5/3/24 CounterPoints Debate: Destiny Vs Omar Baddar On Israel Palestine, Safe Zones, Campus Protests

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 2 (00:08):
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it just means the absolute world to have your support.
But enough with that, let's get to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
You're saying that.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Israel needs to allow Hamas to stay there. Who's been
breaking international law? Of our conplic are twenty years.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
As opposed to Hamas allowing these early government to stay
there when they're breaking international law for even longer.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Than That's not peace. Nobody wants peace. People want justice.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Oops, it's just war.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
Gauz is unlivable anymore, too bad to cancelfort Palestinian life.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
People are starving. Is just all an accident.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
It's crazy that the numbers are so poor for a
country that could kill so many more people. They're doing
things that no other countries are in. There's a reason,
by the way, which you will never recognize, why all
of the surrounding Arab states have a Bean ined the
Palestinians too, because their history has been one of violence.
That first they've been encouraged by the surrounding nations and
used by them, and then now they've been abandoned.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
What's the other nations?

Speaker 5 (01:04):
Happy Friday everyone, or Thursday night if you're a premium
subscriber Breakingpoints dot Com if you want to get the
show early to your inbox. I'm Emilidrishinski, and you probably
recognize the man sitting next to me. We're about to
tee up a fascinating debate. I'm joined, of course, also
by my co host, my wonderful co host, Ryan Grimm.
And these two gentlemen that you see here are not

(01:24):
debating for the first time. They debated in the past.
Maybe some of you have watched that they sparred over
the question of Israel actually earlier this year and then
kind of subsequently continued a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Of a back and forth.

Speaker 5 (01:35):
So we know that we're not going to settle the
debate once and for all here today. But I think
what we want to do Ryan is really pushed for
more moral clarity, push for more contrast as we reflect
on just this last week of absolute historic protests, rocking
dozens of campuses across the country. So we have two
popular proponents of the respective sides here and we're excited

(01:56):
to get into it.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, and to introduce them both. We've got to my
right here, Omar bar Dharr. He is a Palestinian American
political analyst who's been following a situation in the Middle
East for many, many years. On the other side, we
have Stephen Banel Junior, who's better known by his streaming
name mister Barelli or whatever the or by like a

(02:18):
dozen different names from if You If you guys watched
the Norman Finkelstein debate that kind of thrust destiny as
a streaming name into this conversation to we want to
start with the campus protests before getting to the war itself.
This week saw a militarized response over at VCU U

(02:40):
T Austin Columbia and the kind and a vigilante response
at u C l A. Uh So, just curious for
your your read in general on these protests as they've
unfolded it. Have you seen any double standard when it
comes to kind of the free speech warriors that we've

(03:00):
seen championing the cause of free expression on college campuses
now championing the cause of shooting fireworks into peaceful encampments.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Yeah, it's the double standard is incredibly glaring. I mean
you would have to put on blinders to actually miss it.
I think that these student protesters are the conscience of
this country. We are witnessing an absolutely horrific situation unfolding
on the ground, and American policy is to insist on
continuing to send endless weapons unconditionally to a military force
that is mass slaughtering children by the tens of thousands.

(03:31):
And these students are saying, we're taking a stand, this
is not okay. If we can't impact the policy makers directly,
We're going to make sure that our institutions and the
money that we're paying to these institutions is not playing
into this kind of mass slaughter and what we witness like,
from my perspective, in a better world, cops would be
going after the people who are violating American law to
make sure that weapons can continue slaughtering children, rather than

(03:54):
going after people who are peacefully protesting, overwhelmingly peacefully protesting
in order to change that policy, change American investment in it.
And you're absolutely right, you have a level of demonization
of these protesters, constantly talking about them as if you know,
it's just like anti Semitic mobs or whatever that people
leading these protests. There's very significant portion of progressive young

(04:15):
Jewish people who are the leaders in many cases of
some of these protests, groups from If Not Now and
Jewish Wars for Peace and many others, and they are
on the receiving end of tremendous hate and violence, and
nobody talks about that. And as you mentioned, what we're
witnessing in the UCLA is absolutely horrifying. These protesters being
attacked by you know, bear spray and fireworks and some

(04:38):
of them being beaten up and you see like some
serious injuries. But because the climate in this country is
one in which one side gets demonized, that empowers and
emboldens the response not just from police but also from vigilantes.
And I just want to know one last thing, just
because Steven is here and I think it's really relevant,
is there's a person that I know named Simone Zimmermann

(05:00):
and who.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
She's intended today for an intercept of that that's right.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
And she's one of the most conscientious and decent human
beings that you'll ever meet. And she knows personal people
in her life who have lost loved ones on October
seventh from the attack that Hamas carried out, and she
was horrified by that attack, and she's equally horrified by
Israel's response.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
In the mass slaughter.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
And she's one of those people who is fighting for
a better future for Palestinians and Israelis. And she was
at a passover cedar at Colombia, joining the protesters and
talking about how beautiful it is that she's in that setup.
And Stephen Coot tweeted that tweet and said that he
would like to donate thousands of gallons of kerosy and
presumably so these people can set themselves on fire. And

(05:43):
it's just such an ugly and distasteful thing to say.
And I'm genuinely curious of what you were thinking when
you tweet things like that.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
If everybody celebrated Bushnell doing his protest, from more people
want to protest that way than God help him, I guess.

Speaker 5 (05:55):
So this is not about Bushnell, though, But let's keep
going in response to that, because Omar set up an
interesting j justicae position here between anti Semitic mobs and
peaceful protesters. So is what we're seeing on these campuses
anti Semitic mobs or is it peaceful protesters from your perspectives.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Even from my perspective, I mean, it really depends on
which series of videos that you watch. I think from
an American perspective, it really shouldn't matter if they're anti
Semitic mobs or if they're protesting foreign policy or whatever.
The United States, we don't have hate speech laws. You
should be allowed to say really whatever you want in protest,
assuming you're not violating any social or whatever the ordinances are.
I know, like for some college campuses you're not allowed
to block pathways, or you can't protest if they've got

(06:31):
events planned for graduations or whatever. And as long as
they're not disrupting the piece in a way where you're like,
you can't blow loudspeakers. I think on college campuses, as
long as you're following lugs, you'll be able to protest
however you want.

Speaker 5 (06:40):
But if you are, say what we saw from NYPD
and LAPD actually last night, if you're violating laws university rules,
even with an encampment, if you broke into the hall
like they did and have been barricaded up in there,
What did you make of the NYPD response? Just like
Columbia for example, I like.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
To wait till the ust settles on this because I
hear so many different things about how students were all
being peaceful. I've seen obviously the videos of like some
of the stuff being broken into. I think that when
it comes to an analysis of how to respond to
these particular events, I think that the start and stop
needs to be what are the rules and regulations in place?
Because a lot of people will jump in and start arguing, well,
it's a public area, so they could be wherever they

(07:16):
want to do wherever they want without even understanding the
rules or regulations in place. I think as a blanket rule.
I don't know why this particular situation would need any
kind of unique analysis. It would be the same as
all protests. If you're in a private college, I understanding
that they can remove you whenever they want. It's private property.
If you're in a state funded or public university, then
there are certain areas that are supposed to remain open
to the public and they can't remove you unless you

(07:36):
are not there in an ordinary manner. If you're disrupting
some of their event. I don't say anything about these
particulars at a protest that would call for any type
of unique analysis that escapes like that fundamental rule to
protests in the United States in.

Speaker 5 (07:48):
Your fundamental rule, then, to quote tweet with.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
The Kerosene, I thought it was insane that you had
delusional people, especially young children in the United States, that
don't know any part of this conflict whatsoever, which is
probably the vast majority of people protesting it. That people
are celebrating people setting themselves on fire, that is just
unbelievable to me. You saw a guy do it in
front of a I think one of the New York
City courthouses for the Trump stuff. You saw the Aaron

(08:11):
Bushnell guide do it for who knows what reason, I
guess because you thought the whole world wasn't already paying
attention to this issue. And yeah, the idea of people
ever celebrating themselves in a democratic first world country setting
themselves on fire for an issue that already has an
unlimited amount of international attention unbelievably stupid to me.

Speaker 4 (08:26):
But how does it relate to this particular instance. I mean,
this is a bunch of Jewish students celebrating with pro
Palestinian students Overpassover and talking about a climate in which
they're coming together, Like why did you decide to drag
the Bushnell thing into this?

Speaker 2 (08:38):
That's the one I think it's funny when people disingenuously
load phrases like, oh, all the Jewish people are protesting
with these people, there are so many jewishroople. That's not true.
The last few research things I saw I think We're
twenty twenty three shows like ninety percent of people who
are Jewish support the existence of Israel. So the idea
that there's a huge group of Israel.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
All over the Jewish people, Yeah, this is not about
the existence of Israel. There's no question about the fact
that so many of these protests leader are in fact Jewish.
These groups, they're not imaginary, They're not a figment of
your imagination. You can actually go see them and look
at how large their gatherings are, how lot of their
voices have been That people who are getting arrested in Congress,
so many of them are progressive Jewish organizations that are
leading this effort. This is not about some broader what

(09:15):
are the views of American Jews about the existence of Israel.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
We're just what now we're protests about.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
The protests are about ending the slaughter of the children
of Gaza. That's what the protests are about. What do
you mean, what does it look like?

Speaker 2 (09:26):
What is the end condition of the It's not just
ending the slaughter, it's also stopping the blockade. It's also
reaching a just resolution to the Palestadian conflict. It's also
probably the unlimited right of return of six million refugees.
It's probably the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish majority state.
It's probably the create like I mean.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
You're conflating a ton of different things. A lot of
these protesters have varying views about this. Some of them
support a two state solutions, some of them support a
one state solution. But what's bringing everybody together in this
moment is a realization that what Israel is doing to
Gaza is absolutely unconfortable. That you slaughter people at that scale,
that is is is clearly waging a war on the
civilian population of Gaza. That's what these people are upset about,
and they want it to come to an end and.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
The specific thing that they're protesting and maybe, well, we
could actually find something to agree on here because I've
seen you describe yourself as kind of a moderate who
tries to balance the extremists on each side here. So
the specific thing the protesters are arguing for all of
these different campuses is opening up the books of their
basically the hedge funds that run their universities, and divesting

(10:28):
from firms that are either linked to the war in
Gaza or link to Israel. More generally, Brown University reach
an agreement with its protesters that they would they would
abandon their encampment in exchange for a vote in October
to divest from that. That gets to the question of
resistance and the right to resistance, And so for years

(10:51):
it has been the kind of policy of the right
here and a lot of the center here in the
United States to make it illegal to try to ban
people from participating in boycotts or divestment efforts or lobbying
for sanctions against Israel. At the same time, you say, well,
armed resistance is clearly off off the table. So if

(11:12):
you rule out both, you'd only leave people with one option.
So even if you don't support boycotting or divesting from Israel,
do you support the right of people here in the
United States?

Speaker 2 (11:25):
To to check right explicit for how states have banned
some of the BDS participation. As a fundamental right to boycott,
I think in the United States you should always have
the right to boycott everything except for our currency. I think, yeah,
you have the right to boycott whatever you want. I
don't know why that should ever be made illegal, but
I know that in particular things are we going at

(11:45):
that BDS stuff that I think states look at. But yeah,
of course you should always have the right. I wish
that the people that would talk about conditioning support for Israel, though,
would also talk about conditioning support for Palestine, because there
are some of the highest recipients of aid in the
world per capita, the United States trip it's a lot
of that aid. It's interesting to me that it seems
like we're always talking about how we need to condition
aid in congratulations, Congress just banned all funding of ENRA.

(12:09):
So yeah, I have seen that.

Speaker 5 (12:11):
Well so actually, because Stephen raised an interesting point that
what's the kind of end goal of the protesters after
BDS in the service of what you know, what does.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
That look like to one state solution where Jews of
the minority.

Speaker 5 (12:22):
Well, so you said earlier that you know, it's it
sort of depends on whatever video you're looking at, that
this is an anti semitic mob or peaceful protesters, And
I think that's actually true. There's videos showing all kinds
of different things, which is part of the issue of
piecing together these stories via social media. So if that,
if the one state solution is kind of the ultimate
goal of the people that are protesting for BDS, what

(12:43):
is your like do you think they're fundamentally anti Semitic?
Do you think they're fundamentally Are they, from your perspective,
just mistaken, misguided, or are they bigoted?

Speaker 2 (12:55):
I don't care. Trying to start out, like the difference
between like anti semitism and anti zi is almost impossible,
and in practice the two look almost identical sometimes, so
the obsession of trying to figure out, like, what is
the driving thing here between anti semitism versus anti Zionism,
I think in some cases it's good to find differences.
So some people are discriminatory against poor people, some people

(13:16):
are discriminatory against certain races of people, and figuring out
the difference here is really important when it comes to
antisemitism versus anti Zionism. In regards to israel I think
that the talking points of somebody who's an anti Zionists
are indistinguishable from the talking points of somebody who is
anti Semitics. So there are a lot.

