Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/3/24 CounterPoints Debate: Destiny Vs Omar Baddar On Israel Palestine, Safe Zones, Campus Protests

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Ryan and Emily host a debate on Israel Palestine with politics streamer Destiny and political analyst Omar Baddar. They debate campus protests, Israel's conduct in the war, safe zones, history of the conflict, the Great March of Return, and more. Omar Baddar: https://twitter.com/OmarBaddar Destiny: https://twitter.com/TheOmniLiberal To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. You're saying that Israel needs to allow Hamas to stay there, who's been breaking international law of our republic for 20 years? As opposed to Hamas allowing the Israeli government to stay there when they're breaking international law for even longer than that. It's not peace. Nobody wants peace.

People want justice. Oops, it's just war. Gaza is unlivable anymore. Too bad it can't support Palestinian life. People are starving. It's just all an accident. It's crazy that the numbers are so poor for a country that could kill so many more people. They're doing things that no other country is doing.

There's a reason, by the way, which you will never recognize, why all of the surrounding Arab states have abandoned the Palestinians too, because their history has been one of violence that first they've been encouraged by the surrounding nations and used by them. And then now they've been abandoned once the other nations have used them up.

That's a racist anti-Palestinian theory. Happy Friday, everyone, or Thursday night. If you're a premium subscriber, breakingpoints.com. If you want to get the show early to your inbox. I'm Emily Drushinsky, and you probably recognize the man sitting next to me. We're about to tee up a fascinating debate. I'm joined, of course, also by my co-host, my wonderful co-host, Ryan Grimm. And these two gentlemen that you see here are not debating for the first time. They debated in the past. Maybe some of you have watched that. They sparred over the question of Israel actually earlier this year and then kind of subsequently

continued a bit of a back and forth. So we know that we're not going to settle the debate once and for all here today. But I think what we want to do, Ryan, is really push for more moral clarity, push for more contrast as we reflect on just this last week of absolutely historic protests, rocking dozens of campuses across the country. So we have two popular proponents of the respective sides here, and we're excited to get into it. Yeah, and to introduce them both, we've got to my right here, Omar Badar. He's a Palestinian-American political analyst who's been following the situation in the Middle East for many, many years.

On the other side, we have Stephen Bunnell Jr., who's better known by his streaming name, Mr. Borelli, or whatever, or by like a dozen different names. If you guys watched the Norman Finkelstein debate, that kind of thrust destiny as a streaming name into this conversation. So we want to start with the campus protests before getting to the war itself. This week saw a militarized response over at VCU, UT Austin, Columbia, and a vigilante response at UCLA. So just curious for your read in general on these protests as they've unfolded, have you seen any double standard when it comes to

kind of the free speech warriors that we've seen championing the cause of free expression on college campuses now championing the cause of shooting fireworks into peaceful encampments? Yeah, it's the double standard is incredibly glaring. I mean, you would have to put on blinders to actually miss it. You have, I think, these student protesters are the conscience of this country. We are witnessing an absolutely horrific situation unfolding on the ground. And American policy is to insist on continuing to send endless weapons unconditionally to a military force that is mass slaughtering children by the tens of thousands. And these students are saying, we're taking a stand. This is not okay. If we can't impact the policy makers directly,

we're going to make sure that our institutions and the money that we're paying to these institutions is not playing into this kind of mass slaughter. And what we witnessed, from my perspective, in a better world, cops would be going after the people who are violating American law to make sure that weapons can continue slaughtering children rather than going after people who are peacefully protesting, overwhelmingly peacefully protesting in order to change that policy, change American investment in it. And you're absolutely right. You have a level of demonization of these protesters, constantly talking about them as if, you know, it's just like anti-Semitic mobs or whatever, the people leading these protests, there's a very significant portion of progressive young Jewish people who are the leaders of, in many cases, of some of these protests. Groups from If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace and many others. And they are on the receiving end of tremendous hate and violence.

And nobody talks about that. And as you mentioned, what we're witnessing in UCLA is absolutely horrifying. These protesters being attacked by, you know, bear spray and fireworks and some of them being beaten up. And you see like some serious injuries. But because the climate in this country is one in which one side gets demonized, that empowers and emboldens the response not just from police, but also from vigilantes. And I just want to note one last thing, just because Stephen is here, and I think it's really relevant, is there's a person that I know named Simone Zimmerman. She's in town today for an intercept event. That's right. And she's one of the most conscientious and decent human beings that

you'll ever meet. And she knows personal people in her life who have lost loved ones on October 7th from the attack that Hamas carried out. And she was horrified by that attack. And she's equally horrified by Israel's response and the mass slaughter. And she's one of those people who is fighting for a better future for Palestinians and Israelis. And she was at Passover Seder at Columbia, joining the protesters and talking about how beautiful it is that she's in that setup. And Stephen quote tweeted that tweet and said that he would like to donate

thousands of gallons of kerosene, presumably so these people can set themselves on fire. And it's just such an ugly and distasteful thing to say. And I'm genuinely curious of what you were thinking when you tweet things like that. If everybody celebrated Bushnell doing his protest, more people want to protest that way, then God help him, I guess.

Yeah, but this is not about Bushnell, though. But let's keep going in response to that, because Omar set up an interesting juxtaposition here between anti-Semitic mobs and peaceful protesters. So is what we're seeing on these campuses anti-Semitic mobs, or is it peaceful protesters from your perspective, Stephen? From my perspective, I mean, it really depends on which series of videos that you watch. I think from an American perspective, it really shouldn't matter if they're anti-Semitic mobs or if they're protesting foreign policy or whatever.

In the United States, we don't have hate speech laws. You should be allowed to say really whatever you want in protest, assuming you're not violating any social or whatever the ordinances are. I know like for some college campuses, you're not allowed to block pathways or you can't protest if they've got events planned for graduations or whatever the ordinances are. I know like for some college campuses you're not allowed to block pathways or you can't protest if they've got events planned for graduations or whatever and as long as you're not disrupting the peace in a way where you're like you can't blow loud speakers at the college campuses. As long as you're following the laws you'll be able to protest however you want. But if you are, say what we saw from NYPD and LAPD actually last night, if you're violating laws, university rules even, with an

encampment, if you broke into the hall like they did and have been barricaded up in there, what did you make of the NYPD response just at Columbia, for example? I like to wait till the dust settles on this because I hear so many different things about how students were all being peaceful. I've seen obviously the videos of some of the stuff being broken into. I think that when it comes to an analysis of how to respond to these particular events, I think that the start and stop needs to be what are the rules and regulations in place because a lot of people will jump in and start arguing, well, it's a public area so they could be wherever they want or do wherever they want without even understanding the rules or regulations in place. I think as a blanket rule, I don't know why this particular situation would need any kind of unique analysis.

It would be the same as all protests. If you're in a private college, I understand because they can remove you whenever they want. It's private property. If you're in a state-funded or public university, then there are certain areas that are supposed to remain open to the public and they can't remove you unless you are not there in an ordinary manner if you're disrupting some other event. I don't see anything about these particular set of protests that would call for any type of unique analysis that escapes like that fundamental rule to protest in the United States. And your fundamental rule then to quote tweet with the kerosene. I thought it was insane that you had delusional people,

especially young children in the United States, that don't know any part of this conflict whatsoever, which is probably the vast majority of people protesting it, that people are celebrating people setting themselves on fire. That is just unbelievable to me. You saw a guy do it in front of, I think, one of the New York City courthouses for the Trump stuff. You saw the Aaron Bushnell guy do it for who knows what reason. I guess because he thought the whole world wasn't already paying attention

to this issue. And yeah, the idea of people ever celebrating themselves in a democratic, first world country, setting themselves on fire for an issue that already has an unlimited amount of international attention. It's unbelievably stupid to me. But how does it relate to this particular instance? I mean, this is a bunch of Jewish students celebrating with pro-Palestinian students over Passover and talking about a climate in which they're coming together. Like, why did you decide to drag the Bushnell thing into this? That's the one. I think it's funny when people disingenuously load phrases like, oh, all the Jewish people are protesting with these people. There are so many Jewish people. That's not true. The last few research thing I

saw, I think, for 2023 shows like 90% of people who are Jewish support the existence of Israel. So the idea that there's this huge group of Israeli Jewish people. Yeah. This is not about the existence of Israel. There's no question about the fact that so many of these protest leaders are in fact Jewish. These groups, they're not imaginary. They're not a figment of your imagination. You can actually go see them and look at how large their gatherings are, how loud their voices have been. The people who are getting arrested in Congress, so many of them are progressive Jewish organizations that are leading this effort. This is not about some broader, what are the views of American Jews about the existence of Israel.

What are the protests about? The protests are about ending the slaughter of the children of Gaza. What does the end of that look like? What do you mean, what does it look like? What is the end condition? It's not just ending the slaughter. It's also stopping protests are about. What do you mean, what does it look like? What is the end condition of the... It's not just ending the slaughter. It's also stopping the blockade. It's also reaching a just resolution to the Palestinian conflict. It's also probably the unlimited right of return of 6 million refugees.

It's probably the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish majority state. It's probably the... I mean, what all does that entail? You're conflating a ton of different things. A lot of these protesters have varying views about this. Some of them support a two-state solution. Some of them support a one-state solution. But what's bringing everybody together in this moment is a realization that what Israel is doing to Gaza is absolutely unconscionable. That you slaughter people at that scale. That Israel is clearly waging a war on the civilian population of Gaza. That's what these people

are upset about. And they want it to come to an end. And the specific thing that they're protesting, and maybe we could actually find something to agree on here because I've seen you describe yourself as kind of a moderate who tries to balance the extremists on each side here. So the specific thing the protesters are arguing for at all of these different campuses is opening up the books of basically the hedge funds that run their universities and divesting from firms that are either linked to the war in Gaza or linked to Israel more generally. Brown University reached an agreement with its protesters that they would abandon their encampment in exchange

for a vote in October to divest from that. That gets to the question of resistance and the right to resistance. And so for years, it has been the kind of policy of the right here and a lot of the center here in the United States to make it illegal to try to ban people from participating in boycotts or divestment efforts or lobbying for sanctions against Israel. At the same time, you say, well, armed resistance is clearly off the table. So if you rule out both, you only leave people with one option. So even if you don't support boycotting or divesting from Israel, do you support the right of people here in the United States to express? I would have to check the explicit for how states have banned some of the BDS participation as a fundamental right to boycott.

I think in the United States, you should always have the right to boycott everything except our currency, I think. Yeah, you have the right to boycott whatever you want. I don't know why that should ever be made illegal, but I know that there are particular things related to the BDS stuff that I think states look at. But yeah, of course, you should always have the right.

I wish that the people that would talk about conditioning support for Israel, though, would also talk about conditioning support for Palestine because they are some of the highest recipients of aid in the world per capita. The United States contributes a lot of that aid. It's interesting to me that it seems like we're always talking about how we need to condition aid to Israel. Congratulations. Congress just banned all funding of UNRWA.

Yeah, I have seen that. Well, so actually, because Stephen raised an interesting point that what's the kind of end goal of the protesters after BDS in the service of what, you know, what does that look like? It's a one state solution where Jews are the minority. Well, so you said earlier that, you know, it's it sort of depends on whatever video you're looking at, that this is an anti-Semitic mob or peaceful protesters. And I think that's actually true. There's videos showing all kinds of different things, which is part of the issue of piecing together these stories via social media. So if that if the one state solution is kind of the ultimate goal of the people that are protesting for BDS, what is your like? Do you think they're fundamentally anti-Semitic? Do you think they're fundamentally are they from your perspective? Do you think they're fundamentally, are they, from your perspective, just mistaken, misguided, or are they bigoted?

I don't care. Trying to sort out the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is almost impossible. And in practice, the two look almost identical sometimes. So the obsession of trying to figure out what is the driving thing here between anti-Semitism versus anti-Zionism? I think in some cases it's good to find differences. So some people are discriminatory against poor people. Some people are discriminatory against certain races of people. And figuring out the difference here is really important. When it comes to anti-Semitism versus anti-Zionism in regards to Israel, I think that the talking points of somebody who's an anti-Zionist are indistinguishable from the talking points of somebody who is anti-Semitic. So there are a

lot of Israelis who don't support the Netanyahu policy. But that's not anti-Zionism such that they want a one-state solution. Even Palestinians don't want a one-state solution. Omar, do you want to respond? It's utterly grotesque to conflate those two things. Opposition to Zionism is opposition to the state of Israel, the way it came into being at the expense of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were driven out of their homes. And there is a different vision that instead of having a Jewish state that privileges one particular group of people over another,

that you have a vision for a state in which everybody is equal. Americans would be familiar with what that vision actually looks like. You remember the era of Jim Crow and what that meant. And people who are demanding a different kind of country in which everybody is equal. Americans would be familiar with what that vision actually looks like. You remember the era of Jim Crow and what that meant. And people who are demanding a different kind of country in which everybody is equal, that's not the same as being anti-white. It's absurd to even put these remotely in the same category. And can I just, if I can finish just on the point of BDS. BDS also, by the way, has been clear about the fact that they don't take any particular political solution. It does certainly happen that a lot of BDS activists do support a one-state solution,

but that is not the position of BDS itself as a movement that is calling for boycotts and isolation. And just on the free speech angle, you have states all over the country that are passing laws that basically make it punishable to boycott, not just Israel, but Israeli settlements that are built in the occupied territories. And those settlements are war crimes under international law.

And so you have a situation in which this country, part of its founding, is that we celebrate boycotts as part of deep entrenched part of American culture, the boycott of British Street during the founding of the country, the Montgomery bus boycott during the civil rights movement. And now you're saying that boycotting the war crimes of a foreign country is somehow punishable. People being denied the ability to work with state governments or schools or medical facilities or anything that is affiliated with the state.

Those are transparently unconstitutional laws. They have been challenged by organizations like the ACLU. They have been defeated in organizations like the ACLU. They have been defeated in court in many cases, but unfortunately they keep popping up faster than the rate at which you can challenge them. And that's a serious crisis. Anybody who's serious about being committed to free speech and saying that Americans should be able to exercise the right to boycott, including when it comes to Israel or Israel's atrocities, that's an absolutely critical issue that we're not talking

enough about, that you have the power of the state being used to silence people's right to free speech. And I think that's a really important angle. I want to move to the conduct of the war by Israel pretty soon. But on the one state versus two state question, isn't it the case that the current Israeli government position is one state? There is a complete rejection across the board. River to the sea. Of a the board. River to the sea. Of a Palestinian state, river to the sea. Yeah, I think the Likud platform is essentially always said as much, yeah. Okay, so more agreement.

You oppose that, you think that... Well, I oppose it. He's in favor of the one state where the Jews live as a minority in that state. Yeah, no, just to be clear, the Netanyahu government and the Likud are in favor of a one state in which Jews are privileged over Palestinians with Palestinians occupying multi-tiers. If you're a citizen of Israel, you have a certain amount of rights.

