TRIGGERnometry - The Best Israel Conversation You've Ever Heard

00:00:01.000 Andrew, you were on the ground in Gaza. What did you see?

00:00:05.000 There is enough aid in Gaza. The issue is with distribution,

00:00:08.000 and we have to once again insert Hamas into this conversation.

00:00:11.000 There are two sides to this war.

00:00:13.000 Israel is not thinking long-term here 0.98

00:00:15.000 because they're assuming that America will have their back forever

00:00:17.000 and so they can do what they want,

00:00:19.000 which I think is a very dangerous position.

00:00:21.000 Is Israel committing a genocide?

00:00:23.000 No. There have been more bombs dropped in Gaza

00:00:25.000 than people have been killed.

00:00:27.000 You know, either the IDF are the worst shots in history

00:00:29.000 or they're actually taking care of civilian lives.

00:00:32.000 You don't give vaccines for polio

00:00:34.000 to the entire child population of Gaza if you're trying to destroy them. 0.66

00:00:37.000 Why on earth would you do these things 0.86

00:00:39.000 if all you wanted to do was to destroy Palestinians or Gazans 0.99

00:00:43.000 as an ethnic group? It just doesn't make any sense. 0.96

00:00:45.000 Haven't Israel taken out all the leaders of Hamas already

00:00:48.000 and they just have new ones and they just keep going anyway?

00:00:50.000 Yeah, most of them, and that's one of the reasons

00:00:52.000 I think Israel should have ceased fire six months ago.

00:00:55.000 Andrew Foxx, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:59.000 Thank you very much.

00:01:00.000 Good to have you on.

00:01:01.000 We're going to talk about Israel and the war in Gaza above all.

00:01:04.000 Before we do though, your background is super interesting

00:01:07.000 and super informative and informing for what we're going to talk about.

00:01:11.000 So, tell us a little bit about your story. Who are you?

00:01:13.000 So, I did a law degree at Cardiff, graduated in 2003,

00:01:17.000 and I decided that jumping out of planes

00:01:20.000 and running around shooting guns would be a lot more fun

00:01:23.000 than being a lawyer.

00:01:24.000 So, I joined the British Army.

00:01:25.000 I did 16 years, served in the Royal West Fusiliers

00:01:28.000 and then the parachute regiments.

00:01:30.000 Three tours in Afghanistan, tours of Bosnia,

00:01:33.000 Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

00:01:35.000 I left the Army in 2021, and for three years,

00:01:39.000 I was a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst,

00:01:42.000 which is the British West Point.

00:01:44.000 It's where we train our young officers.

00:01:46.000 And I taught behavioural science and war studies.

00:01:49.000 And I'm now a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society,

00:01:52.000 which is a think tank in Westminster,

00:01:54.000 focusing on defence in the Middle East

00:01:56.000 and societal issues more broadly.

00:01:59.000 Tell us a little bit about your time serving in combat areas.

00:02:03.000 Is there any analogy or comparison to be made

00:02:07.000 with the things you experienced and saw with your own eyes

00:02:10.000 and what's happening in Gaza today in terms of urban combat,

00:02:13.000 you know, highly enclosed environments,

00:02:15.000 civilian population enmeshed with the resistance,

00:02:18.000 if you like to call it that way.

00:02:20.000 Is there anything that was informative from your time serving?

00:02:23.000 To an extent, the human factors, I think, remain the same.

00:02:26.000 So, the stresses that people are under,

00:02:28.000 the planning processes that soldiers have to go through.

00:02:30.000 And there's also that sort of adaptive nature of war,

00:02:34.000 where you learn as you go along.

00:02:36.000 So, the IDF went in in a very different way

00:02:38.000 to the way they fight now.

00:02:40.000 How so?

00:02:41.000 So, for example, they went in with a kind of armoured manoeuvre,

00:02:44.000 focusing on an enemy that was embedded

00:02:47.000 in traditional defensive positions.

00:02:49.000 They've had to transition due to various things.

00:02:52.000 So, for example, the pause between Khan Yunus and Rafah,

00:02:55.000 between January and April 2024.

00:02:58.000 Hamas adapted their tactics,

00:03:00.000 so they started mining every single building in Rafah,

00:03:02.000 which meant the IDF had to adopt their tactics

00:03:04.000 and how they cleared three buildings.

00:03:06.000 So, there's that adaptive process,

00:03:07.000 and it was the same in Afghanistan with the IED threat.

00:03:10.000 So, my first tour in 2007,

00:03:12.000 there's an infantry between commander. 0.74

00:03:14.000 It was fairly kinetic.

00:03:15.000 It was pretty much gunfights.

00:03:17.000 But, obviously, then the Taliban adopted their tactics

00:03:20.000 to improvise explosive devices, landmines everywhere.

00:03:23.000 And then, so, we had to adapt.

00:03:24.000 And so, there's that continual...

00:03:26.000 It's like a chess game, moving counter-move.

00:03:28.000 So, that's very similar as well.

00:03:29.000 But the big difference, I think,

00:03:31.000 between Afghanistan and what's happening in Gaza,

00:03:33.000 and to an extent what happened in Lebanon,

00:03:35.000 is that Afghanistan was what we call a counter-insurgency.

00:03:38.000 So, the consent and the will of the people

00:03:40.000 were the main effort for the mission.

00:03:43.000 You know, getting them on side for the government of Kabul.

00:03:45.000 Obviously, completely unsuccessfully.

00:03:47.000 But that was the aim.

00:03:48.000 Whereas in Gaza, the aim is closing with 0.93

00:03:50.000 and destroying the enemy.

00:03:52.000 And, of course, trying to get the hostages back.

00:03:54.000 So, it's a very, very different type of...

00:03:55.000 Why is that?

00:03:56.000 Is that because there's no chance of convincing

00:03:58.000 the population of Gaza that Hamas are the enemy?

00:04:02.000 So, not that Hamas are the enemy,

00:04:04.000 but that Israel are friends.

00:04:06.000 So, if you look at Gaza and Telegram groups,

00:04:09.000 you know, there's a really good translate function there.

00:04:11.000 So, even if you don't speak Arabic,

00:04:12.000 and my Arabic's very, very poor.

00:04:14.000 You know, I can read the words, but that's about it.

00:04:17.000 People in Gaza hate Hamas.

00:04:19.000 They blame them absolutely for the misery

00:04:21.000 they're going through right now.

00:04:23.000 And they have very, very strong feelings

00:04:25.000 and they're not shy of expressing it.

00:04:27.000 That doesn't translate into loving the State of Israel,

00:04:30.000 who've just been bombing and killing them

00:04:33.000 for 21 months.

00:04:35.000 So, they're never going to sort of bring

00:04:38.000 the hearts and minds of the Gazan people with them.

00:04:41.000 So, the best they can hope for, I think, is removing Hamas 1.00

00:04:43.000 and then trying to find some kind of alternate governance

00:04:46.000 once the military campaign is finished.

00:04:48.000 Do you think that possibility of winning over the people,

00:04:52.000 the hearts and minds, was ever on the table,

00:04:54.000 if Israel had taken a different approach?

00:04:56.000 No, I don't think so.

00:04:57.000 And if you look at the videos from 7th of October

00:04:59.000 when the hostages were dragged back into Gaza

00:05:02.000 and the cheering hordes of Gazan civilians,

00:05:05.000 the thousands of Gazan civilians who followed up Hamas' fighters

00:05:08.000 on 7th of October to commit atrocities in Israel itself.

00:05:12.000 And then built onto that, things like the Unruh education system,

00:05:15.000 which has trained Gazans for decades to despise the Yahud, 0.75

00:05:20.000 despise Israel and the Jews. 1.00

00:05:23.000 You know, this is an institutional, decades-long bit of cultural conditioning

00:05:29.000 that I don't think is going to be overcome by a military campaign.

00:05:32.000 It needs a much longer reconstruction campaign,

00:05:34.000 and I don't think that is a problem that anyone has really addressed properly yet.

00:05:38.000 One more question before Francis takes over.

00:05:41.000 Just to set the scene for our conversation,

00:05:44.000 you mentioned what you were teaching at Sandhurst,

00:05:47.000 war studies, behavioral psychology and things like that.

00:05:51.000 One of the things that, I'm a bit of a history buff when it comes to war,

00:05:55.000 but I've never been in the positions you've been,

00:05:57.000 or certainly not educated on it.

00:05:59.000 But even to me, it seems like so much of our public discussion of this conflict

00:06:04.000 is based on the complete ignorance of war, the realities of war,

00:06:08.000 the way that war has always been, the way that war will always be. 0.66

00:06:12.000 So what is it that you see somebody with your expertise,

00:06:16.000 about the way this whole thing is being discussed,

00:06:19.000 that you would like people to be aware of that they're currently not?

00:06:23.000 It's that Hamas have been deleted from the conversation.

00:06:26.000 This is being presented in the media as simply Israel just bombing Gaza randomly.

00:06:33.000 That's nonsense.

00:06:34.000 You know, 20,000-plus Hamas operatives have died.

00:06:37.000 3,000 Israeli soldiers have been wounded or killed on the battlefield in Gaza.

00:06:43.000 This is very much a two-way war.

00:06:46.000 And yes, it has all the human suffering and civilian death and tragedy

00:06:51.000 that you would expect in any war zone,

00:06:53.000 but not at any greater scale than any other war,

00:06:55.000 and especially not when Hamas have a deliberate strategy of sacrificing Gaza civilians.

00:07:01.000 And there's nowhere for those civilians to flee to,

00:07:03.000 other than temporary humanitarian zones because Egypt has shut the border.

00:07:07.000 You know, if Egypt really cared about Gaza civilians,

00:07:10.000 they would open their border and allow them to flee,

00:07:12.000 just like every other war.

00:07:13.000 Look how many Ukrainians fled Ukraine.

00:07:15.000 And that's one of the reasons why Ukrainian civilian deaths 0.99

00:07:18.000 aren't as high as they could be.

00:07:19.000 And yet none of that is available on the table in Gaza.

00:07:22.000 So it's framing this as a war.

00:07:25.000 And that is what's missing from the debate right now.

00:07:28.000 And Andrew, you just said that Egypt refused to open the border.

00:07:33.000 Why is that?

00:07:35.000 Well, Egypt, of course, used to own Gaza. 0.78

00:07:37.000 You know, after 1967, that was entirely Egypt's possession. 0.94

00:07:41.000 The Sinai is not particularly safe or stable.

00:07:44.000 There's Bedouin insurgents in the Sinai Peninsula

00:07:46.000 that Egypt is desperately trying to keep a handle on.

00:07:49.000 They've spent a long time getting a grip of the Muslim Brotherhood issue

00:07:53.000 they've had in Egypt.

00:07:54.000 And I think the last thing they want to do is further destabilize

00:07:57.000 the situation with two million refugees.

00:08:00.000 That hasn't stopped Egypt joining the genocide case against Israel in the ICJ.

00:08:04.000 And yet they have it in their power to end this genocide immediately

00:08:07.000 by opening the heavily reinforced border gate that you see.

00:08:11.000 So I've been along that border with Egypt.

00:08:14.000 And it is an incredibly well reinforced and solid war.

00:08:18.000 So there's something that doesn't quite add up there, I would put it to you.

00:08:21.000 But so they are pointing the finger at Israel and using the word genocide,

00:08:26.000 which is a very, very, very serious claim to make.

00:08:30.000 And yet they're doing nothing to alleviate the genocide.

00:08:33.000 And yet very few people in the media or political commentators

00:08:37.000 are pointing the finger at Egypt.

00:08:39.000 I mean, how are they getting away with this?

00:08:41.000 Well, I think we've got a 50 plus, 60 plus year information campaign

00:08:46.000 supporting what Hamas is doing in Gaza

00:08:50.000 and to an extent what the Palestinian Authority are doing

00:08:52.000 in the West Bank or Judea and Samaria

00:08:55.000 or whichever we're calling it today.

00:08:56.000 This was a reframing backed by a superpower,

00:08:59.000 backed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War,

00:09:02.000 to take the issue of Palestinianism,

00:09:05.000 to turn it against Israel and reframe it as oppressor versus oppressed,

00:09:10.000 which of course is the narrative that's been heavily pushed

00:09:13.000 throughout sort of Western academia, Western media.

00:09:16.000 And it is essentially because of that framing

00:09:19.000 of oppressor versus oppressed,

00:09:20.000 it gives the Palestinians a free pass to do whatever they want. 0.91

00:09:24.000 Mm-hmm.

