The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Ken Roth - We Have It Out! Human Rights Watch Director Counters Charge of Anti-Israel Bias.

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

He walks off after about 35 minutes of a 60-minute interview. In our view, this is an expose of the deep bias that permeates Human Rights Watch. You be the judge. Roth even goes as far as to claim that Israeli soldiers knowingly shot at people speaking in Hebrew. Ironically, we also offer an apology to Norman Finkelstein here. This is quite an episode. 04:44 Dershowitz was unfair to Finkelstein 13:05 Roth Intro 16:02 Proportionality 47:59 Israel Shoots White Flags and its Own Hostages [e-mail] Chairman of HRW repudiates Ken Roth: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html Danielle Haas HRW letter or resignation: https://twitter.com/HillelNeuer/status/1727452511408152934 HRW on Palestinian White Flag Deaths: https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/13/white-flag-deaths/killings-palestinian-civilians-during-operation-cast-lead HRW on Iraq: https://www.hrw.org/report/2003/12/11/target/conduct-war-and-civilian-casualties-iraq HRW - Needless Deaths in the Gulf War: https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1991/gulfwar/

Imagine the audacity of setting yourself up as the world's judge of what is and isn't a proportionate military attack, what is and isn't a war crime, and then being exposed as having no actual standards, guidelines, or processes whatsoever. You're basically just making it up as you go along. That's my take on Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth. In the last few days, I read many essays on the theory of proportionality in war. And of course, it's an extremely complex issue. None of the writers gives us any clear rules. In a certain way, they all throw up their hands. But like they say in Oppenheimer, a three-hour movie basically about proportionality, theory will only get you so far. If you're going to judge people

and accuse them of war crimes and salivate to try them in the world court, don't you have to explain some standards beyond your own gut? War crimes can't be just like porn, which Justice Potter Stewart famously said, I know it when I see it. Now, if we're going to be fair to Stewart's I know it when I see it argument, it was never as stupid as some people claimed. Some things do indeed defy easy codification. Cold logic can lead us astray from our humanity as surely as our emotions can. And sometimes you may not really feel you know something until you see it with your own eyes. Creating a kind of exchange rate between innocent lives and military target value seems almost impossible. And anyone who does it will be called heartless, especially, and it would be inevitable, if they appear to sign off on the deaths of innocents.

Nevertheless, wouldn't any soulful judge who wants to charge someone with war crimes feel compelled to give us some historical examples of battlefield measures he considered to be proportionate. Give us some examples of close call, tough cases, explain scenarios that various respected thinkers and philosophers have grappled with, and tell us which camp he's in. Give us some perspective, Mr. Roth, so we know what guides you. And let's also admit something difficult here. Israel may have to acknowledge limits, even at the cost of ending this war and allowing Hamas to declare victory. Imagine, for instance, that Hamas had somehow booby-trapped all of the tunnels such that one unlucky bomb from Israel would explode all of Gaza, killing almost every civilian man,

woman, and child, more than a million deaths, the mother of all suicide bombs. Does anyone think that Israel would have any moral choice but to abandon its campaign? So the game theory of all this is chilling. It creates terrible incentives for atrocities, and it creates the risk of further descent into barbarism. And yet the world looks the other way, reacting with insufficient outrage at what's right before its eyes. The rules of war, obviously, were meant for good. They were designed to protect morality and protect justice. But the doctrine of proportionality, when combined with this toleration of human shields, is allowing the rules of war to morph into an ultimate weapon of refuge for evil. It's the

perfect bastardization of the law, allowing the victimizer to tie the hands of the victim. Availing itself of the law, the victimizer lives to repeat its crimes over and over, the very opposite of the law's intention. In fact, the lesson of this war may well end up being that Hamas can commit atrocities and then run to the other side of the line and tauntingly thumb its nose at Israel, protected shoulder to shoulder by innocent women and children. And make no mistake, it's only because Hamas wants its civilians to die that its civilians die, at least in such unbearable numbers.

What other conclusion can you draw from an organization that spends billions of dollars on digging tunnels, but not a single dime for bomb shelters? Maybe, except for its leaders. And Hamas leadership has admitted as much as this in interviews. Many lives could be saved, perhaps,

if the world would show unanimous outrage at this tactic and brought pressure to bear. But instead, Human Rights Watch, ostensibly the world's conscience on such matters, focuses almost exclusively on other things and hands down sanctimonious and by the way inaccurate as I will demonstrate sanctimonious reports that then become the fertilizer that people like Norman Finkelstein use to grow their influential arguments against Israel and after all who wouldn't trust an

organization called Human Rights Watch? And while I'm on the subject of Norman Finkelstein, I owe him kind of an apology that I'm going to cut in here. A few weeks ago, Professor Alan Dorshowitz was on our show and he had this exchange with my co-host Dan Natterman. We had your old rival, Mr. Norman Finkelstein, on a couple weeks ago. And I assume he's not one of your favorite people but in any case um he made the point that as soon as hamas was elected israel then imposed a blockade and his uh he made the point that israel didn't give hamas a chance

before imposing the blockade an It's an absolute lie. What happened was this. Hamas took over a coup. Then 6,000 rockets were sent from Gaza into Israel. I know because my cousin is the chief rabbi of Sderot. And it was only after the rockets were sent, after Hamas attacked Israel, that Israel said, we have to control the borders. They still didn't send a single soldier in. They just said, we're not letting rockets go in. We're not letting other items that can be used to make

rockets to go in. And so they gave Hamas a complete chance. And by the way, they still had, they could have turned it into a Singapore paradise even before Hamas took over. But Norman Finkelstein has been a longtime supporter of Hamas. He loves Hamas. He said on October 8th that it warms every part of his heart to see these murders, rapes and robberies and kidnappings. He's a despicable anti-Semite. And, you know, he loves to say his mother was a Holocaust survivor. His mother was a capo. His mother admitted that she did terrible things to survive. So I wouldn't be citing his mother as a Holocaust survivor any more than I would cite George Soros as a Holocaust survivor. Norman Finkelstein isn't Jewish. He's Jewish on his parents' side, but he's an anti-Jewish. He hates Jews and Judaism, but he says, oh, I'm Jewish,

and because I say Hamas is wonderful, it must be wonderful. No, no, that's not the way you judge people's ideas. No, I think that Norman Finkelstein is beneath contempt. The idea that these rapes, murders, and kidnappings warmed, you should get that quote. It was the day after October 7th, warms every part of his heart to see what these people were doing to Israeli babies. That's Norman Finkelstein. Yep. All right. Perry Allen. I have a question.