If you're in the West Bank, you get this many rights. And if you're in Gaza, you're completely under siege and there's nothing that you can do. Which is in my country. You've described every country. My vision of a one state- Citizens usually have more rights than non-citizens. Yeah, well, in those countries,

you don't permanently occupy those people and prevent them from having any rights and deny them citizenship as well. And that's the fundamental problem, is that Israel's vision is Palestinians can never be free. They can't get their own state and they can't live as equals within Israel. So your status is just to be permanently occupied and helpless without rights. And that's a vision that I think is absolutely nobody who has a conscience can actually support. And my vision of a one state would be one in which everybody actually has equal rights and everybody can live equally, precisely the way that we live in the United States. Which is a really fun position to take in the West when we have like

no stake in the game. I think it's fun to scream that at protests. I think it's fun to go on Twitter and do that. I think at the end of the day, that type of rhetoric is ultimately destructive to Palestinians because everybody knows that that's never happening. It's a pipe dream. Less than 30% of Palestinians are in favor of a singular state where Jews and Arabs have the exact same rights. Literally, nobody wants that. People in Israel don't want that. It's literally, you're just virtue signaling and paying lip service to an idea that is grossly unpopular across the entirety of Israel and Palestine. Not only that, the idea that you would have a singular state created where 6 million Palestinian refugees are then brought back into the state, there's no shot that any Jewish person living there who has lived through the Second Intifada,

who has lived through Hamas attacks, who has lived through Hezbollah attacks, who's lived through international support for Houthi attacks, is going to feel safe in such a state. And they know that there would be absolutely no international support for them if that state were created and Jews were to start getting slaughtered en masse there. Let's pass it to Omar with that for a response. And also I'll sort of add to that, maybe narrow it down a little bit. What is then, let's say, hypothetically, we take the best faith argument, not from Netanyahu, but let's say an Israeli citizen who's both concerned about their safety and concerned about Netanyahu's leadership. What does the path towards peace from the perspective

of an Israeli, what does that look like when they see the level of support for Hamas? And we can obviously get into why so many people in Palestine feel like they need to support Hamas. Yeah, no, in a way you're putting your finger on the problem precisely. I mean, Israel is upset that there's so much hostility towards them. But the reason there's so much hostility is because of the way that they have been treated Palestinians for decade after decade. Just the level of brutality that Palestinians have experienced under occupation has been absolutely horrific. And, you know, when you talk about the prospects for peace, there was a time in which Palestinians recognized that there's a significant power differential,

that they can't actually get freedom from the river to the sea in their own homeland. And there was an indulgence of the idea that maybe we can have a two-state compromise in which Palestinians would only get the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, which is about one-fifth of the entire territory of their historic homeland. And Israel gets to keep the other four-fifths. That, from Palestinians' perspective, is a massive Palestinian compromise, bending over backwards to facilitate some kind of two states and all what Israel was required to do is not grant Palestinians some sort of favor, but simply comply with international law by withdrawing from the occupied territories. They're obligated to do that anyway. The occupied territories do not belong to Israel. And during this period, Palestinian support for peace with Israel was skyrocketed. Public opinion showed that there's significant support for a two-state solution.

Support for Hamas went way down. Support for Hamas went way down, Support for Hamas went way down, even though Hamas was trying to destabilize the situation at the time, committing acts of violence. They did not enjoy any support among Palestinians. It is only when it became clear that Israel has no interest whatsoever in allowing Palestinians to have a state

and spent the entire so-called peace process building more and more and more settlements, just expanding them throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, where Palestinians saw the prospect for a Palestinian state shrinking by the day on the ground. They understood that this entire process was a sham. And the fact that Israeli restrictions were increasing,

Israeli violence was ongoing, it became clear that this was not going to be a path in which Palestinians can get a real state. And that's when you got the shift in public opinion back in terms of supporting for armed resistance as the only way, because clearly Israel could not be talked into seeing Palestinians as equal human beings and granting them. But then what now? Well, a shorter version maybe for Stephen to respond to is that the way to defeat

Hamas is through peace, not war. What's wrong with that? It sounds really brutal, but the issue is that the unlimited amount of international support for the Palestinians means the Palestinians will never look to peace. They shouldn't. They always have an unlimited reservoir internationally of people who will encourage the delusions that if they continue to fight, they're going to get a better deal. It's the reason why they walked away in 2000 from Camp David. It's the reason why they walked away from the Tafas Summit. It's the reason why Abbas walked away in 2008 from Omert. It's the reason why the Oslo Accords were never negotiated in 93. That period of violence that he's talking about from 93 to 2000, where the Israelis were continuing to expand

settlements into the West Bank is true. But Palestinians also continue to engage in terrorist activities. A lot of people didn't trust Arafat because Arafat would sign on to a deal for the Oslo Accords. And then he would go over to Switzerland and he'd make speeches in universities about how like, yeah, we agree to this now, but you know, we're going to get them as soon as the, as soon as we got a little bit, we're going to take more, which is ironically what they've accused Israel of doing for the past 100 years. I think that in order for this conflict to actually start to reach some kind of resolution, I think that, again, it sounds mean, but Palestinians need to feel like they have something at stake. And it looks like they do. But in reality, politically, Palestinians have

never lost anything because people continue to make them feel as though they can always go back to borders that existed 80 years ago. People will constantly say, you just said it here, well, what's the fair thing? They only want two, a sliver of this land, one-fifth of the territory. Yeah, they tried like three, four, five different wars to get more and they lost. You can't continue to go back to the first try over and over and over again and demand the deal that was on the table before. You walked away from the partition plan in 47, you can't go to war five times and then keep going back to another set of borders. They're always one generation behind when it comes to accepting some type of actual peace deal. So as long as Palestinians have people like Omar internationally that will support them in an unlimited delusion to fight forever, Palestinians will never try to accept these. And they shouldn't,

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yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. In one sense, if you have public polling that shows some 70 percent, this was from a Palestinian polling firm in December, 72 percent supported what happened on October 7th. So, and we can talk about why, and we will, I'm sure. So with all of that said, what now? What if you, you know, if you were in charge of Israeli foreign policy in a hypothetical sense, and I think this will

be a response to what Stephen just said, what happens now to get to a position where, to your point, there can be justice? I'm happy to address that, but I have to go back to a particular point. The idea that Palestinians are rejectionists because they have so much international support, I think is just thoroughly absurd. Palestinians are paying an unbelievable cost every single day. Their lives are completely brutalized under occupation. And the idea that they see no cost to continuing to fighting on forever is just completely ridiculous. It's detached from reality. It's as if you're unaware of what Palestinian conditions are under Israeli occupation. The reason why they were willing to bend over backwards, I mean, if you look at the history of negotiations, you look at the Palestine papers that got leaked shortly after,

I think back in the mid-2000s, it's obvious that Palestinians were bending over backwards to try to make that deal work. And Israel insisted on expanding more and more settlements. And yes, you can say that Palestinian violence was ongoing at the time, but so is Israeli violence. I mean, the attack that happened on the mosque in Hebron, where 30 Palestinians, nearly 30 Palestinians were killed by a Jewish terrorist named Baruch Goldstein, that happened during the so-called peace process. And Israel responded by putting Palestinians in Hebron under curfew to prevent any possible retaliation. Those are the conditions. But nobody looks at that incident and says, oh, well, there was Israeli violence.

Therefore, the Israelis, you know, we're not. That's the reason why they can't. There's a massacre in Hebron in 29 where a bunch of Palestinian Arabs killed Israelis. The point I'm making is that this is besides the point that, yes, we can point to individual atrocities. And that does not change the fact that throughout the peace process, if Israel were genuinely interested in allowing for a Palestinian state to exist, they would not have spent the entire so-called peace process taking up more and more and more of the West Bank. So it's the disingenuous nature of Israeli policy that's the reason why this is a problem. Now, to your point of what now? Yeah, I was going to say, say they are genuinely interested in the

peace process and you're in charge. Yeah. What do they do? Right now, we have a situation, right? There is a problem of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support groups like Hamas. You have a majority of people in Israel, overwhelming majority, support the most vicious policies of the Netanyahu government and just carrying on. And they think that they're not going far enough in Gaza and so on. And that just it's important to know that hatred is a symptom of the conflict and not the cause of it. People get this stuff backwards. When you think of apartheid in South Africa, there was plenty of hostility. And we eventually had a reconciliation process between white and black people in South Africa, but only after apartheid fell. That's when you can have

reconciliation. But the idea that you can try to work on how people feel about each other in the midst of one side occupying the other, controlling every aspect of their lives and brutalizing them day in and day out, there's no surprise that there are hostile feelings. And yes, when Palestinians do respond with violence, Israelis who are out of touch with the reasons why all of this is happening are going to develop hostile feelings as well. This is a moment in which the international community has to step in. This is not about making Israelis and Palestinians like each other right now. This is about making sure that one side does not get to dominate the other until the end of time.

And the status quo leading up to October 7th is one in which Israel dominated every aspect of Palestinian life. So you can say, yes, both sides hate each other, but one side is in charge of everything. One side gets to decide whether they want to put the people of Gaza on a diet, as they were talking about when they first imposed the siege on Gaza.

Just Palestinians don't get to decide how much food Israelis get. They don't get to demolish Israeli homes at will whenever they feel like it. They don't get to humiliate Israelis at checkpoints day in and day out. So because there's a dynamic in which one side is imposing an illegal occupation over another people

and taking over their land, that has to come to an end, and you can bring it to an end through international pressure, primarily from the United States as the country that has the most leverage over Israel to say not another penny until that occupation ends. And when that occupation comes to an end, we can talk about sorting out the exact specifics

of how we get more conciliation and cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis. And when it comes to international support for Palestinians, there's one side that has had the international support of the world's great superpower and the political and military support as well, Israel. What about the Soviet Union supporting the Arab? The Soviet Union has had a very complicated relationship. To be clear, the Soviet Union supported the Arab states before the United States.

The United States didn't truly start supporting Israel until about 1966, 1967. The Soviet Union also hasn't been here since 1991. That's true, but the conflict also didn't start after the 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The point is that Israel has had a lot of agency, and Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, as the prime minister for most of the last 25, 30 years, has had an extraordinary amount of agency as well.

I wanted to read to you a piece of an essay published in Haaretz recently by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. He writes, Given the murderous nature of Hamas, this time its allies gave Israel free reign for many months to conquer Gaza, liberate the Israeli hostages, change the situation in the Strip, according to Israel's best judgment, and create a new order in the region. The Netanyahu government

wasted this historic opportunity and also wasted the bravery and dedication of the soldiers of the IDF. The Netanyahu government failed to exploit its battlefield victories to reach an agreement on the release of all the hostages and to advance an alternative political order in Gaza. Instead, it decided to knowingly inflict on Gaza an unnecessary humanitarian disaster, and in so doing, inflicted on Israel an unnecessary political disaster. One by one, our allies have become horrified by what is happening in Gaza, and one by one, they are calling for an immediate ceasefire and even for a weapons embargo on Israel. Even during the worst moments of October 7th, Hamas was nowhere near vanquishing Israel. But the ruinous policy of the Netanyahu government following October 7th has placed Israel in

existential danger. So when I ask you, it seems like a pretty fundamental irony that if Israel had listened to critics like Omar and myself after October 7th, who warned against enacting violence just for the purposes of revenge and potentially for ethnic cleansing of Gaza, they would ironically and paradoxically be in a much stronger global strategic political position than they are now, where they're facing not just isolation, but charges before the ICJ and potentially before the ICC. So are they making a mistake in following kind of the more bellicose advice that they're getting from their so-called allies? That's a touching essay. Who was the alternative order politically besides Hamas that

would have risen up in the Gaza Strip? If there was an alternative political order, I would love to hear it. Even in the West Bank, there's a reason why Abbas suspended elections 20 years ago. Even in the West Bank, Hamas enjoys pretty broad support. I mean, there are answers to this question, and it's not rhetorical. Do you want to take that?

I mean, it's... Well, hold on, wait, wait. Before he does, also to elaborate a bit on the military objectives, I think Hamas needs to go. I don't think that there's any future that happens where Israel can negotiate anything, whether it's peace or war,

with Hamas remaining as the government in the Gaza Strip. I don't think any of the surrounding Arab states wanted Hamas to remain as the government in the Gaza Strip. It's a disaster. You've had a series of conflicts. In 2008, you had Kaisled. 2014, you had Protective Edge. 2014, you had Protective Edge. 2018, you had the response to the Great March of Return. And now in 2023, you had a

massive attack on October 7th. The idea that you would just allow them to stay here after spending at least a year preparing for what was probably, I think, the single largest day of violence against Jews since the Holocaust, that's an untenable position. I don't think a single other country or person in all of human history would be asked to keep a government like that in place. Can we pause for one second on the quote response to the Great March of Return? For people who don't know, the Great March of Return was a civil society-led Gaza initiative that was a nonviolent demonstration where every Friday people would meet and kind of march to the fence, symbolically gazing out at land that they had lost over the years. The IDF responded by killing a pretty significant amount of Palestinians, but also

maiming, I believe, tens of thousands to the point where the UN put out a report noting that it had become commonplace to see people walking around with one leg, missing a leg, missing an arm. There were IDF soldiers who said, we were told, shoot out the legs. One guy said he hit like 40 plus legs in a single day. Hamas opposed this at the start because it was nonviolent, because it was civil society-led. Hamas eventually caved under public pressure and ended up supporting the Great March of Return, which I think goes to your question, what is the political order that can replace Hamas? If there is a nonviolent movement that can gain traction, then Hamas is defeated by that. Hamas is pressured into supporting that

just by the kind of public support for it, like happened with the Great March Return. The Israeli response was not to say, wow, let's embrace this nonviolent civil society-led movement and marginalize Hamas and reach a deal with this Palestinian force that could even see a unification between the West Bank and Gaza toward a long-term peaceful solution. It was, let's annihilate this. Let's shoot and kill and maim the peaceful protesters, which only then fortifies Hamas's position and allows them to say that we were right all along. We told you you can't deal with Israel. We warned you against this, that violence is the only way forward.

That's a fantastic retelling that is almost entirely fictional for the Great March of Return. It did start off as a generally peaceful protest. The idea behind the March of Return was returning to Israel. The UN has released a report where they've gone over a lot of the shootings. It's very curious that if you actually read the entire report, you'll notice that almost every single shooting happens between 50 to 100 meters in range, which is curious. Because I was told, I believe by I think Finkelstein himself said, or it might have been Rabbani, that this is a crack team of Israeli snipers, but apparently their rifles only worked up to 100 meters. Maybe they're just lazy.

Or maybe the reason why is because there is a no-go zone between the fence and 100 meters, because when people get too close, people try to cut the fence open, people try to break through, which is what was happening towards the end of the- They had no choice but to shoot all those unarmed people. It doesn't matter if you're armed or unarmed, if you're approaching an area that you're not supposed to be in, and then when people start to try to break through the fence, that's the rules of the border. If you try to cross any militarized border, you're not supposed to be in. And then when people start to try to break through the fence, that's the rules of the border. If you try to cross any militarized border, you're probably going to get shot at.

