Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: You're saying that.
Speaker 2: Israel needs to allow Hamas to stay there. Who's been
Speaker 2: breaking international law? Of our conplic are twenty years.
Speaker 4: As opposed to Hamas allowing these early government to stay
Speaker 4: there when they're breaking international law for even longer.
Speaker 2: Than That's not peace. Nobody wants peace. People want justice.
Speaker 3: Oops, it's just war.
Speaker 4: Gauz is unlivable anymore, too bad to cancelfort Palestinian life.
Speaker 3: People are starving. Is just all an accident.
Speaker 2: It's crazy that the numbers are so poor for a
Speaker 2: country that could kill so many more people. They're doing
Speaker 2: things that no other countries are in. There's a reason,
Speaker 2: by the way, which you will never recognize, why all
Speaker 2: of the surrounding Arab states have a Bean ined the
Speaker 2: Palestinians too, because their history has been one of violence.
Speaker 2: That first they've been encouraged by the surrounding nations and
Speaker 2: used by them, and then now they've been abandoned.
Speaker 3: What's the other nations?
Speaker 5: Happy Friday everyone, or Thursday night if you're a premium
Speaker 5: subscriber Breakingpoints dot Com if you want to get the
Speaker 5: show early to your inbox. I'm Emilidrishinski, and you probably
Speaker 5: recognize the man sitting next to me. We're about to
Speaker 5: tee up a fascinating debate. I'm joined, of course, also
Speaker 5: by my co host, my wonderful co host, Ryan Grimm.
Speaker 5: And these two gentlemen that you see here are not
Speaker 5: debating for the first time. They debated in the past.
Speaker 5: Maybe some of you have watched that they sparred over
Speaker 5: the question of Israel actually earlier this year and then
Speaker 5: kind of subsequently continued a bit.
Speaker 2: Of a back and forth.
Speaker 5: So we know that we're not going to settle the
Speaker 5: debate once and for all here today. But I think
Speaker 5: what we want to do Ryan is really pushed for
Speaker 5: more moral clarity, push for more contrast as we reflect
Speaker 5: on just this last week of absolute historic protests, rocking
Speaker 5: dozens of campuses across the country. So we have two
Speaker 5: popular proponents of the respective sides here and we're excited
Speaker 5: to get into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to introduce them both. We've got to my
Speaker 1: right here, Omar bar Dharr. He is a Palestinian American
Speaker 1: political analyst who's been following a situation in the Middle
Speaker 1: East for many, many years. On the other side, we
Speaker 1: have Stephen Banel Junior, who's better known by his streaming
Speaker 1: name mister Barelli or whatever the or by like a
Speaker 1: dozen different names from if You If you guys watched
Speaker 1: the Norman Finkelstein debate that kind of thrust destiny as
Speaker 1: a streaming name into this conversation to we want to
Speaker 1: start with the campus protests before getting to the war itself.
Speaker 1: This week saw a militarized response over at VCU U
Speaker 1: T Austin Columbia and the kind and a vigilante response
Speaker 1: at u C l A. Uh So, just curious for
Speaker 1: your your read in general on these protests as they've
Speaker 1: unfolded it. Have you seen any double standard when it
Speaker 1: comes to kind of the free speech warriors that we've
Speaker 1: seen championing the cause of free expression on college campuses
Speaker 1: now championing the cause of shooting fireworks into peaceful encampments.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's the double standard is incredibly glaring. I mean
Speaker 4: you would have to put on blinders to actually miss it.
Speaker 4: I think that these student protesters are the conscience of
Speaker 4: this country. We are witnessing an absolutely horrific situation unfolding
Speaker 4: on the ground, and American policy is to insist on
Speaker 4: continuing to send endless weapons unconditionally to a military force
Speaker 4: that is mass slaughtering children by the tens of thousands.
Speaker 4: And these students are saying, we're taking a stand, this
Speaker 4: is not okay. If we can't impact the policy makers directly,
Speaker 4: We're going to make sure that our institutions and the
Speaker 4: money that we're paying to these institutions is not playing
Speaker 4: into this kind of mass slaughter and what we witness like,
Speaker 4: from my perspective, in a better world, cops would be
Speaker 4: going after the people who are violating American law to
Speaker 4: make sure that weapons can continue slaughtering children, rather than
Speaker 4: going after people who are peacefully protesting, overwhelmingly peacefully protesting
Speaker 4: in order to change that policy, change American investment in it.
Speaker 4: And you're absolutely right, you have a level of demonization
Speaker 4: of these protesters, constantly talking about them as if you know,
Speaker 4: it's just like anti Semitic mobs or whatever that people
Speaker 4: leading these protests. There's very significant portion of progressive young
Speaker 4: Jewish people who are the leaders in many cases of
Speaker 4: some of these protests, groups from If Not Now and
Speaker 4: Jewish Wars for Peace and many others, and they are
Speaker 4: on the receiving end of tremendous hate and violence, and
Speaker 4: nobody talks about that. And as you mentioned, what we're
Speaker 4: witnessing in the UCLA is absolutely horrifying. These protesters being
Speaker 4: attacked by you know, bear spray and fireworks and some
Speaker 4: of them being beaten up and you see like some
Speaker 4: serious injuries. But because the climate in this country is
Speaker 4: one in which one side gets demonized, that empowers and
Speaker 4: emboldens the response not just from police but also from vigilantes.
Speaker 4: And I just want to know one last thing, just
Speaker 4: because Steven is here and I think it's really relevant,
Speaker 4: is there's a person that I know named Simone Zimmermann
Speaker 4: and who.
Speaker 2: She's intended today for an intercept of that that's right.
Speaker 4: And she's one of the most conscientious and decent human
Speaker 4: beings that you'll ever meet. And she knows personal people
Speaker 4: in her life who have lost loved ones on October
Speaker 4: seventh from the attack that Hamas carried out, and she
Speaker 4: was horrified by that attack, and she's equally horrified by
Speaker 4: Israel's response.
Speaker 3: In the mass slaughter.
Speaker 4: And she's one of those people who is fighting for
Speaker 4: a better future for Palestinians and Israelis. And she was
Speaker 4: at a passover cedar at Colombia, joining the protesters and
Speaker 4: talking about how beautiful it is that she's in that setup.
Speaker 4: And Stephen Coot tweeted that tweet and said that he
Speaker 4: would like to donate thousands of gallons of kerosy and
Speaker 4: presumably so these people can set themselves on fire. And
Speaker 4: it's just such an ugly and distasteful thing to say.
Speaker 4: And I'm genuinely curious of what you were thinking when
Speaker 4: you tweet things like that.
Speaker 2: If everybody celebrated Bushnell doing his protest, from more people
Speaker 2: want to protest that way than God help him, I guess.
Speaker 5: So this is not about Bushnell, though, But let's keep
Speaker 5: going in response to that, because Omar set up an
Speaker 5: interesting j justicae position here between anti Semitic mobs and
Speaker 5: peaceful protesters. So is what we're seeing on these campuses
Speaker 5: anti Semitic mobs or is it peaceful protesters from your perspectives.
Speaker 2: Even from my perspective, I mean, it really depends on
Speaker 2: which series of videos that you watch. I think from
Speaker 2: an American perspective, it really shouldn't matter if they're anti
Speaker 2: Semitic mobs or if they're protesting foreign policy or whatever.
Speaker 2: The United States, we don't have hate speech laws. You
Speaker 2: should be allowed to say really whatever you want in protest,
Speaker 2: assuming you're not violating any social or whatever the ordinances are.
Speaker 2: I know, like for some college campuses you're not allowed
Speaker 2: to block pathways, or you can't protest if they've got
Speaker 2: events planned for graduations or whatever. And as long as
Speaker 2: they're not disrupting the piece in a way where you're like,
Speaker 2: you can't blow loudspeakers. I think on college campuses, as
Speaker 2: long as you're following lugs, you'll be able to protest
Speaker 2: however you want.
Speaker 5: But if you are, say what we saw from NYPD
Speaker 5: and LAPD actually last night, if you're violating laws university rules,
Speaker 5: even with an encampment, if you broke into the hall
Speaker 5: like they did and have been barricaded up in there,
Speaker 5: What did you make of the NYPD response? Just like
Speaker 5: Columbia for example, I like.
Speaker 2: To wait till the ust settles on this because I
Speaker 2: hear so many different things about how students were all
Speaker 2: being peaceful. I've seen obviously the videos of like some
Speaker 2: of the stuff being broken into. I think that when
Speaker 2: it comes to an analysis of how to respond to
Speaker 2: these particular events, I think that the start and stop
Speaker 2: needs to be what are the rules and regulations in place?
Speaker 2: Because a lot of people will jump in and start arguing, well,
Speaker 2: it's a public area, so they could be wherever they
Speaker 2: want to do wherever they want without even understanding the
Speaker 2: rules or regulations in place. I think as a blanket rule.
Speaker 2: I don't know why this particular situation would need any
Speaker 2: kind of unique analysis. It would be the same as
Speaker 2: all protests. If you're in a private college, I understanding
Speaker 2: that they can remove you whenever they want. It's private property.
Speaker 2: If you're in a state funded or public university, then
Speaker 2: there are certain areas that are supposed to remain open
Speaker 2: to the public and they can't remove you unless you
Speaker 2: are not there in an ordinary manner. If you're disrupting
Speaker 2: some of their event. I don't say anything about these
Speaker 2: particulars at a protest that would call for any type
Speaker 2: of unique analysis that escapes like that fundamental rule to
Speaker 2: protests in the United States in.
Speaker 5: Your fundamental rule, then, to quote tweet with.
Speaker 2: The Kerosene, I thought it was insane that you had
Speaker 2: delusional people, especially young children in the United States, that
Speaker 2: don't know any part of this conflict whatsoever, which is
Speaker 2: probably the vast majority of people protesting it. That people
Speaker 2: are celebrating people setting themselves on fire, that is just
Speaker 2: unbelievable to me. You saw a guy do it in
Speaker 2: front of a I think one of the New York
Speaker 2: City courthouses for the Trump stuff. You saw the Aaron
Speaker 2: Bushnell guide do it for who knows what reason, I
Speaker 2: guess because you thought the whole world wasn't already paying
Speaker 2: attention to this issue. And yeah, the idea of people
Speaker 2: ever celebrating themselves in a democratic first world country setting
Speaker 2: themselves on fire for an issue that already has an
Speaker 2: unlimited amount of international attention unbelievably stupid to me.
Speaker 4: But how does it relate to this particular instance. I mean,
Speaker 4: this is a bunch of Jewish students celebrating with pro
Speaker 4: Palestinian students Overpassover and talking about a climate in which
Speaker 4: they're coming together, Like why did you decide to drag
Speaker 4: the Bushnell thing into this?
Speaker 2: That's the one I think it's funny when people disingenuously
Speaker 2: load phrases like, oh, all the Jewish people are protesting
Speaker 2: with these people, there are so many jewishroople. That's not true.
Speaker 2: The last few research things I saw I think We're
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three shows like ninety percent of people who
Speaker 2: are Jewish support the existence of Israel. So the idea
Speaker 2: that there's a huge group of Israel.
Speaker 4: All over the Jewish people, Yeah, this is not about
Speaker 4: the existence of Israel. There's no question about the fact
Speaker 4: that so many of these protests leader are in fact Jewish.
Speaker 4: These groups, they're not imaginary, They're not a figment of
Speaker 4: your imagination. You can actually go see them and look
Speaker 4: at how large their gatherings are, how lot of their
Speaker 4: voices have been That people who are getting arrested in Congress,
Speaker 4: so many of them are progressive Jewish organizations that are
Speaker 4: leading this effort. This is not about some broader what
Speaker 4: are the views of American Jews about the existence of Israel.
Speaker 2: We're just what now we're protests about.
Speaker 4: The protests are about ending the slaughter of the children
Speaker 4: of Gaza. That's what the protests are about. What do
Speaker 4: you mean, what does it look like?
Speaker 2: What is the end condition of the It's not just
Speaker 2: ending the slaughter, it's also stopping the blockade. It's also
Speaker 2: reaching a just resolution to the Palestadian conflict. It's also
Speaker 2: probably the unlimited right of return of six million refugees.
Speaker 2: It's probably the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish majority state.
Speaker 2: It's probably the create like I mean.
Speaker 4: You're conflating a ton of different things. A lot of
Speaker 4: these protesters have varying views about this. Some of them
Speaker 4: support a two state solutions, some of them support a
Speaker 4: one state solution. But what's bringing everybody together in this
Speaker 4: moment is a realization that what Israel is doing to
Speaker 4: Gaza is absolutely unconfortable. That you slaughter people at that scale,
Speaker 4: that is is is clearly waging a war on the
Speaker 4: civilian population of Gaza. That's what these people are upset about,
Speaker 4: and they want it to come to an end and.
Speaker 1: The specific thing that they're protesting and maybe, well, we
Speaker 1: could actually find something to agree on here because I've
Speaker 1: seen you describe yourself as kind of a moderate who
Speaker 1: tries to balance the extremists on each side here. So
Speaker 1: the specific thing the protesters are arguing for all of
Speaker 1: these different campuses is opening up the books of their
Speaker 1: basically the hedge funds that run their universities, and divesting
Speaker 1: from firms that are either linked to the war in
Speaker 1: Gaza or link to Israel. More generally, Brown University reach
Speaker 1: an agreement with its protesters that they would they would
Speaker 1: abandon their encampment in exchange for a vote in October
Speaker 1: to divest from that. That gets to the question of
Speaker 1: resistance and the right to resistance, And so for years
Speaker 1: it has been the kind of policy of the right
Speaker 1: here and a lot of the center here in the
Speaker 1: United States to make it illegal to try to ban
Speaker 1: people from participating in boycotts or divestment efforts or lobbying
Speaker 1: for sanctions against Israel. At the same time, you say, well,
Speaker 1: armed resistance is clearly off off the table. So if
Speaker 1: you rule out both, you'd only leave people with one option.
Speaker 1: So even if you don't support boycotting or divesting from Israel,
Speaker 1: do you support the right of people here in the
Speaker 1: United States?
Speaker 2: To to check right explicit for how states have banned
Speaker 2: some of the BDS participation. As a fundamental right to boycott,
Speaker 2: I think in the United States you should always have
Speaker 2: the right to boycott everything except for our currency. I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: you have the right to boycott whatever you want. I
Speaker 2: don't know why that should ever be made illegal, but
Speaker 2: I know that in particular things are we going at
Speaker 2: that BDS stuff that I think states look at. But yeah,
Speaker 2: of course you should always have the right. I wish
Speaker 2: that the people that would talk about conditioning support for Israel, though,
Speaker 2: would also talk about conditioning support for Palestine, because there
Speaker 2: are some of the highest recipients of aid in the
Speaker 2: world per capita, the United States trip it's a lot
Speaker 2: of that aid. It's interesting to me that it seems
Speaker 2: like we're always talking about how we need to condition
Speaker 2: aid in congratulations, Congress just banned all funding of ENRA.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I have seen that.
Speaker 5: Well so actually, because Stephen raised an interesting point that
Speaker 5: what's the kind of end goal of the protesters after
Speaker 5: BDS in the service of what you know, what does.
Speaker 2: That look like to one state solution where Jews of
Speaker 2: the minority.
Speaker 5: Well, so you said earlier that you know, it's it
Speaker 5: sort of depends on whatever video you're looking at, that
Speaker 5: this is an anti semitic mob or peaceful protesters, And
Speaker 5: I think that's actually true. There's videos showing all kinds
Speaker 5: of different things, which is part of the issue of
Speaker 5: piecing together these stories via social media. So if that,
Speaker 5: if the one state solution is kind of the ultimate
Speaker 5: goal of the people that are protesting for BDS, what
Speaker 5: is your like do you think they're fundamentally anti Semitic?
Speaker 5: Do you think they're fundamentally Are they, from your perspective,
Speaker 5: just mistaken, misguided, or are they bigoted?
Speaker 2: I don't care. Trying to start out, like the difference
Speaker 2: between like anti semitism and anti zi is almost impossible,
Speaker 2: and in practice the two look almost identical sometimes, so
Speaker 2: the obsession of trying to figure out, like, what is
Speaker 2: the driving thing here between anti semitism versus anti Zionism,
Speaker 2: I think in some cases it's good to find differences.
Speaker 2: So some people are discriminatory against poor people, some people
Speaker 2: are discriminatory against certain races of people, and figuring out
Speaker 2: the difference here is really important when it comes to
Speaker 2: antisemitism versus anti Zionism. In regards to israel I think
Speaker 2: that the talking points of somebody who's an anti Zionists
Speaker 2: are indistinguishable from the talking points of somebody who is
Speaker 2: anti Semitics. So there are a lot.
Speaker 5: Of Israelis who don't support the net Yahoo policy.
Speaker 2: That's but that's not anti Zionism such that they want
Speaker 2: a one state solution. Even Palestinians don't want a one
Speaker 2: state solution.
Speaker 4: It's utterly grotesque to conflate those two things. Opposition to
Speaker 4: Zionism is opposition to the state of Israel the way
Speaker 4: it came into being at the expense of hundreds of
Speaker 4: thousands of Palestinians who were driven out of their homes.
Speaker 4: And there is a different vision that instead of having
Speaker 4: a Jewish state that privilegius one particular group of people
Speaker 4: over another, that you have a vision for a state
Speaker 4: in which everybody is equal. Americans would be familiar with
Speaker 4: what that vision actually looks like. You remember the era
Speaker 4: of Jim Crow and what that meant. And people who
Speaker 4: are demanding a different kind of country in which everybody
Speaker 4: is equal. That's not the same as being anti white.
Speaker 4: It's absurd to even put these remotely in the same category.
Speaker 4: And can I just just if I can finish just
Speaker 4: on the point of BDS, BDS, also, by the way,
Speaker 4: has been clear about the fact that they don't take
Speaker 4: any particular political solution. It does certainly happen that a
Speaker 4: lot of BDS activists do support a one state solution,
Speaker 4: but that is not the position of BDS itself as
Speaker 4: a movement that is calling for boycotts in isolation. And
Speaker 4: just on the free speech angle, you have states all
Speaker 4: over the country that are passing laws that basically make
Speaker 4: it punishable to boycott not just Israel, but Israeli settlements
Speaker 4: that are built in the occupied territories, and those settlements
Speaker 4: are war crimes under international law. And so you have
Speaker 4: a situation in which this country, part of its founding,
Speaker 4: is that we celebrate boycotts of you know, as part
Speaker 4: of deep entrenched part of American culture, the boycott of
Speaker 4: British treat during the founding of the country, the Montgomery
Speaker 4: bus boycott during the Civil rights movement. And now you're
Speaker 4: saying that boycotting the war crimes of a foreign country
Speaker 4: is somehow punishable. People being denied the ability to work
Speaker 4: with state governments or schools or medical facilities or anything
Speaker 4: that is affiliated with the state. Those are transparently unconstitutional laws.
Speaker 4: They have been challenged by organizations like the ACLU, They
Speaker 4: have been defeated in court in many cases, but unfortunately
Speaker 4: they keep popping up faster than the rate at which
Speaker 4: you can challenge them.
Speaker 3: And that's a serious crisis.
Speaker 4: Anybody who's serious about being committed to free speech and
Speaker 4: saying that Americans should be able to exercise the right
Speaker 4: to boycott, including when it comes to Israel or Israel's atrocities,
Speaker 4: that's an absolutely critical issue that we're not talking enough about.
Speaker 4: That you have the power of the state being used
Speaker 4: to silence people's right to free speech.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a really important angle.
Speaker 1: I want to move to the conduct of the war
Speaker 1: by Israel pretty soon. But and the one state verse
Speaker 1: two state question, isn't it the case that the current
Speaker 1: Israeli government position is one state? There's a complete rejection
Speaker 1: across the board of a Palestinian state river to the sea.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think the Lakud platform is essentially always
Speaker 2: said as much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So okay, so a more agreement like you're you're
Speaker 1: you oppose that, you think that why I oppose it?
Speaker 2: He's in favor of the one state where the Jews
Speaker 2: live as a minority in that state. Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, Just to be clear, Theaho government and the liqud
Speaker 4: are in favor of a one state in which Jews
Speaker 4: are privileged over Palestinians, with Palestinians occupying multi tiers. If
Speaker 4: you're a citizen of Israel, have a certain amount of rights.
