The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Israel vs. Hamas Debate with Twitter's "@History_Speaks" Matthew Cockerill

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MhxjO0q9vmkhttps://youtu.be/MhxjO0q9vmk 2 hours of debate (plus another hour over drinks after) and we didn't settle it. Discussed: Is It Genocide? Does Hamas maximize civilian deaths? Comprehending martyrdom - does Hamas consider all civilians to be combatants? Does Hamas have "no choice" but to break the rules? Does Israel break the rules? Why all the name-calling? Is civility possible in debating Israel's action in Gaza? More More from Matthew: https://historyspeaks.substack.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9z6CwgycPjUbOLElkLuHjQ

Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast for the World Famous Comedy Cellar. I am the producer of the show. I'm Perrielle. I'm here with the owner of the World Famous Comedy Cellar and host of our show, Noam Dwarman. We have two very special guests tonight. Matt Cockrell, his PhD student in international history at the London School of Economics, where he also teaches. And he has a JD from the University of Chicago. Welcome to our show. And he goes by History Speaks on Twitter. Can I finish?

Well, usually when you say welcome, that's a very important Twitter account in the arena of debate about anti-Zionist politics. Correct? You agree with that? Yeah. Welcome, welcome, Matthew. Thank you for having me. And I'm going to introduce my friend here, Hatem Gaber, who has been working with me for how long? Maybe 20 years now. Maybe 20 years.

I fired him. I actually fired him. I once fired him and we were made friends. And he was friends with my father. And Dan is out of town. We just found out. So he's going to fill in here. But it's great because although Hatem and I are friends,

we don't agree on much when it comes to the Middle East. We agree on some things. Yeah. And more recently than we used to. Also PhD from... No, I'm not. And Hatem is half Egyptian, half Kuwaiti. And anything else I should say about you?

No, all good. Ready to go. Let's fight. And a survivor of a heart transplant, which is quite an amazing story, I've told the story on his show before, but it's just an amazing story

Also a survivor of arguing with you So become an organ donor if you listen Actually, you know what, you want to start with a little levity, you want to tell the story I will whisper it in your ear so I don't give it away in the mic. Which one? Oh, okay.

Yeah, so, you know, I... And then we'll get to Israel. This is worthless. Okay, yeah. So I was, when I was waiting, you know, I was very sick. And at some point they told me they have to come and wait in the hospital. So I was waiting in the hospital for months and months. I want to say how sick he was.

He was so sick that he was told that basically it was his last day. Yeah. He was calling people and saying goodbye. Yeah. This is how sick he was. And Norm, when I told goodbye to Norm, he said, I'll call you later. I'm busy. But yeah, there's two things because I was locked down because COVID was coming.

So I can't have visitors. The only two things that I had was I was playing with my computer, you know, video games or reading the Quran every day. So anyway, after I got the heart, I'm like so sedated. And I woke up and I don't remember anything, obviously. And it's so drugged. So the nurse come to me and she's like, you look so upset. You want your computer? I was like, why?

She's like, you used to play with it all the time. I was like, no, thank you. And she's like, what about your Bible? You want your Bible? I was like, why? She's like, you used to play with it all the time. I was like, no, thank you. And she's like, what about your Bible? You want your Bible? I was like, my Bible? And she's like, yeah, I used to read the Bible all the time. So I was like, okay. And I started reading the Bible for three days and then I realized it's not really

the word of God. I'm just joking. He forgot that he was Muslim. I was like, oh shit. Okay. But then it's like, there's nothing here that says no Jew. Okay. Nearly a deathbed conversion, but no death and no conversion. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make sure his mic's up. So anyways, okay. So listen, so, you know, I've followed you on Twitter from time to time. Now, so I want to say that you invited me to speak about what I'm going to speak about now. And I actually don't know how your name came across my radar, but I think people were emailing, you need to debate

Matthew, you need to have Matthew Cockrell on, you're chicken shit, you're afraid. I said, alright, so have this guy Matthew Cockrell on, because I'm not afraid of anybody. But then after it was already scheduled, I began to look at your Twitter feed. And then I had second thoughts.

Again, he invited me to speak about this. Because you're pretty venomous on Twitter, calling people liars and shills and charlatans. And it's even more complicated than that for me because actually these people like Salah Weisenberg, John Spencer, Javier Retiguer, Sam Harris, Eli Lake, I know these people. And I've had conversations with these people. These are good and decent people who have the same, in my opinion, the same good faith belief in what they say that you have in yours. And I didn't want to be on the receiving end of these kinds of attacks on Twitter. this may be from age I firmly believe that people who are like coiled springs ready to call names at people they disagree with

are it's kind of a waste of time to speak with them too much and they get it wrong all the time because when you can't hold yourself together to understand that even the people that you really despise what they stand for will from time to time be correct you wind up getting out over your skis and getting things wrong and we see it all the time and you know you don't know me but like for instance to everybody's frustration

around here i speak with aaron mate i speak with norman finkelstein i speak with you but i mean i have a relation i speak with hatem was the worst and um um because i know you know quite often that like as i joke like if if if there's something to be known that's uncomfortable about the Israelis, you're not going to hear about it from Alan Dershowitz, right? You're going to hear about it from Max Blumenthal. Now, I might think that 19 out of 20 things that he comes up with are weak or not even true at all. But, you know, when they were questioning

some of the claims of Israeli atrocities, and she knows this because she's furious. Let's not jump to conclusions that they're wrong. Let's check it out. Let's go slow. When they claim that some of the testimony about the sexual assaults might not be rock solid. I was like, alright, you know.

There's no rule that everybody who claims something has to be telling the truth, even if they're on my side. So anyway, that's how I feel about that with you. And I really do hope that however this conversation goes, that I do not find myself on the receiving end of vitriol because I just don't need that in my life at this point. I just don't, I get it. I get enough from my wife. Okay, let me answer. So, I want you to put yourself

in my shoes for a second. Suppose you believed with a high level of confidence. I'm not saying 100%. High level of confidence. High level of confidence that a genocide is occurring. We're not talking about murder. We're not talking about war crimes We're not talking about war crimes.

We're talking about genocide. And then you have public intellectuals and people with prominent platforms claiming that this is a moral crusade, that this war is being undertaken with more care than any Western military ever has engaged in in any war, as John Spencer's argued. If you were convinced of those two premises, I think any morally and intellectually serious person would respond with a level of vitriol. Why can't you just take apart his statements? You do both. Yeah, but what you're saying is that if you know you're right, how can you blame somebody for coming at somebody that way? I mean, I guess if you know you're right,

and you know that every single thing out of Spencer's mouth is going to be wrong, but you go for it, like you don't just say they're disingenuous or mistaken or lying or biased. You actually say you're not even what you claim to be. You're not even a legitimate expert. You're a charlatan. You're a fraud. Like, you can tell John Spencer, who's been translated into 16 languages or something and has written books that people who, you know,

people who, before they were worried about Israel, objective people in military classrooms felt that he was somebody worth reading. How can you, when you call him a charlatan, which is, you know, as I understand the word, is not just a liar. It means you are not actually what you claim to be. You're not actually an expert. What am I going to do, you know? Okay, so regarding Spencer specifically, the claim that I object to,

so I've said before that in terms of the tactics of urban warfare, which, as I understand, Spencer teaches at West Point, I'm sure he knows a trillion times more than I do, right? I'd never deny that. Where I call him a charlatan, and do now again, is in his claim to have studied every urban war. Sorry, as Zeynep said in his speech to the Congress, Spencer's claim to have studied every urban war in the modern era and to have concluded that Israel is making this historic effort to engage in civilian harm mitigation. That's not what charlatan means.

That's a lie. Let me finish. Yeah. means. That's a lie. Let me finish. Spencer has repeated a popular myth, which anyone who made any serious study of military history would know is bullshit. That the average ratio of civilians to combatants casualties in war is 9 to 1. That's in the ether.

You hear it all the time. EU people have said it. The UN has said anyone who has studied urban warfare, the history of urban warfare, seriously as I have as a historian, knows that's bullshit. And he uses that to say, oh, Israel is so good in comparison with the fake average. That's charlatanry. Maybe he's right.

Maybe he's wrong. I will ask him about that nine to one. He doesn't strike me as the type of guy who would, just in his own obvious self-interest as a credible intellectual, say something, I don't know the context of how he said it, say something which is clearly false and disprovable to, he got that nine to one number from somewhere, or maybe he just spaced out. I don't, I have no idea. But that's not what charlatan means. If he is an expert in military history, he would never have repeated that.

Okay, but that's not what charlatan means. If he is an expert in military history, he would never have repeated that. Okay, but that's not what charlatan means. I'm sorry. But anyway, you could just say, I can't believe that somebody, an expert like you, could get something so wrong. We hear experts, not charlatans, on both sides get things wrong all the time. I hear experts. I mean, I joked to you before, I hear experts on the Palestinian issue all the time claiming that the Jews have no indigenous or historic attachment to the Middle East. And I joked to Hatem, it's funny that the language is, you know, shalom aleichem, shalom aleichem. Like,

like the languages, like what a coincidence that these two languages that come from nowhere on the same part of planet Earth, they have all these words in common. My name is Noam. I have an Arabic friend named Naim. So now, am I going to tell people to say that they're charlatans? It's just so, whatever. I may make mistakes. I don't want to be called a charlatan.

And heed my warning. You will get things. If you are of the impression that everything John Spencer says is going to be wrong because he was wrong about the nine to one, or I'll be more charitable to you. That everything he says is bullshit because he was bullshitting that, you are going to get upended. That's my prediction. Go ahead. Okay. In terms of charlatanry, this, I think, your point about the Jewish connection to the land, what have you, is relevant.

So if somebody were arguing, somebody could argue one of two things. Somebody could say, well, it's all made up. There was no second temple. There was no archaeological evidence. No, no, no. That's just not true, right? So someone saying that would not know the facts.

And I think you could make, at that point, an accusation of ignorance if they were claiming to be an expert on ancient Levantine history. And they thought there was no Jewish presence in ancient Israel. And I would argue that Spencer's knowledge of military history is similarly lamentable. All right. It seems so.

And he's just one people. Like, have you read Tagore, Sam Harris, Eli Lake? I mean, I've spoken to these people. And by the way, every one of them has told me at various times, as I said, you can give them sodium pentothal. They're not happy about this war. See, you're rolling your eyes. This is your problem.

I'm talking about Sam specifically, but go ahead. No, every one of them is, these people are not heartless people who say, who cares, let them all die. And that's the way you portray them. They're pained. And they may come to the conclusion, as many people have come to the conclusion throughout history in horrible wars, including you, who supported the war against ISIS. Plenty of people got slaughtered. And I presume you support the Ukrainian war against Russia,

but plenty of people didn't get slaughtered. And, I mean, Ukraine is an interesting thing because you can make, you know, they should just give up the 20%. Is it worth killing all these people for your lousy 20%? I mean, you know, and people arrive to different conclusions about how to weigh. You know, we,

and I want to get something, we don't know how to process death. I have trouble with this. You die, you take away everything somebody is, everything. And there's, it's like dividing by zero. It's like, it can't be done.

And I always get hung up on that because I know that what's worth me dying for? What's, you know, I die for my kids. So it's very difficult to say, I think this is the right thing to do. I see all these people dying and I think it is the right thing to do. I see all these people dying and I think it's the right thing to do. How could anything be worth what's happening to these people? The Civil War was our bloodiest war ever.

How many people you want to die to free the slaves? Like these, you know, these are impossible questions and they grapple with them in their way and you grapple with them in your way

you can think that the fact that you come out this way on this particular issue as opposed to other wars is because it's just coincidence because you have Arabic heritage it might be just coincidence or it might actually lead you to a different conclusion as it might actually lead you to a different conclusion as it might be leading me

to a different conclusion. But to assume that goodness and light is on your side of this argument and on Sam Harris's side is some sort of hatred and venom, I'm telling you, I would stake my life on it

if there was such a way to do so in a surreal kind of objective reality that you're wrong. There's a big difference between this war and the other conflicts you've talked about. It can be quantified empirically in terms of the percentage of people killed in the Gaza Strip in 15 months. There was a survey released just this week with Mike Spaggett, a co-author of mine, one of the leading... What does percentage have to do with it? If you're killing at least 3%, probably more, of a population in 15 months... Can I ask you a question?

Was there a point where you were okay with it and it crossed a threshold of percentage? Because I believe you were against it on day one. I was against it. I didn't think it was a good assignment. So then the percentage is not the issue. The issue was that even before we knew how this war was going to be conducted, we had a series of statements that we did not see after

9-11 toward the people of Afghanistan from the United States government. You're going to make the argument about why you're right and they're wrong. That's fine. We can get into that. I'm just saying that... It was clear from the beginning that the intentions of the Israeli government toward the Palestinian population was malicious. Okay, Matthew, let's just stipulate... Civilian population. Let's stipulate and move on

that you believe, I don't think, I'm not being flippant here. You believe that there is no other way to look at this and anyone who does look at it another way is deficient. And that's fine. I mean, I could say that about Nazis. So if you want to say that, but I mean, it's not like I think that's an impossible position to take.

But, you know, be forthright about it. No, that's my position. Okay, that's your position. Okay, so then how am I going to avoid being called these names by you if I don't agree with you? We made an agreement. Okay, but you're going to think it. You just won't. Okay.

And also, interpersonally, I am human, so it's harder to be rude and coarse when both of you are sitting across from me and you seem like nice people. Let's talk about this. I'm after the show. I may be a Nazi, but I'm a disarming Nazi. All right, listen.

And by the way, I want you to know about me. I'll tell you a story about him yesterday, but I feel like... All right, this podcast may go on a while. Is that all right? All right. So my father used to say to me... My father was really something.

My father would say to me, Noam, everybody has blind spots but me. And he really believed it because he really believed that he, now that can't possibly be true, obviously. But having known him and you know him, it was more true about him than most people. You agree with that? Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like I am in his footsteps in some way and that I really am seeking to understand things.