00:09:25.000 And it means that Israel is always the bad guy 1.00

00:09:27.000 no matter what happens.

00:09:28.000 Mm-hmm.

00:09:29.000 And so extraneous issues like what are Egypt doing,

00:09:31.000 what are the Gulf states doing,

00:09:32.000 what are Turkey doing, what are Qatar doing,

00:09:34.000 gets kind of overlooked completely

00:09:36.000 because the focus is Israel is the bad guy 0.53

00:09:38.000 and that's really all that matters

00:09:40.000 in that 60-year narrative that's been pushed so hard.

00:09:43.000 And, well, we've used the word genocide already.

00:09:46.000 It's already come up, so let's delve right into this.

00:09:49.000 Mm-hmm.

00:09:50.000 Are Israel, or is Israel committing a genocide?

00:09:52.000 No, no, emphatically not.

00:09:54.000 Look, there's a key factor to genocide,

00:09:56.000 and that is the dolus specialis of the intent.

00:09:59.000 Okay, so normally if you committed a crime, went to court,

00:10:02.000 it would be the burden of proof would be beyond reasonable doubt.

00:10:06.000 Mm-hmm.

00:10:07.000 Okay, so 90% plus, you know, certainty

00:10:10.000 that you'd committed the crime.

00:10:12.000 Mm-hmm.

00:10:13.000 But the dolus specialis, it's 100%.

00:10:15.000 It cannot be anything else for it to be intent for genocide.

00:10:19.000 And if you look at the fact that Israel has sustained 3,000 casualties,

00:10:23.000 that Israel has the capability to end this tomorrow.

00:10:25.000 If they really wanted to wipe out 2 million Palestinians, 0.94

00:10:28.000 they have enough firepower to do that.

00:10:30.000 And they've demonstrated that repeatedly over the last year,

00:10:32.000 that they have firepower beyond anything.

00:10:34.000 Even, you know, even the UK could bring to bear, quite frankly.

00:10:37.000 Mm-hmm.

00:10:38.000 And yet they're not using it.

00:10:39.000 There have been more bombs dropped in Gaza than people have been killed.

00:10:41.000 You know, either the IDF are the worst shots in history,

00:10:44.000 or they're actually taking care of civilian lives.

00:10:47.000 Mm-hmm.

00:10:48.000 You don't give vaccines for polio to the entire child population of Gaza

00:10:51.000 if you're trying to destroy them.

00:10:53.000 You don't facilitate twice the amount of food aid going into Gaza 0.93

00:10:57.000 as was going in before the war if you're trying to kill everyone.

00:11:00.000 Um, you don't put ground troops into harm's way

00:11:03.000 and have 3,000 families in Israel

00:11:05.000 who are now having to deal with the death and the injury of their loved ones.

00:11:09.000 You know, why on earth would you do these things 0.94

00:11:11.000 if all you wanted to do was to destroy Palestinians or Gazans 0.98

00:11:15.000 as an ethnic group? 0.96

00:11:16.000 It just doesn't make any sense.

00:11:17.000 And the intent that is inferred by some of the very dodgy statements

00:11:21.000 that Israeli politicians have made,

00:11:23.000 and I think we should face this head-on.

00:11:25.000 It's like Modric.

00:11:26.000 Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, they've said Smotrich.

00:11:28.000 Modric is a former football player, mate.

00:11:30.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:32.000 Luka Modric has nothing to do with what's happening in Gaza,

00:11:35.000 let's just be clear.

00:11:36.000 He may be Croatian.

00:11:37.000 They do have a dodgy history of genocide,

00:11:38.000 but let's put him to one side.

00:11:40.000 But Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have said outrageous things

00:11:45.000 that are completely unacceptable,

00:11:47.000 but they're not in the direct decision-making chain for the war.

00:11:51.000 And the allegations against Netanyahu,

00:11:53.000 against the old defence minister, Yoav Gallant,

00:11:55.000 they're completely taken out of context.

00:11:58.000 Now, Andrew, can you not see, though,

00:11:59.000 and this is where I genuinely have a lot of trouble with this,

00:12:02.000 can you not see that, let's say,

00:12:05.000 Britain and America invade Afghanistan, 0.74

00:12:07.000 which they did, right?

00:12:08.000 Well, you know, we can argue about whether that was the right decision, whatever.

00:12:12.000 And the finance minister of Britain goes out and starts making the sort of statements

00:12:19.000 that Smotrich has been making.

00:12:21.000 And you go, like, okay, he's the finance minister,

00:12:24.000 maybe he's not in charge of the war decisions,

00:12:26.000 but if he is in the cabinet and allowed to be in the cabinet while making those claims,

00:12:31.000 that can't be anything other than a reflection of what that government sees as the right thing to be saying.

00:12:39.000 Yeah, up to a point. And I do agree with you.

00:12:41.000 And I would utterly condemn everything that's come out of their mouths pretty much during this war.

00:12:45.000 You know, they are absolutely advocating for genocide and ethnic cleansing.

00:12:49.000 And whilst I don't necessarily agree with sanctioning them as the UK government has,

00:12:54.000 actually it might be no bad thing if it gets them to sort of dial back a bit 0.85

00:12:58.000 on that absolute nonsense that comes out of their mouths.

00:13:00.000 So I'm fairly relaxed about that when it comes to what the UK government has done

00:13:04.000 in respect to those two politicians.

00:13:06.000 But the way the war is being fought is through the war cabinet, not the government cabinet.

00:13:11.000 And that is now pretty much Bibby and the defence minister, and that's pretty much it.

00:13:14.000 I think Gaddy Eisencott, the old head of the IDF, was there as an observer.

00:13:18.000 I don't know if he still is.

00:13:20.000 But really this kind of lives and dies now with Bibby.

00:13:23.000 He's centralised everything under his control, working direct at the IDF,

00:13:28.000 who are showing very, very strong resolve in pushing back against some of the madder plans

00:13:32.000 that have been suggested.

00:13:33.000 But either way, it doesn't pay out on the ground.

00:13:35.000 So even if you take the intent out of it, the actions on the ground aren't genocidal either.

00:13:40.000 Because significant numbers of the enemy and Hamas are getting killed.

00:13:43.000 And they're allied militant groups, of course.

00:13:46.000 And when you're closing in on one-to-one ratio between fighters killed and civilians killed,

00:13:52.000 then I think that suggests to you that perhaps they're not just trying to kill indiscriminately.

00:13:56.000 But also people will go, look, Andrew, come on.

00:13:59.000 There was a food embargo that lasted months.

00:14:02.000 The last time I checked, I think it was three months that it lasted, started early March,

00:14:06.000 went right through to June.

00:14:07.000 This is inhumane.

00:14:08.000 Children were starving.

00:14:10.000 You had people, you had surgeons and doctors coming out and saying,

00:14:14.000 people are so physically weak that when we operate upon them, the operation goes well.

00:14:19.000 They're so malnourished that they then end up dying.

00:14:22.000 This is awful, inexcusable, a war crime. 0.99

00:14:26.000 I mean, what do you say to that?

00:14:28.000 I mean, I don't necessarily disagree.

00:14:30.000 I mean, I don't think Israel should have put an embargo on food.

00:14:33.000 You know, it's not something I would support.

00:14:35.000 However, if we look at the statistics,

00:14:37.000 twice as much food has gone into Gaza during the war as beforehand.

00:14:40.000 It's over 3,000 calories per person per day, which should be enough to survive on.

00:14:45.000 During the ceasefire period in early January, we saw enough food going into Gaza

00:14:52.000 that should have lasted between three and six months for every person in Gaza.

00:14:55.000 We know Hamas is hoarding the aid supplies.

00:14:58.000 We know that they have warehouses full of aid that they have been using to withhold from the population

00:15:04.000 so they can control them, and so that they can sell it to pay their fighters.

00:15:08.000 We know that the UN has bucketloads of aid that has already been cleared for distribution by Israel,

00:15:15.000 queued up at Keram Shalom crossing in the south of Gaza,

00:15:19.000 and yet the UN won't distribute it because they won't work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

00:15:23.000 So, whilst on the surface it looks appalling, and I agree, and I still state again they shouldn't have done it,

00:15:32.000 to put an aid block in, that has now been lifted.

00:15:35.000 There is enough aid in Gaza. The issue is with distribution.

00:15:38.000 And we have to once again insert Hamas into this conversation. 0.85

00:15:41.000 There are two sides to this war.

00:15:43.000 Israel is trying to feed people.

00:15:45.000 Hamas are trying to retain the aid themselves and starve their own population. 0.93

00:15:49.000 And the UN is refusing to deliver food because they won't work with the IDF and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

00:15:56.000 So, you can paint Israel as the bad guy, but that would be completely devoid of nuance

00:16:00.000 and completely devoid of any balanced assessment of the situation.

00:16:04.000 Well, I'm glad you brought up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

00:16:06.000 because when doing research for this interview, the problem is, Andrew, is you're looking at this,

00:16:12.000 and this is somebody whose job it is to ask experts like yourselves questions.

00:16:17.000 And I'm reading articles that are in the Guardian, let's not even mention Al Jazeera,

00:16:21.000 but you're reading articles in the Guardian and they paint one picture.

00:16:24.000 You see the UN come out and say something.

00:16:26.000 You see the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation come out and say something else.

00:16:30.000 And you've got political commentators of all shapes and hues with their own particular narratives.

00:16:35.000 And you're looking at this and you're going, I don't know what's true.

00:16:40.000 What is actually happening?

00:16:42.000 Is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, do they just randomly shoot at people, which is what some people are saying?

00:16:50.000 And then two of their operatives were injured because there was a grenade attack?

00:16:56.000 I mean, I guess my question is, how do you know the truth and what is going on?

00:17:00.000 I think what you've perfectly illustrated is the fact that there are two wars going on in Gaza.

00:17:05.000 There's what's actually happening in Gaza, and then there is the entire bubble of media and information manoeuvre that's going on around it.

00:17:12.000 And that information campaign is designed to enable Hamas's survival. 0.90

00:17:16.000 It's designed to force the Israelis through international pressure to a ceasefire.

00:17:20.000 And it's working to an extent.

00:17:22.000 You know, we saw that letter just this week from 28 countries telling Israel to ceasefire and curiously omitting the fact that it was Hamas who turned down the last ceasefire deal.

00:17:32.000 So there are two wars going on here.

00:17:34.000 Now, it is very hard to find out what's going on the ground.

00:17:36.000 It's my job to do that.

00:17:37.000 And even I have struggled over recent weeks.

00:17:39.000 I had a degree of a breakthrough yesterday.

00:17:42.000 And what we're looking at with the GHF is at the moment four distribution sites.

00:17:47.000 So just for people who don't know, let's just talk about what the GHF is, what they're appointed to do.

00:17:53.000 Why were they appointed it?

00:17:54.000 Who are they?

00:17:55.000 So part of the problem with defeating Hamas, which is Israel's war aim, is that Hamas has retained control within Gaza by leveraging the aid.

00:18:04.000 So they seize it, they sell it, and that helps them control the population and pay their own fighters.

00:18:10.000 So what Israel has tried to do is come up with a way to separate the people of Gaza from Hamas.

00:18:17.000 OK, they're probably not going to do that conceptually.

00:18:19.000 They're probably not going to say, we now love Israel, but physically separating them so that Hamas can be destroyed and their command and control over Gaza can be deleted.

00:18:29.000 And so what Israel has done is seize control of the aid delivery mechanism.

00:18:33.000 So they make sure that the aid doesn't get hijacked on the way to delivery points.

00:18:37.000 And they make sure that when people come to the delivery points to collect the aid, it's not then getting nicked by Hamas.

00:18:43.000 Now, once people leave the delivery sites, there's obviously challenges there.

00:18:47.000 But, you know, this is a far more effective way of getting aid for free to people rather than Hamas selling it to them.

00:18:55.000 Because people at the GHF sites have expressed surprise when they receive aid that they haven't had to pay for it.

00:19:01.000 Now, for some of them, this is the first aid in the entire war they've had that they've not had to pay for.

00:19:05.000 Now, if we can start unpacking the issues here, first of all, there is the issue of thinking about it from a military tactical perspective.

00:19:11.000 You have to, you know, secure the site.

00:19:14.000 So there has to be that secure delivery site before people can come to it and take the aid.

00:19:18.000 That is done intimately by contractors, former American service personnel, most usually.

00:19:25.000 The wider bubble of security for that secure distribution site is secured by the IDF.

00:19:32.000 And where the shootings are coming in is when people are coming up to the SDS, the secure distribution site, to get the aid, they're being held back by the IDF.

