Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Douglas Murray debunks 5 lies about Israel

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Douglas Murray, a British writer and commentator, has been on the ground in Israel for about a month, covering the war as a reporter and analyst. He writes for the New York Post, the Sun, and Spectator. He is an international bestselling author of numerous books, including "The War on the West", which can be found here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-war-on-the-west-douglas-murray/1140022863 He is the host of the Uncancelled History podcast -- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncancelled-history/id1654052602

I believe that one of the reasons why there's been an ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinians for so long is precisely because the international community and others keep on making Israel fight to a draw. Never is Israel allowed to win. I think that's intolerable, and I think it makes for perpetual conflict. I think conflict's mainly finished when one side wins and one side loses, and the side that loses knows that it's lost. It is 1045 on Tuesday, November 28th here in New York City. It is 545 a.m. on Wednesday, November 29th in Israel as Israelis get ready to begin their day. Today, 10 Israeli hostages were released as well as two Thai nationals.

The Israelis were all women and children. And all of the Israelis released today were from Kibbutz Neroz. Kibbutz Neroz is in southern Israel, right by the Gaza border, hostage originally, 49 remain. And if you add up the number of people either taken hostage or killed from kibbutz near Oz, about half of its 400 residents fell into one of those two categories after October 7th, murdered or taken hostage. Now again, just to put this in context, geographic proximity, this kibbutz is 1.6 kilometers from Hamas-run Gaza. When people like me and others say Israel has to do everything it can to convince and guarantee to its citizens, as much as it can guarantee anything, that this kind of massacre will not happen again. Imagine a community like Kibbutz near Oz, which is just right there on the border, where about half of its residents were either wiped out or taken hostage and released or

taken hostage and their future is uncertain. Since October 7th on this podcast, I've been trying to talk to as many Israelis as possible from different perspectives on what is going on and where things are headed. But there's one non-Israeli voice that I have been eager to have. That's Douglas Murray. Douglas is a UK national who splits his time basically between the UK and New York City. And he's been in Israel for about a month covering this story as a reporter and as an astute analyst. Douglas's voice from the pages of the New York Post, The Sun and The Spectator in the UK, to his live debates with British news anchors have been indispensable. Just when you think you're losing your mind, Douglass provides some clarity in response to some of the biggest lies out there. Even if you don't always agree with Douglass or the positions he takes, he is chock full of insight

and knowledge about history that brings some badly needed balance to the way the war in Israel is being covered. He sometimes makes a point that gets me thinking, like in a recent conversation I had with him, not on a podcast, where he asked, why is it only Israel that doesn't get to win wars? Most countries, when a war is launched against them, they are expected to try to win that defensive war. But somehow Israel is always expected or pressured to just fight to a draw. This is just one of the points that got me thinking that it would be good to run my running list of big lies past Douglas. Yes, I do keep a running list of the big lies, the big lies I keep hearing about being repeated on social media, on television,

in protests, in casual conversations. I'm not going to address all of these big lies with Douglas today, but we hit five of them. Maybe I'll have to have him come back on in the future to continue working through my list, although I don't think we'll ever be done because the list keeps growing. A little background on Douglas Murray. He is a prolific author. He wrote his first book, published his first book while he was a student at Oxford. He has since written numerous books. His most recent one is the international bestseller, The War on the West, in which he asks the provocative question that if conventional wisdom is to lead us to believe that the history of humankind is a history of slavery, conquest, prejudice, genocide, and exploitation. Why are only Western nations taking the blame for it? His book before the war on the West was The Madness of Crowds, and then also a couple years before that, The Strange Death of Europe, Immigration, Identity, Islam. I can go on and on with all of Douglas's books.

He's published many, but you should also subscribe to his podcast called Uncanceled History, which you can get wherever you subscribe to podcasts. One housekeeping note, on Tuesday, December 5th in New York City, I'll be having a conversation with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl at Central Synagogue. We'll be talking about our new book, The Genius of Israel, The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World. Angela and I will also be discussing recent events in Israel's war with Hamas and where it is going. That is Tuesday, December 5th at 6.30 p.m. Please go to the Central Synagogue website to register. And now to Douglas Murray debunking five lies about Israel. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time my longtime friend, best-selling author, columnist, and public commentator, Douglas Murray,

who I normally speak to or see in the UK, but has been in Israel for the last four weeks or so, doing some extraordinary work, and joins us today from Israel. Douglas, thanks for being here. It's a great pleasure to be with you and your listeners. Thank you for being in Israel. I know it's been difficult, but your observations and analysis and your responding to some rather inane questions from the media for all of us to watch and marvel at has been a real public service. Before I get into the specific topics and subtopics I want to hit with you today, can you just give us a snapshot of you're in Israel during this traumatic time, and then just when you think it couldn't be more of an emotional roller coaster, you're there for the

return of these hostages, which you've been covering quite closely. What's the mood? How does it feel to you? I'd say the mood in general is apprehensive. The hostage deal is, as all hostage deals involving Israel, are wildly traumatic and unfair and une, and filled with mixed emotions. All Israelis want the hostages back. I spent a lot of time with the families, and indeed the whole nation knows about the families now. Every billboard, every illuminated sign that would have, you know, an advert for beer or something in the past, or a new type of washing powder, has the photos of the hostages.