And you tweeted something out. I hope I have it. While you look at it, I just want to say that he had a conversation with me about you coming. And he really wanted to learn. Yeah, well, okay. Yeah, yeah. He really wanted to ask me about that. So you tweeted out, this is about the issue of um whether hamas intentionally has a strategy

to to maximize civilian casualties and i know i had been saying for a long time that they do and you were adamant about it and and i recognize that you're fairly careful about what you say so let me let me take another look at this and I went through some of the quotes again and I said well you know I suppose I could maybe take that one a different way I suppose and look to some of the videos again I'll play them

so I called Hatem and I said Hatem you know do you think is it possible that Hamas isn't actually trying to maximize casualties, that they're just kind of embedding like other guerrilla armies, like the Viet Cong or whatever it is? And Hatem is quiet on the other side of the phone. He goes, Noam, are you stupid? Of course they're trying to maximize casualties. So, and I laughed because, you know, here he is, an anti-Israel, card-carrying Muslim, you know.

I wouldn't say anti-Israel, but yeah. I would. Not in the fun of you. And so, but it's a perfect example of what you're saying. And he's connected to this at least as much as you are. And he thinks absolutely they are. And he almost mocked me. Like, of course they are.

And I said, oh, okay. And let's get into the issue because it's interesting. But all I'm trying to bring out to you in good faith, and maybe it lacks humility, but it lacks humility but i but you know i just want you to know i spent a few hours like like double checking like how do i feel about this and then calling my uh muslim friends and what do you think about this because i just didn't want to assume like you assume that well if it comes out of cockerel's mouth i don't need to spend time uh considering it.

So you want to make that argument? Yeah, absolutely. So I think the people who don't know about how guerrilla warfare is waged look at Hamas shooting rockets out of civilian areas, right? Militarizing civilian infrastructure. And they think, why would you... Embedding under civilian infrastructure. Sure. Like that guy who was just found right near the tunnel. We can talk about that.

No, no, I'm saying, is that an example? That's also... Yeah, obviously. That was an embedment of necessity to be that close to the hospital? We can talk about that particular issue later. I have some questions about that issue, but we can talk about it particular issue later. I have some questions about that issue, but we can talk about it.

So hospitals, sure. They've gone into hospitals before for military reasons. They have passages to hospitals. What's the military reason? Well, I think the military reason they have for being near hospitals is so they can ferret their soldiers into the hospital to get treatment and then ferret them out back into their tunnel system. That's my understanding. So then when the hospitals were all claiming they didn't know about the tunnels, they were lying? I think maybe they didn't know.

How can you ferret people back and forth from the tunnel right into the hospital and nobody knows they're coming out of the tunnel? If you're just an employee of the hospital, what are you necessarily, if you see a man come in who's not in military uniform, are you going to assume that that's a Hamas fighter? You're talking about the Western physicians who said that they didn't see any evidence of militant activity. It seems to me if you're ferreting people in and out of tunnels right near a hospital on a regular basis, where it's going to get around. But Viet Cong did this too with hospitals.

I'm not saying that Viet Cong didn't, but I'm saying it seems to imply, and by the way, it's not the end of the world to me that they were lying, but it does seem to imply very strongly that if you're saying they're all embedding near hospitals and ferreting in and out of tunnels, that means the people in the hospitals are aware of the tunnels. I don't think the people in the hospital... Hold on, hold on, hold on. Sorry, sorry. I don't think there's a compelling case just on this evidence alone that they're lying.

If there was a tunnel ferreting people in and out of the Comedy Cellar, like right on McDougal Street, how am I not... Of course I'm going to see in and out of the comedy cellar, like right on McDougal Street. How am I not, like, of course I'm going to see people coming out of the tunnel. I mean, there were some witnesses who said they saw strange things and they saw, I don't want to accuse people of lying. I just don't know all these witnesses. But more likely than not, it seems like somebody, some people are lying, right? Yeah. Okay.

You agree with that, right? Not every, not a single person. I'm not going to endorse that because I just don't know who we're talking about. I haven't followed the claims of these Western physicians very closely. But if they did claim, if... Sure, maybe. I just don't want to accuse them of lying. If Hamas were to fight head-on, the IDF, in open field, in uniform, they have zero tanks, zero artillery pieces, zero planes, zero viable anti-aircraft guns, They would be destroyed in three hours entirely. So they have to embed among civilians if they want to survive.

Now, it doesn't justify it morally because they're putting their civilians at risk. But I don't see any evidence of a plan by Hamas, a conspiracy, to try to kill civilians on their side to try to harm Israel. And I'm also relying not just on what guerrillas do and the obvious contrary explanation that they're engaged in guerrilla warfare, but folks I've talked to in Gaza, including a young woman who is completely anti-Hamas and condemned on moral grounds, which was not the majority position in Gaza, to be frank, what happened after October 7th. She says this is all dumb excuse for Israel killing us. If she knows that...

Well, she doesn't like them. Okay. So let me present the but assume so and i could show this yeah why would she say that given that she's anti-hamas she went to a co-ed school like she's obviously not is she just trying to cover for them why she hates the group she may believe it's not true well she's living there she's a pretty good witness yeah but i but I could find you a witness that says otherwise. I've seen Arabs in videos saying that they do it on purpose. They train people in Al-Qassam to try to get their own civilians killed. You think that's what they're doing? Rather than just running around trying to hide wherever they can.

Okay, I'll say what I think. But let me just put into the record. I always assume that people listening are not as informed as the people who are on the podcast. So let me put into the record what it is that I'm basing my suspicion on. So there was a most, I think most

well-known, the Wall Street Journal had a story headlined, Gaza Chiefs Brutal Calculations, Civilian Bloodshed Will Help Hamas. Yahya Sinwar's correspondence with compatriots and mediators show he is confident that Hamas can outlast Israel. Sinwar called Gaza's rising civilian death toll a necessary sacrifice on the path to Palestinian liberation. For months, Sinwar has resisted pressure to cut a ceasefire and hush his deal

with Israel. Behind his decision messages, the Hamas military leader in Gaza has sent to mediate a show is a calculation that more fighting and more Palestinian civilian deaths work to his advantage. Quote, we have the Israelis right where we want them, implying Israeli strikes were fueling global pressure on Israel. In dozens of messages reviewed by the Wall Street Journal that Sinmar has transmitted to ceasefire negotiators, Hamas compatriots outside Gaza, and others. He's shown a cold disregard for human life and made clear he believes Israel has more to lose from the war than Hamas. Let me get it all out there. The article concludes he embraces bloodshed as a means to pressure Israel.

He compared Gaza's loss to the Algerian War of Independence stating these are necessary sacrifices. That's, you know, France's moral standing collapsed because hundreds of thousands of people died there. Now, can you play this video, the martyr video? Every time they strike, we will get international media promotion

that will add empathy toward us. So we will put samples for them and we encourage them to strike. And the more they strike us the more we expand and share our narratives for the Palestinian cause. The enemies of Allah do not know that the Palestinian people have developed its methods of death and death seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry at which women excel and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this and so do the mujahideen in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they are saying to the Zionist enemy, we desire death like you desire life. Many people are asking, since you have built 500 kilometers of tunnels,

why haven't you built bomb shelters where civilians can hide during bombardments? We have built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being targeted and killed. These tunnels are meant to protect us from the airplanes. ourselves from being targeted and killed. These tunnels are meant to protect us from the airplanes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels. Everybody knows that 75% of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees. And it is the responsibility of the United Nations to protect them. According to the Geneva Conventions, it is the responsibility of the United Nations to protect them. According to the Geneva Conventions, it is the responsibility of the occupation

to provide them with all the services as long as they are under occupation. We are the ones who need this blood. We are the ones who need this blood. So it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit. So it awakens within us resolve. So it awakens within us

the spirit of challenge and pushes us to move forward. We on the other hand sacrifice ourselves. The thing any Palestinian desires the most is to be We on the other hand Sacrifice ourselves The thing any Palestinian desires the most Is to be martyred For the sake of Allah Defending his land

The occupation must come to an end Occupation where? In the Gaza Strip? No I am talking about all the Palestinian lands Does that mean the annihilation of Israel? Yes of course On October 7th

October 10th One million Everything we do is justified I meant to cut off those Does that mean the annihilation of Israel? Yes, of course. October 7th, October 10th, one million. Everything we do is justified. All right. I meant to cut off those last two minutes. So this seems to be like a pretty strong case. Now, you could not say to an Israeli, a Viet Cong audience, we desire death like they desire life. And I was reading about the Viet Cong, by the way.

They let the civilians in the tunnels. They had children born in the tunnels. They had like a little hospital in the tunnel. They organized warning, early warnings and civil defense militias. They tried to fight away from population centers and like at night. Hamas told people to stay in place. When Israel advised everybody to leave, I guess it was southern Gaza to go to the north

and begin, no, northern Gaza to go south in the beginning of the war. Told or forced? They didn't force. No, Israel urged everybody to leave and Hamas shot some people trying to leave. I think the evidence of this is pretty weak. Oh, let's leave out the shots of people.

I can show you the headlines where they say Hamas is ordering people to stay in place. Well, they didn't coerce any significant number of people to stay in place. People evacuated. No, no. But they wanted them to stay in place. Okay. Why did they want them to stay in place? I mean, I just put a lot of evidence here.

They don't want. Okay. I think this evidence is weak. And here's one reason. Including the Wall Street Journal article. Yeah. So the Wall Street Journal, their reporting has been all over the map on this. So let me talk about the Wall Street Journal article first.

So they are taking a statement initially from Yahya Sinmar, where he's talking about necessary sacrifices. And they're turning that into he wants these people to be killed. He actively seeks civilian death and if you notice that particular article which i think is characteristic that's one part of it also we have them where we want them yeah he said that but then they turn we have them where we want them into and he said there's a strategy to kill civilians which is their paraphrase he said which is not a quote if you'll read that article it's not a quote no some of us almost like fair enough but he says the the article says he, in the paraphrase where he's saying, we have no interest in a ceasefire now.

We have them where we want them. And they say, it would be nice if they released all the documents, I agree. They say, unless you think they are in bad faith here, they say that the totality of those documents indicate he said that because he knew that the civilian deaths were likely to bring pressure down on Israel and they have Israel where they want them. How else do they have Israel where they want them? Militarily? Well, in terms of militarily, Israel's totally failed to destroy this group.

Right, but they don't have Israel where they want them militarily. In terms of politically, Israel's very weak. There's no doubt they're using civilian deaths in Gaza as a propaganda tool against Israel. This is Israel. Israel also uses, and it doesn't mean Israel wants. Of course, I don't believe even Netanyahu wants one on October 7th to happen. I think no Israeli did. But Israel clearly uses the hostages and the murder of these people, the horrible crimes that happened to them, as propaganda. They use it to try to get support for their war effort.

You're naive if you deny that. You trust Haaretz? No, no. Okay, do you agree with the two statements I made? First, Israel does not want their civilians to have been killed on October 7th. Second, they use it for propaganda purposes. What happened?

What really happened? I'm not saying made-up things. What really happened? You don't think they use it for propaganda? The murder of people on October 7th? Define propaganda. To try to promote a political or military, to try to promote sympathy for Israel and its war effort. I think everybody will pick up whatever they can get used and hit each other with in a war like

this, including for propaganda purposes. But Israel makes very, very, goes to extreme measures to try to avoid any civilian deaths. It does not. I mean, yes, it does. Gaza? No. You're talking about its own people. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. They're not trying to kill their own people.

And Hamas orders its people to stay in place and says, we love death more than you love life. And it says, we've developed, I should play the video again, it says we've developed a death machine. In Ha'aris, I didn't leave, I just want to pile it all on Ha'aris, there's an article from an Israeli, I don't know the background,

people can Google it, but the headline is, I asked Sinwar, is it worth 10,000 innocents, Gazans dying? And he answered, even 100,000 is worth it. Right. He clearly believes it's worth it. That doesn't mean he's a policy to kill them. You know why I find your argument weak?

Not because it's completely implausible what you're making. Because there's zero indication on the other side. There's zero statements from these people. Get out. Help yourselves. Come into our tunnel. Protect... I didn't cherry-pick those comments among two different points of view.

Well, I mean, we went back to 2008. Fatih Hamad is one of the most extreme members of this organization. He's also, I think, talking about suicide bombing. No, but what I'm saying is I didn't cherry-pick it among... I could have made the case the other way if I had chosen to. There are no videos the other way. There are no statements the other way.

It's horrible what's happened to our people. It's a genocide. It needs to stop. Yes, but there's no statements there indicating that they wish the civilians would like, go to the beach. There's zero, I can't find a single statement where any prominent Palestinian leader has offered advice how you can avoid being killed. And by the way, why don't they let them in the tunnels?

Okay, so there are obviously reasons why they wouldn't want to let everyone unmasked in the tunnels, because they don't want someone to tell the Israelis where the tunnels are, right? They want to keep the location of the tunnels and the nature of them a secret. They want to keep the infrastructure a secret. If the position is that they are, let callous to other civilians, they obviously are. They wouldn't have done October 7th because they must have known that a massacre and a kidnapping operation would provoke a horrible response. They probably didn't. Here's one very important point.

