The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Did Netanyahu Prop Up Hamas (and Other Matters)? Columnist and Analyst Jonathon Spyer.

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome? Spyer pushes back on some of the more extreme interpretations of Netanyahu's policies and comments. Also discussed: Human shields, Jihad, Camp David negotiations, and more. Spyer is a British-Israeli analyst, writer, and journalist of Middle Eastern affairs. He is director of research at the Middle East Forum, editor of Middle East Quarterly magazine

The Comedy Cellar Podcast, this week featuring Jonathan Speier, British-Israeli security analyst, writer, columnist, and journalist of Middle Eastern affairs. Good afternoon. Welcome to a special edition of Live from the Table. Today we're going to do a quick interview with Jonathan Speier. I'm going to take your intro from Wikipedia. He's a British-Israeli analyst, writer, and journalist of Middle Eastern affairs. He is director of research at the Middle East Forum, editor of the Middle East Quarterly magazine,

a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a freelance security analyst and correspondent for Jane's Information Group and a columnist for the Jerusalem Post. Welcome, Jonathan Speyer. Thanks, Noam. Thanks for inviting me. And I really appreciate you doing this. You had no idea who I was or what it's for, and you agreed to do it. So that's very generous of you. So the main reason I wanted to speak to you,

and things have happened since then, but the way you came on my radar was that you had commented on this now famous Netanyahu quote, which is, anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank. that I've seen in America anyway, about what that might mean other than the most cynical attitude by Benjamin Netanyahu.

So what is your take on that? How do we put that in context? Yeah, first of all, if I understand correctly, the context in which people have attempted to put it, people are drawing on this quote because they're saying, well, actually, Netanyahu wants Hamas to be in power in Gaza. So it's his fault that they were in power in Gaza. So therefore, it's his fault what happened on October 7th. I think we, first of all, I should

mention, I mean, I'm in no way a defender or part of the camp of Benjamin Netanyahu. To put it mildly, I think that he should have resigned when legal proceedings began against him in 2015, as indeed he himself believes with regard to everybody else except for himself, as he was on record as demanding Prime Minister Olmec resign in 2008 when legal proceedings began against him. So to be clear, I'm not some defender or partisan. Having said that, I think that this is a very weak line of argumentation for the following reasons. The fact of the matter is that Netanyahu was not responsible for the rise of Hamas to power. Netanyahu was not prime minister when Hamas assumed power in Gaza.

They assumed power, if you remember, in 2007. In the years since 2009, when Netanyahu has been out of power when there was the so-called government of change of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid there was no discernible change in Israeli policy towards Hamas in Gaza and most importantly

of all, and this is really I guess the central point, Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank and the split between the two are products of Palestinian politics. They're not products of Binyamin Netanyahu this way or the other. Palestinians are not some instrument of Jews or Israel or white people or Western people. They have their own politics. They have their own preferences.

They elected Hamas in 2006. They apparently prefer to be governed by Hamas. So the attempt to kind of shift on the basis of one quote, this notion of actually the person who takes responsibility for Hamas and therefore for everything that has transpired from their rule, Benjamin Netanyahu strikes me as being extremely weak. And this is the point that I would make. Having said that, I think we need to understand Netanyahu's views a bit better

in order to understand the quote. It's clear that Netanyahu, and you can accept this or not, we can accept it or not, but it's clear that Netanyahu does not believe that there is a partner for peace on the Palestinian side, his view. And my opinion, there is a great deal of evidence to support the view. But anyway, his view is that Palestinian politics, both Fatah and Hamas, is not prepared for historic compromise with Israel. As a result of that conclusion, what he then says is, OK, so then you have to manage the situation as best you can. You have Fatah, you have Hamas, neither of them are partners for peace,

and you have to manage the situation as best you can. And it's in that context that that quote, which I believe was made to liquid activists, in that context I think should also be borne in mind, politicians when they're speaking to the base sometimes sound a little bit different to when they're speaking to the base, sometimes sound a little bit different to when they're speaking in other contexts. In America, you have the concept of throwing red meat to the base, I believe.