Speaker 5 (13:32):
Of Israelis who don't support the net Yahoo policy.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
That's but that's not anti Zionism such that they want
a one state solution. Even Palestinians don't want a one
state solution.

Speaker 4 (13:44):
It's utterly grotesque to conflate those two things. Opposition to
Zionism is opposition to the state of Israel the way
it came into being at the expense of hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians who were driven out of their homes.
And there is a different vision that instead of having
a Jewish state that privilegius one particular group of people
over another, that you have a vision for a state
in which everybody is equal. Americans would be familiar with

(14:06):
what that vision actually looks like. You remember the era
of Jim Crow and what that meant. And people who
are demanding a different kind of country in which everybody
is equal. That's not the same as being anti white.
It's absurd to even put these remotely in the same category.
And can I just just if I can finish just
on the point of BDS, BDS, also, by the way,
has been clear about the fact that they don't take
any particular political solution. It does certainly happen that a

(14:28):
lot of BDS activists do support a one state solution,
but that is not the position of BDS itself as
a movement that is calling for boycotts in isolation. And
just on the free speech angle, you have states all
over the country that are passing laws that basically make
it punishable to boycott not just Israel, but Israeli settlements
that are built in the occupied territories, and those settlements

(14:49):
are war crimes under international law. And so you have
a situation in which this country, part of its founding,
is that we celebrate boycotts of you know, as part
of deep entrenched part of American culture, the boycott of
British treat during the founding of the country, the Montgomery
bus boycott during the Civil rights movement. And now you're
saying that boycotting the war crimes of a foreign country

(15:12):
is somehow punishable. People being denied the ability to work
with state governments or schools or medical facilities or anything
that is affiliated with the state. Those are transparently unconstitutional laws.
They have been challenged by organizations like the ACLU, They
have been defeated in court in many cases, but unfortunately
they keep popping up faster than the rate at which

(15:34):
you can challenge them.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
And that's a serious crisis.

Speaker 4 (15:36):
Anybody who's serious about being committed to free speech and
saying that Americans should be able to exercise the right
to boycott, including when it comes to Israel or Israel's atrocities,
that's an absolutely critical issue that we're not talking enough about.
That you have the power of the state being used
to silence people's right to free speech.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
And I think that's a really important angle.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
I want to move to the conduct of the war
by Israel pretty soon. But and the one state verse
two state question, isn't it the case that the current
Israeli government position is one state? There's a complete rejection
across the board of a Palestinian state river to the sea.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
So yeah, I think the Lakud platform is essentially always
said as much.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, So okay, so a more agreement like you're you're
you oppose that, you think that why I oppose it?

Speaker 2 (16:22):
He's in favor of the one state where the Jews
live as a minority in that state. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:25):
No, Just to be clear, Theaho government and the liqud
are in favor of a one state in which Jews
are privileged over Palestinians, with Palestinians occupying multi tiers. If
you're a citizen of Israel, have a certain amount of rights.
If you're in the West Bank, you get this many rights.
And if you're in Gaza, you're completely under siege and
there's nothing that you can do, which is in my
country country, my vision of a one state, they have
more rights than Yeah. Well, in those countries, you don't

(16:47):
permanently occupy those people and prevent them from having any
rights and deny them citizenship as well. And that's the
fundamental problem is that Israel's vision is Palestinians can never
be free, they can get their own state, and they
can't live as equals within Israel. So your status is
just to be permanently occupied and helpless without rights. And
that's a vision that I think is absolutely nobody who
has a conscience can actually support. And my vision of
a one state would be one in which everybody actually

(17:09):
has equal rights and everybody can live equally precisely the
way that we live in the United States.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Which is a really fun position to take in the
West when we have like no stake in the game.
I think it's fun to scream that at protest. I
think it's fun to go on Twitter and do that.
I think at the end of the day, that type
of rhetoric is ultimately destructive to Palestinians because everybody knows
that that's never happening. It's a pipe dream. Less than
thirty percent of Palestinians are in favor of a singular
state where Jews and Arabs have the exact same rights. Literally,
nobody wants that. People in Israel don't want that. It's

(17:35):
literally you're just virtue signaling and paying lip service to
an idea that is grossly unpopular across the entirety of
Israel and Palestine. Not only that, the idea that you
would have a singular state created where six million Palestinian
refugees are then brought back into the state. There's no
shot that any Jewish person living there, who has lived
through the second in Nevada, who has lived through Hamas attacks,
who's lived through hasib law attacks, who's lived through international

(17:55):
support for who the attacks, is going to feel safe
in such a state and they know that there would
be absolutely no intern national support for them if that
state were created. And Jews want to start getting slaughtered
en mass there, let's.

Speaker 5 (18:04):
Past it to Omar with that for a response. And
also I'll sort of add to that, maybe they narrow
it down a little bit. What is then let's say,
you know, hypothetically, would take the best faith argument not
from net Yahoo, but let's say Israeli citizen who's both
concerned about their safety and concerned about net Yahu's leadership.
What does the path towards peace from the perspective of

(18:26):
an Israeli what does that look like when they see
the level of support for Hamas. And we can obviously
get into why so many people in Palestine feel like
they need to support Hamas.

Speaker 4 (18:36):
Yeah, and a way you're putting your finger on the
problem precisely. I mean, Israel is upset that there's so
much hostility towards them. But the reason there's so much
hostility is because of the way that they have been
treated Palestinians for a decade. After a decade, just the
level of brutality that Palestinians have experienced under occupation has
been absolutely horrific.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
And you know, when you talk about the.

Speaker 4 (18:54):
Prospects for peace, there was a time in which Palestinians
recognized that they there's a significant power deferential that they
can't actually get freedom from the river to the sea
in their own homeland, and there was an indulgence of
the idea that maybe we can have a two state
compromise in which Palestinians would only get the West Bank,
Gaza and East Jerusalem, which is about one fifth of

(19:15):
the entire territory of their historic homeland, and Israel gets
to keep the other four fifths. That from Palastinian's perspective,
is a massive Palaestinian compromise bending over backwards to facilitate
some kind of two states. And all what Israel was
required to do is not grant Palestinian some sort of favor,
but simply comply with international law by withdrawing from the
occupied territories that are obligated to do that. Anyway, the

(19:36):
occupied territories do not belong to Israel. And during this period,
Palaestinian support for peace with Israel was skyrocketed. Public opinion
show that their significant support for a two state.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Solution amass way down. Even though Hamas was trying to
destabilize the situation at the time committing acts of violence,
they did not enjoy any support among Palestinians. It is
only when it became.

Speaker 4 (19:56):
Clear that Israel has no interest whatsoever and allowing Palestinians
to have a state and spent the entire so called
peace process building more and more and more settlements, just
expanding them throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, where Palestinians saw
the prospect for a Palestinian state shrinking by the day.
On the ground, they understood that this entire process was
a sham, and the fact that Israeli restrictions were increasing,

(20:18):
Israeli violence was ongoing, it became clear that this was
not going to be a path to in which Palestinians
can get a real state. And that's when you got
the shift in public opinion back in terms of supporting
for armed resistance as the only way, because clearly Israel
could not be talked into seeing Palestinians as equal human
beings and granting them.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
But then what now, Well, a shorter version maybe for
Stephen to respond to is that the way to defeat
Hamas is through peace, not war.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
What's wrong with that? It sounds really brutal, But the
issue is that the unlimited amount of international support for
the Palestinians means that the Palestinians will never look to peace.
They shouldn't. They always have an unlimited reservoir internationally of
people who will encourage the delusions that if they continue
to fight, they're going to get a better deal. It's
the reason why they walked away in two thousand from
Camp David, is the reason why they walked away from

(21:01):
the tap of Summit. Is the reason why a boss
walked away in two thousand and eight from O Mert.
It is the reason why the Oslo Courts were never
negotiated in ninety three. That period of violence that he's
talking about from ninety three to two thousand, where the
Israelis were continuing to expand settleents into the West Bank,
is true. But Palestinians also continue to engage in terrorist activities.
A lot of people didn't trust Arafat because Arafat would
sign on to a deal for the Oslo Courts and
then we'd go over to Switzerland and he'd make speeches

(21:22):
in universities about how like, yeah, we're good to this now,
but you know we're going to get them as as
soon as we got a little bit, we're going to
take more, which is ironically what they've accused is real
of doing for the past one hundred years. I think
that in order for this conflict to actually start to
reach some kind of resolution, I think that, again, it
sounds mean, but Palestinians need to feel like they have
something at stake, and it looks like they do. But

(21:43):
in reality, politically, Palestinians have never lost anything because people
continue to make them feel as though they can always
go back to borders that existed eighty years ago. People
will constantly say, you just said it here, Well, what's
the fair thing? They only want to a sliver of
this land, one fifth of the territory. Yeah, they tried
like three, four or five different wars to get more
and they lost. You can't continue to go back to
the first try over and over and over again and

(22:04):
demand the deal that was on the table before you
walked away from the partition plan in forty seven. You
can't go to war five times and then keep going
back to another set of borders. There are always one generation
behind when it comes to accepting some type of actual
peace deal. So as long as Palestinians have people like
Ohmar internationally that will support them in an unlimited delusion
to fight forever, plistiness will never try to accept these
and they shouldn't. They really should. There's no reason to.

Speaker 5 (22:28):
In one sense, if you have public polling that shows
some seventy percent this was from a Palestinian polling firm
in December, seventy two percent supported what happened on October seventh.
So and we can talk about why, and we will,
I'm sure. So with all of that said, what now,
what if you you know, if you were in charge
of Israeli foreign policy in a hypothetical sense, And I

(22:50):
think this will be a response to what Stephen just said,
what happens now to get to a position where, to
your point, there can be justice.

Speaker 4 (22:58):
I'm happy to address that, but it just I have
to go back to a particular point. The idea that
Palestinians are rejectionist because they have so much international support,
I think is just thoroughly absurd. Palestinians are paying an
unbelievable cost every single day their lives are completely brutalized
under occupation, and the idea that they see no cost
of continuing to fighting on forever.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
It's just completely ridiculous. It's detached from reality.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
It's as if you're unaware of what Palatine conditions are
under Israeli occupation, the reason why they were willing to
bend over backwards. I mean, if you look at the
history of negotiations, you look at the Palestine papers that
got leaked shortly after I think back in the mid
two thousands, it's obvious that Palestinians were bending over backwards
to try to make that deal work, and Israel insisted
on expanding more and more settlements. And yes, you can

(23:39):
say that Palestinian violence was ongoing at the time, but
so is Israeli violence. I mean the attack that happened
on the mosque in Hebron where thirty Palestinians, nearly thirty
Palaestinis were killed by a Jewish terrorist named Baru Goldstein.
That happened during the so called peace process, and Israel
responded by putting Palestinians in Hebron under curfew to prevent
any possible retaliation. Those are theitions, but nobody looks at

(24:01):
that incident and says, oh, well, there was Israeli violence,
Therefore the Israelis, you know, we're not.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
That's the reason why the.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Point I'm making.

Speaker 4 (24:10):
The point i'm making is that this is besides the
point that, yes, we can point to individual atrocities, and
that does not change the fact that throughout the peace process,
if Israel were genuinely interested in allowing for a Palestinian
state to exist, they would not have spent the entire
soul called.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Peace process taking up more and more and more of
the West BacT. So it's the disingenuous.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
Nature of of of of Israeli policy that that's the
reason why this is a problem.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Now to your point of what now.

Speaker 5 (24:33):
Going to say they are genuinely interested in the peace
process and you're you're.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
In charge, Yeah, so what do they do right now?