We're not going to agree on the intent. Why are civilians dying in Gaza though? You believe there's this conspiracy to kill, that Hamas wants to kill them and that's why they're embedding among civilians. I don't agree. Nevertheless, I agree that if they are embedding in cases where they are, obviously they're endangering their civilians. But why are people dying in Gaza? Are they dying because there's rockets being shot out of this hospital or this school and Israel has to bomb the area and kill civilians? If you look at open source data, if you look at Air Wars this day, this from October 2023, it appears the large majority of people are dying in this bizarre, perverse program called

Where's Daddy, where they bomb homes where one Hamas guy is allegedly, he often is a civilian employee. There's a 10% error rate. Over 90% of cases, these are homes with no militant activity, just one guy at home sleeping. Okay, Matthew. And they kill the whole family. I have on my list here to get into exactly. But that's relevant to the human shields conversation. It's relevant because if people were dying in most cases, because Hamas has militarized this

civilian infrastructure and Israel has to bomb it and then people in the area die, that would be one thing. But that isn't why people are dying in the large majority of cases. It may be some, but it's not the large majority according to all the data we have. All right. By the way, do you know what Operation Pied Piper was? I don't. So when, and there's many examples of this, I think it was an example in Ukraine recently, when the Brits got wind that the Blitz was coming, in like three days, they evacuated a million and a half people to the, I guess it's the east, I'm not sure. This is kind of like the opening scene in Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Narnia, where the kids are on the train because they're being sent out to the country because they're expecting war.

And I wondered about this and did some research on it. There's many, many examples of governments who, when they knew the shit was about to hit the fan, took extreme measures, drastic measures, urgent measures to protect their population from what was coming. And... But we're in agreement Hamas does not do that. And if they haven't

done that, I think you should at least be open to the idea, considering, as opposed to the Viet Cong, who actually had a military which was effective and they could hope to win. Hamas is under no illusions that they are going to beat Israel militarily.

Hamas knows, unless they're delusional, they know very well that the only chance they have of coming out on top in this conflict, and this was the reason they did it, they said, is the PR war, to make Israel a pariah state. And they can't make Israel a pariah state unless a lot of their civilians die. So their equation doesn't work without the civilians dying. Imagine a situation where Israel killed no civilians, magically. Hamas would immediately sue for peace. Because if only the fighters were getting killed, and not a single civilian was being

killed, and the world knew that, Israel would have the wind in their back. So it doesn't work. Now, I'll ask you another question. It's a deeper question. And this is the main reason I asked you here. I'll present the question. You say whatever you want. Okay.

One of the things that I've really been grappling with, and this goes a little bit to Sam Harris, by the way, and some of the stuff he talks about, is the limits of my own understanding, my own ability to understand people with drastically different worldviews, mentalities, and belief systems. So I can understand rapeities, and belief systems. So, I can understand rape and murder and pillaging.

I can understand atrocities. I can't understand the martyrdom point of view. And I asked him a little bit about this before he came, and then I decided to pull back because I didn't want to say it not in front of you.

But, one could imagine from seeing that, we're hearing those videos, from seeing that Hamas does not distinguish ever, not just in their lists, but ever in conversation ever between casualties, civilians and combatants, that they don't wear uniforms, that they tell their people to stay in place, that when there are suicide bombers who are children, they put up tents and have celebrations, hand out candies,

that in some way, although we demand that sharp line between civilians and combatants. They don't see it that way. That they see all martyred souls as the same before God. All, and, I mean, in Iran, we hear the story, they sent their own kids as minesweepers. There's many, many conflicts around the world. Islamic countries have nothing to do with Israel, where we hear these stories where the death rates are, you know, hundreds of times higher. Well, no death rate is anywhere close to Gaza in the 21st century.

I'm not talking about percentage, right? I'm talking about the actual numbers. Where millions have died. And so I want to put this to Hatem, who might know differently than you. I want to make one quick comment. So we say all this is an alien mentality, these strange primitive people who don't distinguish.

Don't do that. Don't do that because I didn't say that. That's not nice. That's not nice. It's an alien mentality. You said the Mario dumb thing is alien. This is going to be a problem. I'm speaking in maximum good faith here, sharing with you

my internal questioning about what I'm seeing. I don't see Jewish people handing out candies when their children die, and I'm struggling to understand it. Maybe it's easy. Maybe it's just totally understandable to you, maybe it's just, you know, totally understandable to you. It's, it's intuitive to you that this makes sense, but I should not pay a price or be belittled for having the nerve to say, listen, I can't process that. I can't process of people handing out candies when they've sent their children off to explode themselves. And

your answer is to call me like a bigot. I didn't say bigot. Well, yes, you did. Okay, what do you want me to say? How are you describing these people? I wasn't describing them. I'm describing the behavior. Okay, the behavior.

I'm not describing it inaccurately. I want to describe it, I want to talk substantively about this. Okay. So, 64% of Israelis, according to polls... You can't help yourself. No, I'm saying... I can't help myself. I would never do that to you. You retrist

your words and put it back to... I would recognize your good faith. I'm asking you a serious question. I'm just trying to respond with my impression. I didn't call anybody primitive. Okay. Then we don't have to... Why are you rolling your eyes, though? This isn't important.

It is important. Let's talk about the substance of this. Yes, that's what I want you to do. You think this is a mentality you cannot understand. Let's put it that way. That's what you said. 64% of Israelis, according to a poll done by a body associated with Hebrew University, believe that there are no innocents in Gaza.

No. Brother, why is that? So they don't see any children as innocent. I know. Let Hatem answer my question and then I'll get to your poll because I know all about that. There's multiple polls. I've been in touch with the guy who did that poll. Are you talking about the geocritography poll or are you talking about

the no innocence poll? The one that compares it to Amalek and all that stuff. That's a genocide poll. I'm not talking about that. There's another poll that says 64% say no innocence. Can we get a Muslim... Yep, go ahead.

Damn. Well, I mean, there's two things I want to say quickly. You know, one about the first point about Hamas wanting the civilians to die versus... You know, I think there's two parts of it. One is Israel are doing the killing you know

and Hamas did not build one bomb shelter for the civilian they didn't build their tunnels for civilians they didn't like even if they didn't want to to have you know the civilians know what their tunnels are that they fight from you know the whole Gaza is to there's two guys under and over they never built anything for the civilians so yeah of course do you want it to be part of the propaganda? but on the other hand, you know also Israeli are Killing them if those were and they said that you know example before if the hospital had American children, they would not have Attacked it because the Palestinian life versus any other life is is but Hamas is putting them in the harm way.

Obviously, this is part of it. But there's two parts of the side that also they do it. Now, to answer your question is... So you think Hamas does have a strategy of... 100%. Because they didn't build their tunnel. They didn't build bombshell. But at the same time, Israel is okay with that.

You know, like if you. If you should be the better person, if that was anybody but Palestinians, they would not have died. I think you're both in agreement of that, by the way, about the Hamas part that they are trying. No, I don't agree with that. No, I think they're not making an effort.

No, I do not see any evidence there is a conspiracy by the Hamas fighters to try to act in a certain way to kill a maximized civilian death on their side what do you mean they say it all the time we have

we have a lot to cover but I just want to ask explain the martyrdom just a quick question as a government what's their plan if they're under attack? Where do you go? Where's the bomb shelter? What do you do to help civilians? So that's why I'm saying in that part, I don't think they are trying to, I think they say it as a fair game that doesn't make it okay for Israel to kill civilians. But I think Hamas on their part, they're not doing anything to stop the... But we agree on that. So they're not making an effort,

and not only that, but they showed completely reckless disregard for their civilians by... There you go, yeah. By murdering all these... That's what I'm saying. We're in agreement on that, yeah. But that's not the same as there's a conspiracy to kill as many civilians as possible to hurt Israel politically, and I object to that first. I object to that first.

I think it's false. We're going to run out of time. We'll move on. Second of all, I think it's a way of trying to alleviate agency from the IDF for all the civilians they've killed, if you listen to kill. Okay. Okay, what's the other question?

I want you to explain, if I'm wrong. All right, explain to me as best you can First of all Is this Celebration of Children dying Martyrdom This martyrdom mentality Which clearly exists Do you understand it? Is it common in Islam?

Is it a small subset of Islam? Well that's a You know a good question Because I'm glad you asked it because it's not part of Islam. All the culture, it's part of a group that tried to justify anything in a certain way. There's always a joke in the Middle East. It's like, oh, you're going to take a gold bomb and you're going to go to heaven. It's like, what about you? It's like, no, I'm staying here.

So they use that. But there is punch of it the the children that they use for example are usually people that have everybody killed that they know and they have nothing else to do so they're using that and this is one of the things that i'm saying this war worries me a lot about all these people if somebody lose every single person that they have what they're going to become you know how can you blame them? But they use that. So they take a child that, let's say, their mother died. Everybody's like, hey, this is what you're going to do.

And the children, they don't know. And they celebrate. But at the same time, I always use the analogy of when you see Israeli hostages. I think I told you that before. Coming out of Hamas and they're kissing Hamas and happy. They're not really happy with them. They're scared. Same thing with the civilians civilian they make them do because a lot of times they'll say if you don't do this and if you watch fowda you know the israeli television show they

show that specifically if you don't do this we can call your brother you know so you kind of have to do it but yeah there are some cultures that has nothing to do with uh with the religion but yes they have they celebrate death in a way, and they say the more the better, and I think Gaddafi at some point was paying people. Was it Gaddafi that was paying people? If they killed one of the leaders. So it's a movement.

It's not Islamist. My point is only, and then I'll move on to this poll, is that to the extent that they don't see the distinction, well, don't see the distinction well do they see the distinction between no they do not but again there's a specific

can I say just one last thing I think it's the problem is again is the Palestinian life specifically Palestinian so not valued from anybody from Hamas

or from Israel or from the world if you have that numbers half of the numbers are dying right now having to be French or English or anybody else, the world would have stopped. But the Palestinians' life is not valuable even specifically to Hamas and to Israel, in my opinion.

So if... I don't want to get in trouble. But there's a logic to the idea that if they don't see the distinction between civilians and... By the way... They do say it's fair game, yeah. My gut is that they do see some distinction. Yeah.

But it's not the clear-cut distinction that we Westerners see. My gut... This is just a gut. It's an intuition. I think there's something we also talked about before there's some leader, somebody like Senoir who is there in the middle obviously I don't like him but he's fighting the fight

I don't think he sees the distinction but the people that live in Qatar and stuff they don't give a fuck, they let them all die I believe that humans are incapable of seeing children die and being indifferent in the sense that, oh, that's, you know, most humans.

But in some way, this dilutes. It has to reverberate through their strategy. If they see all their people as basically fighters going to paradise, then it would make more sense to me that they would be open to the strategy. And I don't know. This is what bothers me. I'm not going to tell you I know.

I'm trying to understand. But do you think there's a difference between the people seeing themselves versus them seeing the people, right? So the people don't see themselves as martyrs that they want to die. I don't know. I don't know. Do you agree with that? You need to watch footage from Gaza.

Nobody is happy when they see their, if we're talking about civilians now, no, people are not happy when they see their children die. Of course. They may have a doctrine of martyrdom. Christians, I think Jews, I'm not saying Jews have a martyrdom doctrine, but Christians No, but Christians certainly believe that if a

child is killed, the child will go to heaven, right? I don't know if Jews, do Jews have heaven? I don't know Jews. Whether Christians or Jews have heaven. Regardless, a Christian's not going to be happy. It's a weird question. Yes, but you've never seen a party or handing out candy. I'm not equating that, I'm saying. Or even any Jew sending his child off, even in the most dire circumstances, to blow himself up.

There is something going on there. Well, first of all, suicide bombing has not been a factor since the second defaulter, really, in this conflict. So it is a factor, but it hasn't been for decades now. No, but it's just another manifestation of the idea. How common is this mentality? The average person who, look, the last piece of research I did was 1,079 names that had been removed from the Ministry of Health list.

I looked at... No, but this is... No, but these people are sad when their children die. This is constructive. They're very sad. They're not happy. I said that, but this is constructive suicide bombing in the sense that Israel, you're not sending

them into Tel Aviv, but they become part of the ammunition of this fight on the world's psychology, which this is a 2,000... Every time children die, this is their 2,000 pound bomb.

This is why Hamas is, or the Palestinians are the darling of the world now. It's because of this death. And there's no, you know, that's just true. But there's also blame on the other side, right? From the Israeli bombing.

Yes, I mean, we'll get to that. I'm not trying to avoid that issue. But I like what you said about mentality, not religion, because the Japanese used to have, we don't call it suicide bomber, we got the cool name. Kamikaze. They get kamikaze, but we get

the suicide bomber. The comparisons to the Japanese are easy to fall into because the Japanese also stubbornly, stubbornly, stubbornly, when there was no hope, would not surrender. I mean, Hamas. But I like what he used, mentality.

In the end, no matter what we want to say about Israel, let's just stipulate. Let's just stipulate for the sake of argument. Israel shouldn't be doing this. Let's just do it. There is still the fact that this small group of people, Hamas, who have no respect for the moral responsibility to be practical, meaning like, you know you can't win. There's no chance whatsoever that they are going to beat Israel in this war. And they know that if they took safe passage out of Gaza and released the hostages, the war would have to end.

And they won't do it. They won't. They will stay there. As Sinwar said, 10,000, 100,000, 1 million. And I believe, and you tell me you think I'm wrong. I believe if Hamas knew that every single Palestinian was going to die, they would still not surrender. Do you disagree? I don't think it's a

particular relevant question. I think they care about winning. They don't care about their... They're not interested in their civilians. They're not interested in their civilians. But I don't understand what winning is for Hamas. They're not interested in their civilians, but you don't think they would use them as a strategy. There's a difference between their not making efforts to protect their civilians, which I think

any sane person would agree on, and there's a conscious conspiracy to engage in military conduct that, okay, make sure we act in a certain way that'll get people killed. You'd have whistleblowers who have fought for al-Qasem. It just is not plausible. This guy is a very, they're also a very idiosyncratic group. They're people who are really crazy, jihadist types. And they're people who are like really crazy, this types and there are people who are kind of pragmatic nationalists, right? They're all willing to use violence against civilians. So I'm not, I'm not saying that there's moderates in the sense that one might say,

but there's, there's idiosyncratic. I mean, they didn't Islamize in terms of the criminal law of Gaza. They didn't Islamize it in since 2007, the law being applied in Gaza is, is Islamic for personal status, but it remains secular for criminal law. They're not like cutting off hands of thieves or stoning people to death for adultery. They do hang people from cranes. They do shoot at people who are taking aid from Israel. There's an ideological difference from a group that allows my friend to attend a co-ed high school

a mile away from their HQ and ISIS. And if you can't see that, you're missing something. There's a big ideological difference. Fine. And yeah, that guy probably is so into martyrdom doctrine that he has something...

