Piers Morgan Uncensored - Former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

As Israel signals a willingness to free high-profile Palestinians, former Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett joins Piers to discuss. Piers Morgan Uncensored is the global arena for fearless debate, bold opinions and major interviews. Subscribe for all-new and exclusive daily content.  YouTube: @PiersMorganUncensored X: @PiersUncensored TikTok: @piersmorganuncensored Insta: @piersmorganuncensored Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The war in Gaza has become one of the most divisive issues of our times. Legitimate criticism of Israel has metastasized into a surge in anti-Semitism. Pro-Palestine protesters and cities across the world have charted from the river to the sea, which self-evidently calls for the eradication of Israel. Some have viewed excesses of the Israeli government as a figly for abusing Jewish people, many of whom say they're simply no longer feeling safe. But the ugliness and division is flowing in both directions. In Britain, anti-Muslim hate cases have more than true.

since the October 7th attacks. Horror about the attacks has emboldened prejudice people to let their vitriol poor, and we seem to collectively forgotten what racism actually is, and what it looks like. MP Lee Anderson, who until recently was Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, accused the Muslim Mayor of London of being controlled by Islamists.

I don't actually believe that these Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they've got control of Khan and they've got control of London, and they've got control of London, and they've got control of. of storm as well. If you have any difficulty understanding why those comments are deeply offensive,

try flipping the subject. Imagine London had a Jewish mayor and a senior politician the government said, I believe the Jews have control of the mayor and the Jews have control of London. That wouldn't be tolerated and rightly so. Anderson's now been suspended. He still refuses to publicly apologize,

but a cavalcade of his colleagues, including the Prime Minister, have repeatedly failed to describe his comments as racist. But they were racist. And if you don't agree, consider that it might be because, well, maybe you don't understand what racism is. Lee Anderson's idiotic comments have overshadowed a much bigger issue for British democracy, which made global headlines last week.

A parliamentary debate on a ceasefire in Gaza was disrupted in defiance of all convention over concerns that MPs voting against it would be attacked. The British Parliament ceased to operate by its own rules to prevent its elected officials from being threatened, abused or even killed by Islamist. That sets a chilling and dangerous precedent. If politicians cave into intimidation and threats, as they did last week, the obvious result will be more intimidation and more threats. And if our society tolerates slurs and racism at the bills spewed by the likes of Lee Anderson,

the obvious result will be more slurs and more racism. The only way to deal with all this is by facing up to the reality of extremism on both sides and for all decent people to reject it. The issue British MPs should have been debating freely and openly is the urgent question, or whether it's time for Israel's allies to call for an end of this war. Prime Minister Netanyahu again says no amount of pressure will stop him. Our brave soldiers proved them all wrong on all counts. Many also argued that Israel's military campaign would scuttle our ability to release the hostages.

Well, they were wrong on this one too. Military pressure led to the release of 110 hostages. And only continued military pressure will bring home the remaining hostages. Well, I've said repeatedly that Israel have both the right and a duty to respond with force to October 7th attacks. But Netanyahu keeps pushing the boundaries. Every time he does, many more thousands of innocent Palestinians die in the process. After four and a half months, offended to say what will happen to Gaza after the war, the Prime Minister has now published an insultingly short one-page plan.

It says that if and when Hamas is eradicated, Gaza will be controlled by local officials with administrative experience, provided they have no connections to Hamas. Well, given that Hamas has run Gaza since 2006, exactly who those local administrators are is unclear. If Israel can't find anybody it deemed suitable, Israel will remain in control. And frankly, that looks like a blueprint

for continued occupation, and that will only manufacture more of the radicalization that sparked this deadly war in the first place. Well, Natali Bennett, the former Prime Minister of Israel, joins me now. Mr. Belli, thank you very much indeed for coming back on the program. When we last spoke, it was only about three weeks after the horrors of October the 7th. And you said in terms of Israel's response, it isn't about the numbers deaths, it's about how we, Israel, get them Hamas out. Are you comfortable with how the war has been prosecuted since then?

The IDF is performing exceptionally well under the toughest circumstances in any war that I can recall because we could have finished this war in three days if we were cavalier about civilian lives. But we're not, we care and we do everything we can to prevent unnecessarily deaths of civilians. That's why it's taking time. It's going to take a few more months, but we are on track to. remove Hamas from Gaza. I mean, it's a bold statement to say you'll do that. Many people say that if you try and eliminate Hamas completely,

then many tens or maybe hundreds of thousands more Palestinians will be killed and wounded in that process. And how is that going to stop future radicalization? Are you not just staring up a massive problem for yourselves going forward? No, quite the contrary. What we've learned from history is that when you are working with very radical ideologies, you first have to win, and then you can start recovering and rebuilding. You couldn't start the recovery of Germany without first bringing Germany or the Nazis to total surrender.