So I remember very well what I was thinking when this happened. I didn't like it at all, but I chose to let it go by because I had no knowledge of the accusation. If I challenged it or asked for evidence, I was afraid I'd gotten sucked into something worse. I didn't want to give it any oxygen, so I moved on. But in retrospect, I should have said something to disassociate myself from that kind of ugly charge. I got a very, very upset email from Professor Finkelstein about the segment, and I looked into it, and I want to report that I think Dershowitz's charge was grossly unfair. So I'm going to read at length here from Finkelstein's essay on the matter, which to my knowledge is Dershowitz's only source. Except for the allusions to the relentless pangs of hunger, my mother never spoke about her personal torments

during the war, which was just as well since I couldn't have borne them. Like Primo Levi, she often said that being too delicate and refined, the best didn't survive. Was this an indirect admission of guilt? Much later in life, I finally summoned the nerve to ask whether she had done anything of which she was ashamed. Calmly replying no, she recalled having refused the privileged position of block head in the camp. She especially resented the dirty question, how did you survive, with the insinuation that, to emerge alive from the camps, survivors must have morally compromised themselves. Given how ferociously she cursed the Jewish councils, ghetto police, and kapos, I assume my mother answered me truthfully. Although acknowledging that Jews initially

joined the councils from mixed motives, she said that only scum reaping the rewards of doing the devil's work still cooperated after it became clear that they were merely cogs in the Nazi killing machine. When queried why she hadn't settled in Israel after the war, my mother used to reply, only half in jest, that I had enough of Jewish leaders. The Jewish ghetto police always had the option, she said, of throwing off their uniforms and joining the rest of us. A point that Yitzhak Zuckerman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, made in his memoir. It was always gratifying to find my mother's seemingly erratic or harsh judgments seconded in the reliable testimonial literature. Still shaking her head in disbelief, she would often recall how, after Jews in the ghetto used the most primitive implements, or even bare hands, to dig bunkers deep in the earth and conceal themselves, the Jewish police would reveal these hideouts to the Germans, sending their flesh and blood to the crematoria in order to save their own skins. One of the first acts of the ghetto resistance was to kill an officer of the Jewish police. On a sign posted next to his corpse, my mother would recall with vengeful glee,

read the epitaph, those who live like a dog die like a dog. Still, if she didn't cross fundamental moral boundaries, I glimpsed from her manner of pushing and shoving in order to get to the head of a queue, which mortified me, how my mother must have fought Hobbes' war of all against all many a time in the camps. Really, how else would she have survived? I think this has to be acknowledged

as beautiful and introspective prose. So I'm not going to try to defend Dershowitz's use of ellipses to dismember and reassemble some kind of Frankenstein version to claim that Norman Finkelstein's mother was a kapo. I don't think it holds up. And I think we all have to acknowledge there's a certain cruelty of talking about a person's mother. Okay, back to Roth. This interview really shook me up. So I want to share my initial kind of overblown reaction from an email that I didn't send to a friend. I interviewed Ken Roth last night and it's changed my outlook on life. I'm becoming somewhat radicalized. It's undeniable that there's an informal cabal out there of intellectual thugs, none of them who

can answer even basic questions about their positions, and rarely do they have to. They are powerful, brazen, and cruel. Human Rights Watch is no different than the groups that Jesse Singel has had to face off against on trans issues, no different than those robotic university presidents we listen to, no different than the people at TED who fought to censor Coleman Hughes' TED Talk, the people who called LabLeak racist, the people who chased McNeil and Bennett out of The Times, and more. They are all related and they all support the same issues. It's like some kind of authoritarian will to power.

Again, informal and simultaneous. The emperors have no clothes. We must fight them and expose them. They have done tremendous damage. So, okay, I got carried away, but let me be clear. I couldn't care less about the points of view of these people. Anyone who makes that the takeaway from what I'm saying is completely misunderstanding me. It's the substitution of power and ostracization for debate that scares me. I think we've had enough of it. So here is 35 minutes of the scheduled one-hour interview I did with the chairman of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, before he hung up on me. Hit it.

There he is. Hello. Hello. Hello. Thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Good evening and welcome to Live from the Table. My name is Noam Dorman. I'm the host of this podcast. Dan Natterman is off this week, but of course,

as always, the lovely Periel Ashenbrand, who wrote a scathing letter to somebody and said very nice things about me this week, so I appreciate it. He's here, and she's going to introduce our guest. Go ahead. Kenneth Roth is the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School for Public and International Affairs. He served for nearly three decades as the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch and was a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington. He has written hundreds of articles on a wide range of human rights issues and has a book forthcoming with Knopf. Welcome, sir. Hi, good to be here. By the way, I really appreciate you doing this show. I mean, you have some idea that I'm,

you know, probably disagree with you on a lot of stuff, right? You knew that before you came in. It's not the first time. Yeah. So I always appreciate anybody who's ready to come in like that. So before we get into the Human Rights Watch stuff and your current stuff on Israel, I looked around. I couldn't really find any interview you did about this, and I'm interested. You don't have to talk about this, but I am interested. You're quite a critic of Israel. You're Jewish. What is your, what's your emotional attachment to Israel as a Jewish person? For instance, like Peter Beinart, who is also very critical of Israel, talks very much

about what he does is because he wants Israel to be as good as it can be because he takes it so seriously because he's Jewish and things like that. Where are you coming from on your connection to Israel? Well, you know, I mean, I grew up with, I think, all the usual attachments to Israel. You know, I was bar mitzvahed. I was in Hebrew school three days a week. You know, I remember vividly the 67 war and my Israeli teacher, you know, very upset.

My, you know, I visited for the first time right after law school with a couple of friends and spent a month there. So I think I had a kind of very normal attitude toward Israel. As I began to do human rights work, it changed because I started treating Israel the way I do the hundred other governments that Human Rights Watch works on. And I couldn't help but be disturbed by the conduct of that government so did that turn you off to being jewish as well or just israel no it didn't change my view i still consider myself jewish but it changed my attitude toward the israeli government okay so um you talk a lot uh in conflict. I think you've tweeted like 45 times since the conflict started about the issue of proportionality. I have a video here of a pretty succinct take you did.

You have that video, Max? The other rule that probably is implicated more regularly is the rule against firing even at a recognized military target if the civilian consequences will be disproportionate. And I think the perfect example of that is the Jabal El-Ela refugee camp, where let's even accept Israel's premise, their accusation, that Hamas had a command center of some sort underneath the refugee camp. That does not justify using multiple 2,000-pound bombs in the middle of a heavily populated area, which was quite obviously, quite predictably, going to have huge civilian consequences, resulting in massive civilian death and injury. And other illustrations of this, we've seen Israel doing this time what

they've done in prior wars, which is giving warning with respect to the residents of a particular high-rise apartment building, and then bombing the building. And the argument is, oh, there was a Hamas presence somewhere in the building. And again argument is, oh, there was a Hamas presence somewhere in the building. And again, let's assume that that's true. What kind of Hamas presence would justify suddenly rendering 100 families homeless? So this is my question about that. What attack? Now, you're an expert on all the Israeli actions over the last 20 years.

What was an example of one that you did think was proportionate? So one thing that did what? What was an example of an Israeli attack on Hamas, a building, a tunnel, whatever it is, that was proportionate in your view? Like you say, it's disproportionate. What was proportionate in your view like you say it's disproportionate what what does proportionate look like well proportionate looks like you you hit a military target and there are either no civilian casualties or modest civilian casualties compared to the importance of the military target and that's what the rule says and and i should say that you know

there's not a rule that i made up it's not a rule that human rights watch made up it's not a rule that you know human rights activists or peaceniks made up it's a rule that the militaries of the world establish for themselves including the israeli government and the israeli government says that it abides by this rule so this is not something i'm imposing on them this is something they they say that they abide by. They just don't. OK, so in the Jabalia refugee camp, according to the BBC and Al Jazeera here, that they said a fighter jets carried out a broad attack that had struck Hamas militants, including a commander who Israeli officials had accused of planning the October 7th massacres or what, quote, a wide scale strike on terrorists and terror infrastructure

belonging to the Central Jabaliyah Battalion, which had taken control over civilian buildings in Gaza City. The IDF claims multiple dozens of Hamas fighters had been killed in a vast underground tunnel complex. They had struck in between buildings targeting the tunnel complex. The collapse of the tunnels, the IDF said,

had caused surrounding buildings to collapse. This, he said, cannot be avoided. So this is, if you take them at their word, this is quite an important target. There's a leadership, vast tunnels, all that. I guess what I'm saying is that it sounds like what you're saying is perilously close to saying that Israel can't fight Hamas

so long as they've put all their important assets in a place which can't be reached without killing civilians. Is that your view? No, that's ridiculous. Don't do caricatures, please. We should have a serious conversation here, but not caricatures.

