:58.560 We could carve a map so easily that would give the Palestinians what they need.

00:40:04.040 And it's not a hard job.

00:40:06.840 All we have to do is have a will to have a two-state solution.

00:40:11.060 And it's just not fair.

00:40:11.200 What would that look like, Alan?

00:40:12.060 The vast majority of the West Bank, contiguous, would be under Palestinian control.

00:40:20.660 It would be a demilitarized Palestinian government.

00:40:23.400 There would be a united Jerusalem with East Jerusalem being a borough like Brooklyn or a borough like Manhattan with self-determination, with a borough president, with complete autonomy.

00:40:35.560 There would be no checkpoints.

00:40:39.300 There would be, you know, Gaza would be built up by a Marshall plan. 0.94

00:40:46.320 The Europeans are prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in building up the Palestinian authority.

00:40:51.680 But Hamas has to give up its rockets.

00:40:53.420 The Palestinians have to give up this claim of 14 million Palestinians have a right to return, which would turn Israel into a tiny Jewish minority, which would be living under Sharia law. 0.90

00:41:08.380 All of those things, compromises of the essence.

00:41:11.260 And the two of us, the three of us, you could be our moderator, we could come up with a peaceful resolution in a matter of hours.

00:41:18.260 Bill Clinton told me that.

00:41:19.600 He said the substantive disagreements are easy to solve.

00:41:25.480 They're not difficult.

00:41:27.320 It's the will that isn't there.

00:41:29.720 Shadi?

00:41:30.700 Well, I'm heartened to hear that Alan thinks that we could solve this really policy conflict in 10 minutes or 10 hours.

00:41:39.580 And who knows?

00:41:40.560 Maybe it would be would be possible.

00:41:42.560 And maybe that's what brings us to, I think, what maybe are the larger disagreements.

00:41:47.780 Alan mentioned this a moment ago, and I don't know if you want to save this for later, Megan, but when we're talking about Hamas having to stop its rockets, I agree with you, Alan, on that.

00:42:00.780 We have seen Israelis terrorized and precisely because the rockets are imprecise.

00:42:06.340 They don't know where one is going to fall.

00:42:08.460 The issue here, though, is Israel's bombardment of Gaza is not minimizing civilian casualties.

00:42:17.860 And at some level, we have to understand who has the power in this equation.

00:42:22.300 So we have this long history that we've talked about.

00:42:25.100 There's a lot of blame to go around.

00:42:26.820 Here we find ourselves in a situation where Israel, as the dominant actor, does have a lot of the cards. 0.94

00:42:35.160 Up next, we're going to get into what's currently happening.

00:42:37.880 What led us to this moment?

00:42:39.260 Is this moment likely to end anytime soon?

00:42:41.240 And what would it take to get it past us?

00:42:43.220 And let's talk long term.

00:42:44.560 What about your kids and my kids?

00:42:45.780 Are they going to be dealing with this 40 years from now?

00:42:48.160 Is there any way of avoiding that?

00:42:49.440 But before we get to all that, and by the way, there's also work we're going to get into whether Israel has been proportional in its response.

00:42:57.060 There's been a lot of criticisms of them.

00:42:58.520 But wait until you hear all the stuff that Israel does to try to prevent the civilian casualties. 0.63

00:43:02.640 You know, Shadi wants them to do much, much more.

00:43:04.540 Alan's got a different view of what they've done thus far and what they try to do, which is pretty extraordinary.

00:43:08.940 Anyway, that's all in one second.

00:43:10.080 But first, we're going to bring you a feature we have here on the MK Show called Asked and Answered, where we try to answer some of our listener mail.

00:43:17.880 Steve Krakauer is here.

00:43:18.800 He's our executive producer, and he's got the question for us today.

00:43:22.260 Hey, Steve.

00:43:22.840 Hey, Megan.

00:43:23.220 Yeah, interesting one today.

00:43:24.080 I'm actually very curious to hear the answer myself.

00:43:26.480 This came to us from questions at devilmaycaremedia.com, where anyone of our listeners can email us, and we might get your question answered on the show.

00:43:35.760 This one came to us from Jane Elaine Martin, who says that she's heard you say in a few mediums that you're not a feminist. 0.80

00:43:41.300 She says, no judgment from me, just curiosity.

00:43:43.740 She's your age.

00:43:44.640 She said she's born and raised in the U.S., but also spent some time in Canada, like Canadian Debbie.

00:43:48.800 She thinks of a feminist as simply someone who believes women should be considered full humans under the law. 0.99

00:43:54.320 In practice, she says, you strike me as the consummate feminist, successful, pioneering, bold, impatient with limitations put on your freedom.

00:44:00.980 Are you willing to share your perspective on this?

00:44:03.020 I like all that.

00:44:04.840 Thank you.

00:44:05.240 Thank you for the description.

00:44:06.580 Yeah, for me, it's a no-brainer.

00:44:07.680 I'm definitely not a feminist because I think that feminists are right now, like that term has become known. 1.00

00:44:15.640 It's become associated with a few different things that I don't want anything to do with.

00:44:20.660 I think it's the feminists of today are 100% anti-Republican, anti-conservative. 1.00

00:44:25.460 They can't stand conservative women. 1.00

00:44:27.440 I think they're anti-men.

00:44:29.560 Their rhetoric about trying to empower women too often for me does so by denigrating men.

00:44:35.840 And that's not the way forward.

00:44:37.220 That's not the way to win power, hearts, minds.

00:44:39.000 And I don't agree with it.

00:44:40.080 I'm married to a good man and I produce two more.

00:44:42.520 And I don't want to join any organization that wants to dump on them just because, you know, they happen to be born male with the XY chromosome, right?

00:44:51.000 It's just, no, I'm not in.

00:44:52.580 And let's face it, to be a feminist today, and all the most prominent feminists have said this, you have to be pro-choice. 0.99

00:44:59.060 Now, I have never said whether I'm pro-choice or pro-life.

00:45:01.640 I think some things are private.

00:45:03.600 You just, as a journalist, don't have to get into it.

00:45:05.460 But I don't support an organization or a term, and I am thinking in places like the National Organization for Women, which call themselves feminists, that will openly denigrate people who are on the life side of this, right?

00:45:18.460 Like, why?

00:45:19.280 They don't want freedom for women, you know, to have a different viewpoint than they do. 1.00

00:45:23.720 They really don't.

00:45:24.480 And they will condemn people like Sarah Palin by saying she's a woman only a man could love.

00:45:29.760 Gloria Steinem said that exact thing, right?

00:45:32.080 So I just don't think on something like life and choice, I want to weigh in by, if you call yourself feminist, you are saying you're a pro-choice.

00:45:39.200 You may not think you're saying that, but you are.

00:45:41.040 And I'm not signing on for that.

00:45:42.500 I don't think it's appropriate for a journalist.

00:45:43.880 And I'm not anti-men, and I'm not anti-Republican.

00:45:46.420 So all those things, and I'll give you another example of this.

00:45:49.640 So take now, I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.

00:45:52.620 When I got my desktop with Trump and he was calling me a bimbo and saying all those things, whatever, I handled it, it was fine. 1.00

00:45:58.280 But you know who was totally silent on the matter?

00:46:00.360 Now, they will jump into any dispute.

00:46:02.740 I mean, I'm telling you, like Trump, if he said two words about Hillary, about some Democrat, about a civilian, they'd be all over him.

00:46:09.940 But the one time he attacked somebody who was at Fox News, silence, nothing, right?

00:46:15.540 Why?

00:46:16.220 You know they hate Trump.

00:46:17.640 Why would they give up that opportunity?

00:46:19.080 Because the victim, quote unquote, wasn't sympathetic enough for them.

00:46:22.440 Now, I don't care.

00:46:22.960 I certainly didn't need now jumping in to, quote, help me.

00:46:26.240 But it just shows you what they really stand for.

00:46:28.660 They don't like women who they don't think aren't totally on their side of the political aisle.

00:46:34.320 Okay, fine.

00:46:35.900 But I don't embrace that term.

00:46:37.360 And I think you can be for female empowerment, which I am for. 0.85

00:46:40.040 And unlike a lot of these people just throw these labels out there and then they don't live by them because of politics.

00:46:45.540 I've lived my life standing up for other women from the time I was a young woman in my 20s, my young 20s, in my early days when I was practicing law to the present day.

00:46:56.220 But it doesn't mean I give a presumption to women that they're always truth tellers and so on, right?

00:46:59.920 I don't believe in the believe all women, right? 1.00

00:47:02.420 Like if there's that part of being a feminist, because I reject that, too.

00:47:05.120 Anyway, so I've had this debate with Cheryl Sandberg, who she said she didn't call herself a feminist either until Gloria Steinem got a hold of her and explained to her that she was.

00:47:12.780 And I see her point.

00:47:14.260 I understand if you define it as you did in your question, you could go there.

00:47:17.980 But I don't.

00:47:18.980 If you were to look at the Urban Dictionary, it's been sort of co-opted by all these other factions.

00:47:23.200 And on that or to that, I will not sign my name.

00:47:26.300 I don't need it.

00:47:27.000 I don't like labels anyway.