00:19:43.000 So they don't flood the site and get trampled, which happened the other day.

00:19:48.000 They tried it without the IDF securing it and there were 19 people killed in a stampede for food.

00:19:53.000 Unfortunately, the IDF have limited options and they're using an option to control the crowds, which frankly isn't very good.

00:19:58.000 They're trying to use warning shots to do it.

00:20:00.000 That's certainly not how the British Army would do it, I don't think.

00:20:03.000 We do use warning shots, we absolutely do, and I've seen civilians hit by them as well, so this does happen.

00:20:07.000 But it is a suboptimal way, I would suggest, of putting crowd control measures in place.

00:20:12.000 But how I would turn that on its head is just like, what are the other options?

00:20:16.000 They're not going to send troops in with riot shields. 0.76

00:20:18.000 You know, it's a war zone, you can't do crowd control whilst there's a specific threat from Hamas.

00:20:23.000 And Hamas hate the GHF.

00:20:26.000 I think 14 GHF workers so far have been injured or killed, including the two from a grenade the other day.

00:20:34.000 Hamas are embedding people in the crowds of civilians to try and draw fire from the IDF as well.

00:20:38.000 And the IDF are a bit trigger happy, if we're brutally honest.

00:20:41.000 So why is that? Why are they trigger happy?

00:20:43.000 Because it's a war zone, and because their rules of engagement need tightening up.

00:20:48.000 I think they're a bit loose, personally.

00:20:50.000 Certainly, perhaps not with fighter jets, I think their rules of engagement are very, very tight.

00:20:55.000 But on the ground with your grunts, your infantry, I think, frankly, they do go a bit over the top on occasion.

00:21:02.000 Which is unfortunate, and again, not how the British Army would do it.

00:21:07.000 The news doesn't just tell you what's happening. It so often tells you what to think is happening.

00:21:13.000 And these days, the biggest red flag isn't what's said, it's what gets left out.

00:21:18.000 That's why I use Ground News.

00:21:20.000 It's the only site and app that compares coverage from across the political spectrum

00:21:24.000 and highlights which stories are being ignored entirely.

00:21:28.000 See for yourself at ground.news slash trigonometry.

00:21:31.000 Their blind spot feed is one of my favorite features.

00:21:34.000 It surfaces around 20 stories a day that are being overlooked by either the left or the right.

00:21:39.000 It's a simple but powerful way to track media bias in real time.

00:21:43.000 Like this.

00:21:44.000 NIH scientists recently published a declaration criticizing Trump's cuts to public health research.

00:21:50.000 That's a major move.

00:21:51.000 And yet, only 2% of the coverage came from right-leaning outlets.

00:21:56.000 A new study found that 2024 saw the most armed conflicts globally since 1946.

00:22:01.000 A staggering statistics.

00:22:03.000 But you would have missed it if you'd only read left-wing news sources.

00:22:06.000 Ground News gives you the full picture.

00:22:08.000 Headlines, ownership, bias ratings, and context.

00:22:11.000 So you can actually understand what's going on, not just react to what you're told.

00:22:15.000 Head to ground.news slash trigonometry for 40% off their unlimited vantage plan.

00:22:21.000 The same one we use.

00:22:22.000 And start thinking for yourself.

00:22:24.000 So you've got this incredibly compact situation.

00:22:27.000 You've got hordes of people who are hungry.

00:22:29.000 You've got supplies that are limited.

00:22:30.000 People are trying to push forward.

00:22:32.000 And the Israelis are trying to control those crowds by keeping them a kilometer back or so, 0.79

00:22:36.000 before they're allowed to rush into the aid distribution site.

00:22:39.000 And clearly you can see, I think even from a layman's perspective, a non-military professional,

00:22:44.000 you can see how many things could possibly go wrong in that situation.

00:22:48.000 And it's further complicated by the fact there isn't enough aid.

00:22:51.000 It's about a meal and a half per person per day going through the GHF at the moment,

00:22:54.000 which clearly isn't enough.

00:22:56.000 The UN have aid that's waiting to be distributed and they're refusing to do it

00:23:00.000 because they won't work with the GHF because they say it compromises their neutrality.

00:23:05.000 So they'd rather let Garsen starve.

00:23:07.000 And I think there's a lot of questions for the UN to answer over the last 20 months,

00:23:12.000 not just over the GHF.

00:23:13.000 How has so much aid been seized by Hamas, by humanitarian aid agencies

00:23:18.000 who are supposed to be professionals delivering this stuff?

00:23:21.000 Why have Garsen's been paying for it for 21 plus months?

00:23:25.000 You know, the UN is not an innocent party here.

00:23:27.000 And I think there are some very serious questions to answer.

00:23:29.000 And Andrew, you were on the ground in Gaza.

00:23:32.000 What did you see?

00:23:34.000 Absolute devastation.

00:23:36.000 You know, let's not pretend that the Rafa isn't destroyed.

00:23:40.000 I don't think there's any sense in trying to whitewash what's happened in Gaza

00:23:43.000 in the sense of everything being destroyed.

00:23:45.000 But the important thing is why.

00:23:47.000 OK, and if we look at how, you know, I spoke earlier about adaptation.

00:23:52.000 In Gaza City, when the IDF was assaulting through,

00:23:55.000 they would clear house to house, just as we would,

00:23:57.000 going through an urban environment.

00:23:59.000 There was a four-month pause put in before Rafa.

00:24:02.000 Over that four months, you might remember all eyes on Rafa as a campaign.

00:24:06.000 Yes.

00:24:07.000 Yeah.

00:24:08.000 Huge international pressure.

00:24:09.000 Actually, most of the evacuation from Rafa was done by Hamas.

00:24:13.000 They moved people out so that they could then booby trap all the houses.

00:24:17.000 They'd seen what the IDF were doing in Gaza City.

00:24:20.000 They knew they were fighting house to house.

00:24:22.000 And so they decided that if the IDF was going house to house,

00:24:25.000 each house would have an IED.

00:24:27.000 And I think it's a lot more advanced than people realize.

00:24:29.000 We're kind of used to the idea of IEDs being these kind of pressure plates

00:24:32.000 in the ground like we saw in Afghanistan or Iraq.

00:24:35.000 In Gaza, they are in the tunnel shafts that go into houses.

00:24:39.000 57,000 tunnel shafts in Gaza that lead to the tunnels

00:24:42.000 that are 500 kilometers long.

00:24:45.000 You know, they are everywhere.

00:24:47.000 So the tunnel shaft will have an IED.

00:24:49.000 There'll be a camera wired into the tunnels

00:24:51.000 so they can watch for the IDF entering.

00:24:54.000 And then they'll be able to remotely detonate the IED

00:24:57.000 when they see soldiers in the house.

00:24:58.000 So at the start of the Rafa campaign,

00:25:00.000 the IDF had quite bad casualties from this

00:25:02.000 to the point where they had to completely change their tactics,

00:25:05.000 where they now sent a drone into the building first.

00:25:08.000 If there's nothing found by the drone, they send in a dog.

00:25:11.000 And then only then do they send in troops,

00:25:13.000 but even then only in four-man teams rather than platoons or sections

00:25:17.000 to try and minimize the casualties if anything does go bang.

00:25:20.000 Now, if that's every other house in Rafa,

00:25:23.000 that's not a workable option.

00:25:25.000 So as soon as you find the IED,

00:25:26.000 you can't go firm and just call for the explosive ordinance disposal

00:25:29.000 like we used to in Afghanistan.

00:25:31.000 That would take hours. You'd never get anywhere.

00:25:33.000 And so they've quite legitimately just leveled the buildings that are IED.

00:25:36.000 Now, that has caused incredibly large amounts of destruction.

00:25:40.000 But then if that IED blows up, it's going to level the building just the same.

00:25:43.000 Exactly.

00:25:44.000 I see your point about that.

00:25:46.000 So you see this devastation.

00:25:48.000 And you've commented a number of times

00:25:50.000 that the British Army would do things differently.

00:25:52.000 This is one of the reasons that, you know, on reflection,

00:25:54.000 Francis and I had a conversation about this on camera the other day

00:25:57.000 where we talked about why on balance,

00:26:00.000 while we're not happy about what's happening in Gaza even remotely,

00:26:04.000 I think it's horrible.

00:26:05.000 I understand why Israel is doing what it's doing 1.00

00:26:08.000 because I imagine we would do the same thing in their place,

00:26:11.000 if not worse.

00:26:12.000 I mean, look at the response to 9-11, right?

00:26:14.000 It's the argument.

00:26:15.000 Yeah.

00:26:16.000 But what you've said is we would do things differently.

00:26:18.000 So can you talk about that?

00:26:19.000 You know, the first part, how would the Western world respond

00:26:25.000 to October the 7th happening to us?

00:26:27.000 And secondly, how should we respond?

00:26:30.000 And what is Israel doing wrong?

00:26:33.000 Well, I think when I say we would respond differently,

00:26:35.000 I think that was specifically talking about the tactics at the aid sites.

00:26:40.000 Yeah.

00:26:41.000 I think we would.

00:26:43.000 So the Israelis don't necessarily have a great deal of logistic experience. 0.94

00:26:47.000 OK.

00:26:48.000 So when we deploy a division into the field,

00:26:51.000 it will have an enormous logistical tail behind it.

00:26:55.000 And the reason we're very good at that

00:26:57.000 is because we do expeditionary wars.

00:26:59.000 Our wars are on the other side of the world.

00:27:01.000 They're in the Falklands.

00:27:02.000 They're in Afghanistan, Iraq.

00:27:03.000 You know, you name it.

00:27:04.000 But they're certainly not, since 1945, anywhere near the UK.

00:27:08.000 So you have to be very good at maintaining long logistical tails.

00:27:11.000 The IDF is set up effectively for raiding

00:27:14.000 for very, very short wars

00:27:16.000 on their immediate borders.

00:27:18.000 You know, you can see Israel from the far side of Gaza,

00:27:21.000 if you're on the right spot.

00:27:22.000 That's how close it is.

00:27:24.000 So they don't need to be experts at logistics

00:27:27.000 and perhaps the way that we are.

00:27:28.000 And I think we would have perhaps used our military

00:27:31.000 a lot more effectively than them to deliver the aid.

00:27:34.000 Because the RLC for us, for example, the Royal Logistic Corps,

00:27:37.000 they're very, very good at that.

00:27:38.000 The Israelis don't really have an equivalent.

00:27:40.000 And they've struggled logistically, even just fighting in Gaza.

00:27:43.000 The duration of the war has given them logistic resupply issues

00:27:46.000 right on their own border.

00:27:48.000 So I think that's what we would do differently.

00:27:50.000 That would be a wholly military secured site.

00:27:52.000 The aid would be delivered by military troops

00:27:54.000 and we wouldn't be using contractors to do this

00:27:56.000 if it was the British Army, I suspect.

00:27:58.000 But then again, you know,

00:28:00.000 the Israelis haven't got this capability.

00:28:02.000 Growing it from scratch is very, very difficult.

00:28:04.000 They haven't been invading the rest of the world

00:28:06.000 for several hundred years.

00:28:08.000 They haven't been blundering around the planet 0.97

00:28:09.000 making fools of themselves. 0.98

00:28:10.000 Well, I don't know. 0.97

00:28:11.000 The British Empire was very successful for quite some time

00:28:13.000 in actually fighting the wars.

00:28:15.000 And then the Americans kicked off.

00:28:16.000 Anyway, but talk to us about the broader picture,

00:28:19.000 because this is a fundamental question for me

00:28:21.000 when I think about this issue.

00:28:23.000 A lot of people think that they're being compassionate

00:28:26.000 when they say that they really care about what's happening

00:28:29.000 and it should be stopped and whatever.

00:28:30.000 But I'm thinking if we were the victims of an attack

00:28:33.000 like October the 7th, how would we have reacted?

00:28:36.000 How would the very same people who are saying, you know,

00:28:39.000 oh, I can't believe what Israel is doing, 1.00

00:28:41.000 what would they be demanding that we do

00:28:43.000 to the people who did that to us?

00:28:45.000 So the counterargument to this is that

00:28:47.000 some kind of decapitation campaign

00:28:49.000 in the way that we saw in Lebanon, for example,

00:28:51.000 where they were absolutely saturated by intelligence

00:28:54.000 and they were able to pick off all the leaders of Hezbollah

00:28:57.000 precision from the air.

00:28:59.000 That option doesn't exist in Gaza because of the tunnels.

00:29:02.000 All the leaders are underground.

00:29:04.000 They have a deliberate human shield strategy.