Speaker 4: If you're in the West Bank, you get this many rights.
Speaker 4: And if you're in Gaza, you're completely under siege and
Speaker 4: there's nothing that you can do, which is in my
Speaker 4: country country, my vision of a one state, they have
Speaker 4: more rights than Yeah. Well, in those countries, you don't
Speaker 4: permanently occupy those people and prevent them from having any
Speaker 4: rights and deny them citizenship as well. And that's the
Speaker 4: fundamental problem is that Israel's vision is Palestinians can never
Speaker 4: be free, they can get their own state, and they
Speaker 4: can't live as equals within Israel. So your status is
Speaker 4: just to be permanently occupied and helpless without rights. And
Speaker 4: that's a vision that I think is absolutely nobody who
Speaker 4: has a conscience can actually support. And my vision of
Speaker 4: a one state would be one in which everybody actually
Speaker 4: has equal rights and everybody can live equally precisely the
Speaker 4: way that we live in the United States.
Speaker 2: Which is a really fun position to take in the
Speaker 2: West when we have like no stake in the game.
Speaker 2: I think it's fun to scream that at protest. I
Speaker 2: think it's fun to go on Twitter and do that.
Speaker 2: I think at the end of the day, that type
Speaker 2: of rhetoric is ultimately destructive to Palestinians because everybody knows
Speaker 2: that that's never happening. It's a pipe dream. Less than
Speaker 2: thirty percent of Palestinians are in favor of a singular
Speaker 2: state where Jews and Arabs have the exact same rights. Literally,
Speaker 2: nobody wants that. People in Israel don't want that. It's
Speaker 2: literally you're just virtue signaling and paying lip service to
Speaker 2: an idea that is grossly unpopular across the entirety of
Speaker 2: Israel and Palestine. Not only that, the idea that you
Speaker 2: would have a singular state created where six million Palestinian
Speaker 2: refugees are then brought back into the state. There's no
Speaker 2: shot that any Jewish person living there, who has lived
Speaker 2: through the second in Nevada, who has lived through Hamas attacks,
Speaker 2: who's lived through hasib law attacks, who's lived through international
Speaker 2: support for who the attacks, is going to feel safe
Speaker 2: in such a state and they know that there would
Speaker 2: be absolutely no intern national support for them if that
Speaker 2: state were created. And Jews want to start getting slaughtered
Speaker 2: en mass there, let's.
Speaker 5: Past it to Omar with that for a response. And
Speaker 5: also I'll sort of add to that, maybe they narrow
Speaker 5: it down a little bit. What is then let's say,
Speaker 5: you know, hypothetically, would take the best faith argument not
Speaker 5: from net Yahoo, but let's say Israeli citizen who's both
Speaker 5: concerned about their safety and concerned about net Yahu's leadership.
Speaker 5: What does the path towards peace from the perspective of
Speaker 5: an Israeli what does that look like when they see
Speaker 5: the level of support for Hamas. And we can obviously
Speaker 5: get into why so many people in Palestine feel like
Speaker 5: they need to support Hamas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and a way you're putting your finger on the
Speaker 4: problem precisely. I mean, Israel is upset that there's so
Speaker 4: much hostility towards them. But the reason there's so much
Speaker 4: hostility is because of the way that they have been
Speaker 4: treated Palestinians for a decade. After a decade, just the
Speaker 4: level of brutality that Palestinians have experienced under occupation has
Speaker 4: been absolutely horrific.
Speaker 3: And you know, when you talk about the.
Speaker 4: Prospects for peace, there was a time in which Palestinians
Speaker 4: recognized that they there's a significant power deferential that they
Speaker 4: can't actually get freedom from the river to the sea
Speaker 4: in their own homeland, and there was an indulgence of
Speaker 4: the idea that maybe we can have a two state
Speaker 4: compromise in which Palestinians would only get the West Bank,
Speaker 4: Gaza and East Jerusalem, which is about one fifth of
Speaker 4: the entire territory of their historic homeland, and Israel gets
Speaker 4: to keep the other four fifths. That from Palastinian's perspective,
Speaker 4: is a massive Palaestinian compromise bending over backwards to facilitate
Speaker 4: some kind of two states. And all what Israel was
Speaker 4: required to do is not grant Palestinian some sort of favor,
Speaker 4: but simply comply with international law by withdrawing from the
Speaker 4: occupied territories that are obligated to do that. Anyway, the
Speaker 4: occupied territories do not belong to Israel. And during this period,
Speaker 4: Palaestinian support for peace with Israel was skyrocketed. Public opinion
Speaker 4: show that their significant support for a two state.
Speaker 3: Solution amass way down. Even though Hamas was trying to
Speaker 3: destabilize the situation at the time committing acts of violence,
Speaker 3: they did not enjoy any support among Palestinians. It is
Speaker 3: only when it became.
Speaker 4: Clear that Israel has no interest whatsoever and allowing Palestinians
Speaker 4: to have a state and spent the entire so called
Speaker 4: peace process building more and more and more settlements, just
Speaker 4: expanding them throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, where Palestinians saw
Speaker 4: the prospect for a Palestinian state shrinking by the day.
Speaker 4: On the ground, they understood that this entire process was
Speaker 4: a sham, and the fact that Israeli restrictions were increasing,
Speaker 4: Israeli violence was ongoing, it became clear that this was
Speaker 4: not going to be a path to in which Palestinians
Speaker 4: can get a real state. And that's when you got
Speaker 4: the shift in public opinion back in terms of supporting
Speaker 4: for armed resistance as the only way, because clearly Israel
Speaker 4: could not be talked into seeing Palestinians as equal human
Speaker 4: beings and granting them.
Speaker 1: But then what now, Well, a shorter version maybe for
Speaker 1: Stephen to respond to is that the way to defeat
Speaker 1: Hamas is through peace, not war.
Speaker 2: What's wrong with that? It sounds really brutal, But the
Speaker 2: issue is that the unlimited amount of international support for
Speaker 2: the Palestinians means that the Palestinians will never look to peace.
Speaker 2: They shouldn't. They always have an unlimited reservoir internationally of
Speaker 2: people who will encourage the delusions that if they continue
Speaker 2: to fight, they're going to get a better deal. It's
Speaker 2: the reason why they walked away in two thousand from
Speaker 2: Camp David, is the reason why they walked away from
Speaker 2: the tap of Summit. Is the reason why a boss
Speaker 2: walked away in two thousand and eight from O Mert.
Speaker 2: It is the reason why the Oslo Courts were never
Speaker 2: negotiated in ninety three. That period of violence that he's
Speaker 2: talking about from ninety three to two thousand, where the
Speaker 2: Israelis were continuing to expand settleents into the West Bank,
Speaker 2: is true. But Palestinians also continue to engage in terrorist activities.
Speaker 2: A lot of people didn't trust Arafat because Arafat would
Speaker 2: sign on to a deal for the Oslo Courts and
Speaker 2: then we'd go over to Switzerland and he'd make speeches
Speaker 2: in universities about how like, yeah, we're good to this now,
Speaker 2: but you know we're going to get them as as
Speaker 2: soon as we got a little bit, we're going to
Speaker 2: take more, which is ironically what they've accused is real
Speaker 2: of doing for the past one hundred years. I think
Speaker 2: that in order for this conflict to actually start to
Speaker 2: reach some kind of resolution, I think that, again, it
Speaker 2: sounds mean, but Palestinians need to feel like they have
Speaker 2: something at stake, and it looks like they do. But
Speaker 2: in reality, politically, Palestinians have never lost anything because people
Speaker 2: continue to make them feel as though they can always
Speaker 2: go back to borders that existed eighty years ago. People
Speaker 2: will constantly say, you just said it here, Well, what's
Speaker 2: the fair thing? They only want to a sliver of
Speaker 2: this land, one fifth of the territory. Yeah, they tried
Speaker 2: like three, four or five different wars to get more
Speaker 2: and they lost. You can't continue to go back to
Speaker 2: the first try over and over and over again and
Speaker 2: demand the deal that was on the table before you
Speaker 2: walked away from the partition plan in forty seven. You
Speaker 2: can't go to war five times and then keep going
Speaker 2: back to another set of borders. There are always one generation
Speaker 2: behind when it comes to accepting some type of actual
Speaker 2: peace deal. So as long as Palestinians have people like
Speaker 2: Ohmar internationally that will support them in an unlimited delusion
Speaker 2: to fight forever, plistiness will never try to accept these
Speaker 2: and they shouldn't. They really should. There's no reason to.
Speaker 5: In one sense, if you have public polling that shows
Speaker 5: some seventy percent this was from a Palestinian polling firm
Speaker 5: in December, seventy two percent supported what happened on October seventh.
Speaker 5: So and we can talk about why, and we will,
Speaker 5: I'm sure. So with all of that said, what now,
Speaker 5: what if you you know, if you were in charge
Speaker 5: of Israeli foreign policy in a hypothetical sense, And I
Speaker 5: think this will be a response to what Stephen just said,
Speaker 5: what happens now to get to a position where, to
Speaker 5: your point, there can be justice.
Speaker 4: I'm happy to address that, but it just I have
Speaker 4: to go back to a particular point. The idea that
Speaker 4: Palestinians are rejectionist because they have so much international support,
Speaker 4: I think is just thoroughly absurd. Palestinians are paying an
Speaker 4: unbelievable cost every single day their lives are completely brutalized
Speaker 4: under occupation, and the idea that they see no cost
Speaker 4: of continuing to fighting on forever.
Speaker 3: It's just completely ridiculous. It's detached from reality.
Speaker 4: It's as if you're unaware of what Palatine conditions are
Speaker 4: under Israeli occupation, the reason why they were willing to
Speaker 4: bend over backwards. I mean, if you look at the
Speaker 4: history of negotiations, you look at the Palestine papers that
Speaker 4: got leaked shortly after I think back in the mid
Speaker 4: two thousands, it's obvious that Palestinians were bending over backwards
Speaker 4: to try to make that deal work, and Israel insisted
Speaker 4: on expanding more and more settlements. And yes, you can
Speaker 4: say that Palestinian violence was ongoing at the time, but
Speaker 4: so is Israeli violence. I mean the attack that happened
Speaker 4: on the mosque in Hebron where thirty Palestinians, nearly thirty
Speaker 4: Palaestinis were killed by a Jewish terrorist named Baru Goldstein.
Speaker 4: That happened during the so called peace process, and Israel
Speaker 4: responded by putting Palestinians in Hebron under curfew to prevent
Speaker 4: any possible retaliation. Those are theitions, but nobody looks at
Speaker 4: that incident and says, oh, well, there was Israeli violence,
Speaker 4: Therefore the Israelis, you know, we're not.
Speaker 3: That's the reason why the.
Speaker 2: Point I'm making.
Speaker 4: The point i'm making is that this is besides the
Speaker 4: point that, yes, we can point to individual atrocities, and
Speaker 4: that does not change the fact that throughout the peace process,
Speaker 4: if Israel were genuinely interested in allowing for a Palestinian
Speaker 4: state to exist, they would not have spent the entire
Speaker 4: soul called.
Speaker 3: Peace process taking up more and more and more of
Speaker 3: the West BacT. So it's the disingenuous.
Speaker 4: Nature of of of of Israeli policy that that's the
Speaker 4: reason why this is a problem.
Speaker 3: Now to your point of what now.
Speaker 5: Going to say they are genuinely interested in the peace
Speaker 5: process and you're you're.
Speaker 3: In charge, Yeah, so what do they do right now?
Speaker 4: We have a situation right there is a problem of
Speaker 4: the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support groups
Speaker 4: like Hamas. You have a majority of people in Israel,
Speaker 4: overwhelming majority support the most vicious policies of the Nathaniaho
Speaker 4: government and just carrying on, and they think that they're
Speaker 4: not going far enough in Gaza and so on, and
Speaker 4: that just it's it's important to note that hatred is
Speaker 4: a symptom.
Speaker 3: Of the conflict and not the cause of it. People
Speaker 3: get this stuff backwards.
Speaker 4: When you think of apartheid in South Africa, there was
Speaker 4: plenty of hostility and we eventually had a reconciliation process
Speaker 4: between white and black people in South Africa, but only
Speaker 4: after apartheid fell. That's when you can have reconciliation. But
Speaker 4: the idea that you can try to work on how
Speaker 4: people feel about each other in the midst of one
Speaker 4: side occupying the other, controlling every aspect of their lives
Speaker 4: and brutalizing them day in and day out.
Speaker 3: There's no surprise that there are hostile feelings. And yes,
Speaker 3: when Palestinians do respond with violence, Israelis who are out
Speaker 3: of touch with the reasons why all of this is happening,
Speaker 3: are going to develop hostile feelings as well.
Speaker 4: This is a moment in which the international community has
Speaker 4: to step in. This is not about making Israelis and
Speaker 4: Palestinians like each other right now. This is about making
Speaker 4: sure that one side does not get to dominate the
Speaker 4: other until the end of time and the status quo
Speaker 4: leading up to October seventh is one in which Israel
Speaker 4: dominated every aspect of Palestinian life. So you can say, yes,
Speaker 4: both sides hate each other, but one side is in
Speaker 4: charge of everything. One side gets to decide whether they
Speaker 4: want to put the people of Gaza on a diet,
Speaker 4: as they were talking about, you know, when they first
Speaker 4: imposed the siege on Gaza. Just Palestinians don't get to
Speaker 4: decide how much fruit Israelis get. They don't get to
Speaker 4: demolish Israeli homes will whenever they feel like it. They
Speaker 4: don't get to humiliate Israelis a checkpoints day in and
Speaker 4: day out. So because there's a dynamic in which one
Speaker 4: side is imposing an illegal occupation over another people and
Speaker 4: taking over their land, that has to come to an end,
Speaker 4: and you can bring it to an end through international pressure,
Speaker 4: primarily from the United States as the country that has
Speaker 4: the most leverage over Israel, to say not another penny
Speaker 4: until that occupation ends. And when that occupation comes to
Speaker 4: an end, we can talk about sorting out the exact
Speaker 4: specifics of how we get more conciliation and.
Speaker 3: Cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to international support for Palestinians. There's
Speaker 1: one side that has had the international support of the
Speaker 1: world's great superpower and right the political and military support
Speaker 1: as well Israel.
Speaker 2: What about the Soviet Unius supporting the Soviet Union has
Speaker 2: had a very complicated relationship unions states before the United
Speaker 2: States and truly also Aroun until about sixty six sixteen.
Speaker 1: Some union also hasn't been here since nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: But the conflict also didn't start after the ninety one,
Speaker 2: after the collapse of the Sovietnion.
Speaker 1: But the point is that Israel has had a lot
Speaker 1: of agency, and Benjamin Netyaho in particular, as you know,
Speaker 1: the Prime minister for most of the last what twenty
Speaker 1: five thirty years, has had an extraordinary amount of agency
Speaker 1: as well. And I wanted to read to you a
Speaker 1: piece of an essay published in how Retz recently by
Speaker 1: Israeli historian Yuval Noah Hararia. He writes, given the murderous
Speaker 1: nature of Hamas this time, its allies gave Israel free
Speaker 1: reign for many months to conquer Gaza, liberate the Israeli hostages,
Speaker 1: changed the situation in the Strip according to Israel's best judgment,
Speaker 1: and create a new order in the region. The netn
Speaker 1: Yahoo government wasted this historic opportunity and also wasted the
Speaker 1: bravery and dedication of the soldiers of the IDF. The
Speaker 1: net Yahoo government failed to exploit its battlefield victories to
Speaker 1: reach an agreement on the release of all the hostages
Speaker 1: and to advance an alternative political order in Gaza. Instead,
Speaker 1: it decided to knowingly inflict on Gaza an unnecessary humanitarian disaster,
Speaker 1: and in so doing inflicted on Israel an unnecessary political disaster.
Speaker 1: One by one, our allies have become horrified by what
Speaker 1: is happening in Gaza, and one by one they are
Speaker 1: calling for an immediate ceasefire and even for a weapons
Speaker 1: embargo on Israel. Even during the worst moments of October seventh,
Speaker 1: Hamas was nowhere near vanquishing Israel. But the ruinous policy
Speaker 1: of the net Yahoo government following October seventh has placed
Speaker 1: Israel in existential danger. So, when I ask you, it
Speaker 1: seems like a pretty fundamental irony that if Israel had
Speaker 1: listened to critics like Omar and myself after October seventh,
Speaker 1: who warned against enacting violence just for the purposes of
Speaker 1: revenge and potentially for ethnic cleansing, of Gaza, they would ironically,
Speaker 1: in paradoxly be in a much stronger global strategic political
Speaker 1: position than they are now where they're facing not just isolation,
Speaker 1: but charges before the ICJ and potentially before the ICC.
Speaker 1: So are they making a mistake and following kind of
Speaker 1: the more bellicose advice that they're getting from their so
Speaker 1: called allies.
Speaker 2: That's a touching essay. Who was the alternative order politically
Speaker 2: besides Hamas that would have risen up in the Gaza Strip.
Speaker 2: If there was an alternative political order, I would love
Speaker 2: to hear it. Even in the West Bank. There's a
Speaker 2: reason why a boss suspended elections twenty years ago. Even
Speaker 2: in the West Bank, Hamas enjoys pretty broad support. I
Speaker 2: mean their answers to this question, and it's not rhetorical.
Speaker 3: Do you want to take that?
Speaker 2: I mean, well, hold on, wait wait, But before he
Speaker 2: does it, also to elaborate a bit on the military objectives,
Speaker 2: I think Hamas needs to go. I don't think that
Speaker 2: there's any future that happens where Israel can negotiate anything,
Speaker 2: whether it's peace or war, with Hamas remaining as the
Speaker 2: government in the Gaza Strip. I don't think any of
Speaker 2: the surrounding Arab states wanted Hamas to remain as the
Speaker 2: government in the Gaza strip. It's a disaster. You've had
Speaker 2: a series of conflicts. In two thousand and eight you
Speaker 2: had kind of led, twenty fourteen you had Protective Edge,
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen you had the response to the Great March
Speaker 2: of Return, and now in twenty twenty three you had
Speaker 2: a massive attack on October seventh. The idea that you
Speaker 2: would just allow them to stay here after spending at
Speaker 2: least a year preparing for what was probably I think
Speaker 2: the single largest day of violence against Jesus the Holocaust,
Speaker 2: it would be that's an untenable position. I don't think
Speaker 2: a single other country, a person in all of the
Speaker 2: history would be asked to keep a government like that
Speaker 2: in play.
Speaker 1: Well, we paused for one second on the quote response
Speaker 1: to the Great March of Return. For people who don't know,
Speaker 1: the Great March of Return was a civil society led
Speaker 1: Gaza initiative that was a nonviolent demonstration where every Friday,
Speaker 1: people would meet and kind of march to the fence,
Speaker 1: you know, symbolically gazing out at land that had been
Speaker 1: that they had lost over the years. The idea of
Speaker 1: responded by killing a pretty significant amount of Palestinians, but
Speaker 1: also maiming tens of thousands, to the point where.
Speaker 2: The UN.
Speaker 1: The UN put out a report noting that it had
Speaker 1: become commonplace to see people walking around with one leg
Speaker 1: missing a leg missing an arm. There were IDF soldiers
Speaker 1: who said we were told shoot out the legs.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: One guy said he hit like forty plus legs in
Speaker 1: a single day. Hamas opposed this at the start because
Speaker 1: it was nonviolent, because it was civil society led. Hamas
Speaker 1: eventually caved under public pressure and ended up supporting the
Speaker 1: Great March Return, which I think goes to your question,
Speaker 1: what is the political order that can replace Hamas. If
Speaker 1: there is a non violent movement that can gain traction,
Speaker 1: then Hamas is defeated by that. Hamas is pressured into
Speaker 1: supporting that just by the kind of public support for it,
Speaker 1: like happened with the Great March Return. The Israeli response
Speaker 1: was not to say, Wow, let's embrace this non violent,
Speaker 1: civil society led movement and marginalize Hamas and reach a
Speaker 1: deal with this Palestinian force that could even see a
Speaker 1: unification between the West Bank and Gaza toward a long
Speaker 1: term peaceful solution. It was let's annihilate this, let's shoot
Speaker 1: and kill and maim the peaceful protesters, which only then
Speaker 1: fortifies Hamasa's position and allows them to say that we
Speaker 1: were right all along. We told you you can't deal
Speaker 1: with Israel, we warned you against this, that violence is
Speaker 1: the only way forward.