So I think we should put that into context as well. But yeah, what Netanyahu is referring to here is the concept of conflict management. Now, it may well be that's a bad concept. And it may well be that on October 7th, that concept was blown away forever. Very possibly it was, in fact. It may well be that Israelis will now say, nah, we tried this idea of just letting the other side kind of do its own thing, and we manage it, and we end up with 1,400 people

slaughtered. We have to find another method. So it may well be a poor idea, conflict management, but it's that idea that Netanyahu was referring to when he made that comment. It's not that he was saying, yeah, I think Hamas is fantastic, they're our partners and I'm in favor of them. So those are the kind of contextual aspects which I think are important when understanding. And what is the, from the left, what is the real, what is the worst part of Netanyahu's quote? Because the notion of appeasing or being kind to the horrible enemy, this is usually what people are accused of in America vis-a-vis Iran. That's kind of a moderate left-wing approach.

So is it that that he's being criticized for or did he give away that he opposes the two-state solution? And that's really what they're trying to hang around his neck. I think that's what they're trying to hang around his neck. I think what they're trying to do is extrapolate from a statement where what he's actually saying is like, okay, given the reality

of the situation, given that we don't have a Palestinian partner, it's not necessarily that we don't have a Palestinian partner, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a divided Palestinian camp. That is the essence of what he's saying. If we don't have a partner, if we have an enemy, then it's not necessarily a bad thing that the enemy is divided. It can be better that the enemy is divided rather than the enemy be united. And that is in essence what he's saying. It's better to manage the situation given that we don't have a partner in which the enemy is divided and weakened than if the enemy is united and strengthened. I think this is

the point he's making. This is what he's being sort of taken out and criticised for. You know, I think there's probably different levels of criticism. There's those on the Israeli side who maybe believe there is a partner. In fact, this is something which is clear. People from the centre- left side in Israel say, well, this was very wrong was actually there was a partner all the time of the Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. So Netanyahu made a mistake by not trying to strengthen him as a result leaving Hamas in power and therefore we paid the price for that.

I personally find that argument weak simply as a observer of the region because I personally don't believe that anything that Netanyahu or any other Israeli Prime Minister, whether it was Gantz, who of course has not been Prime Minister, someone like Gantz, if he was Prime Minister, or Lapid or Bennett when they were Prime Minister, or Olmert when he was Prime Minister for a short period when Hamas was

already in power, nothing that they could have done could have brought about the reunification of Palestinian politics for the simple reason that they are not palestinian politicians they are israeli politicians once again palestinian party has its own dynamics and its own culture and its own movements see i think those on the israeli left who make that criticism are maybe a little bit not necessarily disingenuous i think they're maybe a little bit naive they believe there is a palestinian partner so they're upset that netanyahu apparently didn't

notice that and ended up doing conflict management. But then I think most of the time in the current atmosphere of war, it's not people like that who you're talking about when you're thinking about people referring to this stuff. It's just people who are probably very much opposed to Israel, you know, per se. And what they want to do is they want to kind of show the fact that, well, hey, there you go. Actually, it's like it's Israel's fault. It's Netanyahu's fault all along that Hamas is in power. So therefore, if anything Hamas did was bad, maybe Netanyahu is to blame.

So I think there's a kind of disingenuous argument of that kind being made as well. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying, I try not to fall for a kind of Netanyahu derangement syndrome, which is where, because the guy is so detestable in other ways, that you start just opposing everything that comes out of his mouth. And I'm pretty much with you, and I hope that I'm seeing the truth clearly, which is that it really seems like, starting from the Clinton-Camp David negotiations through Olmert, that it's just a rejectionist camp on the other side and that the second intifada you know in my mind was just a slow rolling version of the october 7th atrocity it took way longer to get

to those numbers but the brutality and even the casualty numbers are pretty similar um yeah and Yeah. And if you come from that point of view, then there is some logic to Netanyahu would then proceed to a two-state solution, or do you think he's using it as a pretext to avoid what he would never agree to anyway? It's perfectly possible that Netanyahu would avoid it. I mean, he made the famous Bargainland speech in 2009 where he, in fact, did accept a two-state solution.