00:47:28.860 As you know, I don't like calling my I'm not a Republican, not a conservative, not a damn, not a liberal, just a human.

00:47:34.860 And I don't I don't need anybody's like I don't I don't need these other people to be in my camp or for me to be in theirs.

00:47:41.920 You're in my camp.

00:47:42.980 My listeners and I were in a camp, the camp of reason.

00:47:45.440 It's the only label I need.

00:47:47.220 Thank you for the question.

00:47:48.920 And if anybody else wants to weigh in, Steve.

00:47:51.760 Questions at devilmaycaremedia.com.

00:47:54.860 Yeah, the devil may care, but I do not.

00:47:58.720 Back to our guests in one second.

00:47:59.920 First this.

00:48:00.300 I really wanted the discussion to help us understand what came first, because it's, you know, the news too often just gets in and out on these pinprick stories like this is what happened.

00:48:15.400 They had an argument over these homes and now they're they're killing each other.

00:48:18.120 And that's it's just so much more complex than that.

00:48:20.080 But OK, so just to jump back, I'm not sure Shadi accepts your borders, Alan, but there's hope that, you know, maybe in the next 10 hours we can all get there.

00:48:28.140 But just jump back.

00:48:28.760 So we had said that Jordan was in control of East Jerusalem.

00:48:31.700 They had agreed to register certain homes in the names of these Palestinians, but apparently they never did.

00:48:36.420 Then Jordan lost control in 1967 of East Jerusalem and Israel took control of it.

00:48:41.120 And suddenly these Palestinians were like, wait, the Jordanians were going to take care of us. 1.00

00:48:45.740 They're going to register everything.

00:48:46.640 And it was like, no, they didn't.

00:48:47.720 And too bad on you.

00:48:48.860 And now Israel is trying to oust them from those homes because technically they're now owned by an Israeli real estate group.

00:48:56.220 And it's going up to the Israel Supreme Court who's going to decide who's right.

00:49:00.740 And that's that's how it should be decided.

00:49:03.000 Right.

00:49:03.360 But that decision was about to come down.

00:49:05.380 So tensions were rising because this has a history, as we've just been discussing.

00:49:08.860 They were awaiting the Supreme Court ruling.

00:49:10.500 It was during Ramadan that all this was going on.

00:49:13.340 It was Israel Independence Day.

00:49:14.900 There was something called Jerusalem Day, where some people celebrate the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967.

00:49:21.080 Palestinians don't much like the celebration of that. 0.77

00:49:23.100 It can be it can be in your face and Palestinians don't particularly love it. 1.00

00:49:26.500 But there was a dust up and a do at something called the Damascus Gate, which is a historic entrance to it's called the Old City, which is a historic neighborhood in Jerusalem.

00:49:40.060 And every year the Palestinians break their fast after Ramadan and celebrate the end of it there. 0.90

00:49:44.360 But this year, the Israeli police said no.

00:49:46.520 A battlefield emerged.

00:49:48.300 And so, OK, more and more tensions.

00:49:50.140 A boss who was supposed to be holding an election postponed it, which, OK, people didn't like that either.

00:49:57.220 Why aren't you having the election?

00:49:58.720 There was something called the tick tock attacks where 16 and 17 year olds filled themselves slapping an ultra Orthodox Jewish person on a train.

00:50:05.380 Hundreds of Israelis wound up chanting, marching death to Arabs at Damascus Gate.

00:50:09.920 The police stopped them.

00:50:10.760 But then there was this big confrontation at the end of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as I understand it, very hotly contested site.

00:50:18.360 Like Jews, I'll call it Temple Mount. 1.00

00:50:20.820 This is the third holiest site in Islam.

00:50:23.420 And that that Monday where this all broke out two weeks ago, Israeli groups went up there.

00:50:28.740 The cops stopped them from going in.

00:50:30.340 But the cops also raided the compound.

00:50:32.280 They say it was to disperse the crowds, to stop the violence.

00:50:34.800 It was provocative.

00:50:35.960 Stones were thrown at them.

00:50:36.880 The cops responded.

00:50:37.720 Rubber bullets.

00:50:38.820 Hundreds were injured.

00:50:40.140 You can feel the tensions like all these certain points going up.

00:50:43.440 And by that afternoon, Hamas, here's Hamas again, says, you get the cops out of that mosque by 6 p.m. tonight and away from those Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem or something bad is going to happen.

00:50:57.160 And Israel never responds well to threats like that.

00:50:59.860 The deadline passed.

00:51:00.880 Hamas was the first to fire rockets into East Jerusalem and elsewhere.

00:51:04.800 No one was killed.

00:51:05.380 But there was property damage and Israel basically said, now it's on.

00:51:10.500 Do you guys accept my description, my thumbnail description of the latest events?

00:51:15.380 Except for one thing.

00:51:16.420 Every five years, Hamas does this.

00:51:18.460 They find an excuse.

00:51:20.020 First, it was Sharon going to the Temple Mount.

00:51:22.300 There's an excuse.

00:51:23.100 But Hamas has a policy and they win. 1.00

00:51:25.320 It's a smart policy.

00:51:27.140 They figure out an excuse because Israel is not perfect.

00:51:29.940 It will always do something wrong.

00:51:31.500 It will do something.

00:51:32.840 They will overreact to something. 0.99

00:51:34.400 There will be Israelis who will yell death to the Arabs, which is a horrible, horrible thing. 0.93

00:51:39.720 But Hamas has a policy.

00:51:41.880 It, every five years, will fire rockets at Israel or build terror tunnels or engage in terrorism, knowing that Israel will respond.

00:51:49.500 Israel tries its darnedness not to kill civilians.

00:51:52.920 There's no incentive. 0.79

00:51:54.000 There's no reason why Israel should ever want to kill a civilian.

00:51:56.980 It's against the policy.

00:51:58.420 It's against their need for public relations.

00:52:00.140 It's against everything.

00:52:00.960 But they know civilians will be killed because the rockets are fired from deep within civilian territories.

00:52:07.520 And they know that the world will react the way it reacts.

00:52:10.360 They know the U.N.

00:52:11.020 General Assembly, the Security Council, the International Criminal Court, Bernie Sanders, AOC, the academics.

00:52:18.320 So it's a policy that they do every five years, that every five years they lose 200 civilians, 100 civilians.

00:52:27.180 That happens.

00:52:28.200 And every year they win the property of the war.

00:52:30.280 And it's going to continue to happen.

00:52:32.460 If there's a ceasefire today, that'd be great.

00:52:35.640 Five years from now, there'll be another excuse.

00:52:38.020 And Hamas will fire rockets again.

00:52:39.740 Israel will retaliate again, and the international community will come out and do that.

00:52:45.660 Fortunately, I think both President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have said Israel has the right of self-defense.

00:52:52.880 It has to act proportionately, of course.

00:52:55.160 And if you want to criticize Israel for targeting a particular building like that building with the media, that's fair criticism. 0.91

00:53:03.080 That's a fair point.

00:53:04.680 And I think we should hear the facts.

00:53:06.400 We should see the facts.

00:53:07.380 But when Israel is put to the choice, either let the rockets rain down.

00:53:12.220 And my cousin, who's the chief rabbi of State Road, had to bury a six-year-old boy the other day when the rocket penetrated his shelter and killed him and wounded his mother.

00:53:23.220 Israel has two choices.

00:53:25.000 Either accept the rockets or respond knowing you're going to necessarily kill some civilians because the rockets are being fired from mosques, 0.71

00:53:33.640 from hospitals, from schools, from U.N. places.

00:53:37.600 There are videotapes that you can see of Hamas rockets being taken and fired from beyond civilian areas so that if Israel is going to retaliate, it must retaliate and kill civilians.

00:53:49.700 Hamas could easily fire the rockets from its empty areas, but that wouldn't achieve its goal because then Israel could stop the rockets without killing civilians.

00:53:59.440 So it's a Hobson's choice that's put on Israel. 0.97

00:54:02.520 I have been in Israel.

00:54:04.400 I have been in the command center.

00:54:06.140 When it has a terrorist in its sight and it says, and the commander says, do not fire, there may be a civilian in the area, withdraw, fail to protect yourself, Israel resolves doubts generally in favor of not attacking targets when they know there's civilian casualties.

00:54:23.160 But inevitably there will be civilian casualties because Hamas has made a decision to fire from behind civilian casualties using human shields.

00:54:31.160 I wrote a book a few years ago called The Case for Moral Clarity, and it has a cartoon on the cover, and it has an Israeli soldier standing in front of a baby carriage protecting the baby carriage, and then it has the Hamas terrorist standing behind the baby carriage using the baby carriage to protect him.

00:54:45.180 That is the moral clarity that has to be understood about Hamas's decision every five years to find an excuse to fire rockets and get Israel into a problem with world public opinion. 0.53

00:54:57.240 That would certainly explain a lot of what we've seen, and that is how it feels, that every five years we have this flare-up, and that it definitely benefits Hamas, who, the one thing you can say about Hamas is they're very good at the propaganda work. 0.82

00:55:11.640 They're really good at it.

00:55:12.720 They're very smart.

00:55:13.140 They're great at it.

00:55:13.540 They're very smart.