Also, towards the end of the Great March of Return, there were people that were throwing stones, that were sending over incendiary balloons, that were causing fires to spread on the other side of the fence. All of this is documented even by the UN. And that was when the majority of the firing from the Israeli police happened. If you want to say that they shouldn't be shooting at people who were close to the fence because you don't like that policy or whatever, that's fine.

But characterizing that as like just open firing into a bunch of innocent people that are standing there with the goal of just maiming people for no reason is the most unbelievable retelling of what happened towards the end of that event. That's exactly what happened, actually. Just to characterize it, just, you know, get an even more complete picture. Israeli policy is people in Gaza have no right to go in and out of the cage that they've been placed into. They're complete siege. Their economy is in shambles because Israel does not allow them to trade with the outside world. They can't have an airport because Israel doesn't feel like they are entitled to an airport, can't have a seaport. You know, when you look at the rates of unemployment over 50% in Gaza at the time, and if those people who are trapped in this cage come a little too close to the border, then we open fire at them and kill

them even when they're unarmed, because that's border policy. If this is something that... It's more than 6,000, according to the UN, quote unquote, more than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers week after week at the protest sites by the separation fence. There's no denying that, yes, some people try to open up and some people sent incendiary balloons over the border and so on. But by and large, when you look at the cases, human rights organizations have been clear about the fact that people were targeted when they posed absolutely no threat to Israeli soldiers. So Israeli soldiers opened fire on people and targeted specifically medics and journalists and children and people who are disabled in wheelchairs. There's a very clever game that's being played when we say

pose no threat to Israeli soldiers. There was one UN report that came out that analyzed it that claimed that every single shooting except for one was unjustified. But the way that they got that is they didn't analyze that as an armed conflict. They analyzed that as a policing event. And when you analyze things internationally as a policing event, typically police aren't allowed to shoot or kill anybody unless they pose a direct threat to the individual. Why would it be analyzed as an armed conflict if one side wasn't armed? Because Hamas was present. But they weren't shooting.

It doesn't matter if they were shooting. If you've got an enemy military that is present amongst people that are performing actions that are Hamas. No, it's not a military. Hamas is considered

an oppositional force. And if you've got people that are participating in a demonstration, it doesn't matter if you have guns or not. Of course it does. Guns have nothing to do

with being an oppositional military force. International humanitarian law is absolutely clear about the fact that a situation... You can only kill combatants if they're in combat and they're armed. You can't find somebody... That is absolutely not true. You do not become OISTIC combat. You do not all of a sudden gain the protections of a civilian if you're an enemy combatant without a gun. That is absolutely not true.

If you happen to go home, of course you do. You should familiarize yourself with international humanitarian law. You can Google IHL enemy combatant. Google IHL OISTIC combat. Let's do that. That is absolutely do not. Of course you do. You should familiarize yourself with international military law. You can Google IHL, enemy combat, and Google IHL, ballistic combat. Let's do that. That is absolutely not fair. Just to go back to a point that you made earlier about sort of how mass has to go. Wait, hold on. Just to be clear.

I just want to just to... So you're saying that if there's a military and you're fighting the enemy and you guys are going to... If you just drop your guns, you can just run back and nobody can shoot you? Yes. If you drop your guns and raise your arms, you can't be shot anymore. No, that's surrendering. That's different than running away.

You can't drop your guns and just run away and you can't get shot because you have no firearms. If you're a military threat at the time, it's a military engagement. That's not true. That is absolutely not true. Okay, I just see... We can have the control room look this up. Sure, you can do it. You're wrong about this. That's a level of detail. Again, you start playing up, imagining scenarios of somebody

shooting at you and then dropping their gun and turning around. No, no, but that's what your rule would lead to. We have to be able to analyze. This is the problem.. We can't even acknowledge the basic realities of our conflict. This brings up a really fundamental reality, actually, because Omar was talking about airports and the sea ports, and I think we all agree it would be miserable to live in a territory that doesn't have an airport, doesn't have a seaport. The argument from Israel and supporters of Israel is that if you put an airport in Gaza, Hamas would immediately seize it and use it to use parts, use the technologies to kill Israelis. Yeah. And nobody

asks if you have an airport in Israel, will the Israeli government use it to import weapons from the United States that they then use to kill Palestinians? You see, there's an inequality here that we never really acknowledge. And I don't think that's unfair. I just mean, so what is like now? What is the path to creating a Gaza that can have an airport? Do we think Hamas would use the airport and the seaport to bring in weapons? I have no doubt that they would exactly in the same way the Israeli government imports weapons and commits massive atrocities. Their terrorism against the Palestinian war is anything the Palestinians have ever done. What can people in Palestine do to create a situation where that's not and what can people in Israel do frankly to create a situation that that's not, and what can people in Israel do, frankly, to create a situation that's different?

And to Stephen's earlier point, which we did not address, he thinks the goal of removing Hamas from power is absolutely essential and you've got to do it. First, I want to point out that double standard because nobody says we have to get rid of the Israeli government. Because the Israeli government is infinitely better than Hamas. It's not even close. It's not. It's not by any measure.

Better in what sense? Better in that it's a democracy, better in that it responds to international global pressure, better in that their goal isn't the entire annihilation of a group of people. If you think that the role... It absolutely is. Their absolute intention is the absolute erasure of Palestinians from Gaza. Then how is it the Palestinian population has exploded in the Gaza Strip over the past... Because they're doing it in slow motion.

They're in slow motion going the opposite way? Is it like when you go faster than light and you go backwards through time? That's a very, very cute talking point. But when you look at what actually Israeli policy has been for literally decades, it's been confining Palestinians to smaller and smaller areas. You can see it unfolding in the case of Gaza. They've just given up on Gaza. They've basically besieged the entire thing. It's a cage. Palestinians can do whatever they want there. They don't care about Gaza anymore. And that's how they wanted to leave it. In the case of the West Bank, they absolutely are squeezing Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas. So you can talk about the Palestinian population increasing in terms of numbers,

but they're in the areas that Israel is interested in taking over. They're absolutely decreasing. When you look at Jerusalem, Jerusalem, every few years you look at it, and the number of Palestinians in Jerusalem is actually decreasing. It's a deliberate policy of pushing Palestinians out. But so from my perspective, when you look at- When you say the number of Palestinians is decreasing, are you saying because some of them

are getting citizenship for Israel now? Because Israel- No, no, no, no, no, because Israel is demolishing their homes and replacing them, and in some cases, you see it actually on video, of Palestinian families being thrown out of their homes in East Jerusalem and Jewish settlers

come and take over those homes. There is citizenship available for every person living, even in East Jerusalem. There's a lot of people who don't want it because they don't want to be part of Israel. Okay. Do you think, real quick, because you mentioned between the Hamas and the IDF, do you think if Hamas ran Israel and Jews lived in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, do you think the situation would look the same or do you think Hamas would treat them worse?

I have no idea. You couldn't possibly. What would it look like to be treated worse than Gaza's being treated now? A million times. It could be actual starvation. It could be actual dying. There is actual starvation in Gaza. People are dying by the dozens in Gaza who have already died.

I understand. We've had that. I wish I brought a list of me. I have like 52 different stories between October and now where verge of famine, imminent mass starvation, almost famine, about to start. It's been happening for six months. And prior to this, people would say it's been happening for 20 years. And dozens of children dying. If you go by Al Jazeera reports, the number is 32, and that's the most favorable. Al Jazeera re-reporting the Gazan health. So that's acceptable for you. I didn't say it was acceptable. I'm just saying the idea

that this place has been starved for decades, and we have 32 possibly dozens to show for it. You're once again conflating things. I ask you a very simple question that you're not going to answer, which is if Hamas ran Israel, do you think that the trip would be better, worse, or about the same? I don't see the point of speculating about things that we have no idea what it's going to be like. Because you said that the IDF is worse than Hamas. Yes, in terms of the scale of the atrocities they've committed. So in that case, you agree that the United States is worse than Hamas

and that basically every single large country is worse than Hamas because of the scale of the country? I think the genocidal campaign that Israel is currently engaged in in Gaza is kind of unique. It's not commonplace for countries to engage in that level of violence. When you say that, does October 7th count as genocidal? Let me just... I just want to note, it is fascinating that we won't answer that. You're so good at saying so many things and having me chase the ball into different directions. Let me just be very clear, and then you can answer everyone. Sure. I am not saying so many things and having me chase the ball into different directions. Let me just be very clear, and then you can answer everyone.

Sure. I am not saying so many things. I will ask a very clear question. You won't engage, and then you're going to yap about a whole bunch of unrelated stuff like genocidal campaigns. I'll read it one more time. You're not going to answer. I understand. My very clear question was, if Hamas was in control of Israel, and then the IDF in Israel was in control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,

do we think that Hamas, who would now own nuclear weapons and a full military and everything, would they be treating the Jews better or worse than the Jews are treating the Palestinians? And my answer is, I don't know. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing.

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Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You've mentioned that Hamas has to go. I think the Israeli government has to go by that logic. And the question then becomes, what cost would be acceptable to impose on Israeli civilians in order to get the Israeli government out of power? Would you impose starvation and all that? Of course, nobody would endorse that. Everybody understands that that's a completely monstrous

idea for a government that has committed far greater atrocities than Hamas has. And then you have the second point of if you want to get rid of Hamas, it might be useful to ask yourself how Hamas came into being. How did they come about? How did they get support? And it's obvious that brutality towards Palestinians

is how Hamas came into being because they created- Literally. And even if you want to leave out the part because they created, literally, and it's, you know, even if you want to leave out the part where Netanyahu was effectively indulging their existence as a means of dividing Palestinians, Israeli politicians have been quite explicit

about the fact that they see this as a useful policy to prevent a Palestinian state from existing. But Hamas gained support as an alternative to the Palestinian authority that was pliant, that was bending over backwards to try to accommodate Israel. They said, no, no, no, we can get you freedom because we're going to fight.

And that's how they gained power. And if your idea is to defeat Hamas and get them out of power by brutalizing Palestinians even more, that's just completely delusional. Even if you get rid of Hamas as an organization, whatever replaces it, whether they call themselves Hamas or not,

you're creating another generation of traumatized people who are going to be desperate for revenge. And you're just basically perpetuating conflict. That was the point that I was making earlier. Some of the founders of Hamas, as children, lived through massacres in Gaza in the 1950s. This is well-known history. It doesn't justify what they did, but it raises questions about whether or not tactically, strategically, those massacres worked to Israel's benefit. Now, if you are Netanyahu and you want to divide Palestinians and the extremists are good for you, then it does work to their benefit. But if you're trying to defeat Hamas or the ideology

of kind of armed resistance to Israel. And if you really want a two-state solution. But if you really want a solution to this crisis, then why would more cowbell, like more violence, why would that finally work? I don't think more or less violence will work. We could try less. We've tried more. It's not less, it hasn't. The entire history of the Palestinian people against Israel since 48 has been one of violence, nonstop. So the idea that like it's if you're just peaceful for a little bit it'll fix things isn't going to work. The Palestinian people don't want peace they want justice and in their mind right now justice has to do with acquiring some amount of of Israel. Now whether that is the entirety of Israel into a single state or whether that's a

two-state solution again. But that's not acquiring parts of Israel. If you're talking about two states, that's acquiring occupied territory that is not Israel's and Israel has to withdraw from. It's not anybody's. What do you mean it's not Israel's? It does not belong to Israel. International law is extremely clear about the fact that they have to withdraw from that territory. International law is not extremely clear.

It is extremely clear. You're going to reference a single advisory opinion written by the UN in 2004? And an endless mountain of UN resolutions. clear. You're going to reference a single advisory opinion written by the UN in 2004? Well, hopefully they had a one-day treatment. No, you have even read the report. Wait, wait. It's an endless mountain of UN resolutions that make absolutely clear that Israel has the right to be in the occupied territories.

Before we get into the resolutions, since you raised the virtue of the Israeli government, I did want to ask if you had seen the PLOS 972 article on the Lavender AI program. I imagine you saw this. Yeah, I read through it a bit. So let me read you a little portion of it. So the IDF used artificial intelligence to identify Hamas members. It used to be that you had to be, I think, colonel or above to be specifically targeted by an airstrike. And there had to be some precautions taken to minimize the civilians that you might be around.

The IDF, after October 7th, got rid of both of those precautions. They said any Hamas member is now able to be targeted by an airstrike, and civilian casualties don't matter. In fact, maximizing civilian casualties seems to be a feature of the program. I'll just read from this, if you can put up the 972 Magazine article. They write, during the early stages of the war, the Army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender's kill lists with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a, quote, rubber stamp for the machine's decisions, adding that normally they would personally devote only

about 20 seconds to each target before authorizing a bombing, just to make sure the lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as errors in approximately 10% of cases and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups or no connection at all moreover the israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes usually at night while their whole families were present rather than during the course of military activity according to the sources this was because from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems,

including one called Where's Daddy, also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their families' residences. And 972 argues that the reason that you've seen so many women and children killed is that they were identifying men. Sometimes, something like 10 to 20% of men in Gaza are named Mohammed, like if you go through the Ministry of Health list of casualties. Many of them have same last names because they're from the same family. So they're using AI to identify a particular man and then follow him to his home and then killing him with a bomb in his home. Oftentimes, this is an apartment that doesn't

just have his family sleeping there, but also has many other families sleeping there. Which is where the Where's Daddy name comes from that program. They wait for them to be with their families and they think it's easier to bomb them in their homes rather than try to fight them in the field where they're more difficult to find. So how could this be worse? Try to design a government that behaves in a

worse way than this. The numbers don't support the idea that civilians are being targeted en masse. It doesn't even come close to it. I've seen estimates that anywhere it's like nine to one for civilian to military deaths historically in conflict and the idea that in the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on the planet, those numbers right now are, depending on who's estimates, anywhere from 2.5 to 1 to like 4 to 1 in terms of civilian to militant deaths. So the idea that people

are being wiped out with innocent family members, there just don't seem to be any numbers at all to support that. Something that's also very frustrating is Hamas engages in behavior that has been documented by the UN, by Amnesty International, by other NGOs that is supposed to induce the death of civilians. I don't know why nobody seems to ever care about this. Hamas and the Gaza Strip exclusively fights in civilian clothes. Do you acknowledge that? I was not familiar with that. You don't care. Hamas will fight from hospitals. Do you acknowledge that? They don't fight from

hospitals. What happened with the most recent raid on al-Shifa? Let me, let me, okay, so you've actually gone, no, no, no, I'm going to address this. You're going to address it because you're not, but so let me just get my thing. He said he doesn't think that they fight for hospitals. He just said no, he doesn't think that. But I just want to go, just for people listening, I guess. One of the frustrating things about asymmetrical warfare is that as law-of-arm conflict has evolved past the 90s, the collapse of the Soviet Union, states are having to do more and more fighting against non-state actors, which has posed a huge challenge to the ICJ and the ICC in terms of how you analyze this conflict. And the reason why it's such a challenge is because international law only works if it allows countries to effectively operate so that

countries will want to follow it. So international law tries to balance, for a law of non-conflict, two very, very delicate things. One is the protection of oeristic combat peoples, people that shouldn't be killed ever. And then the other is a state's ability to conduct warfare. Because if you deprive either of these, if you don't protect civilians, everybody dies. And if you deprive a state of the ability to defend itself, nobody follows law of armed conflict. The issue with Hamas as an asymmetrical opponent is every single behavior that they engage in is meant to induce maximum civilian casualty.