But, you know, you can make an argument that probably he would avoid it or he would not. I mean, the thing, what I would say is is this if there was a real partner on the other side an israeli politician who tried to avoid taking that person very seriously wouldn't remain prime minister for very long i can't look into nathan yahu's soul know what he wants but i think i do know israel pretty well society pretty well and the norms of well, and the norms of mainstream Israel pretty well. And I'm convinced that if there was a leader on the other side who looked serious, and then the Israeli prime minister just carried on and said, no, no, no, there's no part of this sort of nonsense, that person would not remain prime minister.

Of that, I am confident. Your take is exactly the same as mine. I've made this argument to people for years. I saw it in my own father, who was very right-wing. And then when sadat came to speak to the kineset i remember i've told the story on my show before he just burst out into tears he and he said he means it he means that he couldn't believe it you know and uh and i my confidence has always been that i mean why why would israel not want to uh pursue peace in that situation? Do they want to keep sending their kids to die in the army?

I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me, right? Well, no, I think that's exactly right. I mean, I think if you look at the historical record, the fact of the matter is that the Jewish-Israeli side, I mean, Jewish because from before the state even, has been a kind of serial acceptor of partition plans, going all the way back to the Peel partition of the 1930s, 1939 I believe it was, when Peel, the British Minister of Peel, proposed a tiny

Jewish state, taking in only the area from Haifa down to Tel Aviv, a little strip of the coastal plain, and Ben-Gurion, the Jewish leader, accepted that one, so the Israel-Jewish side accepted that one. And it was rejected by the other side, of course. 1947, UN partition plan, Israel accepted, rejected by the other side. And then, of course, Oslo, we see exactly the same prison. We already talked about it. Ulmer in 2008.

So basically every single time that there has been a proposal, a serious proposal for the partition of the land west of the Jordan River between the river and the sea, as I know the demonstrators of faith in Israel are so keen on using, so between the river and the sea, whenever there was a time proposal to divide that land, the Jewish side has accepted it and the Arab Muslim side has rejected it without exception. And I think this is very clear.

I mean, when you look at the attitudes on the other side, you know, this kind of weird dichotomy where on the one hand, there's a complete rejection of compromised peace. On the other hand, there's a sort of accepting or assuming the role of victim. I think you've had this very strange dichotomy. We see it all the time in social media now. On October 7th, and I follow a lot of Palestinian and Arab accounts. On October 7th, there was absolute joy and open celebration, absolute joy of what they called the humiliation of the Zionist entity. This was in real time being celebrated while Jewish, young Israeli Jewish men and women were being slaughtered like animals. And right now, if you would look, as I did today before

coming to talk to you on the same social media accounts, there's howls of victimhood. There's like, how can people behave this way so cruelly towards us? We're having another Nakba. How can people be so cruel? So, you know, it's kind of difficult to, with the best will in the world, make peace through a diplomatic process, frankly, with folks with that sort of attitude,

who on the one hand say, you have absolutely no right to exist. So when I'm going to be strong, I'm going to enjoy slaughtering. And then when you fight back successfully, claim that you're some kind of victimizer and sadist. With the best will in the world, it's kind of hard, frankly, to do business with that attitude. And that attitude, I want to speak frankly,

is front and center in the attitudes of Israel's enemies at this time. So, yes, I think that that's deeply problematic, and that's the main reason why there hasn't been peace. And in a way, I would say, people who don't like Netanyahu, you know, this reality is what birthed Netanyahu as a political figure. But why do we have people like Netanyahu or even people more radical than him, people like Smotrich or Ben-Gvil in the Israeli cabinet? Because this reality is the one that Israelis come up against again and again and again, when they try to compromise and make peace. You know, if you try to compromise time and time again, and what you get is the second litifada or October 7th, or etc, etc, then at a certain point, you're kind of going to start going, yeah, I'm not sure if this is going to work. And then you're

going to start listening to those political voices, of course, have always been out there, who say, you see, I told you compromise isn't possible, so vote for me next time. That's the reason why the Likud has been in power for most of the years since 1977, not because there's some inbuilt inclination of Israelis towards radicalism, not radicalism. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, well, I agree with you. And I don't know why more people don't see it that way. My take for a while has also been given the things that have happened, I'm sometimes surprised the Israeli public is in more right wing than it is. I mean, when America has suffered pinpricks compared to what Israel's been through, America turned completely to the right. You know, and here I'm amazed that even after such atrocities and not just not just that, but I saw the footage. I was invited to one of the Israeli public which is stubbornly optimistic somehow that there's a way around this. Anyway, what…