Speaker 2: That's a fantastic retelling that is almost entirely fictional. For
Speaker 2: the great margin return, it did start off as a
Speaker 2: generally peaceful protest. The idea behind the March of Return
Speaker 2: was returning to Israel. The UN has released a report
Speaker 2: where they've gone over a lot of the shootings. It's
Speaker 2: very curious that if you actually read the entire report,
Speaker 2: you'll notice that almost every single shooting happens between fifty
Speaker 2: to one hundred meters in range, Which is curious. Why
Speaker 2: would if these are because I was told I believe
Speaker 2: by I think Finkelstein himself said, or might have been Raboni,
Speaker 2: that this was a cracked team of Israeli snipers. What
Speaker 2: apparently their rifles only worked up two hundred meters. The
Speaker 2: reason why just lazy, or maybe the why because there
Speaker 2: is a no go zone between the fence and one
Speaker 2: hundred meters because when people get too close, people try
Speaker 2: to cut the fence open, people try to break through,
Speaker 2: which is what was happening towards the end of the
Speaker 2: no choice but to shoot all those unarmed people. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if you're armed or unarmed, if you're approaching
Speaker 2: an area that you're not supposed to be in. And
Speaker 2: then when people start to try to break into the
Speaker 2: breakthrough the fence, that's the rules of the border. You
Speaker 2: try to cross any militarized border, you're probably going to
Speaker 2: get shot at. Also, towards the end of the Great
Speaker 2: Marshal Return, there were people that were throwing stones, that
Speaker 2: were sending over incendiary balloons that were causing like fires
Speaker 2: to spread on the other side of the fence. All
Speaker 2: this is documented even by the UN and that was
Speaker 2: when the majority of the firing from the Israeli police happened.
Speaker 2: If you want to say that they shouldn't be shooting
Speaker 2: at people who were close to the fence because you
Speaker 2: don't like that policy or whatever, that's fine, But characterizing
Speaker 2: that is like just open firing into a bunch of
Speaker 2: innocent people that are standing there with the goal of
Speaker 2: just maiming people. For no reason is the most unbelievable
Speaker 2: retelling of what happened. Now, it's the end of that event,
Speaker 2: that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 4: Actually, just to characterize it, just you know, get an
Speaker 4: even more complete picture. Israeli policy is people in Gaza
Speaker 4: have no right to go in a out of the
Speaker 4: cage that they've been placed into, their complete siege, their
Speaker 4: economies and shambles, because Israel does not allow them to
Speaker 4: trade with the outside world.
Speaker 3: They can't have an airport.
Speaker 4: Because Israel doesn't feel like they are entitled to an airport,
Speaker 4: can't have a seaport. You know, when you look at
Speaker 4: the rates of unemployment over fifty percent in Gaza at
Speaker 4: the time, And if those people who are trapped in
Speaker 4: this cage come a little too close to the border,
Speaker 4: then we open fire at them and kill them, even
Speaker 4: when they're unarmed, because that's border policy.
Speaker 3: If this is.
Speaker 1: Something that more than If this is something it's more
Speaker 1: than six thousand, according to the un quote unquote more
Speaker 1: than six thousand unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers
Speaker 1: week after week at the protest sites and the separation fence.
Speaker 3: There's no denying that.
Speaker 4: Yes, some people try to open up, and some people
Speaker 4: sent insidiary balloons over the border and so on. But
Speaker 4: by and large, when you look at the cases, human
Speaker 4: rights organizations have been clear about the fact that people
Speaker 4: were targeted when they posed absolutely no threat to Israeli soldiers.
Speaker 4: So Israeli soldiers opened fire on people and targeted specifically
Speaker 4: journalists and children. That is, and people are.
Speaker 2: Game that's being played when we say posed no threat
Speaker 2: to Israeli soldiers. There was one U and Rep that
Speaker 2: came out that analyzed it that claimed that every single
Speaker 2: shooting except for one was unjustified. But the way that
Speaker 2: they got that is they didn't analyze that as an
Speaker 2: armed conflict. They analyzed that as a policing event. And
Speaker 2: when you analyze things internationally as a policing event, typically
Speaker 2: police aren't allowed shootor kill anybody unless they pose a
Speaker 2: direct threat to the individual who Why would be analyzed
Speaker 2: as an armed conflict if one side wasn't dark because
Speaker 2: Hamas was present, it doesn't matter if they were shooting
Speaker 2: if you've got an enemy. If you've got an enemy
Speaker 2: military that is present amongst people that are perform that
Speaker 2: are there was no AMAS is considered oppositional force and
Speaker 2: if you've got people that are participating, if.
Speaker 4: You don't have guns not, of course, nothing to do
Speaker 4: clear about the fact that the situation. You can only
Speaker 4: kill combatants if they're in combat and they're armed. You
Speaker 4: can't somebody.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you do not become oystered combat You do not.
Speaker 3: You're not.
Speaker 2: Do you not all of a sudden gain the protections
Speaker 2: of a civilian if you're an enemy combatant without a gun.
Speaker 4: If you have to absolute film Google, yes, let's let's
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 3: Just to go back to a point that you made
Speaker 3: earlier about sort of, I just want.
Speaker 2: To just so you're saying that, like if there's a
Speaker 2: military and you're finding the enemy and you guys, if
Speaker 2: you just drop your guns, you can just like run
Speaker 2: back and nobody can.
Speaker 3: If you drop your guns and raise your arms.
Speaker 2: You can't know that surrendering. That's different than running away.
Speaker 2: You can't drop your guns and just run away, and
Speaker 2: you can't get shock because you know, fire off.
Speaker 3: If you're a military threat at the time, it's a
Speaker 3: military engagement.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely not true.
Speaker 3: Okay, I just.
Speaker 2: You have a control room look stuff, But you're wrong.
Speaker 3: That's that's that's a level of detail.
Speaker 4: Again, you start like playing up imaginal scenarios of somebody
Speaker 4: shooting at you.
Speaker 3: And then dropping their gun and turning around.
Speaker 2: But that's what your rule would lead to. We have
Speaker 2: to be able to analyze like this is the problem
Speaker 2: acknowledge like the basic reality conflict.
Speaker 5: This brings up a really fundamental reality actually, because Omar
Speaker 5: was talking about airports and the seaparts ports, and I
Speaker 5: think we all agree it would be miserable to live
Speaker 5: in a territory that doesn't have an airport, doesn't have
Speaker 5: a seaport.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: The argument from Israels of Israel is that if you
Speaker 5: put an airport and Gaza Hamas would immediately see is
Speaker 5: it and use it to use parts, use the technologies
Speaker 5: to kill Israelis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and nobody asks if you have an airport in Israel,
Speaker 4: will these yearly government use it to import weapons from
Speaker 4: the United States that they then used to kill Palestinians.
Speaker 4: You see, there's an inequality here that we never really acknowledge.
Speaker 2: And I don't think that's unfair.
Speaker 5: I just mean, so, what is like, now, what is
Speaker 5: the path to creating a guy that can happen?
Speaker 2: What do we think Hamas would use the airport in
Speaker 2: the support to bring in weapons.
Speaker 4: I have no doubt that they would exactly the same
Speaker 4: way the Israeli government imports weapons. And so it's massive
Speaker 4: atrocities terrorism against What can.
Speaker 5: People in Palestine do to create a situation where that's
Speaker 5: not and what can people in Israel do to create
Speaker 5: a situation.
Speaker 4: And to Stephen's earlier point, that which we did not address,
Speaker 4: is like, you know, he thinks the goal of removing
Speaker 4: Hamass from power is absolutely essential and you've got.
Speaker 3: To do it first. I want to point out that
Speaker 3: double standardause nobody says we have to get rid of
Speaker 3: thesesaely government. It's not.
Speaker 5: It's not even by any better better if you're better,
Speaker 5: and that it's a democracy better in that responds to
Speaker 5: international global pressure better than that.
Speaker 2: Their goal isn't the entire annihilation of a group of people.
Speaker 4: If you think that the absolutely is their absolute intention
Speaker 4: is the absolute erasure of Palestinians has.
Speaker 3: Exploded because they're doing it in slow motion.
Speaker 2: There's going the opposite way and you go backwards.
Speaker 4: That's a very very cute talking point, but when you
Speaker 4: look at what actually Israeli policy has been for literally decades,
Speaker 4: it's been confining, Palestinians too smaller and smaller areas.
Speaker 3: You can see it unfolding.
Speaker 4: In the case of Gaza, they've just given up on Gaza.
Speaker 4: They've basically this seized the entire thing. It's a cage.
Speaker 4: Palestinians can do whatever they want there. They don't care
Speaker 4: about Gaza anymore, and that's how they wanted to leave it.
Speaker 3: In the case of the West Bank, they absolutely are
Speaker 3: squeezing Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas. So you can
Speaker 3: talk about the Palastinian population increasing in terms of numbers,
Speaker 3: but they're in the areas that Israel is interested in
Speaker 3: taking over. They're absolutely decreasing.
Speaker 4: When you look at Jerusalem, Jerusalem every few years you
Speaker 4: look at it in the number of Palatines, and Jerusalem
Speaker 4: is actually decreasing. It's a deliberate policy of pushing Palestinians out.
Speaker 4: But so from my perspective, and look, look.
Speaker 2: There are Palestinian is decreasing. Are you saying because some
Speaker 2: of them are getting citizenship for Israel now?
Speaker 4: Because no, no, no, no no, because Israel is demolishing their
Speaker 4: homes and replacing them. And in some cases you see
Speaker 4: it actually on video of Palestinian families being thrown out
Speaker 4: of their homes in East Rustom and Jews Stetler's come
Speaker 4: and to take over those is There.
Speaker 2: Is cens available for every person living. Even there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people you want because they don't want to
Speaker 2: be part of Israel. And do you think real quick,
Speaker 2: because you mentioned between the Hamas, do you think if
Speaker 2: Hamasu ran Israel and Jews lived in the Gaza strip
Speaker 2: in the West Bank, do you think the situation would
Speaker 2: look the same or do you think as would treat
Speaker 2: them worse?
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't even you couldn't.
Speaker 1: Possibly it wouldn't look like to be treated worse than
Speaker 1: gods is being treated now.
Speaker 2: A million times. It could be actual starvation, It could
Speaker 2: be actual dying.
Speaker 3: Is actually actual gods. So people are dying by the dozen.
Speaker 2: I wish I brought a list of me. I have
Speaker 2: like fifty two different stories between October and now where
Speaker 2: verge of famine emmited, mass starvation, almost famine about to start.
Speaker 2: It's been happening for six months, and prior to this
Speaker 2: people say it's happening for twenty years.
Speaker 3: Those of children dying, you go by.
Speaker 2: Zero reports, the number is thirty two, and that's the
Speaker 2: most favorable re reporting the gods and health.
Speaker 3: So that's acceptable for you.
Speaker 2: That's the idea that this place has been starved for
Speaker 2: decades and we have thirty two? Does the show for
Speaker 2: you're once again conflating not very that you're not going
Speaker 2: to answer, which is if Hamas ran Israel, do you
Speaker 2: think that the truth just worse.
Speaker 3: I don't see the point of speculating about things that.
Speaker 2: Because we have no idea what he said that the
Speaker 2: idea is worse than Hamas.
Speaker 4: Yes, in terms of the scale of the atrocities that committed,
Speaker 4: there's no okay.
Speaker 3: So in that case, you about it.
Speaker 2: The United States is worse than Hamas and that basically
Speaker 2: every single large country.
Speaker 4: Is worth because I think I think the genocidal campaign
Speaker 4: that Israel is currently engaged in Gaza is kind of unique.
Speaker 4: It's not it's not commonplace for countries to engage in
Speaker 4: that level of violence.
Speaker 2: When you mayle or let me, let me just I
Speaker 2: just want to I just want to know.
Speaker 3: So many things. I'm not chase the ball into different directions.
Speaker 2: It's very clear that you can answer everyone. I am
Speaker 2: saying so many things. I will ask a very clear question,
Speaker 2: you won't engage, and then you're gonna yeap about a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of unrelated stuff like genocital campiates to reader
Speaker 2: one more time, you're not going to answer. I understand.
Speaker 2: My very clear question was, if Hamas was in control
Speaker 2: of Israel and then the IDF in Israel was in
Speaker 2: control of the Gaza strip in the West Bank, do
Speaker 2: we think that Hamas, who would now own nuclear weapons
Speaker 2: and a full military and everything, would they be treating
Speaker 2: the Jews better or worse than the Jews are treating
Speaker 2: the Palestinians.
Speaker 4: And my answer is, I don't know. You've mentioned that
Speaker 4: Hamas has to go. I think these early government has
Speaker 4: to go by that logic. And the question then becomes
Speaker 4: what cost would be acceptable to impose on Israeli civilians.
Speaker 3: In order to get the Israeli government out of power?
Speaker 3: Would you impose starvation and all that? Of course nobody
Speaker 3: would endorse that.
Speaker 4: Everybody understand that's a completely monstrous idea for a government
Speaker 4: that has committed far greater atrocities than Hamas has. And
Speaker 4: then you have the second point of if you want
Speaker 4: to get rid of Hamas, it might be useful to
Speaker 4: ask yourself how Hamas came into being, how did they
Speaker 4: come about, how did they get support? And it's obvious
Speaker 4: that brutality towards Palestinians is how Hamas came in to being,
Speaker 4: because they created it literally and it's it's you know,
Speaker 4: even if you want to leave out the part where
Speaker 4: nathaniaho Is effectually was effectively indulging their existence as a
Speaker 4: means of dividing Palestinians Israelly. Politicians have been quite explicit
Speaker 4: about the fact that they see this as a useful policy.
Speaker 3: To prevent a Palestinian state from existing.
Speaker 4: But Hamas gained support as an alternative to the Palestinian
Speaker 4: authority that was client that was bending over backwards to
Speaker 4: try to accommodate Israel. And they said no, no, no,
Speaker 4: we can get you freedom because we're going to fight.
Speaker 3: And that's how they gain power.
Speaker 4: And if your idea is to defeat Hamas and get
Speaker 4: them out of power by brutalizing Palestinians even more, that's
Speaker 4: just completely delusional. Even if you get rid of Hamas
Speaker 4: as an organization, whatever replaces it, whether they call themselves
Speaker 4: Hamas or not, you're creating another generation of traumatized people
Speaker 4: who are going to be desperate for revenge and you're
Speaker 4: just basically perpetuating conflict.
Speaker 1: If however, that was the point that I was making earlier.
Speaker 1: Some of the founders of Hamas As children lived through
Speaker 1: massacres in gods In in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: This is well known. History doesn't justify what they did,
Speaker 2: but it raises questions about whether or not tactically strategically,
Speaker 2: those massacres worked to Israel's benefit.
Speaker 1: Now, if you are net Yahoo and you want to
Speaker 1: divide Palestinians and the extremists are good for you, then
Speaker 1: it does work to their benefit. But if you're trying
Speaker 1: to defeat Hamas or the ideology of kind of armed
Speaker 1: resistance to Israel, and if you really want a two
Speaker 1: state solutions, and if you really want a solution to
Speaker 1: this crisis, then why would more cow bell like more violence?
Speaker 2: Why would that? Why would that finally work? I don't
Speaker 2: think more or less violence will work. There has to
Speaker 2: try less. We've tried more, not less, hasn't of the
Speaker 2: entire history of the Palestinian people against Israel since forty
Speaker 2: eight has been one of violence, NonStop, right, so that
Speaker 2: the idea that like it's if you're just peaceful for
Speaker 2: a little bit, it'll fix things. Isn't going to work.
Speaker 2: The Palestinian people don't want peace, they want justice, and
Speaker 2: in their mind right now, justice has to do with
Speaker 2: acquiring some amount of Israel. Now, whether that is the
Speaker 2: entire irony of Israel into a single state, or whether
Speaker 2: that's a two state solution again.
Speaker 4: Acquiring parts of Israel. If you're talking about two states,
Speaker 4: that's acquiring occupied territory that is not Israels and Israel
Speaker 4: has to withdraw from.
Speaker 3: What do you mean it's not Israels, it does not
Speaker 3: belong to in international law is extremely clear about the
Speaker 3: fact that they have to withdraw from that territory. Not
Speaker 3: extremely it is extremely clear.
Speaker 2: You're going to reference a single advisory of pitten written
Speaker 2: by the by the UN in two thousand.
Speaker 3: And four resolutions that make absolutely clear.
Speaker 2: That resolution story before we get into the resolutions.
Speaker 1: Since you raised the virtue of the Israeli government, I
Speaker 1: did want to ask if you had seen the plus
Speaker 1: nine seven two article on the lavender Ai program. I
Speaker 1: imagine you saw this, so let me read you a
Speaker 1: little portion of it. So the IDEF used artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: to identify hamas members. It used to be that you
Speaker 1: had to be I think kernel or above to be
Speaker 1: specifically targeted by an air strike, and you had to
Speaker 1: be and there had to be some precautions taken to
Speaker 1: minimize the civilians that you might be around. The IDF
Speaker 1: after October seventh got rid of both of those precautions.
Speaker 1: They said, any HAMAS member is now able to be
Speaker 1: targeted by an airstrike, and civilian casualties don't matter. In fact,
Speaker 1: maximizing civilian casualties seems to be a feature of the program.
Speaker 1: I'll just read from this if you can put up
Speaker 1: the nine to seven two magazine article they're write. During
Speaker 1: the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping
Speaker 1: approval for officers to adopt Lavender's kill lists, with no
Speaker 1: requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices
Speaker 1: or to examine the raw intelligence on which they were based.
Speaker 1: One source stated that human personnel often served only as
Speaker 1: a quote rubber stamp for the machine's decisions, adding that
Speaker 1: normally they would personally devote only about twenty seconds to
Speaker 1: each target before authorizing a bombing, just to make sure
Speaker 1: the Lavender marked target is male. This was despite knowing
Speaker 1: that the system makes what are regarded as errors in
Speaker 1: approximately ten percent of cases, and is known to occasionally
Speaker 1: mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant
Speaker 1: groups or no connection at all. Moreover, the Israeli armies
Speaker 1: systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes,
Speaker 1: usually at night, while their whole families were present, rather
Speaker 1: than during the course of military activity. According to the sources,
Speaker 1: this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligent standpoint,
Speaker 1: it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses.
Speaker 1: Additional automated systems, including one called Where's Daddy, also revealed
Speaker 1: here for the first time, were used specifically to track
Speaker 1: the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had
Speaker 1: entered their families' residences, and a nine to seven to
Speaker 1: two argues that the reason that you've seen so many
Speaker 1: women and children killed is that they were identifying men.
Speaker 1: Sometimes something like ten to twenty percent of men and
Speaker 1: gods are named Muhammad. If you go through the Ministry
Speaker 1: of Health list of casualties, many of them have same
Speaker 1: last names because they're from the same family. So they're
Speaker 1: using AI to identify a particular man and then follow
Speaker 1: him to his home and then killing him with a
Speaker 1: bomb in his home. Oftentimes this is an apartment that
Speaker 1: doesn't just have his family sleeping there, but also has
Speaker 1: many other family sleeping.
Speaker 4: There, which is where the whereas Daddy name comes from
Speaker 4: that program. They wait for them to be with their families,
Speaker 4: and they think it's easier to bomb them in their
Speaker 4: homes rather than try to fight them in the field.
Speaker 4: And the words they're more difficult to find.
Speaker 2: So how could the because of the field, like, so,
Speaker 2: how could this be worse?
Speaker 1: Try to design I could government that behaves in a
Speaker 1: worse way than obvious.
