Piers Morgan Uncensored - Israel President Isaac Herzog: On The Recognition Of Palestine

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Piers Morgan speaks to Israeli President Isaac Herzog as the shadow of war continues to darken the Middle East. President Herzog reacts to the news that Ireland, Norway and Spain will officially recognise the state of Palestine by the end of this month, calling it a "futile step" that "won’t help" Palestinians. He also comments on the recent death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, claiming they are not celebrating in Israel - but makes the point that the UN mourning his death illustrates the ‘rotting of the institution’. Before saying goodbye, President Herzog claims he cares about the Palestinian people, and even says he’ll take Piers’ complaint on the rights of journalists in Israel to the relevant authorities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's been a bruising week for Israel's international reputation, wherever you stand on the legitimacy of the international criminal court or the strength of his case against Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and has captured the world's attention. The ICC's prosecutor wants an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, arguing he could bear criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Israel-Hamas war. To Netanyahu's fury, it creates a moral equivalence between Israel's leaders

and the Hamas terrorists who started this war. It shifts the focus again to what many people believe is intolerable civilian suffering in Gaza. Today, Ireland, Norway and Spain, all announced that will formally recognize a Palestinian state within days. What you're going to now to respond to this is the president of the state of Israel, Isaac Herzog. Mr. President, thank you very much indeed for coming back to uncensored. It's good to see you again. First of all, if I can get your reaction. Thank you.

Your reaction, please, to this news today, that Ireland, Norway and Spain, all moving to recognize as a Palestinian state by the end of this month? I must say, you know, these are futile steps that won't help any progress in the region and on adverse to the basic challenges, meaning adverse to the ability to release the hostages, they can be deemed as an award, actually, to Hamas. And I've expressed these opinions

to the leaders of these respective states because what one sees is, okay, because of it. war that was brutally waged by Hamas by raping, burning, chopping, abducting Israelis, all of a sudden the world rushes, a few nations in the world are rushing to declare a Palestinian state when there is no boundaries or no nothing that you can make a Palestinian state. In order to reach any possible venue for the future, there must be negotiations by the two sides. And I think that this step is actually adverse to the real purpose and trajectory of

moving towards peace in our region. I mean, there is a lot of people around the world who believe that the only way this conflict running now for over seven decades can ever get reconciled is if there is a two-state solution. You have said in the past that you are broadly supportive of a Palestinian state. Is this not a logical, moment in this conflict and this war to at least say that this should be the end game, the goal? So thank you for asking this because one has to be lucid and understand the facts on the ground. You have two areas where there could be future possibilities of sovereignty for the Palestinians. One is the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip, we've gone through hell. We've gone through terror that was waged by Hamas. Hamas took this over by Ikuda-ta against the Palestinian government, okay, in 2007. Since then, a whole terror city was built in the most incredibly big way. It's bigger than the New York subway system, the tunnels of terror there. And you expect us to say, okay, now this will be run as a Palestinian state, exactly how. We have to get Hamas out. We have to get the Iranian support out.

we have to make a build a real future and it takes a couple of years to build a real future. And then you've got the West Bank where they are there and their government lacks, I mean, lacks capability. We have a lot of issues that turns out that the whole army of terror is working there. And Israel has to come in, day in, they out to arrest these terrorists. So in order to create a future of hope and peace, there are basic things and basic reparations. requisites that must be met. There is a big argument in Israel regarding the capability or the acceptance of the idea of a Palestinian state because following October 7th in Israel, the deep feeling is that the neighbors, that everybody promised us will be peaceful neighbors, have attacked us

in a brutal way and they've killed and butchered and raped and abducted. First and foremost, the biggest supporters of peace in Israel. So there is also a mental issue here, a national feeling that there's no trust. And in order to move to any possible future, there must be first and foremost trust. So these are the issues we must deal with before throwing declarations that are written

in foreign offices here or there, which serve perhaps internal political pressures in some countries or not, doesn't really matter. At the end, it won't help any Palestinian or any Israeli for that matter. This all comes, of course, just two days after the International Criminal Court announced that it was going to be pursuing a prosecution of your Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and your defense minister, Galang. What is your response to that?

So we have to tell your viewers that, first and foremost, this announcement by the prosecutor has been carried out in bad faith. because despite the fact that Israel is not a member of the Rome Convention, which established that court, like many, many nations are not party to that convention. Israel indirectly and also directly agreed to have a dialogue with the prosecutor. And this was made clear by the announcement of Foreign Secretary, Secretary of State, of course, Anthony Blinken, because the Americans were also involved in this dialogue. and they're also not a party to the convention.