Can I comment on that just quickly before we go on? Just to see… Yes, please, please. My work is mainly… I mean, I live here in Israel and I'm a citizen of Israel, but my work is mainly concerned with the broader region. I mean, I've worked extensively and lived also in Iraq and in Israel and I'm a citizen of Israel, but my work is mainly concerned with the broader region. I've worked extensively and lived also in Iraq and in Syria and in Lebanon.

So from my vantage point, when I see the things that you mentioned, the glee and the joy, savage joy, my late friend and mentor, Professor Barry Rubin, used to call it savage joy on the faces of those kind of people that were doing the slaughter in October 7th. It's not unfamiliar to me because these are very familiar phenomena elsewhere in the region. I happen to be in northeastern Syria in the summer of 2014 when ISIS were attempting a genocide

against the Yazidi people at that time. And I witnessed that and I witnessed people being saved from it. And, you know, give or take some differences in technology. There is no difference between the sites on the Sinjar plain in the summer of 2014 and what you saw when the Gaza border in October 7, 2020. There would be no difference. So these phenomena that you talk about correctly, of the glee and this, the radicalism, it's not unique to Palestinians.

It's about the prevalent culture, political culture, I mean, of the neighborhood, of the Levant, what we call Israel, Lebanon, Syria. And what we saw in Gaza is a local manifestation of that. Israel, for its own reasons, I think, cultural and political and others, has chosen to kind of try as best it can to live without knowledge of that neighbor, to try to as best it can kind of try as best it can to live without knowledge of that neighbor to try to as best it can kind of fence itself off from those very you know unpleasant phenomena and then try and live as normally as possible and i think that that's what it tried to do and most of the time

it works when the local neighborhood breaks through as it did on october 7th the sites can be truly terrifying and also truly shocking i think to many Israelis who prefer not to understandably entirely understandably prefer not to live with the daily knowledge of you know who they're kind of surrounded by and I think that the continued Israeli longing for peace and willingness to go halfway to meet the other guy and so on it's kind of a reflection of that frankly you know I don't want to sound cynical but I also feel when I travel in Syria and Iraq and the other places yeah I like the cultures of those places, and I have many friends there, and I really enjoy many aspects of the history and culture.

But the prevalent political culture, frankly, is a terrifying one. And the correct attitude towards that is to be very, very strong, so that that which wants to hurt you is not able to do so. The difference between Israeli Jews and the Yazidis of northeast Syria is one, and that is the Israel Defense Forces, Israeli security structures. Take that away, there is no difference. In terms of how they're viewed, I mean, by the prevalent political culture of the neighborhood. All right, a few more things before we go.

The settlements. Now, the settlements are provocative. They're the go-to issue that people point to when they want to make the case that Israel is both not serious about any future two-state solution and is insensitive and doesn't care how it's provoking and inflaming the situation now. In any way you want to handle that issue, what is your take on the settlements and how the settlements would prevent any future two-state solution? Yeah, I would say two things in that regard. Firstly, every time there has been a serious peace plan put on the table, and you mentioned Camp David, that's an example, and Olmert also, you know, eight years later. These were going to dismantle large numbers of settlements. When Israel left Gaza in 2005, you know, it dismantled every single Jewish community there. It even had to dig up the corpses to the second, because those

corpses couldn't be unfortunately entrusted to the local population in what was about to happen. So, you know, there has been repeated offers, which include dismantling the settlements, the offers were turned down. The reason they were turned down is not because of the settlements this way or that, but because the other side is not prepared to countenance an agreement in which the Jewish state of Israel continues to exist. That's a simple fact. So the settlements are a little bit of a diversion, I would suggest, from the real reason why we don't have a peace agreement based on partition, which is what we've been discussing. This is one point. The other point,