Speaker 2: Counter is the numbers don't support the idea that civilians
Speaker 2: are being targeted in mass It doesn't even come close
Speaker 2: to it. I've seen estimates at anywhere it's like nine
Speaker 2: to one for civilian to military dost historically in conflict,
Speaker 2: and the idea that in the Goaza Strip, one of
Speaker 2: the most densely populated places on the planet, those numbers
Speaker 2: right now are depending on who's not supposed to go
Speaker 2: anywhere from two point five the one to like four
Speaker 2: to one in terms of civilian too militant deaths. So
Speaker 2: the idea that people doing wiped out with innocent family members.
Speaker 2: There just don't seem to be any numbers at all
Speaker 2: to support that. Something that's also very frustrating is Hamas
Speaker 2: engages in behavior that has been documented by the UN,
Speaker 2: by Amnesty International, by other NGOs, that is supposed to
Speaker 2: induce the death of civilians. I don't know why nobody
Speaker 2: seems to ever care about this. Hamas and the Goaza
Speaker 2: strip exclusively fights in civilian clothes. Do you acknowledge that
Speaker 2: there you don't care Hamas will fight from hospitals? Do
Speaker 2: you acknowledge that they.
Speaker 3: Don't fight from hospitals?
Speaker 2: What happened with the most recent rate?
Speaker 4: Let me let me okay, so you've actually gone no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I'm going to address You're gonna.
Speaker 2: Address it because you're not. But so let me just
Speaker 2: get my f he.
Speaker 5: Said, he doesn't think that they know he's he He
Speaker 5: just said, no.
Speaker 2: He doesn't. But I just want to go. I just
Speaker 2: want to just for people listening. I guess one of
Speaker 2: the frustrating things about asymmetrical warfare is that as law
Speaker 2: arm conflict has evolved past the nineties, the clubs of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union States are having to do more and
Speaker 2: more funding against non state actors, which is post a
Speaker 2: huge challenge to the ICJ and the ICCM. Termetime he
Speaker 2: analyze this conflict and the reason why it's such a
Speaker 2: challenge is because international law only works if it allows
Speaker 2: countries to effectively operate so that countries will want to
Speaker 2: follow it. So international law tries to balance for law
Speaker 2: of ar conflict two very very delicate things. One is
Speaker 2: the protection of orstick combat peoples, people that shouldn't be
Speaker 2: killed ever, and then the other is a state's ability
Speaker 2: to conduct warfare because we deprive either of these. If
Speaker 2: you don't protect civilians, everybody dies, and if you deprive
Speaker 2: a state of the ability to defend it, so nobody
Speaker 2: follows law arm conflict. The issue with hamas as an
Speaker 2: asymmetrical opponent is every single behavior that they engage in
Speaker 2: is meant to induce maximum civilian casualty. That means that
Speaker 2: they exclusively fight in civilian uniforms. It means that they
Speaker 2: operate out of civilians supposed to be special protected areas
Speaker 2: like hospitals. The al Schiafa rate recently is a good
Speaker 2: example of that. They booby trap corpses, they booby trap houses.
Speaker 2: This happened a lot of protective edge In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: AMBSSY International reports show that there was footage taken out
Speaker 2: of Al Shifa Hospital in two thousand and eight. MSCY
Speaker 2: International are on that that there was an interrogation center
Speaker 2: in there and we saw captured CCTV footags that showed
Speaker 2: hostages being brought into Alshiva Hospital. That every that Hamas
Speaker 2: will store munitions, and they will fight even from zones
Speaker 2: that are supposed to be declared safe, and they store
Speaker 2: ammunitions in places like mosques or homes. All of these
Speaker 2: behaviors are designed from the Hamas perspective to induce the
Speaker 2: maximum amount of civilian casualties. And then when it happens,
Speaker 2: nobody has anything to say with Hamas, and everybody has
Speaker 2: something to say with Israel. Why hasn't Hamas, By the way,
Speaker 2: these are also considered failures to uphold your duty under
Speaker 2: an auslaw. Why hasn't Hamas tried to protect the civilian population.
Speaker 2: All those tunnels they built, they couldn't build one bomb shelter.
Speaker 2: Why hasn't Hamas tried to set up a humanitarian area?
Speaker 2: Why is it exclusively on Israel and the international community
Speaker 2: and Hamas can't do any type of collaboration or cooperation
Speaker 2: to do it because they don't care, because the goal
Speaker 2: is to induce the maximum amount of civilian coustus.
Speaker 1: One tiny point out, if they did build a bomb
Speaker 1: shelter for civilians, Israel would bombit and say that the
Speaker 1: look they're putting, they're putting civilians.
Speaker 2: And if it would happen, that would be the end
Speaker 2: of the conflict. Because if there is a civilian bomb
Speaker 2: shelter built and there were no hostenal resort and Israel
Speaker 2: that over target at that point, who supports it bombing
Speaker 2: their bombing entire neighborhood to the hospital.
Speaker 4: You've gone through our lengthy record, allow me to do
Speaker 4: the same. Actually for just one second. One of the
Speaker 4: things that you had actually said recently, I think it's
Speaker 4: on the Comedy Seller podcast, is that it is quite
Speaker 4: blatant to you, he said, parently obvious that Israel is
Speaker 4: doing everything it can to protect civilians and cause.
Speaker 2: Them or I don't understand. I think said more than
Speaker 2: any other country ever has in the history of company. Yes,
Speaker 2: I think, oh, actually it turns out we do have that,
Speaker 2: all right. It seems if you engage with it honestly,
Speaker 2: and I hate to say that's summary parties when you
Speaker 2: engage with honestly, it seems obvious, like parently obvious, that
Speaker 2: Israel is doing everything they can to minimize casualties. That
Speaker 2: it's like undeniable because the numbers would be so much
Speaker 2: different if they were just indiscriminately bombing or carpa bombing,
Speaker 2: as everybody says. So, but I mean, they still have
Speaker 2: to manage the pr aspect because at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, you know, perception is really the only thing
Speaker 2: that matters in international communities with other countries.
Speaker 4: So frankly, the claim that Israel's doing everything it can
Speaker 4: to mini my civilian casualties is by far the single
Speaker 4: most absurd thing that I have heard Stephen say.
Speaker 3: Period, let me run through the record.
Speaker 2: We target a soldier at his house at night, if
Speaker 2: that was your goal.
Speaker 4: And with the thing that you mentioned with Lavender, it's specifically, yeah,
Speaker 4: specifically when they're at home, but beyond that, just if
Speaker 4: I can run through that record.
Speaker 5: Because one second, so quick, do you stand by saying everything.
Speaker 2: The more basically yeah, more back to more than any
Speaker 2: other country ever has in the history of all of them.
Speaker 4: Conflict let's run through the record. Human rights organizations who
Speaker 4: are the objective observers on these situations. Every single one
Speaker 4: of them, in every subsequent invasion of Gaza, including the
Speaker 4: current one, talk about Israel engaging in massive, indiscriminate bombing
Speaker 4: of civilian areas. They talk about flattening and entire neighborhoods.
Speaker 4: They talk also about deliberately killing civilians who oposed absolutely
Speaker 4: no threat to Israeli soldiers. They go through and describe
Speaker 4: these incidents, they raise them with the Israeli military. The
Speaker 4: real military says, we investigated and we saw that nobody no,
Speaker 4: nothing wrong happened. And human rights organization's assessment of the
Speaker 4: way that Israel conducts itself is that it's completely in
Speaker 4: violation of international law and that their self accountability is
Speaker 4: a complete cham it's not actually serious. And then you
Speaker 4: look at what Israeli leaders themselves also say. And by
Speaker 4: the way, that nine seven to two magazine there was
Speaker 4: an article there is a one that came before it
Speaker 4: as well, in which they described that Israeli's policy in
Speaker 4: Gaza is to basically shock the civilian population by doing
Speaker 4: massive devastation in civilian areas as a means of putting
Speaker 4: pressure on Hamas. And that included an example that they
Speaker 4: listed toppling a high rise residential building without warning on
Speaker 4: top of the people who are inside it. So that's
Speaker 4: and that's yeah, that's based on power targets. Is a
Speaker 4: power target? Yeah, And that's based on interviews with Israeli
Speaker 4: intelligence officers about Israeli policy in Gaza. And it's long
Speaker 4: been stated Israeli policy. Frankly, if you look at people
Speaker 4: like gua Island Israeli general who later became the National
Speaker 4: Security Advisor in Israel, they talk about the policy being
Speaker 4: to punish the civilians and to induce so much suffering
Speaker 4: among them in huge numbers, to put pressure on groups
Speaker 4: like Hamas and Hezbela. And this is not new here,
Speaker 4: by the way. During yeah, during the two thousand and
Speaker 4: six invasion of Lebanon, there is an incident in which
Speaker 4: Israel dropped a million cluster bombs all over towns and
Speaker 4: villages in Lebanon, prompting a high ranking Israeli commander to say, quote,
Speaker 4: this is you can find it on ha Itz. What
Speaker 4: we did was insane and monstrous. We covered entire towns
Speaker 4: and villages with cluster bombs. That's how they describe what
Speaker 4: Israel actually carried out at the time. And then you
Speaker 4: look at current Israeli statements right now from all of this,
Speaker 4: Benjamin Attaniajo has been quoted saying in Israeli press again
Speaker 4: talking about what the strategy is with Ron Drmer, and
Speaker 4: he said, the strategy is to thin the population in
Speaker 4: Gaza down to a minimum.
Speaker 3: That's what he actually wants to do. He uses genocidal
Speaker 3: language like the Amalik, which is a quote from the
Speaker 3: Bible about murdering the children and babies of your animal.
Speaker 2: Like appears out to the hang the idea that is exclusively.
Speaker 4: And you have then Israeli soldiers themselves, so in case
Speaker 4: there's a misinterpretation of that, celebrating that they're going to
Speaker 4: kill Palestinians, Palestinian civilians. They're chanting about the Mlek and
Speaker 4: how we're going to destroy them. And you have people
Speaker 4: who are actually posting videos on themselves talking about we're
Speaker 4: killing them by the tens of thousands.
Speaker 3: Isn't that great?
Speaker 4: So though it's the rhetoric of Israeli soldiers themselves on
Speaker 4: the ground, then they're caught on tape shooting children in
Speaker 4: the head when they post absolutely no threat. It happened
Speaker 4: in Janine, even in the West Bank during this current crisis,
Speaker 4: where he saw two young children being shot in the
Speaker 4: head with basically very obviously posing no threat. You saw
Speaker 4: in Gaza grandmother holding the hand of a young child
Speaker 4: while carrying a white flag, and they shoot her dead
Speaker 4: while the child is holding her hand, and the child
Speaker 4: freaks out and everybody else runs away. You have a
Speaker 4: pattern that is documented on video of these kinds of crimes.
Speaker 4: You have American doctors who visit Gaza and talk about
Speaker 4: the horrors they see in hospital, how there's countless children
Speaker 4: who come in with single sniper bullet wounds to the head.
Speaker 4: They can't keep track of how many of these are
Speaker 4: coming in. And you have the President of the United
Speaker 4: States describing Joe Biden describing Israeli bombings of Gaza as
Speaker 4: in discriminate the idea that you can look at this
Speaker 4: amount of evidence between what human rights organizations are reporting,
Speaker 4: what Israeli leaders are saying, what Israeli soldiers are posting
Speaker 4: of themselves, and what the American government's assessment of that
Speaker 4: bombing is, and to say they're doing everything they can
Speaker 4: to minimize civilian casualties is just so thoroughly dishonest on
Speaker 4: behalf of an apartheid government that is committing atrocities before
Speaker 4: all of us. It's just it's it's mind boggling, Steve.
Speaker 4: You honestly would have to be either naive to believe
Speaker 4: that or dishonest.
Speaker 3: And you just don't strike me as an IV guy.
Speaker 3: You're a very smart guy. I don't understand how you can.
Speaker 2: Actually say its funny because the entire like yep, you
Speaker 2: just did, is completely destroyed by a single question. How
Speaker 2: do you explain the numbers? What I would explain the
Speaker 2: ratio of even what Hamas has claimed, I think, how.
Speaker 4: Many percent women and children? How do you explain that?
Speaker 2: I hold, I'm sorry because for children, we're saying eighteen
Speaker 2: and under as opposed to the traditionally fighting age is
Speaker 2: what we would usually talk about in these conflicts. But
Speaker 2: everything you want bombing is worse than fact that even
Speaker 2: Hamas admitted. I believe that I think it was seventy
Speaker 2: five hundred or eight thousand other people.
Speaker 3: Killed with I don't remember what they're exactly right.
Speaker 5: I have an analysis from March twelve, so this is
Speaker 5: from just Security as of this date, the IDF reported
Speaker 5: twenty nine thousand air strikes in Gaza. At that date,
Speaker 5: the number of reported civilian deaths in Gaza was roughly
Speaker 5: twenty nine thousand, two hundred. The number of Hamas fighters
Speaker 5: killed in action has been claimed by the IDF and Hamas,
Speaker 5: both without evidence. The IDF claims twelve thousand fighters killed well,
Speaker 5: Hamas claims six thousand fighters killed. So we can look
Speaker 5: at those numbers. Given the demographic data from the Health Ministry.
Speaker 5: Out of twenty nine thousand, two hundred deaths, about ninety
Speaker 5: seven hundred were men and the rest were women and children.
Speaker 5: If the IDEAF claim is true, this is equivalent to
Speaker 5: every man being killed in Gaza being a Hummas fighter
Speaker 5: and several thousand women and or children being Hamas fighters.
Speaker 5: This is extremely unlikely, but to be extremely conservative, I
Speaker 5: will use the IDEAF reported Hamas casualty numbers. Twelve thousand.
Speaker 5: You give a lower bound on civilian deaths in Gaza.
Speaker 5: In addition, we need to subtract deaths that normally happened
Speaker 5: for this population, So about forty nine hundred deaths per
Speaker 5: year on average equivalent to about eighteen hundred and four
Speaker 5: point five month period. This gives us a minimum number
Speaker 5: of civilian or deaths of approximately fifteen thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 5: based on twenty nine thousand air strikes. That leads to
Speaker 5: an approximate an average of fifty four civilians killed per
Speaker 5: one hundred attacks.
Speaker 2: And just lastly, this.
Speaker 5: Analysis goes on to say, despite the alarm over the
Speaker 5: high rate of civilian dusts in Raka, one finds the
Speaker 5: minimum equivalent in Gaza, fifty four civilians killed in one
Speaker 5: hundred attacks is eight times greater than the air wars
Speaker 5: based estimate and thirty two times greater than the DoD estimate.
Speaker 5: And recall that that fifty two numbers a lower bound
Speaker 5: for the Gaza ratio is likely far higher than this. So, Stephen,
Speaker 5: do you dispute the validity of those numbers?
Speaker 2: What was the ratio of fighters on the lower bound?
Speaker 2: What was the ratio of fighters to civilians?
Speaker 5: There?
Speaker 3: They say?
Speaker 2: Did I say Hamas claimed six thousand? Yeah? So of
Speaker 2: the death told at that time was how much twenty thousand?
Speaker 2: About nine thousand men total? Say six thousand, And it
Speaker 2: was twenty nine thousand total deaths.
Speaker 5: Twenty thousand, two hundred total deaths ninety seven hundred were men.
Speaker 2: So that's so if you're taking the the that's the
Speaker 2: Hamas reported number, you're at one militant to four civilians,
Speaker 2: and that's for the Hamas reported number. How can the
Speaker 2: ratio be so new or on a genoside can discriminate
Speaker 2: campaign against Thomas? Yes, be the case.
Speaker 3: They're doing it again in slow motion to give possible
Speaker 3: that this is happening. It's obvious. Look, they've destroyed eighty
Speaker 3: percent of the building.
Speaker 4: They have, they've displayed it, they've displayed they've displaced ninety
Speaker 4: percent of the population. Can you name any other conflict
Speaker 4: in which he displays ninety percent of the civilian pop now?
Speaker 2: Because usually they just destroyed them. Do you think it
Speaker 2: dressden they told the civilians to flee. Do you think
Speaker 2: in the Tokyo fire bombs sakihiroshim did with all the
Speaker 2: civilians to leave? Can you can you acknowledge what he
Speaker 2: just was incredibly fucking stupid that No, they don't sell
Speaker 2: civilians to leave first. Normally, they just kill them because.
Speaker 3: Because because he thinks, because he thinks that that's a
Speaker 3: clever line. Let me explain something to you. He's not
Speaker 3: going to I'm going to acknowledge it. I'm going to
Speaker 3: acknowledge it.
Speaker 4: Yes, they told civilians to leave and then they dropped
Speaker 4: massive two thousand bombs on the safe zones that they
Speaker 4: told the civilians.
Speaker 2: Just want to know the feature or whatever.
Speaker 4: There have been countless incidents of them dropping.
Speaker 3: Now you're just flying.
Speaker 2: I looked it up up all the data on all
Speaker 2: the safe zones. Four hours of roads they make safe
Speaker 2: per New York they guarantee travels investigation that attack.
Speaker 4: There's a New York Times investigation and there's an NBC investigation.
Speaker 4: Both of them document the fact that Israel is bombing
Speaker 4: safe zones where they tell civilians to flee.
Speaker 2: And isigation hold on, it is.
Speaker 5: Really committed in CNN that intelligence indication that these places
Speaker 5: were safe houses for commanders of the RAF of a
Speaker 5: brigade of the Hamas Terra organization. This is back in
Speaker 5: December about bombing areas that were supposed to be evacuation routes.
Speaker 2: Evacuation routes are not safe zones. There's been one official
Speaker 2: declared they should shouldn't hams not operate from there? I mean,
Speaker 2: we're talking again, that's a good question. There's one zone
Speaker 2: I wish I could remember is that ow, it's ol
Speaker 2: moah something, it's the beach west of conunits whatever, nobody
Speaker 2: knows of it. It's this is the only singing.
Speaker 1: Told people to go to conunits would be safe there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did not say.
Speaker 2: The cones would be a safe zone. No, that's absolutely
Speaker 2: why they tell people to go there. Well, initially because
Speaker 2: most of the where they concentrate them and kill them there.
Speaker 2: If why else would they say so?
Speaker 5: Then if you're a Palestinian, are we going to see.
Speaker 2: You're going to see twenty thirty forty fifty thousand deaths soon?
Speaker 2: Then are we about to see like one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: Palatines go up to smoke? That's what they're doing. They're
Speaker 2: hurting them all to one, sent the cities so that
Speaker 2: they can blow them all. Reason, they were going for
Speaker 2: pausible deniability. Now you're arning them to one dry kills
Speaker 2: one a blower.
Speaker 4: Yes, And now they're going to tell them that it's
Speaker 4: time to relocate because we're going to invade offa Hansen
Speaker 4: into places where there is no food, water, or shelter
Speaker 4: and have them.
Speaker 2: And they're going to be and then it's starvation and
Speaker 2: death like they happened for the past five months.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's going to be I'm going killing right, killing
Speaker 4: them by the tens of thousands, and saying oops, it's
Speaker 4: just war. Gauz is unlivable anymore. Too bad, it can't
Speaker 4: support Palestinian life. People are starving. It's just all an
Speaker 4: accident that they're giving what.
Speaker 2: They're doing an accident. They're doing it because it's crazy
Speaker 2: that the numbers are so poor for a country that
Speaker 2: could kill so many more people you have, but they're
Speaker 2: constantly they're doing things that no other countries on. Do
Speaker 2: you acknowledge that no other country does leaflets, phone calls
Speaker 2: to buildings, roof knocking, sirens. Yes, you you get it,
Speaker 2: No one, no other countries, human rights organizations. You're not
Speaker 2: going to answer that. Used you see what countries do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean literally interrupted before we went in to
Speaker 3: literally interrupt me to tell me I'm not going to ask.
Speaker 4: You were saying no country has done anything like roof
Speaker 4: knockings and leafless and all that. And when you look
Speaker 4: at what human rights organizations say about these, they say
Speaker 4: they're completely pointless because there's nowhere for these civilians to
Speaker 4: go that is safe.
Speaker 3: So you can drop a leaflet.