00:55:14.620 They will make sure that the cameras are rolling by their allies in the press, and this has been documented by reporters.

00:55:18.680 You know what they call it?

00:55:19.660 They call it the dead baby strategy or the CNN strategy.

00:55:22.920 That's what they call it.

00:55:25.100 They know that if it bleeds, it leads, and if you show the picture of the dead baby, if you show the picture of the dead woman, you will get sympathy.

00:55:33.980 Israel doesn't show pictures of its dead victims.

00:55:37.480 It deliberately doesn't do that to protect their privacy, and so the dead baby strategy works.

00:55:43.680 Hamas wants to make sure that when Israel retaliates, there will be some civilian carriage.

00:55:50.140 Some of them result from rockets misfiring, but many of them do result from Israel efforts that fail to try to prevent civilian casual patriotism.

00:55:59.380 Now, I want Shadi to weigh in, and you can address all of that, but can you just start with this?

00:56:03.600 Because as I look at the situation, and I've seen films out of Gaza, and I've seen a lot of news footage, and it just looks awful, and it's interesting because Alan and others have said it could have been the Singapore of the Middle East, and instead, it's more like Somalia, I read in one article.

00:56:20.700 Because it is just beautiful. It's right on the water. It's a lovely community, but you look at it, and it's just rubble.

00:56:26.100 I mean, the shots of Gaza, it's just rubble from all the bombings that have happened over the years, and they can't get supplies in to rebuild because Israel makes determinations about the supplies going in, the supplies coming out, and could it be turned into a weapon?

00:56:38.260 And if you listen to testimonials, first-hand testimonials from people, Palestinians living in Gaza, they say it's horrible that there's 60% unemployment, and there's 90% of people living below the poverty line, and you've got these enormous families with just enough food to get by, and they can't find work, and they can't find supplies, and they can't rebuild after the bombings.

00:56:57.420 And instead of being this Singapore and the Mediterranean, it's a nightmare, controlled by somebody else. They can't even go out to fish as far as they want into the water because Israel controls the waters, and they feel imprisoned, and so I get it. 0.89

00:57:10.880 Okay, they're unhappy. They have a terrible leadership, but what would you say, if all that's true, to start with this, what would you say they need to do differently in order to get the Israelis to bargain with them,

00:57:23.700 and to the point where they do not feel they have to have this embargo on certain goods, and they have to guard Gaza so much because it doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist, and they do fire off rockets into Israel all the time, and it's run by a terrorist, right?

00:57:37.960 So, like, what would you say Gazans need to do to help themselves remove themselves from being this kind of a target from Israel, by Israel, who itself feels targeted by them?

00:57:48.180 Well, first of all, Gazans themselves don't have a lot of control here. I mean, if the blockade is to be eased, it's Israel that has the power to ease the blockade, to let more goods to come in, to allow more medical services to go in.

00:58:04.760 That doesn't mean they have to recognize Hamas or like Hamas, but purely from a humanitarian standpoint, Israel does have the ability to make life easier for people in Gaza.

00:58:16.280 Unfortunately, part of Israel's deterrence strategy is to basically, I would argue, and I know Alan will disagree with this, is to inflict collective punishment on Palestinians in Gaza with the hope that they will turn against their own leaders,

00:58:31.780 with the hope that they will send a message to Hamas and tell them that if you try this again, we will utterly destroy you, and we will make you pay the price. 0.80

00:58:41.040 That is actually the language used by Israeli officials. Pay the price. Pay the price. The only way the price is high enough is if you inflict a considerable toll on Gaza itself.

00:58:53.660 So that's what we've been seeing throughout not just the current period, but 2007 onwards during this very repressive blockade.

00:59:04.900 Now, a couple other things I just want to address on the timeline, Megan, that you laid out, which I think addressed most of the major issues.

00:59:13.700 Sometimes you'll hear Israeli officials say what's happening in East Jerusalem is just a property dispute, but the bigger context here is a broader effort to dispossess Arabs of their homes in East Jerusalem,

00:59:28.320 and again, to change the demographic balance so it becomes more Jewish and less Arab.

00:59:33.220 There's been a nonviolent campaign that's been going on for months protesting peacefully about these threatened evictions of Palestinians.

00:59:44.440 It got no international attention. No one seems to care. So tensions had been building up.

00:59:50.600 And finally, they and then also you have far right Israeli settlers egging all of this on. 0.88

00:59:56.120 And we have to also be clear, Netanyahu himself has allies, has had allies in previous governments who are on the far right.

01:00:06.660 These are people who say explicitly that they want to expel Arabs, including citizens, from Israel.

01:00:14.960 So we're not talking about just normal people on the right or whatever. We're talking about some very extreme figures.

01:00:21.280 I agree. They should be condemned. They should be condemned. And I condemn them.

01:00:24.660 Let him finish. So when we want to understand the current crisis, as you mentioned, Megan,

01:00:32.100 the key turning point is the very heavy handed police raid that we saw in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

01:00:38.540 As you mentioned, rubber bullets, stun grenades, so on, more than 300.

01:00:42.140 That was the excuse to juror. That was the excuse to juror. That was not the provoke.

01:00:47.040 This would have happened if there had been peace in Jerusalem. 0.80

01:00:50.080 Hamas does it every few years. They just wait for an excuse. And they're smart. 0.84

01:00:54.660 And they're pushed by Iran to do it. So they're going to keep doing it. 0.98

01:00:58.100 There's always going to be an excuse.

01:00:58.880 Let him finish. Go ahead, Shadi.

01:01:01.180 Okay. But fair enough, Alan. But I think I would, at the very least, we should be able to condemn what Israel did. 0.98

01:01:08.300 I condemn it.

01:01:08.660 I condemn it.

01:01:09.880 It's that we know we're going to have to have to be extremely provocative to Arabs and Palestinians, especially, you know, Third Holist site, end of Ramadan, tense time. 0.99

01:01:24.640 It's a tinderbox.

01:01:25.860 So if we want to prevent a conflict like this from happening in the future, we can't just say we have to return to a ceasefire and return to the status quo ante. The root cause or the origins of the broader problem here is the tensions that keep on building because Palestinians in Jerusalem and in the West Bank don't see a way out.

01:01:51.540 There is no peace process. There is no, I would argue, I know, Alan, you've said that there's no partner for peace on the Palestinian side. I think it's also fair to say there's no partner for peace on the Israeli side. Benjamin Netanyahu no longer publicly supports an actual two-state solution. He has stopped supporting that, and he should be condemned for that.

01:02:15.700 But let's remember that the first major intifata occurred after Israel offered peace. You know, a lot of these reactions occur when peace is close, not when there's tension. In 2000-2001, it may have been an imperfect offer, but it was an offer.

01:02:34.500 And it was an offer to sit down, and Arafat started an intifada. And the same thing happened with the first rocket attacks. It was just when Omer was offering a two-state solution, a very good one, and Hamas didn't want it.

01:02:50.240 So the closer you come to peace, the more Hamas and Iran are going to try to disrupt peace. So it's the no-win for Israel. If there's tension, that's an excuse. If there's peace, that's an excuse. If there's quiet, that's an excuse. If there's noise, that's an excuse. 0.91

01:03:07.420 You have to understand these are all excuses. Israel should do better. It shouldn't provide the excuses. I agree with you, and I want to be clear. I condemn the extremists who want to expel Israeli Arabs. I condemn efforts to try to undercut the two-state solution. I want a two-state solution.

01:03:23.500 But that is not the root cause. The root cause is Hamas's failure to recognize that Israel has the right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people. And until that is recognized, you're not going to have peace with Hamas.

01:03:37.420 I was going to say just one more thing, just so I just don't lose the thread. Because, Alan, you had said earlier, I think this is actually really important. So you said a lot about the civilian casualties issue, which I touched on earlier.

01:03:49.780 And just to continue that, just so we're all clear on what the numbers are, as I said, more than 200 killed. Now, what's interesting and sad is who was killed out of those 200. Almost half of them are women and children. Over 60 have been children.

01:04:07.420 And we see, you know, medical clinics. Children are defined to include 17 and 18-year-olds who are terrorists, who are lobbing and firing rockets.

01:04:19.460 So let's be clear. If you count the 7 and 8 and 10-year-olds, it would be less. 4,000 Palestinians were killed in Syria. 75,000 Palestinians were killed in Jordan.

01:04:30.860 The world didn't care. There were fewer civilian casualties inflicted by Israel than were inflicted by the United States and Afghanistan and in Iraq. 0.98

01:04:41.300 Every war has civilian casualties. The reason for the civilian casualties, by the way, is that Hamas will not allow civilians into its bunkers. 0.86

01:04:50.320 Israel builds bunkers for everybody, and they avoid civilian casualties. Not always. That six-year-old was killed.

01:04:55.940 But Hamas deliberately requires its civilians to remain above ground, whereas Israel builds shelters.

01:05:04.840 If you'll let me...

01:05:05.940 Let Shadi weigh in. 1.00

01:05:08.080 Sure.

01:05:08.240 Okay. The basic point here is that the majority of people who have been killed are civilians.

01:05:14.440 In the previous war in 2014, which lasted seven weeks, 2,200 were killed. About 1,500 were civilians.