which I do always find interesting, is that in the notion that, of course, if you're going to have a two-state solution, all the Jewish people living on the Arab side of the line have to leave. Kind of an interesting assumption, isn't it, that when we talk about a Palestinian state, we immediately accept the notion that, and obviously this state cannot be expected to put up with such a dreadful thing, you know, as a Jewish minority. I mean, how could you possibly expect people to live with that? I always find that a bit strange. are a great benefit to Israel and to our society in all kinds of ways, and they include judges and doctors and professors and many amazing people. So I certainly wouldn't want to see the state of Israel without an Arab minority. And I don't quite see, at least I don't quite see why it's not even seen as a subject for discussion, that a Palestinian state would not include a Jewish minority. Maybe it would be a Jewish minority who would continue to be Israeli citizens,

or they would become local citizens who knows what but i do find it interesting that nobody's ever even willing to discuss that we just assume that yeah obviously you couldn't possibly expect the palestinians to put up with having some jews living in france yeah i don't quite buy that and i think maybe and vice versa right and vice absolutely yeah so you know i think we need to sometimes broaden that discussion now but just to not leave it unturned they raised a certain number of settlements in

Gaza and it was not easy but this would mean I don't know the number 10x that 20x that this could this could be a violent almost civil war type situation. I don't think it's, I'll be honest with you, I don't think it's possible. I don't think it will be the case that huge numbers of Jews will have to leave.

No, I don't think so. I think that Israel also wouldn't agree to that. And frankly, if I'm honest, I can understand that. If you offer peace time and time again and it's turned down and you're met with violence, will you always have to come back forever and ever, amen, putting the same offer back on the table. I don't think so. I don't think that's where – that seems to be how the world thinks

justice should be for Israeli Jews, not for everybody else. I don't think that's how it works in the world. And I frankly don't at all accept it should work that way in our case either. You put an offer on the table again and again. You're met with violence of sometimes dreadfully brutal response. Okay, the answer is, well, hey, man, so sorry, you didn't want it that time. No, now you get less. Now you get less of an offer. again and again you're met with violence of sometimes dreadfully brutal response okay the answer is well hey man so sorry you didn't want it that time no now you get less now we get now you get less of an offer you get a worse you're gonna have to live with that you know we also have

rights you know we have these huge demonstrations in the west now of rage you know from the arab muslim side not sure what their rage is about they were the ones who carried out the slaughter of october 7th we also have rights so when if you hear this again and again, hey, man, at some point, we don't just keep coming back offering you the same gifts. You know, we're not that sweet either. If you continue to be slaughtering us, we can also be tough if we need to. So, no, I don't think loads of Jews will have to leave their homes. I don't want them to have to either.

We'll find a way eventually, I believe, to manage this or to solve it in a way to the best satisfaction of the greatest number of people possible but at the end of the day aggression has its price as well but if the arab muslim side want to come against us again and again and again with aggression don't expect us to always be coming back with sweetness and light that's not the way that human beings work right but you know it reminds me of a i was involved in a dumb lawsuit and I was kind of saying very analogous things to you. And then a month later, I settled. It was a ridiculous lawsuit, but you settle because you have to.

And there is a moral obligation to accept the practical, even if it's unjust because how many future generations arab and israeli have to live this way and die and so you know i would i would wish that israel would stop with the settlements only because if they if and when it has to come eventually, someday it's got to come, that this issue has to be settled, this makes it ten times as hard, right? I don't think that's the reason there isn't a problem. Right. Also, I want you to remember that the settlements themselves don't, in fact,

contrary to what people have often said, the settlements don't take up a huge amount of territory in question either. So, you know, you can find arrangements of land swaps and so you know you can find arrangements of territory of land swaps and so on the kind of things that olmec was talking about in 2008 you know if that was the problem even with the number of people living in those areas if that was the problem we'd solve it in half an hour the fact is that again and again and again

it becomes apparent that is not it becomes apparent unfortunately that we are dealing with a political culture that just doesn't want us to be here in any shape or form and i do find it you know interesting the way you were saying before also that it's like the evidence for this is so overwhelming and yet people you know many people in the west refuse to see it that way okay i think it's a big problem but you know whatever it remains the case even if people in the west think it ain't that remains the the governing dynamic and at the end West think it ain't. That remains the governing dynamic. And at the end of the day, as Israelis, what we have to first and foremost ensure is that we ourselves and our families are safe. That's the first, you know.