And we agreed to have a dialogue and bring the prosecutor to Israel. And his chief of staff was supposed to land in Israel at 6 p.m. 2 days ago, and all of a sudden he rescinded his visit and the announcement came out. And it shocked all of us because we act in good faith. And we are willing to have a dialogue

with any international body that is relevant, honest, and can, and, and, and, and, can have a dialogue. And here's the second and the most important thing of all. In international law, you have a rule which is called complementarity, meaning if there is a state that is democratic and has a very strong law enforcement arm and can adjudicate and investigate and judge, then that nation is exempt from any steps by the International

Criminal Court, because Israel, of course, knows how to do it. Prime Minister Netanyahu is even under indictment in the district court here in Jerusalem with alleged claims which are known to everybody. The court case convenes almost every week, and we know how to adjudicate and enforce and investigate. We are a law-abiding nation. We are a member of the family of nations. We are a democracy. And we were faced by a brutal dictatorship of a terror organization, a jihadist, terrorist organization.

that doesn't give a damn about anything of the world order, that uses terror to create havoc, that burnt and raped and chopped and abducted innocent civilians, that waged war against us, and therefore this kind of equality between the two sides or the steps taken against Israel is outrageous, totally outrageous, unacceptable, and all decent people around the world must object to it vehemently.

And unfortunately, it shows the political nature and the rotting of some of the institutions in the international law arena, which the entire world order of post-World War II has been collapsing due to pressure by terrorist organizations supported by an empire of evil called Iran. And that's the real issue here. And that's why it's unacceptable and must be taken off the table and blocked. The charges include starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health,

willful killing, internationally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime, extermination and or murder, contrary to articles 71B and 71A, including in the context of death caused by starvation as a crime against humanity, persecution as a crime against humanity, and other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity. These are incredibly serious charges that have been leveled here by the ICC. No, if I can just finish my question.

And obviously, as you know, despite the fact that Israel and the United States are not members of the ICC, well over 100 countries are. So the repercussions of this, even if you don't agree with what they're doing, are pretty serious, aren't they? So, Pierce, that is why, according to the same convention you're quoting and the same articles, you're quoting, the prosecutor is obliged to first to check the facts and enable whoever he wants to investigate, putting aside the question of jurisdiction, which we of course mentioned already and you mentioned, that we are not a party and therefore it's not subject. One has to study the case, and he didn't.

He was about to come and study. He was about to come and talk to us. Give you one example, okay? starvation. It's unbelievable that we are blamed for that, because Israel has taken all necessary precautions and measures to operate according to international law. Number one, alert all civilians according to international humanitarian law, by phone calls millions of them, by leaflets, millions of them, by directing them physically, by sending text messages, then bringing in huge amount of humanitarian aid, huge, coordinated with a huge international effort. In many cases, the UN agencies

failed on the crossings themselves because they had their own issues, problems, and bureaucracy. And yet now, from all corners of the Gaza Strip, food is coming in and coming in big time, from the maritime port, from the crossings which Israel opened, from also air and sea, from Jordan, through Israel, and what's not? And there is no stovvary. and we object to that, and we argued with whoever claimed it, and we show it, and we are monitoring it on an hourly basis. But who cares? The ICC prosecutor decided to say, he wrote.

So what if he has he wrote? If we believe in a real honest legal system, one has to enable whoever he wants to investigate to present his case. It's the most minimal requirements. And what happened here, there was no presentation of the case. and it's outrageous and it looks ludicrous. It looks absurd. We were attacked by terrorists

and we are fighting to defend ourselves and the right of self-defense is an inherent right of any nation. Yes, I understand that. And by the way, I have said that from the start of this war, as I think you know, I said it to you last time. I know. I have never doubted Israel's right.

In fact, it's duty to its people to defend itself. The debate now is simply about the scale of that defense. and in relation to the humanitarian aspect. I know, but do you know that the same citizens of ours on the border with Gaza, which is an internationally recognized and agreed upon border, the same citizens are attacked by missiles every day still from Gaza? Okay, just shows you the enormous amount of war power that was instilled in the houses of all the Gaza's citizens.

We've gone in and we found unbelievable infrastructure, of terror in people's homes. That's the absurdity of this all. They broke havoc on the entire people. If I may ask you to present. Here is the problem, I think, if I may say as a journalist to you, speaking frankly, one of the problems

Israel has is that the United Nations says there are widespread humanitarian issues. I've had doctors from hospitals near Raffa saying there are hundreds of patients coming in on a daily basis who are suffering now from famine, related illness and disease. Everyone is saying one thing.