Speaker 4 (24:38):
We have a situation right there is a problem of
the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support groups
like Hamas. You have a majority of people in Israel,
overwhelming majority support the most vicious policies of the Nathaniaho
government and just carrying on, and they think that they're
not going far enough in Gaza and so on, and
that just it's it's important to note that hatred is
a symptom.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Of the conflict and not the cause of it. People
get this stuff backwards.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
When you think of apartheid in South Africa, there was
plenty of hostility and we eventually had a reconciliation process
between white and black people in South Africa, but only
after apartheid fell. That's when you can have reconciliation. But
the idea that you can try to work on how
people feel about each other in the midst of one
side occupying the other, controlling every aspect of their lives
and brutalizing them day in and day out.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
There's no surprise that there are hostile feelings. And yes,
when Palestinians do respond with violence, Israelis who are out
of touch with the reasons why all of this is happening,
are going to develop hostile feelings as well.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
This is a moment in which the international community has
to step in. This is not about making Israelis and
Palestinians like each other right now. This is about making
sure that one side does not get to dominate the
other until the end of time and the status quo
leading up to October seventh is one in which Israel
dominated every aspect of Palestinian life. So you can say, yes,
both sides hate each other, but one side is in

(25:54):
charge of everything. One side gets to decide whether they
want to put the people of Gaza on a diet,
as they were talking about, you know, when they first
imposed the siege on Gaza. Just Palestinians don't get to
decide how much fruit Israelis get. They don't get to
demolish Israeli homes will whenever they feel like it. They
don't get to humiliate Israelis a checkpoints day in and
day out. So because there's a dynamic in which one

(26:14):
side is imposing an illegal occupation over another people and
taking over their land, that has to come to an end,
and you can bring it to an end through international pressure,
primarily from the United States as the country that has
the most leverage over Israel, to say not another penny
until that occupation ends. And when that occupation comes to
an end, we can talk about sorting out the exact
specifics of how we get more conciliation and.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
And when it comes to international support for Palestinians. There's
one side that has had the international support of the
world's great superpower and right the political and military support
as well Israel.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
What about the Soviet Unius supporting the Soviet Union has
had a very complicated relationship unions states before the United
States and truly also Aroun until about sixty six sixteen.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Some union also hasn't been here since nineteen ninety.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
But the conflict also didn't start after the ninety one,
after the collapse of the Sovietnion.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
But the point is that Israel has had a lot
of agency, and Benjamin Netyaho in particular, as you know,
the Prime minister for most of the last what twenty
five thirty years, has had an extraordinary amount of agency
as well. And I wanted to read to you a
piece of an essay published in how Retz recently by
Israeli historian Yuval Noah Hararia. He writes, given the murderous

(27:30):
nature of Hamas this time, its allies gave Israel free
reign for many months to conquer Gaza, liberate the Israeli hostages,
changed the situation in the Strip according to Israel's best judgment,
and create a new order in the region. The netn
Yahoo government wasted this historic opportunity and also wasted the
bravery and dedication of the soldiers of the IDF. The
net Yahoo government failed to exploit its battlefield victories to

(27:53):
reach an agreement on the release of all the hostages
and to advance an alternative political order in Gaza. Instead,
it decided to knowingly inflict on Gaza an unnecessary humanitarian disaster,
and in so doing inflicted on Israel an unnecessary political disaster.
One by one, our allies have become horrified by what
is happening in Gaza, and one by one they are

(28:14):
calling for an immediate ceasefire and even for a weapons
embargo on Israel. Even during the worst moments of October seventh,
Hamas was nowhere near vanquishing Israel. But the ruinous policy
of the net Yahoo government following October seventh has placed
Israel in existential danger. So, when I ask you, it
seems like a pretty fundamental irony that if Israel had

(28:35):
listened to critics like Omar and myself after October seventh,
who warned against enacting violence just for the purposes of
revenge and potentially for ethnic cleansing, of Gaza, they would ironically,
in paradoxly be in a much stronger global strategic political
position than they are now where they're facing not just isolation,

(28:56):
but charges before the ICJ and potentially before the ICC.
So are they making a mistake and following kind of
the more bellicose advice that they're getting from their so
called allies.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
That's a touching essay. Who was the alternative order politically
besides Hamas that would have risen up in the Gaza Strip.
If there was an alternative political order, I would love
to hear it. Even in the West Bank. There's a
reason why a boss suspended elections twenty years ago. Even
in the West Bank, Hamas enjoys pretty broad support. I
mean their answers to this question, and it's not rhetorical.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Do you want to take that?

Speaker 2 (29:31):
I mean, well, hold on, wait wait, But before he
does it, also to elaborate a bit on the military objectives,
I think Hamas needs to go. I don't think that
there's any future that happens where Israel can negotiate anything,
whether it's peace or war, with Hamas remaining as the
government in the Gaza Strip. I don't think any of
the surrounding Arab states wanted Hamas to remain as the

(29:52):
government in the Gaza strip. It's a disaster. You've had
a series of conflicts. In two thousand and eight you
had kind of led, twenty fourteen you had Protective Edge,
twenty eighteen you had the response to the Great March
of Return, and now in twenty twenty three you had
a massive attack on October seventh. The idea that you
would just allow them to stay here after spending at
least a year preparing for what was probably I think
the single largest day of violence against Jesus the Holocaust,

(30:14):
it would be that's an untenable position. I don't think
a single other country, a person in all of the
history would be asked to keep a government like that
in play.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Well, we paused for one second on the quote response
to the Great March of Return. For people who don't know,
the Great March of Return was a civil society led
Gaza initiative that was a nonviolent demonstration where every Friday,
people would meet and kind of march to the fence,
you know, symbolically gazing out at land that had been
that they had lost over the years. The idea of

(30:42):
responded by killing a pretty significant amount of Palestinians, but
also maiming tens of thousands, to the point where.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
The UN.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
The UN put out a report noting that it had
become commonplace to see people walking around with one leg
missing a leg missing an arm. There were IDF soldiers
who said we were told shoot out the legs.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
You know.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
One guy said he hit like forty plus legs in
a single day. Hamas opposed this at the start because
it was nonviolent, because it was civil society led. Hamas
eventually caved under public pressure and ended up supporting the
Great March Return, which I think goes to your question,
what is the political order that can replace Hamas. If

(31:29):
there is a non violent movement that can gain traction,
then Hamas is defeated by that. Hamas is pressured into
supporting that just by the kind of public support for it,
like happened with the Great March Return. The Israeli response
was not to say, Wow, let's embrace this non violent,

(31:51):
civil society led movement and marginalize Hamas and reach a
deal with this Palestinian force that could even see a
unification between the West Bank and Gaza toward a long
term peaceful solution. It was let's annihilate this, let's shoot
and kill and maim the peaceful protesters, which only then

(32:15):
fortifies Hamasa's position and allows them to say that we
were right all along. We told you you can't deal
with Israel, we warned you against this, that violence is
the only way forward.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
That's a fantastic retelling that is almost entirely fictional. For
the great margin return, it did start off as a
generally peaceful protest. The idea behind the March of Return
was returning to Israel. The UN has released a report
where they've gone over a lot of the shootings. It's
very curious that if you actually read the entire report,
you'll notice that almost every single shooting happens between fifty

(32:45):
to one hundred meters in range, Which is curious. Why
would if these are because I was told I believe
by I think Finkelstein himself said, or might have been Raboni,
that this was a cracked team of Israeli snipers. What
apparently their rifles only worked up two hundred meters. The
reason why just lazy, or maybe the why because there
is a no go zone between the fence and one
hundred meters because when people get too close, people try

(33:05):
to cut the fence open, people try to break through,
which is what was happening towards the end of the
no choice but to shoot all those unarmed people. It
doesn't matter if you're armed or unarmed, if you're approaching
an area that you're not supposed to be in. And
then when people start to try to break into the
breakthrough the fence, that's the rules of the border. You
try to cross any militarized border, you're probably going to
get shot at. Also, towards the end of the Great
Marshal Return, there were people that were throwing stones, that

(33:27):
were sending over incendiary balloons that were causing like fires
to spread on the other side of the fence. All
this is documented even by the UN and that was
when the majority of the firing from the Israeli police happened.
If you want to say that they shouldn't be shooting
at people who were close to the fence because you
don't like that policy or whatever, that's fine, But characterizing
that is like just open firing into a bunch of
innocent people that are standing there with the goal of
just maiming people. For no reason is the most unbelievable

(33:49):
retelling of what happened. Now, it's the end of that event,
that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 4 (33:52):
Actually, just to characterize it, just you know, get an
even more complete picture. Israeli policy is people in Gaza
have no right to go in a out of the
cage that they've been placed into, their complete siege, their
economies and shambles, because Israel does not allow them to
trade with the outside world.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
They can't have an airport.

Speaker 4 (34:08):
Because Israel doesn't feel like they are entitled to an airport,
can't have a seaport. You know, when you look at
the rates of unemployment over fifty percent in Gaza at
the time, And if those people who are trapped in
this cage come a little too close to the border,
then we open fire at them and kill them, even
when they're unarmed, because that's border policy.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
If this is.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
Something that more than If this is something it's more
than six thousand, according to the un quote unquote more
than six thousand unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers
week after week at the protest sites and the separation fence.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
There's no denying that.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
Yes, some people try to open up, and some people
sent insidiary balloons over the border and so on. But
by and large, when you look at the cases, human
rights organizations have been clear about the fact that people
were targeted when they posed absolutely no threat to Israeli soldiers.
So Israeli soldiers opened fire on people and targeted specifically
journalists and children. That is, and people are.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Game that's being played when we say posed no threat
to Israeli soldiers. There was one U and Rep that
came out that analyzed it that claimed that every single
shooting except for one was unjustified. But the way that
they got that is they didn't analyze that as an
armed conflict. They analyzed that as a policing event. And
when you analyze things internationally as a policing event, typically
police aren't allowed shootor kill anybody unless they pose a
direct threat to the individual who Why would be analyzed

(35:16):
as an armed conflict if one side wasn't dark because
Hamas was present, it doesn't matter if they were shooting
if you've got an enemy. If you've got an enemy
military that is present amongst people that are perform that
are there was no AMAS is considered oppositional force and
if you've got people that are participating, if.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
You don't have guns not, of course, nothing to do
clear about the fact that the situation. You can only
kill combatants if they're in combat and they're armed. You
can't somebody.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Absolutely, you do not become oystered combat You do not.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
You're not.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Do you not all of a sudden gain the protections
of a civilian if you're an enemy combatant without a gun.

Speaker 4 (35:53):
If you have to absolute film Google, yes, let's let's
do that.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
Just to go back to a point that you made
earlier about sort of, I just want.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
To just so you're saying that, like if there's a
military and you're finding the enemy and you guys, if
you just drop your guns, you can just like run
back and nobody can.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
If you drop your guns and raise your arms.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
You can't know that surrendering. That's different than running away.
You can't drop your guns and just run away, and
you can't get shock because you know, fire off.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
If you're a military threat at the time, it's a
military engagement.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
That is absolutely not true.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Okay, I just.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
You have a control room look stuff, But you're wrong.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
That's that's that's a level of detail.

Speaker 4 (36:31):
Again, you start like playing up imaginal scenarios of somebody
shooting at you.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
And then dropping their gun and turning around.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
But that's what your rule would lead to. We have
to be able to analyze like this is the problem
acknowledge like the basic reality conflict.

Speaker 5 (36:41):
This brings up a really fundamental reality actually, because Omar
was talking about airports and the seaparts ports, and I
think we all agree it would be miserable to live
in a territory that doesn't have an airport, doesn't have
a seaport.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (36:53):
The argument from Israels of Israel is that if you
put an airport and Gaza Hamas would immediately see is
it and use it to use parts, use the technologies
to kill Israelis.

Speaker 4 (37:04):
Yeah, and nobody asks if you have an airport in Israel,
will these yearly government use it to import weapons from
the United States that they then used to kill Palestinians.
You see, there's an inequality here that we never really acknowledge.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
And I don't think that's unfair.

Speaker 5 (37:15):
I just mean, so, what is like, now, what is
the path to creating a guy that can happen?

Speaker 2 (37:20):
What do we think Hamas would use the airport in
the support to bring in weapons.

Speaker 4 (37:24):
I have no doubt that they would exactly the same
way the Israeli government imports weapons. And so it's massive
atrocities terrorism against What can.

Speaker 5 (37:31):
People in Palestine do to create a situation where that's
not and what can people in Israel do to create
a situation.

Speaker 4 (37:38):
And to Stephen's earlier point, that which we did not address,
is like, you know, he thinks the goal of removing
Hamass from power is absolutely essential and you've got.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
To do it first. I want to point out that
double standardause nobody says we have to get rid of
thesesaely government. It's not.

Speaker 5 (37:53):
It's not even by any better better if you're better,
and that it's a democracy better in that responds to
international global pressure better than that.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Their goal isn't the entire annihilation of a group of people.

Speaker 4 (38:05):
If you think that the absolutely is their absolute intention
is the absolute erasure of Palestinians has.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
Exploded because they're doing it in slow motion.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
There's going the opposite way and you go backwards.

Speaker 4 (38:20):
That's a very very cute talking point, but when you
look at what actually Israeli policy has been for literally decades,
it's been confining, Palestinians too smaller and smaller areas.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
You can see it unfolding.

Speaker 4 (38:29):
In the case of Gaza, they've just given up on Gaza.
They've basically this seized the entire thing. It's a cage.
Palestinians can do whatever they want there. They don't care
about Gaza anymore, and that's how they wanted to leave it.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
In the case of the West Bank, they absolutely are
squeezing Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas. So you can
talk about the Palastinian population increasing in terms of numbers,
but they're in the areas that Israel is interested in
taking over. They're absolutely decreasing.