So even if we understand our enemy, even if the Western world thinks the enemy is something entirely different, we can have the discussion. But we have to follow on the knowledge we have and ensure the safety of ourselves and our families that's a paramount let me ask you another question about the settlement not as an obstacle to an eventual peace negotiation which i i tend to agree with you on that but uh and i'm not excuse me i'm not very informed on this so you correct me if i'm wrong but i get the feeling that a lot of the daily humiliations that Palestinians are forced to suffer on the West Bank come about as a result of measures that are taken in some way to protect the Jewish settlement population there. And this is very inflammatory. So number one, is that true? And number two, how much does that provocation have to do with the inflamed population that we're seeing now in Gaza and throughout the world? I mean, I think if you look at the number of checkpoints that were there before the Second Intifada, the area in question, when there was already a large number of Jewish residents or settlers, whatever,

you know, the number was tiny. In other words, you could drive very easily from Jerusalem to Ramallah to Bethlehem to wherever without coming across any checkpoints prior to the Second Intifada, which would seem to me to indicate that actually these restrictions are the result not of this or that Jewish community, but rather of the wholesale rejection of the prospect of partition and peace. After all, what is the Second Defilement? What did it come after? It came after the Palestinian refusal to divide the country,

which is what was being discussed, as you mentioned earlier, in Camp David and in Taba. So no, I think that the trigger factor for this is the refusal to for compromise peace which comes out of the other side the settlements the the security ranges on the ground these are all products of that but that is the causal factor that's how i see it i think it's very clear you know everything else just falls on from on a On a grading scale from F to A, how would you rate the proper behavior of Israel vis-urgencies, which are intended to result in killing of civilians, will tend to react pretty harshly. A thousand Israelis, or it's over a thousand, will kill during the Second Intifada. I was a soldier at that time, and I took part in operations in the West Bank.

And sure, this was counterinsurgency. Hey, counterinsurgency ain't pretty. America's done plenty of it. We actually, I think, by the way, are often as well behaved or even better behaved than the United States military or British military or other Western militaries. But hey, it ain't pretty. So yeah, sure. I'm not saying it's all done with elegance, you know.

But at the end of the day, you know, how can I put this? The solution to this is quite simple. If the Palestinian Arab population don't want all that, then they can accept our right to live in our state and we can clear this up in about 30 minutes. It really is as simple as that. So you know, if they're suffering so terribly, okay, by the way, again, as a journalist who's worked in Iraq and Syria and Lebanon, and this I will say with absolute confidence,

the IDF is honey and sweetness and light compared to the behaviors of Arab militaries, including Palestinian military towards their own population. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, we are sweetness and light. We are honey and dough compared to those militaries. So I think we should have that discussion as well because, you know, because I like this thing which we began with at the beginning. We noted this thing where Palestinians are seen as lacking agency. Palestinians do not lack agency.

Palestinian human beings are our equals in every way. They're not our inferiors. They're not our superiors. So we have a right to compare ourselves to them and say, well, guys, if the Arab world could produce a military with the norms of the IDF, it would be lauded throughout the world because it's kilometers ahead for any Arab military in terms of its treatment of civilians at times of tension and insurgency and counterinsurgency.

Two more questions, I guess. If there was a true secret ballot among all the Palestinian people, what percentage, what's your sense, what percentage would like to have taken the deals that Olmert had offered? Well, I mean, the only real indicator we have of Palestinian political preference is, I'm suspicious of polling, right? But one thing I do trust is real elections. That's a real election.