That means that they exclusively fight in civilian uniforms. It means that they operate out of civilian, supposed to be special protected areas like hospitals. The al-Shifa raid recently is a good example of that. They booby trap corpses. They booby trap houses. This happened a lot of Protective Edge in 2014. Amnesty International reports show that. There was footage taken out of al-Shifa hospital in 2008. Amnesty International did a report on that, that there was an interrogation center in there. And we saw captured CCTV footage that showed hostages being brought into al-Shifa hospital. That Hamas will store munitions and they will fight even from zones that are supposed to be declared safe. And they store ammunitions in places like mosques or homes.

All of these behaviors are designed from the Hamas perspective to induce the maximum amount of civilian casualties. And then when it happens, nobody has anything to say with Hamas and everybody has something to say with Israel. Why hasn't Hamas, by the way, these are also considered failures to uphold your duty under international law. Why hasn't Hamas tried to protect the civilian population? All those tunnels they built, they couldn't build one bomb shelter. Why hasn't Hamas tried to set up a humanitarian area? Why is it exclusively on Israel and the international community and Hamas can't do any type of collaboration or cooperation to do it? It's because they don't care because the goal is to induce the maximum amount of civilian casualties.

Just one tiny point. If they did build a bomb shelter for civilians, Israel would bomb it and say that, look, they're putting civilians in the tunnels. And if it would happen, that would be the end of the conflict. Because if there is a civilian bomb shelter built and there were no Hamas militants, and Israel hit that,

then it's over. Because at that point, who supports Israel? They're bombing entire neighborhoods. I want to get Omar's response. Let's get Omar's response to the hospital supports Israel? They're bombing entire neighborhoods. Let's get Omar's response to the hospital. You've gone through a lengthy record. Allow me to do the same, actually, for just one second.

One of the things that you had actually said recently, I think it's on the Comedy Cellar podcast, is that it is quite blatant to you. You said, patently obvious that Israel is doing everything it can to protect civilians in Gaza. I think I said more than any other country ever has in the history of armed conflict. Yes. I think.

Go ahead. Oh, actually, it turns out we do have that. All right. It seems if you engage with it honestly, and I hate to say this because I'm very partisan, when you engage with it honestly, it seems obvious, like patently obvious that Israel is doing everything they can to minimize civilian casualties. It's like undeniable because the numbers would be so much different if they were just indiscriminately bombing or carpet bombing, as everybody says. So, but I mean, they still have to manage the PR aspect because at the end of the day,

you know, perception is really the only thing that matters in international communities with other countries. So frankly, the claim that Israel is doing everything it can to minimize civilian casualties is by far the single most absurd thing that I have heard Stephen say, period. Let me run through the record for you. You wouldn't target a soldier at his house at night if that was your goal. And with the thing that you mentioned with Lavender, it's specifically, yeah, specifically when they're at home. But beyond that, just if I can run through that record. One second. Do you stand by saying everything? Basically, yeah. More than any other country ever has in the history of all of armed conflict.

Perfect. Let's run through the record. Human rights organizations who are the objective observers on these situations, every single one of them in every subsequent invasion of Gaza, including the current one, talk about Israel engaging in massive indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas. They talk about flattening entire neighborhoods. They talk also about deliberately killing civilians who pose absolutely no threat to Israeli soldiers. They go through and describe these incidents. They raise them with the Israeli military. The

Israeli military says we investigated and we saw that nothing wrong happened. And human rights organizations' assessment of the way that Israel conducts itself is that it's completely in violation of international law and that their self-accountability is a complete sham. It's not actually serious. And then you look at what Israeli leaders themselves also say. And by the way, that 972 magazine, there was a article. There was one that came before it as well in which they described that Israelis' policy in Gaza is to basically shock the civilian population

by doing massive devastation in civilian areas as a means of putting pressure on Hamas. And that included an example that they listed, toppling a high-rise residential building without warning on top of the people who are inside it. So that's- And there's a name for it. And that's, yeah, that's based on power targets.

Power target, yeah. And that's based on interviews with Israeli intelligence officers about Israeli policy in Gaza. And it's long been stated Israeli policy, frankly, if you look at people like Giora Island, Israeli general, who later became the national security advisor in Israel, they talk about the policy being to punish the civilians and to induce so much suffering among them in huge numbers to put pressure on groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. And this is not

new here, by the way, during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, there is an incident in which Israel dropped a million cluster bombs all over towns and villages in Lebanon, prompting a high-ranking Israeli commander to say, quote, this is, you can find it on Haaretz, what we did was insane and monstrous. We covered entire towns and villages with cluster bombs. That's how they describe what Israel actually carried out at the time. And then you look at current Israeli statements right now from all of this. Benjamin Netanyahu has been quoted saying in Israeli press, again, talking about what the strategy is with Ron Dermer. And he said the strategy is to thin the population in Gaza down to a minimum. That's what he actually wants to do. He uses genocidal language like the Amalek, which is a quote from the Bible about murdering the

children and babies of your enemies. The word Amalek, which is a quote from the Bible about murdering the children and babies of your enemies. The word Amalek appears outside the Hague. The idea that it's exclusively used to describe animals is not true. And you have then Israeli soldiers themselves, so in case there's a misinterpretation of that, celebrating that they're going to kill Palestinians, Palestinian civilians. They're chanting about the Amalek and how we're going to destroy them. And you have people who are actually posting videos of themselves talking about we're killing

them by the tens of thousands. Isn't that great? So that's the rhetoric of Israeli soldiers themselves on the ground. Then they're caught on tape shooting children in the head when they posed absolutely no threat. It happened in Jenin, even in the West Bank during this current crisis, where you saw two young children being shot in the head without, basically, very obviously posing no threat. You saw in Gaza, a grandmother holding the hand

of a young child while carrying a white flag and they shoot her dead while the child is holding her hand and the child freaks out and everybody else runs away. You have a pattern that is documented on video of these kinds of crimes. You have American doctors who visit Gaza and talk about the horrors they see in hospital, how there's countless children who come in with single sniper bullet wounds to the head.

They can't keep track of how many of these are coming in. And you have the president of the United States describing, Joe Biden describing Israeli bombings of Gaza as indiscriminate. The idea that you can look at this mountain of evidence between what human rights organizations are reporting, what Israeli leaders are saying, what Israeli soldiers are posting of themselves, and what the American government's assessment of that bombing is, and to say they're doing everything they can

to minimize civilian casualties, is just so thoroughly dishonest on behalf of an apartheid government that is committing atrocities before all of us. It's just, it's mind-boggling. Steve, you honestly would have to be either naive to believe that or dishonest. And you just don't strike me as a naive guy.

You're a very smart guy. I don't understand how you can actually say that. It's just funny because the entire, like, yap you just did is completely destroyed by a single question. How do you explain the numbers? How do you explain the ratio of even what Hamas has claimed? I think 70% women and children. How do you explain that percentage? 70% women and children?

Hold on. I'm sorry. I think as militants... 70% women and children. How do you explain that percentage? 70% women and children? Hold on. I'm sorry. Because for children, we're saying 18 and under, as opposed to the traditionally fighting age is what we would usually talk about in these conflicts. But everything, whether it's the Palestinians or special rules... You can bend this however you want. It's not bending. No, no.

I'm asking, how do you explain the fact that even Hamas admitted, I believe it was 7,500 or 8,000 of the people killed were militants? I don't remember what their exact numbers are. So I have an analysis from March 12th. So this is from Just Security. As of this date, the IDF reported 29,000 airstrikes in Gaza. At that date, the number of reported civilian deaths in Gaza was roughly 29,200. The number of Hamas fighters killed in action has been claimed by the IDF and Hamas, both without evidence. The IDF claims 12,000 fighters killed, while Hamas claims 6,000 fighters killed. So we can look at those numbers given the demographic data from the health ministry. Out of 29,200 deaths, about 9,700 were

men and the rest were women and children. If the IDF claim is true, this is equivalent to every man being killed in Gaza being a Hamas fighter and several thousand women and or children being Hamas fighters. This is extremely unlikely, but to be extremely conservative, I will use the IDF reported Hamas casualty numbers, 12,000, you give a lower bound on civilian deaths in Gaza. In addition, we need to subtract deaths that would normally happen for this population. So about 4,900 deaths per year on average, equivalent to about 1,800 in a 4.5 month period. This gives us a minimum number of civilian war deaths of approximately 15,700 based on 29,000 airstrikes that leads to an approximate, an average of 54 civilians killed per 100 attacks and just lastly

This analysis goes on to say despite the alarm over the high rate of civilian deaths in Raqqa One finds the minimum equivalent in Gaza 54 civilians killed in 100 attacks is eight times greater than the air wars based estimate and 32 times greater than the DoD Estimate and recall that that 52 number is a lower bound for the Gaza ratio, is likely far higher than this. So, Stephen, do you dispute the validity of those numbers? What was the ratio of fighters on the lower bound? What was the ratio of fighters to civilians there? Did it say Hamas claimed 6,000? 6,000. Yeah. So, and the death toll at that time was how much? 29,200.

About 9,000 men total. So, 6,000 and it was 29,000 total deaths? 29,200 total deaths. 9,000 men total. So 6,000 and it was 29,000 total deaths? 29,200 total deaths. 9,700 were men. So if you're taking the, that's the Hamas reported number, you're at one militant to four civilians. And that's for the Hamas reported number. How can the ratio be so horrible? If Israel is on a genocidal, indiscriminate campaign against Hamas, how could that possibly be the case? They're doing it, again, in slow motion to give plausible deniability that this is happening after war.

It's obvious. Look, they've destroyed 80% of the buildings. No, they haven't. That's bullshit. That number is not true. They've displaced 90% of the population. Can you name any other conflict in which you've displaced 90% of the civilian population? No, because usually they just destroy them. You think in Dresden they told the civilians to flee do you think in the Tokyo fire? But there's a there's a there's a sake in Hiroshima. Did we tell the civilians to leave? Can you in that all that can you acknowledge it? We just it was incredibly fucking stupid that no

They don't tell civilians to leave first. Normally. They just kill them. Yeah Because we know Because because he thinks this is a clever line. Let me explain something to you. He's not Knowledge it I'm to acknowledge it. No, no, I'm going to acknowledge it. I'm going to acknowledge it. Yes, they told civilians to leave, and then they dropped massive 2,000 bombs on the safe zones that they told the civilians to flee to. There was one safe zone, the Al-Mawawas, the beach or whatever, and they haven't bombed it. There have been countless incidents of them dropping. Now you're just lying.

I'm not. I looked it up. You look up all the data on all the safe zones. There's four hours of roads that they make safe per day where they guarantee travel. There's a New York Times investigation. And then there's a beach that they have not attacked yet. There's a New York Times investigation and there's an NBC investigation.

Both of them document the fact that Israel is bombing safe zones where they tell civilians to flee. And Israel admitted this. Israel admitted this. Hold on. Israel admitted at CNN that intelligence indication that these places were safe houses for commanders of the Rafah Brigade of the Hamas terror organization.

This was back in December about bombing areas that were supposed to be evacuation routes. Evacuation routes are not safe zones. There's been one official declared safe zone. Shouldn't it be safe? Shouldn't Hamas not operate from there? I mean, we're talking, again, armed conflict. That's a good question. There's one zone, I wish I could

remember, is it Al, it's Al-Muah something. It's the beach west of Khan Yunus or whatever. Nobody knows the name of it. This is the only singular... They told people to go to Khan Yunus and be safe there. No, they did not. They absolutely did not declare that Khan Yunus would be a safe zone.

No, that's absolutely... Why did they tell people to go there? Well, initially, because most of the combat operations were in the north. So that they could concentrate them and kill them there? Why else would they say go there? If you're a Palestinian citizen, what should you trust? Are we going to see 20, 30, 40, 50,000 deaths soon then? Are we about to see like 100,000 Palestinians go up in smoke?

That's what they're doing. They're herding them all to one city so they can blow them all up. Wait, wait, wait. I thought we said they were going for plausible deniability. Now they're herding them to one giant kill zone and blowing them all up? Yes, and now they're going to tell them that it's time to relocate because we're going to invade Rafah and send them to places where there is no food, water, or shelter

and have them strangle themselves. And they're going to be on imminent starvation and death like they have been for the past five months. Yes, it's going to be ongoing killing rate, killing them by the tens of thousands, and saying, oops, it's just war. Gaza is unlivable anymore. Too bad it can't support Palestinian life. People are starving.

It's just all an accident. No, nobody said it's an accident. It's crazy that the numbers are so poor for a country that could kill so many more people. But they're constantly, they're doing things that no other country's done. Do you acknowledge that no other country does leaflets, phone calls to buildings, roof knocking sirens? You get it. No other country's done that. Human rights organizations.

You're not going to answer that. The U.S. cleared Mosul out. Other countries do it. You literally interrupt me to tell me I'm not going to answer something as I'm trying to answer it. You were saying no country has done anything like roof knockings and leaflets and all that. And when you look at what human rights organizations say about these, they say they're completely pointless because there's nowhere for these civilians to go that is safe. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

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Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. So you can drop a leaflet. It's a game, right? And the fact that people like you fall for it, it's just kind of really embarrassing. You still have no explanation for the ratio, for the one to four on the lower bound. They tell civilians to flee because here we're going to be

so nice and make sure that you don't die. And then when they flee, they kill them as they're fleeing or they kill them wherever they arrive. The numbers are so disproportionate. If you were a Palestinian, what would you do if you lived in... Probably go south to the, whatever the beach was. I wish I had the name of it right now, but there's been one singularly declared safe area and it's that beach.

How many Palestinians do you want to crowd into that, whatever that small beach is? I guess at one point, however many millions. How many bathrooms are there? How much water is there? I mean, it's better than getting blown up by a bomb. If you want to crowd into that, whatever that small beach is? I guess at one point, however many millions. How many bathrooms are there? How much water is there? I mean, it's better than getting blown up by a bomb. If you want the water to stop, how about just have Hamas leave and release the hostages? Or Israel could just stop bombing Gaza. Why would Israel stop attacking an enemy that committed the largest terror attack per capita in the history of the entire country?

It's a ridiculous double standard. Wait, hold on a minute. Hold on. You think it's reasonable to tell Israel, hey, Hamas, I know that you guys, like, did a little bit of a large terrorism against us and have been, by the way, which is a violation of international law, indiscriminately launching rockets for decades from this law.

And every single one of those is a violation of international law because those are, by definition, indiscriminate, which, by definition, fail the distinction principle that is essential to law of armed conflict, one of the three prongs. You're operating... No, no, wait.