Speaker 4: That's it's it's it's a game and right and like
Speaker 4: the fact that people like you fall for it. It's
Speaker 4: it's just kind of really embarrassing you have for the
Speaker 4: wonderful They tell civilians to flee because here we're going
Speaker 4: to be so nice and make sure that you don't die,
Speaker 4: and then when they flee, they kill them as they're fleeing,
Speaker 4: or they kill them.
Speaker 3: Wherever they.
Speaker 2: If you were a Palestinian, what would you do if
Speaker 2: you lived and probably go south to the whatever the
Speaker 2: beach was? I wish the name of it right now,
Speaker 2: but there's there's been one singularly declared safe area, and
Speaker 2: it's that beach.
Speaker 3: How many how many plasons you want a crowd into
Speaker 3: that whatever? That small beach?
Speaker 2: One point?
Speaker 3: How many bathrooms are there? How much water is there?
Speaker 2: If you will thea how about just have Hamas.
Speaker 3: Or is it just the top bombing gus to stop
Speaker 3: attacking enemy.
Speaker 2: That committed the largest terror attack per capital of the
Speaker 2: history of industry.
Speaker 3: It's a ridiculous double standard.
Speaker 2: Way hold on, you think it's reasonable to tell Israel, hey, Hamas,
Speaker 2: I know that you guys like did a little bit
Speaker 2: of a large terrorism against US and have been, by
Speaker 2: the way, which is a violation of international law, indiscriminately
Speaker 2: launching rockets for decades from this and every single one
Speaker 2: of those is a violation of law because by definition indiscriminate,
Speaker 2: which by definition fail the distinction principle that is essential
Speaker 2: to law, are on conflict one of the three problems.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that Israel needs to allow Hamas to
Speaker 2: stay there, who has been breaking international law of our
Speaker 2: conflict are.
Speaker 4: Twenty years as opposed to Hamas along with the Israeli
Speaker 4: government to stay there when they're breaking international law for
Speaker 4: even longer than that.
Speaker 3: And I want to put a fine, honestly, I want
Speaker 3: to get an answer to that. Why is it that
Speaker 3: you think that the Israeli government having committed all the atrocities.
Speaker 2: Because the Israeli government is a democracy that can be
Speaker 2: reasoned with. Their neighbors have reasoned with them, people have
Speaker 2: signed peace agreements, and people have reached agreements with them.
Speaker 2: The Palestinians have not. And there's a reason, by the way,
Speaker 2: which you will never recognize, why all of the surrounding
Speaker 2: Arab states have abandoned the Palestinians too, Because their history
Speaker 2: has been one of violence that first they've been encouraged
Speaker 2: by the surrounding nations and used by them, and then
Speaker 2: now they've been abandoned. What's the other nations?
Speaker 3: That's a racist anti Palestinians?
Speaker 2: What happened to seventies Jordan fifty two? Jerusal to go
Speaker 2: to work with the reason he's a racist?
Speaker 4: Yes, when he talks about Palestinians, nobody likes them and
Speaker 4: nobody wants them and nobody whatever.
Speaker 3: Absolutely that's a racist description. Don't this this this distinction
Speaker 3: between like there's a category of people who are racist
Speaker 3: category of people who are not.
Speaker 4: I think that's a simplistic thing. What he just described
Speaker 4: is a racist stereotype. There're absolutely no question.
Speaker 3: I don't want to I don't.
Speaker 2: Want to get them to who he is. To a
Speaker 2: lot of people that are pro Palestinian, understand the history
Speaker 2: is if.
Speaker 4: You don't understand that the Egyptian dictatorship is collaborating with
Speaker 4: Israel to suppress anything that is Muslim Brotherhood affiliated. And
Speaker 4: that's why the reason they're collaborating against the.
Speaker 2: Are collaborating with the with the Israeli government. When they
Speaker 2: locked all the Gozzins and the Gouzens, strip and didn't
Speaker 2: let any of them leave.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, yeah, Steve, you do this thing constantly where
Speaker 4: you bring up random anecdotes that are completely irrelevant to
Speaker 4: anything that what I'm too.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to you. The reason why that wasn't random
Speaker 2: is because you applied today that the dictatorship in Egypt.
Speaker 2: First of all, you said dictatorship very loaded. Yes, Egypt's
Speaker 2: had a history of dictatorships. You're implying that they're collaborated
Speaker 2: with Israel and a part of unique act, like they're
Speaker 2: collaborating with his own unique way. And even from forty
Speaker 2: eight to sixty seven, when Egypt had controlled the Gaza Strip,
Speaker 2: the Palestines were still locked in.
Speaker 4: And let's be clear about whether we're about something or
Speaker 4: let me be clear about something right now. This rhetoric,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna let it go for now. The idea is
Speaker 4: looking at all the Arabs surrounding our government who are
Speaker 4: collaborating with Israel. It's signed that they hate Palestinians. When
Speaker 4: you do opinion polling in any of these countries, all
Speaker 4: of them, including in Saudi Arabia, the overwhelming majority of
Speaker 4: the population wants to cut off any talk. They want
Speaker 4: to isolate Israel diplomatically. They don't want to deal with them.
Speaker 4: The people of the region absolutely oppose what Israel is
Speaker 4: doing to Palestinians. And the fact that you can cite
Speaker 4: a handful of governments in the surrounding area who all
Speaker 4: effectively belonged to the US orbit and operate under and
Speaker 4: get tremendous privilege and financial privilege and security privilege for
Speaker 4: collaborating with the United States, and to try to paint
Speaker 4: that as some sort of validation that they have anti
Speaker 4: Palestinian sentiment, I think it is completely ridiculous and ignorant
Speaker 4: of the dynamics that actually exist in the region, a
Speaker 4: region that I grew up in.
Speaker 3: By the way, what you have I.
Speaker 4: Grew up in Kuwait, Jordan, Yemen, Oman and the United
Speaker 4: Arab Emirates, and I visited Palestine on multiple occasions.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, you grew up equated in what years? Was that
Speaker 2: when Arafat was supporting I was Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 3: I was born in Kuwait in nineteen eighty two, when
Speaker 3: I lived there until that war, and yes, when Arafat
Speaker 3: made statements in support of Saddam Hussein, that became the
Speaker 3: reason why many Palestinians could not go back, which was.
Speaker 2: A really big deal too, which is also funny because
Speaker 2: those Oslo course would point to Israel not being a
Speaker 2: good part of for peace. The only reason why those
Speaker 2: Oslo courts were so horrible is because Arafat was desperately
Speaker 2: looking for a way back into Palestinian popularity after supporting
Speaker 2: speaking of Oslo.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you know what was also happening, And the
Speaker 3: reason why Oslo happened is because while Arafat was looking
Speaker 3: for a way to get validation as the leader of
Speaker 3: Palestinians and come back, Israel was dealing with the fact
Speaker 3: that there is a Palestine uprising, the first into Fada
Speaker 3: overwhelmingly non violent, in which Palestinians were doing civil disobedience,
Speaker 3: sometimes throwing rocks at soldiers, and Israel was brutalizing them
Speaker 3: for a year after year after there were they killed
Speaker 3: so many of them that the Israeli officials started being
Speaker 3: concerned about the the optics of it, so they just said,
Speaker 3: don't kill them, beat them up and break their arms instead.
Speaker 3: And what you ended up with, and what you ended
Speaker 3: up with, you have to let me finish my thought
Speaker 3: every now and then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what you ended up with murder the children.
Speaker 2: Understand we gain.
Speaker 4: They started beating up Palestinian protesters and seeing them brutalizing
Speaker 4: them and breaking their bones on video, and that ended
Speaker 4: up being an even.
Speaker 3: Bigger disaster for Israel.
Speaker 4: And they did not know what to do with that
Speaker 4: civil uprising of people who wanted to be free from occupation,
Speaker 4: and so they struck a deal with Arafat and brought
Speaker 4: him in to suppress the Intafada on the fake and
Speaker 4: false promise that they might grant Palestinians estate. Arafat fell
Speaker 4: for it, and it was all a sham made to
Speaker 4: suck the energy out of a genuine Palatinian uprising for
Speaker 4: freedom and to turn it into the fraudulent Oslo process
Speaker 4: in which Israel had cover to expand more and more
Speaker 4: settlements and entrench the occupation under the pretensive peace.
Speaker 3: That's the history of what happened.
Speaker 5: So what could Israel have done after October seventh that
Speaker 5: would have been and I don't want to ump you
Speaker 5: into this camp. Some people said, it's about proportionality. What
Speaker 5: could Israel have done after October seventh that would have
Speaker 5: either been proportional or given some of the legitimate points
Speaker 5: that Stephen made about a densely populated area where you
Speaker 5: have a military and a civilian population crowded into hospitals,
Speaker 5: et cetera. What could Israel have done? What should they
Speaker 5: have done after October seventh?
Speaker 4: That would have been a just response, And I promised
Speaker 4: I'll address that directly, but just on the context that
Speaker 4: you just described before that you have a situation in
Speaker 4: which there is it's impossible to have a situation which
Speaker 4: HAMSS is fighting not in civilian areas. I mean when
Speaker 4: you talk about the difference in power. One side has
Speaker 4: a full fledged military, as air force has tanks, Hams
Speaker 4: can just go out in the field and confront them directly.
Speaker 3: So they do so, they do, so they do. Thank you.
Speaker 4: You'd have to let me finish my sentence right now,
Speaker 4: and then Steven seriously, like judge try, in the words
Speaker 4: of Norman Ficklestein tried to have the self possession to
Speaker 4: just listen.
Speaker 2: A little bit more and then a style of norm
Speaker 2: be wrong of it everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have a situation in which the balance of
Speaker 4: power makes it so that those militants have to effectively
Speaker 4: use guerrilla tactics, and grilla tactics involve hiding in civilian areas.
Speaker 4: That's how that actually that happens. And if you're really
Speaker 4: upset about that and you think that that's a real
Speaker 4: problem by all means, arm hamasked, the way you arm
Speaker 4: Israel and then they can have military on military war
Speaker 4: and we can spare the Palestine and civilians if you
Speaker 4: think that's really what's the underlying motivation. But of course
Speaker 4: nobody would ever consider that we only armed the criminals
Speaker 4: on one side with massive armaments. Now, on the question
Speaker 4: of what Israel should have done, there's two separate questions
Speaker 4: that often get conflated. There's the question of is it
Speaker 4: a just war to begin with, and then there's the
Speaker 4: question of proportion.
Speaker 3: And you can imagine if people in Gaza were free
Speaker 3: and Israel was not controlling their lives and deciding how
Speaker 3: much food they get to eat and whether they can
Speaker 3: go and come back, and then some kind of attack happened,
Speaker 3: you might expect some kind of Israeli retaliation, and and
Speaker 3: then the only conversation would be about propersonality.
Speaker 4: Are they doing it in a way that is that
Speaker 4: is defensible, and what they're currently doing is I'm obviously
Speaker 4: not defensible, to be devastating the civilian population in order
Speaker 4: to thin that population, by the words of the Israel's
Speaker 4: leader right now.
Speaker 2: But there's which is it comes from the red line.
Speaker 4: It comes from Israeli press reporting on internal strategic conversations.
Speaker 4: So yes is really yes israelly media anxiety when.
Speaker 2: Then the population has always had a calorie surplus, even
Speaker 2: even the diets they literally have. That's why when the
Speaker 2: famine started, when all the people were moved, I believe
Speaker 2: it was Unra that made the statement that this is
Speaker 2: a region that.
Speaker 3: Is super experienced before.
Speaker 2: That's that's also why things got mad because if you
Speaker 2: really wait, these people are starving by what metric?
Speaker 3: That's fine.
Speaker 4: That's what's so infuriating, Stephen, is that you want to
Speaker 4: start counting calories and try to discover whether they have
Speaker 4: a surplus or or not, when you're missing the fact
Speaker 4: that Israel getting to decide what food gets into gaza
Speaker 4: is itself outrageous. One people does not get to control
Speaker 4: whether another side gets to have cookies for their children
Speaker 4: and you know, potato chips or sodas.
Speaker 3: You don't get to do that. That's the level dominant unacceptable.
Speaker 2: But you're not capable of having it because you won't
Speaker 2: even admit why the blockade exists, so you don't even
Speaker 2: deserve to be in.
Speaker 5: What do you want?
Speaker 2: I want to why DoD, Why is the Gaza? Why
Speaker 2: is our blockade and Gaza?
Speaker 4: When you look at the fact that Israel's preventing cookies
Speaker 4: from going into Gaza, you know that it's not cookies
Speaker 4: going in and the rockets filled with Yeah.
Speaker 2: With cookies, Yeah, with sugar and fertilizer.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's how they're going to deny Palestinians and Gaza
Speaker 4: sugar because it might.
Speaker 2: Be used, you know, back in because he's not I know,
Speaker 2: how to be clear another time, another thing, you're not
Speaker 2: gonna admit. You know, why does the blockade exist? It's
Speaker 2: literally just because you know.
Speaker 3: Mass spiders breathe air too. Maybe Israel can restrict air
Speaker 3: from going into Gaza to make.
Speaker 5: Sure that are He's saying, then the burdens should be
Speaker 5: on not to use Palistines have no agency is the
Speaker 5: language of the You.
Speaker 2: Don't they can't help.
Speaker 3: Don't punish the civilian racist to get that military ones.
Speaker 3: You don't punish civilian population criminately.
Speaker 2: Shooting ten of thousands of rockets decade after decade into
Speaker 2: Israel like, what does population like like like selling some
Speaker 2: of the humanitarian food? Population just want to make picking
Speaker 2: up tunnels of water pipes and using them to fashion rockets,
Speaker 2: want to all the international Steve did you? Did you, Stephen?
Speaker 2: Did you say that Hamas is turning cookies into missiles?
Speaker 2: I understand the reason for the the reason for the
Speaker 2: restricting sugar based products was that the first generation, I
Speaker 2: think there were all cassive rockets were built in really
Speaker 2: crude shops, using combinations of fertilizer and sugars that they
Speaker 2: would use.
Speaker 1: You know what the primary component of Hamas, What Hamas
Speaker 1: explosives is now? I think I'm pretty sure now they
Speaker 1: use more sophisticated stuff, but unexploded Israeli bombs, because they've
Speaker 1: dropped so many over the last decade.
Speaker 2: I doubt that's true. I'm sure they do.
Speaker 1: With a ten to twenty percent failure rate. Hamas then
Speaker 1: digs them up that you've seen one O five's that
Speaker 1: that you see, uh, you know, blowing up.
Speaker 2: All these Israeli tanks primarily fled, but I doubt the
Speaker 2: majority of them all.
Speaker 3: There's just more so than.
Speaker 2: Cookies tell you to tell you why it exists.
Speaker 4: I'm going to tell you why the block it exists,
Speaker 4: and the reason, by the way, why it includes banning
Speaker 4: cookies and soda pop.
Speaker 2: And potato chips going into the gun.
Speaker 4: No, I'm sure it's it's very funny denying children the
Speaker 4: ability to eat chocolates and toys because they are Palestinie
Speaker 4: and not Israeli. That's just so incredibly, incredibly trivial, incredibly
Speaker 4: the emotional and potatoes.
Speaker 2: It's working just we're two more virtuary signals away. You're free.
Speaker 2: Palestinian people keep doing this.
Speaker 3: It's you trivializing. If it was the other way around.
Speaker 4: If Hamas was imposing a siege on Israel, which is
Speaker 4: really children not allowed to do any of that stuff,
Speaker 4: you would not be sitting here making making a lot
Speaker 4: of it. It would not be trivial to you, because
Speaker 4: you understand that Israelis are human beings and their children
Speaker 4: deserve to eat potatoes, potato chips.
Speaker 3: Jewish people.
Speaker 2: Jewish people live in Arab countries around the world, don't
Speaker 2: they about the knock the expulsion of live in the
Speaker 2: West Bank after forty Thank you for the deflection, and
Speaker 2: I understand.
Speaker 5: You're you're answer about why the blockade exists.
Speaker 2: He's not He's got to do the fiftytography.
Speaker 3: Blockade exists. Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Okay, the blockade exists because they want to punish the
Speaker 4: civilian population in Gaza as an putting pressure on Hamas
Speaker 4: they're saying, as long as we have a government in
Speaker 4: Gaza that does not play ball with Israel the way
Speaker 4: the Palestine and authority plays ball with Israel on the
Speaker 4: West Bank, the civilian population is going to suffer as
Speaker 4: a means of putting pressure on them and getting somebody
Speaker 4: else to be in power.
Speaker 3: The evidence for that is overwhelming.
Speaker 4: Children's toys were not allowed in at the beginning of
Speaker 4: the blockade, and when Israel came under intense pressure under
Speaker 4: the flotilla after the flotilla incident, a bunch of activists
Speaker 4: tried to basically force medicines to be delivered into the.
Speaker 2: Flotilla incident, there were two of five of the ships
Speaker 2: were empty, and they were aggressive ships that were designed
Speaker 2: to fight against the IDEF. When they landed, you realize
Speaker 2: that footage is available and there's one hundred some people
Speaker 2: on the deck with chairs throwing Israeli soldiers overboard. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and when they shift weapons at everything too shift weapons
Speaker 2: y yeah, I know, well that was all they could
Speaker 2: bring from Turkey with them, I guess because they were
Speaker 2: inspecting the boats. But yeah, those were not peaceful activist ships.
Speaker 2: And how the words if you open more than a
Speaker 2: Figglestein book and read what actually happened, or watch any
Speaker 2: of the footage, actually actually they were the part of
Speaker 2: the fighters or were they Listen to yourself, listen listeners
Speaker 2: of what you can watch the videos.
Speaker 3: There are people who, yes, fought back when Israel bordered
Speaker 3: their ship in an act of piracy in international water border.
Speaker 3: The ship because they don't watch gets to god, there
Speaker 3: you go.
Speaker 2: Because there's a blockade because they announced.
Speaker 3: Don't you need to announce.
Speaker 4: They don't get to impose that blockade. Absolutely, do no
Speaker 4: more than Hamaskis to impose a blockade on Israel.
Speaker 3: This is ridiculous. Of course, they don't get to decide
Speaker 3: what ships could get.
Speaker 5: To go on.
Speaker 2: By the here he's saying that the blockade exists because
Speaker 2: the Thews are evil to their intentionally.
Speaker 4: That's a despicable thing to say. And not say anything
Speaker 4: about Jews. I'm talking about the Israeli government policy.
Speaker 2: You can't I'm curious. And the second were submersibles or
Speaker 2: weapons brought in via that via the water into the
Speaker 2: Gaza Strip. That happened.
Speaker 3: What are you talking say that, We're talking their weapons.
Speaker 2: That were shipped into the Gaza Strip via the Mediterranean and.
Speaker 3: Plenty of weapons were shipped into Israel as well.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 5: So there was so there is it.
Speaker 2: The egypt has been a partner with Israel in that
Speaker 2: block this inception as well.
Speaker 3: I've already explained to you why the Egyptian government is
Speaker 3: interested in for twenty.
Speaker 2: Years, they've just been okay, okay, everybody is a this
Speaker 2: is This is consistent at least with the history that
Speaker 2: everybody is collaborators with the West and the world, according
Speaker 2: to the Egyptian dictators. Everybody.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 4: Also, I just want to say something. I just honestly,
Speaker 4: there's one thing that I think is really really important. This,
Speaker 4: you know, just saying the Jews are evil. It's such
Speaker 4: a despicable line. And let me explain why anti Semitism
Speaker 4: is a very very serious and rising problem in the country,
Speaker 4: in many other places around the world, and especially in
Speaker 4: the Trump years, we've seen these shootings that have happened
Speaker 4: at synagogues, and everything like that, and you have a
Speaker 4: situation in which Israel's defenders constantly try to conflate those things.
Speaker 4: Is that you ignore the fact that there is a
Speaker 4: significant portion of the progressive young American Jewish population that
Speaker 4: is opposed to Israeli policies. And every time you criticize
Speaker 4: Israeli policy, people say, oh, you're attacking.
Speaker 3: Jews, And that's exactly what you just did.
Speaker 4: And it's not just harmful to people like me who
Speaker 4: get smeared by that accusation, completely baseless and really ugly
Speaker 4: and detestable, but it's also yeah.
Speaker 3: Of Omar, thank you, thank thank you, thank you for that.
Speaker 3: That's wonderful seculation.