A real election gives a real indication, preferences. The only election we have is 2006. Hamas was the winner. My own view is that political Islam in its various forms, and I don't take any joy in saying this, but political Islam in its various forms remains the choice of the Arab publics in our neighborhood on street level, not only among the Palestinians. It's true of the Egyptians as well.

They had one go at a real free election back in 2011, and they elected the Muslim Brotherhood. It's true of the Syrians as well. When they rose up against their dictator Assad, and I covered that as a journalist very closely, the militias that rapidly took control were Sunni Islamist militias. The politics that actually just really gets people going on street level in the Arab world, or our part of it, is political Islam, is Islamism.

So I have no doubt, although it doesn't make me happy to say it, that if there were to be a true and free election in the West Bank today, Hamas would almost certainly be the victor, at least prior to October 7th. I don't know, maybe the things that they've put the Gaza population through now will have some kind of impact, I've no idea. But prior to October 7th, I'm confident in saying that Hamas would have been the winner. That style of politics, militant political Islam, with its talk of humiliation at the hands of others and the desire for revenge, that is the mainstream in the Arab political space.

I think we have to confront that. It's something that's important. If you're correct, it's something that's so hard to understand, right? Just like, why would you want this as the future? Okay, to end, assuming that you're not a heartless person, which I believe you're not, when you see these horrible images of children

and all humans dying now in Gaza, do you question yourself do how do you steal yourself do you um uh have any of any observations uh it's very very difficult for me to look at i understand that every war that's ever been fought has looked like that i understand that in the second world war we could have had pictures of the innocent german children i i understand all that and yet and yet i don't know if you have children it's impossible to look at and uh it's it's a it's a it's like the visceral versus the logical and it's it's a battle right so how do you deal with all that and what's your what's your wisdom on all that i mean i agree with you you know because i've been i've been covering conflict and i personally have taken part as a soldier in conflict now for uh around quarter of a century thanks many years all the way across the second and defiled of the

second lebanon war syrian civil war the isis war in iraq i covered as a journalist you know this has been the reality it's it's a dread and it the reality. It's a dreadful thing, and war is a dreadful thing, and human suffering is what it is, and one should never become, also inured to it, I think is the word, shouldn't become indifferent to it or used to it. You have to try hard to make sure you don't become hardened in a certain sense. On the other hand, you also have to, I think, be aware of realities. The fact of the matter, this is my view, is that any authority or entity which ordered the kind

of thing which happened on October 7th, and by the way, I don't care if this is Arabs or Jews or anybody else, any political authority that ordered something like that, in my opinion, forfeits its right to existence and it becomes human and moral duty to take that authority out of existence and that can often or this only be done by means of use of force of arms that i think is what israel is currently engaged in and i think it is the direct parallel to what the united states-led coalition did against islamic state and Syria in 2014 and 2019. And I would venture to add what the Allies did against the German Nazi regime in Germany between 1939 and 1945.

Look, I visited Raqqa City, the former capital of the so-called Islamic State, about a month after it was liberated by the Kurdish forces on the ground with the United States and other air power helping them. And I can tell you, I witnessed, I've seen with my own eyes, massive, enormous mass graves which ISIS built. And they did not build them in this case, as elsewhere, for their victims, otherwise for the people they wanted to genocide. No, these mass graves were built for ISIS to put in them rapidly so as

to avoid an epidemic, the victims of coalition bombing. Hundreds and thousands of civilians, men, women and children and babies tragically died. These people had not chosen to live under ISIS. They did not vote for them. ISIS happened to them. It just took control of their areas. And tragically, many, many of them died in the course of the war against ISIS. I don't in any way seek to sweeten or lessen impact to reality of that tragedy. And do I believe the war against ISIS was justified and necessary? Yes, I do. We have to, I think, live with as adults facing this difficult, tragic, broken world in which we have to operate. We have to deal with that reality.