Speaker 4 (38:48):
When you look at Jerusalem, Jerusalem every few years you
look at it in the number of Palatines, and Jerusalem
is actually decreasing. It's a deliberate policy of pushing Palestinians out.
But so from my perspective, and look, look.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
There are Palestinian is decreasing. Are you saying because some
of them are getting citizenship for Israel now?

Speaker 4 (39:03):
Because no, no, no, no no, because Israel is demolishing their
homes and replacing them. And in some cases you see
it actually on video of Palestinian families being thrown out
of their homes in East Rustom and Jews Stetler's come
and to take over those is There.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Is cens available for every person living. Even there's a
lot of people you want because they don't want to
be part of Israel. And do you think real quick,
because you mentioned between the Hamas, do you think if
Hamasu ran Israel and Jews lived in the Gaza strip
in the West Bank, do you think the situation would
look the same or do you think as would treat
them worse?

Speaker 3 (39:30):
I have no idea.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
You wouldn't even you couldn't.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Possibly it wouldn't look like to be treated worse than
gods is being treated now.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
A million times. It could be actual starvation, It could
be actual dying.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Is actually actual gods. So people are dying by the dozen.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
I wish I brought a list of me. I have
like fifty two different stories between October and now where
verge of famine emmited, mass starvation, almost famine about to start.
It's been happening for six months, and prior to this
people say it's happening for twenty years.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Those of children dying, you go by.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Zero reports, the number is thirty two, and that's the
most favorable re reporting the gods and health.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
So that's acceptable for you.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
That's the idea that this place has been starved for
decades and we have thirty two? Does the show for
you're once again conflating not very that you're not going
to answer, which is if Hamas ran Israel, do you
think that the truth just worse.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
I don't see the point of speculating about things that.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Because we have no idea what he said that the
idea is worse than Hamas.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
Yes, in terms of the scale of the atrocities that committed,
there's no okay.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
So in that case, you about it.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
The United States is worse than Hamas and that basically
every single large country.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
Is worth because I think I think the genocidal campaign
that Israel is currently engaged in Gaza is kind of unique.
It's not it's not commonplace for countries to engage in
that level of violence.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
When you mayle or let me, let me just I
just want to I just want to know.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
So many things. I'm not chase the ball into different directions.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
It's very clear that you can answer everyone. I am
saying so many things. I will ask a very clear question,
you won't engage, and then you're gonna yeap about a
whole bunch of unrelated stuff like genocital campiates to reader
one more time, you're not going to answer. I understand.
My very clear question was, if Hamas was in control
of Israel and then the IDF in Israel was in
control of the Gaza strip in the West Bank, do
we think that Hamas, who would now own nuclear weapons

(41:18):
and a full military and everything, would they be treating
the Jews better or worse than the Jews are treating
the Palestinians.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
And my answer is, I don't know. You've mentioned that
Hamas has to go. I think these early government has
to go by that logic. And the question then becomes
what cost would be acceptable to impose on Israeli civilians.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
In order to get the Israeli government out of power?
Would you impose starvation and all that? Of course nobody
would endorse that.

Speaker 4 (41:39):
Everybody understand that's a completely monstrous idea for a government
that has committed far greater atrocities than Hamas has. And
then you have the second point of if you want
to get rid of Hamas, it might be useful to
ask yourself how Hamas came into being, how did they
come about, how did they get support? And it's obvious
that brutality towards Palestinians is how Hamas came in to being,

(42:00):
because they created it literally and it's it's you know,
even if you want to leave out the part where
nathaniaho Is effectually was effectively indulging their existence as a
means of dividing Palestinians Israelly. Politicians have been quite explicit
about the fact that they see this as a useful policy.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
To prevent a Palestinian state from existing.

Speaker 4 (42:19):
But Hamas gained support as an alternative to the Palestinian
authority that was client that was bending over backwards to
try to accommodate Israel. And they said no, no, no,
we can get you freedom because we're going to fight.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
And that's how they gain power.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
And if your idea is to defeat Hamas and get
them out of power by brutalizing Palestinians even more, that's
just completely delusional. Even if you get rid of Hamas
as an organization, whatever replaces it, whether they call themselves
Hamas or not, you're creating another generation of traumatized people
who are going to be desperate for revenge and you're
just basically perpetuating conflict.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
If however, that was the point that I was making earlier.
Some of the founders of Hamas As children lived through
massacres in gods In in the nineteen fifties.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
This is well known. History doesn't justify what they did,
but it raises questions about whether or not tactically strategically,
those massacres worked to Israel's benefit.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Now, if you are net Yahoo and you want to
divide Palestinians and the extremists are good for you, then
it does work to their benefit. But if you're trying
to defeat Hamas or the ideology of kind of armed
resistance to Israel, and if you really want a two
state solutions, and if you really want a solution to
this crisis, then why would more cow bell like more violence?

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Why would that? Why would that finally work? I don't
think more or less violence will work. There has to
try less. We've tried more, not less, hasn't of the
entire history of the Palestinian people against Israel since forty
eight has been one of violence, NonStop, right, so that
the idea that like it's if you're just peaceful for

(43:47):
a little bit, it'll fix things. Isn't going to work.
The Palestinian people don't want peace, they want justice, and
in their mind right now, justice has to do with
acquiring some amount of Israel. Now, whether that is the
entire irony of Israel into a single state, or whether
that's a two state solution again.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
Acquiring parts of Israel. If you're talking about two states,
that's acquiring occupied territory that is not Israels and Israel
has to withdraw from.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
What do you mean it's not Israels, it does not
belong to in international law is extremely clear about the
fact that they have to withdraw from that territory. Not
extremely it is extremely clear.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
You're going to reference a single advisory of pitten written
by the by the UN in two thousand.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
And four resolutions that make absolutely clear.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
That resolution story before we get into the resolutions.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Since you raised the virtue of the Israeli government, I
did want to ask if you had seen the plus
nine seven two article on the lavender Ai program. I
imagine you saw this, so let me read you a
little portion of it. So the IDEF used artificial intelligence
to identify hamas members. It used to be that you
had to be I think kernel or above to be

(44:57):
specifically targeted by an air strike, and you had to
be and there had to be some precautions taken to
minimize the civilians that you might be around. The IDF
after October seventh got rid of both of those precautions.
They said, any HAMAS member is now able to be
targeted by an airstrike, and civilian casualties don't matter. In fact,

(45:20):
maximizing civilian casualties seems to be a feature of the program.
I'll just read from this if you can put up
the nine to seven two magazine article they're write. During
the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping
approval for officers to adopt Lavender's kill lists, with no
requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices
or to examine the raw intelligence on which they were based.

(45:42):
One source stated that human personnel often served only as
a quote rubber stamp for the machine's decisions, adding that
normally they would personally devote only about twenty seconds to
each target before authorizing a bombing, just to make sure
the Lavender marked target is male. This was despite knowing
that the system makes what are regarded as errors in
approximately ten percent of cases, and is known to occasionally

(46:04):
mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant
groups or no connection at all. Moreover, the Israeli armies
systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes,
usually at night, while their whole families were present, rather
than during the course of military activity. According to the sources,
this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligent standpoint,

(46:25):
it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses.
Additional automated systems, including one called Where's Daddy, also revealed
here for the first time, were used specifically to track
the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had
entered their families' residences, and a nine to seven to
two argues that the reason that you've seen so many

(46:47):
women and children killed is that they were identifying men.
Sometimes something like ten to twenty percent of men and
gods are named Muhammad. If you go through the Ministry
of Health list of casualties, many of them have same
last names because they're from the same family. So they're

(47:08):
using AI to identify a particular man and then follow
him to his home and then killing him with a
bomb in his home. Oftentimes this is an apartment that
doesn't just have his family sleeping there, but also has
many other family sleeping.

Speaker 4 (47:21):
There, which is where the whereas Daddy name comes from
that program. They wait for them to be with their families,
and they think it's easier to bomb them in their
homes rather than try to fight them in the field.
And the words they're more difficult to find.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
So how could the because of the field, like, so,
how could this be worse?

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Try to design I could government that behaves in a
worse way than obvious.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Counter is the numbers don't support the idea that civilians
are being targeted in mass It doesn't even come close
to it. I've seen estimates at anywhere it's like nine
to one for civilian to military dost historically in conflict,
and the idea that in the Goaza Strip, one of
the most densely populated places on the planet, those numbers
right now are depending on who's not supposed to go
anywhere from two point five the one to like four

(48:01):
to one in terms of civilian too militant deaths. So
the idea that people doing wiped out with innocent family members.
There just don't seem to be any numbers at all
to support that. Something that's also very frustrating is Hamas
engages in behavior that has been documented by the UN,
by Amnesty International, by other NGOs, that is supposed to
induce the death of civilians. I don't know why nobody

(48:22):
seems to ever care about this. Hamas and the Goaza
strip exclusively fights in civilian clothes. Do you acknowledge that
there you don't care Hamas will fight from hospitals? Do
you acknowledge that they.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
Don't fight from hospitals?

Speaker 2 (48:35):
What happened with the most recent rate?

Speaker 4 (48:37):
Let me let me okay, so you've actually gone no, no, no,
I'm going to address You're gonna.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Address it because you're not. But so let me just
get my f he.

Speaker 5 (48:45):
Said, he doesn't think that they know he's he He
just said, no.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
He doesn't. But I just want to go. I just
want to just for people listening. I guess one of
the frustrating things about asymmetrical warfare is that as law
arm conflict has evolved past the nineties, the clubs of
the Soviet Union States are having to do more and
more funding against non state actors, which is post a
huge challenge to the ICJ and the ICCM. Termetime he
analyze this conflict and the reason why it's such a
challenge is because international law only works if it allows

(49:12):
countries to effectively operate so that countries will want to
follow it. So international law tries to balance for law
of ar conflict two very very delicate things. One is
the protection of orstick combat peoples, people that shouldn't be
killed ever, and then the other is a state's ability
to conduct warfare because we deprive either of these. If
you don't protect civilians, everybody dies, and if you deprive
a state of the ability to defend it, so nobody
follows law arm conflict. The issue with hamas as an

(49:34):
asymmetrical opponent is every single behavior that they engage in
is meant to induce maximum civilian casualty. That means that
they exclusively fight in civilian uniforms. It means that they
operate out of civilians supposed to be special protected areas
like hospitals. The al Schiafa rate recently is a good
example of that. They booby trap corpses, they booby trap houses.
This happened a lot of protective edge In twenty fourteen,

(49:54):
AMBSSY International reports show that there was footage taken out
of Al Shifa Hospital in two thousand and eight. MSCY
International are on that that there was an interrogation center
in there and we saw captured CCTV footags that showed
hostages being brought into Alshiva Hospital. That every that Hamas
will store munitions, and they will fight even from zones
that are supposed to be declared safe, and they store
ammunitions in places like mosques or homes. All of these

(50:15):
behaviors are designed from the Hamas perspective to induce the
maximum amount of civilian casualties. And then when it happens,
nobody has anything to say with Hamas, and everybody has
something to say with Israel. Why hasn't Hamas, By the way,
these are also considered failures to uphold your duty under
an auslaw. Why hasn't Hamas tried to protect the civilian population.
All those tunnels they built, they couldn't build one bomb shelter.
Why hasn't Hamas tried to set up a humanitarian area?

(50:35):
Why is it exclusively on Israel and the international community
and Hamas can't do any type of collaboration or cooperation
to do it because they don't care, because the goal
is to induce the maximum amount of civilian coustus.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
One tiny point out, if they did build a bomb
shelter for civilians, Israel would bombit and say that the
look they're putting, they're putting civilians.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
And if it would happen, that would be the end
of the conflict. Because if there is a civilian bomb
shelter built and there were no hostenal resort and Israel
that over target at that point, who supports it bombing
their bombing entire neighborhood to the hospital.

Speaker 4 (51:09):
You've gone through our lengthy record, allow me to do
the same. Actually for just one second. One of the
things that you had actually said recently, I think it's
on the Comedy Seller podcast, is that it is quite
blatant to you, he said, parently obvious that Israel is
doing everything it can to protect civilians and cause.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Them or I don't understand. I think said more than
any other country ever has in the history of company. Yes,
I think, oh, actually it turns out we do have that,
all right. It seems if you engage with it honestly,
and I hate to say that's summary parties when you
engage with honestly, it seems obvious, like parently obvious, that
Israel is doing everything they can to minimize casualties. That
it's like undeniable because the numbers would be so much

(51:45):
different if they were just indiscriminately bombing or carpa bombing,
as everybody says. So, but I mean, they still have
to manage the pr aspect because at the end of
the day, you know, perception is really the only thing
that matters in international communities with other countries.