And we've had weeks of hearing from the families, hearing from the parents in particular of the missing children and abducted children, the stolen children. And so everybody wants some home. And there's enormous trepidation, of course, and a great fear about the state that some of them are in. And indeed, if all 240 hostages, how many of them are alive? Which is a sort of conversation people have in private

but don't like having in public. And then there's the whole issue of, yes, everyone wants some home, but look at the price. The price, for for instance is three terrorists criminals from israeli jails released for every jewish child not the worst deal the israelis have ever done in terms of um person for person swapping but but there's one other thing i should you know stress this point which is that there's an awful lot of added trepidation, because in perhaps the most unequal swap of all time,

the Gilad Shalit swap more than a decade ago, more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners inside Israel were swapped for, of course, one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. And one of the people swapped out was Sinoir, who is the Hamas leader in the West Bank, in the Gaza now, who planned the October the 7th massacre. So it's not like the Israelis are releasing from prison, you know, shoplifters or something. Yeah. They're releasing the people who could be the next Sinois. And this is just, yeah, it's a horrible mixture of emotions.

As you mentioned, I was at the, I mean, I've been around many of the kibbutzim and the massacre sites since I've been here, and I know personally some of the families, and I know their stories. And as I say, we all do. But, you know, when I was at the children's hospital on Friday night for the first children to be helicoptered in from the swap in the south of Gaza and then Egypt and then from the Israeli base and from there to the hospital. You know, the whole of central Tel Aviv shut down, all the streets around the children's hospital.

And, you know, the crowds, people just got out of their cars on the streets and started singing and just showing support for the children as they came came back home and it's extremely hard i think for most israelis as it is i mean it's hard just for somebody to watch it but the mixture of emotions because it's this yes every one of these lives is priceless that israel is getting back but they know the price is going to be huge is there a sense i mean some some israeli journalists and officials i've spoken to believe that yes the price is potentially huge on the one hand on the other hand because of the strength of the israeli

response since october 7th it's it's because of that that they've been able to get these hostages back. That Sinoir had to really start negotiating because of the pressure Hamas was under. This is not how Hamas would have wanted to get a pause implemented from the IDF might being unleashed on Israel by hand. I don't know about that. I mean, that's a positive spin on it. A more negative view might be, well, of course, this is exactly what Sinwa must have expected. He must have expected after the scale of the battalion-sized attack

on Israel on October the 7th. He must have known the Israelis would respond. I actually think there's among many problems, I don't want to be an armchair analyst about this, but I mean, the aim of Israel, as expressed by Benjamin Netanyahu, is to destroy Hamas. Simultaneously, they have to negotiate with Hamas. I see these two aims as being obviously at some levels contradictory. Why would Hamas give back all the hostages if they know that the hostages are their golden tickets to survive? I mean, why would Israel not go in even harder? The point of clearing the north of Gaza, making sure that civilians all moved south, instructing civilians to move south,

was to have fights with Hamas, and that happened. But the Hamas leadership moved south, and the hostages clearly moved south. So the war continues south. And I think most people are also aware that Hamas is playing not just the Israelis, but the international media and international opinion. They eke out these offerings of now maybe 15 people a day. They didn't abide by the agreement yesterday on the day we're speaking.

They delayed. Looked like they might delay again tonight. They haven't, but they haven't stuck to their side of the bargain. There were children they were meant to release with their mothers, and they haven't done that. They're deliberately splitting up families. They're making sure the hostages who come back have a family member still in captivity in order to ensure the hostages can't speak once freed with any kind of freedom, or at least will probably almost certainly feel they can't speak negatively about their captors. So there's a lot of things going on and a lot of

concern that Hamas is controlling the thing. Yeah. Okay uh there is the sense that that that sinwar and dave the the architects of of october 7th seem to have gotten at least some control if not total control back of the clock you know before the yeah that they that the idf had control of the clock and now if they can dribble out hostage releases it gives them some some control of the clock, and now if they can dribble out hostage releases, it gives them some control of the clock. Yeah, and at this rate, they could keep extending the ceasefire for weeks, if not months. Yeah, unless the IDF says...

