In this episode, Megynkel and Alan Dershowitz and shadi hamid debate the politics of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They discuss the history of the conflict, why it s so complicated, and what Israel should do about it.
00:00:28.460What I wanted to do is explain this thing to people in a way that we could all understand.
00:00:34.300I 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.
00:00:41.460And I think we nailed it, if I may be so bold.
00:00:55.640I love it because today they went together and they got to interject and it was really illuminating.
00:01:01.080And our guests are one man you know very well, Professor Alan Dershowitz.
00:01:05.240He's Professor Emeritus of Harvard Law School, where he was for like, I don't know, 50 years.
00:01:10.940I 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.
00:01:21.080And he's been on the ground as this whole conflict has been unfolding for his entire life.
00:01:25.160He's like, wait until you hear, he's like, Waldo, he's been everywhere.
00:01:29.980And we also have a guy you're going to like named Shadi Hamid.
00:01:33.140Now, Shadi is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, also contributing writer at The Atlantic.
00:01:37.580He hosts a podcast called The Wisdom of Crowds and very respectful guy in terms of his debate and his approach.
00:01:44.320And I just thought the two of these guys were great.
00:01:46.620And 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.
00:02:04.640There has not been peace in this region for 75 years, at least.
00:02:08.740And all attempts to create it have failed.
00:02:10.600They've fallen apart and they've been utterly feckless in solving just the deep seated animosity in the region.
00:02:16.040Right. 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.
00:02:36.020Right. Hamas is a terrorist organization and they are in control in Gaza.
00:04:34.320All right. So let me start this one with you, Shadi.
00:04:37.340Before 1948, before 1948, who controlled and lived in what was then known as Palestine?
00:04:45.180Before 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.
00:04:55.160This was the League of Nations mandate after World War I, which started around 1920.
00:05:03.420And there was various there was increasing Jewish immigration during that period.
00:05:10.420So the population balance was shifting in various ways.
00:05:15.320And it also depended on where in Palestine we're talking about.
00:05:19.040But in some sense, it became a kind of demographic contest of who could sort of assert their control and create facts on the ground.
00:05:27.480And obviously, there were tensions between Arabs and Jews.
00:06:28.160Well, in 1947, the United Nations finally decided to do something about the conflict that was going on in the Middle East.
00:06:35.600And so they proposed a division into two states, a Jewish state and an Arab state.
00:06:41.900And the Jewish state would have a Jewish majority.
00:06:44.160It was largely along the Mediterranean coast from Haifa down to the end of the Gaza Strip with Jerusalem being internationalized.
00:06:53.660And 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.
00:07:02.920And the Jews who were living in the areas that ultimately would become part of a Palestinian state were exiled, were thrown out.
00:07:12.400Basically, Jews lived in a place in various places in what is now the West Bank, Karzion, the Zion area.
00:07:24.780Israel accepted the division into two states.
00:07:28.520And 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.
00:07:38.100Israel also controlled the Negev, which was barren.
00:07:40.780And David Ben-Gurion insisted that he could make the desert bloom.
00:07:45.140Nobody really cared about the Negev, except the Bedouins, obviously, who lived there, and some Jews who lived in there, Sheva, and other places.
00:07:52.060But the Israelis accepted the two-state solution, as they had in 1938.
00:30:11.240But go ahead, Shadi, and then I'll give you the floor, Alan.
00:30:13.860Yeah, I mean, 2006 is relevant as sort of the starting point because that's when Hamas won elections.
00:30:19.880So 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.
00:31:26.580Now, there's a lot of complication in between.
00:31:29.360But generally, there were concerted efforts to undermine this government and to undermine national unity on the part of the U.S.
00:31:39.440and also on the part of Israel, understandably from their standpoint, because obviously, you know, the U.S.
00:31:44.960considers Hamas to be a designated terrorist organization.
00:31:48.000Israel sees Hamas as an existential enemy.
00:31:53.200So from Israel's standpoint, it would make sense to try to undermine this sort of national reconciliation government.
00:32:00.660But basically, there was an election that the Bush administration supported.
00:32:05.280And 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.
00:32:17.620And she almost fell off because she couldn't believe that Hamas won.
00:32:22.880If 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.
00:32:32.280There 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.
00:32:48.000Anyway, the government fell apart because of increasing tensions between the two factions and because there wasn't international recognition.