Speaker 4 (51:58):
So frankly, the claim that Israel's doing everything it can
to mini my civilian casualties is by far the single
most absurd thing that I have heard Stephen say.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
Period, let me run through the record.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
We target a soldier at his house at night, if
that was your goal.

Speaker 4 (52:13):
And with the thing that you mentioned with Lavender, it's specifically, yeah,
specifically when they're at home, but beyond that, just if
I can run through that record.

Speaker 5 (52:19):
Because one second, so quick, do you stand by saying everything.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
The more basically yeah, more back to more than any
other country ever has in the history of all of them.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Conflict let's run through the record. Human rights organizations who
are the objective observers on these situations. Every single one
of them, in every subsequent invasion of Gaza, including the
current one, talk about Israel engaging in massive, indiscriminate bombing
of civilian areas. They talk about flattening and entire neighborhoods.
They talk also about deliberately killing civilians who oposed absolutely
no threat to Israeli soldiers. They go through and describe

(52:50):
these incidents, they raise them with the Israeli military. The
real military says, we investigated and we saw that nobody no,
nothing wrong happened. And human rights organization's assessment of the
way that Israel conducts itself is that it's completely in
violation of international law and that their self accountability is
a complete cham it's not actually serious. And then you
look at what Israeli leaders themselves also say. And by

(53:11):
the way, that nine seven to two magazine there was
an article there is a one that came before it
as well, in which they described that Israeli's policy in
Gaza is to basically shock the civilian population by doing
massive devastation in civilian areas as a means of putting
pressure on Hamas. And that included an example that they
listed toppling a high rise residential building without warning on

(53:32):
top of the people who are inside it. So that's
and that's yeah, that's based on power targets. Is a
power target? Yeah, And that's based on interviews with Israeli
intelligence officers about Israeli policy in Gaza. And it's long
been stated Israeli policy. Frankly, if you look at people
like gua Island Israeli general who later became the National
Security Advisor in Israel, they talk about the policy being

(53:53):
to punish the civilians and to induce so much suffering
among them in huge numbers, to put pressure on groups
like Hamas and Hezbela. And this is not new here,
by the way. During yeah, during the two thousand and
six invasion of Lebanon, there is an incident in which
Israel dropped a million cluster bombs all over towns and
villages in Lebanon, prompting a high ranking Israeli commander to say, quote,
this is you can find it on ha Itz. What

(54:16):
we did was insane and monstrous. We covered entire towns
and villages with cluster bombs. That's how they describe what
Israel actually carried out at the time. And then you
look at current Israeli statements right now from all of this,
Benjamin Attaniajo has been quoted saying in Israeli press again
talking about what the strategy is with Ron Drmer, and
he said, the strategy is to thin the population in

(54:37):
Gaza down to a minimum.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
That's what he actually wants to do. He uses genocidal
language like the Amalik, which is a quote from the
Bible about murdering the children and babies of your animal.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Like appears out to the hang the idea that is exclusively.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
And you have then Israeli soldiers themselves, so in case
there's a misinterpretation of that, celebrating that they're going to
kill Palestinians, Palestinian civilians. They're chanting about the Mlek and
how we're going to destroy them. And you have people
who are actually posting videos on themselves talking about we're
killing them by the tens of thousands.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
Isn't that great?

Speaker 4 (55:09):
So though it's the rhetoric of Israeli soldiers themselves on
the ground, then they're caught on tape shooting children in
the head when they post absolutely no threat. It happened
in Janine, even in the West Bank during this current crisis,
where he saw two young children being shot in the
head with basically very obviously posing no threat. You saw
in Gaza grandmother holding the hand of a young child

(55:31):
while carrying a white flag, and they shoot her dead
while the child is holding her hand, and the child
freaks out and everybody else runs away. You have a
pattern that is documented on video of these kinds of crimes.
You have American doctors who visit Gaza and talk about
the horrors they see in hospital, how there's countless children
who come in with single sniper bullet wounds to the head.

(55:51):
They can't keep track of how many of these are
coming in. And you have the President of the United
States describing Joe Biden describing Israeli bombings of Gaza as
in discriminate the idea that you can look at this
amount of evidence between what human rights organizations are reporting,
what Israeli leaders are saying, what Israeli soldiers are posting
of themselves, and what the American government's assessment of that
bombing is, and to say they're doing everything they can

(56:13):
to minimize civilian casualties is just so thoroughly dishonest on
behalf of an apartheid government that is committing atrocities before
all of us. It's just it's it's mind boggling, Steve.
You honestly would have to be either naive to believe
that or dishonest.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
And you just don't strike me as an IV guy.
You're a very smart guy. I don't understand how you can.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Actually say its funny because the entire like yep, you
just did, is completely destroyed by a single question. How
do you explain the numbers? What I would explain the
ratio of even what Hamas has claimed, I think, how.

Speaker 4 (56:42):
Many percent women and children? How do you explain that?

Speaker 2 (56:45):
I hold, I'm sorry because for children, we're saying eighteen
and under as opposed to the traditionally fighting age is
what we would usually talk about in these conflicts. But
everything you want bombing is worse than fact that even
Hamas admitted. I believe that I think it was seventy
five hundred or eight thousand other people.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Killed with I don't remember what they're exactly right.

Speaker 5 (57:05):
I have an analysis from March twelve, so this is
from just Security as of this date, the IDF reported
twenty nine thousand air strikes in Gaza. At that date,
the number of reported civilian deaths in Gaza was roughly
twenty nine thousand, two hundred. The number of Hamas fighters
killed in action has been claimed by the IDF and Hamas,
both without evidence. The IDF claims twelve thousand fighters killed well,
Hamas claims six thousand fighters killed. So we can look
at those numbers. Given the demographic data from the Health Ministry.

(57:27):
Out of twenty nine thousand, two hundred deaths, about ninety
seven hundred were men and the rest were women and children.
If the IDEAF claim is true, this is equivalent to
every man being killed in Gaza being a Hummas fighter
and several thousand women and or children being Hamas fighters.
This is extremely unlikely, but to be extremely conservative, I
will use the IDEAF reported Hamas casualty numbers. Twelve thousand.
You give a lower bound on civilian deaths in Gaza.
In addition, we need to subtract deaths that normally happened

(57:50):
for this population, So about forty nine hundred deaths per
year on average equivalent to about eighteen hundred and four
point five month period. This gives us a minimum number
of civilian or deaths of approximately fifteen thousand, seven hundred
based on twenty nine thousand air strikes. That leads to
an approximate an average of fifty four civilians killed per
one hundred attacks.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
And just lastly, this.

Speaker 5 (58:07):
Analysis goes on to say, despite the alarm over the
high rate of civilian dusts in Raka, one finds the
minimum equivalent in Gaza, fifty four civilians killed in one
hundred attacks is eight times greater than the air wars
based estimate and thirty two times greater than the DoD estimate.
And recall that that fifty two numbers a lower bound
for the Gaza ratio is likely far higher than this. So, Stephen,
do you dispute the validity of those numbers?

Speaker 2 (58:30):
What was the ratio of fighters on the lower bound?
What was the ratio of fighters to civilians?

Speaker 5 (58:34):
There?

Speaker 3 (58:35):
They say?

Speaker 2 (58:35):
Did I say Hamas claimed six thousand? Yeah? So of
the death told at that time was how much twenty thousand?
About nine thousand men total? Say six thousand, And it
was twenty nine thousand total deaths.

Speaker 5 (58:46):
Twenty thousand, two hundred total deaths ninety seven hundred were men.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
So that's so if you're taking the the that's the
Hamas reported number, you're at one militant to four civilians,
and that's for the Hamas reported number. How can the
ratio be so new or on a genoside can discriminate
campaign against Thomas? Yes, be the case.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
They're doing it again in slow motion to give possible
that this is happening. It's obvious. Look, they've destroyed eighty
percent of the building.

Speaker 4 (59:15):
They have, they've displayed it, they've displayed they've displaced ninety
percent of the population. Can you name any other conflict
in which he displays ninety percent of the civilian pop now?

Speaker 2 (59:22):
Because usually they just destroyed them. Do you think it
dressden they told the civilians to flee. Do you think
in the Tokyo fire bombs sakihiroshim did with all the
civilians to leave? Can you can you acknowledge what he
just was incredibly fucking stupid that No, they don't sell
civilians to leave first. Normally, they just kill them because.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
Because because he thinks, because he thinks that that's a
clever line. Let me explain something to you. He's not
going to I'm going to acknowledge it. I'm going to
acknowledge it.

Speaker 4 (59:46):
Yes, they told civilians to leave and then they dropped
massive two thousand bombs on the safe zones that they
told the civilians.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
Just want to know the feature or whatever.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
There have been countless incidents of them dropping.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
Now you're just flying.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
I looked it up up all the data on all
the safe zones. Four hours of roads they make safe
per New York they guarantee travels investigation that attack.

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
There's a New York Times investigation and there's an NBC investigation.
Both of them document the fact that Israel is bombing
safe zones where they tell civilians to flee.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
And isigation hold on, it is.

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
Really committed in CNN that intelligence indication that these places
were safe houses for commanders of the RAF of a
brigade of the Hamas Terra organization. This is back in
December about bombing areas that were supposed to be evacuation routes.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Evacuation routes are not safe zones. There's been one official
declared they should shouldn't hams not operate from there? I mean,
we're talking again, that's a good question. There's one zone
I wish I could remember is that ow, it's ol
moah something, it's the beach west of conunits whatever, nobody
knows of it. It's this is the only singing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Told people to go to conunits would be safe there. Yeah,
they did not say.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
The cones would be a safe zone. No, that's absolutely
why they tell people to go there. Well, initially because
most of the where they concentrate them and kill them there.
If why else would they say so?

Speaker 5 (01:01:02):
Then if you're a Palestinian, are we going to see.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
You're going to see twenty thirty forty fifty thousand deaths soon?
Then are we about to see like one hundred thousand
Palatines go up to smoke? That's what they're doing. They're
hurting them all to one, sent the cities so that
they can blow them all. Reason, they were going for
pausible deniability. Now you're arning them to one dry kills
one a blower.

Speaker 4 (01:01:17):
Yes, And now they're going to tell them that it's
time to relocate because we're going to invade offa Hansen
into places where there is no food, water, or shelter
and have them.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
And they're going to be and then it's starvation and
death like they happened for the past five months.

Speaker 4 (01:01:27):
Yes, it's going to be I'm going killing right, killing
them by the tens of thousands, and saying oops, it's
just war. Gauz is unlivable anymore. Too bad, it can't
support Palestinian life. People are starving. It's just all an
accident that they're giving what.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
They're doing an accident. They're doing it because it's crazy
that the numbers are so poor for a country that
could kill so many more people you have, but they're
constantly they're doing things that no other countries on. Do
you acknowledge that no other country does leaflets, phone calls
to buildings, roof knocking, sirens. Yes, you you get it,
No one, no other countries, human rights organizations. You're not
going to answer that. Used you see what countries do it?

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
Yeah, I mean literally interrupted before we went in to
literally interrupt me to tell me I'm not going to ask.

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
You were saying no country has done anything like roof
knockings and leafless and all that. And when you look
at what human rights organizations say about these, they say
they're completely pointless because there's nowhere for these civilians to
go that is safe.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
So you can drop a leaflet.

Speaker 4 (01:02:22):
That's it's it's it's a game and right and like
the fact that people like you fall for it. It's
it's just kind of really embarrassing you have for the
wonderful They tell civilians to flee because here we're going
to be so nice and make sure that you don't die,
and then when they flee, they kill them as they're fleeing,
or they kill them.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
Wherever they.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
If you were a Palestinian, what would you do if
you lived and probably go south to the whatever the
beach was? I wish the name of it right now,
but there's there's been one singularly declared safe area, and
it's that beach.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
How many how many plasons you want a crowd into
that whatever? That small beach?

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
One point?

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
How many bathrooms are there? How much water is there?

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
If you will thea how about just have Hamas.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
Or is it just the top bombing gus to stop
attacking enemy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
That committed the largest terror attack per capital of the
history of industry.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
It's a ridiculous double standard.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Way hold on, you think it's reasonable to tell Israel, hey, Hamas,
I know that you guys like did a little bit
of a large terrorism against US and have been, by
the way, which is a violation of international law, indiscriminately
launching rockets for decades from this and every single one
of those is a violation of law because by definition indiscriminate,
which by definition fail the distinction principle that is essential

(01:03:31):
to law, are on conflict one of the three problems.
So you're saying that Israel needs to allow Hamas to
stay there, who has been breaking international law of our
conflict are.