I mean, not to digress down this topic, but it sounds to me like at the cabinet meeting when the security apparatus, the security leadership was briefing the cabinet, the war council, the security cabinet, and the full cabinet the other night, they argued that a four or five-day pause or even maybe even a few days longer won't really set the military effort back that much, which was persuasive to most members of the cabinet. The question is, is there a limit to which the security apparatus could make that argument? Is there a limit where they say, look, five, six, seven days is one thing, but many weeks is an entirely different thing? Or it just wouldn't hold up? That's not undermining the overall effort to eradicate Hamas. We'll see. I mean, as I say, it feels already like the momentum of the operation is being lost.

Okay. You have done a, you write a lot about history, you've covered events in this region, and specifically Israel for a long time, And you have been sparring with many members of the, of the mainstream media, particularly from your home country, from the UK over the last number of weeks. And I want to go through with you, as I mentioned a few mentioned to you before we, before we recorded this, a few of the most common canards out there about how we got into this mess and um they're they're basically what i see you know the kind of the list of lies is what i call them okay so the first one that i hear all the time is the war against israel by hamas is the inevitable response to colonization that that israel is is part of an extension of the jews in israel are part of an extension of uh colonization and what on earth do you expect the palestinians to do in response yeah that is of course just the laying over of a form of social

justice theory that has infected the minds of many Americans, most of whom I'm afraid to say know nothing about history in general, let alone the history of this region, who simply have this interpretation, which is colonized, colonizers, oppressed, oppressor, indigenous peoples, interlopers. And I mean, they've got everything upside upside down even if it was a useful paradigm which to look at everything in the world which it isn't um of course there's no colonization in gaza other than by him as um all of gaza was given over by the israelis in 2005 i was speaking to a commander in the middle of gaza the other day uh who i said to him and i commanded in the idf i said to him uh have you commanded him in the IDF, I said to him, have you been here before? He said, yes. I said, when were you last here? He said, in 2005,

tearing out family friends from their homes so that there wouldn't be any Jews in Gaza, and we could hand it over to the Palestinians. And 18 years later, here I am back. So it's true that Gaza has been colonized, but it's colonized by Hamas. Admittedly, they were voted in by the Palestinians. And so to that extent, of course, the Palestinians in Gaza do have some responsibility for Hamas. But no, the idea that colonization only really works and the people who use that terminology really mean all of Israel. And if you believe that all of Israel is colonized by these usurping Jews

who weirdly have colonized a land of people whose religion was invented several millennia after Judaism came about, then you sort of haven't got any history right. But plenty of people talk that language, and it just, as I say, it's like just something that doesn't fit here. The whole idea of colonizer colonized, I mean. Well, what about that point though that this whole

argument this is that israel leave gauze out of it that israel is is a colonized state is was created by colonizers yeah i mean i mean to believe that you basically have to agree that everything in the world is colonized i mean by the, if people want to care about indigenous peoples, I mean, first of all, the Jews are the oldest continuous group of people who lived in these lands. The Palestinians as a people weren't even mentioned until some decades ago. They're a sort of recent invention as a people. If you went back a couple hundred years and said Palestinian, nobody would know what you're talking about particularly, whereas if you said Jewish, they certainly would. And by by the way you can tell the recentness of it because if you ask people name of famous palestinian including palestinians they can

usually come up with yes arafat and then they draw a blank that's not the case with jews you'll notice that you can name an awful lot of jews in history and in the present in the recent past so the palestinian claims are pretty thin um but by the way the people do if people do want to do the whole indigenous peoples thing then then then at least don't be selective about it um talk about the indigenous rights of the british or the french i mean go on try it right you know if you want to play that game play it everywhere don't play it in selective places well when the un was formed when the un charter 1945 there were i think something like 50 to 52 countries 30 years later there were 170 countries today 192 193 countries so presumably the majority of those countries after 1945 were just made out of thin air i mean they were just like created

and i mean i'm just interesting that everyone's focused on israel's well i also think in general the idea that Israel lacks legitimacy despite coming about by a vote at the United Nations, the idea that anyone is still having this debate seems to me to be like having a debate about the most basic mathematical theorems. Pakistan was created within the same year as israel and nobody that i know talks about not even the most fervent indian nationalist says that

pakistan should be abolished or the peoples of pakistan should just be moved out because they have no right to be there because they're a colonial construct which by the way pakistan was and and pakistan has territorial disputes pakistan is accused of oppression i mean it has all these all these um frames that are applied to israel yet no one's suggesting you could do it on any country right i mean when you and i were growing up if you wanted to signal some kind of virtue in the international arena you you'd do free Tibet. Does anyone remember free Tibet? Tibet remains doggedly unfree because it turns out the Chinese Communist Party doesn't give much of a damn about a sandal wearer in Brooklyn trying to signal decency.