You're saying another. You're saying it's all nonsense. It's all invented to denigrate Israel. But at the same time, you won't allow journalists, independent journalists, to go in and see it for themselves. And in fact, what you're doing as a country... If I can finish my question. What you're doing as a country is, it seems to me, is that you're also having a secondary attack on freedom of the press.

And the reason I say that is you shut down Al Jazeera in Israel, You recently this week, you confiscated equipment from the Associated Press, which you've now had to hand back, and you still won't let foreign journalists go in there. And I think that if you really want people to believe what Israel's version of events is, surely it's now incumbent on Israel to say this far into this war, we are now going to allow foreign independent journalists to go in. So first of all, I take your comment, and I will definitely pass it on to the relevant authorities, because, I was under the impression that people see and report. Secondly, and that is the most important thing here, we hold a dialogue. We have a war room with all UN agencies with Kogat.

Kogat is the agency that deals with all the UN agencies and the international rescue operations, and we monitor it in the war home 24-7. I don't ignore the fact that people are suffering. We know that the Gazan people are suffering. They're going through a terrible ordeal by moving themselves and then getting the food and then living. We understand that. It's very sad.

It's a real tragedy. And this havoc was brought upon them by Hamas. It's a real tragedy. And I sincerely hope that now we will be able to see a different rule over Gaza that will bring hope to them, the Palestinians, our neighbors, and to the entire region. but I can't in a war zone, unfortunately, where people are dying all the time in war and there's battles going on and huge terror infrastructure,

I don't know what's allowed and what's not allowed in terms of bringing in the press, but I'll pass on your request and idea as well because I take you seriously and thank you. Well, I appreciate that because serious journalists who I respect greatly are really getting incensed that they're not able to do their jobs and I think they should be allowed to.

I want to play you a clip, President Herzog, if I may. This is from you towards the end of October, talking about the war then. It's an entire nation out there that is responsible. It's not true. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it's absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime, which took over Gaza in a coup d'etat. But we're at war.

We are at war. We are defending our homes. We're protecting our homes. That's the truth. And then when a nation protects its home, it fights. And we will fight until we'll break their backbone. It has been construed your comments then, that you were talking about the entire Palestinian population as being equally culpable for what happened. And therefore, you were waging, as some of your critics have put it, as some of your critics have put it, as you know, that you were waging a form of genocide in response because of what you said.

Would you like to clarify what you meant by those comments? Absolutely, because there was a continuation, which you didn't show, where I made clear that there are many, many innocent civilians in Gaza. This was given four days after the waging of this brutal, horrific attack that was waged against Israel. And what I commented was,

had to do with the whole discussion, as you can see, related to the fact that there were so many enormous celebrations out there in Gaza, celebrating the rape, the butchering, the burning, the chopping, the abduction, and the killing of so many Israelis. That's what I related to. And I made clear, outright clear, and it was made clear also time and again, and I'm happy that you gave me the opportunity to make clear. Of course, there are many, many civilians in Gaza, so many, many of them that are totally innocent. They are in a trend.

tragedy that has befallen upon them by Hamas. And the people of Gaza are not our enemies. They are our neighbors. With many of them, we had very strong and good relations. But they were taken hostage by Hamas, which has infrastructure all throughout. And the entire infrastructure of billions of dollars, billions of dollars, was spent to build a terror machine rather than helping to up bringing their society in their life. And what I said was there should be a moment where there's a moment where there's a terror machine,

There will be a debate within Palestinian society saying, why? Why do we accept this route rather than going on the root of peace and coexistence? But let me ask you this, Mr. President, because I've interviewed you before, and I think you're a man who, I think, means what he says, right? I do believe that. But when it comes to eliminating Hamas, the question everyone's asking is, at what cost? If you go into Rafa and you try and eliminate the rest of Hamas, there's a fear that you will kill many thousands more innocent Palestinians.

As we know, half of the population in Gaza are children under 18. And people just have had enough of the slaughter of children. Even those who understand why you want to get rid of Fama. They don't see what the end game is here, or actually at the end of it, how it makes Israel more secure. if you kill however many children are now dead, many say it's 10, 12,000. It's a huge number of people, right?