Let me just address your question. Okay, so, I mean, first of all, you gotta be careful about taking the Israeli Defense Forces at their word, because this is the same group that said there's this huge command center under all. Let's just take it for the sake of argument, because I don't want to get I don't want to get I'm trying to understand. You know, let's not take it for the sake of argument, because the whole point is you can't because they say these things. And then when you look at what happens, they have, you know, a handful of light bulbs and a tunnel or two under the hospital. So there was a Hamas presence there, but it was justified in shutting down the major hospital in northern Gaza in the midst of a war. Obviously not. Let's go to the Javali

refugee camp. Absolutely. You can take it for the sake of argument, say if they're telling the truth, it would be proportionate. If they're not telling the truth, it would not be proportionate. If we can't take it for the sake of argument, there's no way to talk about it. Let's talk about Jabaliya refugee camp. The U.S. military, which is as friendly as you can get to the Israeli government, they would never drop a 2,000-pound bomb on a heavily populated area like the Jabalia refugee camp because it would be disproportionate. That's their position. They would never drop a 1,000-pound bomb on the Jabalia refugee camp. They are extremely reluctant to drop a 500-pound bomb on a populated area like that. But Israel dropped two 2,000-pound bombs on this heavily populated area.

That is disproportionate. It predictably had huge consequences for civilians. Now, we can, even if you take them at their word, they are using an approach that even their best defender, the U.S. government, would never do. So you should think about that. Okay. But the question, I do think about it and I don't know enough about military bomb tonnage. We got to know about that if you're gonna make these decisions. Okay. Since the podcast, I did a little research into what Roth said so I could understand it. There's an article here from Business Insider,

I guess reporting on an article by the New York Times. Brian Kastner, an Amnesty International weapons investigator and former U.S. Air Force explosive ordinance disposal officer, told the Times that the bombs used in Gaza are larger than bombs used by the U.S. to fight ISIS in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Kastner told the outlet that the explosives are more consistent with targeting underground structures such as tunnels. Quote, they are using extremely large weapons in extremely densely populated areas,

Kastner said. It is the worst possible combination of factors. Israel has noted that Gaza is a unique battlefield, small and dense, with civilians living next to and on top of Hamas-run tunnel networks, the Times reported. And of course, in other conflicts, it has to be said that the army didn't have to deal with the primary strategic and necessary objective of destroying 300 miles of reinforced tunnels and all the military assets contained therein. These tunnels can't be destroyed with machine guns.

They can only be destroyed with high-pound explosives. Further, the issue of embedding in civilian areas, as the New York Times has said about, well, I'll quote it, but in the bloody arithmetic of Hamas's leaders, the carnage is not the regrettable outcome of a big miscalculation. Quite the opposite, they say. It is the necessary cost of a great accomplishment, the shattering of the status quo, and the opening of a new, more volatile chapter in their fight against Israel. In other words, civilian deaths are Hamas's objective. So you can imagine how hard it might be to avoid civilian deaths in a war when your enemy actually

wants them, which is all to say that these conflicts are probably not fairly compared. However, a Google search of the Human Rights Watch website does reveal that 2,000-pound bombs are not out of the question even for the U.S. military, nor are other liberties taken with civilian lives. So there is a report on the Human Rights Watch website called Needless Deaths in the Gulf War, Civilian Casualties During the Air Campaign and Violations of the Law of War. And I'll just read the headings from the table of contents here. 100 killed in daytime attack on the bridge in Southern City. Scores of civilians killed in flawed attack on bridge in Western Iraq. Denials and then admissions by the allies about the attack. Scores of civilians killed in daytime attack on bridge near market. Scores of workers killed in market area of southeastern city. Morning bombing near crowded market areas in Basra.

Daytime bombings of bridges in Basra. Scores of civilians waiting for cooking gas killed and injured during daytime attack. Civilian factory in southern City bombed in afternoon. And a few excerpts. Yemeni students interviewed said that this market was bombed about four times before they left Basra. One student remarked that some of the craters were as large as swimming pools. The crater size suggested that the ordinance drop may have been a 2,000-pound guided bomb. In another report, the Allies have yet to explain the factors leading to the civilian casualties and the damage that did occur in Baghdad, some of which are detailed below.

And there's some Pentagon denials. And then it says, second, the stealth used ordinance that was not battle tested. General McPeak stated in his briefing that the stealth were equipped with case hardened 2000 pound bombs that have never been used before. There's some mention of Afghanistan. Nine civilians killed, five women, three children and an elderly man 2,000-pound bombs dropped by U.S. aircraft. Al-Mansur, Baghdad. On April 7th, Lancer aircraft dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on a house in the Al-Mansur district of Baghdad. Killed an estimated 18 civilians.

And one more report. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone's high-definition field division and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb. Then another, killing most of the survivors. So, of course, there may be good reasons for all these things. They may be proportionate. I don't know very much about war, if anything at all, except to note that these things go on in other conflicts,

and the notion that America has not been accused of similar things seems to be untrue i don't know about that if you can make these decisions yes right but i'm asking you i'm answering you you would drop a two thousand pound letter on two on the job what would you drop presuming that a commander and major assets were under and in the Jabali refugee camp? Or would you say Israel has no that that's now off limits? No, no. I mean, look, there are lots of options beyond dropping huge bombs. You can go in there with personnel. You can do kind of a targeted effort. So you go after the Hamas commander, you go after their command center, you do it in a way

that minimizes harms for civilians. That's what Biden is pushing the Israeli Defense Force to do right now. They're resisting. They're continuing to drop bombs despite now 20,000. So in other words, it's not just, you know, is it OK? Tell me, what do you need to know before you can drop a 2000 pound bomb in a heavily populated area? That's the wrong question. There are other ways to go about it. So what you're saying then is that basically all the bombing of Gaza is probably disproportionate in your view. You're putting words in my mouth again. I'm asking you.

Just don't do that. Give me an example. Okay, if you let me answer, don't interrupt me and I'll answer. If you, you know, imagine, you know, if we're going to do these hypotheticals, imagine, you know, Hamas command center sitting in the middle of a field. They can bomb it to smotherines. I don't care. But that doesn't exist. That doesn't exist.

They don't do that. You don't know that. You know, they're all over the place. If there's not a significant civilian presence, then bombing is okay. If there is a significant civilian presence, you've got to find ways to do it where you minimize the civilian harm. Now, they can use, obviously, there's a difference between using precision weapons and dumb weapons, too. That's another way to minimize harm. We now know that nearly half of the bombs that Israel's dropping are dumb bombs. You know, they're not precision guided. You know, that again adds to this kind of indiscriminate nature.

So let me ask you again. Let me ask you, are you aware in your whole history of this conflict of any bombing that you thought was proportionate? I don't know. There's they've been dropping so many bombs. I mean, I don't, I mean, there's, they've been dropping so many bombs. I mean, I don't, I can't tell you every single one that they've dropped. Was there ever a time? I'm sure that there have been times when they have bombed,

when there was only military presence there. And I would have no problem with that because I'm not a fan of Hamas. Hamas is this awful military. I mean, but- They committed these awful war crimes on October 7th. It's a despicable force. They can be fought.