But, you know, unfortunately, when you're dealing with the world's democracies like Israel, they do actually listen to international opinion and international pressure, and they don't like being misrepresented. And so, yeah, but I mean, the colonizer-colonized thing is, I'm afraid, an invention of a particularly stupid form of American pseudo-academia from the last few decades, which is mainly done by people who do sort of social studies. Everything has studies after it, which, of course, means it's not a study of any kind.

The October 7th attack was a, so the next lie or canard goes, the October 7th attack was a response to genocide. Well, of course, if there was a genocide in Gaza, it would be the only genocide in history in which the population massively boomed. I mean, most genocides involve an attempt to eradicate a race of people. And the population of Gaza has boomed in the last 18 years. So if you say there has been a genocide, either you've got to say there has been an attempted genocide and the Jews are no good at committing genocide, that there would be genocidists, but they're just

really bad at the job. Or, more likely, you're trying to wound the Jews. And that's all that's happening. Notice that all of the accusations against Israel, all the most vicious accusations, involve attempts to draw a parallel between the behavior of the Israelis and the behavior of Nazi Germany. Genocide, concentration camp, ghetto, like the Warsaw ghetto, like the concentration camps, etc., etc., Hitler-like behavior. Now, there are several ways you can interpret this. You could say, well, that's a response of having a public culture in America and the wider West that knows nothing of history in general, and only knows one bad thing from history, and that's the Nazis. And so therefore, whenever you reach for any historical analogy, you will always reach for

the Nazi analogy, whereas plenty of analogies historically could be much more relevant. You could say that. Actually, I think it's worse worse than that i think that it's a deliberate attempt to wound and hurt choose but moving on from that when people talk in this language about genocide and ghettos and concentration camps uh uh the gaza was a concentration camp by the way unlike concentration camps from nazi germany you'll notice that there are shopping malls in gaza uh beaches uh you know relative freedom of movement office buildings yeah i don't i don't remember billions of dollars being sent in from the sunni gulf yeah i don't remember uh the the jews in auschwitz being given billions of dollars in aid by the international community to do with what they will and then deciding just to enrich themselves and then go to the beach um so it's it's it's again only the product of people who either are fantastically ignorant or just want to wound jews and as for the sort of ghetto comparison

it's a claim that the 7th of october massacre was a result of intolerable war-torn ghetto-like conditions within Gaza, you would have to, first of all, not know that the Egyptians have a border with Gaza as well and have kept it doggedly closed. So that, just for our listeners, so that's the border on the other side of Gaza. So there's the Israel-Gaza border, and then there's the Gaza-Egyptian border that no one ever really talks about. I mean, the kibbutzim around Gaza were, of course, hiring, and there was meant to be an increase in the hiring of, and the movement of, passage of Palestinian workers from Gaza into Israel until the 7th October massacre, when we discovered that many of the Gazans who were working inside the kibbutz were actually feeding back the information of door-to-door of how to kill who,

and the people from Hamas who were found dead and alive had maps on their bodies which showed that the that the Gazan workers who these mainly peacenik left-wing Israelis were employing were actually acting as spies who led to the direct murder and massacre of the people who are trying to help them but let's put that aside again for a moment and just restate the fact that, again, if it was a ghetto-like condition in Gaza, you would have to live under the impression, if you had this as a justification in your head, that the Warsaw ghetto was filled with Jews who were oppressed and who, when they broke out, just immediately helped themselves to some rape and beheading. Does anyone know that

that happened or think that happened or imagine that happened? Of course not. What a sinister and sick argument that is. The Palestinians couldn't help themselves. They broke out and immediately, inevitably, went to a music party of young people where they gunned people down, raped women, and shot them in the head and continued raping them. It's how all oppressed people behave. The population size, just to put a sharper point on it, when Israel took over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, there were something like one million Palestinians.

Today, there are over five million palestinians so to your point if it was a genocide uh it was it was um the least effective genocide in history bumbled right most bungled genocide in history uh why i mean i want to stay on this point for a moment because the speed with which october 7th happens and there was maybe a day, a day, I'll give it a day at most, two days, before there was this blowback in all these major cities, not all these, many major cities in Europe and the United States, certainly on college campuses, going right for genocide. Not – they weren't – the outrage wasn't being directed at Hamas. The outrage was being directed at Jews for objecting to being slaughtered. Yes. institutions in our most cosmopolitan geographies in the world geographic centers in the world