Speaker 4: But it's also actually harmful to Jewish communities themselves that
Speaker 4: are trying to protect themselves from anti Semitism. To constantly
Speaker 4: trivialize that charge that you throw it around at anybody
Speaker 4: who is critical of Israeli policy, anybody who thinks that
Speaker 4: Palophonians are human.
Speaker 3: Beings who deserve to have rights. You water that charge
Speaker 3: down so much when you love it all around that
Speaker 3: real anti Semites get more room to breathe and operate
Speaker 3: because that charge doesn't mean anything. So even if you
Speaker 3: enjoy smearing people like me and people who defend Palophonians,
Speaker 3: that's fine. But if you have any part of you
Speaker 3: that actually cares about Jewish people in this country, I
Speaker 3: would strongly advise you to stop throwing that smear around
Speaker 3: at people, because okay, I'll.
Speaker 2: Do my virtual signs situated yours. I gotta ask an
Speaker 2: interesting question on my way up here from the is
Speaker 2: It Max Mac producer Mac not or Not? Max Mac
Speaker 2: ask me why I was so interested in this conflict.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that I think is so
Speaker 2: sad is I think of all the things that I've
Speaker 2: ever looked at my entire life, this is one where
Speaker 2: you can pick and choose facts from one side and
Speaker 2: you can build the most compelling anti Palestinian argument, or
Speaker 2: you can build the most compelling anti Israeli argument. And
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever seen anything where you can
Speaker 2: have such a one sided telling of the history as
Speaker 2: I have for this particular conflict. I think the really
Speaker 2: sad thing here is that I think that there are
Speaker 2: really good criticisms that can be made of Israel. I
Speaker 2: think they're really good criticism you can make of their
Speaker 2: past policy. And I think that the story of the
Speaker 2: Palestinian is an incredibly empathetic one. I think that there
Speaker 2: are reasons why you could support violence in forty seven,
Speaker 2: violence in forty eight, wars in sixty seven. I think
Speaker 2: you can support all of these things from a really
Speaker 2: empathetic understanding place. But the issue is that both sides
Speaker 2: are so invested in telling their story and making money
Speaker 2: and making videos and making whatever off of their particular
Speaker 2: side of things that you never will ever, ever, ever
Speaker 2: ever have that conversation. So, for instance, this is why
Speaker 2: identifying root causes is so important when we talk about
Speaker 2: the blockade. The blockade exists because during the set into Fada,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of weaponry that came in to
Speaker 2: Gaza from the Mediterranean and from Egypt. This is a
Speaker 2: problem that Egypt recognized, the problem that Israel recognized. That's
Speaker 2: why the blockade existed. Especially after the Palestinian authority was
Speaker 2: not able to bring Hamas under control and Hamas gain
Speaker 2: control of that region, Israel said, well, fuck this, We're going.
Speaker 3: To one point. I don't want to drupt you. Just
Speaker 3: there's one thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So when before the flotilla incident, they were not
Speaker 4: allowing certain food items from going in and children's toys.
Speaker 2: There's two thousand and eight, righteh, we're talking about right, yeah.
Speaker 3: But I want you to explain to me.
Speaker 4: And then after that incident that Israel came under pressure,
Speaker 4: they started allowing a little bit more humanitarian stuff to
Speaker 4: go into Gaza.
Speaker 3: Is that because Hamas stopped being a threat to Israel?
Speaker 4: Or is that because those humanitarian goods are actually not
Speaker 4: a threat and Israel did not give a shit about
Speaker 4: them anyway, apart from wanting to punish them.
Speaker 2: My guess would be is probably because the Israeli restrictions
Speaker 2: were too much, and they probably could have calmed the
Speaker 2: fuck down. Right now, Israel is in the position that
Speaker 2: it's in because Israel thinks that they can maintain an
Speaker 2: indefinite status quo and more or less slowly annexed the
Speaker 2: West Bank. That's Israel's goal. The problem with this conflict
Speaker 2: has always been that Israel wants to fight forever, because
Speaker 2: the longer they fight, the more of the West Bank
Speaker 2: they get to annex. The only reason the Abraham Accords
Speaker 2: happened was because it was to stave off annexation of
Speaker 2: the West Bank. And the problem is that while Israel
Speaker 2: wants to continue fighting to gain more and more. People
Speaker 2: like you have deluded Palestinians. Anything that they fight, they
Speaker 2: can gain more and more too. Only one side, only
Speaker 2: one side of Paliestate. Whatever that means, Okay, only one
Speaker 2: side in its conflict.
Speaker 3: What does it mean to you Palestinian?
Speaker 2: There are a lot of people became Palestinian after we're
Speaker 2: depending on what the conflict is. So I don't know
Speaker 2: what that means. I don't really care that much. The
Speaker 2: idea that the idea that both sides can continue to
Speaker 2: fight only serves one side, and that's the Israeli side.
Speaker 2: The longer the Palestinians continue to fight, the more the
Speaker 2: Israels is going to get because the reality is is
Speaker 2: the Arab states around them are bored. They don't want
Speaker 2: to fight. The leadership doesn't want to fight anymore, not
Speaker 2: going to they did at one point, which is I
Speaker 2: think the most tragic thing is that Palestinians were a
Speaker 2: tool of the surrounding Arab states to fight with Israel.
Speaker 2: And that's the most they ever cared about. Why, that's why,
Speaker 2: that's why if you go to these surrounding countries and
Speaker 2: you ask, that's crazy. There are so many Palestinian refugees here,
Speaker 2: I wonder why they don't like takingny of them in
Speaker 2: as like actual citizens. And the reason why is because
Speaker 2: in the Arab States you're not allowed to. They don't
Speaker 2: give citizenship to those people because they use them as
Speaker 2: a tool to fight with Israel, and that's why they're
Speaker 2: not even allowed to do it. They're banned from actually
Speaker 2: giving citizenship to end these palatina. So even the whole
Speaker 2: refugee crisis is inflated more than it should be. But
Speaker 2: the issue is that when you look at these sides
Speaker 2: and you go to criticize the policies, Okay, I bring
Speaker 2: it back to the blockade. That blockade existed because weapons
Speaker 2: were coming in to the Gaza Strip via the ocean,
Speaker 2: via the land routes. So if that's the reason why
Speaker 2: the blockade came in here is I think that you
Speaker 2: can make an incredibly powerful argument that listen net and Yahoo.
Speaker 2: If you want to destroy Hamas, that's fine, but one
Speaker 2: of the conditions of eliminating Hamas has to be the
Speaker 2: lifting of the blockade, because with Hamas gone, your justification
Speaker 2: for the blockade is completely and totally non existent in
Speaker 2: my world. In your world, the blockade never leaves because
Speaker 2: the only reason is there is to punish Palestine citizens.
Speaker 2: So if you're constantly screaming in a government, hey you
Speaker 2: need to take this blockade away because you just hate
Speaker 2: Palestinian people, why would they never remove it. There's absolutely
Speaker 2: no desire to. There's no reason to. Why would they.
Speaker 2: But if the argument is, well, we said that the
Speaker 2: blockade existed because weapons were going into a hostile administration. Well,
Speaker 2: now that that hostile administration has gone and we allowed
Speaker 2: you to remove it at great cost both to infrastructure
Speaker 2: and civilian life, Well now we can say, hey, they're gone,
Speaker 2: you have to lift the blockade. Now there's no justification
Speaker 2: for it. So we have a real analysis of what's
Speaker 2: going on, we can levy legitimate criticisms, and we can
Speaker 2: look for legitimate solutions. But if the arguments are delusional,
Speaker 2: that Israel is here indiscriminately murdering tons of people because
Speaker 2: they're evil, or because they hate Jews, or or they
Speaker 2: hate Palestinians or hate Arabs or whatever, or they're racist
Speaker 2: or is homophobic, there's no solution to be had because
Speaker 2: because in your world, the hatred runs so degres it's intractable.
Speaker 5: Crystal's look stick just full over.
Speaker 2: That's always really fanny.
Speaker 4: So this is it's funny some bits of that narrative.
Speaker 4: Actually we're kind of like close to reality. But just
Speaker 4: let me let me fix a couple of things for you.
Speaker 4: First of all, if you're saying that a precondition for
Speaker 4: lifting the seed is that Hamass has to not be
Speaker 4: in power anymore, you have that backwards. The occupation of
Speaker 4: Gaza existed before Hamas was created. The occupation created Hamass.
Speaker 2: Wait when the blockade wasn't since the occupation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the occupation is felthy to and they
Speaker 3: replaced the occupation with the siege. That's what they did.
Speaker 2: And the blanket started like two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: Yes, so they withdrew.
Speaker 2: It's been occupied since forty eight.
Speaker 3: It remains exactly.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: Gaza has been occupied since nineteen sixty seven, nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 3: What are you talking about? Israel took over Gaza nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty seven.
Speaker 2: Who took over in nineteen forty eight? The Egyptians did, Yes,
Speaker 2: so it was occupied by the Egyptians.
Speaker 3: This okay, See this is the I know you don't
Speaker 3: like to talk about.
Speaker 2: That because it's not convenient, but that's true. It wasn't
Speaker 2: a Palestinian state, right, who cares? The point is who
Speaker 2: cares the Palestinians where they had a fake government for
Speaker 2: one year that was recalled to Cairo and immediately let
Speaker 2: they became a training bard for Fettiyi.
Speaker 4: Let me, let me then call for an end to
Speaker 4: the Egyptian occupation of Gaza to oh wait, it ended great.
Speaker 4: So now let's talk about the Israeli occupation of Gaza.
Speaker 4: It started in nineteen sixty seven, it has continued, and
Speaker 4: all Israel did is withdraw settlers out of Gaza and
Speaker 4: replace that settlers on the ground with an occupation from
Speaker 4: the outside. That's why nearly every international organization still considers
Speaker 4: Gaza occupied, even after they with drew settlers then placed
Speaker 4: it under occupation, according to just about every UN agency
Speaker 4: that you just the list goes on in human rights
Speaker 4: organizations as well. And so the idea then that you
Speaker 4: need something to change and that Israel would lift the
Speaker 4: siege in Gaza. Frankly, if Nataniahu Caven said to Hamas,
Speaker 4: if you agree to no longer be in power, We're
Speaker 4: gonna let Gaza be completely. You can have an airport,
Speaker 4: it can have a seaport, you can just like have
Speaker 4: the population live. I suspect Hamas might actually be up
Speaker 4: for that. In fact, they would consider it a feather
Speaker 4: on their cap. They can say, see, we've delivered something
Speaker 4: for you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, but they won't even go to a permanent ceasefire.
Speaker 4: What would you think that it's changed for Israel ending
Speaker 4: the devastation of Gaza there they've offered it a million
Speaker 4: times to release all thestages. Yeah, it's it's it's they've
Speaker 4: offered it repeatedly, and it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2: It'll me to be clear, you're saying that if Israel
Speaker 2: said they would end the blockade, that Hamas would step
Speaker 2: down if.
Speaker 4: They were to leave Gaza. Absolutely, I think that I
Speaker 4: would actually.
Speaker 2: Are you sure that? Are you sure that the claim
Speaker 2: isn't that they need to have a ten year truce
Speaker 2: or that they need to recognize a two states.
Speaker 4: This is them as a governing body early on, when
Speaker 4: they were signaling that they're actually interested in in in moderating.
Speaker 2: Two thousands. This was before they attempted to coop a
Speaker 2: boss's palastinia to throw the pill in the West Bank,
Speaker 2: before the attempted coup.
Speaker 3: You don't know what you're talking about. It's so incredible.
Speaker 4: There was an attempt actually a driving Hamas out of
Speaker 4: power that they then flipped and pushed the Palistina and
Speaker 4: authority out as part of a plot that is documented.
Speaker 3: I think it was vanity fair.
Speaker 2: That's true. But you're talking about two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: and they were there was going to be internet sport
Speaker 2: for tod yes to the Palastini thirt to the West
Speaker 2: Bank a few years later when they right after they
Speaker 2: announced their unity.
Speaker 3: It's great that you've done some reading and you can
Speaker 3: throw out random factoids, but please.
Speaker 2: It sucks with the history, Like please try to listen
Speaker 2: to what I'm saying to you so you can actually understand.
Speaker 2: I'm broken bones.
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, I'm not.
Speaker 5: I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to throw up random facts that I've read.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to explain something to you, and I really
Speaker 4: hope they would actually just make an effort to.
Speaker 3: Listen to what I'm describing.
Speaker 4: There was an effort by Hamas at the time to
Speaker 4: try to moderate and how that Micheald wrote a piece
Speaker 4: in the Washington Post here in the US talking about how,
Speaker 4: you know, we don't like the idea of a two
Speaker 4: state solution. But if we put it to our friend
Speaker 4: themnt Palestinian want it, will accept it and whatever. There's
Speaker 4: all kinds of stuff signs. And what Israel did is
Speaker 4: put a suffocating blockade on Gaza and said you have
Speaker 4: to denounce renounced violence.
Speaker 3: Even though Israel does not renounce violence.
Speaker 4: They said, you have to recognize Israel even though Israel
Speaker 4: does not recognize Palestine. And they said you have to
Speaker 4: stick by all previous agreements, even though Israel was obviously
Speaker 4: not sticking to any agreements they had made with Palestinians
Speaker 4: in terms of just clearly entrenching the occupation left and
Speaker 4: right at every opportunity. And so Hamas said, no, those
Speaker 4: are not acceptable demands, and that's how we ended up
Speaker 4: being stuck in this situation where Hamas's refusal to accept
Speaker 4: whatever Israel wants to meet out to them is the
Speaker 4: reason why that blockade got entrenched and intensed and became
Speaker 4: more and more punishing as a means of trying to
Speaker 4: place more political pressure on Hamas, and the idea that
Speaker 4: now if only Hamas would agree to X y Z,
Speaker 4: then everything would be great in Gaza.
Speaker 3: There's just no reason to believe that because the occupation
Speaker 3: and what Israeli military officials and security officials and political
Speaker 3: officials were talking about when they actually withdrew Gaza was
Speaker 3: very transparently a plot to deny Palestinian statehood. That they're
Speaker 3: saying this is a strategic move that will be useful
Speaker 3: for them.
Speaker 1: Said, you said as much as yourself that the Israel's
Speaker 1: goal is to prolong the conflict so they can continue
Speaker 1: to and.
Speaker 3: So he's right about that.
Speaker 5: Well, so what are acceptable terms now? I mean, there
Speaker 5: are ongoing negotiations happening right now. What should acceptable terms be.
Speaker 2: Right for the end of the conflict or for the
Speaker 2: actual resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, for the end
Speaker 2: of the conflict. For this one, Hamas has to go.
Speaker 2: Ideally the hostages would come back, but I don't even
Speaker 2: know if we know how many are alive at this point.
Speaker 2: I think that Israel initially wanted forty and now they
Speaker 2: I think turned it down to thirty three because they
Speaker 2: don't think they're enough alive that even meet the conditions
Speaker 2: that they have. But yeah, Hamas needs to go. I
Speaker 2: imagine my understanding is Israel still wants to go into
Speaker 2: Rafa right. I think they've They've reiterated as much I supported.
Speaker 2: I think Hamas needs to go. I think that's hopefully
Speaker 2: they do it without great costs of simay in life.
Speaker 2: But I think, yeah, Hamas has to leave. But I
Speaker 2: would hope that after Hamas has gone, I think that
Speaker 2: Israel has to change their approach to the area. I
Speaker 2: think that Israel right now is on the verge of
Speaker 2: a very strange existential threat where they're getting consumed by
Speaker 2: their own I don't know if I would say fear
Speaker 2: or just they need to In the early history of Israel,
Speaker 2: the reason why Israel was able to thrive so much
Speaker 2: and make friends of the West and win wars against
Speaker 2: the warring Arab states is because they had two arms
Speaker 2: of military and diplomacy that they wielded both incredibly effectively.
Speaker 2: Israe was one of the first nations to identify the
Speaker 2: United States as an important emerging power and to try
Speaker 2: to win favor with them, like they did a lot
Speaker 2: diplomatically and a lot militarily. But I think ever since
Speaker 2: peace with Egypt, Jordan, the abram I think that Israel
Speaker 2: is just like now, they don't care. They're just going
Speaker 2: to try to maintain a status quo indefinitely because on
Speaker 2: a military level, they're really not threatened anymore. They pretend
Speaker 2: that it's always an existential threat when it comes to conflict,
Speaker 2: but that's not true. Has Belah, the Huthis and everybody
Speaker 2: in the Gossa Strip can invade all at once and
Speaker 2: Israel in battom away. It's not a huge deal. The
Speaker 2: existential threat I think that Israel phases now is a
Speaker 2: political one, is a diplomatic one because of the situation.
Speaker 2: The status quo is not tenable and the conditions are
Speaker 2: not to Mber seventh were entirely I don't want to
Speaker 2: say like completely foreseeable, but like, what do you think
Speaker 2: is going to happen if you're continuing this status quo
Speaker 2: over and over and over again. And then the really
Speaker 2: funny thing is we talk about we're so obsessed with
Speaker 2: the They're trying to ethically cleanse the Gazza Strip. They
Speaker 2: want to kick Palestiness out of count Jews don't care
Speaker 2: about the Gaza Strip. They want to kick people out
Speaker 2: of Judereica, Juda and Samaria. That's what you just really
Speaker 2: care about. It's that encroachment into the West Bank and
Speaker 2: we're not even talking about that anymore because everybody thinks
Speaker 2: that apparently they want to put settlements back on the
Speaker 2: Gaza Strip, which historically Israel's never even cared about. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean Hamas has to go. I would hope that
Speaker 2: the blockade and the conditions are lessened there, but there
Speaker 2: has to be huge pressure on Israel and the Palestinians.
Speaker 2: There has to be huge pressure on both sides to
Speaker 2: reach some peaceful, long term agreement because until that happens,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just going to happen over and over
Speaker 2: and over again. It's in nobody's surprise.
Speaker 4: So just when we speak about hostages, I think it's
Speaker 4: important to note that Israel rounded up tens of thousands
Speaker 4: of Palestinians, at least thousands, I don't want to say
Speaker 4: to tens of thousands, but thousands of them after October seven.
Speaker 4: They are being brutalized in Israeli detention facilities. Dozens of
Speaker 4: them have been killed, many more have required amputae, and
Speaker 4: the reports of the torture, of the sexual abuse. All
Speaker 4: this stuff is happening, and you don't get a fraction
Speaker 4: of attention to Palestinian hostages being held by Israel compared
Speaker 4: to the conditions that Israeli hostages are enduring in Gaza,
Speaker 4: which are unknown. And on top of that, you have
Speaker 4: an Israeli policy of insisting on this path of vengeance
Speaker 4: in which they have killed infinitely more Israeli hostages than
Speaker 4: they have rescued, and to continue down this path. It's
Speaker 4: quite obvious that the Israeli government and NATANIELO himself does
Speaker 4: not give a crap about Israeli hostages. So just keeping
Speaker 4: that in the back of mind now when we're talking
Speaker 4: about peace, and it's funny. The reason why I wanted
Speaker 4: to point out that you've said a lot of things
Speaker 4: that are actually correct, but you're just kind of like
Speaker 4: missed a key part of it is that, yes, the
Speaker 4: longer this conflict goes, Palestinians do lose more and more,
Speaker 4: and Israel sees that as an advantage. Every day the
Speaker 4: conflict goes on, they get to take more and more
Speaker 4: of the West Bank, they get to entrench their control
Speaker 4: of it. And that's why we desperately need an intervention.
Speaker 4: And if Israel's not going to do it itself, you
Speaker 4: need it from the outside the way to defeat Hamas.
Speaker 4: If we're serious about not wanting Hamas to be in power.
Speaker 4: It's extremely simple. Give Palestinian a path to freedom and
Speaker 4: they will take it, rather than be driven by despair
Speaker 4: into supporting groups that insist on doing it the most
Speaker 4: violent way possible. The truth is Palestinians tried it with
Speaker 4: a marcher return, They've tried it with negotiations with Israel.