I have no quarrel with Israel fighting Hamas. My aim is to protect civilians. Okay, but you've acknowledged that Hamas embeds itself with civilians. I've seen that in interviews. I wanted to address two defenses that the Israeli government typically puts forward. One is that Hamas is using human shields to try to render certain military targets untouchable, unattackable, or the related one that Hamas is firing from or fighting from heavily populated areas,

thereby endangering the civilian population. And again, I assume that that is true at times. But the important point to stress is that just because Hamas may be committing a war crime there does not, as I said earlier, justify Israel committing a war crime in turn. What I've said there, and in fact, why don't we go through the whole thing?

Because in other words, Israel, when you say, oh, you're killing all these civilians, they say, human shields, human shields, human shields. That's their answer, you know? And so sometimes that happens. Other times Hamas is fighting from civilian populated areas, which is a war crime. But a basic rule of humanitarian law is the war crime by one side does not justify war crimes by the other. And so you still, as the attacker, need to ensure that the attack is proportionate, that you're not causing disproportionate harm to civilians. And the mere fact that you can say Hamas

is using civilians as shields is not the answer to the question. You still have to make an independent assessment. That's what the law says. I know you don't like it, but that's what the law says. Okay, well, you know, the previous head of Human Rights Watch, I think his name is Robert Bernstein he had it no he was

the chair he was never the heading a chair whatever forgive me yeah um he had a different take but you were you replaced him or no who was he he was my predecessor was already known here okay who was who was who agreed with what I did who's Bernstein Bernstein was the chairman of the board okay the previous the previous chairman of the board or a previous chairman of the board had a slightly different take no he accused you of uh many things he's a lost critical perspective you know and I'll tell you what he said he said that human rights watch should not report on israel wait wait we should only report now who's now let me explain what he said now what he said he said because because israel has civil society so we should let them do it themselves and we

shouldn't report on them we should focus on women's rights in the rest of the middle east that was okay my view is hold on i didn't report on everybody hold on hold on so that since you said since you caricaturize him i will read what he said but what i wanted to get to Hold on. Since you caricaturized him, I will read what he said, but what I wanted to get to is that he also said that nevertheless, there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense

and those perpetrated intentionally. I'll read some other stuff he said. I don't think where you put it was accurate at all. I'm reading from his letter. Let me just read it.

Let me just read it. Let me just read it. Let me just read it and respond. Human's Right Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israel's citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention

not just to destroy Israel, but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage wars from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. And they know the militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for peaceful and productive life. And then it goes on, reporting often relies on witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because of fear retaliation from their own rulers. Significantly, Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces

in Afghanistan and an expert on warfare, has said that the Israeli defense forces in Gaza did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. And it goes on and on. And similarly, there was a woman, Danielle Haas, who a couple of weeks ago. Can I just respond to Bernstein first? Only to say that this has been echoed, it's kind of bookended by a recent resignation from another. Let me just, let me just let me address what robert says because he's just flat wrong i mean this is a guy who first of all has never conducted investigation in his life he's never done any work in israel um but his basic

premise that um if you are on the right side of a war you know you're fighting self-defense or the other side wants to eradicate you or you know the stuff he says there therefore it's okay to commit war crimes he never said okay no he said basically we don't you know we are picking on israel poor israel they're fighting self-defense why are we reporting on them because they're committing war crimes does not justify war crimes that's a basic rule it doesn't matter the justice of your cause because everybody thinks their cause is just you cannot commit war crimes so you cannot commit war crimes that's a basic rule it doesn't matter the justice of your cause because everybody thinks their cause is just you cannot commit war crimes so you cannot commit war crimes israel cannot commit you accuse me of caricaturization but really you're doing it over and over i haven't done that he didn't say it's okay he says there's a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally the law of murder well that's wrong i mean hamas says

that they're resisting the occupation that doesn't give them the right to kill civilians no it's fine it's fine to say it's wrong it's fine to say it's wrong but don't say he said it's okay he didn't say it's okay he he wanted us not to report on israel okay that means we're not going to do what they're working on. That was so wrong. It violates the fundamental principles of the organization. We didn't do that. Let me add this in here because we didn't

get to discuss it because the interview ended early. A woman named Danielle Haas, senior editor at Human Rights Watch, resigned. These are some excerpts from her letter of resignation which is available online. Quote, Following the Hamas massacres in Israel on October 7th,

years of institutional creep culminated in organizational responses that shattered professionalism, abandoned principles of accuracy and fairness, and surrendered its duty to stand for the human rights of all. HRW's initial reaction to the Hamas attacks failed to condemn outright murder, torture, and kidnapping of Israeli men, women, and children. They included the context of apartheid and occupation before blood was even dry on bedroom walls. These responses were not,

as some have since characterized it internally, a messaging misstep in the tumult after the Hamas attack. It was not the failure of a few to follow robust internal mechanisms of editing and quality control, as others have claimed. Rather, HRW's initial response was the fruition of years of politicization of its Israel-Palestine work that has frequently violated basic editorial standards related to rigor, balance, and collegiality when it comes to Israel. She goes on to say that people at Human Rights Watch self-censor because of, quote, the tone and content of banter before and during meetings in listservs and in message chats. And after a long bullet point list of specific accusations, she says these accusations, quote, amount to a charge and a challenge to human rights watch. Tackle the longstanding issues infecting your Israel work and the hostile internal climate that Hamas attacks brought into sharp relief but did not birth.

Let me ask you a question. This one, and then we'll move on to something else. You know, the concept of death by a thousand cuts. This is what bothers me. The notion of death by a thousand cuts is that if you were to treat each cut proportionally, you wouldn't do anything about them because they're little cuts.

But if you fear death by a thousand cuts you have to treat every cut seriously because otherwise you'll die if hamas spreads itself out all around in tunnel you know all around civilians and in your view each individual thing would be disproportionate because I think without making a caricature of you, I think you're saying that basically any civilian deaths in a bombing for a military target is disproportionate. That's not the law. That's not what the law says.

The law says you have to compare the anticipated civilian cost and see is it excessive to the concrete indirect measure. How many civilian lives is a... I mean, let's look at what Biden is saying today. Sorry, wait, wait. I'm trying to go orderly. I'm just trying to go system-ed. I'm answering your question. How many civilian lives would you say is proportionate to a central command center and a major planning leader? How many civilian lives would you say is proportionate to a central command center and a leader and a major planning leader?

How many civilian lives? There's not a concrete answer to that. These are judgment calls. And Human Rights Watch doesn't condemn if it's a close call. We condemn when it's clearly wrong. What would be a close call? Now, let me just answer your question. How many would be a close call?

Biden is trying to address this issue. And he's saying at this stage, this ongoing bombing is creating wholly disproportionate civilian casualties, which is why he's pushing Israel to proceed in a much more focused way using ground forces. Okay, that's the U.S. government's position. If the U.S. government's position

is like a complete apologist for the Israeli military, that's gotta be the least you would do. Okay. Well, you tweeted out, you tweeted out a Newsweek article of December 16th, a few days ago, and quoting a test of proportionality, the modest number of Hamas fighters killed compared to Palestinian lives suggested that the IDF's intent was indeed to punish the Palestinian people. U.S. military offers said it's hard to come to any other conclusion.