01:05:22.600 We keep on hearing about the most... This humanitarian army that's doing everything to protect civilian life.

01:05:29.880 That just... So I understand that's the propaganda, and I understand that's what Israeli officials tell you. They tell others. I get it. Fine.

01:05:38.940 We have to look at the facts on the ground and say, if the goal is precision, does that really comport with the fact that so many civilians have been killed?

01:05:48.980 The fact that the building housing the Associated Press, a major mainstream news outlet, that got bombed, and then people will say...

01:05:59.380 Nobody was killed. Nobody was injured.

01:06:00.800 Well, wait, let's talk about why it was bombed. Let's not skip over why... It's not like they just tried to bomb the AP.

01:06:05.320 They bombed it because the Israeli intelligence said that Hamas military intel operations were based in there.

01:06:11.180 Israeli officials claim that there was a Hamas presence in that building, but Tony Blinken, our Secretary of State, asked for additional evidence for that claim.

01:06:21.660 And so far, the U.S. position is that they have not seen credible evidence that that is the case.

01:06:28.040 Now...

01:06:28.360 Wait, wait, wait. Just before we leave that point, and I will give you back the floor, Shadi, because I was just reading up on this, and it was making the rounds that...

01:06:34.640 There was a now former AP reporter, Matt Friedman, who wrote an article in 2014 in The Atlantic saying the AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, the AP office,

01:06:49.540 endangering reporters and other civilians nearby because they knew, A, the rocket launch could go wrong, which it often does, and B, that's now a target for Israel to respond.

01:06:58.040 And the AP wouldn't report it, not even in AP articles being written about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas.

01:07:08.460 And Matt says this did happen. Hamas did launch rockets from residential areas.

01:07:12.880 Hamas fighters would burst into the AP's Gaza Bureau and threaten the staff, and the AP would not report it.

01:07:21.200 And Matt Friedman goes on to write, at the time, that there were cameramen waiting outside of the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and they would film the civilian casualties.

01:07:30.900 These are AP cameramen.

01:07:32.920 Film the arrival of civilian casualties.

01:07:36.180 So it's part of, you know, this is what Hamas wants on camera. 0.85

01:07:38.620 And then at a signal from a Hamas official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters on the Palestinian side came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying.

01:07:52.180 Now, this is a this is an AP reporter at the time writing prior to all this in 2014.

01:07:57.660 And so he says, look, I'm not saying that this AP building absolutely had Hamas military intel operations in it.

01:08:05.000 But I refer you back to my earlier article where it had all the facts I just spelled out.

01:08:10.320 That's a good point. So let's take that on.

01:08:11.780 So this is always a justification.

01:08:13.660 I would also just urge us all to maintain some skepticism when we're talking about official Israeli government sources,

01:08:22.420 just as if my own government here in the U.S. and Afghanistan or Yemen with drone strikes, they would say, well, I agree. 1.00

01:08:29.420 I agree. This was justified to leave us as as analysts, as as people who are following this.

01:08:35.380 We have to be careful. And it does help to have some independent verification.

01:08:39.340 Now, let's say let's say that there was here's the bigger problem.

01:08:43.360 If there is one let's say there's one Hamas member and near him, there are nine innocent civilians. 0.97

01:08:49.780 Now, it shouldn't be shouldn't be attacked.

01:08:52.440 It shouldn't be attacked.

01:08:53.600 You shouldn't be attacked.

01:08:54.720 But what's happening in practice seems to be that in Israel uses this language of collateral damage that we were targeting the Hamas guy.

01:09:03.940 These people were caught in the crossfire.

01:09:06.520 Does Hamas's badness justify having this cavalier approach where you say, hey, we're going to we're going to launch we're going to launch airstrikes.

01:09:15.060 Hey, too bad. We're not we're not trying to kill civilians.

01:09:18.080 But if they happen to be in the area that we're targeting, well, you know, we can't always help that.

01:09:25.460 And as you as you know, Alan, there are they call off.

01:09:27.780 They call off their airstrikes.

01:09:29.480 I just I just finished my area.

01:09:31.900 Sure.

01:09:32.660 Let me just kind of finish the thought.

01:09:34.320 And then just so I just finished this thread.

01:09:37.540 So, I mean, and as you know, there are, you know, international human rights organizations.

01:09:41.340 Some people might say they're biased, but we're talking about.

01:09:44.840 But but generally speaking, most most international NGOs do document how Israel isn't particularly proportionate.

01:09:53.620 There are what appear to be on unlawful strikes that do put civilians in harm's way.

01:10:00.040 But I would just I would just say that based on the numbers that we're seeing on the ground, there isn't there is a high civilian toll.

01:10:08.660 And not even if we talk about not just the people who have been killed, but also the fact that the U.N.

01:10:14.440 just reported that more than 50,000 Gazans are internally displaced because of the destruction in Gaza.

01:10:20.980 So it's also about livelihoods.

01:10:22.980 It's about people's homes.

01:10:24.940 It's about and there are entire families.

01:10:28.940 What should Israel do?

01:10:30.720 What should Israel do if you were this the head of the Israeli Defense Forces or the prime minister and you were getting calls from State Road in Jerusalem.

01:10:38.280 And Ashkelon and Ashdod saying our people are being terrorized.

01:10:42.620 Rockets are coming.

01:10:43.380 Please stop the rockets from coming.

01:10:45.320 What would you do differently from what Israel is doing today? 0.72

01:10:48.660 And don't say I would be more careful.

01:10:50.940 I'll tell you a story.

01:10:52.060 I know this for a fact.

01:10:54.000 One of the leading terrorists who was planning to blow up a gas refinery that would have killed thousands of people was targeted by Israel.

01:11:02.880 He was in their sights and they saw that there may have been some civilians.

01:11:07.200 They canceled it.

01:11:09.100 They canceled the strike and waited months.

01:11:12.900 And there was more terrorist attacks until he was alone with his wife.

01:11:17.260 And, yes, his wife was who knows.

01:11:20.220 Maybe she was complicit where she wasn't. 0.71

01:11:22.160 But that's one.

01:11:23.380 Israel does everything it can.

01:11:25.360 What incentive does it have?

01:11:27.180 You talk about terrorism.

01:11:28.840 You know, that's what the United States did in in Dresden.

01:11:32.260 The United States, when it bombed Dresden, clearly had a policy with Churchill of terrorizing civilians to make them turn against their government.

01:11:40.080 We did that.

01:11:40.620 We did that in Japan, the firebombing of Tokyo. 0.98

01:11:43.820 Israel doesn't do that.

01:11:45.840 It doesn't have as a policy to terrorize civilians.

01:11:49.580 Yes, it will destroy infrastructure that is used to help the Palestinians. 0.99

01:11:54.600 Yes, it will cut off electricity. 0.71

01:11:55.920 You always do that during wartime if the electricity is being used to send rockets.

01:12:00.980 Israel has done far, far less in a state of war with Hamas than the United States did in relation to Germany and Japan and also Iraq and Afghanistan.

01:12:10.700 So you have to make comparisons.

01:12:12.640 The numbers of civilians killed in Afghanistan has been much, much greater in proportion to the threat.

01:12:18.260 So Israel should do better.

01:12:20.040 Yes, I agree with you if it can.

01:12:22.520 But it has to prioritize its own civilian safety over the safety of Hamas members. 0.61

01:12:30.540 And remember, too, there are a lot of Hamas people who operate by day.

01:12:34.240 They sell bread. 0.83

01:12:35.160 And at night, they're terrorists. 0.86

01:12:36.380 Are they civilians or are they terrorists?

01:12:38.360 You know, we have to look.

01:12:39.940 Well, so once the war is over, we'll know better.

01:12:43.000 Any six year old, obviously.

01:12:44.500 But tell me that they kill a woman at that's relevant. 1.00

01:12:48.300 Yeah.

01:12:48.480 So, so, Alan, you know, I worry there that you're coming awfully close to this idea that, you know, a lot of people in Gaza are fair game because they may or may not have ties to Hamas.

01:13:00.300 When we're saying that someone who seems to be a civilian, you're suggesting that they may actually be secretly Hamas.

01:13:06.800 Again, we're speculating.

01:13:08.140 It's not Hamas.

01:13:09.200 It's terrorists.

01:13:10.460 It's sending rockets.

01:13:11.600 Being a member of Hamas is not, for me, a justification for being killed.

01:13:15.760 But being part of the process of sending rockets makes you a combatant.

01:13:20.060 And so, yeah.

01:13:20.680 No, but we don't know the breadsellers. 0.71

01:13:22.440 We have to see combatants and noncombatants, and some of them are matters of degree.

01:13:25.080 The point is that you're saying that some of these people who are counted as civilians because they're breadsellers or women or whatever, you're suggesting that maybe they're not actually civilians.

01:13:34.280 That line of thinking, I think, takes us in maybe a little bit of a problematic place.

01:13:39.440 But more broadly, let me just finish with a thought here.

01:13:42.500 It is actually Israel's deterrent strategy to inflict overwhelming pain on Palestinians.

01:13:47.680 My colleague, Dan Byman, who's a leading counterterrorism expert, he wrote a piece in the last Gaza war in 2014.