Speaker 4: They've gone to the UN. The US keeps vetoing every
Speaker 4: UN resolution that is critical of Israel. They've gone to
Speaker 4: the International Court of Justice, the ICC. The US keeps
Speaker 4: putting pressure on the ICC and had to prosecute Israel
Speaker 4: for crimes. And then when people try to do international
Speaker 4: solidarity in boycotts, people call that economic terrorism. And you
Speaker 4: have American politicians trying to pass laws. Just every single
Speaker 4: method of resistance has been completely quashed, and civil disobedience
Speaker 4: in Palestine was extremely common against the apartheid barrier that
Speaker 4: Israel's building throughout the West Bank, and all these people
Speaker 4: are basically just end up languishing and is reeally prisons.
Speaker 3: You've left Palestinines no avenue.
Speaker 4: And if you want to be serious about defeating more
Speaker 4: radical organizations that are committed to violence, all you have
Speaker 4: to do is give Palestinians a path to freedom that
Speaker 4: does not pushed them in the arms of people who
Speaker 4: insist that fighting is the only way that has to
Speaker 4: be stopping US military funding for the Israeli occupation. This
Speaker 4: occupation is illegitimate, it's indefensible. It's clearly intended to be permanent,
Speaker 4: and Taniyajo has said so. The way it appears on
Speaker 4: the ground is not some kind of like temporary thing.
Speaker 4: We're just holding off until every day they're taking more
Speaker 4: and more of the West Bank.
Speaker 3: That is what they're doing.
Speaker 4: They're demolishing Palestinian homes, they're pushing Palestinians out of certain
Speaker 4: areas that Israel wants, just the entrenchment of it. We're
Speaker 4: watching it unfolding, and there should not be another penny
Speaker 4: spent in support of the Israeli military until that occupation
Speaker 4: comes to an end. And that's how you can put
Speaker 4: Israel finally in a position where they have an incentive
Speaker 4: to start negotiating in good faith, seeing Palestinians as equal
Speaker 4: human beings.
Speaker 1: Paradoxically, I think that that actually would be a boost
Speaker 1: to Israeli society because under the current Israeli politics, you
Speaker 1: have some who say, we need to compromise. You know,
Speaker 1: we live here, they live here, We're all going to
Speaker 1: live here, you know, for hundreds of years. We need
Speaker 1: to come to some deal. And then you have a
Speaker 1: faction in Israeli society that says, no, we don't because
Speaker 1: we have on conditional US support militarily and politically, so
Speaker 1: we'll we can just permanently quote unquote manage the conflict.
Speaker 1: And voters look at that and they say, well, it's
Speaker 1: true the US does unconditionally support, so why should we
Speaker 1: actually you make any compromises, And it has driven them
Speaker 1: into this this cul to stack that is potentially suicidal
Speaker 1: for the entire project.
Speaker 2: I think the issue is that people don't realize that
Speaker 2: the way that Israeli opinion flipped so hard on peace
Speaker 2: for Palestinians was after the Second Antefada that completely mind
Speaker 2: destroyed so many Israeli people. When they saw so many
Speaker 2: Palestinians across the entire country engaging in violence against Israeli people,
Speaker 2: a lot of them were like this is like this
Speaker 2: is apparently these people just don't ever want peace. After that,
Speaker 2: I think that that's when you saw the government start
Speaker 2: to shift a lot to the right, and the issue
Speaker 2: is that you just it doesn't feel like there has
Speaker 2: been that Palestinian leader that's been ready to come up
Speaker 2: and actually make brave concessions or strong concessions, because every
Speaker 2: deal with the Palestinian feels like a concession was not
Speaker 2: all of Israel. I just don't think Palestinians all.
Speaker 4: The occupied territory is just to be technically which the
Speaker 4: West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem the internationally recognized occupied
Speaker 4: territories that Israel has to withdraw from. That's what Arafad
Speaker 4: has said, and that's what Abasa said. I'm a fan
Speaker 4: of neither of these men, but they're not the obstacle
Speaker 4: to peace. They made very clear that they would accept
Speaker 4: the deal if Israel actually ended the occupation in Israel.
Speaker 2: Never accepted a deal. Of course, he has no deal.
Speaker 2: There are no deals on the table. The deal are
Speaker 2: the table deals left on the table where the policinems
Speaker 2: like we would just have accept I.
Speaker 4: Happened to be familiar with a private conversation between Bill
Speaker 4: Clinton and somebody that I know, an advocate, in which
Speaker 4: Bill Clinton said that Arafad just kept saying, twenty two
Speaker 4: percent is my offer, and Bill Clinton had no idea
Speaker 4: what he was talking about, and the person who was
Speaker 4: talking to him explain to him, twenty two percent is
Speaker 4: the percentage of the land that is illegally occupied by Israel,
Speaker 4: Arafad was telling you. And the occupation of the West
Speaker 4: Bank Goz in East Jerusalem. That was the counter offer repeatedly.
Speaker 3: In Israel has never it has what do you It's
Speaker 3: the entire basis of the peace process.
Speaker 2: That was not two thousand, No, absolutely now that they
Speaker 2: verified in nineteen in the late eighties recognized Israel.
Speaker 4: So he effectively conceded Israel on seventy eight percent of
Speaker 4: historic Palestine as legally defined, yes, yes, and Israel then
Speaker 4: if well, if you wanted to call his bluff, all
Speaker 4: you have to do is end the occupation and see
Speaker 4: what happens. But Israel didn't. Israel entrench the occupation. That's
Speaker 4: the pattern. And you're also missing something about the regional dynamic.
Speaker 4: You're talking about the Abraham Accords and all of that.
Speaker 4: Just to be clear, the entire Arab world. First, it
Speaker 4: was Saudi Arabia put on the table something called the
Speaker 4: Arab Peace Initiative effectively and the occupation.
Speaker 3: It'll get recognition from US. Nope, and then wait, what was.
Speaker 2: The huge part? Wait, what was the huge part of
Speaker 2: the Arab peace initiative? You're not bringing up there?
Speaker 3: You tell me.
Speaker 2: It was the infinite right of return for every single
Speaker 2: Palestini refuge You're confused about the negotiating No, no, no,
Speaker 2: that's a non negotiable. That was one of the reasons.
Speaker 2: Why why why the after Camp David or missing, after
Speaker 2: the Clint parameters, after Taba Summit. That was the stamous
Speaker 2: leak in rejection of the Clint parameters where they said,
Speaker 2: as negotiators will never give up your ran of era.
Speaker 3: You are want what was offered?
Speaker 4: What was offered in that Rapeace initiative? First of a
Speaker 4: Saudium that it became the ar League. It said a
Speaker 4: just resolution to the Palestinian refugees, which is always and
Speaker 4: that phrasing, No, it has not always meant that that
Speaker 4: phrasing was specifically designed. When we talk about a two
Speaker 4: state solution and a just resolution to the refugee issue,
Speaker 4: it's not saying and the full ride of return that
Speaker 4: is considered a Palestinie compromise, like many Palestinians are unhappy
Speaker 4: with it. On the grounds that it doesn't say the
Speaker 4: full riud of return. It only since it is a
Speaker 4: just resolution, one one in which it's understood that you
Speaker 4: would allow for a two state situation to happen, means
Speaker 4: Israel recognizes that they drove those Palestinians out, a small
Speaker 4: symbolic number gets to return to Israel proper, and then
Speaker 4: the majority of them end up in a Palestinian state.
Speaker 3: That was the loose.
Speaker 2: Formula that if you look at it was offered in
Speaker 2: two thousand that it was not what was offered into
Speaker 2: that literally was there was an international fund that is
Speaker 2: what was going to contribute to. There was some number
Speaker 2: I saw anywhere from ten to one hundred thousand. I
Speaker 2: don't know what the actually was. There some number that.
Speaker 3: There always entered the occupation. That's basically what Palestinians had
Speaker 3: been asking for.
Speaker 4: And if you look at actual details of it, and
Speaker 4: I'm happy again to tweet about it afterwards'm happy to
Speaker 4: send you all the links that you need, that was
Speaker 4: what the Latian official position was.
Speaker 3: Actually.
Speaker 1: Let me just respond to one of the things that
Speaker 1: the point that you made earlier in the form of
Speaker 1: a question that a lot of people I've seen it
Speaker 1: out there, So I think it's worth kind of trying
Speaker 1: to answer directly, said, it can't be a genocide because
Speaker 1: they've only killed thirty three thousand people. You know, if
Speaker 1: they wanted to do a full genocide, they have the capacity,
Speaker 1: they have the bombs.
Speaker 2: To kill all two million plus people.
Speaker 5: So a argument, but five of their population, right.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't they do it? And so one you'd say, well,
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand children far too many. But you know, more
Speaker 1: more importantly than that, you would say they they've killed
Speaker 1: the number that they can sort of get away with
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 2: But the goal is not killing in death.
Speaker 1: The goal is domination and the ethnic cleansing of the region,
Speaker 1: the clearing out, the thinning out of the population. And
Speaker 1: so you don't actually need to kill two million Palestinians
Speaker 1: if you can drive hundreds of thousands of them to
Speaker 1: their countries.
Speaker 2: If you're talking about genocide, you have a genesip with
Speaker 2: one hundred people. Theoretically, the number of people killed isn't important.
Speaker 2: The intention is important. But it's hard to make an
Speaker 2: argument for genocide. Setting aside genocide, Oh sure, well, I
Speaker 2: mean like the attacks happened in response to that, would
Speaker 2: that would be the answer to the question, why haven't
Speaker 2: they killed more?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I guess, but the problem is just absent. Any there
Speaker 2: just isn't strong. It's the weirdest genocide ever. If you're
Speaker 2: dropping leaflets saying, hey, flee to the south, most of
Speaker 2: the military tip is going to come to north, or hey,
Speaker 2: we're working with fifty two organizations. Try to open up
Speaker 2: boarders is generally in the south. Why why did they
Speaker 2: bomb the north? Everywhere? No amass like military strongholder has
Speaker 2: always been the South. Why did they go to the
Speaker 2: thought there were literally nine hundred people that they happened
Speaker 2: to this, by the way, what happened to that three story,
Speaker 2: three D rendering of a command center that we saw
Speaker 2: under a Schiffa hospital, the one with the you mean
Speaker 2: the one where they released the footage of the massive
Speaker 2: tunnel the bomb shelter.
Speaker 1: There are tunnels, yeah, in Gaza, But where was the
Speaker 1: command center we're all told existed.
Speaker 2: I don't When you're saying command center, are you looking
Speaker 2: for like a one? I'm not the one that intelligence
Speaker 2: has corroborated everything that is real said and they said
Speaker 2: they arrived at Oh that's nice of it was intelligence. Well, listen,
Speaker 2: if you can believe Russias instead of the United States,
Speaker 2: I can't. I can't help hold on if you want
Speaker 2: to believe paul On. Actually wait, I'm curious if Hamas
Speaker 2: were to make a statement about a particular thing, would
Speaker 2: you believe that more than the United States? And the
Speaker 2: idea of corroborating their statements? Who would you believe more
Speaker 2: on that?
Speaker 3: I don't think you can trust either of them.
Speaker 2: That's why you look, you think it's equal amounts of trust.
Speaker 3: I think yes, that's about distrust.
Speaker 2: That's unbelievably because because we believe governments generated hold on,
Speaker 2: who do you trust then? For your for a third
Speaker 2: party verification?
Speaker 3: Human rights organizations were re report.
Speaker 2: Things from the idea f and from Hamasy.
Speaker 3: Look, and they do independent investigations as well, and they
Speaker 3: do comparison.
Speaker 2: They're independent investors. Have you ever read how they actually
Speaker 2: come up with the numbers. They'll call a hospital and say,
Speaker 2: what's your list of people that are dead? And then
Speaker 2: they look at the register and they go, oh, well,
Speaker 2: it seems like the names exist, and then they write it.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 4: It's the same thing that you do with polling and
Speaker 4: population counting and stuff. You take samples, and based on
Speaker 4: that you extrapolate. You can't go and investigate every single
Speaker 4: last thing that happens.
Speaker 2: Doing sample working all that that would be interest. That's
Speaker 2: not what they do. If you read how these engines
Speaker 2: actually then they include their methodlogyally you can read it.
Speaker 2: They'll say we contact they'll say this has been third
Speaker 2: party investigator. Hamas has ten thousand. But also these guys
Speaker 2: actually third party verified. And then when you read their methodology,
Speaker 2: say we contacted the gods and help indistry and that
Speaker 2: they told us as.
Speaker 3: Like you know, I mean, always interesting.
Speaker 4: And you know what's really interesting is that every time
Speaker 4: the human rights organizations try to go and investigate, Hamass says,
Speaker 4: we welcome a full investigation, and vidital like government tries
Speaker 4: to block human rights organization.
Speaker 2: They welcome a full investigation. This is when this is
Speaker 2: an internationally. Are there to interview people and they say,
Speaker 2: some of them are kind of nervous to talk to us.
Speaker 2: Why isn't a mass opening our gives so that we
Speaker 2: can externally validate what's going on?
Speaker 3: That nonsense? Use pew is just what did I just say?
Speaker 2: That was nonsense.
Speaker 3: Hamas has reported on multiple occasions that they have basically
Speaker 3: verified the credibility of the people who are talking to
Speaker 3: them that they are talking to because they have been willing.
Speaker 4: To criticize Hamas and say, we disagree with Hamass doing,
Speaker 4: we disagree with the firing or prockets.
Speaker 3: They are brutal, they are repressive.
Speaker 4: So they talked to Palestinians who are perfectly willing to
Speaker 4: criticize Hamas for being terrible. But then they say, but
Speaker 4: it's not true that they were hiding in our house
Speaker 4: or used human shields or whatever. So that's how you
Speaker 4: know that when you compare those narratives, it's these really
Speaker 4: narrative that is completely baseline.
Speaker 2: Do you acknowledge it? I have somebody that real quick
Speaker 2: you acknowledge that AMST International has said that they store
Speaker 2: munitions in houses. I'll take on to that. I'll take
Speaker 2: on to that. So very important.
Speaker 5: This is from earlier this month, an interrogation of an
Speaker 5: Islamic Jahad fighter. And I'm genuinely curious. This is not
Speaker 5: a leading question at all asked by the interrogator of
Speaker 5: the Islamic israelly interrogator of the Islamic And that's why
Speaker 5: I'm asking. Yeah, in Israel's attention torture asks which hospitals Islamic,
Speaker 5: Jahad and Hamas operate in. He says, all of the
Speaker 5: hospitals now omar to Ryan's point, what's your response, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Mean just when you look at the levels of torture
Speaker 4: that happened inside Israeli, the detention, it's just you can't
Speaker 4: take anything in base value of what comes out of
Speaker 4: any confessions that come out from people are being interrogated
Speaker 4: by Israel, and so that to me is completely meaningless. Yes,
Speaker 4: if you put me in his really interrogation center on
Speaker 4: my also confessed to whatever the hell these were the military?
Speaker 2: Do you acknowledge that Al Shifa Hospital was inhabited by
Speaker 2: a fun ton of fighters a month ago when they
Speaker 2: did that massive in.
Speaker 3: Habit of buy a ton of fighters? I think I
Speaker 3: can't verify.
Speaker 5: And they were not inhabited by any fighters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were nine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And there were there were mass graves and near
Speaker 4: the unless or hospital that were filled with people who
Speaker 4: are wearing.
Speaker 2: One set where people have been buried there four months earlier.
Speaker 3: They're hands tied behind their back, zip tied. Can you
Speaker 3: can you explain to me what threat people who.
Speaker 2: Have zero actual and totally by people that were Geolocator
Speaker 2: is an ocent account on Twitter that like has looked
Speaker 2: at a ton of videos. You can go and you
Speaker 2: can look through every single video.
Speaker 3: Two is who debunked those?
Speaker 2: Is that is that we're doing to buy a Twitter account?
Speaker 2: You can look at all the videos yourself. If you don't,
Speaker 2: you don't trust the id F, You don't trust the
Speaker 2: United States, you don't who do you trust?
Speaker 4: And trust human rights organizations whose job is to investigate
Speaker 4: these things.
Speaker 2: I don't think any human rights organizations said one percent
Speaker 2: we found Ala zero.
Speaker 4: They can't say it's one percent because Israel will not
Speaker 4: let them in and they can't actually go on.
Speaker 2: Ad INURR act ward zone for Al Shifa? Do you
Speaker 2: acknowledge that there was a huge two week fight there
Speaker 2: between the IDF and militants, Yes.
Speaker 3: Near Alzhiva Hospital.
Speaker 2: I think there was a fight and Al Shifa hospital.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know that it was inside the hospital.
Speaker 4: Certainly there were there were horror stories of what was
Speaker 4: happening inside the hospital.
Speaker 2: Two weeks fight. You think there were civilians there are
Speaker 2: two weeks.
Speaker 5: There's a very clear, I think disconnect here. That is
Speaker 5: probably a good point to start getting to, not start
Speaker 5: getting to. But like if we want to wind down here, Stephen,
Speaker 5: you said that Palestinians fundamentally don't want peace. It sounds
Speaker 5: to me also Omar, like you think fundamentally the Israeli
Speaker 5: government as it is right now does not want peace.
Speaker 5: I think we can both agree that there's civilians in
Speaker 5: the Palestinian territories and in Israel that would like to
Speaker 5: live in peace.
Speaker 2: Can I can? I mean, just real quick, if I've
Speaker 2: said that it's not peace. Nobody wants peace. That's a
Speaker 2: thing that we say in the West because we have
Speaker 2: no concept of what anybody's looking for. People want justice.
Speaker 2: Right in Ukraine, they could end the war right now
Speaker 2: for peace, but they want their territory. They want justice.
Speaker 2: Palestinians could say, listen, we're going to go with the
Speaker 2: whatever plan where we're broken up into twenty enclays and
Speaker 2: of peace. They don't want peace. They feel like they've
Speaker 2: been expelled from their homelands with international support or for
Speaker 2: no reason. They want justice. So to be clear, you
Speaker 2: want justice, right, they don't want peace? Yes? Well, what
Speaker 2: does the MLK quote, like the White Matter one that
Speaker 2: says where some people prefer an uneasy peace or whatever,
Speaker 2: to an uncomfortable tension or whatever. There's there's ways to
Speaker 2: make things peaceful, but people want more than that on
Speaker 2: both sides, and they should.
Speaker 1: I just think that, and I think it's you in
Speaker 1: the end agree with the point that I was making,
Speaker 1: because I haven't heard a counter to it, that the
Speaker 1: way to defeat the ideology of Hamas is through peace,
Speaker 1: not through war.
Speaker 2: It's a Now I will sound racist. I don't want
Speaker 2: to sound racist. There's a fundamental misunderstanding of the way
Speaker 2: that Arab states and Arab people in the Middle East
Speaker 2: view Jews and Israel. And to just assume that being
Speaker 2: peaceful as then there is a whole mythos, a whole
Speaker 2: telg This would have been super fascinating to listen to
Speaker 2: Finkelstein expand on if he was capable of more than
Speaker 2: insults and atoms. But there is a completely and totally
Speaker 2: different retelling of history from that region, if from the
Speaker 2: eighteenies and onwards, and as long as those histories are
Speaker 2: separate from each other, there is no reconciliation that can ride.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't even take this seriously. But if Arabs are
Speaker 1: just fundamentally racist, wait, hold on, I just I mean
Speaker 1: the citizens that live in these places. If the citizens
Speaker 1: that live in these places are just fundamentally racist, why
Speaker 1: is it the case that when peace is close at hand,
Speaker 1: support for hamas and armed resistance plummets. Because I think
Speaker 1: that if they're fundamentally just opposed, fundamentally, when they.
Speaker 2: Look at Israel and the Jewish people there, the view.
Speaker 1: From a lot of Arabs is why does their view
Speaker 1: change when peace gets wouldn't one of the opposite if
Speaker 1: they fundamentally just want to fight with Israel, wouldn't they
Speaker 1: actually be more blood thirsty as peace approached. Yet, opinion
Speaker 1: polls consistently show that support for armed resistance plummet as
Speaker 1: peace becomes more possible. That is the reverse of what
Speaker 1: would happen if they were fundamentally a violent There's two things.