00:29:07.000 There's one really irritating piece of commentary,

00:29:10.000 which is, oh, every guerrilla force does that.

00:29:12.000 And actually, no, they don't.

00:29:13.000 Not in the way that Hamas have done this.

00:29:15.000 This is unprecedented.

00:29:17.000 You know, yes, we saw tunnels in Raqqa

00:29:19.000 and we saw tunnels fighting ISIS

00:29:21.000 and there were tunnels in, you know,

00:29:23.000 all the way back in history

00:29:24.000 to digging under the walls of forts

00:29:26.000 and that sort of thing.

00:29:27.000 But nobody in history has ever said,

00:29:29.000 look, kill my civilians. 0.99

00:29:30.000 I want you to kill my civilians 1.00

00:29:32.000 so that I can make PR gains out of it. 0.98

00:29:34.000 And Hamas' leaders have said that explicitly.

00:29:36.000 Yeah.

00:29:37.000 Like, it's psychotic.

00:29:38.000 We're seeing families being wiped out in Gaza at the moment

00:29:41.000 because Hamas fighters are gathering their families around them

00:29:44.000 and waiting to die 0.69

00:29:46.000 because they know that they'll get PR gains,

00:29:48.000 they know they'll go to heaven together,

00:29:49.000 and they know it'll make the Israelis look bad. 0.98

00:29:51.000 It's psychotic.

00:29:52.000 And it's a, you know, it's a paradigm

00:29:54.000 that I think we really struggle to get our heads around in the West

00:29:57.000 because that's so alien.

00:29:58.000 Like, if you knew you were being hunted,

00:30:00.000 the last thing you would do is gather your wife and children around you.

00:30:02.000 You know, that's how warped these people's mentality is.

00:30:05.000 And they want people to die.

00:30:06.000 And they want their civilians to die.

00:30:08.000 And so that makes it a very different campaign

00:30:10.000 to any that's ever been fought before.

00:30:12.000 But the other thing seems to me, Andrew, correct me if I'm wrong,

00:30:15.000 haven't Israel taken out all the leaders of Hamas already

00:30:18.000 and they just have new ones and they just keep going anyway?

00:30:20.000 Yeah, most of them.

00:30:21.000 And that's one of the reasons I think Israel should have ceased fire 1.00

00:30:23.000 six months ago or so, you know.

00:30:26.000 You think Israel should have stopped fighting?

00:30:28.000 Yeah, I think so.

00:30:29.000 I think after, particularly after Sinwar died,

00:30:31.000 I think there was a really good case to make

00:30:33.000 and declare unilateral victory.

00:30:35.000 And then negotiate for the hostages on their own terms 1.00

00:30:40.000 rather than in this stupid back and forth 0.99

00:30:42.000 that we've got going at the moment. 0.98

00:30:44.000 Well, sorry to interrupt you.

00:30:45.000 You say declare unilateral victory, but I guess,

00:30:48.000 and look, you're obviously not far more than me.

00:30:50.000 How can you declare unilateral victory

00:30:52.000 if the enemy doesn't want to surrender?

00:30:55.000 Surely you can only declare victory when the enemy surrenders.

00:30:58.000 Well, I think victory and defeat are kind of unhelpful.

00:31:01.000 I think this is sort of a slightly out of date paradigm.

00:31:06.000 I think what we have to talk about in terms of succeeding

00:31:09.000 or not succeeding in your strategic goals.

00:31:11.000 And Israel had three.

00:31:12.000 Defend Israel's borders and prevent 7th of October ever happening again. 0.99

00:31:16.000 Defeat or dismantle, more accurately in Hebrew, Hamas. 0.94

00:31:20.000 Mm-hmm.

00:31:21.000 And to return the hostages.

00:31:22.000 And I think if you can gauge the percentage

00:31:24.000 to which you have achieved those goals,

00:31:26.000 you can decide whether you've effectively...

00:31:28.000 You need to keep going or not.

00:31:30.000 And I think we can say for pretty fair certainty

00:31:33.000 that Israel's border is now secure.

00:31:35.000 Looking at Hamas' strategic capabilities 0.63

00:31:37.000 to push force beyond the borders of Gaza,

00:31:39.000 that's completely done.

00:31:40.000 Hamas, most of their leadership, as you correctly say, is dead.

00:31:44.000 Central Camps Battalion still exists,

00:31:46.000 but they're dealing with that as we speak.

00:31:48.000 The guys who planned

00:31:49.000 and who kind of were the masterminds of 7th of October

00:31:52.000 are all dead.

00:31:53.000 Dave's dead.

00:31:54.000 Hania's dead. 0.99

00:31:55.000 Sinwar is dead.

00:31:56.000 Sinwar's brother's dead.

00:31:57.000 You know, there is a pretty good, um,

00:31:59.000 command and control, uh, senior leader, um, destruction rate.

00:32:04.000 And most of the hostages are home.

00:32:06.000 And I don't think military force is going to get them home.

00:32:09.000 So you need to find another way to bring the hostages home

00:32:11.000 if that is your key concern.

00:32:13.000 So I think if we look at the campaign, you know,

00:32:15.000 even as most recently as January and say,

00:32:17.000 look, in terms of achieving your strategic goals,

00:32:19.000 you're about there.

00:32:20.000 And now on the flip side of that,

00:32:22.000 you are getting hammered on the international stage.

00:32:24.000 So whilst you're having tactical successes in Gaza,

00:32:27.000 strategically, you're being very short-sighted

00:32:29.000 because the world is turning horribly against you.

00:32:32.000 Younger generations particularly are susceptible to these narratives 0.99

00:32:35.000 of you being murderous, bloody, genocidal molesters. 0.94

00:32:38.000 They're going to be the leaders in 10, 15, 20 years' time. 0.99

00:32:41.000 Um, and they're going to hate you.

00:32:43.000 And, and Israel is not thinking long-term here

00:32:45.000 because they're assuming that America will have their back forever

00:32:48.000 and so they can do what they want,

00:32:50.000 which I think is a very dangerous position.

00:32:52.000 A lot of people, well, some people have claimed that the reason,

00:32:56.000 I mean, you are, I think it's fair to say,

00:32:59.000 on the balance of your commentary, very, very supportive of Israel,

00:33:03.000 generally speaking.

00:33:04.000 Well, I mean, I think you talk about the facts

00:33:06.000 and the facts lead you to that conclusion.

00:33:08.000 But nonetheless, people would, I think, perceive you rightly

00:33:10.000 as being very pro-Israel.

00:33:12.000 And yet here you are saying they should have stopped six months ago.

00:33:14.000 They really don't need to keep going.

00:33:16.000 This is not helpful.

00:33:17.000 It's detrimental to the long-term objectives.

00:33:20.000 And I think a lot of people would agree with you.

00:33:24.000 Where this, and that's where a lot of the thinking comes in

00:33:28.000 is why is this carrying on?

00:33:29.000 And there are people who are saying

00:33:31.000 this is because Benjamin Netanyahu wants the war to keep going

00:33:35.000 because it allows him to be the wartime leader

00:33:37.000 instead of someone who's being accused of very serious crimes,

00:33:43.000 offenses that he would then have to deal with once the war ends.

00:33:47.000 What are your thoughts on why it's carrying on?

00:33:50.000 Yeah, so I was puzzled.

00:33:51.000 I couldn't work this out for a long time

00:33:53.000 because the Trump ceasefire, huge amounts of hostages released.

00:33:56.000 Obviously, there was all that unpleasant stuff going on

00:33:58.000 with the parades of the hostages,

00:34:00.000 but bottom line is they did come home.

00:34:04.000 And they weren't able to extend that beyond the 60 days

00:34:07.000 or whatever it was.

00:34:08.000 Now, I couldn't work out why Israel was so keen to keep going 0.99

00:34:11.000 until the Iran war kicked off.

00:34:13.000 That made sense to me then

00:34:15.000 because it makes sense to keep Bibi's coalition together.

00:34:18.000 So the Smatritches, the Bengavirs don't leave 1.00

00:34:20.000 because Gaza has ceased fire.

00:34:22.000 So Netanyahu stays in power

00:34:24.000 to achieve his lifelong goal of striking Iran. 0.99

00:34:27.000 So that made sense to me.

00:34:28.000 But now that's done, I still don't understand.

00:34:31.000 It has to be a political reason.

00:34:33.000 It doesn't make military sense to me.

00:34:34.000 The IDF don't like it.

00:34:36.000 The IDF are saying, you know,

00:34:37.000 we've achieved everything we can realistically achieve militarily.

00:34:40.000 Really?

00:34:41.000 Yeah, that's been quite publicly leaked.

00:34:43.000 So the IDF are saying, we need to stop this.

00:34:45.000 Yeah, the IDF don't hate the plan to move people

00:34:48.000 to the kind of what they call the concentration camp in the south,

00:34:51.000 humanitarian zone, whatever you want to call it.

00:34:53.000 The IDF don't like that plan.

00:34:55.000 And I can see why, because militarily it's terrible.

00:34:57.000 You know, the idea of the army having to control

00:35:00.000 600,000 civilians in that smashed up area,

00:35:04.000 all living in, I mean, it's just a recipe for carnage.

00:35:07.000 So I can see why the IDF hates it.

00:35:09.000 So it is political at this point, I think.

00:35:12.000 And I would much prefer them to see the priority of prioritising

00:35:16.000 bringing the hostages home and, you know,

00:35:19.000 ceding to some sort of demands that Hamas make,

00:35:22.000 because Hamas are not going to be completely deleted.

00:35:24.000 You know, unless you go full Grozny and start slaughtering everyone, 1.00

00:35:28.000 which the IDF has resisted doing so far,

00:35:30.000 I don't see how you can possibly winkle out

00:35:32.000 every last Hamas fighter and leader.

00:35:34.000 By Grozny, you're referring to the Russian bombing of Chechnya,

00:35:37.000 where they just flattened the entire city,

00:35:39.000 irrespective of who they killed.

00:35:41.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:35:42.000 Because when I've seen certain Israeli officials

00:35:45.000 and ambassadors and so on, their argument is,

00:35:49.000 unless we wipe out Hamas, 0.94

00:35:51.000 we're going to get another October the 7th.

00:35:53.000 But what you're effectively saying is,

00:35:56.000 it's going to be impossible to wipe out Hamas, 0.91

00:35:58.000 because every time you kill the leadership,

00:36:01.000 there's going to be new people to take their place.

00:36:04.000 Plus, let's be fair, the more women and children who are dying, 1.00

00:36:08.000 the more you're going to radicalise people.

00:36:10.000 And therefore, the more likely people are

00:36:12.000 to going to be joining Hamas.

00:36:13.000 Yeah, and so trying to apply some sort of counterinsurgency ideal here,

00:36:16.000 where you bring the Gaza population onto your side of the argument,

00:36:20.000 and you win their hearts and minds,

00:36:21.000 it's just not going to happen.

00:36:22.000 Certainly after 21 months of bombing, it's not going to happen.

00:36:25.000 So you've got two options here, really.

00:36:27.000 You accept that people in Gaza are just going to hate you, 1.00

00:36:29.000 and that you've done significant damage to Hamas's capabilities

00:36:32.000 and credibility and authority.

00:36:35.000 Or, you know, you go down the crazy Trump plan route,

00:36:38.000 where you start ethnically cleansing the place.

00:36:40.000 And clearly, that's not an idea anyone rational could support.

00:36:44.000 Can you explain?

00:36:46.000 This whole ethnic cleansing thing is a very confusing term

00:36:50.000 for a lot of people, because when I think of ethnic cleansing,

00:36:53.000 I think of people being killed because of their identity, effectively, right?

00:36:58.000 I don't think President Trump is calling for people to be...

00:37:00.000 So when you say ethnic cleansing, what do you mean?

00:37:02.000 Yeah, and you're quite right.

00:37:03.000 You've caught me in a bit of sloppy vocabulary there, in fairness.

00:37:07.000 The Trump plan effectively sees Gaza being cleared out of Gaza

00:37:11.000 and they go somewhere else, allegedly, until it's rebuilt,

00:37:14.000 and then they come back.

00:37:15.000 And part of the problem is that ethnic cleansing

00:37:18.000 doesn't actually have a definition under international law.

00:37:21.000 Okay.

00:37:22.000 It's not a concrete, codified war crime in the way that, say, genocide is.

00:37:27.000 And actually, by calling removing people from Gaza ethnic cleansing,

00:37:30.000 it is co-opting that vocabulary from Bosnia, from Rwanda,

00:37:35.000 where people are being cleansed by being deleted from existence, effectively.