01:13:54.360 It's called An Eye for a Tooth.

01:13:55.940 And that's how he describes Israel's bombardment strategy in Gaza, that if they break one of your teeth, you take out one of their eyes.

01:14:08.260 It's because, again, you're trying to teach them a lesson so they learn to never again.

01:14:12.380 As long as the eye is a combatant, that's fair.

01:14:15.660 It's okay under international law if you lose one person to terrorism to take out 10 terrorists or 100 terrorists.

01:14:21.900 Proportionality has nothing to do with a matter of international law.

01:14:25.760 It has only to do with civilians.

01:14:27.980 And remember, the civilian numbers are all given by the Palestinian Health Authority.

01:14:33.120 We know that they are not reliable.

01:14:37.040 We're going to wait.

01:14:37.500 There will be a study at the end of this, and we'll see the percentages.

01:14:40.860 And there will be many more Palestinians killed than Israelis because Israel has a policy of protecting its civilians by bunkers, by sirens.

01:14:49.880 The Hamas has a policy of exposing its civilians and wanting them to die by putting the rockets right near there, in front of schools, in front of hospitals, in front of mosques.

01:15:01.420 We know that the mosques are used to keep rockets. 1.00

01:15:04.900 And that other – when you do that, it's you, Hamas, that is endangering your civilians, not Israel. 0.96

01:15:10.540 Are you honestly trying to tell me that when an Israeli airstrike kills a family of four?

01:15:16.080 And there was just a video that was going around that you may have seen.

01:15:19.620 It's a terrible tragedy.

01:15:20.140 Anyway, are you trying to tell me that that father who lost four children, he should not blame Israel?

01:15:28.520 He should blame Hamas for firing the rocket from near his children. 0.83

01:15:38.980 That's where the blame lies.

01:15:40.280 And perhaps he should also blame the Israeli strike that actually killed his children.

01:15:45.280 I mean, we're coming awfully close here to blaming Palestinians themselves for being killed.

01:15:50.980 Not the Palestinians, Hamas. 1.00

01:15:52.760 I don't blame the Palestinians for being killed.

01:15:54.940 I blame Hamas for putting Palestinians in harm's way.

01:15:58.000 I blame Hamas for having its soldier stand behind the baby carriage. 1.00

01:16:03.280 That's what they're doing.

01:16:04.440 That family that was killed was killed because Hamas fired rockets from near that family if they had gone to an area and done it.

01:16:12.820 Well, we know that they fired their rockets from crowded areas.

01:16:16.260 We know that from reporting.

01:16:18.460 Shadi, let me ask you because the other thing that the Israelis say is they actually go as best they can and give a warning before they bomb a site. 0.89

01:16:27.380 And that actually did happen with that AP building in Gaza City.

01:16:31.220 They'll actually – I mean, it's kind of crazy if you think about it.

01:16:33.680 Like, just from a layperson standpoint, they'll go tell you, we're about to bomb you.

01:16:37.480 You should leave this building right away. 0.53

01:16:39.460 They'll call you on the phone and they'll have a knock bomb on top.

01:16:42.820 Yeah.

01:16:43.280 Yeah.

01:16:43.560 And so one of the AP reporters who was in that building said, oh, we were lucky to get out.

01:16:48.720 And Netanyahu responded, it wasn't luck.

01:16:51.320 We took special pains to call people in the buildings before we dropped the bomb.

01:16:54.860 I mean, it's extraordinary in terms of how one conducts warfare.

01:16:59.340 But Shadi, I mean, what more can they do, right?

01:17:03.380 If Gaza is such a mess, Hamas does fire rockets from civilian concentric areas.

01:17:12.460 What more can Israel do? 0.84

01:17:13.880 So it's – is it supposed to be reassuring that Israel gives people – it drops leaflets a little while before they blow a 14-story building?

01:17:28.680 Phone calls.

01:17:29.580 Phone calls and knock on the roof.

01:17:31.080 They drop leaflets and knock on the roof.

01:17:32.160 They drop leaflets.

01:17:33.960 I don't think that's reassuring.

01:17:35.640 And I've heard this a lot in the debates on social media the past few days.

01:17:39.000 People will tell me, but Shadi, they're dropping those leaflets.

01:17:43.060 That's pretty terrifying when you get a text message or a call and it's like your home that you've built, it's been your home for God knows how long, decades even.

01:17:52.460 And you only have one hour.

01:17:54.540 And you gave it to Hamas and you let Hamas throw a rocket center. 0.74

01:17:57.820 No, no.

01:17:58.180 Those are the houses that are destroyed.

01:18:00.140 It's not true.

01:18:00.660 If it's a 14-story building and Hamas is in one part of it, you're just in a residential building by yourself, your family. 0.57

01:18:08.200 And then Israel claims there's a Hamas asset in another part of the building.

01:18:12.140 You take their word for it.

01:18:13.840 But the point is – and that's why we know that the number of people who are homeless in the place is a large number.

01:18:18.400 What would you do if you were the Israelis and you knew that a large building was being used to send rockets into –

01:18:28.180 stay wrote.

01:18:29.660 And unless you destroy that building, unless you destroy that building, the rockets will continue.

01:18:34.800 And you know that people live in that building.

01:18:37.580 They're warned.

01:18:38.460 So there will only be economic damage.

01:18:40.740 Would you refrain from knocking that building down and allow the rockets to continue to attack your civilians and stay wrote?

01:18:47.800 I would not.

01:18:49.100 All right.

01:18:49.320 Let him answer.

01:18:49.620 Go ahead.

01:18:50.080 So we know that Israel is some of the most advanced precision targeting in the world.

01:18:58.440 The idea that there aren't more precise ways to target Hamas assets than destroying an entire apartment block – again, we've seen those images. 0.74

01:19:09.500 I think we have to call that into question.

01:19:11.540 I get that they think it's necessary, but there are ways to be more precise in your targeting outside of destroying whole apartment blocks.

01:19:20.940 If we try to do that in any war where it's justified that if there's one Hamas operative, you can destroy a 14-story building, that would be completely – that would be an utterly – 0.68

01:19:32.280 I agree with you.

01:19:32.760 I agree with you.

01:19:33.820 But if rockets are being fired from the mosque, if rockets are being fired from the building, you notify the people in the building, get out.

01:19:41.520 Your building has been taken over by Hamas.

01:19:43.480 It is now a terrorist asset.

01:19:46.080 And what's the alternative?

01:19:47.640 Send ground troops in?

01:19:48.980 No.

01:19:49.540 We don't want ground troops to be sent in.

01:19:51.160 The alternatives are just to let the rockets go or destroy the building after the morning.

01:19:57.040 I'll let Shadi answer.

01:19:58.940 And then I want to get to something else.

01:20:00.220 Go ahead.

01:20:00.380 You ask, what can Israel do?

01:20:03.560 Well, Israel does have the ability now. 0.94

01:20:06.200 They have sent a very strong message to Hamas.

01:20:08.780 They've degraded Hamas' capabilities.

01:20:11.320 Israel could come now and say, listen, we are ready to move to a ceasefire. 0.51

01:20:15.660 We are ready to do a 24-humanitarian pause for our bombardment of Gaza to allow Gazans to actually get access to fundamental health care, water, and so on.

01:20:27.020 They could do that.

01:20:28.440 They're the ones who have the card.

01:20:29.620 And this is why—let me just finish my thought.

01:20:31.760 Let me just finish.

01:20:32.220 Sure, Alan, let me finish.

01:20:32.760 As an American, as the U.S., we have leverage over Israel. 0.80

01:20:38.780 One of our closest allies, we can actually impress upon them the need to move towards an immediate ceasefire.

01:20:45.480 The reason that I focus more on what Israel can do to stop this is because we have no direct relations with Hamas.

01:20:51.880 We can't actually persuade Hamas. 0.95

01:20:54.540 Others perhaps can, but we don't really have any direct contacts with them for legal reasons, obviously.

01:21:01.800 So I think as Americans, it behooves us to focus on what we actually have the power to change and where we actually have leverage if we want to stop.

01:21:09.840 And the fact that up until now, Biden has not called for an explicit immediate ceasefire, which I think is interpreted as a green light to Israel to continue its bombing campaign.

01:21:21.880 There's no other way to interpret that.

01:21:23.880 I agree with that.

01:21:24.980 And let me explain why he's doing it.

01:21:26.620 Let me just finish the thought.

01:21:27.780 Hold on, Alan.

01:21:29.480 Wait, you're so busy agreeing.

01:21:30.840 We still need to hear Shadi's point that you agree with.

01:21:33.140 I just want to say, like, okay, as an American, I feel I don't want my government to be complicit in an ongoing bombing campaign that has such a high civilian toll.

01:21:45.280 So it does concern me when I see my president, Joe Biden, he's taking a very minimalistic approach.

01:21:51.700 He's not saying much.

01:21:52.780 He doesn't seem very engaged.

01:21:54.280 And he doesn't seem to be putting enough pressure on Netanyahu, because Netanyahu said just the other day that this could take quite a bit of time and it may continue.

01:22:04.160 That is not very encouraging.

01:22:06.200 I'm going to give you the floor, Alan.