went right to israeli genocide oh yeah israeli genocide i'm just i mean you wrote a lot about a lot a lot about this in your last book but i'm still it's like we it's sometimes these things are so uh in excess that we become numb to them yeah i i me too i'm like just used to jews being accused of genocide on october 8th or october 9th as opposed to like saying whoa what well october 8th if you know i live in new york or in america most of the time um yeah on october 8th i went down to time square to the palestinian protest there. Why were they protesting on October the 8th? Israel hadn't done anything yet, hadn't retaliated. Well, some of them were simply there to celebrate the massacre. There was a woman in a hijab waving a placard celebrating the massacre of 24 hours earlier than Times Square. So Americans who think this is someone

else's problem should first of all realize that the people who heart the rape, massacre, beheading, and burning of Jews are right in your midst in America and have no fear at all from the authorities or anyone else of showing themselves up in public like that straight away. The second point that needs to be made is, I've seen this before, as you did. I remember very much that when they were still trying to identify bodies in the rubble of the Twin Towers in 2001, there were people like the sickly academic in the UK, Mary Beard, who wrote in the London Review of Books that it was impossible to keep out of one's mind the fact that to some extent, she said, to some extent, we all feel the same thing, which is that America had this coming. Now, how many Americans want to be talked

to in that way? How many Americans within days, if not hours, of a massacre of 3,000 Americans want to hear people telling you, you had it coming. I wouldn't like to be talked about or to in that tone of voice, but the Israelis are expected to put up with it. You've got to understand the context, the context, as if there's a context to going to a music festival and gunning down lots of people in their 20s and tying the women to trees and raping them. And putting live babies in ovens. As if there's a context to going into Berry and near Oz and kibbutz after kibbutz of left-wing peaceniks in the main. And as I've seen myself, door after door, ruined house after ruined house, people in their shelters, bomb shelters, because they were used to bomb shelters, because they have to be used to the bombs, because they come over so often.

But they didn't know that people would come door to door, 4,000 people from Gaza with Kalashnikovs and RPGs and much more, door to door, so the safe rooms don't lock. I spoke to one man whose grandsons were in their house on their own because their mother was out when the Hamas death squads came. And he was on the phone trying to tell the boys, I think they were 13 and 15, how to hold the safe room door shut when the grown men of Hamas on the other side were pushing it to open the door the other way. And they were abducted. They were stolen. They were kidnapped. Because they couldn't hold out. Not against grown men.

And you see the safe room doors in these kibbutz. You know the ones where it was an even worse ending. Because you see the bullet holes all around the handles. Because that was a faster way in for Hamas. was an even worse ending because you see the bullet holes all around the handles because that was a faster way in for Hamas. Now, if anyone wants to tell me that this is a legitimate answer to oppression, I say you are sick in the head beyond comprehension. And you should not presume that the Palestinian peoples are all necessarily and must be for all time as sick as you think they are. It seems that lots of critics of Israel's response argue that Israel has a right to self-defense. The ones that are not as on the surface as extreme as the ones we're seeing marching in major American cities and European cities and college campuses. but must be more mindful more thoughtful in terms of how it wages its war and must be careful not to

hit civilian areas that feels to me like a contradiction when israel when people say israel has the right self-defense it's always followed by a but i don't know why i don't know any other people who's always a but um but there's a reason for that, which is the people who say that, what they really mean is Israel is allowed to do something rather tokenistic, and then it must settle for a draw. I believe that one of the reasons why there's been an ongoing war for so long between Israel and the Palestinians is precisely because the international community and others keep on making Israel fight to a draw. Never is Israel allowed to win. What would winning be?

Winning would be in this case, for instance, with Hamas, destroying Hamas and making sure that no Hamas-like organization exists in the Gaza again, that no rocket ever again fires out of Gaza into Israel, that would be winning. Everything else is a draw. And I have very little sympathy for the putative supporters of the Palestinian peoples, who first of all think that Hamas is the necessary spokesgroup of the Palestinian peoples, when they completely ignore that when Hamas was voted in, they promptly made sure there was never another election and killed all of their Fatah and other Palestinian opponents. And by the way, the people who doubt that should even look at very anti-Israel organizations like Amnesty International, who nine years ago in 2014 said that the Shifa hospital in Gaza was the Hamas headquarters. And what's more was the

main place where Hamas brought Palestinian prisoners and tortured them and killed them. It was known as the interrogation center and torture chamber of Hamas in Gaza. Anyhow, this is what Hamas do. This is what they're like. But if you want to pretend that the Palestinians should live under that, then be my guest. There is no reason why the Israelis should continue to have to live beside a place where endlessly rockets will be fired to the extent that every house is used to them, to the extent that every house has to have a bomb shelter. I mean, to say that Israel has to learn to live without threat is to say Israel, right, it's existential. I speak to endless people who are refugees from these towns, from Ashkelon and places like that.