So you're saying that Israel needs to allow Hamas to stay there, who's been breaking international law of armed conflict, one of the three prongs. You're operating... No, no, wait. So you're saying that Israel needs to allow Hamas to stay there, who's been breaking international law of armed conflict for 20 years? As opposed to Hamas allowing the Israeli government to stay there when they're breaking international law for even longer than that. And I want to put a fine point on that.

Seriously, no, no. Honestly, I want to get an answer to that. Why is it that you think that the Israeli government, having committed all the atrocities that they committed... Because the Israeli government is a democracy that can be reasoned with.

Their neighbors have reasoned with them. People have signed peace agreements and people have reached agreements with them. The Palestinians have not. And there's a reason, by the way, which you will never recognize, why all of the surrounding Arab states have abandoned the Palestinians too,

because their history has been one of violence that first they've been encouraged by the surrounding nations and used by them. And then now they've been abandoned once the other nations have used them up. That's a racist anti-Palestinian theory. Racist? What happened in the 70s? Why did the Palestinians get kicked out of Jordan in the 70s?

Why did the Palestinians assassinate the Jordanian king in 52 in Jerusalem? Why did the Palestinians get kicked out of Lebanon? Why doesn't YouTube want to work with the Palestinians? Do you believe he's a racist, Omar? Yes. When he talks about Palestinians, nobody likes them and nobody wants them and nobody whatever. Yes, absolutely. That's a racist description.

I don't like this distinction between, there's a category of people who are racist and a category of people who are not, I think that's a simplistic thing. What he just described is a racist stereotype. There's absolutely no question about it.

I'm just, I'm just, in fact, I don't want to, I don't want to get into who he is. It is to a lot of people that are pro-Palestinian. I understand.

History is like, it was traumatizing. If you don't understand that the Egyptian dictatorship is collaborating with Israel to suppress anything that is Muslim Brotherhood affiliated and that's why the reason they're collaborating against Gaza. Was Nasser collaborating

with the Israeli government when they locked all the Gazans in the Gaza Strip and didn't let any of them leave? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Steve, you do this thing constantly where you bring up random anecdotes that are completely irrelevant to anything that what I'm doing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The reason why that wasn't random is because you applied today that the dictatorship in Egypt, first of all, you said dictatorship, very loaded. Yes, Egypt's had a history of dictatorships. You're implying that they're collaborating with Israel in a unique way. You're acting like they're collaborating with Israel in a unique way.

And even from 48 to 67, when Egypt had control of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians were still locked in the Gaza Strip. Let's be clear about it. Just kidding, it wasn't random. All right, all right, let me be clear about something. Right now, this rhetoric, I'm going to let it go for now. The idea is looking at all the surrounding Arab governments who are collaborating with Israel, it's a sign that they hate Palestinians. When you do opinion polling in any of these countries, all of them, including in Saudi Arabia,

the overwhelming majority of the population wants to cut off any talk. They want to isolate Israel diplomatically. They don't want to deal with them. The people of the region absolutely oppose what Israel is doing to Palestinians. And the fact that you can cite a handful of governments in the surrounding area who all effectively belong to the U.S. orbit and operate under and get tremendous privilege and financial privilege and security privilege for collaborating with the United States, and to try to paint that as some sort of validation that they have anti-Palestinian sentiment, I think is completely

ridiculous and ignorant of the dynamics that actually exist in the region, a region that I grew up in, by the way. What you have, I grew up in Kuwait, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, and I visited Palestine on multiple occasions. Gotcha. Wait, you grew up in Kuwait in what years? Was that when Arafat was supporting Saddam Hussein? I was born in Kuwait in 1982, and I lived there until that war. And yes, when Arafat made statements in support of Saddam Hussein expelling. I was born in Kuwait in 1982, and I lived there until that war. And yes, when Arafat made statements in support of Saddam Hussein, that became the reason why many Palestinians could not go back to Kuwait. Which was a really big deal too, which is also funny because those Oslo Accords, we point to Israel not being a good partner for peace. The only reason why those Oslo

Accords were so horrible is because Arafat was desperately looking for a way back into Palestinian popularity after supporting Saddam Hussein when he expells him. Speaking of Oslo, yes. And you know what was also happening? And the reason why Oslo happened is because while Arafat was looking for a way to get validation as the leader of Palestinians and come back, Israel was dealing with the fact that there is a Palestinian uprising, the first intifada, overwhelmingly nonviolent, in which Palestinians were doing civil disobedience, sometimes throwing rocks at soldiers. And Israel was brutalizing them for year after year. After they killed so many of them,

that the Israeli officials started being concerned about the optics of it. So they said, don't kill them, beat them up and break their arms instead. And what you ended up with- I'm so curious. Hold on, I'm so much more frustrated. And what you ended up with,

allow me to finish, you have to let me finish my thought every now and then. Yeah. And what you ended up with- It was like murder the children, I understand. They started beating up Palestinian protesters and seeing them, brutalizing them and breaking their bones on video. And that ended up being an even bigger disaster for Israel.

And they did not know what to do with that civil uprising of people who wanted to be free from occupation. And so they struck a deal with Arafat and brought him in to suppress the Intifada on the fake and false promise that they might grant Palestinians a state, Arafat fell for it and it was all a sham made to suck the energy out of a genuine Palestinian uprising for freedom and to turn it into the fraudulent Oslo process in which Israel had cover to expand more and more settlements

and entrench the occupation under the pretense of peace. That's the history of what happened. So what could Israel have done after October 7th that would have been, and I don't want to lump you into this camp. Some people said it's about proportionality. What could Israel have done after October 7th that would have been, and I don't want to lump you into this camp, some people said it's about proportionality. What could Israel have done after October 7th that would have either been proportional or given some of the legitimate points that Stephen made about a densely populated area where you have a military and a civilian population crowded into hospitals, etc. What could Israel have done? What should they have done after

October 7th that would have been a just response? And I promise I'll address that directly, but just on the context that you just described before that, you have a situation in which there is, it's impossible to have a situation in which Hamas is fighting not in civilian areas. I mean, when you talk about the difference in power, one side has a full-fledged military, has air force, has tanks. Hamas can't just go out in the field and confront them directly. They have to wear a civilian guard. So they do. They have to wear civilian guards. So they do. They have to fight for hospitals. That's just a complete total lie.

Thank you. You'd have to let me finish my sentence every now and then, Stephen, seriously. Just try, in the words of Norman Finkelstein, try to have the self-possession to just listen a little bit more. And in the style of Norman Finkelstein, be wrong about everything. Keep going. Yeah, great. You have a situation in which the balance of power makes it so that those militants

have to effectively use guerrilla tactics, and guerrilla tactics involve hiding in civilian areas. That's how that actually happens. And if you're really upset about that and you think that that's a real problem, by all means, arm Hamas the way you arm Israel and then they can have military on military war and we can spare the Palestinian civilians if you think that's really what's the underlying motivation. But of course, nobody would ever consider that. We only arm the criminals on one side with massive armaments. Now, on the question of what Israel should have done, there's two separate questions that often get conflated. There's the question of, is it a just war to begin with? And then there's the question of proportion. And you can imagine if people in Gaza were free and Israel was not controlling their

lives and deciding how much food they get to eat and whether they can go and come back. And then some kind of attack happened. You might expect some kind of Israeli retaliation. And then the only conversation would be about proportionality. Are they doing it in a way that is defensible? And what they're currently doing is obviously not defensible, to be devastating the civilian population in order to thin that population, by the words of Israel's leader right now. There's no source for that quote by the way, which is it comes from the red line. It comes from Israeli press reporting on internal strategic conversations. Which has never been substantial. Yes, Israeli media makes things up.

When the population has always had a calorie surplus. Even the diet part. They literally have. That's why when the famine started, when all the people were moved, I believe it was UNRWA that made the statement that this is a region that has never experienced hunger before. That's what's so infuriating. And that's also why Fengelstein got mad, because if you try to say, really, wait, these people are starving? By what metric?

That's what's so infuriating, Stephen, is that you want to start counting calories and try to discover whether they have a surplus or not, when you're missing the fact that Israel getting to decide what food gets into Gaza is itself outrageous. One people does not get to control whether another side gets to have cookies for their children or potato chips or sodas.

You don't get to do that. That's a level of dominance and oppression that is unacceptable. But you're not capable of having it because you won't even admit why the blockade exists. So you don't even deserve to be in the- What do you want him to admit? What do you want him to admit?

Why is there a blockade in Gaza? Yeah, you tell me. Why is there a blockade in Gaza? When you look at the fact that Israel is preventing cookies from going into Gaza, you know that it's not motivated by military. Why weren't cookies being prevented from going in? What were custom rockets fueled with? Yeah.

With cookies? Yeah. With sugar and fertilizer. Yes, that's how they made the early rockets. We're going to deny Palestinians in Gaza sugar because it might be used. You know what? First of all, they're not allowed back in because they use one-shift hand. You might know.

He's not going to admit it. I'm going to be clear another time. Another thing you're not going to admit. Why does the blockade exist? It's literally just because of the evil Jews trying to kill the Amalekites. Hamas fighters breathe air too. Maybe Israel can restrict air from going into Gaza to make sure that Hamas fighters don't breathe. But he's saying then the burden should be on Hamas not to use.

No, Palestinians have no agency. Rape is the language of the oppressed. You don't punish the civilian population to get military ones. You don't punish civilian populations to get that. Like indiscriminately shooting tens of thousands of rockets decade after decade into Israel, like what Hamas does? The scale of Israeli violence. Punishing the civilian population, like selling some of the humanitarian food back to the

population? Picking up tunnels of water pipes and using them to fashion rockets? Just want to make sure I heard. Hey, Stephen. Did you, Stephen, did you say that Hamas is turning cookies into missiles? pipes and using them to fashion rockets? I'm thinking all the international aid that comes in and building tunnels and tunnels of cement. Stephen, did you say that Hamas is turning cookies into missiles? My understanding is that the reason for the

restricting of sugar-based products was that the first generation, I think they were called Qasem rockets, were built in really crude shops using combinations of fertilizer and sugars that they would use. Do you know what the primary component of Hamas explosives is now? I think, I'm pretty sure now they use more

sophisticated stuff, but I don't know. You tell me. Unexploded Israeli bombs, because they've dropped so many over the last decade. I doubt that's true. I'm sure they do utilize it. With a 10 to 20% failure rate, Hamas then digs them up. The Yassin 105s that

you see blowing up all these Israeli tanks, primarily fueled by Israeli explosives. But I doubt the majority of them are. But also, again, just to reiterate, you're not going to tell me why does the blockade exist? I'm going to tell you why the blockade exists.

And the reason, by the way, why it includes banning cookies and soda pop and potato chips. Yes, the Oreos aren't going into the gun. Yes, no, by the way, why it includes banning cookies and soda pop and potato chips. The Oreos aren't going into the gum strip. No, I'm sure. It's very funny denying children the ability to eat chocolates and toys because they are Palestinian and not Israeli. That's just so incredibly trivial. Incredibly trivial. Oh, the emotional abuse.

And potato chips. It's working. We're two more virtue signals away from free Palestinian people. Keep going. Yes. It's you trivializing. If it was the other way around, if Hamas was imposing a siege on Israel, which is really children are not allowed to do any of that stuff. You would not be sitting here

making a lot of it. It would not be trivial to you because you understand that Israelis are human beings and their children deserve to eat potatoes, potato chips. Jewish people. I'm sorry, hold on.

You do. Jewish people live in Arab countries around the world. I don't know. When we talk about the Nakba and the expulsion of Jews, how many Jews lived in the West Bank after 48? Thank you for the def is. I'm curious that they all left. When we talk about the Nakba and the expulsion of Jews, how many Jews lived in the West Bank after 1948? Thank you for the deflection.

I'm just answering your... Let him answer about why the blockade exists. He's not. He's got to do the 52 different talking points first. The blockade exists. Oh my God, okay. The blockade exists because they want to punish the civilian population in Gaza as a means of putting pressure on Hamas. They're saying as long as we have a government in Gaza

that does not play ball with Israel the way the Palestinian Authority plays ball with Israel on the West Bank, the civilian population is going to suffer as a means of putting pressure on them and getting somebody else to be in power. The evidence for that is overwhelming. Children's toys were not allowed in

at the beginning of the blockade. And when Israel came under intense pressure after the flotilla incident, a bunch of activists tried to basically force medicines to be delivered into Gaza. So on the flotilla incident, a bunch of activists tried to basically force medicines to be delivered into Gaza. So on the flotilla incident, there were two of five of the ships were empty

and they were aggressive ships that were designed to fight against the IDF when they landed. You realize that footage is available. There's a hundred some people on the deck with chairs

throwing Israeli soldiers overboard. Yeah, and makeshift weapons and everything too. Makeshift weapons. Wow. I know. Well, that was all

they could bring from Turkey with them, I guess, because they were inspecting the boats. But yeah, those were not peaceful activist ships. And if you read any of the reports, if you open more than a Finklestein book and read what actually happened or watch any of the footage that actually happened. My friends were on that flotilla. Were they part of the fighters? Listen to yourself.

Listen to yourself. Listen to myself what? You can watch the videos. There were people who, yes, fought back when Israel bordered their ship in an act of piracy in international waters. Wait, why did Israel border the ship? Because they don't want the ship to get to Gaza. There you go, because there's a blockade and because they announced you need to stop. They don't get to impose that

blockade. They absolutely do. No more than Hamas gets to impose a blockade on Israel. This is ridiculous. Of course they don't get to decide what ships get to go in. Omar is saying by the end here, he's saying that the blockade exists because the Jews are evil. No, he's saying they're intentionally. That's a despicable thing to go in here? He's saying that the blockade exists because the Jews are evil. No, he's saying they're intentionally. That's a despicable thing to say.

I'm not saying anything about Jews. I'm talking about the Israeli government policy. Okay, I'm curious. In the second Intifada, were submersibles or weapons brought in via the water into the Gaza Strip? Did that happen? Say that one more time. Were there weapons that were shipped into the Gaza Strip via the Mediterranean? And plenty of weapons were shipped into Israel as well.

Oh, that's interesting. It is interesting, isn't it? So there were things... You think one side gets to dominate the other. Why is it that Egypt has been a partner with Israel in that blockade since its inception as well? I've already explained to you why the Egyptian government is interested in restricting any kind of environment.

Oh, because for 20 years they've just been an evil... Okay, okay. Everybody is a... This is consistent, at least with the history, that everybody is collaborators with the West. And Israel... Governments that are transparently collaborating with the West have hypnotized the world. Of course they are.