This was your tweet. So I went and looked at the article and there's other things in the article too. The article also says, contrary to what you're saying now, U.S. military and intelligence officers following the war agree that civilian casualties measured per bomb

or per target are exceptionally low. The article quoted a retired military lawyer who has been involved in target review for four different American campaigns, saying, quote, to say that Israel threw out the rule book and indiscriminately bombed civilians is absurd. It continues. While Washington was telling the Israelis to do everything that could be done to minimize the loss of civilian life, U.S. intelligence observers say there were few specific disagreements over individual targets. The Biden administration was more concerned about the tone of the campaign. So this seems to be contrary to what you're saying. It seems like on a target, target by target, the Biden administration has signed off on almost all these bombings.

They're not reviewing them target by target. But let's look what Biden said. Biden has has now twice there's an article you tweeted out this is indiscriminate bombardment no he said indiscriminate bombing now this is different what we're talking about we've been talking about disproportionate harm there are two different rules here one is that you cannot treat an area just because it has some military targets within it you can't bomb the whole area biden says that that's what they're doing a second one is even if you're aiming at a military target you can't fire if the harm to civilians is disproportionate now that bill arkin's article says the u.s agrees that most of the bombs are proportionate when they're not being indiscriminate

but that there clearly are quite a few that are disproportionate which is why biden is pressing them to stop well if biden may be pressing them stuff obviously we're all grown-ups here he could be pressing him stops for for the political reasons because we don't know why it's present political reasons that led him to say it's indiscriminate bombing that's basically saying israel is committing war crimes that's what indiscriminate bombing is. For the President of the United States to say that, that is serious. Biden, as we know, has flubbed with a lot of words. You don't flub twice.

But after he said that, they did ask the administration to clarify, and the administration's answer was, no, that is not our determination. On that particular issue issue the president yesterday did uh talk about indiscriminate bombing said um this is a different story than what i believe was occurring before an indiscriminate bombing he's kind of talking about how the us has been able

to influence the uh the way that the israelis are campaign. So does that mean there was an assessment at some point that it was indiscriminate? So as always, I will let the White House speak to the president's specific comments. But I think the point that he was making is that when you look at the way they have conducted their military operation around al-Shifa, it has been a targeted operation to move slowly into the hospital. They're moving one building at a time. It's an operation that is yet ongoing. My understanding is they have not completed operations against every building in the hospital as of yet. It's something that's

ongoing. And he was contrasting that with the airstrikes that Israel has conducted, that even when targeted can produce significant collateral damage and loss of civilian life. But indiscriminate is not this building's assessment. It's not an assessment that we've made. And again, what I think the president was referring to was contrasting ground operations with airstrikes, which even when targeted, can produce significant civilian casualties. White House spokesman John Kirby downplayed President Biden's comment that Israel is using indiscriminate bombing to attack Hamas in Gaza. The president was speaking to his concerns about making sure we're seeing the results

that Israel has claimed is their intent, which is to reduce civilian casualties. You know, if Israel is twice he I mean this is what they're talking about internally he repeats it publicly and they say no no we're not ready to say that publicly yet you know let's get real so let's pretend for a second that um um 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 going to bomb this camp. They say it's going to 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 Amalek. Why would you? No women, children, men, or animals alive that's not no let me just that's what he said and so the signal there is basically don't worry about uh civilian casualties you know it's basically an invitation to war crimes the defense minister gallant says these are all human animals no he didn't say that he said hamas he he specifically said go back and look

at what he says he's referring to you he's referring to the siege and so what in other words he is not referring to hamas he's returning to everybody who's affected by the siege which is the civilian population of ghazal so this was far more than just saying moss is human animals he's saying everybody there it was in the context of a discussion of the siege. 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 are imposing a complete siege of Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no Gaza. There will be no electricity, 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 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 moment they will regret it this is the last thing that a commander should do okay this is inviting his troops to discount Palestinian civilian life okay but can you 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're not gonna you know you can 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. You don't use a 2,000-pound bomb in the middle of a refugee camp. It's pretty straightforward.

Well, I don't think you're answering my question. Okay. I've only got about 10 minutes, Mario, so we're going to have to hurry up here. Oh, I thought we had you for an hour. No, 45 minutes. That was what we said. All the white flag thing let's do it so israel tragically killed three of its own hostages and there were some tweets you tweeted israel has a history of killing people in gaza who are waving white flags in an effort to convey their non-combatant status

status human rights watch reported in 2009. And then Sari Bashi, program director, who was appointed, I think, just after your resignation, tweeted, the kidnapper of the three Israeli hostages bear responsibility for their deaths. Hostage taking is a war crime. The Israeli military also bears responsibility

because of its longstanding failure to enforce the IHL protections for civilians waving white flags. I think she also cited to that report so i read the report and there were certain things about it that uh that i thought were very unfair and i want to ask you about them all right these are my various reactions and then you can answer everything number one these soldiers are risking their lives to save their own hostages. So you would think that would be evidence that the shootings in the past, previous examples of this, were made in some kind of panic rather than a callous murder of Palestinians, because the report has said they were in plain view and posed no apparent threat. Well,

these hostages were in plain view and posed no apparent threat. So I would get from that, that it's not as simple as it sounds. That's number one. The article makes no mention of the fact that Hamas doesn't wear uniforms. Now, that's a war crime, I believe, not to wear uniforms. Now, what's interesting to me is no mention of it everywhere and how it might complicate things. However, in a report that Human Rights Watch did about the war in Iraq, they wrote the following. The Iraq military's practice of wearing civilian clothes

tended to erode the distinction between combatants and civilians, putting the latter at risk. And perfidy, perfidy is what this is called, poses particular dangers because it blurs the distinction putting the latter at risk. And perfidy, perfidy is what this is called, poses particular dangers because it blurs the distinction between enemy soldiers who are a valid target and civilians and other non-combatants who are not.

Soldiers fearful of perfidious attacks are more likely to fire upon civilians and surrendering soldiers, however, unlawfully. In other words, when it came to Iraq, Human Rights Watch went out of its way to point out that, yes, but if the enemy doesn't wear uniforms, this can actually lead to surrendering people being shot. But in the Israel report, it doesn't mention that at all.

And finally, the report leaves out any mitigating facts, as for instance, in 2010, the officers were indicted for shooting those who waved the white flag. Now, the report came out before they were indicted, but it's been many, many years. There's been no update to the report. There's no footnote. There's no update. They say, well, actually, they did. They were indicted. Military Israeli military spokesman was quoted as saying, the decision is based on evidence. The soldier who was serving as a designated marksman deliberately targeted an individual

walking with a group of people waving a white flag without being authorized to do so. This last thing I'll say, it mentions the Goldstone report. HRW mentions the Goldstone report 167 times on its website, as best I could tell. Not once does it mention the fact that Goldstone walked back his own report. Human Rights Watch wrote, Israel has refused to cooperate with Goldstone mission because it views the human rights council is biased against Israel.

It denied visas for Goldstone's team to visit Israel, where three Israeli civilians died from Palestinian rocket fire in December 2008. Hamas said it would cooperate with the mission and Goldstone team visited Gaza. So this makes it seem like Israel was uncooperative. Is this a question or is this a level question? It's the last thing and then you're going to talk all the rest. But Goldstone walked back his own report, writing, if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document.

Further investigation indicates that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy. Indeed, our main recommendation was for each party to investigate transparently and in good faith the incidents referred to in our report. Israel has done this to a significant degree. Hamas has done nothing. Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas,

an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic. And I'll stop there. Meaning that if I read your report, I would get a completely, completely mistaken impression of how Israel handled these white flag things, what it is to deal with white flag things when the enemy doesn't wear uniforms, and what Goldstone's opinion was of all this stuff. How could you leave this stuff out? I'm asking you.