Likewise here, we have to defeat Hamas, and then we can start the process of recovery. How will you know when you've beaten Hamas? when they come out and surrender with white flags or we've killed them why would they surrender they've shown no sign of doing that no there's quite hundreds already that have surrendered perhaps already thousands because when you know the army is closing on you and now they're hunkered down underground in raffach and hiding behind women and children but it is closing on them and they'll know and they'll know

And as we've seen in other places, when they know that their death is imminent, they come out and surrender. If thousands of Hamas have surrendered, where are they? We've already interrogated over a couple of thousands of Hamas operatives. And yeah, that's what we do. They're in our custody. Where are they in custody? In all kinds of places in Israel, in the Negev. Some of them are in Gaza.

We prefer logistically to do it within Gaza, and then we move on. But just to be clear, you're saying that thousands of Hamas terrorists have surrendered to the IDF and are being held in custody and being interrogated. We've interrogated, I believe, over 3,000 operatives in varying degrees of involvement. and some are military, Hamas, some are civilian Hamas, and we've learned a lot from that. That's another source of our being able to close on the leadership of Hamas.

What is a civilian Hamas? I mean, aren't they all terrorists? Hamas has a civilian arm of governing Gaza and a military arm of conducting terror against Israel. You are right that they are intertwined, much like the Nazis. During the Nazi regime, there were also Nazi teachers and Nazi officials that dealt with Germany, but there were also the Nazis that conducted the Holocaust, the Shoah, and World War II. It's a government. Peers, I want to be very clear.

Hamas has been governing Gaza for the past 15 years. Yeah, no, I'm obviously aware of that. I think the point of concern for the global community, that's been mounting, as you're well aware, is that it's now being reported that as many as 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, with another 70,000 injured. This is out of a population of just 2 million,

of whom half of them are children under 18. And again, it comes back to what is proportionate. You know, I understand Israel's desire to want to get rid of Hamas, but at what cost, you know, the sheer scale of the the deaths of young, innocent Palestinians must be of great concern to you, isn't it? Yeah, we are concerned with unnecessary or deaths, first of our own people and then also of citizens. But these deaths, I wouldn't call them unnecessary. I would call them collateral damage that is part of war.

And I have to say that in Israel's case, we're conducting war at one of the lowest racial of collateral damage, I believe, roughly 2.5 versus every terrorist compared to six, seven, eight, and nine, and other wars. Look, there's no magic here. This whole thing could go away right now if Hamas lays down its arms and releases the hostages. We have really no choice. You had this army of radical Islamic zombies attacking Israel on October 7th, raping, severing heads, burning families because they were brainwashed with radical Islamic ideology, and they say they're going to do it again. So obviously, we really have no choice, and we're going to conduct this as far as we need.

I also want to tell you something that is actually news. From our intelligence now, we know that prior to the October 7th attack, some of the Hamasniks asked the question, according to Sharif. you're not allowed to just murder people. So they asked how can we do it? Hamas brought in clerics to give them a special fatwa that said, because you are Hamas warriors, you are allowed to murder civilians, women and children.

You can go ahead and do that freely. This is what we're working against. And obviously, we have to uproot all of Hamas until they're gone. Right, but you've just admitted that you're killing Hamas civilians? No, I said we're killing Hamas and unfortunately

as in every war in history there's also civilians that died because Hamas explicitly or deliberately hides behind the civilians in the most cowardly fashion. Notwithstanding that we're facing this incredible challenge we're managing to do it at a

much lower ratio of civilian loss than in other war. You keep saying that, but the bottom line is this. More Palestinians have been killed in four months than the total number of serving Ukrainians in the war against Russia, which has now entered its third year. How can you say that this is pro rata, one of the best executed wars in history, when you have that comparison of the two wars that are currently raging? Well, you're comparing apples and oranges. Here we're facing an enemy whose desire is to maximize not only the number of Israelis dead, but of their own civilians, precisely so Pira's Morgan can ask me that question.

It's a very cynical organization. We're not magicians. There's no magic here. If anyone has a better plan to submit to tell us how to eradicate Hamas, bring it on, we'll go ahead and do it. Without that, short of that, we're going to have to pursue this. Just like Britain and America and the Soviet Union pursued Nazi Germany until total victory. We have to have total victory.