Even the Egyptian dictators are everybody. Yes. I just want to say something. I just honestly, there's one thing that I think is really, really important. This, you know, just saying the Jews are evil. It's such a despicable line. And let me explain why. Anti-Semitism is a very, very serious and rising problem in the country, in many other

places around the world, especially in the Trump years, we've seen these shootings that have happened at synagogues and everything like that. And you have a situation in which Israel's defenders constantly try to conflate those things, is that you ignore the fact that there is a significant portion of the progressive young American Jewish population that is opposed to Israeli policies. And every time he criticizes Israeli policy, people say, oh, you're attacking Jews. And that's exactly what you just did. And it's not just harmful to people like me

who get smeared by that accusation, completely baseless and really ugly and detestable. It's probably more true than we know, I think. Of Omar? Thank you for that wonderful speculation. But it's also actually harmful to Jewish communities themselves that are trying to protect themselves from anti-Semitism to constantly trivialize that charge that you throw it around that anybody who is critical of Israeli policy, anybody who thinks-Semites get more room to breathe and operate because that chart doesn't mean anything. So even if you enjoy smearing people like me and people who defend Palestinians, that's fine. But if you have any part of you that actually cares about Jewish people in this country, I would strongly advise you to stop throwing that smear around at people.

Okay. I'll do my virtue signals to the studio. I got asked an interesting question on my way up here from the, is it Max? Mac, producer Mac. Not Max, Mac. He asked me why I was so interested in this conflict. And one of the things that I think is so sad is, I think of all the things that I've ever looked at in my entire life, this is one where you can pick and choose facts from one side, and you can build the most compelling anti-Palestinian argument, or you can build the most compelling anti-Israeli argument.

And I don't think I've ever seen anything where you can have such a one-sided telling of the history as I have for this particular conflict. I think the really sad thing here is that I think that there are really good criticisms that can be made of Israel. I think they're really good criticisms you can make of their past policy. And I think that the story of the Palestinian is an incredibly empathetic one. I think that there are reasons why you could support violence in 47, violence in 48, wars in 67. I think you can support all of these things from a really empathetic, understanding place. But the issue is that both sides are so invested in telling their story and making money and

making videos and making whatever off of their particular side of things that you never will ever, ever, ever, ever have that conversation. So for instance, this is why identifying root causes is so important. When we talk about the blockade, the blockade exists because during the second intifada, there was a lot of weaponry that came in to Gaza from the Mediterranean and from Egypt. This is a problem that Egypt recognizes, a problem that Israel recognized. That's why the blockade existed, especially after the Palestinian Authority was not able to bring Hamas under control, and Hamas gained control of that region Israel said well fuck this we're going to

I don't want to drop you just there's one thing Yeah, so when before the flotilla incident they were not allowing certain food items from going in and children's toys And then after 2008, right? Yeah, you know, but it's just I want you to explain to me and then after that incident and Israel came under pressure They started allowing a little bit more humanitarian stuff to go into Gaza Is that because Hamas stopped being a threat to Israel or is that because those humanitarian goods are actually not a threat and Israel came under pressure, they started allowing a little bit more humanitarian stuff to go into Gaza. Is that because Hamas stopped being a threat to Israel, or is that because those humanitarian goods are actually not a threat and Israel did not give a shit about them anyway, apart from wanting to punish the Syrian population? My guess would be it's probably because the Israeli restrictions were too much, and they probably could have calmed the fuck down.

Right now, Israel is in the position it's in because Israel thinks that they can maintain an indefinite status quo and more or less slowly annex the West Bank. That's Israel's goal. The problem with this conflict has always been that Israel wants to fight forever because the longer they fight, the more of the West Bank they get to annex. The only reason the Abraham Accords happened was because it was to stave off annexation of the West Bank.

And the problem is that while Israel wants to continue fighting to gain more and more, people like you have deluded Palestinians into thinking that they fight, they can gain more and more too. I'm Palestinian for what it's worth. Only one side of Palestine, whatever that means, okay?

Only one side of this conflict. What does it mean to you? Palestinian? There are a lot of people who became Palestinian after depending on what the conflict is. So I don't know what that means. I don't really care that much. The idea that both sides can continue to fight only

serves one side, and that's the Israeli side. The longer the Palestinians continue to fight, the more the Israelis are gonna gain, because the reality is, is the Arab states around them are bored, they don't wanna fight, the leadership doesn't wanna fight anymore, they're not going to. They did at one point, which is I think

the most tragic thing, is that Palestinians were a tool of the surrounding Arab states to fight with Israel, and that's the most they ever cared about. That's why, that's why, that's why if you go to these surrounding countries and you ask, that's crazy. There are so many Palestinian refugees here. I wonder why they don't ever take any of them in as actual citizens. And the reason why is because in the Arab states, you're not allowed to. They don't give citizenship to those people because they use them as a tool to fight with Israel. And that's why they're not even allowed to do it. They're banned from

actually giving citizenship to any of these Palestinians. So even the whole refugee crisis is inflated more than it should be. But the issue is that when you look at these sides and you go to criticize the policies, OK, I bring it back to the blockade. That blockade existed because weapons were coming in to the Gaza Strip via the ocean, via the land routes. So if that's the reason why the blockade came in, here is, I think, that you can make an incredibly powerful argument that, listen, Netanyahu, if you want to destroy Hamas, that's

fine. But one of the conditions of eliminating Ham you want to destroy Hamas, that's fine. But one of the conditions of eliminating Hamas has to be the lifting of the blockade. Because with Hamas gone, your justification for the blockade is completely and totally nonexistent in my world. In your world, the blockade never leaves because the only reason it's there is to punish Palestinian citizens. So if you're constantly screaming at a government, hey, you need to take this blockade away because you just hate Palestinians. Why would they ever remove it? There's absolutely no desire to. There's no reason to. Why would they? But if the argument is, well, we said that the blockade existed because weapons

were going into a hostile administration. Well, now that that hostile administration is gone and we allowed you to remove it at great cost, both to infrastructure and civilian life. Well, now we can say, hey, they're gone. You have to lift the blockade now. There's no justification for it. So we have a real analysis of what's going on. We can levy legitimate criticisms. We can look for legitimate solutions. But if the arguments are delusional, that Israel is here indiscriminately murdering tons of people because they're evil or because they hate Jews or they hate Palestinians or hate Arabs or whatever, or they're racist or Islamophobic, there's no solution to be had because in your world, the hatred runs so deeply, it's intractable. Crystal's lipstick just fell over. That's all it was.

So this is, it's funny. Some bits of that narrative actually were kind of like close to reality, but just let me, let me fix a couple of things for you. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

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And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, Oh dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, dad, all you were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school.

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Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. First of all, if you're saying that a precondition for lifting the siege is that Hamas has to not be in power anymore,

you have that backwards. The occupation of Gaza existed before Hamas was created. The occupation created Hamas. Wait, when was the blockade? The blockade wasn't since the occupation. Yeah, I mean, the occupation itself needed to end. They replaced the occupation with the siege. That's what they did. No, no, the blockade started in like 2005. Yes, so they withdrew. It's been occupied since 1948. It remains. No, Gaza has been occupied since 1967.

Gaza has been occupied since 1948. What are you talking about? Israel took over Gaza in 1967. Who took over in 1948? The Egyptians did. Yes, it was occupied by the Egyptians. Okay, see this is the I know you don't like to talk about that because it's not convenient, but that's true. It wasn't a Palestinian state prior to 1967. Who cares? The point is... Who cares? The Palestinians were there. They had a fake government for one year that was recalled to Cairo and immediately disbanded. And it became a training ground for Fedayeen. What do you mean? Let me then call for an end to the Egyptian occupation of Gaza too. Oh wait, it ended. Great. So now let's talk about the Israeli occupation of Gaza. It started in 1967, it has continued, and all Israel did is withdraw settlers out of Gaza and

replace that settlers on the ground with an occupation from the outside. That's why nearly every international organization still considers Gaza occupied, even after they withdrew settlers and placed it under occupation. According to just about every UN agency, the EU, the list goes on on human rights organizations as well. And so the idea then that you need something to change and that Israel would lift the siege in Gaza, frankly, if Netanyahu came and said to Hamas, if you agree to no longer be in power,

we're gonna let Gaza be completely, you can have an airport, you can have a seaport, you can just like have the population live, I suspect Hamas might actually be up for that. In fact, they would consider it a feather on their cap. They can say, see, we've delivered something for you. Absolutely. They won't even agree to a permanent ceasefire. Why would you think that? In exchange for Israel ending the devastation of Gaza. They've offered it a million times to release all the hostages. Yeah, they've offered it repeatedly.

Dave, hold on. Let me be clear. You're saying that if Israel said they would end the blockade, that Hamas would step down as leadership? If they were to leave Gaza, absolutely. I think that would actually happen. Are you sure that the claim isn't that they need to have a 10-year truce or that they need to recognize a two-state solution where the refugees are brought back? This is them as a governing body early on when they were signaling that they're actually interested in moderating Khaled Mishal. Oh, in the late 2000s. This was before they attempted to coup Abbas's Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. I remember this. Right before they attempted coup. You don't know what you're talking about. It's so incredible. There was an attempt actually at driving Hamas out of power

that they then flipped and pushed the Palestinian Authority out as part of a plot that is documented. I think it was Vanity Fair. That's true, but you're talking about 2005 when there was going to be international support for Fatah. But Hamas tried to include the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank a few years later right after they announced their unity government. It's great that you've done some reading and you can throw out random factoids, but please listen to... I know that it sucks when the

history disagrees with you. I know, but just please try to listen to what I'm saying to you so you can actually understand. Go back to the broken bones. Yes. Okay, I'm not trying to throw up random facts that I've read. I'm trying to explain something to you. And I really hope that you would actually just make an effort to listen to what I'm describing. Okay. There was an effort by Hamas at the time to try to moderate.

And Khaled Mishal wrote a piece in the Washington Post here in the U.S. talking about how, you know, we don't like the idea of a two-state solution. But if we put it to our referendum and Palestinians want it, we'll accept it and whatever. Like there's all kinds of stuff, signs. And what Israel did is put a suffocating blockade on Gaza and said, you have to denounce, renounce violence, even though Israel does not renounce violence. They said, you have to recognize Israel,

even though Israel does not recognize Palestine. And they said, you have to stick by all previous agreements, even though Israel was obviously not sticking to any agreements they had made with Palestinians in terms of just clearly entrenching the occupation left and right at every opportunity. And so Hamas said, no, those are not acceptable demands. And that's how we ended up being stuck in this situation where Hamas's refusal to accept whatever Israel wants to mete out to them is the

reason why that blockade got entrenched and intense and became more and more punishing as a means of trying to place more political pressure on Hamas. And the idea that now if only Hamas would agree to X, Y, Z, then everything would be great in Gaza, there's just no reason to believe that. Because the occupation and what Israeli military officials and security officials and political officials were talking about when they actually withdrew from Gaza was very transparently a plot to deny Palestinian statehood that they're saying this is a strategic move that will be useful for them. You said as much as yourself that Israel's goal is to prolong the conflict so they can continue to... So he's right about that.

So what are acceptable terms now? I mean, there are ongoing negotiations happening right now. What should acceptable terms be right now? For the end of the conflict or for the actual resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? For the end of the conflict. For this one, Hamas has to go. Ideally, the the hostages would come back but i don't even know if we know how many are alive at this point i think that israel initially wanted 40 and now they i think turned it down to 33 because they don't think that they're enough alive that even meet the conditions that they have um but yeah hamas needs to go i imagine my understanding is israel

still wants to go into rafa right i? I think they've reiterated as much. I support it. I think Hamas needs to go. I think that's, hopefully they do it without great cost to civilian life. But I think, yeah, Hamas has to leave. But I would hope that after Hamas is gone, I think that Israel has to change their approach to the area. I think that Israel right now is on the verge of a very strange existential threat where they're getting consumed by their own, I don't know if I would say fear,

or just, they need to, in the early history of Israel, the reason why Israel was able to thrive so much and make friends in the West and win wars against the warring Arab states is because they had two arms of military and diplomacy that they wielded both incredibly effectively. Israel was one of the first nations to identify the United States as an important emerging power and to try to win favor with them.

They did a lot diplomatically and a lot militarily. But I think ever since peace with Egypt, Jordan, the Arab Republic, I think that Israel is just like, no, they don't care. They're just going to try to maintain a status quo indefinitely because on a military level, they're really not threatened anymore. They pretend that it's always an existential threat when it comes to conflict, but that's not true. Hezbollah, the Houthis, and everybody in the Gaza Strip can invade all at once and Israel

will bat them away. It's not a huge deal. The existential threat I think that Israel faces now is a political one, is a diplomatic one, because the situation, the status quo is not tenable. And the conditions on October 7th were entirely, I don't want to say completely foreseeable, but what do you think is going to fucking happen if you're continuing this status quo over and over and over again? And then the really funny thing is we talk about, we're so obsessed with the,

they're trying to ethically cleanse the Gaza Strip. They want to kick Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. Jews don't care about the Gaza Strip. They want to kick people out of Judea and Samaria. That's what Jews really care about. It's that encroachment into the West Bank. And we're not even talking about that anymore because now everybody thinks that apparently

they want to put settlements back on the Gaza Strip, which historically Israel has never even cared about. So yeah, I mean, Hamas has to go. I would hope that the black aid and the conditions are lessened there, but there has to be huge pressure on Israel and the Palestinians. There has to be huge pressure on both sides to reach some peaceful long-term agreement, because until that happens, I mean, it's just going to happen over and over and over again. It's a nobody's surprise. So just when we speak about hostages, I think it's important to note that Israel rounded up tens of thousands of Palestinians, at least thousands. I don't want to say tens of thousands, but thousands of them after October 7th. They are being brutalized in Israeli detention facilities.