Well, first of all, I mean, Goldstone, this is what we're talking about, 2006 or something. I've got to remember the exact date. So this is a long time ago ago the report you quoted was even earlier than that well i'm sorry i'm sorry the report the white flag report was 2009 maybe within a few years in other words my point is that um there actually is a long history even since that report where you see you know wounded palestinians in the West Bank who were just executed. You know, so, I mean, these things come up over and over again. But shouldn't you update the report?

Let's focus on what happened. Do I answer the question or are you going to keep talking? Shouldn't you update the report saying that? Are we going to answer the question or not? Shouldn't you update the report? Let me address, you went on in this whole soliloquy. Let me answer, okay? You're not going to answer.

Let's look at what happened here, okay? You had, now it's worth, Hamas absolutely engages in perfidy. You know, they clearly, you know, they don't always wear uniforms. They disguise themselves as a civilian population. So, you know, those are war crimes. I'm not a defender of Hamas.

This is a horrible organization, horrible militia. The hostages obviously knew that. That's why they took off their shirts to say, look, I don't have no suicide bomb here. You know, that's why they were waving a attacked. They're fearful this could be a suicide bomb, whatever. Yes, they're like you know completely panicked when they shouldn't then they shouldn't be there or it suggests that in Gaza um any young man is killed and any young man is not the same as Hamas any young man speaking any young young men this is a tragedy because these were Israelis and we know about this but we don't know about all the Palestinian men who were being shot. But you said that's the disturbing thing about this.

But you said they were speaking Hebrew. Yes, they were. So you think they know. So you think they knowingly shot Israelis? Yes, they did. They shot. This is what The New York Times reports. The three young hostages, shirtless and holding the makeshift white flag, exited a nearby building, the Israeli military said, citing a preliminary investigation.

One of the Israeli soldiers, mistaking them for a threat, opened fire, killing two of them and wounding the third, according to the military. The third hostage fled into the building, from which a cry in Hebrew for help could be heard. The battalion commander ordered the forces to hold their fire, but the wounded hostage later reemerged, after which he was fatally shot, the military said. Roth gets from this that Israeli soldiers knowingly shot people speaking Hebrew.

I get from it that the Israeli soldier couldn't conceive that the person coming out of the building was the person crying for help in Hebrew. So he shot that person thinking that was the terrorist and the hostage was still inside. Can you imagine being judged as a nation by a man influential throughout the world who was ready to draw such horrible conclusions on such scant evidence? So you think they knowingly shot Israelis? Yes, they did. They shot. Why would they? They shot their own. Let me put it this way.

They knew that these were, they were speaking Hebrewrew now they you know maybe they thought it was a joke you know that it was palestinians who were speaking hebrew but there was nothing in there to indicate that this was a hostile force i don't know i i don't know that they how do we know they were speaking they thought they were shooting israelis how do we know they were shooting young men they didn't know they were israelis they didn't know they were hostages they just thought they were young men speaking here excuse me they were speaking hebrew young men speaking hebrew is that something they normally come into hamas people speaking hebrew i mean i i you know the only if i'm putting myself you know why did they shoot maybe they thought that hamas was you know trying to fool them by speaking hebrew but the point is there was you

know the the hostages were doing everything they could to signal they were not threatening. How do you know? Yelling in Hebrew. How do we know? Well, maybe they weren't. I don't question it. I just don't know.

How do we know they were yelling in Hebrew? I mean, the media has talked about this. They wrote on the walls in Hebrew. I mean, they did everything they could to indicate that they were hostages know that they're not a threat that the soldiers were going to panic if they saw just mud coming out there so they did what they could and they saw that did soldiers report after they shot them that they heard them speaking hebrew i'm trying to understand how they're dead so how would we know they're speaking hebrew i

mean what i've seen is they were there were actually signs on the wall you know written they say with food you know leftover food in hebrew yeah but i'm asking how they speaking hebrew they might not have seen the sign speaking hebrew what i read is they were calling out in hebrew okay i have a look you know so listen but i i i i told you i know you have to go but point is this, and it seems pretty clear to me, that when it came to the same kind of situation in Iraq, you were understanding enough to write that this lack of wearing uniforms endangers the lives specifically because people won't know when people are surrendering or not.

That's the same in Gaza same thing but it's not but it's not written in the report about Israel that's not a report that we've done on the Hamas thing yet we haven't done the report a white flag report on the killing of the three we would certainly note that no but the point is that zero threat that they were posing zero threat and they were shot anyway what does that say about the de facto rules of engagement governing it doesn't it doesn't in my opinion doesn't say anything other than for that they panicked in some way um why there was nothing threatened zero no fact whatsoever well we respectfully we weren't there and we don't know no I mean

there's been have you ever have you ever fought anything what was the threat i don't i i really don't know but i know that if you don't know okay we just feel that we bring unfair so we see no you're you're in there because you're actually one facts you're on i mean you're just a commentator but you got a report based on facts and the facts we have is that these hostages did everything they could to make themselves unthreatening and they were killed. If you're, if it's based on facts, I would call on you to have somebody's human rights watch.

I'm sure you're still in touch with, look at that 2009 report about the white flags and update it with the facts that we know, update it with the gold updated with the fact that goldstone has, we don't go back to reports. But when we do a next report, and I'm not there anymore, but if there's a report...

You have to go back and update it. If there's a report, we will do... Human Rights Watch does new reports all the time. No, but you have... They will report in those reports. Sir, I'm sorry. That's unacceptable.

If you are still tweeting out these reports you have an absolute obligation an ethical obligation to update to say that perfidy is wrong i i say that right now if you if you ever if you have a report out there if you have a report what i've been writing about hamas i constantly criticize hamas for using human shields for i am a scientist um populated areas all the time i am astonished that you don't see that if you have a report that you are still tweeting out and it contains inaccurate information what's inaccurate about that it was true it was true they did shoot a bunch of people who were waving white flags and they just did it again that's the whole point anyway i'm sorry i've

really got to go i had another appointment coming up. I got them past their time now. What's inaccurate is that you say there was no punishment. Well, what do you think about that, Perrielle? I think that first of all, if we're going to start at point A, I said an hour and I have it in writing. It doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. He wanted to get wanted to get out right well then say that and then the other thing is is you saw me squirming in my the other thing is um about this these three soldiers who were tragically killed by the idf um anybody who knows as much as he seems to know would know that um there had just been a trap where nine soldiers were killed, I believe the day before,

where they had put Hebrew speaking devices into children's toys. Are you sure about this? We have to check. Pull it up. Oh, well, I'll pull it up after. Nope, I mean, look it up. I don't have the energy to do it now. I will pull it up, but-

In which not, and they were lured into a building because they heard Hebrew. I'm really upset by this interview. First of all. Wait, wait, wait. Let me finish because it's what he should have said. And that's why, or at least part of why, and also what is known to be a heavily,

a densely populated area where complete chaos, right? And so that's probably why, if you wanted to guess, that the IDF would have tragically killed three hostages that it's been fucking looking for and trying to save okay okay right so that's the answer I don't know the answer well I mean I just gave you something that seems like a very plausible possibility right yes they thought it was a trap because that has what just happened the day before. Nine soldiers were killed.