That comparison is not accurate in the sense that there's never been a conflict like this, a war like this, waged against a population, where half of the population is under 18. I mean, that in itself makes this a very different type of war. That is why so many children are getting killed. That is why this collateral damage, as you call it, is almost uniquely horrific in Gaza because half the population are children. Well, as I said, if any country in the world would be willing to live next to Hamasthan that explicitly says right now that they're going to conduct more,

October 7th massacres again and again and again, if we don't eradicate them, then tell me who that is. Because again, we have absolutely no choice here but to win. And the best way to make this whole misery go away is to accelerate the pace of this victory and not tie Israel's hands behind our back. The longer it takes, the more losses there will be. We're being cautious about it, but I won't be reprimanded by anyone for defending my children, for defending my nation. I fought in wars. We hate war. Israelis do not like war.

We didn't start this war. It came and hit us out of left field, and we were reminded that we're surrounded by the craziest terror organizations on earth. We didn't choose this. They started. They are continuing. all go away if they lay down their arms. The only organization, the only people that are responsible for this is Hamas. And I also have to say, unfortunately, I would have loved to say that Hamas has hijacked the Palestinian population. But the facts are that Hamas won in democratic

elections. Out of 132 seats, they won an absolute majority of 76 seats. And they were, were elected by their own people. That's the government that they chose, a government that attacked and did these hyenas things and raped our daughters and bird families alive. People tend to forget that. This is not to say that we will go and deliberately hurt civilians, but unfortunately, after 20 years of brainwashing, many, many Palestinians support these sort of massacres. They say, Jews are pigs, Jews are the Satan, we need to kill them. If, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has said, you attack the Rafa refugee camp, there's 1.6 million people there who've gone there because they were told to go there by Israel,

if that is attacked in the way you've been attacking the north of Gaza, it's going to be absolutely horrific in terms of the death toll. And again, it will be largely innocent children and women. We know that from the comparative figures of Hamas terrorists who've been killed to innocent civilians. How could you justify attacking a massive refugee camp? No, first we're going to

move them away from that camp. We're going to allow for ample time for the civilians to move away much as we did. Where do they go? They're going to go. There's an area between Gaza City and Han Yunus, that can allocate them. Look, this isn't fun. This isn't something we want to do, but we have to uproot

Hamas for everyone's benefit, including the citizens of Gaza. You know, when I see the Palestinians celebrating this, you know, do you know that 70% of the Palestinians in the latest poll support this massacre? It's unbelievable. You know, in the over 100 years of conflict, they call this their biggest achievement. we were building a country, a nation for the Jewish people, and bringing deserts back to life here in Israel, their biggest achievement, in their own words, is raping women and burning families.

Is that what you're proud about? I ask them? The other area of concern about what Israel is doing or not doing is the amount of aid that's getting in there. All the official bodies are in agreement that not enough aid is getting through, despite what Israel keeps saying. saying, what is happening on that front? Because there are many, many people now who are dying as a

consequence, not of bombs, but of malnutrition, of dehydration, of just not getting basic stuff to survive on. So Israel is allowing as much aid and civilian aid as necessary. What we don't want is that within that aid, they will smuggle arms and ammunition. and it is complicated. As I said, you know, all the questions are always towards Israel, as if we're the perpetrators of all of this. But it's Hamas who started and is continuing all of this. They can make it go away right now. It's not going to be, you know, a bed of roses. It's tough. It's a very complicated situation. But I'm proud to be Israeli. I'm proud that we are managing this in the most responsible way under international,

that is growing and is unfair and is wrong, but it is what it is and we're going to see this through. I mean, Brazil's president, Lula, last week's called out Israel, said that Israel was responsible for the genocide of the Palestinian people. What's your response to him? He's an idiot. That's it? That's it. What can I say? Look, I want to tell you something. You know, I hear this criticism, and it's simply,

Israel hate, Jewish hate. There's no explanation for someone who can talk about genocide. There's no genocide whatsoever. The only genocide that was attempted is when they came in on October 7th to explicitly murder women and children. That is an attempt for genocide. The only reason it stopped is because of the Israeli army. We're going in and doing everything bending over backward to defend

and avoid unnecessary deaths. We're losing boys fighting there because we are so cautious. So anyone who says that is simply a hypocrite and worse than that. And you know what? I'll also tell you one more thing. I want to say... Well, I just want to say the kind of blanket, you know, this is obviously ridiculous, is when you look at the numbers, 1,200 Israelis died on October the 7th.