00:32:58.720And that's where there started to be a kind of chokehold on this new government.
00:33:02.820And the Bush administration refused to do business and was starting to withdraw support from this government.
00:33:09.460And then it sort of collapses, and then you basically have a civil war between the two Palestinian factions.
00:33:15.380Hamas ends up having control over Gaza, and Abbas's faction ends up having control over the West Bank.
00:33:23.820Hamas is in control of Gaza, and that's where the brutal, quite repressive blockade started and continues to this day.
00:33:33.520Now, 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.
00:33:50.160Right, 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.
00:33:59.020The repercussions and the blockade began when Hamas then started to send rockets into Israel, declared war in Israel.
00:34:06.280Remember, the Hamas charter says Israel has no right to exist.
00:34:11.080It says Jews caused the French Revolution, Jews caused the World War I, Jews of this, Jews of that.
00:34:16.040It's a terrible, terrible document, and it's Hamas' charter.
00:34:21.020And so, of course, Israel had to take self-defense actions.
00:34:24.080It 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.
00:34:37.180But I want to talk a little bit about second-class citizens in Israel.
00:34:40.760So it's very important to distinguish between Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs.
00:34:44.420Christian Arabs have exactly the same life as Jews in Israel.
00:34:50.600They are as wealthy, they are as accomplished, they are as prevalent in the medical professions.
00:34:55.600They have—Christian Arabs live better life in Israel than anywhere in the Middle East.
00:35:40.980But 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.
00:37:22.000And the difference, again, is that Israel tries its best.
00:37:24.960And Hamas—I mean, you both correctly point out Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist.
00:37:29.740So they really are an existential threat to Israel.
00:37:32.720And 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.
00:37:39.860And it's one of the main reasons why the Bush policy has been so criticized as, you know, what were you thinking?
00:37:47.060Like, this bringing democracy to the Middle East thing is a disaster.
00:38:27.760But, 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.
00:39:10.880So—but I think there's also the other issue that the Bush administration and also successive Israeli governments have not really encouraged Palestinian moderates.
00:40:12.060The vast majority of the West Bank, contiguous, would be under Palestinian control.
00:40:20.660It would be a demilitarized Palestinian government.
00:40:23.400There 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.
00:40:53.420The 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.
00:41:08.380All of those things, compromises of the essence.
00:41:11.260And 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.
00:41:42.560And maybe that's what brings us to, I think, what maybe are the larger disagreements.
00:41:47.780Alan 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.
00:42:00.780We have seen Israelis terrorized and precisely because the rockets are imprecise.
00:42:06.340They don't know where one is going to fall.
00:42:08.460The issue here, though, is Israel's bombardment of Gaza is not minimizing civilian casualties.
00:42:17.860And at some level, we have to understand who has the power in this equation.
00:42:22.300So we have this long history that we've talked about.
00:42:49.440But 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.
00:42:57.060There's been a lot of criticisms of them.
00:42:58.520But wait until you hear all the stuff that Israel does to try to prevent the civilian casualties.
00:43:02.640You know, Shadi wants them to do much, much more.
00:43:04.540Alan's got a different view of what they've done thus far and what they try to do, which is pretty extraordinary.
00:43:10.080But 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.
00:43:24.080I'm actually very curious to hear the answer myself.
00:43:26.480This 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.
00:43:35.760This 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.
00:43:41.300She says, no judgment from me, just curiosity.
00:43:44.640She said she's born and raised in the U.S., but also spent some time in Canada, like Canadian Debbie.
00:43:48.800She thinks of a feminist as simply someone who believes women should be considered full humans under the law.
00:43:54.320In practice, she says, you strike me as the consummate feminist, successful, pioneering, bold, impatient with limitations put on your freedom.
00:44:00.980Are you willing to share your perspective on this?
00:44:40.080I'm married to a good man and I produce two more.
00:44:42.520And 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?
00:45:03.600You just, as a journalist, don't have to get into it.
00:45:05.460But 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?
00:45:24.480And they will condemn people like Sarah Palin by saying she's a woman only a man could love.
00:45:29.760Gloria Steinem said that exact thing, right?
00:45:32.080So 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.
00:45:39.200You may not think you're saying that, but you are.
00:46:37.360And I think you can be for female empowerment, which I am for.
00:46:40.040And unlike a lot of these people just throw these labels out there and then they don't live by them because of politics.