00:37:40.000 Right.

00:37:41.000 As opposed to moving people from population center age.

00:37:43.000 So when you use the term ethnic cleansing,

00:37:45.000 and some people do use it in this way,

00:37:47.000 in this way, you mean removing the Palestinian Arabs from Gaza.

00:37:53.000 Yeah.

00:37:54.000 I'm going to ask a question that is going to be super controversial.

00:37:57.000 I'm not advocating for this.

00:37:59.000 I'm just looking at it from a first principles perspective.

00:38:02.000 And I'm going, the borders of Poland after World War II

00:38:05.000 were not the same as they were before World War II.

00:38:07.000 That's because we moved a lot of the Polish population 0.52

00:38:09.000 from the area which became Soviet,

00:38:11.000 and we moved them westwards from an area which was German.

00:38:13.000 Right.

00:38:14.000 So we moved populations to make a country work.

00:38:17.000 Poland has prospered since World War II.

00:38:19.000 Right.

00:38:20.000 Germans, as you well know, were moved around in a lot of places

00:38:23.000 within what used to be Germany during World War II to other places.

00:38:28.000 Again, to make the post-war countries coherent and for them to work.

00:38:34.000 Nobody would say that we committed ethnic cleansing of the Polish or the Germans or,

00:38:38.000 I mean, there are some people, but you know what I mean, right?

00:38:41.000 So, forget about the rights and wrongs and the language and the whatever.

00:38:44.000 I'm just asking a question from, like, if you were an alien looking down,

00:38:48.000 would you not say that President Trump is actually the only one being sensible about this?

00:38:52.000 Because if you've got a population who absolutely hate Israel,

00:38:56.000 who are going to remain there with Hamas as you're, I mean, you're saying they should have stopped.

00:39:00.000 So you leave some remnant on Hamas and a population for them to feed off. 0.84

00:39:05.000 This whole thing is never going to get resolved.

00:39:09.000 And therefore, when someone like Trump is saying,

00:39:12.000 if you put these people in a place they're going to have a better life in,

00:39:17.000 Hamas is not going to leech off them and use them.

00:39:20.000 And Israel is not going to have to keep killing them. 0.78

00:39:22.000 Isn't that actually the merciful and better thing?

00:39:26.000 I'm just asking. I'm not suggesting this is the right thing.

00:39:29.000 But it's a question that I think if you're a logical person will come into your head.

00:39:33.000 Yeah. And I think it boils down to agency, doesn't it?

00:39:35.000 I think if you can say to the Palestinian people, look, we're going to take you to another country, 1.00

00:39:40.000 you will have a good life there.

00:39:42.000 Your children's peace and security will be guaranteed.

00:39:46.000 This will be far better for you than living in this,

00:39:49.000 what you yourselves have been calling an open-air concentration camp for 20 years.

00:39:55.000 If you want to go and we give you some money to do that, then great.

00:39:59.000 I've got no problem with that whatsoever.

00:40:01.000 I think if you're rounding people onto trucks at gunpoint and forcing them out with bayonets,

00:40:06.000 then I think we're in a very different and dark place.

00:40:08.000 Of course.

00:40:09.000 I think that's the key.

00:40:10.000 And are you suggesting that you'd have to do that in order to get people to move, basically?

00:40:14.000 If you wanted all of them out, I suspect you would have to.

00:40:16.000 Right. I can see.

00:40:17.000 Yeah.

00:40:18.000 I definitely wouldn't want that to happen, for sure.

00:40:20.000 But then I come back to my point.

00:40:24.000 Well, then this is never going to end.

00:40:26.000 And that's kind of the problem with the Middle East. 0.51

00:40:28.000 I mean, look around Israel.

00:40:30.000 You know, we kind of zero in on Gaza, but we forget the issues in West Bank.

00:40:34.000 We forget the issues in Lebanon.

00:40:36.000 Even this week, Hezbollah have refused to disarm at the request of the Lebanese government. 0.70

00:40:41.000 Hezbollah are still a global, narco-trafficking, people-trafficking, drug-smuggling, 1.00

00:40:46.000 weapon-smuggling crime syndicate that operates in South America and in Europe. 0.86

00:40:51.000 You know, they're still incredibly powerful and far more powerful than the Lebanese government.

00:40:55.000 So that problem hasn't gone away, even though perhaps their supply line to Iran has been cut off.

00:41:00.000 It's an oversimplification to suggest that Hezbollah is done just because that's a thing.

00:41:04.000 Syria, as we speak, is descending into a basket case of jihadi slaughtering minorities. 0.59

00:41:10.000 Iran, just this week, have started trying to launch ballistic space rockets again,

00:41:15.000 which clearly demonstrates their long-term intent to maintain some sort of power in the region.

00:41:20.000 Qatar are still having their fingers in many, many pies around the Middle East designed to destabilize. 1.00

00:41:27.000 And Turkey, of course, are heavily involved in northern Syria.

00:41:31.000 And some of the worst militant groups in Syria are governed by Turkey. 0.90

00:41:35.000 And so, whilst we hone in on Gaza and resolve that situation, you know,

00:41:39.000 if people voluntarily emigrate, great.

00:41:42.000 If they don't, the problem, as you say, endures.

00:41:45.000 But this is the Middle East. It's never going to be completely peaceful.

00:41:48.000 And it's just one tiny, small part of the problem compared to what is a much bigger and more challenging paradigm.

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00:43:43.000 Sorry, go ahead.

00:43:44.000 No, and I was going to say, and every time you talk about this situation,

00:43:48.000 you always come back to one country, which is Iran.

00:43:52.000 Mm-hmm.

00:43:53.000 And Iran's effective modus operandi is to destabilize the entire region and fund terrorist groups. 0.89

00:44:00.000 Will there ever be peace in the Middle East when you have the Ayatollah in power in charge of Iran?

00:44:06.000 No. No, I mean, look, any country in the world that just had the beatdown that Iran has suffered might consider it twice, 0.96

00:44:14.000 except those countries that are run by religious zealots.

00:44:18.000 That they believe that Mahdi's coming back. They believe for that to happen, Israel has to be deleted. 0.91

00:44:22.000 It is the motivating kind of agency behind everything they do.

00:44:28.000 And that's just not going to change because they've been spanked. 1.00

00:44:31.000 It's just not going to happen.

00:44:33.000 And so regime change is probably the only thing that we can say in Iran that will make a difference.

00:44:40.000 But that comes with a whole load of other problems as well.

00:44:42.000 So there's always second, third order, fifth, sixth, seventh order effects in the Middle East 0.53

00:44:46.000 that quite often are impossible to map and predict.

00:44:49.000 And that's why we have to be very careful about making huge, big, sweeping moves in the region,

00:44:53.000 because they can quite often go badly wrong.

00:44:55.000 And we've seen it go badly wrong again and again and again.

00:44:59.000 So I guess what is what should Israel do?

00:45:05.000 What should the U.S. do?

00:45:07.000 I mean, because if you're saying non-intervention, that's kind of the position I'm starting to come to.

00:45:14.000 I wouldn't want regime change to be happening in any of these countries,

00:45:17.000 because if you just look at the history of it, it's always gone appallingly badly.

00:45:21.000 But then if you leave the Ayatollah in charge, this is what you're going to get.

00:45:26.000 But isn't this exactly, Francis, the point I was making with trying to get Andrew to comment on earlier,

00:45:32.000 which is a lot of the media discussion about this is sort of utopian in nature.

00:45:38.000 It's like, well, we should have a gray option.

00:45:40.000 Therefore, a gray option must exist.

00:45:42.000 And it's like, no, these are all shitty options and you don't have any good choices here.

00:45:47.000 Is that basically where we are? 0.59

00:45:48.000 Yeah, pretty much.

00:45:49.000 I mean, I think the human mind seeks simplicity.

00:45:53.000 You know, cognitive fluency is a very well-established psychological phenomenon where we look for the easy answer because our brains are overloaded.

00:46:00.000 There is no easy answer in the Middle East.

00:46:02.000 There never is.

00:46:03.000 And I think the way forward here is perhaps to look at two metrics.

00:46:08.000 First of all is the deterrence metric.

00:46:10.000 You know, how do you actually deter malign actors from doing stuff? 0.99

00:46:13.000 And that's very tricky.

00:46:14.000 You know, yes, you have the conventional deterrence that Israel has demonstrated in abundance. 0.67

00:46:19.000 How do we economically deter Iran from putting its tentacles out around the region? 1.00

00:46:25.000 How do we diplomatically deter Iran? 1.00

00:46:26.000 You know, there's elements to this that we need to consider in depth.

00:46:30.000 And again, no easy answers.

00:46:31.000 And I certainly don't have the solution.

00:46:33.000 We can also look at expanding deterrence.

00:46:35.000 You know, perhaps missile defenses for the Gulf states that are friendly and co-opting Israel and normalization.

00:46:42.000 You know, that could be a really good incentive.

00:46:45.000 Because they're all concerned about Iran.

00:46:46.000 Yes, absolutely.

00:46:47.000 So if you extend the missile shield to them, they feel more secure.

00:46:50.000 Exactly.

00:46:51.000 And therefore, they're more likely to cooperate economically with like-minded fellow travelers.

00:46:55.000 And once economics starts working and people start getting richer and malign actors start seeing the benefits, actually, of playing nice rather than playing nasty, then perhaps that's a direction we could lead people in.

00:47:07.000 So there's a huge amount to consider here across all of those different metrics.

00:47:12.000 And there's no one simple silver bullet.

00:47:15.000 But isn't it also the problem?

00:47:16.000 And let's just be honest about this. 0.82

00:47:18.000 You're dealing with nutcases.

00:47:20.000 These are... 1.00

00:47:21.000 They're worse than nutcases. 0.99

00:47:23.000 They're ideologically. 1.00

00:47:24.000 Yes, they're ideologically possessed.

00:47:27.000 They believe these, quite frankly, horrific ideologies, you know, where they will put their own women and children in the firing line because they believe that they're going to go to heaven if they die.

00:47:40.000 So that's ultimately the best solution.

00:47:42.000 For them, it's a win-win because Israel looked terrible. 0.98

00:47:46.000 They are martyrs.

00:47:47.000 They're going to go to heaven.

00:47:49.000 And you're looking at this ideology, which is just rampant throughout the Middle East.

00:47:54.000 And you go, it's impossible to defeat, isn't it?

00:47:58.000 It's impossible to defeat.

00:47:59.000 And it's always going to be like this.

00:48:02.000 Or is that just defeatist?

00:48:04.000 I mean, when you say it's across the Middle East, I mean, I think you have to be slightly more reserved than that.

00:48:09.000 I mean, I think you can pinpoint certain hotspots, certainly, where this psychotic jihadi mentality is dominant. 1.00

00:48:15.000 But, you know, we've seen in countries like Saudi Arabia, like the UAE, that there is a path for Islamic, pretty hardline Islamic countries to a slightly more moderate outcome.

00:48:25.000 And I would suggest that the key to all of this is Saudi Arabia.

00:48:29.000 They've shown it can be done. They've got Mecca and Medina statements from Saudi Arabia.

00:48:34.000 They're kind of, I mean, they're not quite like the papacy and Catholicism.

00:48:37.000 But, you know, they're about as punchy as it gets in the Islamic world. 1.00

00:48:40.000 If Saudi Arabia show a leadership piece here, then that's a really good thing.

00:48:45.000 But, unfortunately, Saudi Arabia won't do this without a solution to the Palestinian problem.

00:48:50.000 And that is why Gaza and the West Bank are so critical, because they are the key to unlocking Saudi acceptance.

00:48:58.000 Saudi acceptance of Israel and therefore greater prosperity and acceptance across the whole region.

00:49:03.000 But what is a solution to the Palestinian problem? 0.99

00:49:06.000 At the moment, I think it feels like the United's Palestinian Emirates.

00:49:11.000 We've seen a very kind of tempting teaser of this in the last couple of weeks with the Emirates of Hebron.

00:49:18.000 Where some of the elders have got together and said, hey, we'll join the Abraham Accords.

00:49:22.000 We'll acknowledge Israel. Now can we do trade and get richer? 0.85

00:49:26.000 You know, there's plenty wrong with that model in terms of whether these Emirates even have the authority to do what they've done.

00:49:32.000 You know, there's all sorts of debate around that.

00:49:34.000 But actually, I think if that works, if that can be made to work, and you do see Hebron suddenly getting richer and finding the benefits of peace with Israel, 0.67

00:49:43.000 you can carry other moderate Palestinian voices with you.