01:22:07.180 But can it also like is there also politics at play here?

01:22:10.620 I know, I mean, Shadi mentions the sort of more right wing base in Israel for Netanyahu.

01:22:15.580 He's had political troubles.

01:22:16.900 Does this shore him up?

01:22:18.040 Certainly Hamas is gaining in popularity as a result of this. 0.95

01:22:21.960 There have been reports of a lot of those Arab Israelis, a lot more active and anti-Israeli right now than they have been before.

01:22:28.140 So Hamas seems to be emerging as sort of a winner, which is, you know, from the American perspective, bad. 0.63

01:22:33.980 This is bad.

01:22:34.560 And that's right.

01:22:36.060 And that's why if you have the conversation, Biden calls Netanyahu and says, do a ceasefire.

01:22:40.600 Netanyahu says, I'm happy to do a ceasefire if they don't use the 48 hours to renew their rocket firing, to put themselves in better position to fire.

01:22:50.400 There's no such thing as a ceasefire to help the enemy launch new rockets.

01:22:55.380 If we could have a mutual ceasefire, if there is some way of assuring that the ceasefire is purely humanitarian and is not used by Hamas to increase their ability once the ceasefire is over to send more rockets, then agree.

01:23:11.540 But the idea that Hamas gets a ceasefire, gets a time out in order to regroup and make their rocket launches more effective makes no sense from an American point of view.

01:23:22.880 And that's why I think President Biden is doing the right thing.

01:23:25.980 He's urging a movement toward a mutual ceasefire.

01:23:29.620 But he doesn't want, and Netanyahu doesn't want, and I think the world shouldn't want, a unilateral ceasefire by Israel during the time when Hamas can regroup and make its rocket launchings more effective.

01:23:44.280 A ceasefire has to be a real, real ceasefire, and it has to be permanent, not temporary.

01:23:49.720 It can't be, let's stop now.

01:23:51.900 We've inflicted damage.

01:23:53.360 Five years from now, you'll find another excuse.

01:23:56.000 Three years, a year from now.

01:23:57.220 That just doesn't make any sense.

01:23:58.680 I want to talk about America and our perspective on this and also sort of where we are with the Abraham Accords, because I know, Alan, you helped with those during the Trump administration.

01:24:09.960 And yet one of the things we're seeing in the press is the notation that there's been relative silence from the UAE, from Bahrain, from Morocco, from Sudan, all of which normalized ties with Israel recently.

01:24:21.960 So where are they?

01:24:23.620 Should we be happy they're not saying anything?

01:24:25.520 Should they be saying something more?

01:24:27.320 Like, what do you make of it?

01:24:28.960 Well, first of all, they are saying more things behind the scenes.

01:24:31.720 They are putting pressure on Israel behind the scenes.

01:24:33.680 But remember, the Abraham Accords were signed because it was in the interest of the Arab countries to sign with Israel.

01:24:39.760 Israel had become an indispensable ally for peace in relation to Iran, for technology, for economic advantage.

01:24:47.180 These countries weren't doing Israel a favor.

01:24:49.240 They weren't doing Donald Trump a favor.

01:24:50.920 It was a good thing for these Arab countries to sign on.

01:24:54.640 And it will be a good thing when Saudi Arabia signs on as well, because they have a common enemy, Iran, and they have common needs for economic development.

01:25:03.280 And Palestinians shouldn't have a veto over that.

01:25:05.700 I do think it will be good if more Arab countries sign on.

01:25:09.500 And I think that Joe Biden, who I've known for more than 30 years, I worked with him on Ted Kennedy's campaign back in 1980, is a decent, decent man.

01:25:20.220 And I think a very good president.

01:25:21.800 And I think he's doing exactly the right thing.

01:25:25.120 I've known Tony Blinken for some time, and I think he's doing the right thing.

01:25:28.680 I think so far the United States policy has been right, calling for greater constraint, calling for a ceasefire if one is feasible, but without putting pressure on Israel not to defend itself.

01:25:41.780 So I'm happy with American policy.

01:25:43.360 A lot of my people on the right who like me because they think I defended Trump.

01:25:48.160 If I didn't, I only defended his rights, hate, you know, think I'm selling out Israel.

01:25:52.920 But I do think that President Biden and Secretary Blinken are doing a good job in striking a balance.

01:25:59.080 Look, there's no moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas.

01:26:02.140 And anybody who tries to create a moral equivalence between a terrorist organization that deliberately targets civilians from behind their civilians and a democracy, which may be imperfect, which is trying to avoid civilian casualties, there is no moral equivalent.

01:26:15.720 A couple of things.

01:26:17.300 First of all, I mean, it's a bit of a straw man.

01:26:19.720 I don't really see anyone prominent drawing a moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel.

01:26:25.360 It's not in mainstream American politics.

01:26:27.780 The Democrats are critical.

01:26:29.360 Bernie Sanders, AOC.

01:26:30.340 That's not fair.

01:26:32.080 I have not.

01:26:33.640 AOC?

01:26:34.700 No, you're right.

01:26:35.400 She hasn't drawn a moral equivalent.

01:26:36.600 She's blamed Israel for everything.

01:26:38.520 Ilan Omer.

01:26:39.740 That doesn't mean you think they're morally equivalent.

01:26:41.900 Again, the reason.

01:26:43.280 I want to hear.

01:26:43.740 Can I just.

01:26:44.640 Let me jump in.

01:26:45.860 Let me jump in for one second, because we do have a butted soundbite of Ilan Omer, Ayanna

01:26:49.680 Presley, Rashida Tlaib, and AOC is in there as well.

01:26:52.980 Let's just hear a little bit about what they are saying.

01:26:55.840 Listen.

01:26:55.980 This is not a conflict between two states.

01:26:59.900 This is not a civil war.

01:27:02.540 It is a conflict where one country, funded and supported by the United States government,

01:27:09.880 continues an illegal military occupation over another group of people.

01:27:15.780 As a black woman in America, I am no stranger to police brutality and state-sanctioned violence.

01:27:20.440 We have been criminalized for the very way we show up in the world.

01:27:23.260 Palestinians are being told the same thing as black folks in America.

01:27:27.000 There is no acceptable form of resistance.

01:27:30.380 This is not about both sides.

01:27:32.700 This is about an imbalance of power.

01:27:35.040 So what we just heard, that's actually, there was none of them said anything about equivalency

01:27:41.720 between Israel and Hamas.

01:27:43.440 That is not actually what they said.

01:27:45.480 They criticized the occupation and they talked about a power imbalance.

01:27:49.380 That is true.

01:27:50.220 As I've said, I mean, there is a wildly unequal power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians

01:27:57.000 more broadly.

01:27:58.240 But she also said this is not about both sides.

01:28:00.440 So it's as if Israel has no side to its story. 0.88

01:28:03.600 You know, that there's, that there, it's all about them being the bigger, the bigger enemy,

01:28:07.040 the bigger, more powerful guy.

01:28:08.800 Not a word about the rockets.

01:28:10.340 Not a word about the rockets targeting Israeli civilians.

01:28:14.060 Because they don't have the courage to stand up to Hamas.

01:28:16.380 OK, so not to go, I'm not here to defend Ilhan Omar, and I don't know what she said in other

01:28:21.440 situations.

01:28:22.440 But just a point on that that was made earlier about the Abraham Accords, which I thought

01:28:28.380 was interesting from from Alan, is that it's good that Arab countries are being relatively

01:28:35.380 quiet.

01:28:35.980 But on the other hand, if you're a Palestinian, you look at these Arab countries that have

01:28:40.820 signed these accords and they're quiet about an injustice.

01:28:45.660 The injustices being committed against Palestinians, not just not talking here even about Gaza, but

01:28:49.680 just more broadly, that isn't necessarily a great thing if you're an Arab who wants Palestinians 0.98

01:28:56.400 to have more rights and more freedoms.

01:28:58.360 The fact that Arabs are pretty much leaving the Palestinians alone and not supporting them 0.97

01:29:03.520 contributes to this unequal power imbalance.

01:29:07.520 And the broader question, I think, for us is, how is peace possible if you have one party

01:29:13.620 in a peace negotiation, hypothetically, in the future that is so extremely powerful, has

01:29:18.520 all the leverage, all the cards?

01:29:20.640 The Palestinians are extremely weak and don't really have much to offer. 1.00

01:29:24.940 However, Israel doesn't have a lot of incentives to make compromises and concessions.

01:29:31.000 How do you explain that in 67 when Israel won an overwhelming war?

01:29:34.720 They immediately accepted Resolution 242.

01:29:36.940 Look, I'm not going to go back.

01:29:38.060 Wait, to go back.

01:29:38.880 But let me but let me put the question a different way.

01:29:41.220 I mean, I guess the question that comes to mind on that, Shadi, is, is that what you call

01:29:45.420 losing?

01:29:47.140 They don't have power because their ideas haven't resonated.

01:29:50.580 They haven't been able to amass enough allies to back their cause.

01:29:53.760 They're losing this long 75-year-old war bit by bit.

01:29:58.620 They're being, you know, sort of their power is fading by the minute.

01:30:02.720 And at some point, they'll do what people who are on the losing side of a long conflict

01:30:07.480 do, which is surrender.