Speaker 4 (01:03:39):
Twenty years as opposed to Hamas along with the Israeli
government to stay there when they're breaking international law for
even longer than that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
And I want to put a fine, honestly, I want
to get an answer to that. Why is it that
you think that the Israeli government having committed all the atrocities.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Because the Israeli government is a democracy that can be
reasoned with. Their neighbors have reasoned with them, people have
signed peace agreements, and people have reached agreements with them.
The Palestinians have not. And there's a reason, by the way,
which you will never recognize, why all of the surrounding
Arab states have abandoned the Palestinians too, Because their history
has been one of violence that first they've been encouraged
by the surrounding nations and used by them, and then
now they've been abandoned. What's the other nations?

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
That's a racist anti Palestinians?

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
What happened to seventies Jordan fifty two? Jerusal to go
to work with the reason he's a racist?

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
Yes, when he talks about Palestinians, nobody likes them and
nobody wants them and nobody whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Absolutely that's a racist description. Don't this this this distinction
between like there's a category of people who are racist
category of people who are not.

Speaker 4 (01:04:38):
I think that's a simplistic thing. What he just described
is a racist stereotype. There're absolutely no question.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
I don't want to I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Want to get them to who he is. To a
lot of people that are pro Palestinian, understand the history
is if.

Speaker 4 (01:04:49):
You don't understand that the Egyptian dictatorship is collaborating with
Israel to suppress anything that is Muslim Brotherhood affiliated. And
that's why the reason they're collaborating against the.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
Are collaborating with the with the Israeli government. When they
locked all the Gozzins and the Gouzens, strip and didn't
let any of them leave.

Speaker 4 (01:05:02):
Yeah, okay, yeah, Steve, you do this thing constantly where
you bring up random anecdotes that are completely irrelevant to
anything that what I'm too.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
I'm sorry to you. The reason why that wasn't random
is because you applied today that the dictatorship in Egypt.
First of all, you said dictatorship very loaded. Yes, Egypt's
had a history of dictatorships. You're implying that they're collaborated
with Israel and a part of unique act, like they're
collaborating with his own unique way. And even from forty
eight to sixty seven, when Egypt had controlled the Gaza Strip,
the Palestines were still locked in.

Speaker 4 (01:05:31):
And let's be clear about whether we're about something or
let me be clear about something right now. This rhetoric,
I'm gonna let it go for now. The idea is
looking at all the Arabs surrounding our government who are
collaborating with Israel. It's signed that they hate Palestinians. When
you do opinion polling in any of these countries, all
of them, including in Saudi Arabia, the overwhelming majority of
the population wants to cut off any talk. They want

(01:05:52):
to isolate Israel diplomatically. They don't want to deal with them.
The people of the region absolutely oppose what Israel is
doing to Palestinians. And the fact that you can cite
a handful of governments in the surrounding area who all
effectively belonged to the US orbit and operate under and
get tremendous privilege and financial privilege and security privilege for
collaborating with the United States, and to try to paint
that as some sort of validation that they have anti

(01:06:12):
Palestinian sentiment, I think it is completely ridiculous and ignorant
of the dynamics that actually exist in the region, a
region that I grew up in.

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
By the way, what you have I.

Speaker 4 (01:06:21):
Grew up in Kuwait, Jordan, Yemen, Oman and the United
Arab Emirates, and I visited Palestine on multiple occasions.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Gotcha, you grew up equated in what years? Was that
when Arafat was supporting I was Saddam Hussein.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
I was born in Kuwait in nineteen eighty two, when
I lived there until that war, and yes, when Arafat
made statements in support of Saddam Hussein, that became the
reason why many Palestinians could not go back, which was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
A really big deal too, which is also funny because
those Oslo course would point to Israel not being a
good part of for peace. The only reason why those
Oslo courts were so horrible is because Arafat was desperately
looking for a way back into Palestinian popularity after supporting
speaking of Oslo.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
Yes, and you know what was also happening, And the
reason why Oslo happened is because while Arafat was looking
for a way to get validation as the leader of
Palestinians and come back, Israel was dealing with the fact
that there is a Palestine uprising, the first into Fada
overwhelmingly non violent, in which Palestinians were doing civil disobedience,
sometimes throwing rocks at soldiers, and Israel was brutalizing them
for a year after year after there were they killed

(01:07:15):
so many of them that the Israeli officials started being
concerned about the the optics of it, so they just said,
don't kill them, beat them up and break their arms instead.
And what you ended up with, and what you ended
up with, you have to let me finish my thought
every now and then.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Yeah, and what you ended up with murder the children.
Understand we gain.

Speaker 4 (01:07:33):
They started beating up Palestinian protesters and seeing them brutalizing
them and breaking their bones on video, and that ended
up being an even.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
Bigger disaster for Israel.

Speaker 4 (01:07:41):
And they did not know what to do with that
civil uprising of people who wanted to be free from occupation,
and so they struck a deal with Arafat and brought
him in to suppress the Intafada on the fake and
false promise that they might grant Palestinians estate. Arafat fell
for it, and it was all a sham made to
suck the energy out of a genuine Palatinian uprising for
freedom and to turn it into the fraudulent Oslo process

(01:08:04):
in which Israel had cover to expand more and more
settlements and entrench the occupation under the pretensive peace.

Speaker 3 (01:08:09):
That's the history of what happened.

Speaker 5 (01:08:11):
So what could Israel have done after October seventh that
would have been and I don't want to ump you
into this camp. Some people said, it's about proportionality. What
could Israel have done after October seventh that would have
either been proportional or given some of the legitimate points
that Stephen made about a densely populated area where you
have a military and a civilian population crowded into hospitals,
et cetera. What could Israel have done? What should they

(01:08:33):
have done after October seventh?

Speaker 4 (01:08:34):
That would have been a just response, And I promised
I'll address that directly, but just on the context that
you just described before that you have a situation in
which there is it's impossible to have a situation which
HAMSS is fighting not in civilian areas. I mean when
you talk about the difference in power. One side has
a full fledged military, as air force has tanks, Hams
can just go out in the field and confront them directly.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
So they do so, they do, so they do. Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:08:58):
You'd have to let me finish my sentence right now,
and then Steven seriously, like judge try, in the words
of Norman Ficklestein tried to have the self possession to
just listen.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
A little bit more and then a style of norm
be wrong of it everything.

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
Yeah, you have a situation in which the balance of
power makes it so that those militants have to effectively
use guerrilla tactics, and grilla tactics involve hiding in civilian areas.
That's how that actually that happens. And if you're really
upset about that and you think that that's a real
problem by all means, arm hamasked, the way you arm
Israel and then they can have military on military war

(01:09:29):
and we can spare the Palestine and civilians if you
think that's really what's the underlying motivation. But of course
nobody would ever consider that we only armed the criminals
on one side with massive armaments. Now, on the question
of what Israel should have done, there's two separate questions
that often get conflated. There's the question of is it
a just war to begin with, and then there's the
question of proportion.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
And you can imagine if people in Gaza were free
and Israel was not controlling their lives and deciding how
much food they get to eat and whether they can
go and come back, and then some kind of attack happened,
you might expect some kind of Israeli retaliation, and and
then the only conversation would be about propersonality.

Speaker 4 (01:10:02):
Are they doing it in a way that is that
is defensible, and what they're currently doing is I'm obviously
not defensible, to be devastating the civilian population in order
to thin that population, by the words of the Israel's
leader right now.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
But there's which is it comes from the red line.

Speaker 4 (01:10:17):
It comes from Israeli press reporting on internal strategic conversations.
So yes is really yes israelly media anxiety when.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Then the population has always had a calorie surplus, even
even the diets they literally have. That's why when the
famine started, when all the people were moved, I believe
it was Unra that made the statement that this is
a region that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
Is super experienced before.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
That's that's also why things got mad because if you
really wait, these people are starving by what metric?

Speaker 3 (01:10:43):
That's fine.

Speaker 4 (01:10:43):
That's what's so infuriating, Stephen, is that you want to
start counting calories and try to discover whether they have
a surplus or or not, when you're missing the fact
that Israel getting to decide what food gets into gaza
is itself outrageous. One people does not get to control
whether another side gets to have cookies for their children
and you know, potato chips or sodas.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
You don't get to do that. That's the level dominant unacceptable.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
But you're not capable of having it because you won't
even admit why the blockade exists, so you don't even
deserve to be in.

Speaker 5 (01:11:08):
What do you want?

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
I want to why DoD, Why is the Gaza? Why
is our blockade and Gaza?

Speaker 4 (01:11:14):
When you look at the fact that Israel's preventing cookies
from going into Gaza, you know that it's not cookies
going in and the rockets filled with Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
With cookies, Yeah, with sugar and fertilizer.

Speaker 4 (01:11:25):
Yes, that's how they're going to deny Palestinians and Gaza
sugar because it might.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
Be used, you know, back in because he's not I know,
how to be clear another time, another thing, you're not
gonna admit. You know, why does the blockade exist? It's
literally just because you know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
Mass spiders breathe air too. Maybe Israel can restrict air
from going into Gaza to make.

Speaker 5 (01:11:45):
Sure that are He's saying, then the burdens should be
on not to use Palistines have no agency is the
language of the You.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
Don't they can't help.

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):
Don't punish the civilian racist to get that military ones.
You don't punish civilian population criminately.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
Shooting ten of thousands of rockets decade after decade into
Israel like, what does population like like like selling some
of the humanitarian food? Population just want to make picking
up tunnels of water pipes and using them to fashion rockets,
want to all the international Steve did you? Did you, Stephen?
Did you say that Hamas is turning cookies into missiles?

(01:12:20):
I understand the reason for the the reason for the
restricting sugar based products was that the first generation, I
think there were all cassive rockets were built in really
crude shops, using combinations of fertilizer and sugars that they
would use.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
You know what the primary component of Hamas, What Hamas
explosives is now? I think I'm pretty sure now they
use more sophisticated stuff, but unexploded Israeli bombs, because they've
dropped so many over the last decade.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
I doubt that's true. I'm sure they do.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
With a ten to twenty percent failure rate. Hamas then
digs them up that you've seen one O five's that
that you see, uh, you know, blowing up.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
All these Israeli tanks primarily fled, but I doubt the
majority of them all.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
There's just more so than.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
Cookies tell you to tell you why it exists.

Speaker 4 (01:13:09):
I'm going to tell you why the block it exists,
and the reason, by the way, why it includes banning
cookies and soda pop.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
And potato chips going into the gun.

Speaker 4 (01:13:17):
No, I'm sure it's it's very funny denying children the
ability to eat chocolates and toys because they are Palestinie
and not Israeli. That's just so incredibly, incredibly trivial, incredibly
the emotional and potatoes.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
It's working just we're two more virtuary signals away. You're free.
Palestinian people keep doing this.

Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
It's you trivializing. If it was the other way around.

Speaker 4 (01:13:34):
If Hamas was imposing a siege on Israel, which is
really children not allowed to do any of that stuff,
you would not be sitting here making making a lot
of it. It would not be trivial to you, because
you understand that Israelis are human beings and their children
deserve to eat potatoes, potato chips.

Speaker 3 (01:13:46):
Jewish people.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
Jewish people live in Arab countries around the world, don't
they about the knock the expulsion of live in the
West Bank after forty Thank you for the deflection, and
I understand.

Speaker 5 (01:14:00):
You're you're answer about why the blockade exists.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
He's not He's got to do the fiftytography.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
Blockade exists. Oh my god.

Speaker 4 (01:14:06):
Okay, the blockade exists because they want to punish the
civilian population in Gaza as an putting pressure on Hamas
they're saying, as long as we have a government in
Gaza that does not play ball with Israel the way
the Palestine and authority plays ball with Israel on the
West Bank, the civilian population is going to suffer as
a means of putting pressure on them and getting somebody
else to be in power.

Speaker 3 (01:14:24):
The evidence for that is overwhelming.

Speaker 4 (01:14:26):
Children's toys were not allowed in at the beginning of
the blockade, and when Israel came under intense pressure under
the flotilla after the flotilla incident, a bunch of activists
tried to basically force medicines to be delivered into the.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
Flotilla incident, there were two of five of the ships
were empty, and they were aggressive ships that were designed
to fight against the IDEF. When they landed, you realize
that footage is available and there's one hundred some people
on the deck with chairs throwing Israeli soldiers overboard. Yeah,
and when they shift weapons at everything too shift weapons
y yeah, I know, well that was all they could
bring from Turkey with them, I guess because they were
inspecting the boats. But yeah, those were not peaceful activist ships.

(01:14:59):
And how the words if you open more than a
Figglestein book and read what actually happened, or watch any
of the footage, actually actually they were the part of
the fighters or were they Listen to yourself, listen listeners
of what you can watch the videos.