I speak to a family earlier, lovely young couple bombed out of their apartment they were in the safe room in ashkelon with their three young children and uh the missile hit their apartment and thank god they were okay but their apartment is destroyed how can they move back if you're within missile um uh you know and to be clear ashkelon is not even one of the towns that's right on the border with gaza i mean ashkelon you're already long way into already much closer to the center of Israel. But the main thing about this thing of Israelis not being allowed to win is that I think that's intolerable. And I think it makes for perpetual conflict. I think conflict is mainly finished when one side wins and one side loses.

And the side that loses knows that it's lost. and the side that loses knows that it's lost and the side that wins knows that it's won but i find this perverse idea that the israelis you know this isn't just with this conflict but in almost every conflict involving the arabs and israel in fact every conflict from 1948 up till now. What always happens is, the Israelis are hit or invaded. And they are told by the international community, you can do something in response, but you mustn't win. You mustn't answer a question. I mean, I think the Palestinian question is effectively an insoluble question at this point, there is going to be no Palestinian state, partly because Fatah PA in the West Bank celebrates the October

7th massacres. And we saw a couple of days ago with the lynching of two Palestinians by a crowd, all of whom, by the way, recorded on their mobile phones. So these are the peaceful people of the West Bank as well. There's going to be no Palestinian state because the Palestinians have made sure yet again, there's just no chance. But I don't see why this insoluble problem of the Palestinians has to be a problem for the Israelis. Giving somebody an insoluble problem and telling them to solve it seems to me to be a kind of unfair and cruel thing to do. Give it to somebody else to solve. Give it to the Egyptians to solve. Give it to the Qataris or the UAE or the Jordanians. Give it to somebody else to solve. Why should it be Israel's insoluble problem?

But of course, what happens is effectively that, and it's happening at the moment with Hamas, Hamas is behaving in the way that the thing that's most similar to it would be if you and I were standing at a bus stop and I punched you in the face for no reason, or for reason I could say went back to some inherited feeling of oppression. And then you turned out to be a jujitsu master and informed me of this fact. And I said, oh, can we just go back to the moment before I hit you? Would you mind? That's the situation Israel is in with Hamas. Hamas wants to go back to the moment before I hit you? Would you mind? That's the situation Israel is in with Hamas. Hamas wants to go back to October the 6th.

Most of the international community wants to go back to October the 6th. There was a ceasefire of a kind. Hamas broke it. Hamas has to pay the price. The argument of proportionality, which is a version of what we're just discussing, but I just want to stay on it. Now, there are two versions of proportionality. One is under international law, when you take out a military target, according to international law, I'm not weighing in all the various interpretations, but at least according to Matthew Waxman, who we had on this podcast, who's a professor of international law, Columbia Law School, is that the collateral damage in going after a target has to be proportional to the military

gain. Again, I don't want to start, that's one interpretation of proportionality. Then there's this sort of media interpretation of proportionality, which is actually not based on the rules of laws of war and the rules of international rules of war. It's about, it's a different kind of proportionality. It's like Israel was hit. So, and Israel's now hitting back, quote unquote, harder. And that's not proportional as though it's a math game. First of all, I mean, you should hit back harder if you want to win. When we wanted to win wars in America and Britain, we always hit back harder. Why would

you hit back softer? What's the point in that? You have to hit back harder. If you want to destroy an opponent, you hit them as hard as you can. Now, of course, as is often pointed out, and I've seen it with my own eyes, so I know it's not just an Israeli talking point. The Israelis do everything they can to minimize civilian casualties. Are there civilian casualties? Yes, and it's terrible. I think they're all the responsibility of Hamas for starting a war. But when Hamas spends billions of dollars of international aid from your American taxpayer and from your British taxpayer, and great use of our tax dollars, that was, and funnel money to the Gaza authorities, the Hamas, you would think they might build bunkers for their people if they think that they're going to start a war. But of course, no, they have built bunkers for the Hamas leadership.

And the Hamas leadership has said that themselves on plenty of occasions, the bunkers, the tunnels there for us. Uh, the Israelis of course, do it the other way around. The Israelis use the IDF and the other, the other security agencies to protect the Israeli people. Um, uh, Hamas wanted to kill as many civilians as possible on October the 7th. That's why they chose the softest imaginable targets, like a music festival, like small kibbutz and so on. They deliberately target civilians and the Israelis accidentally hit civilians. And there's every difference in the world with that. But the proportionality argument is, I mean, first of all, there's an argument I made quite early on in this conflict, which was, if you do actually believe in this thing of proportionality, which I really only hear about involving wars in Israel, I've covered plenty of wars. I was in Ukraine last year,

I hear nobody saying that the Ukrainians have to have a proportionate response to the annexation of major parts of their country. They're just everyone hopes that they can take those parts back. But it's always the Israelis, you have the discussion of proportionality with. And as I said, if you actually want to follow that through, then proportionality would mean that the Israelis, to the extent they have the right to respond to Hamas's massacres on October 7th, should find precisely the same number of women in Gaza as Hamas found and rape them.