Now, wait a second. We're going to run out of time. And I want to talk about a lot of things. The casualty counts. I have tried to follow the thing back and forth with you and Eisenberg and your article and his article. I spoke to him about it. I tried to understand.

I can't I can't parse the numbers and I don't want you to drag me into the numbers. I am not saying that you're 100% right. I'm not saying that he's 100% right. I want to say something a little bit more 30,000 feet, which is the following. I don't understand people who believe that the Hamas numbers are accurate. I don't know what the margin of error is. And these are the reasons I can't believe anybody believes they're accurate.

And this harkens back to the point we all basically agreed on, is that these casualty counts are the main effective weapon that Hamas has wielded in this war. It's impossible for me to believe that the people who would slaughter and massacre all those people on October 7th would say, but we can't lie about casualty numbers. That's, that's, lying about casualty numbers is not even a war crime. Number one. Number two, just as one little example we all know about, and I did look into this, when they announced that very accurate number of 471 people

who died in the Baptist Hospital back in December of 2023, whatever it was, and it turned out not to be true, it was the parking lot that was bombed and various estimates of 50 to whatever it was. And it turned out not to be true. It was the parking lot that was bombed and various estimates of 50 to 100 people died. Not Israeli killed by Islamic Jihad rocket. They did not lower the numbers. They never struck those 471 people off the list. Now, the 471 was a lie.

Those people were never listed on a Ministry of Health list. Well, they told us. Yeah, there was a statement made. Right. And, well, you assume they added to their numbers. Well, I mean, that's an assumption you're making. Yeah, yeah. Well, then you're saying the numbers are too low?

Let me make a point here. So why would we trust these figures? It's not because we think that they're good people or that they wouldn't lie. It's because all of these now, virtually all of them, have full names, full Loon algorithm compliant Israel-issued IDs, genders, ages. That's one thing. Another reason we trust

them is they've been historically accurate within one... No, that's not true. No, it's true. No, it's not. I've heard that. I looked into it. But even if they have been historically accurate in very small numbers which they haven't been, anybody can google it you can see the articles about this

listen I heard I'm going to make your point a little bit I heard Netanyahu interviewed by Barry Weiss was it like a year and a half ago and he referred to the numbers and he seemed to be citing a number of deaths. Now, this is different than the ratio of deaths, very similar to what the Hamas numbers were,

which made me think that, you know, that this is almost not a fruitful inquiry, because I'll tell you why I think it's not fruitful. After saying that, I just think it's silly to think that they would be accurate because for the reasons I said. The reason I think it's not fruitful is because like in the law, you have to introduce the foundation. correlation that I'm aware of between the number of people who have died in a war and our general feeling of how just that war was. And as I said, the Civil War was our most bloody war. Was that our least justifiable war? And you can go on in all sorts of wars. Wars are fought for whatever reason they're fought. And it has to be justifiable or not based on that. You know, we were going to kill, Hiroshima or not,

we were going to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Yeah, and we were wrong. Well, you think we were wrong, but a lot of people, especially who were alive at that time, whose children would have been among the Americans that would have died in that invasion of Japan without the atom bomb. I mean, we were purpose...

Again, I agree with the intervention in the Second World War, to be clear, but purposely killing hundreds of thousands of civilians is wrong. And the fact that we haven't come to terms with this is absurd. I'm not somebody Adam Baum, though. I'm saying that... Well, the firebombing of Tokyo

killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, deliberately. But it's not clear to anybody if there was a way that the Japanese were ever going to surrender. Just like I asked you the question, you said it's irrelevant. But irrelevant is kind of a telling answer because you didn't say,

yes, I think they would surrender. That every single person would die and they still wouldn't surrender. And, you know, again, these are impossible questions. But I just want to, I'll just say again, there is no correlation that I'm aware of that says that the more people are dying, the less justified the war is. Of course. Of course there is. So I'm ready to... So the civilian death toll, for example, in Syria. Now, of course, people also talk about the use of chemical weapons on civilians by Assad. But the civilian death toll in Syria, if it were 3,000 instead of hundreds of thousands, half a million roughly,

the moral judgment people would have about the need to overthrow this regime and even kind of a willingness to see what this butcher, this former guy who was in Al-Qaeda in Syria, willingness to give him a chance is based on how horrible Bashar al-Assad is, and that's largely based on the number of civilian fatalities. In terms of the MOH list, you mentioned that in Yahoo, there was a report in Vice. I don't agree with what you said. In January 2024, they said the Israelis have privately assessed that this list is largely accurate. So that was in Vice News, January 2024. So people denying this, this is extremely well-vetted. We can have an ideological skepticism, which is completely reasonable,

but then you have to look into the data and see, is this accurate? As a historian, I look at Nazi documents. I look at Soviet documents. Well, I can't read Russian, but I have looked at Soviet documents and said, oh, do this for me, you know, Ivan or whatever. But you don't just dismiss them based on the fact that Satan wrote them, right? You vet them. You know, you could have provisional skepticism, but these data are very well. And there was a study that came out this week, as I said, a survey that showed that estimated 75,200 civilian deaths in Gaza through January 2025, which would show, which is what I think the Ministry of Health is undercutting. I don't think it's hundreds of thousands, but it's undercutting.

I don't want to get dragged into the numbers, not because I'm afraid of them, but because I see online enough back and forth of people arming themselves with various studies and various analyses that I don't feel qualified to analyze. And I don't want to be in a position of saying, I believe this one because it suits me. Can I just talk about one thing in regards to that? But I just wanted to just repeat my thing in a second.

That just as a, you know, this is glib, but I always say, if I catch an employee doing something like giving out a free drink, I say, what are the odds that I caught them the one time they did it and would ever do it? You know, when I know that one bombing, they said four, they didn't say 470, they didn't

say about 500 people died. They said 471 people have died in the bomb. And Rashid Khalidi came on my show and he said, I have people who work at the hospital that are my friends and I know it's true. Remember he said that? And it turned out not to be true. So now I know, well, they bullshitted that time. Now, what are the odds?

That was the first time they bullshitted and the only time they'll ever bullshit. Now, can I just read you some casualty numbers? Second Congo War. It was the beginning of the 24th. Four thousand. I'm sorry. Four million dead civilians the second Sudanese civil war and in 2005

1,800,000 civilians Tigray war we haven't even heard about these wars barely Tigray war in Ethiopia 385,000 civilians Darfur, 300,000 civilians Iraq war 200,000 civilians Afghanistan, 50,000 civilians. Iraq war, 200,000 civilians. Afghanistan,

50,000 civilians. And, you know, this is... How is it that there's a war... We heard a fair amount about Iraq and Afghanistan because we were doing it. Right, but how is it there was a war that killed 4 million civilians? You're talking about the second Congolese war, right?

Yeah, yeah. And the world just kind of yawned. We didn't even know about it. And here Hamas is, you know, refusing to surrender, holding these hostages to this day. How do you explain all that? So I'm going to move back for just a second to the Ministry of Health stuff. So the last piece of research I did, which I think shows that they are undercounting, contrary to what world you guys are living in in this regard, is they had removed – Eisenberg made a big deal about this. They had removed 3,000 fatalities from their list. And this to me was like maybe he actually finally found – like he finally got a direct hit on them, on their credibility.

Because why were these names removed? And I looked into, with a team from Gaza, the children who were removed, 1,079. And we looked at, like, Instagram, Facebook, family postings, local media. And we found that the large majority of them had, in fact, died. Okay. So that attack, so why would the Ministry of Health remove them? Well, because they didn't, our hypothesis is, they either didn't have a body associated with them, or they didn't, the family didn't complete, like, a judicial process

and get, like, a certificate of death. No, but the point is, they're removing real fatalities. That's pretty strong evidence against exaggeration. Okay, I think my evidence is stronger, actually, but, you know, you're, whatever. The other problem is... My question is this. How many lives would they save if they put uniforms on? If they put uniforms on, Israel would destroy them

very quickly. They'd save lives, though, yeah, of course. The guerrilla tactics endanger their civilians. So you've kind of... So what's happening here is that they are weaponizing international law, which was designed to restrict the bad guys by forcing people to wear uniforms. And then we say, well, yeah, you guys do what you want. You don't put uniforms on.

That would mean you would lose the war. So therefore, it becomes Israel's fault. In other words, eh, the last smack we were talking about international law, like it would be nice if people followed it. But if you don't follow it, we will blame the other side for all the consequences that we wrote the law to avoid, right? We wrote the law to make sure you wear uniforms so that you wouldn't have your civilian killed. We wrote, we wrote the, all the, we wrote the law to make sure you wear uniforms so that you wouldn't have your civilian killed. We wrote the laws. What are the other laws? They're not following.

That's a clear example. Oh, embedding with civilians, embedding in hospitals. I'm losing my mind. So I'm saying all these laws which were written specifically to avoid certain outcomes. And actually in the commentary in the Geneva Conventions, they say that if you do this, it's a legitimate target. A hospital becomes a legitimate target. There's still a proportionality analysis.

If it isn't essential to winning the war, you can't bomb the hospital. In theory, though, you could lose protection. There's still a proportionality, but proportionality is a lesser thing here because proportionality is impossible to determine, and there's no objective standard. Can I play something?

Can you play that? You have that Ken Roth proportionality thing? You know what Ken Roth is. I had him on the show. And you heard me, Tiana? Yeah. And I tried to drill down on this question of proportionality because you're exactly right. So they don't follow any of the laws.

And they say, yeah, I know the laws were designed to, I know the law says that now the hospital's fair game, but you still have to be proportional. And if I put my command center near the hospital, that has to be proportional. And then, so I asked Ken Roth, who says this every day, I said, okay, what does proportional mean? And this is the exchange I had with him. and this is kind of like she this was a formative moment for me go ahead uh Tiana there's a former I'm I'm the prime minister of Israel and I have the human rights head in my office with me I'm about to send out I'm gonna bomb this camp they say it's gonna be around 500 people dead and you would say no sir it's not proportionate and I would say to you then okay how many what would be okay what number would be okay and you'd say well

it's a judgment call sir and I'd say well okay but I have to make a decision and I don't want you criticizing me after I make it so give me something to go on. How many civilians? If I were talking to Netanyahu, this is what I would say. Netanyahu, as you may remember, he invoked the biblical injunction of Hamlet. Why? Why would you? No women, children, men or animals. So let's change my hypothetical to a different prime minister, one that you don't want to criticize. Some prime minister that you think is not a criminal. And he's going to ask you the very same question

I just asked you. You say 500 is too many, but I do want to bomb this command center. And this is the guy who was responsible for killing our people in an atrocity. How do I measure proportionality if the guy who's in charge of calling it disproportionate after being asked five times won't even give a range of civilians? It sounds like you keep asking the question. I'm not going to give a number because the answer is you use the means that are most precise, that are least likely to harm civilians.

All right. So I went around a circle. So what it came down to with him, he'll always tell you when it was disproportionate. He will never tell you, even post facto, okay, they did this, 30 died. Do you think it was worth 15? He will never answer it. And I just decided this whole idea of proportionality, not that it's not related to some legitimate moral question. Of course it is.

But it's just a make itit-up-as-you-go-along standard. But what is not a make-up-as-you-go-along standard is you should wear uniforms. You should not be having military hardware near a hospital. You shouldn't engage in torture. You shouldn't raise civilian infrastructure with no military justification to get people to flee, as Netanyahu said they were doing in this march.

I'll acknowledge that. You're going to agree with me? Can all of those things be true? Of course. I mean, can both of those things be true? But also, what about the crimes that they do on Hamas to their own people as well? But that, I mean, I don't know. I think that those are important things, that like all of these things can be true at once.

Let's give Matthew a break and let's argue on something that I think he's going to have a better time with. Can I make one point? Please do. Go ahead. I think, again, we have to look at how are people dying in Gaza? Are people dying through these very difficult decisions where they're in the hospital, they're

in the school, they've militarized it, there's a ton of combatants there, we're going to kill civilians in the vicinity. Or are they dying because Israel has a program called Where's Daddy where we bomb to death entire families to kill one junior militant or one guy who took a selfie with Sinwar maybe or one guy who works for the civilian government? It appears to me that this specific deliberate bombing of homes, and it appears to all the open source evidence, is accounting for the large majority of fatalities

from bombing. So it is not these scenarios. I'm not saying these scenarios don't exist, but the large majority of the casualties are Israel making highly autonomous decisions that, fuck these people, they're not worth it. Well, except, yes, you know, I can't get into all that. I mean, I don't know enough to get into all that, but it is contradicted by what you said

earlier, which is that if they put on uniforms, they would lose. But also to add... Oh, hold on, hold on, let the point sit in. How is is contradicted by what you said earlier, which is that if they put on uniforms, they would lose. But also to add... Hold on, hold on. Let the poet sit in. How is that contradicted? Because in the end, there is... If Israel followed the international law as you interpret it,

they would be still ineffective at getting back their hostages and defeating Hamas. They would be in a worse position, which doesn't mean, I'm not justifying violating international law, but the war would go on longer and longer and longer and longer. But if Hamas were to obey international law, the war would be over. And that's a big difference because Hamas is holding hostages. They're driving this.

The war may be over, but the Israelis have been clear that a condition of ending the war is implementing the so-called Trump Gaza plan and engaging in politics. Why wouldn't you, as an advocate, give equal time in your tweets to complaining about Hamas? I do complain about Hamas. No, no, no. You don't give equal time. No, I don't give equal time. I shouldn't give equal time because Israel's carrying out a genocide. But isn't Hamas the bigger villain here in terms of driving the genocide? All right. Let's talk about the genocide. So I looked into, first of all, this issue upsets me so much because I know you had been very keen on Benny Morris, and now you've kind of soured on him as being a crackpot.