If you do that, how does that not fuel the mentality that led to Hamas? So first of all, I want you to know that every Palestinian child is, I care for every Palestinian child. And we have many Palestinian children and families who are treated in Israeli hospitals all throughout,

regular basis. And the tragedy is that, according to international law, when you're attacked, you have the right to defend yourself. When they send missiles on your homes, you have to go in and uproot those missiles. So we alert and operate according to international law, and our soldiers are instructed, and they operate according to these rules. There are many cases where Palestinian civilians were killed by Hamas fire. May I remind you of the Anglican hospital case, which was Hamas fire, and we were blamed for hours. I don't shy away from the tragedy, although now we know that the data is totally different than what was reported throughout, but you know what? Every life counts. Every life matters. But in order to exit from this horrible

war, there has to be a future whereby somebody takes over the Gaza Strip and manages and goes forward with it, because if you stop right now, what will happen? will take over. Iran will again smuggle all their aid to them. The entire terror machine will uprise again. What have we gained? How do we stop it? Their intention, the declared intention, the jihadist intention, is to eradicate all of us, eradicate Israel, and eradicate all those who don't accommodate the fundamentalist extreme Islam that they believe in. That's the real clash of civilizational values that the world is witnessing. Well, one of the problems, Mr. President, if I may just...

Europe would have been next and the United States afterwards. I understand that argument. I think one of the problems people have is that... That's last questions, fierce. Okay, I'll just have one more question. We have to end. Prime Minister Netanyahu. Just one more question.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear. He believes that the only way through this at the end is for there to be an Israeli occupation of Gaza. He's made that pretty clear. And yet, of course, from the Palestinian side, It's their perception that they'd been under occupation from Israel, in their eyes, completely unjustifiably and illegally, for many decades. Why would anyone in Israel genuinely believe that occupying Palestine going forward after this would do anything but, again, fuel the ideology which led to Hamas?

You know, I'm trying to understand how do you quote Netanyahu here, because yesterday on CNN, he made clear that nobody in the government has the intention of conquering and occupying Gaza again. We have the military situation where we have to guard the situation on the ground with Gaza on Gaza, but we have to build the right apparatus and the right solution. This is an issue being discussed right today in the next few days in our war cabinet, and I hope there will be a formula that will be worked out with our allies. We had the National Security Advisor of the United States, Jake Sullivan, just a few days ago to discuss exactly that.

Regarding Rafa as well, we listen to our partners and friends and allies, we consult with them, we are taking all the necessary precaution because we understand that we don't want to go into unintended consequences, as you mentioned. And therefore, I outright reject the notion, that we intend to occupy Gaza. We don't. We have to find who will rule Gaza. In order to rule Gaza, it takes time.

Nobody wants to go in with boots on the ground from the outside to rule Gaza if you enable Hamas to stay with its war machine underneath. That is the real tragedy. And we haven't even mentioned one word about our hostages. Pierce, we have to remember that. We have around 130 hostages in Gaza, in the tunnels, going through hell and havoc. We don't know anything about their fate.

Hamas is refusing to give even small details about their situation, their fate, live or dead. They're going through horrors. We know they're being raped. We know they're being attacked. We know they're going through hell. And there's no progress in sight because Hamas refuses to get to a compromise.

The real exit from this war would be a hostage deal that will enable us to move forward, but they refused all offers, and this was declared officially by the people who are trying to mediate it, of course, United States and President Biden himself. What is your message to America? As a final question and a final answer,

I respect America tremendously. America is our greatest ally and friend because it believes in the rules and guidelines of the free world. We are a major part of the world. the free world. We are a peace-loving nation. We believe in peace. We believe in democracy, we believe in the rule of law. But a war was waged against us from all corners by an empire of evil in Tehran, from Gaza by Hamas, with Hezbollah from Lebanon in the north,

with attacks from the east all the time and the Qutis from the south. Let's not forget that. We're at war and we are protecting the free world. And I demand, request and advise the free world to look at it with more clarity and understand that we are fighting for the free world. You mentioned Tehran. I simply wanted to ask you how you felt as the president of Israel when following the death of Iran's president Raisi, the United Nations held a period of silence

for a man that many view as the butcher of Tehran? I have, you know, I'll answer in two ways. In the Bible, it is said, your enemy falls do not celebrate. So, you know, we are not celebrating. We are not involved in this, and we are not there to comment on this. But when I saw the Security Council standing a moment of silence

for the person who, him and his government, are pushing the biggest war machine and terror machine in the world with terror cells all over the world through their proxies, I was shocked by said to myself, this is a perfect example of the failure of the world order post-World War II. We should not forget. A million people were butchered in Syria and the world stood idly by an ally of Iran. And that was the beginning of a whole cascade of wars, okay, which is launched all because of Iran.

And we must not forget, of course, Iran's involvement in Ukraine and so many other places. So Iran is the biggest threat to world stability and the world has to stand firm against Iran and we've seen it recently with the missile attacks against Israel. Thank you very much for the interview. President Hogue, I really appreciate the time you gave me. I know you're a very busy man and thank you very much indeed for coming back on to Unsensitive.

Thank you.