They should find precisely the same number of babies that Hamas killed on October 7th and behead and kill them. They should find precisely the same number of other people and go door to door and stop only when they've killed exactly the same number of people as Hamas killed on October 7th. Now, some people might say, well, the population of Gaza is about a quarter the size of the population of Israel. So actually, if it's properly proportionate, you would only rape a quarter of the women that Hamas raped, and you'd only kill a quarter of the babies. And is that okay? Come on. This is like wildly perverted thinking.

Wildly perverted thinking. It's not even thinking. And by the way, I mean, just look at what the u.s did to isis yes in raka and mosul i mean the idea of proportionality is but and i supported what we did against isis it was it was the idea that we would talk about proportionality was preposterous we flattened these places when when france bombed the cote d'ivoire in 2003 or 4 the international community didn't say don't you know don't do this don't be you know you've got to be proportionate the french just did whatever they want because the french always do um it's only israel that people care

about and that's because most people don't want israel to win i'm as far as i can see i'm saying most people i mean a lot of people are decent in the world and most critics most critics they just don't want israel to win and so they come up with this bs about proportionality hamas is an idea some say and no matter what israel does here it cannot bomb away an idea some many critics argue and that you know your your analogy about in this hostage exchange, there may be a future sin war. Some critics argue, well, in some of the bombed out civilian areas in North Gaza, there are sin wars in the making who otherwise may go another way. And they then get radicalized because of Israel's quote-unquote indiscriminate bombing.

And you will never defeat an idea that will be so attractive to a vulnerable victim of Israeli warfare that becomes radicalized as a result. Well, it's a very strange argument, isn't it? Because we've destroyed ideas all the time. We destroyed fascism. Right. So Nazism was much more robust, both financially, infrastructurally, and numerically than Hamas is. still thrives in Berkeley and various American college campuses. But otherwise, communism is a pretty defunct ideology. Even the CCP sort of steps away from some of it now. Japanese imperialism was a very strong idea. And the Japanese were almost as dedicated as Hamas and ISIS to dying for that idea. But we so destroyed Japan's infrastructure and leadership and indeed cities.

And there is no talk these days, no serious talk. I mean, there's some discussion about indoctrination in Japanese schools. Sometimes it comes up about the nationalism that some people feel is always sort of nodded to within Japan's schools. But I don't think there's any serious movement in Japan

that is because we were treated like this, we're going to go back to Japanese imperialism. And that's because we bombed the hell out of them and defeated them, because otherwise they would have defeated us. And it's a very good thing too. Again, I get back to this point. You have to lose.

You have to lose. You have to lose. Your enemy has to lose. And we won't necessarily get unconditional surrender. Israel will not necessarily get unconditional surrender from Hamas. But it could get unequivocal defeat of Hamas. I would like unconditional surrender, but we'll see. Yeah. Douglas, you wrote this book, The War on the west which was a new york times

bestseller very provocative book long before published long before october 7th where does october 7th fit into your thesis the war on the west is about the anti-westernism of our time whereby every single western country is treated by this bizarre standard where we're all meant to have original sins and uh we must atone for them. And of course, no other country in the world has the same thing. Our history has been rewritten in America and Britain and elsewhere as one of terrible oppression. And it's all looked at through this lens of negativity and evil and wrongdoing. And I mean, to put a very long and scholarly book into simplistic terms, I would say it's about,

well, it's very strange that this only happens to the world's Western democracies and it doesn't get done anywhere else. I see no one going to Uganda and saying what's their original sin. Most Ugandans would look at you with some confusion if you raised the issue. I don't see people going to Jordan and saying, what's your original sin? And by the way, guys, you've never done anything good. It's all been horrible. In fact, there are countries in the world that are much more deserving of such an interpretation. But yes, Israel obviously suffers from this as well. This idiot American idea of colonization, of first peoples, um oppressor oppressed and so on uh this has been

transplanted onto israel as it's been transplanted onto every other western country canada australia we've all got versions of the same virus um and uh yeah the response to october the 7th in america in particular and parts of America in particular, is a vindication of the fact that this horrible, horrible mind virus has wrecked the minds of young people in particular to the extent that they don't realize that they are being the Nazis. If they got their wish, and I hope to God they never do for themselves apart from anything else, if they got their wish and i hope to god they never do for themselves apart from anything else if they got their wish of the river whose name they don't know to the sea who they couldn't point to on a map being entirely judenrein which is of course the desire not just of

hamas but of the palestinian authority who are meant to be the putative next failed Arab state. They would be Hitler. What they're chanting for is the final dream of Hitler. So they should know that and wish to God that they never get their chant fulfilled. Yeah. You wrote in the New York Post, you go back to the 2014 Boko Haram hostage-taking of Christian schoolgirls in Nigeria. You wrote here, and I'm quoting,

my mind keeps going back 10 years ago to Nigeria in 2014, as some readers will remember, on the night of April 14th, 2014, 276 mainly Christian schoolgirls were abducted by terrorists from the Boko Haram group. It happened at a school in a town called Chibuk in Borno State. In some ways, it is obvious why there was such international outrage at the incidenthtag bring, what was it? Bring the girls home. Bring back our girls. Bring back our girls, including the first lady, including Michelle Obama.