Speaker 3 (01:15:11):
There are people who, yes, fought back when Israel bordered
their ship in an act of piracy in international water border.
The ship because they don't watch gets to god, there
you go.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
Because there's a blockade because they announced.

Speaker 3 (01:15:22):
Don't you need to announce.

Speaker 4 (01:15:23):
They don't get to impose that blockade. Absolutely, do no
more than Hamaskis to impose a blockade on Israel.

Speaker 3 (01:15:28):
This is ridiculous. Of course, they don't get to decide
what ships could get.

Speaker 5 (01:15:31):
To go on.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
By the here he's saying that the blockade exists because
the Thews are evil to their intentionally.

Speaker 4 (01:15:37):
That's a despicable thing to say. And not say anything
about Jews. I'm talking about the Israeli government policy.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
You can't I'm curious. And the second were submersibles or
weapons brought in via that via the water into the
Gaza Strip. That happened.

Speaker 3 (01:15:48):
What are you talking say that, We're talking their weapons.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
That were shipped into the Gaza Strip via the Mediterranean and.

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):
Plenty of weapons were shipped into Israel as well.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
That's interesting.

Speaker 5 (01:15:56):
So there was so there is it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
The egypt has been a partner with Israel in that
block this inception as well.

Speaker 3 (01:16:03):
I've already explained to you why the Egyptian government is
interested in for twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
Years, they've just been okay, okay, everybody is a this
is This is consistent at least with the history that
everybody is collaborators with the West and the world, according
to the Egyptian dictators. Everybody.

Speaker 5 (01:16:21):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:16:21):
Also, I just want to say something. I just honestly,
there's one thing that I think is really really important. This,
you know, just saying the Jews are evil. It's such
a despicable line. And let me explain why anti Semitism
is a very very serious and rising problem in the country,
in many other places around the world, and especially in
the Trump years, we've seen these shootings that have happened
at synagogues, and everything like that, and you have a

(01:16:43):
situation in which Israel's defenders constantly try to conflate those things.
Is that you ignore the fact that there is a
significant portion of the progressive young American Jewish population that
is opposed to Israeli policies. And every time you criticize
Israeli policy, people say, oh, you're attacking.

Speaker 3 (01:16:57):
Jews, And that's exactly what you just did.

Speaker 4 (01:16:59):
And it's not just harmful to people like me who
get smeared by that accusation, completely baseless and really ugly
and detestable, but it's also yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
Of Omar, thank you, thank thank you, thank you for that.
That's wonderful seculation.

Speaker 4 (01:17:14):
But it's also actually harmful to Jewish communities themselves that
are trying to protect themselves from anti Semitism. To constantly
trivialize that charge that you throw it around at anybody
who is critical of Israeli policy, anybody who thinks that
Palophonians are human.

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):
Beings who deserve to have rights. You water that charge
down so much when you love it all around that
real anti Semites get more room to breathe and operate
because that charge doesn't mean anything. So even if you
enjoy smearing people like me and people who defend Palophonians,
that's fine. But if you have any part of you
that actually cares about Jewish people in this country, I
would strongly advise you to stop throwing that smear around
at people, because okay, I'll.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
Do my virtual signs situated yours. I gotta ask an
interesting question on my way up here from the is
It Max Mac producer Mac not or Not? Max Mac
ask me why I was so interested in this conflict.
And one of the things that I think is so
sad is I think of all the things that I've
ever looked at my entire life, this is one where
you can pick and choose facts from one side and
you can build the most compelling anti Palestinian argument, or

(01:18:11):
you can build the most compelling anti Israeli argument. And
I don't think I've ever seen anything where you can
have such a one sided telling of the history as
I have for this particular conflict. I think the really
sad thing here is that I think that there are
really good criticisms that can be made of Israel. I
think they're really good criticism you can make of their
past policy. And I think that the story of the
Palestinian is an incredibly empathetic one. I think that there
are reasons why you could support violence in forty seven,

(01:18:34):
violence in forty eight, wars in sixty seven. I think
you can support all of these things from a really
empathetic understanding place. But the issue is that both sides
are so invested in telling their story and making money
and making videos and making whatever off of their particular
side of things that you never will ever, ever, ever
ever have that conversation. So, for instance, this is why
identifying root causes is so important when we talk about

(01:18:57):
the blockade. The blockade exists because during the set into Fada,
there was a lot of weaponry that came in to
Gaza from the Mediterranean and from Egypt. This is a
problem that Egypt recognized, the problem that Israel recognized. That's
why the blockade existed. Especially after the Palestinian authority was
not able to bring Hamas under control and Hamas gain
control of that region, Israel said, well, fuck this, We're going.

Speaker 3 (01:19:16):
To one point. I don't want to drupt you. Just
there's one thing.

Speaker 4 (01:19:19):
Yeah, So when before the flotilla incident, they were not
allowing certain food items from going in and children's toys.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
There's two thousand and eight, righteh, we're talking about right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:28):
But I want you to explain to me.

Speaker 4 (01:19:29):
And then after that incident that Israel came under pressure,
they started allowing a little bit more humanitarian stuff to
go into Gaza.

Speaker 3 (01:19:34):
Is that because Hamas stopped being a threat to Israel?

Speaker 4 (01:19:37):
Or is that because those humanitarian goods are actually not
a threat and Israel did not give a shit about
them anyway, apart from wanting to punish them.

Speaker 2 (01:19:43):
My guess would be is probably because the Israeli restrictions
were too much, and they probably could have calmed the
fuck down. Right now, Israel is in the position that
it's in because Israel thinks that they can maintain an
indefinite status quo and more or less slowly annexed the
West Bank. That's Israel's goal. The problem with this conflict
has always been that Israel wants to fight forever, because
the longer they fight, the more of the West Bank
they get to annex. The only reason the Abraham Accords

(01:20:04):
happened was because it was to stave off annexation of
the West Bank. And the problem is that while Israel
wants to continue fighting to gain more and more. People
like you have deluded Palestinians. Anything that they fight, they
can gain more and more too. Only one side, only
one side of Paliestate. Whatever that means, Okay, only one
side in its conflict.

Speaker 3 (01:20:20):
What does it mean to you Palestinian?

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
There are a lot of people became Palestinian after we're
depending on what the conflict is. So I don't know
what that means. I don't really care that much. The
idea that the idea that both sides can continue to
fight only serves one side, and that's the Israeli side.
The longer the Palestinians continue to fight, the more the
Israels is going to get because the reality is is
the Arab states around them are bored. They don't want
to fight. The leadership doesn't want to fight anymore, not

(01:20:43):
going to they did at one point, which is I
think the most tragic thing is that Palestinians were a
tool of the surrounding Arab states to fight with Israel.
And that's the most they ever cared about. Why, that's why,
that's why if you go to these surrounding countries and
you ask, that's crazy. There are so many Palestinian refugees here,
I wonder why they don't like takingny of them in
as like actual citizens. And the reason why is because
in the Arab States you're not allowed to. They don't

(01:21:05):
give citizenship to those people because they use them as
a tool to fight with Israel, and that's why they're
not even allowed to do it. They're banned from actually
giving citizenship to end these palatina. So even the whole
refugee crisis is inflated more than it should be. But
the issue is that when you look at these sides
and you go to criticize the policies, Okay, I bring
it back to the blockade. That blockade existed because weapons
were coming in to the Gaza Strip via the ocean,

(01:21:26):
via the land routes. So if that's the reason why
the blockade came in here is I think that you
can make an incredibly powerful argument that listen net and Yahoo.
If you want to destroy Hamas, that's fine, but one
of the conditions of eliminating Hamas has to be the
lifting of the blockade, because with Hamas gone, your justification
for the blockade is completely and totally non existent in
my world. In your world, the blockade never leaves because

(01:21:47):
the only reason is there is to punish Palestine citizens.
So if you're constantly screaming in a government, hey you
need to take this blockade away because you just hate
Palestinian people, why would they never remove it. There's absolutely
no desire to. There's no reason to. Why would they.
But if the argument is, well, we said that the
blockade existed because weapons were going into a hostile administration. Well,
now that that hostile administration has gone and we allowed
you to remove it at great cost both to infrastructure

(01:22:07):
and civilian life, Well now we can say, hey, they're gone,
you have to lift the blockade. Now there's no justification
for it. So we have a real analysis of what's
going on, we can levy legitimate criticisms, and we can
look for legitimate solutions. But if the arguments are delusional,
that Israel is here indiscriminately murdering tons of people because
they're evil, or because they hate Jews, or or they
hate Palestinians or hate Arabs or whatever, or they're racist
or is homophobic, there's no solution to be had because

(01:22:28):
because in your world, the hatred runs so degres it's intractable.

Speaker 5 (01:22:30):
Crystal's look stick just full over.

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
That's always really fanny.

Speaker 4 (01:22:33):
So this is it's funny some bits of that narrative.
Actually we're kind of like close to reality. But just
let me let me fix a couple of things for you.
First of all, if you're saying that a precondition for
lifting the seed is that Hamass has to not be
in power anymore, you have that backwards. The occupation of
Gaza existed before Hamas was created. The occupation created Hamass.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
Wait when the blockade wasn't since the occupation.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
Yeah, I mean the occupation is felthy to and they
replaced the occupation with the siege. That's what they did.

Speaker 2 (01:23:03):
And the blanket started like two thousand and five.

Speaker 3 (01:23:05):
Yes, so they withdrew.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
It's been occupied since forty eight.

Speaker 3 (01:23:10):
It remains exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:23:11):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:23:11):
Gaza has been occupied since nineteen sixty seven, nineteen forty eight.
What are you talking about? Israel took over Gaza nineteen
sixty seven.

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
Who took over in nineteen forty eight? The Egyptians did, Yes,
so it was occupied by the Egyptians.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
This okay, See this is the I know you don't
like to talk about.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
That because it's not convenient, but that's true. It wasn't
a Palestinian state, right, who cares? The point is who
cares the Palestinians where they had a fake government for
one year that was recalled to Cairo and immediately let
they became a training bard for Fettiyi.

Speaker 4 (01:23:37):
Let me, let me then call for an end to
the Egyptian occupation of Gaza to oh wait, it ended great.
So now let's talk about the Israeli occupation of Gaza.
It started in nineteen sixty seven, it has continued, and
all Israel did is withdraw settlers out of Gaza and
replace that settlers on the ground with an occupation from
the outside. That's why nearly every international organization still considers
Gaza occupied, even after they with drew settlers then placed

(01:23:59):
it under occupation, according to just about every UN agency
that you just the list goes on in human rights
organizations as well. And so the idea then that you
need something to change and that Israel would lift the
siege in Gaza. Frankly, if Nataniahu Caven said to Hamas,
if you agree to no longer be in power, We're
gonna let Gaza be completely. You can have an airport,

(01:24:19):
it can have a seaport, you can just like have
the population live. I suspect Hamas might actually be up
for that. In fact, they would consider it a feather
on their cap. They can say, see, we've delivered something
for you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
Absolutely, but they won't even go to a permanent ceasefire.

Speaker 4 (01:24:31):
What would you think that it's changed for Israel ending
the devastation of Gaza there they've offered it a million
times to release all thestages. Yeah, it's it's it's they've
offered it repeatedly, and it's kind of funny.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
It'll me to be clear, you're saying that if Israel
said they would end the blockade, that Hamas would step
down if.

Speaker 4 (01:24:47):
They were to leave Gaza. Absolutely, I think that I
would actually.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
Are you sure that? Are you sure that the claim
isn't that they need to have a ten year truce
or that they need to recognize a two states.

Speaker 4 (01:24:58):
This is them as a governing body early on, when
they were signaling that they're actually interested in in in moderating.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
Two thousands. This was before they attempted to coop a
boss's palastinia to throw the pill in the West Bank,
before the attempted coup.

Speaker 3 (01:25:13):
You don't know what you're talking about. It's so incredible.

Speaker 4 (01:25:15):
There was an attempt actually a driving Hamas out of
power that they then flipped and pushed the Palistina and
authority out as part of a plot that is documented.

Speaker 3 (01:25:21):
I think it was vanity fair.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
That's true. But you're talking about two thousand and five,
and they were there was going to be internet sport
for tod yes to the Palastini thirt to the West
Bank a few years later when they right after they
announced their unity.

Speaker 3 (01:25:32):
It's great that you've done some reading and you can
throw out random factoids, but please.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
It sucks with the history, Like please try to listen
to what I'm saying to you so you can actually understand.
I'm broken bones.

Speaker 3 (01:25:41):
Yes, Okay, I'm not.

Speaker 5 (01:25:42):
I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:25:42):
I'm not trying to throw up random facts that I've read.

Speaker 4 (01:25:44):
I'm trying to explain something to you, and I really
hope they would actually just make an effort to.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
Listen to what I'm describing.