Speaker 2: The one you said it correct earlier that even though
Speaker 2: countries have foreign peace, a lot of the Arab sance
Speaker 2: countries still don't like Israel and still don't like the Jews.
Speaker 2: So that's one thing that even through peace, that opinion
Speaker 2: has remained consistent. You said that that it's.
Speaker 1: True chomping the bit to normalize with Israel. What these
Speaker 1: Arab countries are chomping at the bit to normalize. You're
Speaker 1: going to say it's the leaders.
Speaker 3: That's true in your case. Also, the contradiction is quite palpable.
Speaker 4: Which is on the one had everybody in the regions
Speaker 4: just fed up with the Palestinians and they're just eager
Speaker 4: to make peace with Israel, And now.
Speaker 3: It's like the problems that the people in the region
Speaker 3: just don't like Jews.
Speaker 2: No, which one is it? Well, it's it's both. I
Speaker 2: think that over time, sure, So one is sometimes brave
Speaker 2: leaders are the people that are needed to make progress
Speaker 2: towards peace. This might come in the form justice or peace,
Speaker 2: towards justice, whatever, towards like.
Speaker 1: You haven't answered that question though, which when when peace
Speaker 1: becomes closer. In the moments where there's news that a
Speaker 1: deal is getting closer, yes, support for armed resistance among
Speaker 1: Palestinians goes down. Agree, that's the reverse, yes, of what
Speaker 1: would be the case if they just fundamentally hated Jews
Speaker 1: and just wanted violence And you have that.
Speaker 2: We've heard the teas apart. When I say that they
Speaker 2: fundamentally have these opinions, I don't mean that they want
Speaker 2: to fight and go to war. Forever. I'm just saying
Speaker 2: that there is an Arab mythos around Jews that all
Speaker 2: of them basically believe in in terms of they're in
Speaker 2: the European transplants that have unlimited support from the West
Speaker 2: for whatever action they want to do, and they don't
Speaker 2: belong there, and then there's like a different telling of
Speaker 2: historical events that have happened. That doesn't mean that he's impossible.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean that there's not ways to work out.
Speaker 2: We've seen peace of treaties have happened. They just require
Speaker 2: very strong leadership and sometimes those leaders even have to
Speaker 2: pay the price. So for instance, when Saddat made peace
Speaker 2: with Israel, he was assassinating because they thought it was
Speaker 2: a Western sellout like and it happened to the to
Speaker 2: the Israeli leader as well, who was also assassinated for
Speaker 2: by a fariziois for that peace deal. So peace is possible,
Speaker 2: It just it takes really strong, great leadership. It Arafat
Speaker 2: was never that leader. You should feel that especially.
Speaker 3: Certainly was not a rejectionist. That's fine here, what I
Speaker 3: want to test.
Speaker 5: To Omar for closing thoughts, and then we'll go back
Speaker 5: to you, Stephen.
Speaker 3: Sure Omar.
Speaker 4: All right, So when we talk about just just set
Speaker 4: up the regional dynamic real quick, you have the region
Speaker 4: in general. The people of the region are extremely furious
Speaker 4: by the way Israel treats Palestinians. That is the primary
Speaker 4: reason behind the hostility that exists towards Israel is because
Speaker 4: people see day in and day out on their TV
Speaker 4: sets what is happening. Unlike in the United States, where
Speaker 4: you can barely see that kind of thing on mainstream media.
Speaker 4: Al Jazeera does broadcast what Israel is doing to Palestinians,
Speaker 4: and they get a very very clear and accurate view
Speaker 4: of what Palestinians are suffering under. And so the people
Speaker 4: in the region are in solidarity with Palestinians against that
Speaker 4: brutal occupation, against their displacement, the ethnic cleansing and slow
Speaker 4: motion that happened and in some cases not a slow
Speaker 4: motion in particular periods in Israel's history. And they see
Speaker 4: this fundamental injustice day in and day out, on that
Speaker 4: level of racism, and they're enraged by it. But you
Speaker 4: also have a lot of governments in the region that
Speaker 4: are US clients. They're on the US team in the
Speaker 4: blue sense of the word, and This is uncomfortable for them.
Speaker 4: They want this conflict to end because they would rather
Speaker 4: be on better terms with Israel and the United States.
Speaker 4: They want that dynamic to end, and so they also
Speaker 4: want this conflict to end, which is why we had
Speaker 4: things like the Arapeace initiative. They want to see just
Speaker 4: an end to the occupation. Just give the Palestinian something,
Speaker 4: can we please like make this work? And Israel faced
Speaker 4: that with complete and total rejection over and over again,
Speaker 4: because you have the political end of the political spectrum
Speaker 4: within Israel right now is just completely off the charts. Yes,
Speaker 4: you have some super progressive marginal leftists in Israel. You've
Speaker 4: got the Palestinian citizens of Israel who serve in the
Speaker 4: Israeli Knesset and so on, and they have.
Speaker 3: No power effectively in Israeli society.
Speaker 4: And the bulk of it ranges from the Nataniaho Bank
Speaker 4: Veer coalition, which is stomp Palestinians until no end, brutalize
Speaker 4: them in the worst ways possible and hopefully throw them
Speaker 4: out and finish the Nekba towards the other liberal end
Speaker 4: of the spectrum in the Israeli sense, which is just
Speaker 4: maintain permanent and occupation, but let it be a humane occupation.
Speaker 3: Let's just you know, control them and let everything be fine.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we do won't give them.
Speaker 4: Full rights, but they can at least, you know, have
Speaker 4: some economic activity and whatever normalize a little bit. That's
Speaker 4: the spectrum, and that spectrum will never allow for peace
Speaker 4: to exist, because no people anywhere in the world would
Speaker 4: except to live without the fundamental right to be free.
Speaker 4: And that's what's missing here. And because you do have
Speaker 4: a dynamic right now where that cannot peace cannot emerge
Speaker 4: in direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, because yes, there's
Speaker 4: a lot of intense feelings right now, but on top
Speaker 4: of that, there is a significant imbalance of power that
Speaker 4: if you leave them, you're going to end up with
Speaker 4: a repeat of previous peace negotiations, which is Israel saying yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: let's negotiate, while on the ground they do whatever the
Speaker 4: hell they want, keep entrenching the occupation, eating up more land,
Speaker 4: brutalizing Palestinians more but saying hey, we're negotiating. It's just
Speaker 4: it's all it's all charade, And what you need right
Speaker 4: now is pressure from the outside. I don't care whether
Speaker 4: you like Palestinians or hate them, or you think they're
Speaker 4: this or that, or same with Israeli as it's just
Speaker 4: it's besides the point. You have a reality right now
Speaker 4: in which Palestinians are living under a permanent apartheid occupation
Speaker 4: and apartheid, and this particular episode in Gaza right now
Speaker 4: is a genocidal episode. As an emergency, we need to
Speaker 4: put an end to this Gaza episode. But the situation
Speaker 4: was not acceptable even before the onslaught that is unfolding
Speaker 4: in Gaza. You have a situation in which Israel denies
Speaker 4: Palestinians the right to live in their own state and
Speaker 4: denies them full rights even under the areas that Israel controls.
Speaker 4: So they're stuck forever either as subject with no rights,
Speaker 4: and they can either take that and be happy with it,
Speaker 4: or if they try to fight back in any way,
Speaker 4: then Israel will just escalate its violence to levels that
Speaker 4: are absolutely horrific. Those are the choice of the Palestinians face,
Speaker 4: and it requires external intervention. It requires the world to
Speaker 4: isolate Israel and say this is not acceptable, This occupation
Speaker 4: cannot end. You have to end that occupation, and that
Speaker 4: means that you don't get another penny, no diplomatic relations,
Speaker 4: no embrace of Israel until there's a change of inn
Speaker 4: Israeli policy. And when you look at Russia and Ukraine
Speaker 4: right now, just we've had a very brief episode of that,
Speaker 4: comparatively speaking, when you compare the two things, there are
Speaker 4: instances in which Ukraine, for example, I think it was December,
Speaker 4: fired a rocket at Belgrade and killed a couple of
Speaker 4: dozen Russian citizens, including three children. If in response to that,
Speaker 4: the United States said Putin has the right to defend
Speaker 4: himself and we're going to give him unlimited arms to
Speaker 4: fight against Ukraine, everybody would just laugh at you instantly,
Speaker 4: You'd be laughed out of the room because that's such
Speaker 4: a ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Thing to say. So pointing at hamass violence and saying
Speaker 3: that the responses we give Israel unlimited weapons to defend
Speaker 3: themselves when the broader context is Israel is invading and
Speaker 3: occupying Palestinians and robbing them their basic rights and brutalizing them.
Speaker 4: And killing them and imprisoning them and torturing them. That
Speaker 4: in this context you're going to refer to Israel's right
Speaker 4: to self defense is a joke. A home intruder who
Speaker 4: breaks into somebody's home with a gun does not get
Speaker 4: to claim self defense when they're inside that house. If
Speaker 4: the people inside that house get to fight back, Palestinians
Speaker 4: are fighting for their land that Israel is not entitled
Speaker 4: to taking. Israel does not belong there, and it's time
Speaker 4: to isolate Israel until that occupation comes to an end.
Speaker 4: And that's the only path in which we're going to
Speaker 4: see Israel moderate. The reason why sentiments in Israel are
Speaker 4: so extreme is because the US has provided complete and
Speaker 4: total impunity for Israel. Nobody can ever hold Israel accountable
Speaker 4: for anything they've done because the US ensures that that
Speaker 4: accountability cannot happen. And that's precisely why we've seen these
Speaker 4: reel spectro move to an extreme. And in response to
Speaker 4: that brutal extreme that is imposed on top of Palestinians,
Speaker 4: we're seeing more extreme views also occurring among Palestinians. The
Speaker 4: corrective is incredibly obvious and is impossible to miss if
Speaker 4: you're being intellectually honest and understand what's actually outful.
Speaker 1: So your last word wouldn't cutting off US military aid
Speaker 1: and blanket unconditional political support push Israel toward to compromise.
Speaker 2: I don't think we have blanket unconditionals for Rozo. I
Speaker 2: think they were to do certain things, I think they
Speaker 2: would lose, they'd lose hit, lose internal support pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: A lot of the people that you like to quote
Speaker 2: Harazzer but Salam are literally posted in Israelis or Israeli organizations.
Speaker 2: Just one thing before my final statement, do you think
Speaker 2: that October seventh was justified the attack? And do you
Speaker 2: think civilians were targeted on that day?
Speaker 4: I mean, if you separate it out, the part where
Speaker 4: they attacked Israeli military could be construed as an active
Speaker 4: resistance store, but the part where they attack civilians is
Speaker 4: completely unjustifiable. Of course they attack civilians. Of course that's
Speaker 4: completely indefensible. So I think that's cool.
Speaker 2: I think that the I think that the big I
Speaker 2: think the big issue when this conflict is talked about
Speaker 2: is that it feels like people only ever want to
Speaker 2: tell one side of the story. That we can't have
Speaker 2: a conversation on why does the blockade exist, We can't
Speaker 2: have a conversation on what does some US do to
Speaker 2: induce civilian death? Because some US wants civilians to die
Speaker 2: in Palestine more than Israelis do. Why can't we have
Speaker 2: a conversation about why, I know you're.
Speaker 3: Going to get last or you might find inroject on
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 4: Human rights organizations have also By the way, it was
Speaker 4: officially Israeli policy to use Palestinian civilians as human shields.
Speaker 3: They've done it in the West Bank for many arguing
Speaker 3: they have the legal right to do. Yeah, they were
Speaker 3: arguing for it. The Israeli Supreme Court bandit, I mean.
Speaker 2: To do it is rarely supreme crazy ye, hang on,
Speaker 2: hang on.
Speaker 3: I'm giving some contest just I think it. Just hear
Speaker 3: me out.
Speaker 4: This is I thought that I'm going to piece together
Speaker 4: that I think will be useful for you to to
Speaker 4: think about a little bit.
Speaker 3: Sure it was official policy.
Speaker 4: There was a case in which a palestine got killed
Speaker 4: because they do home raids in which the first person
Speaker 4: knocking of the door is the Palestinian with Israelis like
Speaker 4: standing behind them with the guns to try to get
Speaker 4: somebody to come out and cooperate and whatever, and they
Speaker 4: don't want to be shot at. And when the Israeli
Speaker 4: Supreme Court tried to ban it, the Israeli military establishment
Speaker 4: was furious, so this is a really important method of combat.
Speaker 3: It protects the soldiers' lives. You can't ban it.
Speaker 4: And you know Israel that basically disregarded what the military
Speaker 4: establishment said. It was Sho Mofaz who was the defense
Speaker 4: minister at Israel at the time all of this was happening.
Speaker 4: I think it was in two thousand and five. And
Speaker 4: even though the Supreme Court officially banned it, human rights
Speaker 4: organizations keep catching Israel engaging in acts of holding Palestinians
Speaker 4: as human shields, and Gaza.
Speaker 3: And the West bangs it.
Speaker 4: Just yes, it happened, and you see it like there's
Speaker 4: footage sometimes of holding a Palestinian with a gun over
Speaker 4: his shoulder.
Speaker 3: Which is which is? Which is the point you're making?
Speaker 3: You're making my point, Yes, very quickly.
Speaker 4: If the Israeli military things holding Palestinian civilians in front
Speaker 4: of them where they're fighting with Hamas saves these rarely soldiers' lives,
Speaker 4: it tells you that they don't believe their own lies
Speaker 4: about Hamas wanting Palestinian civilians to die, because it would
Speaker 4: not be useful if that's.
Speaker 3: What they care.
Speaker 2: When the idea was using those human shields, how many
Speaker 2: how many Muslims were killed. How many Palestines were killed
Speaker 2: when they were this is the last question.
Speaker 4: I think there was one incident of somebody getting killed
Speaker 4: erect yes, you know, okay, don't want to.
Speaker 2: Shoot their own No, So it's interesting. So the ideas
Speaker 2: idea behind that was when they were engaged in this,
Speaker 2: when they were clearing out houses, the idea was is
Speaker 2: that if a bunch of ideas shoulder soldiers show up
Speaker 2: and start banging on your door, it's going to lead
Speaker 2: to some sort of armed conflicts. So what the idea
Speaker 2: started to do houses is no, what the idea started
Speaker 2: to do when they were proaching houses, if they were
Speaker 2: people in the neighborhood of people walking by, they were like, hey,
Speaker 2: do you want to walk up and do you want
Speaker 2: to knock on the door and talk to the sky
Speaker 2: because if you go in and you talk the gutes,
Speaker 2: do they want to hand me your wall? There's a
Speaker 2: reason why. Yeah, you can laugh. But the funny this
Speaker 2: is like this is the conflict as you leck. Now,
Speaker 2: more people probably die because that policy is gone because
Speaker 2: the way that you phrase it is, oh, they got
Speaker 2: to go to their head, specificly human shield, which I
Speaker 2: think did happen.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: There's a reason why when you talk about the policy,
Speaker 2: only one person ever died doing it. It's because it'scause
Speaker 2: it's a safer way to bring people out of the
Speaker 2: home in order to like you have an actual battle syndico,
Speaker 2: knock the doork rather than the idea is bank human shield.
Speaker 2: That's not a human shield. The human shield. When you
Speaker 2: say human on the shielding, the other people know it
Speaker 2: was to shield that the IDF doesn't need shields from
Speaker 2: the Palestines of the West Bank the.
Speaker 3: Human shields, but you don't.
Speaker 2: The Supreme Court ruled against it because they felt like
Speaker 2: the the ability for them to truly consent the Palestine
Speaker 2: is truly consent to knocking in a door was compromised.
Speaker 3: Eventually, Israel said, yes, okay, fine, I want to give
Speaker 3: me time.
Speaker 5: I want it because Ohmar got a good chunk of
Speaker 5: time to have final thoughts. So I want to make
Speaker 5: sure that you get this.
Speaker 2: I gotcha. Yeah. So there's just a refusal on one side, well,
Speaker 2: really on both sides. Woun't have a crazy ultra side
Speaker 2: is here except I guess maybe. But generally there's refusal
Speaker 2: on both sides to acknowledge the trewths of the other side,
Speaker 2: but the blockade. The reason why the blockade exists is
Speaker 2: because Israel is evil. Hamas doesn't actually do any things
Speaker 2: to induce civilians to be killed. Israeli people, Jewish people
Speaker 2: don't have any reasonable fears of Hamas. That's why earlier
Speaker 2: when I asked if Hamas was in charge of Israel
Speaker 2: and if the Jews lived in the Godza Strip, do
Speaker 2: we think the treat would be the same or worse
Speaker 2: or better? We couldn't even get an answer to that
Speaker 2: because the obvious answer is Hamas had probably engaged in
Speaker 2: a genocidal campaign to kill every actual genocidal campaign, not
Speaker 2: one where the people are on the verge of starvation
Speaker 2: for twenty five years while the population increases fivefold. Okay,
Speaker 2: So this refusal to acknowledge like basic facts of history
Speaker 2: or the fact that the complication is or the conflict
Speaker 2: itself is really complicated. This goes back decades in terms
Speaker 2: of how people are disagreeing over who owns what peace
Speaker 2: of land, or or who has a right to live
Speaker 2: in what place, or whether or not there living or apartheid,
Speaker 2: or what a final solution should look like. The fact
Speaker 2: that people are incapable of acknowledging both parts of the
Speaker 2: sides of this conflict, makes it so that when people
Speaker 2: are encouraging their particular side, there will never be a resolution.
Speaker 2: If you are a Palestinian and you believe that today
Speaker 2: you are being subjected to genocide and apartheid, why in
Speaker 2: the fuck would you ever negotiate with Israel for and
Speaker 2: and thing and and I think both of you said
Speaker 2: to yourselves, the international community needs to step in and
Speaker 2: solve this problem. And as long as Palestinians think that,
Speaker 2: there's never going to be a drive there to actually
Speaker 2: reach any lasting solution, because why would you If we're
Speaker 2: being genocided, we're being apartheided, we live in open air
Speaker 2: prisons and concentrations. We're not going to figure the problem out.
Speaker 2: Somebody's gonna come save us. And as long as that
Speaker 2: is the mentality that is given to the Palestinian people,
Speaker 2: they will continue.
Speaker 3: To fight negotiating with their oppressors or they could get.
Speaker 2: Where they could where all of the And this is
Speaker 2: funny too. You can see so many maps in a minute. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can see so many maps that are published from
Speaker 2: negotiations between Palestinian negotiators and Israeli negotiators. All of them
Speaker 2: are from the Israeli side. There has never been a
Speaker 2: deal on the table where Palestinian said this is what
Speaker 2: we want and then Israel didn't accept. It's never been
Speaker 2: the case that that was it. Negotiations have been horrible.
Speaker 2: Cushioners talked about a.
Speaker 3: Bus, they recognize.
Speaker 2: Talking about error, fat about a boss. The negotiations just
Speaker 2: can never be made because there is no negotiating on
Speaker 2: the Palestinian side. And that's what we see today internationally,
Speaker 2: that it is encouragement to keep fighting and fighting and
Speaker 2: fighting until eventually your one state from river to cy.
Speaker 5: So we started this by saying we were not going
Speaker 5: to solve the problem, and I think that proved to
Speaker 5: be correct. We did not solve the problem, but what
Speaker 5: we did say we wanted to do was bring some
Speaker 5: more clarity about the contrast on both sides. And I
Speaker 5: do think Ryan, that we saw a lot of contrasts
Speaker 5: and a lot more clarity in the contrast just by
Speaker 5: flushing some of this out. So sincerely, yeah, sincerely want
Speaker 5: to think both of you because this is not always
Speaker 5: an easy thing to do, and we all are still here.
Speaker 2: So that note, Ryan, any final thoughts, no, no final thoughts.
Speaker 1: I'll just leave it at that because if I say anything,
Speaker 1: it's just going to and that's right back up, and
Speaker 1: we've all got things we.
Speaker 2: Got to do, right, that's right.
Speaker 5: So Breakingpoints dot Com subscribe. We will be here, remember
Speaker 5: now on Fridays, in addition to Wednesdays. Thank you, Stephen,
Speaker 5: thank you, Omar, thank you, thank you guys.
Speaker 3: Soon