All right. I can't find anything about nine soldiers being killed in that trap. However, there is a story. She's right. IDF uncovers Hamas ambush utilizing children's cries in Hebrew. Military reports Hamas terrorists attempted to draw soldiers into a tunnel shaft in Jabalia using rigged children's toys and school bags. I don't know, Perry. Maybe you're right. I mean,

they're going to debrief these soldiers, and I'm sure they will have a story, and people will say that is true or not true, depending on what they- Well, I don't understand what the other possibility is that they did it intentionally like they killed okay can you stop for a second um he he danced around a little bit saying they're speaking hebrew they shot them so maybe they thought it was a trick but but of course if they thought it was a trick. But of course, if they thought it was a trick, then that would be already a mitigating factor. That would be a tragedy, but if they thought it was a trick. So he stepped in a little bit there.

But I don't know, did it come through, the points that I made, that when it came to Iraq, they pointed out the fact that not wearing a uniform can lead to people surrendering and being shot? Yes. Did it look as evasive as I felt it was? I mean, will people see that he's not answering that way? He's avoiding every...

Well, I mean, he didn't really answer any. But does that, do you see that? Yes, I mean, he didn't really answer any. But does that... Do you see that? Yes. I mean, I see it. I don't... Max? Yeah, I see that.

No, don't give me the answer I want to hear. No, I mean, he didn't answer any. Yeah, I mean, if he wrote that, he talked about Iraq having the same issue. Yeah. Now, what about... Was it unfair of me to ask him for a number range how can you say if you can say something is disproportionate doesn't it stand to reason

that you'd be able to say what is proportionate and well and then he went off on netanyahu like just changing the question yes um i mean I think that the question of if this, if you're saying that this is disproportionate, then what is proportionate? And then if the answer to that is it's a judgment call and then it's like, okay, fine. But then can you give me some range? And the answer to that is also no.

I'm not going to give you any answer other than that it's a judgment call. And then every time, let's say Israel or whoever makes that judgment call, you're going to say that it's disproportionate, then you're going in circles. Look, I think the whole thing is very upsetting. There is a...

What part is upsetting? The part that he doesn't answer any questions or the fact that he logged off like in the middle of a sentence because he didn't want to answer any questions? The part that is upsetting me is the following. There are thousands of people dying, innocent people dying. And it's unbearable.

It's horrific. And yet Israel can't allow Hamas to... Israel cannot allow this conflict to end with Hamas in power for the following reasons. It will be seen as a victory for Hamas and throughout the Arabic world. First of all, the other Arabic nations will be very, very upset by that. Second of all, if Hamas is seen to have been victorious, there will never be a two-state solution because, and this is a very Netanyahu-like

argument, the only way there will be a two-state solution is if the Palestinian movement feels that's the best they can get. If they sense that Israel is on the downslope, that there's thousands of precision rockets in the north, and there are going to be more rockets in the south, and they've won, and Iran, and the Houthis, and that 10, 15, 20 years from now, there may be a dirty bomb, enriched uranium. Who knows? The sky's the limit of what's possible here.

They will not settle for their 22%, as Aaron Maté pointed out. There will never be peace if Hamas retains power here. So Israel has to end Hamas. And the world is failing its moral responsibility because the focus of the world, not exclusively, but to a much greater extent, has to be on the outrage of Hamas using civilians as civilian deaths as a war aim,

the bloody arithmetic, as the New York Times put it. Because otherwise, what I said is true. If Hamas is allowed to spread itself out all among civilians, and people like Human Rights Watch will say that any death of civilians through rockets or through bombs, precision, even precision bombs, is disproportionate. Israel will die a death by a thousand cuts. He signed off before I got to ask him, but it's pretty clear his position is Israel should stop.

Nothing will satisfy him. Because if Israel goes in with gunfire, civilians are going to get killed there, right? There's no numbers. I don't know. It sounded like what he was saying is that he's not opposed to the military going into, let's say, Jabalia refugee camp,

but let them send soldiers in on the ground instead of dropping bombs from the sky. Soldiers in on the ground, civilians are going to get killed on the ground, obviously. I think he's saying that less civilians. I mean, I have- Well, fine if he would say, there's a number of civilians that is too much.

But if he's saying any number of civilians is too much, what difference does it make if it's a bomb or it's soldiers? And how do you get rid of the tunnels? And how do you find the commander? I mean, where is his outrage? Well, that's a different, but I think very important question.

I don't think that the answer is, I mean, look, I think that- I mean, let's just say when there was an article and this last thing was, I'll say, you can say what you want, I'm very upset. Well, I think you should go through all of the points that you wanted to make. It was not, I'm very upset. Well, I think you should go through all of the points that you wanted to make.

There was an article in Jerusalem Post yesterday. I don't know if you saw this. A Gaza hospital doctor, director. I saw it. Admits Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes. You can see the interview online. Maybe I'll just cut the interview in here. Now people will say it's not true,

but it looks pretty credible, right? So what is Israel to do? They have an answer for everything. People like Kenneth Roth, they have an answer for everything. And no option for Israel. This man tweets out, I'll cut this in two, he tweets out, the photographs of the Israeli military stripping Palestinian men to their underwear and huddling them together reminds me of the deliberate humiliation used toward the prisoners rounded

up by El Salvador's autocratic president. We've all seen these photographs. Now, I'm told that this is necessary because they're wearing suicide belts or whatever it is. I don't know. Maybe he's right that there's some humiliation there. I don't know. I don't see why taking off your shirt and having everybody kneel down in a wartime would be a ridiculous tactic. I mean, what else are you supposed to do? However, there's not a single tweet about october 7th from this right right that is that is as bothered by he is at these people on

their knees with their shirts off first of all i think the idf and i mean i think a few places have addressed why they make them take off their clothes. It's completely standard procedure. You put your gun over your head and you take off your clothes and it's to show that you don't have a suicide bomb on. Look, Perrielle, don't discount the probability that there's some spite and venom and rage in every decision. You can be multi-purposes.

Listen, Noah, I'm gonna tell you something. I'm not discounting that, but I can tell you something else. And I talk to Israeli soldiers every single day because we're getting them gloves and shirts and socks. And I have not heard any of them. And we had somebody on the show and I'm not saying that it doesn't exist. And I'm not saying that some people aren't doing horrible things. And I don't agree with any of those things. And what's happening to the Palestinian mothers and children and innocent people, honestly, fucking keeps me up at night. It really does.

However, that does not mean that these completely ignoring the fact that I have not heard one soldier that I've spoken to say anything venomous about the Palestinian people. I'll add to that. When I was in Israel in the 80s, I had a friend who was shot by an Israeli soldier.

He was a soldier, and he was shot by another Israeli in a tragic accident. He wasn't killed. He was very badly wounded. These things do happen. Happens in police forces. All these things happen. For him to assume that this was an act of murder...

I can tell you something for a fact. There is no one more devastated about the killing of those hostages than the guy who killed them. I can tell you something for a fact. There is no one more devastated about the killing of those hostages than the guy who killed them. And if you ask anybody... Of course. ...who knows anything...

Maybe the parents of the hostages, but yes, of course. You know what? I'll bet it's on equal ground. That soldier is devastated. Well, you know, there was- He will never fucking recover from that. There was a famous shooting of an unarmed guy in New York. It wasn't Amadou Diallo.

It was the other one. No, it was Amadou Diallo. And I think that was the one in the lobby of the apartment. I hope I'm not getting it wrong. But anyway, the cop shot him, thought he had a gun. And when he got to him and saw that he wasn't carrying a gun, the cop apparently burst out in tears. So these terrible mistakes happen, and yes, you're right,

it can be devastating to the person who makes a mistake. Now, I don't know anything about what it's like to be in war, how that distorts your psychology, how PTSD can strike you from something that happened in the morning and carry through to the evening. But the first point I made to him, I stand by. When you see an Israeli shoot Israeli hostages speaking Hebrew, you probably have to open your mind to other explanations than simply murderous intent. I'm so upset by this guy. Why are you upset? That he wouldn't answer any of your questions or that you felt, what part of it's upsetting? You keep having these people on and you keep getting surprised that they all seem to have a very similar kind of demeanor, which is that when you ask them real questions, they don't actually answer you.