01:30:09.920 Like, it's not it's not getting better for them.

01:30:11.660 It's getting worse.

01:30:12.740 Expect people to surrender and accept an unjust peace negotiation.

01:30:17.760 So currently, what's on the table is not even close to 90 or even 80 percent of the

01:30:21.880 West Bank.

01:30:22.540 What we're talking about here is basically, you know, 50, 60 percent autonomy or whatever

01:30:27.920 it might be that some of the right wingers in Israel are proposing, or maybe even not

01:30:32.160 having a two state solution at all.

01:30:35.100 I think there's something really I mean, is it is it right to say that Palestinians should 1.00

01:30:40.480 just accept defeat and accept something that doesn't even count as the most minimal state

01:30:46.800 possible?

01:30:47.460 That's because that'll just create more grievances over time.

01:30:51.580 But aren't they aren't they calling for?

01:30:53.520 Shadi, you tell me what are they?

01:30:54.640 Because the last I saw, the Palestinians were calling for a two state solution.

01:30:59.840 I think it was the one that Israel offered back in 19.

01:31:04.940 What was the year?

01:31:06.140 You guys tell me.

01:31:06.900 But their their their two state solution seemed a little outdated.

01:31:10.840 You tell me.

01:31:11.520 Yeah, well, the 67 solution, they wanted to go back to the 67 borders.

01:31:16.500 Israel has made tremendous offers.

01:31:18.820 When you reject an offer, don't expect more the next time.

01:31:22.000 Expect less the next time.

01:31:23.620 They could have had 98 percent in 2008 with Omar.

01:31:28.100 They didn't accept it.

01:31:29.760 Why should Israel now come up with more? 0.98

01:31:32.660 They should come up with less.

01:31:33.740 And if the Palestinians reject this now, they're going to get less in the future.

01:31:40.040 So there's every reason for the Palestinians to come and sit down and compromise. 0.89

01:31:45.240 Netanyahu said we will both sides will have to make painful compromises.

01:31:50.760 And he said, I invite Abbas to come to Jerusalem any day.

01:31:54.040 I'll go to Ramallah.

01:31:55.340 We'll negotiate.

01:31:56.540 You say he has rejected the two state solution.

01:31:58.920 No, he hasn't talked about it.

01:32:00.760 But the last speech he made accepted explicitly the two state solution.

01:32:04.780 I know I was there.

01:32:07.120 I was there.

01:32:08.780 My uncle, who was very, very extremist, walked out because he was so upset at offering a two

01:32:15.020 state solution.

01:32:15.800 The two state solution is still on the table if the Palestinians were to come to negotiate.

01:32:20.940 You can't get a state without negotiating.

01:32:23.380 You're not going to get it.

01:32:24.020 What about that point, Shadi?

01:32:25.100 The point about you, you don't when you when you reject an offer and it doesn't get better

01:32:30.240 next time around unless you've really emerged as the winner of the long conflict, which they're

01:32:34.800 not.

01:32:35.160 They haven't.

01:32:36.300 That that is that is the Israeli perspective on this.

01:32:39.440 I just don't think it's conducive to peace because Palestinians are not going to accept 1.00

01:32:43.380 the crumbs that are being offered to them.

01:32:45.040 I don't think they should, quite frankly, because I also believe that every people has a right

01:32:49.560 to self-determination.

01:32:50.600 Every people has a right to some basic level of dignity.

01:32:54.680 We Americans, we have values, and I think that we should try to reflect those values

01:32:58.220 and how we conduct our foreign policy.

01:33:00.560 So do the Jews have a right of self-determination?

01:33:04.560 Of course they do.

01:33:05.620 Of course they do.

01:33:06.660 Israel has a right.

01:33:07.260 I mean, yes.

01:33:08.600 So you reject the BDS movement that says.

01:33:11.260 Oh, I'm on the record.

01:33:12.080 Oh, yeah.

01:33:12.580 OK, OK, OK, OK.

01:33:14.120 Look, I think we agree more than we disagree.

01:33:16.320 And I come back to the point, I think if the two of us sat down, we could create peace instantaneously.

01:33:22.180 There are radicals on both sides that should be rejected and marginalized.

01:33:26.160 And I think if people like the two of us could sit down and maybe write a joint article together

01:33:31.620 where we come lay out the seven points we agree to and the seven points we disagree to

01:33:37.380 and possible resolutions of those seven points we disagree with, I think that would be very helpful.

01:33:43.880 I think you and I share a lot.

01:33:46.320 We've made we've made real progress.

01:33:47.640 But can I just can I add a human element to this?

01:33:49.780 Because I'll tell you, to me, the press coverage around what we're seeing right now,

01:33:54.520 it's a little different than it normally is.

01:33:56.340 Normally, I would say it's it's I don't know, maybe slightly more pro-Israel than it's been.

01:34:01.780 It's been to me.

01:34:02.460 It's felt like a little bit less pro-Israel.

01:34:04.460 People who would normally be speaking up for Israel seem to be saying nothing.

01:34:07.460 And I don't know if that's just because of the numbers or, you know,

01:34:10.240 if we're having a political shift thanks to the so-called squad being so vocal.

01:34:13.840 I'm not sure.

01:34:14.340 But I know I mean, I see it when it comes to tactics that I don't think there's any question

01:34:18.160 that Israel tries harder to protect the innocents than we've seen, certainly Hamas do. 0.99

01:34:23.120 And yet and yet I see I see children in in Gaza.

01:34:28.600 And I think, no, you know, I think and not only do I feel bad as a human being, as a mom,

01:34:35.140 but I worry about the next generation.

01:34:36.520 Right.

01:34:36.760 I've got three kids.

01:34:37.660 I I feel ongoing hate being created by the day by both sides.

01:34:41.600 I agree.

01:34:42.020 And I understand we've explored why and how and all that.

01:34:44.660 But like, nonetheless, the fact remains, we're creating future enemies by the minute.

01:34:49.260 And the soundbite that I want to play was from there was a 10 year old Palestinian girl in

01:34:52.380 Gaza.

01:34:52.860 Richard Engel found her and put her on NBC.

01:34:55.640 And I just want to ask you about this.

01:34:56.740 So here she is, 10 years old.

01:34:57.840 I want to cry.

01:34:59.360 I want to let out of my anger, out of my body, because they're killing people that they don't 0.92

01:35:04.420 deserve to die.

01:35:05.440 They're just living their own self. 1.00

01:35:08.060 But they come and kill them. 0.99

01:35:10.600 We don't deserve this. 0.79

01:35:12.340 We can't do anything.

01:35:13.320 We're just dying.

01:35:14.820 The American people stop giving, stop giving weapons to the occupiers.

01:35:19.720 That's the way that you can help us.

01:35:22.060 She's right.

01:35:23.200 She's pointing the finger at the wrong person.

01:35:25.240 She's in Gaza.

01:35:25.940 She and her parents and her family should be pointing the finger at Hamas, who could 1.00

01:35:30.060 have given her a good life, who could have given her peace, and instead gave her rockets

01:35:33.660 in warfare.

01:35:34.800 And inevitably, they're going to be civilian casualties.

01:35:37.420 So she has to know who to point the finger of blame at. 0.65

01:35:40.320 The finger of blame squarely falls on Hamas.

01:35:44.000 OK, so, Alan, first of all, I'm glad that you think that we could co-author an article

01:35:48.420 together.

01:35:48.880 That would probably be extremely controversial for various reasons.

01:35:52.080 But I appreciate the sentiment.

01:35:53.960 But I guess, you know, I do.

01:35:56.880 But if you're talking, this is where I think we actually do have a big divergence, and we

01:36:01.400 wouldn't be able to agree on this necessarily, is you just heard, you know, a very, you know,

01:36:06.920 you might not agree with her assessment, but a powerful emotional moment.

01:36:11.200 I agree.

01:36:11.680 It hit me hard.

01:36:12.560 You're pretty much telling her that she shouldn't be angry at Israel. 0.52

01:36:16.200 No, no, she should be angry at the, she should be angry both at Israel, but also at Haas.

01:36:19.140 OK, both.

01:36:19.640 So, OK, we do acknowledge that there can be anger to both sides.

01:36:22.920 Great.

01:36:23.560 But the thing that Megan mentioned, which I think is really important, if Israel's goal

01:36:27.320 is to weaken Hamas's popularity and all of that, the fact that we're also, what we saw

01:36:35.220 today, which doesn't have much to do with Hamas, this is actually an independent Palestinian

01:36:40.460 movement that's happening, the general strike where hundreds of thousands, if not millions

01:36:45.360 of Palestinians are staying home and not going to work in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, as

01:36:51.300 a way to sort of have a unified protest against Israel's Gaza campaign.

01:36:55.900 What we're seeing now is actually a resurgence of Palestinian nationalism, which is much broader

01:37:01.880 than Hamas. 0.83

01:37:02.940 I would say Hamas is probably gaining some popularity in Gaza, because the natural thing is that if 1.00

01:37:08.620 you're being attacked by your enemy, your perceived enemy, you're going to blame them instead 0.99

01:37:16.380 of whoever's ruling you, even if you don't like Hamas, even if you don't agree with their

01:37:21.460 Islamic interpretation.