00:46:45.540I'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.
00:46:56.220But it doesn't mean I give a presumption to women that they're always truth tellers and so on, right?
00:46:59.920I don't believe in the believe all women, right?
00:47:02.420Like if there's that part of being a feminist, because I reject that, too.
00:47:05.120Anyway, 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.
00:48:00.300I 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.
00:48:15.400They had an argument over these homes and now they're they're killing each other.
00:48:18.120And that's it's just so much more complex than that.
00:48:20.080But 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.
00:49:14.900There was something called Jerusalem Day, where some people celebrate the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967.
00:49:21.080Palestinians don't much like the celebration of that.
00:49:23.100It can be it can be in your face and Palestinians don't particularly love it.
00:49:26.500But 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.
00:49:40.060And every year the Palestinians break their fast after Ramadan and celebrate the end of it there.
00:49:44.360But this year, the Israeli police said no.
00:49:58.720There was something called the tick tock attacks where 16 and 17 year olds filled themselves slapping an ultra Orthodox Jewish person on a train.
00:50:05.380Hundreds of Israelis wound up chanting, marching death to Arabs at Damascus Gate.
00:50:40.140You can feel the tensions like all these certain points going up.
00:50:43.440And 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.
00:50:57.160And Israel never responds well to threats like that.
00:53:07.380But when Israel is put to the choice, either let the rockets rain down.
00:53:12.220And 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.
00:53:25.000Either accept the rockets or respond knowing you're going to necessarily kill some civilians because the rockets are being fired from mosques,
00:53:33.640from hospitals, from schools, from U.N. places.
00:53:37.600There 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.
00:53:49.700Hamas 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.
00:53:59.440So it's a Hobson's choice that's put on Israel.
00:54:06.140When 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.
00:54:23.160But inevitably there will be civilian casualties because Hamas has made a decision to fire from behind civilian casualties using human shields.
00:54:31.160I 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.
00:54:45.180That 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.
00:54:57.240That 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.
00:55:25.100They 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.
00:55:33.980Israel doesn't show pictures of its dead victims.
00:55:37.480It deliberately doesn't do that to protect their privacy, and so the dead baby strategy works.
00:55:43.680Hamas wants to make sure that when Israel retaliates, there will be some civilian carriage.
00:55:50.140Some of them result from rockets misfiring, but many of them do result from Israel efforts that fail to try to prevent civilian casual patriotism.
00:55:59.380Now, I want Shadi to weigh in, and you can address all of that, but can you just start with this?
00:56:03.600Because 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.
00:56:20.700Because 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.
00:56:26.100I 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?
00:56:38.260And 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.
00:56:57.420And 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.
00:57:10.880Okay, 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,
00:57:23.700and 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?
00:57:37.960So, 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?
00:57:48.180Well, 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.
00:58:04.760That 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.
00:58:16.280Unfortunately, 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,
00:58:31.780with 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.
00:58:41.040That 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.
00:58:53.660So that's what we've been seeing throughout not just the current period, but 2007 onwards during this very repressive blockade.
00:59:04.900Now, 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.
00:59:13.700Sometimes 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,
00:59:28.320and again, to change the demographic balance so it becomes more Jewish and less Arab.
00:59:33.220There's been a nonviolent campaign that's been going on for months protesting peacefully about these threatened evictions of Palestinians.
00:59:44.440It got no international attention. No one seems to care. So tensions had been building up.
00:59:50.600And finally, they and then also you have far right Israeli settlers egging all of this on.
00:59:56.120And we have to also be clear, Netanyahu himself has allies, has had allies in previous governments who are on the far right.
01:00:06.660These are people who say explicitly that they want to expel Arabs, including citizens, from Israel.
01:00:14.960So we're not talking about just normal people on the right or whatever. We're talking about some very extreme figures.
01:00:21.280I agree. They should be condemned. They should be condemned. And I condemn them.
01:00:24.660Let him finish. So when we want to understand the current crisis, as you mentioned, Megan,
01:00:32.100the key turning point is the very heavy handed police raid that we saw in Al-Aqsa Mosque.
01:00:38.540As you mentioned, rubber bullets, stun grenades, so on, more than 300.
01:00:42.140That was the excuse to juror. That was the excuse to juror. That was not the provoke.
01:00:47.040This would have happened if there had been peace in Jerusalem.