Well, first of all, it's stunning to me that they seem to be being asked these questions for the first time in their lives. You'd think it was to be the most natural question in the world when you go out, when you spend 20 years, 30 years saying this is disproportionate, disproportionate, that somebody would have said, hey, Ken, what is proportionate? I thought the question I asked was very good. Do you remember any bombing that you thought was proportionate?

You'd think to say, oh, there was that time they bombed that out. Never. Not one recollection of a single proportionate bombing. But Noam, also the answer of, well, he did answer. And his answer seemed to me to be very, you know, fantastical, which is he's like, well, if there's a military base in the middle of a field, you can go ahead and bomb that. And unfortunately, that's not what

the case is in Gaza. It's horrible. It's a tragedy every single day. But that's not a real answer, right? Because that's not the situation. He knows that's not the situation. He knows that's not the situation. Of course, Gaza, as they like to tell us, is small and dense, and there's 300 miles. I mean, I guess what I'm coming to grips with is that I struggle with what seems to me to be total intellectual dishonesty. I don't want to think that about people. It's not often true about people. This guy has been on top of Human Rights Watch for 30 years. This is the guy that everybody's been quoting when they make their case against Israel.

Done a lot of influence, a lot of damage. Finkelstein quotes him. Everybody quotes him. And then you speak to him, and you say, holy shit. This is not somebody. This is not a judicious soul. I just like to think if I was in that situation, and somebody asked me that question, I would say,

I understand your question. You're right. If I'm going to say it's disproportionate, I should have some idea of what is proportionate. We've tried to develop some guidelines. Some metrics. One person is proportionate. I mean, anything. Or, I mean, I don't see how you can, in the privacy of your own mind, call things disproportionate without questioning yourself what I think is proportionate. It's the most natural thing in the world. Or if you want to say, I don't believe any bombing is legal. Any bombing that kills civilians, or any bombing that, um, is... will predictably kill civilians, I believe is a war crime.

Fine. Yeah, which is fine, too. Fine to say that. And then apply it to every nation on Earth. Because... Uh, but... when somebody... And he accused me of caricaturing.

I don't caricature anybody. And also, when you read you read the Bernstein thing and he then started like being like, well, that guy doesn't go and know anything. He said, he said, it's fine. He didn't say it's fine. No, he didn't say it's fine. He said, it's just not the same thing.

Right. And it isn't the same thing because when you're forced to react, you are thrust into a situation that you don't want to be in. When you find yourself a soldier being shot at, and you make mistakes, I mean, I guess he would say, he jumps around, what's a mistake? What's not a mistake?

But when you're thrust into a situation where all of a sudden your life is in danger, not because you wanted to be in that situation, but because you're defending yourself, that is a different moral situation than someone who intentionally comes over and kills 1,200 people in atrocities. Now, it's true.

This is a complex question. It's true that if you then simply execute somebody in cold blood, it is the same thing. It is the same thing. It doesn't matter why you're there. You cannot find yourself in no danger and kill children. That's an equivalent war. A hundred percent. But can we call a spade a spade here, please? And just say that there is a double standard

when it comes to Israel. For somebody who's so concerned about members of a Nazi fucking death cult being in their underwear. I didn't hear a word about the elderly hostages that were forced to- Don't say it's a Nazi death cult, Cariel, because it was not- Hamas is not a Nazi death cult.

Not Nazi. I'll call it that. No, no, no. But the civilians were not all Hamas. I'm not talking about the civilians. Let me rephrase that. The no. But the civilians were not all Hamas. I'm not talking about the civilians. Let me rephrase that. The people with their shirts off were not all Hamas. Many of them were let go because they were civilians.

That's not what I'm talking about. Just be careful with your words. Okay. I wish that everybody else was as careful with their words. Maybe Roth is right. There's no excuse. Your war crime is the same as theirs. Did the three elderly hostages, the men who they forced them to change their appearance to conform with the rules of Islam, did you see that?

Yoram Metzger and Chaim Péry and one other older man who's about 80 years old. Like, why is there no outrage for any of these hostages? Like, why is there no outrage for anything that... So, anyway, it's heartbreaking to me because of what Israel appears to be up against. This is a very powerful man sitting on top of the Human Rights Watch. And listen to what he's saying. You don't have to update your reports

with correct information. We don't update reports. But you can still tweet them out. Right. It's fucking outrageous. It's Right. It's fucking outrageous. It's outrageous. It is fucking outrageous. You have a much higher expectation of these people than I do.

I'm never surprised by any of this. You seem to be giving them the benefit of the doubt somehow. And you think that their ethics are, I mean, are somehow like, how many, how many times are we going to go through this until you're like, oh. Yeah, maybe you're right. Okay. Oh, that's a good place to end. Say that again. I can't say it twice. I'm like the Fonz. I'm i'm so you know my fonzie couldn't say i'm sorry um i had i had i was just getting to my best points by the way i don't know why you don't make them no it's enough it's

enough um make one of them no i'm really i'm drained by this. I don't know. Max, do you have any final comments on this? This is more than any interview I've ever done. This has really gotten to me because Finkelstein is an advocate for the Palestinians. We get that. This

guy is supposed to be in charge of Human Rights Watch. He's supposed to call it down the middle. And he couldn't even put up any argument, I think, that would convince anybody that he's actually calling it down the middle. Max, what do you think? I mean, I think he kind of came in pretty hostile, like, just from the start, it seemed like. It just, his energy was, like, I've never seen it, you know, things get heated in the middle of an interview, but it seemed like he started from there.

Maybe he didn't like my question about his feelings towards being Jewish in Israel. Why? What's wrong with that? I said, I... Is that... I thought six times about whether to ask it or not, because that's why I didn't ask him about the church, because... It's a fair question.

It's a completely fair question. But it's the kind of question that somebody couldn't pretextually use to become a little indignant about because it is a cousin of an ad hominem attack, meaning that he should be able, I should be willing to simply judge what he says, what his arguments are and what he says. I shouldn't need to know

whether he believes in Islam, Judaism, or Christianity. That's not, I disagree. We're not in a court of law here. No, no, not in a court of law. You asked this question to Chaya Raychik when we had her on about, you've asked, I mean, it's a reasonable question to understand where somebody's coming from,

just as curiosity. Well, like I said, if it was a Palestinian who became our bishop, and then he was bashing the Palestinians. Yeah, it's a natural question. The reason is the reason I'm not making an ad hominem attack, because I would never use that to attack any of his logic. I attack his logic based on his logic. But then if his logic fails miserably as it did, then it becomes fair in some way to say, well, what's going on here?

These guys went to Harvard and Yale. It's not stupid. He's making points that aren't really adding up. So what's the emotional? Sure, there's a psychology behind it, right? I mean, that's not. And by the way, I felt that he was going to sign off the interview early.

I felt that today as I was preparing for the interview. And that's why I chose to ask the question at the top because I felt he wouldn't be there at the end to ask him. I knew in my heart that these points were so devastating that he would find a way to get out, that he would have to sign off. Because, like, you know, I committed a human rights violation. All right, good night, everybody.

Good night. Oh, my God.