But, you know, I do find him to be a very important voice because he's the one person who can both bitterly criticize Israel's policies and settlements or something like that, and openly admit terrible things that Israel might do, while at the same time stick up for Israel if the logic of the situation he feels is on their side. And I don't believe that, I believe that Benny Morris would have the courage to admit that Israel is crossing the line into genocide. And it wouldn't have to be that every person they're killing is cross-line genocide.

But he stubbornly doesn't. Although he wrote an article where he does believe that the outcome of what's going on in the Middle East is that sooner or later, one side or the other is going to commit genocide because of dehumanization. He writes, the dehumanization of the Palestinians

that has to take root before mass murder. Oh, I lost my page here. Let me just find it. So the headline is, Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza, but it may be on the way there. And the headline is a little deceptive because in the article it says that both sides

may be on the way there. The dehumanization of the Palestinians that has to take root before mass murder is already here in parallel with the dehumanization of the Palestinians that has to take root before mass murder is already here, in parallel with the dehumanization of Jews among Palestinian Muslims. There was only one possible way to prevent genocide from happening. Then he writes, Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. The prosecutor in The Hague and all the learned professors from Omar Bartov on down who talk about genocide are wrong. It doesn't equivocate.

It does equivocate on the apartheid charge, by the way. The government has no policy of genocide. There is no decision by Israeli leaders to commit genocide. There is no deliberate intention to wipe out the Palestinians. And there are no orders coming from the government to the army and from the army chiefs to the operative ranks to murder the Palestinians. Many of them have been killed, but this is no policy. So then I went in and started to look at the case, and I'm going to give you all the time in the world to respond. Much of the genocide charge is built on these statements of people.

And you've tweeted most of them out. And maybe we should go through them one at a time because... The ones I've tweeted out, yeah. There is no um ethnic cleansing is not genocide and massacres are not genocide genocide has a very specific intent which is to destroy a people even if ben gevir and his in his uh sick uh fulfillment of his dreams were to kick every Gazan out of every Palestinian out of Gaza that would not be genocide

by itself no which is just an illustration of how high the standard is for genocide so the first one was Galant this was the earliest one he said we're fighting human animals and we will act accordingly remember that one?

of course now I have two things to say about Gallant and then you can respond. So the first thing is, if he meant for genocide, I mean, Gallant wants the destruction of the Palestinian people. That's what it would have to mean. Isn't it interesting that he's been hounding the government now saying that we've achieved our objectives in Palestine and the war should end. Why is it that the guy whose objective was to destroy the people is now saying he thinks that the war should end? The end of the military campaign must come together with political action. Israel must not impose military rule in Gaza. The price paid would be bloodshed and victims. He says we stop because the price

would be victims as well as a heavy economic price. There's nothing left to do. There's nothing left in Gaza to do. The major achievements have been achieved. And there's one other thing. Can you play the Gallant thing there? They chose that one statement, but within a few days, he had issued another statement where he didn't just say we're fighting human animals, which could mean the Gazans. He actually specifically says the Gazans. But they never talked about that. And go ahead, play this. I got a chance to respond with these statements.

Yeah, I'm going to do statements one at a time for you to respond to. Go ahead. So there were two Gallant quotes about this. One was at a formal announcement in front of the press, and one is on a cell phone camera just to the troops. So here they are. We're imposing a complete siege of Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel.

Everything will be closed. We no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly. You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting against human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza. This is what we are fighting against. Gaza won't return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything eliminate everything it doesn't

take one day it will take a week it will take weeks or even months we will reach all places there is no way that our brothers our children our parents will be killed and we won't react because we are a state so we understand that Hamas wanted to change the situation. It'll change back 180 degrees, and they'll regret this more. That's good. They will regret it. Now, is that a genocidal statement to you?

Galant's statements, I don't think are... It's strange that you're highlighting this, because I would not cite them as the most damning by any means. I think Israel Katz is... I know you want to do this whole sequence thing, but if you want to get my argument, Israel Katz, the current defense minister, he specifically tweeted of Palestinian civilians, not Hamas, civilians, that they will never receive a drop of water or another battery until they leave the world. That's a clear genocidal statement. But he wasn't defense minister at the time. He was promoted to it. No one's ever punished for

these things. Another statement I would cite that's very relevant because it's somebody on the ground is Brigadier General Yehuda Vash, who told his troops, this was reported in Haaretz in December 2024, he told his troops that every woman is a man in disguise, you can shoot all of them. Everyone on a bicycle is a scout, you can shoot all of them. And they were routinely counting combatants killed as civilians. That's not genocide either. I mean, it's part of the puzzle. It's intentionally killing civilians at the division level.

And by the way, division is at least 10,000 soldiers. This is a good chunk of all the combat troops in Gaza. The first statement is genocidal. The second statement is not genocidal. The second statement is saying you can't trust them. There's perfidy going on. If you see somebody, they're in costume, meaning that they actually are a fighter, not that kill any Palestinian and saying don't be fooled because they do dress up in outfits, and Israelis are

killed that way, and that statement is like, give yourself the benefit of the doubt, don't take any chances. You think you're seeing a woman? Shoot them. I'm not defending that at all. I would not, I don't- I understand you're not defending- That's probably not, that's probably a violation of even Israeli, yeah, but it's not genocidal. No, it's murder with a thinly wrapped excuse. You're not making any of that. Yeah, it might be murder, but it's not genocide. It's part of a genocidal policy. No, because...

Why is this guy never punished? Why is nobody punished? Because genocide would imply go out and find them and kill them. He said there, he also said there's no innocents in Gaza. Mr. Vash did. This is a general giving commands to 10,000 troops. There were, there right now, I think, are four divisions in all of Gaza. What about Netanyahu's Amalek statement?

I don't cite that. I don't think that's, again, particularly damning. You want to go through the sequence, but it's kind of a... No, no, if you don't... So a much stronger statement, as I said, is from Israel Katz, which I mentioned. A much stronger statement is from the deputy speaker of the Knesset, who said all Gazan men should be killed. Just explicitly said we should do Srebrenica, basically.

So, yeah, there's some quotations where people may have exaggerated, but if you look at, there are numerous statements that are clearly explicitly genocidal. Also, Smotrick. I mean, do you really, he said I wish we could starve to death two million Gazans, it would be moral, but the world won't let us. So, the fact of the matter is,

genocidal, would you agree with this? Genocidal sentiment in Israel appears, I'm not saying it's the majority, but it appears to be normalized. What I mean by that is if you say something genocidal, like the deputy speaker of the Knesset said, like Smotrich said, you're not punished, you're not arrested, you're not shunned. Yes, I agree with you. It's normalized. It's disgusting.

That's good, I'm glad you can see that. And by the way. Let me make a point. I'm not trying to get a debate when, I'm just, I appreciate you can see that, because it's a problem. Dehumanization is a problem of Jews. It's horrifying. People who are Israelis or people who surround Israelis,

I see these people on TV. I cannot meet an Israeli in person, or none of you have, who doesn't say, it's disgusting. It's like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene goes half-cocked or many, or any, many, many fringe figures that we have in this, even in our government.

But. And, and, but to. We're talking about ministers, the secretary of, the equivalent of the secretary of defense. Hold on. This is not just the secretary. When he, when Israel Katz said that, listen, I, I think you're right. It's an outrage that the guy who said that was promoted to Secretary of Defense.

It's a shame. It brings shame on us. Don't get me wrong. But when he said that, he was just a schmo saying that. He was not anybody with any authority. He was a minister. Yeah, but there's a million ministers in Israel. He was not

anybody who even could get in the room in terms of issuing orders, making military policy, whatever it is. And you have to concede that. Yes, it's disgusting that he was... And you're right. What does it say when the guy who said that gets appointed Ministry of Defense?

Now, of course, we read in Haaretz that he's considered to be a laughingstock in the government even now, that nobody even takes him seriously, that actually Netanyahu just put him there to take his portfolio from him. That's what I read in Haaretz. But I'm just putting that into record because that's what I read. But I agree with you on that.

I'm happy because the whole Amalek thing, actually, I was going to read it. It's false, but I'm not going to spend the time if you— I don't think the Netanyahu statement is a compelling exhibition. Actually, they took it, they took his, there's two places it's mentioned in the Bible. I'll send it to you, rather. And actually, the place he took it was not about killing every last woman in China. The point is, there are, which I think we agree on, there

are genocidal statements made by ministers, made by Knesset members, and they're not punished or stigmatized. So, that's a problem. And that's why Israel is going to lose, at least in part, on the ice in Dice Street. They are going to lose. So be prepared for that. They may win.

They may lose on genocide. They're going to lose on incitement to genocide. And let me make a point here. Incitement to genocide is punished. Let me make a point here. I'm going to tell you what's going to happen, and then we'll see what happens. Incitement to genocide on the Genocide Convention

is punished even when a genocide does not occur. Why? Because if a government incites genocide, if Knesset members are, if the Secretary of Defense is, or the Defense Minister, the idea is even if a genocide isn't occurring, soldiers are going to commit more war crimes.

They're going to feel like they're entitled to murder or kill or... Okay, back to you. So given that Israeli leaders are engaged in this rhetoric and it's not being punished, they're going to lose at the ICJ. Maybe they will.

And maybe they will... Listen, it's not lost. It shouldn't be lost on anybody that these Israeli, former Israeli prime ministers like Barack and Olmert, who are considered to be, you know, the voices of reason now, they were accused of war crimes too. Well, but the level... Israel is used to it. Yeah. Olmert, I will say Olmert, Ol, Omar referred to this war as a war of extermination. I know, but I know, I know. So now you have some, at least one statement, one statement that I agree with you is genocidal,

but it was not issued by anybody in the chain of command. You've conceded that the people who were in charge for the first year and X months who were presiding over the military decisions while it was that Israel was being accused of genocide. People were actually with the levers of

decision making. They didn't make genocide. Galant did. Galant did. I thought you could see that. I'm talking about Netanyahu's Amalek. I don't think that's genocidal. The Galant statement was clearly about collective punishment because you're talking about cutting off food, water, electricity from the whole population. Collective punishment is not genocide either.

We can call it a murderous statement then. Okay, but, okay, well, except that he says we're fighting human animals and it could, you know, I don't want you to be too kind to him, but one might just infer that everybody knows he means a lot. Well, the man of Kogat, a day later, said, was clearly, he specifically said, the people of Gaza. He said, they're celebrating while they're

I don't know who that name is. I don't know who Kogat is. I don't know what the acronym stands for, but they're involved in policy for the occupied territories. Now, have you looked... He had a genocidal statement. Have you looked into the procedures that Israel has when they target people, the chain of command, in terms of all the lawyers that are in the room? In other words, even if you have some minister who wants genocide how does that get from that guy's mouthing off to the very

to the procedures which sign off on which targets are to be bombed are you referring to the air force because i don't think this is the case for like mr vosh i mean he says kill everyone kill every woman who's in that certain corridor. So you don't think the Air Force bombing is genocide? I think the Air Force bombing is murder and part of the genocide. Right. Because the standard... So you think the people... First of all, I think there is bureaucracy and so forth with the Israeli Air Force.

It's different than the Army. But I think that these standards have become nominal in the current... You think that or you have... Well, I mean, if you read the New York Times... There was a New York Times article last year released about how the collateral damage standard just went off the charts. You could get 20 people killed for one individual.

Yes. And they also... We did stuff like that, too. America did stuff like that, too. When? In Mosul or Raqqa, though? No, no, no. We had Phil Klaner. John Spencer may say that's not true. No. We weren't even close to killing as may say that's not true. No.

We weren't even close to killing as many civilians, or as a proportion. There's another thing Spencer lies about, by the way. He attributes all the civilians killed by ISIS in Mosul to the American coalition to try to make America look worse so Israel looks better in comparison. No, he doesn't. I'll just read a little bit of you, just so people know. The chain of command for authorization of sensitive targets strikes the chief of staff and a written legal opinion escalating oversights for high-risk targets. Civilian warning mechanisms, the IDF issues advanced warnings via leaflets, calls, texts, and roof knocks to evacuate civilians from targeting areas fulfilling the IHO requirements to take all precautions. This is just bullet points. I mean, like they are systematically,

we can look at what the press release says. They are systematically bombing homes where there's no military activity. I did not get this from a press release. Well, we know what they're doing. From West Point article, proportionality review of all levels. Military lawyers assess each strike to ensure expected civilian.

Well, I'm trying to ask you what you actually think is going on. Do you think the military lawyers are signing off on genocide? I think that the system... So based on what I know about the airstrikes, which is extremely extensive, again, systematically bombing homes because they think one Hamas guy is there

or because they say one person who is working for the government, who isn't even a lawful combatant, is there, or it's their error rate. They are systematically bombing homes. When I did my last research, over and over again, I saw children killed, where entire families were killed with them, in a home with no military activity, killing one person. So they either are signing off on murder, or this is fake. Okay, let me- One of the two. I think in the past, there was, you know, I'm not an expert in the Israeli Air Force, but I think in the past, there was more bureaucracy and checks for airstrikes compared to the soldiers on the ground.

And in the past? There's clearly not the case right now. But in the past, nobody said that. In the past. Well, okay. And you wouldn't agree with me. I think if you look at my content about Israel before October 7th, it's not favorable, but I wouldn't, I didn't accuse them of anything like I'm accusing them now. Now,

do we agree that Hamas is guilty of all the same things? Genocidal intent, statements, whatever. Well, they're not guilty of genocide. Is there something, is there something that Israel, I understand the scale is different

because of their ability to scale differently, but is there something that Israel has I understand the scale is different because of their ability to scale differently, but is there something that Israel has done in terms of statements or killing or failing to confine their killing to military targets? Can we talk about intention now? We can talk about intention if you wish. I'm happy to. Are you talking about intention or action?