Dozens of them have been killed. Many more have required amputations and reports of the torture, of the sexual abuse, all this stuff is happening, and you don't get a fraction of attention to Palestinian hostages being held by Israel compared to the conditions that Israeli hostages are enduring in Gaza, which are unknown. And on top of that, you have an Israeli policy of insisting on this path of vengeance in which they have killed infinitely more Israeli hostages than they have rescued. And to continue down this path, it's quite obvious that the Israeli government and Netanyahu himself does not give a crap about Israeli hostages. So just keeping that in back of mind. Now when we're talking about peace, and it's funny,

the reason why I wanted to point out that you've said a lot of things that are actually correct, but you just kind of like missed a key part of it, is that, yes, the longer this conflict goes, Palestinians do lose more and more, and Israel sees that as an advantage. Every day the conflict goes on, they get to take more and more of the West Bank, they get to entrench their control of it, and that's why we desperately need an intervention. And if Israel's not going to do it itself, you need it from the outside. The way to defeat Hamas, if we're serious about not wanting Hamas to be in power, it's extremely simple. Give Palestinians a path to freedom, and they will take it rather than be driven by despair into supporting groups that insist on doing it the most violent way possible. The truth is Palestinians tried it with a march

of return. They've tried it with negotiations with Israel. They've gone to the UN. The US keeps vetoing every UN resolution that is critical of Israel. They've gone to the International Court of Justice, the ICC. The US keeps putting pressure on the ICC not to prosecute Israel for crimes. And then when people try to do international solidarity and boycotts, people call that economic terrorism, and you have American politicians trying to pass laws. Just every single method of resistance has been completely quashed. And civil disobedience in Palestine was extremely common against the apartheid barrier that Israel is building throughout the West Bank. And all these people are basically just end up languishing in Israeli prisons,

you've left Palestinians no avenue. And if you want to be serious about defeating, you know, more radical organizations that are committed to violence, all you have to do is give Palestinians a path to freedom that does not push them in the arms of people who insist that fighting is the only way. And that has to be stopping U.S. military funding for the Israeli occupation. This occupation is illegitimate. It's indefensible. It's clearly intended to be permanent. Netanyahu has said so. The way it appears on the ground is not some kind of like temporary thing we're just holding off until every day they're taking more and more of the West Bank. That is what they're doing. They're demolishing Palestinian homes. They're pushing Palestinians out of certain areas that Israel wants. Just the entrenchment of it, we're watching it unfolding, and there should not be another penny spent

in support of the Israeli military until that occupation comes to an end. And that's how we can put Israel finally in a position where they have an incentive to start negotiating in good faith, seeing Palestinians as equal human beings. Paradoxically, I think that that actually would be a boost to Israeli society, because under current Israeli politics, you have some who say we need to compromise. We live here. They live here. We're all going to live here for hundreds

of years. We need to come to some deal. And then you have a faction in Israeli society that says, no, we don't because we have unconditional U.S. support militarily and politically. So we can just permanently, quote unquote, manage the conflict. And voters look atarily and politically. So we can just permanently, quote unquote, manage the conflict. And voters look at that and they say, well, it's true. The U.S. does unconditionally support. So why should we actually make any compromises? And it has driven them into this cul-de-sac that is potentially suicidal for the entire project. I think the issue is that people don't realize that the way that Israeli opinion flipped so hard on peace for Palestinians was after the second Intifada. That completely mind destroyed

so many Israeli people. When they saw so many Palestinians across the entire country engaging in violence against Israeli people, a lot of them were like, this is it. Like this is, apparently these people just don't ever want peace. After that, I think that that's when you saw the government start to shift a lot to the right. And the issue is that you just people just don't ever want peace. After that, I think that that's when you saw the government start to shift a lot to the right. And the issue is that it doesn't feel like there has been that Palestinian leader that's been ready to come up and actually make brave concessions or strong concessions because every deal with a Palestinian feels like a concession. It was not all of Israel.

I just don't think Palestinians... Oh, the occupied territories, just to be technical which occupied ones the West Bank Gaza and East Jerusalem the internationally recognized occupied territories that Israel has to withdraw from that's what Arafat has said and that's what Abbas has said I'm a fan of neither of these men but they're not the obstacle to peace they made very clear that they would accept a deal if Israel actually ended the occupation in Israel never accepted a deal of Of course he has. There are no deals on the table. There are no deals left on the table where the Palestinians are like, we would just have accepted this. I happen to be familiar with a private conversation between Bill Clinton and

somebody that I know, an advocate, in which Bill Clinton said that Arafat just kept saying, 22% is my offer. And Bill Clinton had no idea what he was talking about. And the person who was talking to him explained to him, 22% is the percentage of the land that is illegally occupied by Israel. Arafat was telling you, and the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, that was the counteroffer repeatedly. And Israel has never- That has never been the counteroffer. That's not true. What are you, it's the entire basis of the peace process. That's not, that was not in 2000? No, absolutely not.

Arafat in 19, in the late 80s recognized Israel. So he effectively conceded Israel on 78% of historic Palestine as legally defined. Recognized, yes. Yes. And Israel then, well, if you wanted to call this bluff, all you had to do was end the occupation and see what happens. But Israel didn't. Israel entrenched the occupation.

That's the pattern. And you're also missing something about the regional dynamic. You're talking about the Abraham Accords and all of that. Just to be clear, the entire Arab world, first it was Saudi Arabia put on the table something called the Arab Peace Initiative effectively and the occupation will get recognition from us. And then... Wait, what was the huge part of the Arab Peace Initiative? They're not bringing up there. You tell me which part. It was the infinite right of return for every single Palestinian refugee. That's the Arab

Peace Initiative? You're confused about the people. You negotiate that. No, no, no. That's a non-negotiable. That was one of the reasons why after Camp David, after the Clinton parameters, after Tabasum, that was the statement left in rejection of the Clinton parameters where they said, we as negotiators will never give up the right of Arabs to be repatriated to Israel. What was offered in that Arab Peace Initiative, first it was Saudi and then it became the Arab League, it said a just resolution to the Palestinian refugees.

Which has always meant... And that phrasing, no, it has not always meant that. That phrasing was specifically designed when we talk about a two-state solution and a just resolution to the refugee issue, it's not saying and the full right of return. That is considered a Palestinian compromise. Like many Palestinians are unhappy with it

on the grounds that it doesn't say the full right of return. It only says a just resolution. What do you think a just resolution is? A just resolution, one, one, in which it's understood that you would allow for a two-state situation to happen, means Israel recognizes that they drove those Palestinians out. A small symbolic number gets to return to Israel proper, and then the majority of them end up in a Palestinian state. That was the loose formula that if you look at the- That's what was offered in 2000.

It was not what was offered in 2000. It literally was. There was an international fund that Israel was going to contribute to. There was some number, I saw anywhere from 10 to 100,000. I don't know what the actual number was, but there's some number that they're going to accept as repatriated. Along with an end to the occupation. That's basically what Palestinians have been asking for. And if you look at actual details of it, and I'm happy again to tweet about it afterwards, I'm happy to send you all the links that you need. That was what the Palestinian official position was. There was no official position. Let me just respond to one of the things that a point that you made earlier in the form of a question that a lot of people, I've seen it out

there, so I think it's worth kind of trying to answer directly. You said it can't be a genocide because they've only killed 33,000 people. You know, if they wanted to do a full genocide, they have the capacity, they have the bombs to kill all 2 million plus people. Sure's kind of a main argument. One in five of their population. Right. Right. Why wouldn't they do it? And so one, you'd say, well, 13,000 children, far too many. But more importantly than that, you would say they've killed the number that they can sort of get away with at this point. But the goal is not killing and death. The goal is domination and the ethnic cleansing of the region, the clearing out, the thinning out of the population. And so you don't actually need to kill two million Palestinians if you can drive hundreds of

thousands of them to other countries. If you're talking about genocide, you have a genocide with a hundred, theoretically. The number of people killed isn't important. The intention is important. But it's hard to make an argument for genocide. We're setting aside genocide. Oh, sure. Well, I mean, like, the attacks happen in response to... But that would be the answer to the question, why haven't they killed more? Yeah, I guess. But the problem is just absent any... There just isn't strong... It's the weirdest genocide ever. If you're dropping leaflets saying, hey, fleet of the south, most of the military activity is going to come to the north. just absent any, there just isn't strong, it's the weirdest genocide ever. If you're dropping leaflets saying,

hey, fleet of the south, most of the military activity is going to come to the north, or hey, we're working with 52 organizations trying to open up borders and crossings to get more humanitarian aid in. Hamas is generally in the south. Why did they bomb the north? Hamas is generally, Hamas is everywhere. No, Hamas is like military stronghold

has always been the south. So why did they go to the north? There were literally 900 people that they captured. By the way, what happened to that three-story 3D rendering of a command center that we saw under a Shifa hospital? The one with the, do you mean the one where they released the footage of the massive tunnel, the bomb shelter? There are tunnels in Gaza. But where was the command center that we're all told existed? I don't, when you're saying command center, are you looking for like a 2001 space odyssey?

I'm not the one that said command center. The US intelligence has corroborated everything that Israel said. And they said they arrived at those. Oh, that's nice of the US intelligence. Well, listen, if you want to believe Russia and Hamas instead of the United States and Israel. The same United States. I can't help you. Hold on.

If you want to believe, hold on, actually, wait, I'm curious. If Hamas were to make a statement about a particular thing, would you believe that more than the United States and the IDF corroborating their statements? Who would you believe more on that? I don't think you can trust either of them. You think it's equal amounts of trust? Yes, that's about right. Equal amounts of distrust. That's an unbelievably stupid statement.

Because the government is generous. Wait, hold on. I'm curious. Who do you trust then for a third-party verification? Human rights organizations report. They report things from the IDF and from Ham yes they look and they do independent investigations as well and they do comparisons they're independent investors have you ever read how they actually come up with the numbers they'll call a hospital and say what's your list of people that are dead and then they look at the register and they go oh well it seems like the names exist and then they write it that's it's the same thing that you do with polling and population counting and stuff you take samples and

based on that you extrapolate you can't go and investigate every single last thing that happens. Doing sample work and all of that, that would be interesting. That's not what they do. If you read how these NGOs actually, then they conclude their methodology on the reports. You can read it. They'll say, we contact, they'll say, this has been third party investigated. Hamas says 10,000, but also these guys are actually third party verified. And then when you read their methodology, they say, we contacted the Gazan health ministry and they told us this. It's like, oh, okay, well, fuck me. And you know what's interesting? And you know what's really interesting?

Yeah, what's that? Every time the human rights organizations try to go and investigate, Hamas says we welcome a full investigation. The Israeli government tries to block human rights organizations. They welcome a full investigation? Yes, repeatedly. This is when Amnesty International go down and interview people and they say some of them were kind of nervous to talk to us. Why hasn't Hamas opened any archives so that we can externally validate what's going on in that country? The amount of nonsense you spew is just incredible.

What did I just say that was nonsense? Hamas has reported on multiple occasions that they have basically verified the credibility of the people who are talking to them, that they are talking to because they have been willing to criticize Hamas and say, we disagree with what Hamas is doing, we disagree with the firing of rockets, they are brutal, they are repressive. So they talk to Palestinians who are perfectly willing to criticize Hamas for being terrible, but then they say, but it's not true that they were hiding in our house or used human shields or whatever. So that's how you know that when you compare those narratives, it's the Israeli narrative that is completely baseless.

Do you acknowledge that Amnesty International has said that they store munitions in houses? I'll tack on to that. I'll tack on to that. This is from earlier this month, an interrogation of an Islamic Jihad fighter. And I'm genuinely curious. This is not a leading question at all. Asked by the interrogator of this Islamic, Israeli interrogator of this Islamic Jihad fighter. Is this in Israeli detention?

That's what I'm asking. Yeah, in Israeli detention. Engages in torture. Asks which hospitals Islamic Jihad and Hamas operate in. He says all of the hospitals. Now, Omar, to Ryan's point, what's your response? Yeah, I mean, just when you look at the levels of torture that happen inside Israeli detention, it's just you can't take anything at base value of what comes out of any confessions that come

out from people who are being interrogated by Israel. And so that to me is completely meaningless. Yes, if you put me in an Israeli interrogation center, I might also confess to whatever the hell the Israeli military wants me to confess to. Oh, I definitely would. Do you acknowledge that Al-Shifa Hospital was inhabited by a fuckton of fighters a month ago when they did that mass grave? Inhabited by a fuckton of fighters, I think. I can't verify. They were not inhabited by any fighters?

Yeah. There were 900 arrested. I don't know the scientific definition of a fuckton. Yeah, and there were mass graves near the Al-Nasr Hospital that were filled with people who were wearing scrubs with hands behind. The ones where people had been buried there four months earlier? With their hands tied behind their back, zip-tied.

No, I don't think so. Can you explain to me what threat people who had their hands zip-tied posed to Israel to actually end up in mass graves? The initial reporting by Al Jazeera was completely and totally debunked by people that were analyzing. Debunked by who? Geolocator is an OSINT account on Twitter that has looked at a ton of videos. You can go and you can look through every single video of people that had to. So by a Twitter account is who debunked those?

Is that what we're doing, by a Twitter account? You can look at all the videos yourself. If you don't trust the IDF, you don't trust the United States, you don't trust, who do you trust? Just Hamas? I trust human rights organizations whose job is to investigate these things.

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Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. I don't think any human rights organizations have said 100%. Al Jazeera has re-reported what Hamas has said. They can't say it's 100% because Israel will not let them in and they can't actually go in and investigate. Do you think that in a current active war zone, for Al-Shifa, do you acknowledge that there was a huge two-week fight there between the IDF and militants? Yes, near Al-Shifa Hospital, I think there was a fight.

And Al-Shifa Hospital. Yeah, I don't know that it was inside the hospital. Certainly there were horror stories of what was happening inside the hospital. Well, it was a two-week fight. Do you think they were just fighting civilians? There's a very clear, I think, disconnect here. That is probably a good point to start getting to, not start getting to, but like if we want to wind down here. Stephen, you said that Palestinians fundamentally don't want peace. It sounds to me also, Omar, like you think fundamentally the Israeli government, as it is right now, does not want peace. I think we can both agree that there's civilians in the Palestinian territories and in Israel that would like to live in peace.

Can I, I mean, just real quick, if I've said that, it's not peace. Nobody wants peace. That's the thing that we say in the West because we have no concept of what anybody's looking for. People want justice, right? In Ukraine, they could end the war right now for peace, but they want their territory. They want justice. Palestinians could say, listen, we're going to go with whatever plan where we're broken up into 20 enclaves and have peace. They don't want peace. They feel like they've been expelled from their homelands with international support for Israel for no reason.

They want justice. So to be clear, everybody wants justice. Right, so they don't want peace. They feel like they've been expelled from their homelands with international support for Israel for no reason. They want justice. So to be clear, everybody wants justice. Right, so they don't want peace. Yes. Well, what is the MLK quote? Like the white moderate one that says where some people prefer an uneasy peace or whatever to an uncomfortable tension or whatever. There's ways to make things peaceful, but people want more than that on both sides, and they should. I just think that... And I think some of you in the end agree with the point that I was making earlier, because I haven't heard a counter to it, that the way to defeat the ideology of Hamas is through peace, not through war. Now I will sound racist. I don't want to sound racist,

but there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that Arab states and Arab people in the Middle East view Jews and Israel. And to just assume that being nice and peaceful, as in there is a whole mythos, a whole mythology. This would have been super fascinating to listen to Finkelstein expand on if he was capable of more than insults and ad-hams. But there is a completely and totally different retelling of history from that region from the 1880s and onwards. And as long as those histories are separate from each other, there is no reconciliation that can ever happen. I shouldn't even take this seriously, but if Arabs are just fundamentally racist. Hold on, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. I mean,

the citizens that live in these places. Okay, if the citizens that live in these places are just fundamentally racist, why is it the case that when peace is close at hand, support for Hamas and armed resistance plummets? Because I think that people... If they're fundamentally just opposed and just rabid and violent animals. When they look at Israel and the Jewish people there, the view from a lot of Arabs is... But why does their view change when peace gets closer? Wouldn't it be the opposite?

If they fundamentally just want to fight with Israelis, wouldn't they actually be more bloodthirsty as peace approached? Yet opinion polls consistently show that support for armed resistance plummets as peace becomes more possible. That is the reverse of what would happen if they were fundamentally a violent racist people. There's two things. One, you said it correct earlier that even though countries have foreign peace, a lot of the Arabs in these countries still don't like Israel and still don't like the Jews. So that's one thing that even through peace,

that opinion has remained consistent. You said that, that is true. They're chomping at the bit to normalize with Israel. The what? These Arab countries are chomping at the bit to normalize with Israel. Wait, close, you're going to say it.