5,431 more were injured. And 233 IDF soldiers have been killed in Gaza with 1,373 injured. But in the response against the Palestinians in Gaza, nearly 30,000 Palestinians now killed, 69,000 more injured. So this is 30 times as many Palestinians have already been killed in response. And you've indicated this could go on for many more months. So these numbers could double, potentially. They could triple.

how long it will take for you to finish this war, you may end up where you've killed 50, 60, 70 times as many Palestinians as Israelis who died in October the 7th. How can that be right? Wars and this sort of situation, which is not really a war because it started by a heinous terror attack that was totally out of the blue. They were actually going through a period of prosperity, relative prosperity and growth in Gaza, yet they, perpetrated this. It's never about comparing numbers. When did we start comparing numbers? Do you want to compare how many Americans died in World War II versus

Nazi Germany? Is that the comparison? Is America in the wrong because more Nazis died than Americans? Well, again, I would again say in relation to that comparison, the particular nature of this war, which

is so concerning to people, is the massively high percentage of the Ghazan population, which is children. And that did not happen in World War II. Those numbers were not anything like the same. So there's no direct comparison to be made. You're basically waging war on a very small area of land, densely populated by 50% children.

And in the process, you're killing thousands and thousands of children and will continue to do so. And that is why the international community, even those who, like me, say, I think you have a right and a duty to defend yourself, and clearly, if a mass is wedded to doing more of these, you must try and get rid of them. But there must come a point, even for Israel,

even for people like yourself, where you look at the sheer numbers of children being killed, and you stop and pause and think, is this actually the right way to prosecute this war? Pierce, I'd rather be unpopular and alive than beloved and dead. And if the world doesn't have sympathy for us when we're fighting for our lives,

fighting for our lives, because it's not only Hamas and Chisbalah, so be it. We're just going to have to do what we need to do. And I can guarantee that more Nazi children and German children died in World War II than in Gaza. Not as a percentage of those who died. That's the point.

Let me ask you... Look, I'm not in a math class right now. I'm in the real world. To be fair, you were the one that was actually, you wanted to make the comparison. I'm simply saying the comparison is not a valid one for that specific reason. It's exactly a valid one. I fully disagree.

It's exactly a valid one because you had a regime that was from foot to head embroiled in radical Nazi ideology and in murder. and in murdering Jews, you have the same regime in Gaza that enjoys full popular support, unfortunately. Almost every home in Gaza. I spoke to soldiers for the past several months. They come out and say almost every home in Gaza has arms, has grenades, has rifles, has RPGs within the home.

They've turned all of Gaza into a massive military terror base, and they are paying for that. It's their responsibility. All these questions that you're lobbying towards me, you should be lobbying towards Hamas and Hamas only. I know that you are actually on the much more balanced and fair side, but I'm focused on international criticism. Go to Hamas and ask them.

Go to Iran and ask Iran, why are they funding this sort of genocidal attempts? Let me ask you about the reports of a potential new ceasefire, this meeting in Paris. moving to Qatar. What do you know about that? And how likely is it that we will get another ceasefire? And what would it look like? Well, I'd give it about a 50% chance at this moment in time. We're talking about release of several dozen hostages that are held by Hamas captives. And in return, we're going to unfortunately have to release terrorists that are in jail in a reasonable ratio that the government is trying to achieve. there will be a temporary ceasefire of a ballpark of a month, month and a half,

after which we will continue and finish Hamas, last stronghold in Rafakh, and hopefully eradicate Hamas, and then begin the process of allowing Gaza to recover and rebuild. Final question, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority has resigned. Many people in Israel, the vast majority, actually, think that Prime Minister Netanyahu should also leave his job as a result of what happened on October the 7th. You were his former Chief of Staff. Do you think he should step aside? And we have completely

new leadership on both sides here? There's going to be a time for everything. While we've been political rivals for many years, Prime Minister Netanyahu and myself, I'm not going to criticize him on international media, certainly not during war. But his plan, finally, is that basically Israel will continue with a more restrictive occupation of Gaza than it was doing before October the 7th. How, given the long history of this conflict, how would you think that that would do anything other than stir up more radicalization against Israel? No, that's not the plan.

The plan is to have a security umbrella and ultimately allow the Gazans to govern themselves. The two guiding stars from our perspective are A, to retain full Israeli security, and B, we don't want to govern them. Israel doesn't have any desire to govern or reenter or live in Gaza. So it's purely on security grounds that we're going to make our decisions. and it's complicated because it's going to take several years to denazify Gaza from the brainwash that these people have gone through for many, many years. It takes time because they are convinced that all Jews are the Satan and need to be murdered. Otherwise, they wouldn't do those crazy stuff they did on October 7th.

Natali Bennett, former Prime Minister of Israel. Thank you very much for joining me. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Piers.