This is part of the outrage of Obama's position. I mean, he has his fingerprints all over that stuff. I know I said it before, but just one other thing. I saw an article in Haaretz, and it described talking about the people trying to evacuate from the north to the south, and they had to set out on the long journey i think that was the exact right the long journey from this place to this camp and then i google mapped it and it was about a two and a half hour walk right so and then i then i google mapped what would it take to walk from one tip of gaza to

the other tip of gaza it's like a day. So these are not long distances to evacuate. If you think that it may be for somebody in a wheelchair, I can imagine there's certain people. But even then, I mean, we had in America, we have a constant stream of migrants who've been walking hundreds and thousands of miles and they do it in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. So what is the reason? What is the reason? It can't be because of the distance. It can't even be because the roads are closed.

These are walkable distances. What is the reason that we haven't seen a much more effective evacuation from the north to the south? Oh, well, many people have evacuated. I mean, there has been, you know, of the two million population, nearly population, of the million population, I think more than half of them have left. Hamas has been preventing people from leaving, and there's now photographic evidence that Hamas has been shooting at people trying to. So they're doing their best. This is reliable? This evidence is 100% reliable?

I think you need to, you know, we need to take a close look at it, of course. I mean, we're dealing with war and the fog of war now. There is disinformation, of course, on both sides of the natural. But my sense of some of the stuff I've seen, and certainly knowing the way that Hamas behaves and the extent to which it is an astonishingly brutal and repressive governing authority, and that's been, by the way, criminally underreported since it's been in power since 2007, it's entirely par for the course with its behavior. I would want to ask the following question in this regard, in addition, which is why is it that when Israel is behaving in this way,

it gets such disproportionate attention? I mean, we think about the fact that the coalition bombed ISIS in ways comparable to or maybe even in excess of what Israel is doing. And these were Western countries, England and America and others. And yet you didn't have massive publics demonstrating against their own governments in those countries on behalf of the people living under ISIS control without their consent, as we said earlier. But the very same people, the very same citizens of the same countries, not citizens of Israel, are busy in their own capital cities now demonstrating against Israel.

Where is the logic in that? Where does it come from? But I think maybe that's something which is, for me myself, I feel it's beyond my pay grade. I only know that Jews have a very, very unique and tragic history. And this does strike me. When you get rid of all the explanations that don't work, you're just left with a thing of double standards towards Jews that large parts of the non-Jewish world still choose to have. And I do see this with a thing of double standards towards Jews that large parts of the non-Jewish world still choose to have. And I do see this as a manifestation of that.

Yeah, I agree with that. But I still want to know more. I guess more information will come out now, especially as Israel is in there, as to why. I mean, I'm trying to be devil's advocate in some of these questions. Obviously, the casualty numbers are significant, but they're not actually outrageously high given the description of indiscriminate bombing and people shoulder to shoulder the most densely placed. You know, if you think about that, you'd think the casualties would be in the hundreds of thousands. So, yeah, they would be in the hundreds of thousands. So yeah, they would be in Gaza. They would be. Yeah. The actual,

if we use those words properly, indiscriminate bombing would kill hundreds of thousands without a question. But it's still, it's still, um, I, I wish I had a better handle on why so many civilians have not evacuated. So many civilians are still there to be killed,

able to be killed. And if it's Hamas keeping them there, I wish somebody would nail that down with very reliable information. I think it's not only that, because I think also we should bear in mind that a lot of people support Hamas. In other words, there are people in the Gaza Strip

who are part of the authorities or are part of that governing movement who are sympathetic. And I think it's intuitively correct to assume if people like that, you know, were told by Israel, listen, you should really move now because they'd be like, oh, we're not moving. We're here for the fight. We're here to, you know, we're here to resist you. So I'm sure there's a very, very decent, you know, component of that as well. In addition to a collusion

certainly not only collusion on the part of the class all right i'm gonna let you go what what just what a what a tragedy huh all around anyway uh so i i really appreciate you you uh taking the time i don't know if you ever get to the states i'd be very you know i own the the comedy cellar in manhattan and um uh i'm, very happy to meet you in person. You probably get to New York. It'll be fantastic. I do come to the States as often as I can, usually two or three times a year.

So certainly next time I'll drop you a line and that'll be great. Yeah. I'll message you my phone number. So, okay. So I'm going to let you go. Thank you very, very much.

Good afternoon. See you. Bye.