So this was widespread. Again, I'm sort of numb to the reaction now. But post-October 7th. But like when I read you lay it out like that, it's like, what is going on? It was hip. It was chic. It was in vogue to demand children be returned. Yeah, it was like free Tibet.

Right. Yeah, it was the cause du jour. Again, it did no good, by the way. I covered the conflict in northern Nigeria in recent years and was in Borno State. I've been to the places the Chibok schoolgirls were taken from. I've covered the massacres of Christians there by Fulani militia and others. Know that conflict pretty well.

Yeah, it was a cool thing to be be on the side of to say uh bring back our girls and i don't doubt it but when you say it had no effect when you say it had no effect oh well i mean um uh the nigerian could care less no well first of all boko haram couldn't care less and i will like the chinese communist party not vulnerable to international pressure it turned out that a hashtag couldn't stop Boko Haram. Who knew? And secondly, though, of course, the schoolgirls largely, I mean, some were returned in drips and drabs of returnees. The Nigerian military and government was so incompetent. Again, I saw this in my own eyes. One of the Chibok schoolgirls was only returned in April this year.

So the international campaign was as often noisy and largely ineffective, but it did put some pressure on the Nigerian government, not least the pay PR agencies to try to cover up the fact of their own inadequacies, but that's another story. Yeah, I spent a lot of time with the families of the abducted hostages from October the 7th, and I try not to say to them what is always on my mind like this, which is where is the international outcry?

Where is it? And I'm afraid you can only come to the conclusion, as we see with the people, particularly women, it's noticeable for interesting psychological reasons we can't get into but who rip down posters of kidnapped israeli children one can only come to the conclusion that either internationally people don't care that much about jews or actively dislike them Or they think that the stealing of Jewish children and the likely death of some of them

is just one of the eggs that needs to be broken in order to make the terrific omelette of the Palestinian state. I think probably most are in that second camp. And all I would say to those people is what George Orwell said to the Stalinists he rowed with in the 1940s, who eventually admitted that, okay, the show trials of 37 may have happened. Okay, the gulag may be there.

Okay, political, okay, there might be no... And eventually Orwell heard him say that fatal phrase, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. And George Orwell said, well, where's your omelette? And I would say to the people who say, effectively, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. You can't make the Palestinian state or get the Gazans free without breaking heads. And having not only seen the unedited massacre footage of October the 7th, but having spent too much time in the massacre sites and indeed in the morgues and the places where the bodies are still being identified and the mortuaries, I would say, go to those places,

tell me this was worth anything, and then point to your bloody omelet. Douglas, we will leave it there. Very powerful. If you had one impression from your time in Israel that you would like to break through to people listening to this podcast and others that you feel just people don't get after having spent a month with the israelis during this horrific traumatic nightmare what would it be one of the

most powerful too many powerful things to list but one of the most powerful conversations i had in recent weeks was at one of the trauma hospitals where a father who had been in the safe room with his wife, daughter, and son, and they were there for hours. They were smoked out. They'd burnt down the house. They were all suffering from smoke inhalation. And then the terrorists of Hamas found the window and threw grenade after grenade in and shot into this small room.

Father lost both his legs. His wife was killed in front of him, died in front of the children. And then his boy, who'd been shot in both sides of his chest, bled out in front of his sister and father. And his father said to me, I've been a leftist all my life, all my life. I want nothing but potato fields from here to the sea. I'm afraid that is the feeling of vast number of Israelis now.

Hamas killed the possibility of peace. People in Israel know that. The wider world should know that. Douglas, thank you. Stay safe. Keep doing what you're doing. Hope to get you back on. But until then, I'll be, I think, like many folks listening, following your reporting and commentary. Thank you very much. That's our show for today. To keep up with Douglas Murray, you can find him on X.

That's at Douglas K. Murray. And he is the number one bestselling author of seven books, including The War in the West, which I talked about at the beginning of this podcast. You can find that book wherever you purchase books. And you can also follow his work at The Spectator, at The New York Post, and The Sun. And please subscribe to his podcast, Uncanceled History. Call Me Back is produced by Alain Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.