01:00:50.080Hamas does it every few years. They just wait for an excuse. And they're smart.
01:00:54.660And they're pushed by Iran to do it. So they're going to keep doing it.
01:01:09.880It'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.
01:01:25.860So 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.
01:01:51.540There 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.
01:02:15.700But 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.
01:02:34.500And 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.
01:02:50.240So 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.
01:03:07.420You 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.
01:03:23.500But 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.
01:03:37.420I 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.
01:03:49.780And 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.
01:04:07.420And 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.
01:04:19.460So 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.
01:04:30.860The world didn't care. There were fewer civilian casualties inflicted by Israel than were inflicted by the United States and Afghanistan and in Iraq.
01:04:41.300Every war has civilian casualties. The reason for the civilian casualties, by the way, is that Hamas will not allow civilians into its bunkers.
01:04:50.320Israel builds bunkers for everybody, and they avoid civilian casualties. Not always. That six-year-old was killed.
01:04:55.940But Hamas deliberately requires its civilians to remain above ground, whereas Israel builds shelters.
01:05:08.240Okay. The basic point here is that the majority of people who have been killed are civilians.
01:05:14.440In the previous war in 2014, which lasted seven weeks, 2,200 were killed. About 1,500 were civilians.
01:05:22.600We keep on hearing about the most... This humanitarian army that's doing everything to protect civilian life.
01:05:29.880That 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.
01:05:38.940We 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?
01:05:48.980The fact that the building housing the Associated Press, a major mainstream news outlet, that got bombed, and then people will say...
01:05:59.380Nobody was killed. Nobody was injured.
01:06:00.800Well, 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.
01:06:05.320They bombed it because the Israeli intelligence said that Hamas military intel operations were based in there.
01:06:11.180Israeli 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.
01:06:21.660And so far, the U.S. position is that they have not seen credible evidence that that is the case.
01:06:28.360Wait, 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...
01:06:34.640There 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,
01:06:49.540endangering 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.
01:06:58.040And the AP wouldn't report it, not even in AP articles being written about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas.
01:07:08.460And Matt says this did happen. Hamas did launch rockets from residential areas.
01:07:12.880Hamas fighters would burst into the AP's Gaza Bureau and threaten the staff, and the AP would not report it.
01:07:21.200And 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.
01:07:32.920Film the arrival of civilian casualties.
01:07:36.180So it's part of, you know, this is what Hamas wants on camera.
01:07:38.620And 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.
01:07:52.180Now, this is a this is an AP reporter at the time writing prior to all this in 2014.
01:07:57.660And so he says, look, I'm not saying that this AP building absolutely had Hamas military intel operations in it.
01:08:05.000But I refer you back to my earlier article where it had all the facts I just spelled out.
01:08:10.320That's a good point. So let's take that on.
01:08:54.720But what's happening in practice seems to be that in Israel uses this language of collateral damage that we were targeting the Hamas guy.
01:09:03.940These people were caught in the crossfire.
01:09:06.520Does 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.
01:09:15.060Hey, too bad. We're not we're not trying to kill civilians.
01:09:18.080But if they happen to be in the area that we're targeting, well, you know, we can't always help that.
01:09:25.460And as you as you know, Alan, there are they call off.
01:10:30.720What 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.
01:10:38.280And Ashkelon and Ashdod saying our people are being terrorized.
01:10:54.000One of the leading terrorists who was planning to blow up a gas refinery that would have killed thousands of people was targeted by Israel.
01:11:02.880He was in their sights and they saw that there may have been some civilians.
01:11:28.840You know, that's what the United States did in in Dresden.
01:11:32.260The United States, when it bombed Dresden, clearly had a policy with Churchill of terrorizing civilians to make them turn against their government.
01:11:55.920You always do that during wartime if the electricity is being used to send rockets.
01:12:00.980Israel 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.
01:12:48.480So, 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.
01:13:00.300When we're saying that someone who seems to be a civilian, you're suggesting that they may actually be secretly Hamas.
01:13:20.680No, but we don't know the breadsellers.
01:13:22.440We have to see combatants and noncombatants, and some of them are matters of degree.
01:13:25.080The 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.
01:13:34.280That line of thinking, I think, takes us in maybe a little bit of a problematic place.
01:13:39.440But more broadly, let me just finish with a thought here.