01:37:23.800 It's natural.

01:37:24.540 You want to get the meanest MF-er possible representing your side. 1.00

01:37:29.300 I mean, that's human instinct, right?

01:37:30.760 Get the dirtiest fighter you can get.

01:37:33.280 And it helps Netanyahu for the same reason, obviously. 0.61

01:37:35.460 Yeah, so then how does this help in the long term when we have, like, you know, a new

01:37:39.400 It doesn't, and Hamas should stop sending the rockets.

01:37:42.160 That's why, because it doesn't help.

01:37:43.800 It may help them in the short term, but it does not help in the long term.

01:37:46.980 The single most important thing that could happen would be Hamas stop sending the rockets.

01:37:51.280 If that were to happen, that we would see no civilian casualties.

01:37:57.160 We would see restoration of quiet and peace.

01:38:00.200 Israel would immediately stop. 0.74

01:38:01.640 Until the next time.

01:38:02.500 Until the next time.

01:38:03.140 To your earlier point.

01:38:03.940 Let's say Hamas stops the rockets today.

01:38:07.120 We're going to be back to square one with the same problems in Jerusalem, the same problems

01:38:12.480 in the West Bank, the same occupation, and we're going to be repeating this endlessly.

01:38:18.080 We're not going to see dead children.

01:38:19.440 That's the big difference.

01:38:20.400 And that's what the focus is.

01:38:21.700 We're not going to see that 10-year-old.

01:38:23.560 We can stop that.

01:38:25.120 You know, we can do one piece at a time.

01:38:27.540 We're not going to achieve perfect peace.

01:38:29.020 We could have in 2000, 2001.

01:38:31.260 We could have in 2008.

01:38:32.980 But we're beyond that now.

01:38:34.540 Let's at least stop the killing of children.

01:38:37.180 Let's stop the rockets penetrating a bunker and killing a six-year-old Israeli boy.

01:38:41.840 And let's stop Israel from retaliating to stop the rockets. 0.56

01:38:45.800 Yes.

01:38:46.340 But the rockets have to stop for that to happen.

01:38:48.560 Part of the problem, though, is on the day after, Alan, you're not willing to push for any Israeli compromises.

01:38:53.780 You're saying that all the responsibility is on Palestinians.

01:38:56.800 You basically said that—

01:38:57.860 No, no, no.

01:38:57.900 I want to have—the responsibility for the dead children is completely on Hamas' side. 0.92

01:39:03.740 The responsibility for there not being peace is shared.

01:39:06.760 And I want to put all of my effort on trying to persuade both the United States and Israel

01:39:12.000 to move forward to have a two-state solution, to have negotiations.

01:39:17.020 I would like to see that happen as soon as possible.

01:39:19.220 This is where I'd like to leave it.

01:39:20.500 But unlike you, I have never been even to the Middle East.

01:39:23.780 It's on my bucket list.

01:39:25.640 And I've certainly never seen Gaza.

01:39:27.640 I've never seen Israel.

01:39:28.940 Can you explain, Alan?

01:39:29.920 Because as somebody—I remember my closest friend's older sister, they were Jewish.

01:39:34.460 I grew up next to them growing up, and she moved to Israel.

01:39:37.920 And back then, you know, in the 70s and 80s, things were bad, too.

01:39:41.640 And there was all the suicide bombings.

01:39:43.020 And I remember thinking, why would you want to move to Israel?

01:39:45.860 You know, it's like it's an unsafe place.

01:39:47.720 Why would you leave the United States, upstate New York, where I grew up, and go move to Israel?

01:39:51.940 Right.

01:39:52.260 And I've heard you talk about the region in such glowing terms.

01:39:55.600 And I just—can you give people a perspective?

01:39:57.400 Because it is a special, magical area from what people tell me.

01:40:01.640 And I just don't want to leave people with the impression that it's just this war-torn,

01:40:06.800 terrible, awful, dangerous war.

01:40:09.340 You know, it's much more than that.

01:40:11.020 Look, Israel is 73 years old this month.

01:40:14.660 It has done something that no country in history has ever done.

01:40:18.660 It has restored a language that was dead for many years.

01:40:21.820 It has restored a culture.

01:40:23.700 It has restored nationhood.

01:40:26.360 Jews have prayed for 3,000 years to return to Jerusalem, to return to Israel.

01:40:32.160 It's been a dream.

01:40:33.740 Jews say it in prayer every single day.

01:40:36.000 And it is a magical place for a Jew.

01:40:40.900 I'm sure it's a magical place for a Palestinian.

01:40:43.180 That's why there's room for two states.

01:40:46.260 You know, you could take the cynical view.

01:40:47.680 There already are two states.

01:40:49.140 Remember, the Palestinian mandate that was established after the First World War included

01:40:52.980 what is now Jordan, Transjordan, in which a majority of the people are Palestinians.

01:40:58.580 And they live there as Palestinians in Jordan.

01:41:02.720 Nothing happens in Jordan without the approval of the Palestinians. 0.97

01:41:05.440 They are a very, very powerful force.

01:41:08.500 And then there was what was left over, and that was divided.

01:41:11.840 And I want to go back to 1947, 1948, 1967.

01:41:17.100 I would like to see a viable Palestinian state.

01:41:20.020 First of all, a Palestinian state would be a great thing for the world because the Palestinian

01:41:23.500 people in general are incredible people.

01:41:26.640 They are innovative.

01:41:28.460 They're intelligent.

01:41:29.560 They're thoughtful.

01:41:30.340 They're resourceful.

01:41:31.240 If they could work together with Israel and form a kind of almost informal federation maybe

01:41:37.660 over time, that would be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

01:41:41.040 And I think both sides have to make efforts to marginalize their extremists, move to the

01:41:46.760 center, and move toward a compromise piece that nobody will find 100% satisfying.

01:41:52.040 But everybody will find better than the current situation.

01:41:55.020 I'll give you the last word, Shadi. 0.86

01:41:57.660 Thank you.

01:41:58.300 That was a somewhat positive note to end on.

01:42:02.300 I would agree with Alan.

01:42:03.800 I've lived in the Middle East for about a total of seven, eight years in different countries.

01:42:08.180 I've also spent some time in Israel.

01:42:10.080 I've been to Israel proper twice and had a wonderful time.

01:42:14.400 And, you know, a deep respect for what Israel has been able to do, despite my criticisms of

01:42:19.680 Israel's policies.

01:42:20.660 And I think it's possible to do both.

01:42:22.100 I think it's possible to have respect for a people and respect for a national project,

01:42:28.520 but also to say, hey, states are imperfect.

01:42:32.720 States can be deeply flawed.

01:42:34.200 And I think that's the kind of middle ground that we have to manage, that Israel is not 1.00

01:42:39.500 beyond criticism.

01:42:41.700 And just as, you know, we would hold our own government in the U.S. to accountability,

01:42:45.980 we would extend that same accountability to Israel and any other government, any other

01:42:51.320 democracy that we're close to.

01:42:54.420 But I'm skeptical about a two-state solution.

01:42:57.280 That is the ideal.

01:42:58.300 I think a one-state, bi-national state, which we didn't really talk about, a lot of problems

01:43:04.300 there.

01:43:05.120 But I worry that if we lose sight of a two-state solution and people start to lose faith that

01:43:10.800 it's even possible, then we're in a very difficult situation.

01:43:15.300 But yes, my hope is that we can return to some kind of deep compromise between the two peoples.

01:43:21.800 I agree.

01:43:23.000 You guys are amazing.

01:43:24.460 Well, you're amazing.

01:43:25.260 You kept us peaceful.

01:43:28.880 I mean, this is great.

01:43:29.980 Thank you.

01:43:30.280 How many times can you have conversations like this, except with a moderator like you, Megan?

01:43:34.460 Oh, thank you.

01:43:35.200 Maybe I am key to Middle East peace.

01:43:37.400 I never even considered that.

01:43:38.840 But yeah, maybe we all have a greater role in life.

01:43:39.960 You'd be a good mediator, I think.

01:43:41.680 Yeah.

01:43:43.060 Listen, I'm so intellectually engaged and excited by this whole conversation.

01:43:47.680 I learned a lot.

01:43:48.500 And I just think you're helping me make this a place for people to go and learn without heavy

01:43:54.280 bias, one side or the other.

01:43:55.500 And I'm so grateful to you both.

01:43:57.080 God bless.

01:43:57.520 Thank you very much.

01:43:58.720 Thank you.

01:43:59.000 I'm grateful to you.

01:43:59.760 And I'm grateful to Shadi for such a rational conversation.

01:44:02.520 Likewise.

01:44:02.940 And thank you, Megan.

01:44:07.160 All right.

01:44:07.780 Don't miss our next show this Friday by popular demand, including my own.

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01:44:15.880 I can't wait.

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01:44:20.740 Gosh, I can't even tick off all the subjects as a tease.

01:44:24.720 You know, it's going to be great, don't you?

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The Megyn Kelly Show - May 19, 2021

What's Happening in Israel and Gaza, Today and Throughout History - With Alan Dershowitz and Shadi Hamid ｜ Ep. 104

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