Has Hamas not made statements at least as bad as what Israel made? So, yeah, there are definitely Hamas leaders who have made... Has Hamas not targeted civilians in the same way? Obviously they've targeted... Let me make a point here, though. The murder... You're saying Hamas is not guilty of genocide, but Israel is?

Clearly, okay. Let me make a point here. So first of all, I'll mention why I don't think October 7th is genocide. And then I'll talk about the question of genocidal intent, which I don't have a strong opinion on vis-a-vis Hamas, because I think there's one or you can look at it one or two ways. So the first, first of all, I want to make clear, what do I mean by genocide? Why do I think Israel is committing genocide? You actually, you're going to make the case now that Hamas actually has less harsh intent for its enemy than Israel has for its enemy.

Yeah, essentially. Okay. So not before Yeah, essentially. Okay. So, not before October 7th, but... Now. Well, no, on October... Yes, on October 7th and... Well, I wouldn't make that case on October 5th. Well, then why'd they plan October 7th?

They had to have the intent on October 5th. No, no, no. I wouldn't make that case vis-a-vis Israel's intent on October 5th. That's my point. Let me describe what I mean by genocide. If the shoes were reversed, Hamas would be going easier on Israel now than Israel's going on Hamas?

Now, I think, who knows what they do now? Okay, go ahead. I interrupt you. Go ahead. It's a hypothetical question. So first I want to define what I mean by genocide. What do I mean when I accuse Israel of genocide? So there's legal definitions under the Genocide Convention, but in practice, how law works

is you look at cases, you look at human understanding, and language of destroying a people in whole or in part, as used in the Genocide Convention, that's not really self-contained, the meaning of it. So we have to figure out based on precedent, based on legal precedent, based on other matters, what does genocide actually mean? So how I would define it in this case is, and really generally, is you have to, although the Genocide Convention allows for other possibilities, you have to engage in mass intentional killing. We're not talking about collateral damage. We're talking about intentional murder of civilians. And it has to be done with the intent to destroy a people.

So you can't, if you're just massacring people to try to, so suppose Israel were just massacring Gazans, killing Gazans to try to make them not want to do October 7th again, to realize the cost of this, that would not, in my view, be genocide. The reason I believe Israel is committing a genocide is because

I believe they want to destroy Palestine Gazans as a people, not through the, like the, and Hamas doesn't want the same. I'll talk about Hamas in a second. Cause I'm not, I'm not as committed to that as you think I am. The policy of Israel and it's written this Trump Gaza vision.

And Dania, who has boasted about Dania, who said we're destroying houses in order to get them to leave. They want to basically kill all these people to try to ethnically cleanse the rest. That's my view of it. It isn't the final solution. They're not trying. Like the Jews of Europe, there was at some point a policy to actually wipe them out genetically.

Like wipe them out, just kill all of them, right? I don't say it's this extreme. But it's a genocide, I'd argue, that's akin to the Rohingya genocide, where you're trying to kill some, make life miserable for some, to try to ethnically cleanse the rest. And I think whether it's the starvation strategy, whether it's the obvious deliberate targeting of civilians by guys like Yehuda Vash, whether it's this Where's Daddy program where you're deliberately bombing families, stuffing homes over and over again to get some nominal or military target, or even a target that isn't a valid military target, I think

it's aimed at trying to get the Gazans to leave. And in that sense, they're trying to destroy the people of Gaza. Violating proportionality. Well, where's daddy if it's disproportionate? That's the crime. No, so my view is that these are sham rationales for killing entire families. Especially, you have to understand, too, that many of these cases are not even combatants at all.

So sometimes they're junior militants, you could argue disproportionately. I'd argue murderers in that case, too, but in some cases they're just civilian employees of the government. They can't... Who signs off on those targets? The lawyers? Look, this is what's happening.

Yeah, a lawyer signs off, or they're not doing the same. I don't know. Israel has a free press, a very, very. And they had a free press. You know how many thousands of articles have been censored in whole or in part during the war by the military censor. Okay, but Israel has. The free press is collapsing. I read her arts every day.

If that's what collapse looks like. Hamas has no free press. My only point is that Israel has an adversarial press. Everybody knows everything. I don't know if you know what goes on in Israel. Everybody knows everything. I'm amazed what I hear as rumors in the olive tree that I read about in the papers in terms of including, up until including the strike on Iran's nuclear reactor. I heard about it through rumors, but like everybody knows everything. If there was a widespread policy among the lawyers, and there's got to be

hundreds, if not thousands of lawyers signing up on all these targets to... They wouldn't use the word genocide, but there are no rules anymore. We know about it. It's widely reported. I mean, again... Not widely reported. The where's daddy is not widely reported.

The where's daddy is widely reported. But the notion that the where's daddy means you don't even have to be a you can we can it can knowingly kill civilians. And we're going to send the Air Force to do it. And we're going to we're going to give them their orders and we're going to fill out the card that has to be hard and signed by the lawyer and authorized that that lawyer who signed and authorized it knew there was just civilians there and he does it because he's part of the genocide machine. That's what you believe. And I'm saying you don't have evidence of that.

So, let me just go on. Just look at the pattern of systematically bombing homes with no militant activity. Nobody does this. It's the reason why the majority of fatalities are women and children. And if you look at violent fatalities, there's no precedent for this in the 21st century where you're killing women and children, the majority. If you look at deaths in cases where there's famine, sometimes you have, you know, the majority women and children. But you acknowledge if they wore uniforms and if they didn't embed in the hospitals.

No, because where's daddy doesn't have anything to do with that. No. It's just killing someone in their home. We're almost out of time. I have a question. Based on everything you said now, do you agree that the war against Israel in 1948 was a genocidal war? No. What difference? There were no statements, genocidal statements?

There were genocidal statements. But you have to look at conduct, too. They didn't massacre Israelis when they captured the Arab regular armies. They massacred some. There was, I think, one where— Well, they didn't have... Benny Morris' figure is three massacres in which the Palestinian Arab militias participated

and zero were the regular Arab armies. They didn't kill POWs either. But Benny Morris, who you like, acknowledges that the Arab regular armies... Who you like, too. You said he was your top guy. I heard you on With Destiny saying he's my... You said PAP is too tendentious. Morris is your top guy. I heard you on with Destiny saying he's my You said Pap is too tendentious.

Morris is my top guy. Morris is pre-Second Intifada workers great. He has some problems, but he's very We're discussing his pre-Second. Well, this is actually from 2008, which is probably his only good book after the Second Intifada. But it's still a pretty good book. But he has counted three massacres

carried out by the Palestinian Arab militias. I think he says zero carried out by the Palestinian Arab militias. I think he says zero carried out by the Arab regular armies, but you could argue one. And I think 24 for the Yishuv and then the IDF. And he also acknowledges that the POWs were treated well by the Arab regular armies. So there was rhetoric, but there wasn't a genocide. I have to see that. But there were statements, slaughter the Jews, drive the Jews

into the sea, we will murder, wreck, and ruin everything standing in the way, be English, American, or Jewish. All the Jews will be eventually massacred. In 1949, it was one after another after another genocidal state. When they overran settlements, they didn't massacre. Obviously, the statements are evidence, but you have to then look at what the actions are, too. Well, I don't know that Israel is going in there and massacring people either. I mean, look at these aid, look at these people seeking aid. They're shot every day. There's just no, at some point, you may have a nominal system, but if there's just no standards for targeting. Let's put our guard down for a second.

Why do you think those people were shot? Well, first of all, some of those stories seem to not be correct. Okay, so I have a friend whose cousin, 15-year-old cousin, this is true, right? This is the woman I was talking about earlier who's anti-Hamas from a liberal family by Gaza standards. And her cousin, 15-year-old boy, was trying to help the family get aid and was shot in the head by the IDF and was in a coma for a day. And now he's starting to, like, talk again. So this is real. The CNN did an investigation.

The bullets were Israeli. The NATO-grade full metal jacket bullets. This has all happened. No. Some things have happened. Some things that were reported haven't happened. But— What hasn't happened?

Some of the shootings turned out not to have happened. Which ones? The ones that were reported that were retracted. I don't know. By whom? By Eisenberg? No, by BBC. But let's but let's. That's a different issue. But let's just let's just. That's not the question I'm asking. Israel can be trusted to operate in its own amoral interest. I'm not talking about, I'm assuming arguendo, they're a horrible bunch. Shooting people coming to get aid,

especially after going through all this trouble of creating this whole bureaucracy to distribute it, bringing it in, there's no... It's impossible for me to believe that Netanyahu on down saying, I've got it.

Let's create this whole thing and then we'll announce that we're giving aid and then we'll give the order and we'll mow them down. That's not plausible to me because it's 100% against Israel's interests. And if from that Israel wants to have people starving to death and look like concentration camp victims. Well, they did start people.

I'm saying that would not be in Israel's interest either. So it's hard for me to accept, but not you. And I want you to explain it, that you think this order came from the top to shoot these people showing up to get aid. And then, of course, at the same time, we know that Hamas has done the same. And I'd like to know why you think Hamas has done that, shooting to get aid. So it doesn't have to be some document signed by Netanyahu where he says, I hereby decree. No, why would he want it? Well, he could be with a blink of an eye, a wink of an eye.

He wants it. Why does he not punish this guy who leads a whole division in Gaza that says no innocent civilians, all women can be shot because they're men in disguise? Because he wants to see large numbers of civilians killed to try to get the rest to flee. That's what he wants. I can answer your question. He wants people to be killed.

I don't think he wants to kill every Gazan, and I think he realizes he couldn't get away with that. I think he wants to see a lot of civilians killed to try to ethnically cleanse the rest. So, yeah, this is a policy. He wants to shoot people showing up to get it. Yeah. You believe that? Yeah, I do.

I think he wants to see—I don't think he's visualizing, like, the cousin of my friend. What does he gain by that? He gains ethnic cleansing. He wants the people to leave Gaza. They can't leave Gaza. They—150,000 have left. Believe me, people are trying to leave, and some of them are leaving. Look, there are people at the border in Egypt who have let people through.

You know, like, nearly, I think the figures are, it may be as much as 8%, 9%, 10% who've left. Okay, so let me ask. You know, a lot of people have left. Let me ask. Even though they're not allowed to. They can't leave now, can they? Where can they go? Israel allows people to leave.

To go where? I'm right now arranging. Where can they go? If you have a visa. To go where? I'm right now arranging. Where can they go? If you have a visa and a plane ticket, you can go. Okay. I know someone who works. Only affluent people can get visa and plane tickets. People who can't afford food are not getting visas and plane tickets.

150,000 people have left the Strip. They want people to leave. They want the Egyptians. You don't think they want the Egyptians to open the border and let them all leave? Yes, they do, but it's not open now. So when they're shooting these people. All right. Let me ask you a question. First of all, it pains me that you believe that about not a soldier who could be a murderer or the reality of almost two years of war and the PTSD and the rage and the resentment that might cause somebody to open fire or, you fire, especially law enforcement people,

that, you know, especially when faced with crowds, that we ought not to assume it was premeditated because it almost has never been premeditated when we see a law enforcement person with a gun who opens fire and kills innocent people. And, you know, when you're with a mob and they're coming and something scares you and you have PTSD. And, you know, it seems to be a very Occam's razor plausible thing that somebody did something horrible.

And it's painful for me to, and you represent maybe a majority of the world. And I say, no, that's what Netanyahu wants. He high-fived with his, whatever it is, when he saw these people being shot trying to get food. And then he stopped doing it, of course. But as far as why he doesn't fire the people, the thin blue line, as it were, is a fact of human psychology. Why is it that the priests covered for other priests

who were raping little boys? Why is that? It's so fucking horrifying, right? Nothing makes us angrier than to know that those priests, hundreds of them, in a grand conspiracy, covered for their fellow priests sexually abusing children. Why do they do that? Because they want those children abused?

No, that's not the reason. Why do cops cover for cops? Why do doctors cover for their fellow doctors after they've committed malpractice? You show me the example, you will not find an exception to this thin blue line dynamic. And that's how I explain it. And I don't defend it. But in a time when a country is at war, especially, there is this rallying thing. They certainly don't want to give, it's a mistake by the way, I really believe it's a mistake, but you see it all around. They don't want to give, it's a mistake, by the way. I really believe it's a mistake, but you see it all around. They don't want to give ammunition to the enemy to say, look, even Israel

says he's said genocidal stuff. So I understand how it happens. And if it didn't happen so routinely all over the world in so many less serious situations, I would say, yeah, Matthew is making a good point here. How else can you explain

these things? This is not the way people normally behave, but when it's 100% the way people normally behave, 100% the way armies cover for each other. We had our Abu Ghraib. It's ubiquitous in wartime. And that's how I explain it. And it's repulsive. Regarding Netanyahu, this is reported by YNet, two days into the war. And this is very interesting because in the first couple days of the war, the fatalities, if you look at them from open sources and others, the fatality demographics don't look completely insane. It's like mostly adult males are being killed, which is what you'd expect in war, by Israel. And Netanyahu, according to reporting in Ynet, was angry about the pace of the bombing and said, bomb homes, don't worry about vetted targets, and slam the table. That, to me, is clearly a statement of don't worry about collateral damage. Don't worry about killing civilians. Another issue.

I agree with you about that. Another thing regarding Netanyahu, which I think there's just no answer for. I agree that we didn't reach the level of famine as a technical definition. I think that the violent deaths are extremely high in Gaza, but the indirect deaths are low compared to what you'd expect from the violent deaths. However, it still is a fact that Netanyahu blocked food imports for months, and there's no coherent military explanation for this. In fact, it grew Hamas. It grew Hamas because hungry young boys who weren't very thoughtful, 16, 17, 18, 19, joined because they wanted to get food for themselves and their families. There were dozens, probably hundreds of children who starved to death, especially children with special nutritional needs, need special milk or so on. And no Hamas died.