00:49:47.000 And then the hardliners will be isolated.

00:49:49.000 And eventually, you reach a point where you've got these separate Emirates who can then work together and create that Palestinian state that they've been after for so long. 0.57

00:49:58.000 But it's a very long journey, loads of road bumps.

00:50:01.000 But I haven't seen a better suggestion.

00:50:03.000 Because I think two-state solution is firmly dead at this point.

00:50:06.000 I think that's fair.

00:50:08.000 We need to look for a better way.

00:50:09.000 Which brings me to a question I was going to ask you.

00:50:12.000 Because one of the claims that people have made, including in discussions I've had with people, and I think it's largely false because people misrepresent Israel allowing Qatar to give money to Hamas in order to fund basically civilian life.

00:50:28.000 But they keep claiming that Israel funded Hamas.

00:50:31.000 Looked into it.

00:50:32.000 I think it should be fair.

00:50:33.000 There are some allegations that Netanyahu allowed Hamas to rise because it divides Hamas and Fatah.

00:50:42.000 And it means that the people who control the West Bank are not the same people who control Gaza.

00:50:46.000 Therefore, there's less likelihood of a serious push for a Palestinian state.

00:50:51.000 So, to what extent is the current government of Israel even interested in a solution to the Gaza question?

00:50:58.000 Well, I think they're voting today on the two-state solution and ruling it out completely.

00:51:03.000 So, I think 0% right now is the answer.

00:51:06.000 But when we look at what happened in Gaza before the war and the funding of Hamas, I think there are two things that went on here.

00:51:13.000 I think correctly you've identified that divide and conquer was part of it.

00:51:16.000 But secondly, I think there was a genuine belief on the Israeli side that by putting money into Hamas and Gaza, it would keep them peaceful.

00:51:24.000 Mm-hmm.

00:51:25.000 And that they would spend it on, you know, retaining power and kind of keeping the place relatively peaceful.

00:51:31.000 And there was a bit of an exchange of fire in 2021, which was against PIJ, passed in Islam, which it had. 0.91

00:51:38.000 And Hamas played quite a clever confidence trick to say, hey, we're not the problem. 0.94

00:51:42.000 We're not the crazies. 0.99

00:51:43.000 It's those PIJ lunatics. 1.00

00:51:44.000 They're the ones you need to worry about. 0.96

00:51:46.000 And that actually really successfully suckered the Israelis into seeing what they wanted to see. 0.54

00:51:51.000 So there's an element of cleverness by Hamas. 0.89

00:51:54.000 And yeah, Israel, I think, just played their cards completely wrong. 0.98

00:51:58.000 And my goodness, didn't they?

00:51:59.000 Didn't they pay the price of that?

00:52:01.000 And the other thing is you mentioned that one of Israel's war objectives was to secure the border.

00:52:05.000 I can see why after October 17, you'd be pretty keen to do that, obviously.

00:52:09.000 Why wasn't that border already secure, Andrew?

00:52:12.000 That is a question that I haven't heard a convincing answer to.

00:52:16.000 So there's a couple of things.

00:52:17.000 First of all, there was a huge intelligence failure.

00:52:20.000 The female observers in Nahal Oz talked about having seen rehearsals, having seen Hamas practicing for the attack.

00:52:28.000 They passed it up the chain.

00:52:29.000 And it was overlooked for a variety of reasons.

00:52:31.000 Why did you emphasize that they were female?

00:52:33.000 What were you saying?

00:52:34.000 Because I think there's an element of sexism.

00:52:36.000 As in these girls are freaking out. 0.81

00:52:38.000 Yeah.

00:52:39.000 They're having an episode or whatever.

00:52:41.000 Yeah, I think there was an element of that.

00:52:42.000 And of course, also, they were abducted and murdered and killed on the day of the attack itself.

00:52:47.000 There were a bunch of SIM cards, Israeli SIM cards, that lit up inside Gaza just before the attack.

00:52:51.000 That got overlooked as well.

00:52:53.000 So there were big intelligence failures.

00:52:55.000 But what I think is underestimated on 7 October is the sophistication of Hamas's attack.

00:53:01.000 Now, the fence wasn't just a chain link border fence.

00:53:04.000 This was a five deep security fence with, you know, underground tunneling, with remote control machine guns on top, with barbed wire and cameras the whole way along it.

00:53:16.000 You know, this is about as solid as a fence can get.

00:53:18.000 And so what Hamas had was what anyone in the Western army would recognize as a combat engineering team. 0.70

00:53:23.000 They breached the burns.

00:53:24.000 They had explosive charges to blow through the fence to get their vehicles through.

00:53:28.000 They had fire support onto the gun towers to take them out using drones that dropped grenades.

00:53:35.000 You know, this was a very sophisticated military assault.

00:53:37.000 And that's why the fence was breached.

00:53:40.000 It's because Israel ignored the intelligence, very similar to 9-11.

00:53:44.000 They had all the pieces, but nobody put the picture together.

00:53:47.000 And because Hamas knew what they were doing, and they had a very good engineering setup to get through the fence. 0.90

00:53:52.000 And where are Hamas getting this sophisticated equipment and tactics and training from?

00:53:56.000 Well, a lot of it they make themselves.

00:53:58.000 So some of the firma barrack warheads for RPGs, they were made in armories inside Gaza itself.

00:54:03.000 There was a lot of armed smuggling coming through from Egypt.

00:54:06.000 And then, of course, there was the coastal region where they would smuggle stuff in as well.

00:54:10.000 A combination of making it themselves and it getting smuggled in from other countries.

00:54:14.000 You know, I'm really glad that we're actually talking about October 7th.

00:54:18.000 Because when I talk to people, just regular people, there's so many, and I never realized this,

00:54:24.000 but conspiracy theories that are springing up around October 7th.

00:54:28.000 One of them is why did it take so long for the IDF to respond?

00:54:34.000 It took hours upon hours upon hours.

00:54:37.000 Why was that?

00:54:38.000 So, first of all, it was a holiday.

00:54:40.000 There was complacency on the Israeli side.

00:54:42.000 They sent far too many troops home from the Gaza division.

00:54:45.000 Secondly, the military bases on 7th of October were the direct target of Hamas.

00:54:50.000 So the base at Rehim was assaulted.

00:54:53.000 Command and control was dislocated.

00:54:55.000 Totally disrupted in the Gaza periphery region, which was just Hamas being, again, 0.98

00:55:01.000 making a very good and sophisticated military plan.

00:55:03.000 Now, if you've got troops in the north of the country that you're trying to mobilize, that's not as easy as a phone call saying, get down to the south now.

00:55:13.000 To compare and contrast with the British Army, our highest readiness company is at 48 hours notice to move.

00:55:19.000 So that's moving 48 hours from getting the phone call.

00:55:22.000 You have to get the troops back to base, back into uniform.

00:55:25.000 You have to get the weapons out of the armories.

00:55:27.000 You have to get the ammunition issued.

00:55:28.000 You have to get the vehicles signed out.

00:55:30.000 You have to give orders.

00:55:31.000 You have to establish commander control and radio networks.

00:55:34.000 You know, this stuff is really, really complicated.

00:55:37.000 And I think that's why what we saw on the first hours of 7th October was just dribs and drabs of special forces units who were ready to go because they are at a much higher readiness.

00:55:46.000 You know, our highest SF, I think, are at one hour notice to move.

00:55:50.000 So, you know, they're much, much better set up to respond so quickly than the conventional army are.

00:55:55.000 And then you just saw those lone half-a-go heroes who just picked up their weapons and went for it and did incredible things on the day.

00:56:01.000 But to get a conventional force, even back into uniform, given a set of orders and moved from A to B, takes a lot of time in peacetime, never mind when there is a psychotic terrorist massacre going on in the south of your country.

00:56:15.000 So I think we can be a little bit kinder to the IDF than perhaps some of the critics that you're talking about.

00:56:20.000 Because the reality is, is this happened on Netanyahu's watch, and he needs to accept responsibility for that.

00:56:28.000 There's also the other conspiracy theory, which is he was secretly happy that it happened because it meant that he wouldn't have to confront the corruption charges and the very serious charges that are being levelled against him.

00:56:41.000 Or alternatively gave him an excuse to go and do to Gaza what they've done. 0.73

00:56:45.000 I mean, I would, I can't disprove a negative, I mean, I can't prove a negative, sorry.

00:56:50.000 I mean, where's your evidence for that would be my take.

00:56:52.000 This is wild supposition that I don't think has any tangible or concrete evidence to back it up.

00:56:58.000 Yeah, none of those things ever made a lot of sense.

00:57:01.000 And to imagine the leader of a country allowing thousands of its citizens to be treated in that way is hard, even with, you know, whatever you think about the person involved.

00:57:12.000 One of the things I found really, really shocking, Andrew, I discovered this in two instances.

00:57:17.000 One, I did a discussion with a guy called Safety Namas on our channel who wanted to debate this war with me.

00:57:24.000 And another one was when I went to the pro-Palestine protests here in London and documented it, again, available on our channel.

00:57:31.000 The number of people who effectively deny that any sexual violence happened on October the 7th, who claimed that it was effectively just, you know, a military-on-military engagement in which none of the rapes that are alleged to have happened, none of this other stuff.

00:57:49.000 Even though quite a lot of, I mean, the rapes are not on camera, but, you know, we've seen video of guys throwing grenades into shelters with their kids and then getting the coke out of the fridge afterwards and things like that.

00:58:02.000 What do we know about what actually happened on that day?

00:58:06.000 And also, why do you think people are pretending it didn't?

00:58:11.000 Or why do they believe it didn't happen?

00:58:13.000 We know a huge amount, you know, as you correctly identify, Hamas filmed it and broadcast it themselves. 0.98

00:58:18.000 You know, this isn't really a matter for debate when it comes to the massacres.

00:58:22.000 We also have the Roberts Inquiry, which was a British House of Lords all-parliamentary group UK-Israel report into the 7th of October, which is fantastically comprehensive and intimately evidenced.

00:58:35.000 So that's a very good document I would point people towards.

00:58:38.000 What does it say? What happened?

00:58:40.000 Yeah, it talks about the slaughter in mass, and it talks about, you know, each individual that was killed, and it goes into detail about what actually happened on the day.

00:58:48.000 But then you can walk the ground.

00:58:50.000 I mean, I've been to Be'ari, I've been to Re'im, I've been to the Nova site, I've been to Nahalos and Neroz, and, you know, I've walked in human ashes, where the fires that burned were so intense, they had to get archaeologists in to identify the bones of dead Israelis.

00:59:04.000 Where families were burned hugging in the fire because that was their last moment on earth, and they wanted to be near their own families.

00:59:11.000 You know, this is the most brutal thing I have ever seen, even including my three tours of Afghanistan.

00:59:17.000 I mean, it doesn't show you the sexual assault evidence, because quite understandably, the Israelis haven't released that. 0.62

00:59:22.000 You know, what rape in history do people demand that all the evidence be put out into the public domain? 0.97

00:59:29.000 It's ridiculous. It shows no respect for the victims and no respect for their families. 0.83

00:59:35.000 There is evidence, and I have seen it.

00:59:37.000 So there is a very famous 47-minute video that shows the massacre of the day.

00:59:41.000 That's something that a lot of journalists and people have seen.

00:59:44.000 If you go to a base in Israel, just north of Tel Aviv, called Blilot, 0.81

00:59:49.000 they have the sexual assault evidence pack there, which certain people invited to see, and I'm sad to say that I am one of them.

00:59:58.000 I went with a military delegation of senior retired generals from around NATO and the US,

01:00:04.000 and I have never seen grizzled 35-year career soldiers reduced to that kind of fury and horror is the only word.

01:00:16.000 It's the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

01:00:18.000 You know, I get chills just talking about it to you.

01:00:22.000 And I won't go into, again, I won't go into details about what I've seen, but it is absolutely unquestionable that sexual assault happened.

01:00:30.000 And on top of that, I have spoken to people who witnessed it and who can tell the stories of what happened that day.

01:00:36.000 This was brutal, that people deny it is disgusting.

01:00:40.000 And it's simply anti-Semitic.

01:00:42.000 You know, I haven't used that word really much today because I think a lot of that word is sometimes overblown.

01:00:47.000 And I think people read into...

01:00:48.000 People overuse it and I think it's very unwise of them to do so.

01:00:51.000 And I agree with you completely.

01:00:52.000 But I think there is an anti-Semitism in not believing Jewish women when they say they're racist.

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01:02:23.000 Do you think that...