01:13:42.500It is actually Israel's deterrent strategy to inflict overwhelming pain on Palestinians.
01:13:47.680My colleague, Dan Byman, who's a leading counterterrorism expert, he wrote a piece in the last Gaza war in 2014.
01:14:37.500There will be a study at the end of this, and we'll see the percentages.
01:14:40.860And there will be many more Palestinians killed than Israelis because Israel has a policy of protecting its civilians by bunkers, by sirens.
01:14:49.880The 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.
01:15:01.420We know that the mosques are used to keep rockets.
01:15:04.900And that other – when you do that, it's you, Hamas, that is endangering your civilians, not Israel.
01:15:10.540Are you honestly trying to tell me that when an Israeli airstrike kills a family of four?
01:15:16.080And there was just a video that was going around that you may have seen.
01:16:18.460Shadi, 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.
01:16:27.380And that actually did happen with that AP building in Gaza City.
01:16:31.220They'll actually – I mean, it's kind of crazy if you think about it.
01:16:33.680Like, just from a layperson standpoint, they'll go tell you, we're about to bomb you.
01:16:37.480You should leave this building right away.
01:16:39.460They'll call you on the phone and they'll have a knock bomb on top.
01:17:13.880So 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?
01:17:35.640And I've heard this a lot in the debates on social media the past few days.
01:17:39.000People will tell me, but Shadi, they're dropping those leaflets.
01:17:43.060That'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.
01:18:50.080So we know that Israel is some of the most advanced precision targeting in the world.
01:18:58.440The idea that there aren't more precise ways to target Hamas assets than destroying an entire apartment block – again, we've seen those images.
01:19:09.500I think we have to call that into question.
01:19:11.540I get that they think it's necessary, but there are ways to be more precise in your targeting outside of destroying whole apartment blocks.
01:19:20.940If 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 –
01:19:33.820But 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.
01:19:41.520Your building has been taken over by Hamas.
01:20:11.320Israel could come now and say, listen, we are ready to move to a ceasefire.
01:20:15.660We 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.
01:20:54.540Others perhaps can, but we don't really have any direct contacts with them for legal reasons, obviously.
01:21:01.800So 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.
01:21:09.840And 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.
01:21:21.880There's no other way to interpret that.
01:21:30.840We still need to hear Shadi's point that you agree with.
01:21:33.140I 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.
01:21:45.280So it does concern me when I see my president, Joe Biden, he's taking a very minimalistic approach.
01:21:54.280And 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.
01:22:36.060And that's why if you have the conversation, Biden calls Netanyahu and says, do a ceasefire.
01:22:40.600Netanyahu 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.
01:22:50.400There's no such thing as a ceasefire to help the enemy launch new rockets.
01:22:55.380If 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.
01:23:11.540But 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.
01:23:22.880And that's why I think President Biden is doing the right thing.
01:23:25.980He's urging a movement toward a mutual ceasefire.
01:23:29.620But 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.
01:23:44.280A ceasefire has to be a real, real ceasefire, and it has to be permanent, not temporary.
01:23:58.680I 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.
01:24:09.960And 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.
01:24:28.960Well, first of all, they are saying more things behind the scenes.
01:24:31.720They are putting pressure on Israel behind the scenes.
01:24:33.680But remember, the Abraham Accords were signed because it was in the interest of the Arab countries to sign with Israel.
01:24:39.760Israel had become an indispensable ally for peace in relation to Iran, for technology, for economic advantage.
01:24:47.180These countries weren't doing Israel a favor.
01:24:49.240They weren't doing Donald Trump a favor.
01:24:50.920It was a good thing for these Arab countries to sign on.
01:24:54.640And 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.
01:25:03.280And Palestinians shouldn't have a veto over that.
01:25:05.700I do think it will be good if more Arab countries sign on.
01:25:09.500And 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.
01:25:21.800And I think he's doing exactly the right thing.
01:25:25.120I've known Tony Blinken for some time, and I think he's doing the right thing.
01:25:28.680I 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.
01:25:43.360A lot of my people on the right who like me because they think I defended Trump.
01:25:48.160If I didn't, I only defended his rights, hate, you know, think I'm selling out Israel.
01:25:52.920But I do think that President Biden and Secretary Blinken are doing a good job in striking a balance.
01:25:59.080Look, there's no moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
01:26:02.140And 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.