In fact, it grew because of this. So it doesn't make any sense other than as an attack on civilians. I, of all the things Israel's done, and I said it all along, the one thing that I thought was the most clear mistake they made was this not letting food in for six weeks let's confine ourselves to the food it was two and a half months

I'm happy you corrected me on that and I don't know that it's a war crime and I'll tell you why it might not be a war crime I'm not saying it wasn't a war crime, and I'll tell you why it might not be a war crime. I'm not saying it wasn't a war crime, because if the math is correct that they had delivered enough aid to Gaza in tonnage such that Hamas was the one withholding it,

I believe, just my instinct for the law, is that Israel would have no obligation to provide food if the leadership had it but was not distributing it. Nevertheless, that's as a technical matter, as a legal, would it be a war crime?

Nevertheless, what they were doing, and by the way, you remember this hot time, I was worried about this at the beginning of the war. They were using hunger in some way in their war effort. And I believe they tried to calibrate it in some way,

knowing that Hamas would withhold the food. Let's try to ferment some resentment towards Hamas, because the people know Hamas has the food. You seem to be conceding. You're targeting civilians. You're trying to get them to be upset because they're starving. And Hamas is not even suffering, really. Yes, I'm agreeing.

This is the one criticism of Israel's. And I'll go a step further. It was coalitional politics and pressure within his coalition that might have put him to cross that line. And it blew up in their face. The other thing that's important here is the medicine. So do we think Hamas are all diabetic or that they're selling insulin shots to get rich and fund? No, this was, again, just trying to make life miserable for civilians, maybe to get an uprising. But they killed people. No, look, Matthew, I'm not, you know, there's not on this particular issue.

We're not like speaking. More children were killed this way than on October 7th. There is a. Been children. Can we do this again? Maybe even over Zoom. You're not based in New York. Where are you based? I'm based in London. I'm visiting my folks.

I would like to. Maybe can just do it over Zoom. I think it's interesting for us. Yeah, we can. But what were we just saying right before that? I mentioned insulin. We're talking about the food, the blocking of food imports. I don't remember. Okay, let's

go just to the end. I'm debating whether to say one other thing. Oh, yeah. So I want to just make kind of a statement. You can respond. You don't have to. And then I'm going to ask like a parting question.

We hear all the time. Hatem likes to talk all the time about, you know, you're creating more terrorists. For everyone you kill, you create two terrorists, and there's all this resentment, and there's tremendous attention to the psychology of the Palestinians, which is brought to bear essentially in some way in the argument of, what do you expect from that? Do you understand what they're going through? Of course they're going to

including up to and including Norman Finkelstein's excuse of October 7th as being like a slave rebellion. There is an Israeli psychology as well. And it will lead to them doing

things that they shouldn't. I'm very proud. I've said this before. I'm very proud of the... Not very proud is the wrong word. I have a lot of respect for the kind of Jewish cultural overlay of values and thinking that I was, as an accident of birth, was given.

But it's just a cultural overlay. We're just human beings. And we resort to the primitive like any other group of people does in primitive situations. And in this situation of all this death and October 7th and hostages being tortured and the urgency of trying to get them out,

lines will be blurred. All of which is to say that I think it would be foolish of me to pretend that lines don't get blurred. Foolish of me to pretend that Israelis don't cross those lines. I will point out again, only one side is holding the hostages and can take free passage. But that doesn't give Israel a blank check, that's what I want to say.

Now, let me just ask you the parting question. Let's say that, I asked this of Josh Zeps, let's say that tomorrow Israel agrees to a ceasefire, which I think is what you want, and Hamas stays in command of Gaza, which I think is also what you want, correct? No, I don't want Hamas to govern Gaza. They're not going to give up.

Yeah, I mean, it's better they govern Gaza than the genocide continues. Obviously, I'd prefer that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not... Yeah. Of the realistic outcomes, that's the one you prefer.

Yeah. Now, for years, we heard about Gaza being an open-air prison, concentration camp, and we were told that this excessive blockade of goods in and out was cruel a war crime and it was a compelling narrative but now we know that actually that blockade leaked like a sieve. Almost two years into this war, Hamas is armed to the teeth. They still have rockets from time to time. And if they were able to sneak in enough armaments and materials to build 300 miles of tunnels, all those rockets, all those weapons, all the bullets, all of it that they've had, obviously they could sneak in anything they wanted.

Now, if Hamas stays in charge and Hamas continues to promise we'll do it if we get the chance, Israel, I think even you will agree, is going to have no choice but to implement an even harsher blockade going forward. Will you back Israel on its blockade of Gaza should Israel end this conflict under the terms that you accept? No. So then Israel will have to allow...

What I favor are negotiations between Israel and Hamas toward a two-state solution. Hamas said... Just the other day, Hamas said never, never, never. Please, please. They have hardliners. They have extremity logs. They also have more pragmatic people.

I think that if we could get... Send me a video of a pragmatic person. Go ahead. As I made the point earlier, they haven't Islamized the criminal law in Gaza in 17 years. It's pretty remarkable. You're talking about the pragmatic person saying we should negotiate with Israel. If

Israel offered a two-state solution in the legal borders contingent on some kind of exile of Hamas leaders, disarming of Hamas, I absolutely believe that this would be accepted by Hamas.

In fact, they've said that. They've said that they talk about like, they talk about like some kind of 100-year truce and then they're going to fight Israel again. Okay, I mean, what was the world like 100 years ago? I mean, the point would be to get security guarantees. I've heard about a 10-year truce, but they'll never accept the Jewish state.

No, yeah, they won't ideologically. But even moderate, even Palestinians who think like, you know, a dear friend of mine who's coming to visit us in Miami, this will be after I come back from London, complicated schedule. This is a guy who's completely opposed to what happened on October 7th. He actually said, I'll share this,

it was personal comment, but I'll share it. He said that he thought of his daughter when he saw Shani Luke. He lives in the Middle East, by the way. He's not in the diaspora. But in his heart, he doesn't see Israel as legitimate. Like, you're not going to get, even people who are pro-peace, you're not going to get to see Israel as legitimate. Maybe in 200 years they will. Matthew, is it asking too much for a leader of the Palestinians

to say out loud what you're saying? Yeah, Arafat even did that. To say, you know what, Israel? If you would agree to a two-state solution, we will return the hostages and take safe passage and we'll recognize the Jewish state along the lines of the Olmert map. Why can't they just say it out loud?

They would never accept this. But why don't they? Maybe as many of them. They should, but they've said that they would accept the two-state solution. It doesn't matter. No, they've never said that. They've also said that.

That's not true. They have. No, they have not. Here's my laptop. You show me right now where they accepted the two-state solution. Under the circumstances I described. Meaning no recognition of Israel.

I don't know what recognition means. But they said we're going to have some temporary truce that's 100 years. A truce is not a two-state solution. You can even show me that. I don't think there's going to be a productive exercise around. But after the show, I'll send you links. And then I've looked, I've looked into it. So Matthew has promised it, send me a source.

It's an article called In Theory, Reframing Sacred Values by Scott Atrin and Robert Axelrod, two professors. I'll quote a little bit from it. Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet, Israel's counterterrorism and internal security agency. By the way, we've interviewed him, you should look it up, expressed to us his view that Hamas' proposals for a hudna, a provisional armistice could be moving

in this direction. Yassin, who's the Hamas guy, stated that a hudna was renewable for 30, 40, or 100 years, although it would never signal recognition of Israel, which I think is a key point. The article goes on.

It compares it to the IRA in Great Britain. Of course, the IRA never refused to recognize Britain's existence, and many Israelis believe that Hamas's refusal of recognition and permanent peace indicate that any hudna will just be a smokescreen to allow military preparation for an eventual attack on Israel. And then Ayalon, who recently lost the vote for leadership of Israel's Labor Party to Ehud Barak, says, a hudna that disallows military preparation for an attack on Israel, in other words, that Hamas would have to agree to be demilitarized, and does not explicitly rule out some future form of recognition, can allow dialogue.

So that's Matthew's source. I'm adding the caveat. There was just a London hearing, and they asked the guy specifically, will you accept the end of the conflict if Israel goes? And he said, no, never. End of the conflict would mean Israel is recognized forever. I don't think that that's their position, but they have really...

If they agree to a hundred year truce and say that's a good faith, I mean, who knows what the world will look like. It's amazing to me. They have to maintain some kind of ideological cover to their hardliners. Because they can't say, oh, we're done fighting forever. Why can't they say, why should they? But if they got the right offer, they should.

But the problem is that if Israel agrees to this, then tomorrow the West Bank could be overrun by Gaza, by Hamas as well. And then October 7th will come from the left and the right. Israel can't accept that. Israel needed, Israel,

it was hard enough for Israel to accept it when Sadat said it. It was really tough for the Israelis, not because they wanted the Sinai. Well, they did. I mean,

Moshe Dayan said, better to have Sharm el-Sheikh without peace. Dude, dude, this is where you're on thin. I, you can't, I lived through it.

I know with 100% certainty. You don't look that old, Noam. You really lived through it? I know, I know through 100% certainty. Looking pretty young over there. There are always statements. The Arab world is lucky because they don't have,

we have no access to their minutes, their diaries, their private comments, whatever it is. You can find statements in the last year of American history within the Trump administration. You can make any case you want about any issue based on some single statement somebody said somewhere, somebody mouthed off.

But the fact is, the big issue in 73 or in Camp David, when Carter, 77, 78, I guess, was, can we trust it? Does he mean it? And Sadat convinced the Israeli people he meant it. And then, you can look it up, and then the polls shifted

all the way in favor of giving it up. And then Menachem Begin, the most hard, gave in. But he was less ideologically committed to, to Sinai

than he was the West Bank because he saw Judea and Samaria, as he would call it, as much more important to Jewish history than Sinai. This is part of his view. Yes, but Ehud Olmert, who was a right-winger,

he was Sharon's deputy. He was elected on a promise to pull out of the West Bank unilaterally. He was elected on that platform. You mean Gaza? Out of the West Bank. Olmert ran on a plan to leave the West Bank.

This is what the Israelis were capable of doing. And if there was a Palestinian leader, ala Sadat, who got up and said, listen, Israel, we don't want this anymore. We want peace. Like Lapid, you know, Lapid, when he was prime minister for a little bit, he made a speech. People of Gaza, please, we'll help you. We'll send technical stuff. We'll give you economic aid. All we ask is the end of the rockets.

All that we need is, and what kills me about you and people like you is like, you have no demands on that side. You can't expect him to admit that he'll be the, you have to let him save face. He could just say it's a truce. And Israel should just totally disarm based on somebody's promise, not of a peace treaty. It's the first time I've ever heard. It's too much to ask for a peace treaty. You'd have security assurances. You'd have probably some kind of exile of the Hamas leadership.

This is what's being... Until that happens, can Israel have the blockade? Why is Israel continuing... The West Bank, you have... I know you were going to say, oh, pay to slay, whatever. Since the second intifada, the PA, the PLO, have done nothing to Israel. They have not attacked Israel. They have not engaged in terrorism for two decades.

All they have gotten in return is there was this last minute offer by Olmert, but he was a lame duck. He was unpopular. 2014, he walked away also. Since 2009, there's not been... I don't accept that there's been

any good faith offer from Israel since 2009. In 2014, Netanyahu made an offer? Yes, in 2014, Indyk reported in the New York Times that Obama, that Abbas would not respond

to Obama's entreaties about a peace plan and Obama just got discouraged. Because it wasn't a concrete offer. Can I say a couple of things? It wasn't interesting. Why is Abbas, if he doesn't want a two-state solution,

why does he not engage in violent struggle? Why does he just allow the land to be stolen in the West Bank? I have a theory about that. He just wants to be corrupt and make money? It seems Israel has a... If you look at the history of colonialism and so forth, and even if you regard Israel as

completely legitimate at the founding, which I certainly don't, but I'm sure you do, the West Bank is clearly a colonial project. You have a mother state Israel sending people, settlers, to essentially take over land and expand the territory. It's a colonial project. If you look at comparative in history, Abbas is like one of the most benign partners you could have in this kind of a context. Again, it's a second indefatig,

no violence. Okay, I have a theory about it. I have a theory. Two decades now. So let me read you from the... Isn't that enough evidence that they're a partner? Let me give you my theory. First of all, just so I back up. This is 2014 New York Times. In a March meeting with Mr. Abbas in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama tried to sell him on the Kerry framework. The Palestinian leader, officials said, did not respond, preferring to reiterate his rejection of the Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Quote, the president was skeptical about a deal after that meeting, the official said. Abbas was more comfortable pivoting to public grievance than focusing on a private negotiation. In a speech last week at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mr. Indyk, now Indyk died recently, he was an anti-Netanyahu guy to his core.

Mr. Indyk drew a distinction between the Israeli government and Mr. Netanyahu, who he said took substantial risks he moved he showed flexibility mr index said we had him i think by the end of that process in the zone of a possible agreement now of course i'm not saying anything would have come with that one one snippet and you're using it advantageously nothing yahoo since 2009 it has not it's relevant has not offered a viable two can i give you a concrete can i give you my theory about abas? By the way, only 5% of the Palestinian people support Abbas, and he canceled elections because Hamas was likely going to win the elections.

My theory, and this came to me based on a conversation that Hatem knows about. My theory is that Abbas and the upper middle class and more successful Palestinians there. And by the way, the standard of living in the West Bank is the highest of the non-oil Arab states. Very similar to Jordan.

Maybe, but it's the highest of the non-oil Arab states. Gaza is the lowest. Okay, but I'm talking about the West Bank. Pre-war Gaza. I'm talking about the West Bank. Maybe, but it's the highest of the non-Alai. Gaza is the lowest of pre-war Gaza. Let's bank. That they understand that the second there is a solution with Israel, there's going to be a civil war.

And I've run this by people since someone mentioned this to me. He's not, Hatem, not yet. In other words, as bad as the status quo is, they're practical people. They see what goes on in the other tribally mixed or Arab countries that don't have agreement. They understand Hamas. They understand jihadism. They understand Iran and its designs on controlling things.