01:02:25.000 See, I'm sure that there's an element of that.

01:02:28.000 But I think partly it also...

01:02:30.000 I think there's a political...

01:02:33.000 There's a PR agenda behind this.

01:02:36.000 Because if you were a logical person who knew anything about military conflict,

01:02:40.000 you would go, in every single war in history,

01:02:43.000 when a bunch of men with guns break through their enemy defenses

01:02:46.000 and they find themselves with enemy women,

01:02:49.000 this is what happens.

01:02:51.000 Let's just be honest.

01:02:52.000 Even in the most restrained militaries in world history,

01:02:55.000 to some extent, it still happens.

01:02:57.000 So, in this situation, it must have happened.

01:03:00.000 I think that's just undeniable, right?

01:03:02.000 But I think the problem is, and I've encountered this directly,

01:03:07.000 if you concede that these militants who invaded Israel on that day committed rape,

01:03:13.000 committed sexual violence, attacked civilians, killed children,

01:03:17.000 burned people who had nothing to do with being in the military or anything like that,

01:03:22.000 then you can no longer claim that October the 7th was an act of resistance.

01:03:26.000 Yes.

01:03:27.000 And if, therefore, it's essential that you deny any violence happened to civilians,

01:03:32.000 it's essential that you deny any rapes happened,

01:03:34.000 it's essential that you pretend that this was, you know,

01:03:37.000 the Native Americans kind of rising up against their evil occupiers.

01:03:42.000 Yeah, and you're framing it with that oppressor versus oppressed kind of dynamic,

01:03:46.000 and it falls apart with sexual assault.

01:03:47.000 And I think we also have to extend that to the Arab world as well.

01:03:50.000 I think we tend to be awfully Western-centric in our analysis sometimes.

01:03:53.000 Don't forget that Hamas were talking very much to the Arab world,

01:03:56.000 trying to get them to rise up alongside Hamas 0.82

01:03:59.000 and, you know, finally destroy the state of Israel.

01:04:01.000 They wanted the West Bank to rise up,

01:04:03.000 they wanted militias of Syria to rise up,

01:04:05.000 they wanted Hezbollah to rise up. 0.96

01:04:06.000 And if they're running around raping people, 0.86

01:04:09.000 that firmly, again, undermines that messaging 0.83

01:04:12.000 that we are noble resistance Islamic fighters 0.99

01:04:15.000 who are sticking to the Quran and not going as far as the Jews do. 0.96

01:04:20.000 And, you know, that's why there's been such a narrative as well 0.72

01:04:23.000 to push the IDF raping, 0.66

01:04:24.000 of which there's no substantive evidence that I've seen whatsoever.

01:04:27.000 When I see these narratives happening,

01:04:30.000 and I see the way that people talk about this,

01:04:33.000 again, it goes back to this point where it's just,

01:04:36.000 what makes this conflict so difficult to talk about

01:04:39.000 is that everybody has their own narrative about it.

01:04:42.000 You talk, and everybody has an alternate set of facts.

01:04:46.000 And I guess, how do we solve this?

01:04:50.000 If nobody can agree on a basic truth,

01:04:54.000 like women were raped on October 7th, 0.78

01:04:57.000 how do we actually come to some kind of agreement and reproachment

01:05:02.000 and being able to move forward?

01:05:04.000 It's a really good question.

01:05:05.000 And if I had, you know, if I had the totality of the answer,

01:05:09.000 then, you know, I think I would be in a far more influential role

01:05:13.000 than I currently am.

01:05:14.000 But, you know, I think there are certain things we can do.

01:05:17.000 And that is making sure that moderate voices are amplified.

01:05:23.000 I think, you know, talking about Israeli moderate voices

01:05:25.000 and Palestinian moderate voices,

01:05:27.000 I think they're the ones that we should be focusing on.

01:05:29.000 We should be trying to exclude the Bengavirs and Smotriches 1.00

01:05:32.000 and the Sinwas of this world 0.99

01:05:34.000 and focusing on those people that can be persuaded

01:05:37.000 to see both sides of the argument.

01:05:38.000 There aren't many, but the more we amplify,

01:05:40.000 perhaps the more there will be.

01:05:42.000 I do think we need some accountability for our media,

01:05:46.000 I think, you know, agencies like Sky News and the BBC

01:05:49.000 have truly been appalling.

01:05:51.000 Why do you say that, Andrew?

01:05:52.000 They've made no effort to present the Israeli arguments

01:05:56.000 and they've published everything that the Hamas kind of side

01:05:59.000 of the argument have said.

01:06:01.000 So we did a study on this with the Henry Jackson Society.

01:06:04.000 98% of the world's media were using Hamas's casualty figures.

01:06:08.000 3% were using the IDF's figures.

01:06:11.000 You know, they have totally platformed one side in this war

01:06:13.000 and taken everything they've said as reliable.

01:06:15.000 Everything the IDF has said is presumed immediately to be unreliable

01:06:19.000 unless evidence is presented.

01:06:21.000 And, of course, armies can't do that because there are operational secrecy

01:06:24.000 and, you know, there are important military secrets

01:06:27.000 that they can't just reveal.

01:06:29.000 So there's been a hideous one-sided platforming in this war

01:06:32.000 and I think we need to find some method of accountability for this

01:06:35.000 because particularly for a state broadcaster

01:06:37.000 who are taking, you know, taxpayers' money,

01:06:40.000 enforced taxpayers' money,

01:06:42.000 like that's just not good enough.

01:06:43.000 And, you know, things like Glastonbury

01:06:46.000 not cutting the feed when the guy's calling for the death of the IDF,

01:06:49.000 the documentary that was naked Hamas propaganda,

01:06:53.000 you know, there's been no heads roll over this.

01:06:56.000 And that's really poor.

01:06:57.000 So I think platforming neutral voices,

01:07:00.000 media accountability.

01:07:04.000 But, look, this has gone on for decades.

01:07:06.000 This isn't the first time Israel's fought a war.

01:07:08.000 It's not the first time they fought a war

01:07:09.000 where they've been hammered on the international stage

01:07:12.000 through misinformation.

01:07:13.000 So this is not a new phenomenon.

01:07:15.000 It's not going anywhere.

01:07:16.000 You know what is a new phenomenon, Andrew?

01:07:18.000 And I was going to ask you this about your time.

01:07:21.000 How do you think things would have been different

01:07:24.000 when you were in Afghanistan if we had the camera phone?

01:07:27.000 Yeah, I thank God every day that we didn't, quite frankly,

01:07:31.000 for two reasons.

01:07:32.000 First of all, it's very easy to take stuff out of context

01:07:35.000 if you're filming everything.

01:07:37.000 The blokes did film stuff.

01:07:39.000 And actually that's how Marine A was caught.

01:07:41.000 He was caught on head cam.

01:07:42.000 So, you know, there's actually a plus side to it

01:07:44.000 where there is accountability when people do stuff wrong.

01:07:47.000 And there's been accountability for the IDF 1.00

01:07:49.000 and they've made those stupid videos of them, you know, 1.00

01:07:52.000 arsing around in women's underwear in people's houses. 1.00

01:07:54.000 They've been sacked and disciplined as a result of the fact

01:07:56.000 they captured it on camera.

01:07:58.000 So there is a plus side to it.

01:08:00.000 But, you know, to conduct military operations

01:08:04.000 under a 24-7 lens of minute scrutiny

01:08:07.000 is incredibly challenging

01:08:09.000 because war is really complicated.

01:08:11.000 It's really scary.

01:08:12.000 You're at the heightened end of human emotion

01:08:14.000 when you're operating in a firefight.

01:08:16.000 And mistakes happen.

01:08:18.000 And, you know, people make the wrong choice.

01:08:21.000 And that doesn't necessarily make it criminal,

01:08:23.000 but it certainly looks bad on camera.

01:08:25.000 Well, I was just, you know, I think people

01:08:27.000 who haven't had your experiences won't understand this.

01:08:31.000 So I just, when I think about it,

01:08:33.000 here's how I try to conceptualize it.

01:08:35.000 Think about your job, whoever you are listening and watching this,

01:08:38.000 or your marriage or your business interactions

01:08:41.000 or whatever it is that you do, right?

01:08:43.000 And imagine that was filmed 24-7.

01:08:45.000 And the worst highlights of that were clipped together

01:08:48.000 and broadcast to the public.

01:08:50.000 Would you have the same reputation with your friends and family

01:08:53.000 that you do now?

01:08:54.000 I don't think there's a single person in the world

01:08:56.000 who survives that test.

01:08:57.000 No.

01:08:58.000 And then you throw into the fact that, you know,

01:09:00.000 these people are carrying weapons.

01:09:01.000 They're fighting other people with weapons.

01:09:03.000 They're operating in the most chaotic landscape

01:09:07.000 imaginable with the most intense pressure,

01:09:09.000 a 360-degree threat at all times, above ground, below ground.

01:09:14.000 You know, that is going to push you right to the extremes

01:09:16.000 of where you are capable of going emotionally.

01:09:20.000 And yes, some of the decisions you make

01:09:22.000 when you're at that point aren't going to be the right ones.

01:09:24.000 But that doesn't necessarily make it criminal,

01:09:27.000 and it doesn't necessarily make it, you know,

01:09:29.000 part of a genocidal campaign.

01:09:31.000 It just means that you're a human

01:09:32.000 who made the wrong choice at the wrong moment in time.

01:09:34.000 And war is generally a thing that's not a good thing.

01:09:36.000 It's not a good thing.

01:09:37.000 Exactly that.

01:09:38.000 And it's also, as well, you get these people watching it,

01:09:41.000 and you see them, it's not only with war,

01:09:43.000 you also see them with the police.

01:09:44.000 They're going, oh, why didn't they, for instance,

01:09:46.000 there was, for instance, a person shooting at the police officer.

01:09:49.000 They're like, well, why didn't they shoot the guy on the shoulder?

01:09:51.000 Why did they shoot him in the head?

01:09:53.000 And you're going, well, number one,

01:09:55.000 I don't think it works like that

01:09:57.000 in that particular heightened circumstance.

01:09:59.000 And number two, and let's be honest about this,

01:10:02.000 you don't know what you're talking about.

01:10:03.000 So you have people who are civilians whose idea of confrontation

01:10:07.000 is them saying to their barista that they'd like one sugar instead of two,

01:10:11.000 and then they think that they've got an opinion on war.

01:10:14.000 Surely, unless you, I don't comment on it,

01:10:16.000 because I've never been in war, thankfully.

01:10:18.000 Well, when we were in America, we went to a gun range,

01:10:20.000 and then that's where you suddenly realize, like,

01:10:22.000 hitting a giant target at 20 yards in a completely calm environment,

01:10:27.000 that's an achievement, you know.

01:10:30.000 So it must be very frustrating for someone like you

01:10:33.000 to be hearing narratives like that.

01:10:35.000 It is, and I think a lot of the commentary on this war

01:10:37.000 is utterly devoid of that context.

01:10:39.000 And it goes back to pretty much what we said at the start of the conversation,

01:10:42.000 that this has not been framed as a war.

01:10:44.000 It's been framed as just airstrike after airstrike by the IDF.

01:10:47.000 And actually, when you have 300,000 soldiers from the IDF

01:10:51.000 who have been through Gaza, that's how many troops have served in Gaza.

01:10:55.000 Like, some of those 300,000 are going to do things wrong.

01:10:58.000 You know, they're going to get stuff wrong.

01:10:59.000 You know, it's a numbers game at that point.

01:11:01.000 But show me a campaign where the army didn't do something wrong.

01:11:04.000 You know, our SAS are under investigation

01:11:06.000 with very credible allegations of war crimes.

01:11:09.000 The Australian SAS was found guilty of, you know,

01:11:14.000 systematic war crimes in Afghanistan.

01:11:16.000 The American army had numerous disciplinary issues in Iraq.

01:11:21.000 I remember Abu Ghraib.

01:11:23.000 Yeah.

01:11:24.000 That wasn't like a guy doing the wrong thing.

01:11:26.000 That was like the Zimbardo experiment playing out in real world.

01:11:29.000 It was.

01:11:30.000 And it was the most, probably the most controlled military in the world,

01:11:34.000 you'd argue.

01:11:35.000 Yeah, one of them.

01:11:36.000 And, you know, these things happen.

01:11:37.000 You know, it doesn't make it right.

01:11:39.000 It doesn't mean we can excuse it.

01:11:41.000 But it does mean we should apply the same standard to the IDF

01:11:45.000 that we apply to our own armies because they actually deal with it in the same way.