It's the leaders, right? That's true. And in your case, also the contradiction is quite palpable. Which is? On the one hand, everybody in the region is just fed up with the Palestinians and they're just eager to make peace with Israel. And now it's like the problem is is is quite palpable which is on on the one hand everybody in the region is just fed up with the palestinians and and they're just eager to make peace with

israel and now it's like the problem is that the people in the region just don't like jews well no it's it's like which one is it well it's it's both i think that over time yeah sure so one is sometimes brave leaders are the people that are needed to make progress towards peace um this might come in the form towards justice or or peace? Towards justice, whatever. Towards like bilateral... You haven't answered that question though. Which... When peace becomes closer,

in the moments where there's news that a deal is getting closer. Yes. Support for armed resistance among Palestinians goes down. I agree. That's the reverse of what would be the case if they just fundamentally hated Jews

and just wanted violence. We've got to tease apart. When I say that they fundamentally have these opinions, I don't mean that they want to fight and go to war forever. I'm just saying that there is an Arab mythos around Jews that all of them basically believe in, in terms of their European transplants that have unlimited support from the West for whatever action they want to do and they don't belong there. And then there's like a different telling of historical events that happen. That doesn't mean that peace is impossible. It doesn't mean that there's not ways to work out. We've seen peace treaties have happened. They just require very strong leadership and sometimes those leaders even have to pay the price.

So for instance when Sadat made peace with Israel, he was assassinated because they thought it was a Western sellout. Like and it happened to the to the Israeli leader as well, who was also assassinated by a far-right Zionist for that peace deal. So peace is possible. It just takes really strong, brave leadership to do it. Arafat was never that leader. You should feel that especially. I'm not a fan of Arafat.

Yeah, so Arafat was never that leader. And Abbas isn't that leader either. But he certainly was not a rejectionist as far as the peace deal is concerned. Here's what I want to do. I want to toss to Omar for closing thoughts, and then we'll go back to you, Stephen. Sure. Omar. All right.

So when we talk about, just to set up the regional dynamic real quick, you have the region in general, the people of the region are extremely furious at the way Israel treats Palestinians. That is the primary reason behind the hostility that exists towards Israel, is because people see day in and day out on their TV sets what is happening. Unlike in the United States where you can barely see that kind of thing on mainstream media, Al Jazeera does broadcast what Israel is doing to Palestinians and they get a very, very clear and accurate view of what Palestinians are suffering under.

And so the people in the region are in solidarity with Palestinians against that brutal occupation, against their displacement, the ethnic cleansing in slow motion that happened in some cases not in slow motion in particular periods in Israel's history. And they see this fundamental injustice day in and day out on that level of racism, and they're enraged by it. But you also have a lot of governments in the region that are U.S. clients. They're on the U.S. team in the loose sense of the word. And this is uncomfortable for them. They want this conflict to end because they would rather be on better terms with Israel and the United States. They want that dynamic to end. And so they also want this conflict to end, which is why we have things like the Arab Peace Initiative. They want to see just an end to the

occupation, just give the Palestinians something, let's can we please like make this work. And Israel faced that with complete and total rejection over and over again, because you have the political end of the political spectrum within Israel right now is just completely off the charts. Yes, you have some super progressive marginal leftists in Israel. You've got the Palestinian citizens of Israel who serve in the Israeli Knesset and so on. And they have no power effectively in Israeli society. And the bulk of it ranges from the Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir coalition, which has stomped Palestinians until no end, brutalized them in the worst ways possible, and hopefully throw them out and finish the Nakba, towards the other liberal end of the spectrum in the Israeli sense,

which is just maintain permanent occupation, but let it be a humane occupation. Let's just, you know, control them and let everything be fine. And yeah, we won't give them full rights, but they can at least, you know, have some economic activity and whatever, normalize a little bit. That's the spectrum. And that spectrum will never allow for peace to exist because no people anywhere in the world would accept to live without the fundamental right to be free. And that's what's missing here. And because you do have a dynamic right now where that cannot, peace cannot emerge in direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, because yes, there's a lot of intense feelings right now, but on top of that, there is a significant imbalance of power that if you leave them, you're going to end up with a

repeat of previous peace negotiations, which is Israel saying, yeah, yeah, let's negotiate while on the ground. They do whatever the hell they want. Keep entrenching the occupation, eating up more land, brutalizing Palestinians more, but saying, hey, we're negotiating. It's just, it's all a charade. And what you need right now is pressure from the outside. I don't care whether you like Palestinians or hate them or you think they're this or that, or same with Israelis, it's just, it's besides the point. You have a reality right now in which Palestinians

are living under permanent apartheid. Occupation and apartheid, and this particular episode in Gaza right now is a genocidal episode. As an emergency, we need to put an end to this Gaza episode. But the situation was not acceptable even before the onslaught that is unfolding in Gaza. You have a situation in which Israel denies Palestinians the right to live in their own state and denies them full rights even under the areas that Israel controls. So they're stuck forever, either as subjects with no rights, and they can either take that and be happy with it, or if they try to fight back in any way, then Israel will just escalate its violence to levels that are absolutely horrific. Those are the choices that

Palestinians face. And it requires external intervention. It requires the world to isolate Israel and say, this is not acceptable. This occupation cannot end. You have to end that occupation. And that means that you don't get another penny, no diplomatic relations, no embrace of Israel until there's a change in Israeli policy. And when you look at Russia and Ukraine right now, just we've had a very brief episode of that, comparatively speaking, when you compare the two things. There are instances in which Ukraine, for example, I think it was December, fired a rocket at Belgrade and killed a couple of dozen Russian citizens, including three children. If in response to that, the United States said, Putin has the right to defend himself, and we're going to give him unlimited arms to fight against Ukraine, everybody would just laugh

at you instantly. You'd be laughed out of the room because that's such a ridiculous thing to say. So pointing at Hamas violence and saying that the response is we give Israel unlimited weapons to defend themselves, when the broader context is Israel is invading and occupying Palestinians and robbing them of their basic rights and brutalizing them and killing them and imprisoning them and torturing them, that in this context, you're going to refer to Israel's right to self-defense is a joke. A home intruder who breaks into somebody's home with a gun does not get to claim self-defense when they're inside that house, if the people inside that house get to fight back. Palestinians are fighting for their land that Israel is not entitled to taking. Israel does not belong there. And it's time to isolate Israel until that occupation comes to an end. And that's the

only path in which we're going to see Israel moderate. The reason why sentiments in Israel are so extreme is because the U.S. has provided complete and total impunity for Israel. Nobody can ever hold Israel accountable for anything they've done because the U.S. ensures that that accountability cannot happen. And that's precisely why we've seen the Israeli specter move to an extreme. And in response to that brutal extreme that is imposed on top of Palestinians, we're seeing more extreme views also occurring among Palestinians. The corrective is incredibly obvious and is impossible to miss if you're being intellectually honest and understand what's actually unfolding. So your last word, wouldn't cutting off U.S. military aid and blanket unconditional political

support push Israel toward a compromise? I don't think we have blanket unconditional support for Israel. I think if they were to do certain things, I think they would lose internal support pretty quickly. A lot of the people that you like to quote, Harad, Sir, but Salem are literally posted in Israelis or Israeli organizations. Just one thing before my final statement, do you think that October 7th was justified, the attack? And do you think civilians were targeted on that day? I mean, if you separate it out, the part where they attacked Israeli military could be construed as an act of resistance drawer, but the part where they attacked civilians is completely unjustifiable. Of course, they

attacked civilians. Of course, that's completely indefensible. So I think that's pretty straightforward. I think that the big issue when this conflict is talked about is that it feels like people only ever want to tell one side of the story, that we can't have a conversation on why does the blockade exist?

We can't have a conversation on what does Hamas do to induce civilian death because Hamas wants civilians to die in Palestine more than Israelis do. Why can't we have a conversation about why? I know you're going to get the last word. You might have to interject on this point. Interject all you want. Go ahead. Human rights organizations have also, by the way, it was officially Israeli policy to use Palestinian civilians as human shields. They've done it in the West Bank for many years. They've been arguing they have the legal right to do. Yeah. They were arguing for it. The Israeli Supreme Court banned it. I mean, you have to do it. Israeli Supreme, crazy.

Yeah, hang on, hang on. I'm giving some context. I think it's just, hear me out. This is a thought that I'm gonna piece together that I think will be useful for you to think about a little bit. Sure. It was official policy.

There was a case in which a Palestinian got killed because they do home raids in which the first person knocking on the door is the Palestinian with the Israelis like standing behind them with the guns to try to get somebody to come out and cooperate and whatever. They don't wanna be shot at.

And when the Israeli Supreme Court tried to ban it, the Israeli military establishment was furious. Said this is a really important method of combat. It protects the soldiers' lives. You can't ban it. And Israel basically disregarded what the military establishment said. It was Shaul Mofaz who was the defense minister

at Israel at the time all of this was happening. I think it was Shaul Mofaz who was the defense minister at Israel at the time all of this was happening I think it was in 2005 and even though the supreme court officially banned it human rights organizations keep catching Israel engaging in acts of holding Palestinians as human shields in Gaza and the West Bank. Last couple weeks. Yes it happened and you see it like there's footage sometimes of holding a Palestinian with a gun over his shoulder. It doesn't even make sense. Hang on hang on which is which is which is the point you're making you're making you're making footage sometimes of holding a Palestinian with a gun over his shoulder. That doesn't even make sense. Hamas just killed him. Hang on. Which is the point. You're making my point. Yes, very quickly. If the Israeli military thinks holding Palestinian civilians in front of them when they're fighting with Hamas saves the

Israeli soldiers' lives, it tells you that they don't believe their own lies about Hamas wanting Palestinian civilians to die because it would not be useful if that's what they believe. So you're actually making my point. When the IDF was using those human shields, how many Muslims were killed? How many Palestinians were killed when they were? This is the last question. I think there was one incident of somebody getting killed. Correct. Yes. You know why? Because Palestinians don't want to shoot their own people. No. So it's interesting. So the IDF's idea behind that was when they were engaged in this, when they were clearing out houses,

the idea was is that if a bunch of IDF soldiers show up and start banging on your door, it's gonna lead to some sort of armed conflict. So what the IDF started to do is when they were approaching houses is, no. What the IDF started to do when they were approaching houses is if there were people in the neighborhood of their people walking by, they would say like,

hey, do you wanna walk up and do you wanna knock on the store and talk to this guy because if you go in and you talk- With a gun to their head. No, not with a gun to their head. That's not how that works. Hey, do you want to hand me your wallet? There's a reason why. Yeah, you can laugh, but the funny this is like, this is the conflict. Because you laugh now more people probably die because that policy

is gone because the way that you phrase it is, oh, they held a gun to their head because it was a human shield, which I think did happen one time. But there's a reason why when you talk about the policy, only one person ever died doing it. It's because it was a safer way to bring people out of the home in order to, like, you have an actual bottle of Cineco knock on the door rather than the idea of us banging doors. Defending the use of human shield. But I'm just saying, that's not a human shield. That's not of the home in order to, like, you have an actual bottle of Cinego knock on the door rather than the IDF is banging the door. You're defending the use of human shields. But I'm just saying, that's not a human shield.

That's not a human shield. A human shield is when you... A human who is shielding the other people. No, it was to shield the... The IDF doesn't need shields from the Palestinians of the West Bank. So the IDF... So the Israeli military thinks it's human shields, but you don't. The Supreme Court ruled against it

because they felt like the ability for them to truly consent, the Palestinians to truly consent to knocking at a door Was compromised first it was not consensual eventually Israel said yes I want to give you time. I want it because Omar got a good chunk of time to get final thoughts So I want to make sure that you get this. Yeah, I got you Yeah, so there's just a refusal on one side. Well really on both sides We don't have any crazy ultra Zionist here except I guess maybe me but generally this refusal on both sides. We don't have any crazy ultra-Zionists here, except I guess maybe me. But generally there's a refusal on both sides to acknowledge the truths of the other side. With the blockade,

the reason why the blockade exists is because Israel is evil. Hamas doesn't actually do any things to induce civilians to be killed. Israeli people, Jewish people, don't have any reasonable fears of Hamas. That's why earlier when I asked if Hamas was in charge of Israel and if the Jews lived in the Gaza Strip, do we think the treatment would be the same or worse or better?

We couldn't even get an answer there because the obvious answer is Hamas would probably engage in a genocidal campaign to kill every, an actual genocidal campaign, not one where the people are on the verge of starvation for 25 years while the population increases fivefold. Okay, so this refusal to acknowledge like basic facts of history or the fact that the complication is, or the conflict itself is really complicated. This goes back decades in terms of how people are disagreeing over who owns what piece of land or who has a right to live in what place or whether or not they're living under apartheid or what a final solution should look like. The fact that people are incapable of acknowledging both parts of the sides of this conflict makes it so that when people are encouraging their particular side, there will never be a resolution. If you are a Palestinian and you believe that today you are being subjected to genocide and apartheid, why in the fuck would you ever negotiate with Israel for an end thing? And

I think both of you said it yourselves, the international community needs to step in and solve this problem. And as long as Palestinians think that, there's never going to be a drive there to actually reach any lasting solution. Because why would you? If we're being genocided, we're being apartheided, we live in open air prisons and concentration camps, we're not going to figure the problem out. Somebody's going to come save us. And as long as that is the mentality that is given to the Palestinian people, they will continue to fight. They should keep negotiating with the repressors.

And this is funny too. You can see so many maps. You can see so many maps that are published from negotiations between Palestinian negotiators and Israeli negotiators. All of them are from the Israeli side. There has never been a deal on the table where Palestinians said, this is what we want. And then Israel didn't accept. It's never been the case that that was it. The negotiators have been horrible. Kushner's talked about a bus. Every single person has talked

about Arafat, about a bus. The negotiations just can never be made because there is no negotiating on the Palestinian side. And that's what we see today internationally. Yeah, that's just an encouragement to keep fighting and fighting and fighting until eventually you're one state from river to sea. So we started this by saying we were not going to solve the problem. And I think that proved to be correct. We did not solve the problem. But what we did say we wanted to do was bring some more clarity about the contrast on both sides. And I do think, Ryan, that we saw a lot of contrast and a lot more clarity in the contrast just by fleshing some of this out. So sincerely, yeah, sincerely want to thank both of you because this is not always an easy thing to do. And we all are still here.

So on that note, Ryan, any final thoughts? No, no final thoughts. I'll just leave it at that because if I say anything, it's just going to keep the mortgage nest right back up. And we've all got things we've got to do, right? That's right. So BreakingPoints.com, subscribe. We will be here, remember now, on Fridays in addition to Wednesdays.

Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, Omar. Thank you. See you guys soon. The OGs of Uncensored Motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila.

And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms. But not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe.

Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

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