They see what happened in Lebanon. And they're like, you know what? What good is going to come of a two-state solution for Abbas and for people like him? They're going to kill each other. This is not my calling the Arabs primitive. This is verbatim

what a Palestinian told me. You need to get off of that point because it's not that important. No, you asked me why. Now, just let your guard down for a second. Think about what... I'm interested in something you maybe haven't thought about. Do you understand my logic?

Let me make a point here. I think part of the reason Arafat turned down the agreement in 2000 was because it wasn't politically viable to accept. He kept saying, I'm going to get assassinated. Clinton wanted him, for instance, to waive the right of return within, generally waive it, like there would be some limited exceptions. And that was not politically viable because Haqq al-Awda, or the right of return in Palestinian culture, is very, very important to their identity. So here's why I bring that up. I bring that up to say, oh, you may have a dream of a point, Noam, but also to say, why do we always try to push the Palestinians to do things, to come to agreements that are not

politically viable and could in fact lead to civil war? There are certain agreements, if an Israeli prime minister endorsed the right of return, that would cause us, and somehow a government, it's pie in the sky, but somehow, go with the hypothetical, somehow this gets implemented. There would be a civil war in Israel if gets implemented, there would be a civil war in Israel. If all the Palestinians were under... Oh, come on, there would. There would be huge unrest. Yes, there'd be political unrest.

If somehow this were being implemented, there'd be huge political unrest. There'd be political unrest, which is not the same thing as a bloody civil war. Can I just say something? Yeah, because this is the peace plan. If you tweet bad about me, I'm fucking... Are we both going to retweet this debate? yeah I'll retweet it

so A this is the peace plan this is what we need to happen A Palestinians need to get a leader that steps up and really represent the people to Israel and the whole world needs to stop supporting the leaders, the Palestinian leaders that they want

let's mention Hamas, big deal exists because of Israel. And what Hamas did to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia, to a lot of people, were bad. And nobody stopped them until they started attacking Israel. But when they attacked Egypt, the same thing with Al-Qaeda before, you know, people just keep supporting them. So we need to stop supporting Hamas. We need to find the Israeli. And then, which most importantly, I think it's important,

those who committed a war crime need to be punished. Because those who, if you want to move to peace, you're not going to just let it go. You're either going to become a terrorist, or justice has to be made. So these are the three things. The Palestinians need to get a leader that really represents them and say what they mean and mean what they say.

The world, stop supporting Hamas and Al-Qaeda and all these people and giving money to Qatar and all that. And those who committed a crime from both sides, the October 7th, or everything that happened in Gaza, must be punished. You know, and we saw examples of Saudi Arabia and UAE. The one is, oh, it doesn't want a peace anymore, you know? Yeah, I would just add add to that that um there needs to be prosecution there needs to be the charge of genocide has been made and by by myself but by a

number of people who are more distinguished than i am that needs to be investigated and in criminals murderers need to be punished that includes people who murdered israelis of course and we can call it don't hold your breath we can call it the hot and commit committee since i came up with that um ultimately i think we also with the negotiations need to have a rebalancing of power. Because there was such a huge power differential at Camp David. Palestinians are much weaker than Israel. The Clinton administration was more sympathetic to Israel than to Palestine. Was there something about the Olmert offer that you found insufficient?

The problem with the Olmert offer, well, first of all, we don't know all the details of it. Is there some detail you suspect? I mean, it was 100%. Capital needs Jerusalem. I mean, I said earlier this moral obligation to be practical. All these people

have died. People are living this way forever. Imagine now, what was the thing that they were holding out for? I mean, isn't it weird that we don't even know what it was? We have much more information about 2000.

Part of the problem with 2000 is... No, we know 2008. We know all the details. 2008 is a lot sketchier. I think Olmert was, in good faith, wanted a two-state solution, but the details are much more scattershot. Olmert was incredibly unpopular. He was incredibly unpopular. There's no way that the Netanyahu government was going to

implement this. Yeah, he was a lame duck. This is your mistake. And I meant to say this before. 2000, we can talk about it in more detail. I'll say one thing after. And then we're going to wrap it up. Let's do it again. We'll do it again in a couple weeks. Stuff happening in Iran now. It'll say one thing after. And then we're going to wrap it up. Let's do it again. We'll do it again in a couple weeks. There's stuff happening in Iran now. It'll be interesting to see.

I know, I know. This is, I mean, you're not going to take my word for it. You're not going to believe me. But I'm telling you what I really believe is true based on my entire life around Israelis. I was raised by four grandparents

who came to Israel in the early part of the 20th century as refugees, pictures in the mud, building Tel Aviv. You know, if you had told them they were colonials, they'd be like, what are you talking about? And all I ever heard my entire life was, would they make peace? Will the Arabs make peace? The Arabs will never make peace.

I don't trust it. This is up until Sadat. I remember I've told the story a million times when my father began to cry, like literally crying because he heard Sadat speaking. And he says, oh, my God, he means it. Like, I never thought this could happen and immediately he's like give him whatever he wants

the Israeli people are western people who do not want to send their kids to die especially for these fucking religious fanatics in the West Bank it's a tough sell after October 7th to tell them, trust us, which is

what you're going to, that's what you want to sell them. That, trust, don't ignore our rhetoric, ignore our murder, ignore our promises. Just note that somewhere on the internet you can find that somebody did say, you know, we'd be willing for a truce. This is so absurd

to think. And all the Palestinians need to do, and maybe too much to ask, they need to tell the Israelis in a way that they mean it. We want peace with you, and we want this to end. We were close with Al-Mert. We actually

have a few details we weren't satisfied with. Here they are. Give us those things and you have a deal. And it doesn't matter what Netanyahu wants. Because 50, 60, 70% of the Israeli population, if it's sincere, and they believe it's sincere, will swing, it's a democracy, it will swing in the other direction. Israel swung to the right. When I was a kid, 150,000 people were marching for peace, peace now, meaning peace

under any circumstances. They swung to the right after the second intifada. Israel is not want this. They snapped out of it. They are disillusioned. It's a disillusioned nation who believes that we did actually go down all the left-wing policies. We had 10, 12 years of prime ministers preaching two-state solutions, and all we got was our kids blown up in coffee houses, and we still don't even know today what the hell that was all about. What were they even asking for? What was the demand behind the second intifada? They're killing us. Arafat's walked away, and you could hold a gun to anybody's head. Nobody could even tell you what the demand was.

They just want to kill us. We were saying we want peace. We want to negotiate. Here's the map. Come talk. Come sit down. No second intifada. This is the defining moment of Israeli psychology. And at some point, I think you're very much in

the wrong here to be making this kind of solicitous excuses for the fact that the Palestinians won't do the one thing which would end the conflict. I'm going to stipulate to you that Israel is awful. Israelis, I know them better than you do. It doesn't matter. Everything that happened in the past, none of it matters because it can't change the past. The only thing that can bring a good future to these people is what the Palestinians can do. Israel has no agency here.

Israel can be nicer to them. Israel can have less oppression. Israel can crack down. Israel has no agency? Israel has no agency in terms of bringing about the solution here. The Arabs, the Palestinians have to cross that threshold and say, yes, we want this. And if you're ready to give it to us, yeah, then you better stop. And then at that point, yes.

Really quickly? I want to make one quick response. And then I'll, this is probably my last remark. I just think this, first of all, I mean, I obviously disagree with you strongly on all the historical claims. I don't think we have time to get into that. I said they don't matter. They don't matter, the historical claims. I think this would be a coherent pro-Israel position before October 7th. Israel has decided to engage in a policy of genocide, and that changes the conversation entirely. I'm not inclined to make a cultural

critique of Palestinian Gazans when they're enduring a genocide. I'm happy to make a cultural critique of Egyptians or any other people in the region, but the Palestinian Gazans are enduring genocide for the reasons I outlined and for many others we could talk about. And that needs to be the priority. What comes after that, it's important to talk about because we do need to have peace. But stopping the genocide and punishing the perpetrators is the overwhelming paramount task. And you're calling for the Gazans to release the hostages and take safe passage out of Gaza? So, yeah, the hostages should be released. Hamas should release the hostages and take safe passage out of Gaza.

That will end the genocide. No, punished. Be punished. Forget about the punishment. I'm saying you, Matthew. It wouldn't end the ethnic cleansing. But if by leaving Gaza this would stop the war, yeah, I would favor that, of course. No, but you call for it.

You call for Israel to do ex-Pisad. I call for them to release the hostages. And take safe passage out of Gaza. Yeah, sure. But this isn't... The problem with this narrative is Hamas did these horrible crimes on October 7th. The Israelis are committing a genocide in Gaza. So the onus should not be on condemning...

But they're holding a hostage. ...a party other than Israel. They're holding a hostage. Yeah, I told you they should be released. Just really quickly, just like you were saying, you know Israeli and they really want peace. I know a lot of Palestinians and you know a lot of Palestinians and they live

peacefully in Israel and they live peacefully here and they do all this. They just need to be released from Hamas, the torture of people, which is supported by the United States. Yeah, and supported by Israel, who gave the money, and also the United States. So we need to stop and let people be, and Palestinians are going to want peace as well.

Who wants their children to be killed? But we have to, and this is the last question, do you support that everybody that committed a crime should be punished in this war? Of course I support it, but it's never going never going to happen okay but it should happen just like it happened with the nazi germany that's how the world move on i i would be so proud of israel and by the way this is not the first time they've gone easy on people who committed crimes you know but this is this is beyond this is every time they bring charges if you read about it like one out of 200 people get actually and and even then it's a slap on the wrist. This is a,

you know, I mean, it shouldn't be hard to criticize this because the same shit happens in America. But what happens is horrible. Just like the Nazis did, we need to and we're talking about October 7th murderers as well. They need to be punished

to a way that this really never happened. And we'd be proud to be humans again. Be an organ donor. Bye. Be an organ. You know who the biggest organ donors are. Tell them who it is. No, I refuse a Jewish heart.

They give it to me as like, I don't want this shit. Did you actually get a heart donated from a Jewish person? I have no idea who did. But, you know, that's the beauty of it. It's like when you wait, it doesn't matter if you're Christian, Jewish, you know, that's the beauty of it, is like when you wait, it doesn't matter if you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim, it doesn't matter,

you just wait as long as you need. I wanted to say one thing, because everyone in the room says I'm anti-Semitic. I'm not Jewish, I don't know that many Jewish people, but just as a historian, I've read a lot about

the Jewish contribution to the Enlightenment, discourses of human rights, the Jewish culture of looking at oneself and critiquing one's own culture, like dialectic. I have to say, this is something Norman Finkelstein has said,

this kind of machismo, self-righteousness from Israel does not seem like the Jewish culture I'm familiar with. And it's not a culture, again, That sounds like a backhanded compliment. No, I mean, it is. Yeah, I forgot. I was like, huh?

Wait a second here. Listen, Israelis, you're right. This has become part of Israeli culture, and it is a little bit of a disconnect from American Jewish culture, because they're in a rough neighborhood, and they've become quite tough. I had a theory. Can I

finish with a joke? I think it's time for aliens to come if the aliens attack Israel we'd be like listen obviously nobody likes you. Did you know that Norman Finkelstein at one time was saying that the Iron Dome was a fraud and the tunnels were not for terrorists? I haven't followed those claims

I know it's crazy the tunnels are very important to the war. Without the tunnels, they couldn't subsist. Yeah. Exist. They couldn't do their hits and runs and ambushes. And everybody must know that they're building the tunnels and wasting the money that they took for the people to the tunnels. I mean.

Billions of dollars. They could have built so much. But Israel should have known that, too. And they were happy not to do it. I mean, if you talk about missed opportunities. I mean, so here I have to, again, disagree. We'll do another show. Poor Tian is probably asleep behind the thing there.

I'm surprised to hear you went to University of Chicago Law School. You don't know many Jews. That's a little weird to me. Are we wrapped up now? Oh, let's say goodnight. So, Matthew, you're going to tweet this. God, if you tweet anything bad about me, and please lay off my friends. Just, just, just.

No, don't, don't, don't. Just criticize them for what you disagree with. As a matter of fact, do more than that. Have conversations with them. You should host them. I'm happy to talk to these people, and I'll happily abide by no personal attacks. I debate any of these people. I think that they're completely wrong.

He allowed me to be, to be fair, what's his name, the guy that you let me respond to, Sam? You know, does Eisenberg live in New York? Oh, I would debate Harris. Yeah, I would too. But to be fair, he hosted Harris in his show and I wasn't here and then he called me and was like listen and, you know, respond.

Do a five minute respond and he posted out. And it turned out to be like 20 minutes. I mean, Harris is just living in literal... No, I think Harris, from all the people you say, we're off, right? No, we're not off. But listen, I want to say, it's one thing to debate,

and I'm happy to host debates, but it can often be more productive just to meet and break bread and shoot. Because when you talk, as we're talking now, you want to win. You're playing to the audience in some way, and you have your dukes up. I think you would find that these people are much more reasonable, much less sure of, or much more compassionate in their hearts than you would understand from

twitter wars this is the worst possible way to interpret somebody's character but after sam harris his effect on people is so damaging it doesn't mean so just because you're way nicer in person than you are on twitter everyone is but. No, I'm pretty good on Twitter. Perhaps. But simply because I believe these people are doing something monstrous, does not believe I think that they're not human beings. Of course they're human beings capable of compassion, laughing, insight. But in this context, I think the only salient critique that I'd listen to is, are the personal insults ineffective? Does it undermine your effectiveness? That's something that I'll have to reflect on after the war, genocide is over. It undermines your own psychological ability to

listen to what they're saying. I think I've investigated their claims quite thoroughly, but that's something I'd entertain. But look, people who are human beings do horrible things, and that's what I believe they're doing. I assume we all agree on that. All right. Good night, everybody. Good night.