01:11:49.000 They do have accountability and military discipline

01:11:52.000 and legal discipline for their soldiers when they get things wrong.

01:11:56.000 And that's just what armies should do.

01:11:58.000 And it's no different for the IDF than it is for the British, 0.53

01:12:00.000 the Americans, the Australians.

01:12:02.000 And for Hamas as well. 0.78

01:12:03.000 Because if you're going to be hypercritical of the IDF and their conduct in Gaza,

01:12:08.000 then you also need to apply those standards to Hamas on October 7th.

01:12:12.000 Otherwise, what it looks like is you're being an apologist.

01:12:15.000 Yeah.

01:12:16.000 Or even Hamas in Gaza while the fighting has gone on.

01:12:18.000 You know, actually on the ground in Gaza.

01:12:20.000 You know, where is the accountability for them throwing their own people

01:12:24.000 into the path of bombs on purpose?

01:12:26.000 I mean, that's a straight up war crime. 0.91

01:12:28.000 You know, using hospitals and mosques and schools and people's houses is illegal.

01:12:33.000 It's a war crime. 0.92

01:12:34.000 And yet they've been given a completely free pass on that.

01:12:36.000 Yeah, I've never heard anyone talk about that as a war crime really in the media.

01:12:40.000 And by the way, since we're delving into the details, I don't know much about the various conventions that govern the rules of war.

01:12:48.000 But wouldn't, isn't like, isn't for you to be recognized as a military force,

01:12:53.000 do you not have to like wear uniforms and do all these other things and basically follow the rules of war?

01:12:59.000 If you're hiding in a basement with an IED.

01:13:01.000 Wearing civilian clothes.

01:13:03.000 Wearing civilian clothes.

01:13:05.000 Isn't that a, doesn't that change the entire thing?

01:13:07.000 Yeah, you're supposed to be able to distinguish combatants.

01:13:10.000 That's one of the rules.

01:13:11.000 And they're not doing that.

01:13:12.000 You know, again, it's a straight up war crime. 0.95

01:13:14.000 And they published their own videos of them firing mortars in civilian areas, wearing civilian clothes.

01:13:20.000 Like a mortar is an unguided weapon.

01:13:22.000 It's an area weapon.

01:13:23.000 You know, if you're indiscriminately firing mortars, you're, you're, you're guaranteeing that civilian targets 1.00

01:13:28.000 are gonna take some collateral damage from what you're firing.

01:13:31.000 And yet there's no accountability for that.

01:13:33.000 There's no demands that Hamas show their collateral damage assessments, that they show their risk assessments

01:13:39.000 and their battle damage assessments afterwards in the way the IDF is.

01:13:43.000 You know, there is, there's a complete double standard here.

01:13:45.000 And you could make the case that there should be, because Israel is a democratic country with an army that should have accountability.

01:13:51.000 Hamas is a terror group that we expect to behave in the manner of a terror group. 0.93

01:13:55.000 But legality aside, the morality here is very clear that Hamas are acting in a deeply, deeply immoral way. 0.88

01:14:01.000 And they're getting a free pass, irrespective of the laws of war.

01:14:05.000 Can you, can you, can you, this is the thing I've always wondered about.

01:14:09.000 I remember we had another combat veteran in here, Kelsey Sheeran, we talked about this.

01:14:13.000 It's like, if one side is allowed to have no rules, how can a party that tries to play by the rules ever win a conflict?

01:14:21.000 And we're seeing that play out in real time in Gaza.

01:14:23.000 And I think there is a case to be made that the law of armed conflict needs looking at.

01:14:27.000 It was written in post-1945 with the conception that it would be used by two fighting armies.

01:14:35.000 What it didn't, I think, foresee was the era of counterinsurgency and irregular warfare that we are now firmly in.

01:14:41.000 And I think there are elements of it that are effectively handcuffs on conventional armies that perhaps need to be, need to be looked at.

01:14:49.000 And actually the way they're set up, they encourage the use of human shields.

01:14:53.000 They encourage the use of hospitals and schools by irregular actors because they know and they've seen that when those hospitals and schools are legally struck,

01:15:01.000 that are still conceived of as an immoral act and therefore condemned in the international media.

01:15:06.000 So I think, I think there is a case to say that the law of armed conflict is counterproductive when it comes to stuff like this.

01:15:11.000 And it also enables Hamas and the rest of their ilk to play the long game. 0.99

01:15:17.000 Because they know that Gen Z will eventually come into power and they will eventually be running the United States. 0.99

01:15:24.000 And if you look at Gen Z's opinions on Israel, they are not sympathetic.

01:15:30.000 And a large part of this is because they have been mainlined footage from the war zone straight to their phones.

01:15:38.000 So if you think about the long game, all right, Israel may have won the war, they may have achieved their objectives, but the propaganda war, there's only one winner and it ain't Israel. 0.68

01:15:48.000 Yeah, I agree. And I've been saying that for months.

01:15:50.000 And I think we also have to consider the era of the smartphone.

01:15:54.000 As you say that, that instantaneity of imagery on your phone.

01:15:58.000 Now, like, war is horrifying. Like, it is. There's no way around it.

01:16:02.000 You can't fight a war in a clean, you know, sanitized manner that doesn't look horrendous when you see it up close.

01:16:09.000 You know, the very first thing I did in Afghanistan, we were, you know, I was two weeks out of training, straight on tour.

01:16:16.000 We dropped a 500-pounder bomb and then we were clearing through body parts in the compound afterwards.

01:16:21.000 You know, this is not within the normal scope of what humans expect to see.

01:16:25.000 And when it's boomed onto your phone as you're sat on your commuter train or in your classroom at school,

01:16:29.000 like, horror is absolutely the correct reaction to that on a human level.

01:16:35.000 But what you then do with that horror and what narratives then get attached to it is where the problem comes in.

01:16:40.000 And how do you, you know, how do you, when someone is really upset over seeing a dead kid in Gaza,

01:16:46.000 of which there are thousands, and they're horrified at it,

01:16:50.000 how do you then say, ah, yes, but, you know, under the Geneva Conventions,

01:16:54.000 we were legally able to strike this child and it's legal collateral damage.

01:16:57.000 So what we've done is actually fine.

01:16:59.000 Yeah.

01:17:00.000 You know, how do you make that argument?

01:17:01.000 This is what I'm wondering, Brian.

01:17:02.000 It's like, I just wonder, if we had the internet and the camera phone on TikTok in 1945,

01:17:09.000 I don't even know if we would have won the war at this point.

01:17:12.000 Do you know what I'm saying?

01:17:13.000 Yeah, I mean, look at Khan.

01:17:14.000 1944, it was absolutely flattened.

01:17:16.000 20,000 civilians died.

01:17:18.000 Right.

01:17:19.000 Scenes of horror and you look, you know, just Google Khan

01:17:22.000 and you'll see how much it looks like Gaza does today.

01:17:25.000 You know, how do you, you know, and I think the difference is that was a war of survival.

01:17:30.000 The people in the UK had been through the Blitz and through rationing

01:17:34.000 and through hundreds of thousands of American soldiers coming to live in the UK

01:17:38.000 and they've seen spitfires overhead and they get that it's a war for national survival.

01:17:42.000 Um, I think it's very difficult to frame that as a war for national survival with Israel-Gaza,

01:17:49.000 even though I think it is in many ways, because one side has F-16s and the other side does not.

01:17:55.000 And it looks like a mismatch.

01:17:57.000 So when you've already got an oppressor, oppressed, colonizer, colonial narrative

01:18:01.000 that underpins the whole thing, when you've then got one side with fast jets and one side without,

01:18:06.000 again, we go back to the emotion of the piece.

01:18:08.000 I think that's a very hard sell on a purely emotional level.

01:18:11.000 And I think that's probably the difference.

01:18:12.000 And it's also as well, if you look at the population in 1945, a lot of them went through the First World War.

01:18:19.000 You know, these are, these are people who lived a much harder, tougher life where war was an ever present threat and reality.

01:18:26.000 If you look at the generation now of which we are all, well, I was a constant.

01:18:31.000 I was certainly part of, it was our grandparents who went to war.

01:18:34.000 My dad didn't. My generation luckily didn't, unless we enlisted and we served. 0.62

01:18:40.000 And Gen Z, again, so they're even more detached from it. 0.99

01:18:45.000 And even the wars that, you know, my generation fought in were wars of choice.

01:18:48.000 They were expeditionary wars that we chose to fight.

01:18:50.000 They weren't, you know, the UK wasn't under direct threat from Afghanistan or Iraq.

01:18:55.000 You know, indirect, maybe, but certainly not.

01:18:58.000 It wasn't a war for national survival.

01:18:59.000 So not only have we not seen wars of the kind that our grandparents or great grandparents saw,

01:19:06.000 but also the wars we have seen are very, very different.

01:19:09.000 So, you know, we're even further away from that idea of the fact that wars happen.

01:19:13.000 It's a feature, not a bug of human existence.

01:19:16.000 And unfortunately, they are really, really unpleasant things.

01:19:19.000 Before Andrew answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our sub stack.

01:19:24.000 The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this.

01:19:28.000 Is there a drive to lower standards within the armed forces in the interest of increasing diversity?

01:19:33.000 And if so, what effect is that having on the ground?

01:19:35.000 Kristen Maguire asks, would you please speak to the modernity of the concept of war crimes

01:19:40.000 and what qualifies as a war crime?

01:19:42.000 Stephen Davids asks, how much booby trap capability does Hamas have?

01:19:47.000 Endless. It's so easy to make an IED.

01:19:49.000 I could probably make one with the stuff that's in this room right now.

01:19:52.000 All right. Well, if we ever want to start an insurgency, we'll give you a call, mate.

01:19:55.000 He could reward the plastic expression.

01:19:58.000 Jack our producer's just perked up.

01:20:00.000 He's got a bunch at home. Don't worry about that.

01:20:02.000 Andrew, it's been really great having you on because I feel like this has actually been the nuanced conversation about this issue

01:20:10.000 that no one is I've never seen anyone have because you either get people who are this side or that side.

01:20:17.000 And what you've talked about is, I think, the facts on the ground.

01:20:20.000 But also from, you know, like I say, from a pro-Israel position, nonetheless, you're openly saying Israel needs to wrap this up and should have done already.

01:20:29.000 And there are some definitely some questions about what's happening politically there.

01:20:33.000 We've invited the prime minister of Israel on many times.

01:20:36.000 We would give him a fair hearing just as we do with every guest.

01:20:39.000 So I hope that still happens because I think that this it's an important discussion.

01:20:43.000 And I really think this has brought a lot of value to people who want to hear that kind of conversation.

01:20:49.000 So thanks for being here.

01:20:50.000 We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters in a minute.

01:20:53.000 But before we do, what's what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we should be?

01:20:58.000 Turkey.

01:20:59.000 OK, I think Turkey is a NATO member.

01:21:02.000 It is also heavily spinning in the direction of Islamism. 0.65

01:21:06.000 It is a Muslim Brotherhood country. 0.99

01:21:08.000 It is fingers in the pies all over the Middle East, including close links with Hamas and Gaza

01:21:13.000 and some of the really unpleasant organisations in northern Syria.

01:21:17.000 And I think with Iran weakened, Turkey is one of the bigger threats in the region that people are overlooking right now.

01:21:22.000 Oh, and one thing I'm going to ask you when we go to Substack is about the Druze situation happening in Syria. 0.94

01:21:27.000 Because that's something, we were discussing it, whether it's something that we really ought to cover in the full episode.

01:21:32.000 But it's like no one's talking about it, but these people are being massacred.

01:21:35.000 Yeah, it's good to say.

01:21:37.000 It's as bad as 7th of October.

01:21:39.000 Horrendous.

01:21:41.000 Really?

01:21:42.000 As bad.

01:21:43.000 In terms of the horrors that are being perpetrated and the numbers of people being killed.

01:21:46.000 All right, well follow us on and we'll continue the conversation on our Substack at triggerpod.co.uk.

01:21:53.000 Stephen Davids asks, how much booby trap capability does Hamas have?

01:21:57.000 Endless.

01:21:58.000 Absolutely endless.

01:21:59.000 It's so easy.

01:22:00.000 I could probably make one with the stuff that's in this room right now.

01:22:02.000 See you in this room right now.

01:22:03.000 Thanks, man.

01:22:04.000 Have a great了, everyone.

01:22:05.680 See you in the same room right now.

01:22:06.000 See you right there.

01:22:07.000 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - July 30, 2025

The Best Israel Conversation You've Ever Heard

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