Speaker 4 (01:25:48):
There was an effort by Hamas at the time to
try to moderate and how that Micheald wrote a piece
in the Washington Post here in the US talking about how,
you know, we don't like the idea of a two
state solution. But if we put it to our friend
themnt Palestinian want it, will accept it and whatever. There's
all kinds of stuff signs. And what Israel did is
put a suffocating blockade on Gaza and said you have
to denounce renounced violence.

Speaker 3 (01:26:10):
Even though Israel does not renounce violence.

Speaker 4 (01:26:11):
They said, you have to recognize Israel even though Israel
does not recognize Palestine. And they said you have to
stick by all previous agreements, even though Israel was obviously
not sticking to any agreements they had made with Palestinians
in terms of just clearly entrenching the occupation left and
right at every opportunity. And so Hamas said, no, those
are not acceptable demands, and that's how we ended up
being stuck in this situation where Hamas's refusal to accept

(01:26:33):
whatever Israel wants to meet out to them is the
reason why that blockade got entrenched and intensed and became
more and more punishing as a means of trying to
place more political pressure on Hamas, and the idea that
now if only Hamas would agree to X y Z,
then everything would be great in Gaza.

Speaker 3 (01:26:51):
There's just no reason to believe that because the occupation
and what Israeli military officials and security officials and political
officials were talking about when they actually withdrew Gaza was
very transparently a plot to deny Palestinian statehood. That they're
saying this is a strategic move that will be useful
for them.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
Said, you said as much as yourself that the Israel's
goal is to prolong the conflict so they can continue
to and.

Speaker 3 (01:27:12):
So he's right about that.

Speaker 5 (01:27:14):
Well, so what are acceptable terms now? I mean, there
are ongoing negotiations happening right now. What should acceptable terms be.

Speaker 2 (01:27:19):
Right for the end of the conflict or for the
actual resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, for the end
of the conflict. For this one, Hamas has to go.
Ideally the hostages would come back, but I don't even
know if we know how many are alive at this point.
I think that Israel initially wanted forty and now they
I think turned it down to thirty three because they
don't think they're enough alive that even meet the conditions
that they have. But yeah, Hamas needs to go. I

(01:27:39):
imagine my understanding is Israel still wants to go into
Rafa right. I think they've They've reiterated as much I supported.
I think Hamas needs to go. I think that's hopefully
they do it without great costs of simay in life.
But I think, yeah, Hamas has to leave. But I
would hope that after Hamas has gone, I think that
Israel has to change their approach to the area. I
think that Israel right now is on the verge of

(01:28:02):
a very strange existential threat where they're getting consumed by
their own I don't know if I would say fear
or just they need to In the early history of Israel,
the reason why Israel was able to thrive so much
and make friends of the West and win wars against
the warring Arab states is because they had two arms
of military and diplomacy that they wielded both incredibly effectively.

(01:28:24):
Israe was one of the first nations to identify the
United States as an important emerging power and to try
to win favor with them, like they did a lot
diplomatically and a lot militarily. But I think ever since
peace with Egypt, Jordan, the abram I think that Israel
is just like now, they don't care. They're just going
to try to maintain a status quo indefinitely because on
a military level, they're really not threatened anymore. They pretend
that it's always an existential threat when it comes to conflict,
but that's not true. Has Belah, the Huthis and everybody

(01:28:48):
in the Gossa Strip can invade all at once and
Israel in battom away. It's not a huge deal. The
existential threat I think that Israel phases now is a
political one, is a diplomatic one because of the situation.
The status quo is not tenable and the conditions are
not to Mber seventh were entirely I don't want to
say like completely foreseeable, but like, what do you think
is going to happen if you're continuing this status quo
over and over and over again. And then the really

(01:29:08):
funny thing is we talk about we're so obsessed with
the They're trying to ethically cleanse the Gazza Strip. They
want to kick Palestiness out of count Jews don't care
about the Gaza Strip. They want to kick people out
of Judereica, Juda and Samaria. That's what you just really
care about. It's that encroachment into the West Bank and
we're not even talking about that anymore because everybody thinks
that apparently they want to put settlements back on the
Gaza Strip, which historically Israel's never even cared about. So yeah,

(01:29:28):
I mean Hamas has to go. I would hope that
the blockade and the conditions are lessened there, but there
has to be huge pressure on Israel and the Palestinians.
There has to be huge pressure on both sides to
reach some peaceful, long term agreement because until that happens,
I mean, it's just going to happen over and over
and over again. It's in nobody's surprise.

Speaker 4 (01:29:44):
So just when we speak about hostages, I think it's
important to note that Israel rounded up tens of thousands
of Palestinians, at least thousands, I don't want to say
to tens of thousands, but thousands of them after October seven.
They are being brutalized in Israeli detention facilities. Dozens of
them have been killed, many more have required amputae, and
the reports of the torture, of the sexual abuse. All
this stuff is happening, and you don't get a fraction

(01:30:06):
of attention to Palestinian hostages being held by Israel compared
to the conditions that Israeli hostages are enduring in Gaza,
which are unknown. And on top of that, you have
an Israeli policy of insisting on this path of vengeance
in which they have killed infinitely more Israeli hostages than
they have rescued, and to continue down this path. It's
quite obvious that the Israeli government and NATANIELO himself does

(01:30:26):
not give a crap about Israeli hostages. So just keeping
that in the back of mind now when we're talking
about peace, and it's funny. The reason why I wanted
to point out that you've said a lot of things
that are actually correct, but you're just kind of like
missed a key part of it is that, yes, the
longer this conflict goes, Palestinians do lose more and more,
and Israel sees that as an advantage. Every day the
conflict goes on, they get to take more and more

(01:30:47):
of the West Bank, they get to entrench their control
of it. And that's why we desperately need an intervention.
And if Israel's not going to do it itself, you
need it from the outside the way to defeat Hamas.
If we're serious about not wanting Hamas to be in power.
It's extremely simple. Give Palestinian a path to freedom and
they will take it, rather than be driven by despair
into supporting groups that insist on doing it the most

(01:31:08):
violent way possible. The truth is Palestinians tried it with
a marcher return, They've tried it with negotiations with Israel.
They've gone to the UN. The US keeps vetoing every
UN resolution that is critical of Israel. They've gone to
the International Court of Justice, the ICC. The US keeps
putting pressure on the ICC and had to prosecute Israel
for crimes. And then when people try to do international
solidarity in boycotts, people call that economic terrorism. And you

(01:31:29):
have American politicians trying to pass laws. Just every single
method of resistance has been completely quashed, and civil disobedience
in Palestine was extremely common against the apartheid barrier that
Israel's building throughout the West Bank, and all these people
are basically just end up languishing and is reeally prisons.

Speaker 3 (01:31:45):
You've left Palestinines no avenue.

Speaker 4 (01:31:47):
And if you want to be serious about defeating more
radical organizations that are committed to violence, all you have
to do is give Palestinians a path to freedom that
does not pushed them in the arms of people who
insist that fighting is the only way that has to
be stopping US military funding for the Israeli occupation. This
occupation is illegitimate, it's indefensible. It's clearly intended to be permanent,

(01:32:08):
and Taniyajo has said so. The way it appears on
the ground is not some kind of like temporary thing.
We're just holding off until every day they're taking more
and more of the West Bank.

Speaker 3 (01:32:17):
That is what they're doing.

Speaker 4 (01:32:17):
They're demolishing Palestinian homes, they're pushing Palestinians out of certain
areas that Israel wants, just the entrenchment of it. We're
watching it unfolding, and there should not be another penny
spent in support of the Israeli military until that occupation
comes to an end. And that's how you can put
Israel finally in a position where they have an incentive
to start negotiating in good faith, seeing Palestinians as equal

(01:32:38):
human beings.

Speaker 1 (01:32:38):
Paradoxically, I think that that actually would be a boost
to Israeli society because under the current Israeli politics, you
have some who say, we need to compromise. You know,
we live here, they live here, We're all going to
live here, you know, for hundreds of years. We need
to come to some deal. And then you have a
faction in Israeli society that says, no, we don't because

(01:32:59):
we have on conditional US support militarily and politically, so
we'll we can just permanently quote unquote manage the conflict.
And voters look at that and they say, well, it's
true the US does unconditionally support, so why should we
actually you make any compromises, And it has driven them
into this this cul to stack that is potentially suicidal

(01:33:20):
for the entire project.

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
I think the issue is that people don't realize that
the way that Israeli opinion flipped so hard on peace
for Palestinians was after the Second Antefada that completely mind
destroyed so many Israeli people. When they saw so many
Palestinians across the entire country engaging in violence against Israeli people,
a lot of them were like this is like this
is apparently these people just don't ever want peace. After that,

(01:33:44):
I think that that's when you saw the government start
to shift a lot to the right, and the issue
is that you just it doesn't feel like there has
been that Palestinian leader that's been ready to come up
and actually make brave concessions or strong concessions, because every
deal with the Palestinian feels like a concession was not
all of Israel. I just don't think Palestinians all.

Speaker 4 (01:34:04):
The occupied territory is just to be technically which the
West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem the internationally recognized occupied
territories that Israel has to withdraw from. That's what Arafad
has said, and that's what Abasa said. I'm a fan
of neither of these men, but they're not the obstacle
to peace. They made very clear that they would accept
the deal if Israel actually ended the occupation in Israel.

Speaker 2 (01:34:21):
Never accepted a deal. Of course, he has no deal.
There are no deals on the table. The deal are
the table deals left on the table where the policinems
like we would just have accept I.

Speaker 4 (01:34:32):
Happened to be familiar with a private conversation between Bill
Clinton and somebody that I know, an advocate, in which
Bill Clinton said that Arafad just kept saying, twenty two
percent is my offer, and Bill Clinton had no idea
what he was talking about, and the person who was
talking to him explain to him, twenty two percent is
the percentage of the land that is illegally occupied by Israel,
Arafad was telling you. And the occupation of the West
Bank Goz in East Jerusalem. That was the counter offer repeatedly.

Speaker 3 (01:34:53):
In Israel has never it has what do you It's
the entire basis of the peace process.

Speaker 2 (01:34:59):
That was not two thousand, No, absolutely now that they
verified in nineteen in the late eighties recognized Israel.

Speaker 4 (01:35:05):
So he effectively conceded Israel on seventy eight percent of
historic Palestine as legally defined, yes, yes, and Israel then
if well, if you wanted to call his bluff, all
you have to do is end the occupation and see
what happens. But Israel didn't. Israel entrench the occupation. That's
the pattern. And you're also missing something about the regional dynamic.
You're talking about the Abraham Accords and all of that.
Just to be clear, the entire Arab world. First, it

(01:35:26):
was Saudi Arabia put on the table something called the
Arab Peace Initiative effectively and the occupation.

Speaker 3 (01:35:31):
It'll get recognition from US. Nope, and then wait, what was.

Speaker 2 (01:35:34):
The huge part? Wait, what was the huge part of
the Arab peace initiative? You're not bringing up there?

Speaker 3 (01:35:38):
You tell me.

Speaker 2 (01:35:39):
It was the infinite right of return for every single
Palestini refuge You're confused about the negotiating No, no, no,
that's a non negotiable. That was one of the reasons.
Why why why the after Camp David or missing, after
the Clint parameters, after Taba Summit. That was the stamous
leak in rejection of the Clint parameters where they said,
as negotiators will never give up your ran of era.

Speaker 3 (01:36:00):
You are want what was offered?

Speaker 4 (01:36:02):
What was offered in that Rapeace initiative? First of a
Saudium that it became the ar League. It said a
just resolution to the Palestinian refugees, which is always and
that phrasing, No, it has not always meant that that
phrasing was specifically designed. When we talk about a two
state solution and a just resolution to the refugee issue,
it's not saying and the full ride of return that
is considered a Palestinie compromise, like many Palestinians are unhappy
with it. On the grounds that it doesn't say the
full riud of return. It only since it is a

(01:36:25):
just resolution, one one in which it's understood that you
would allow for a two state situation to happen, means
Israel recognizes that they drove those Palestinians out, a small
symbolic number gets to return to Israel proper, and then
the majority of them end up in a Palestinian state.

Speaker 3 (01:36:37):
That was the loose.

Speaker 2 (01:36:38):
Formula that if you look at it was offered in
two thousand that it was not what was offered into
that literally was there was an international fund that is
what was going to contribute to. There was some number
I saw anywhere from ten to one hundred thousand. I
don't know what the actually was. There some number that.

Speaker 3 (01:36:50):
There always entered the occupation. That's basically what Palestinians had
been asking for.

Speaker 4 (01:36:53):
And if you look at actual details of it, and
I'm happy again to tweet about it afterwards'm happy to
send you all the links that you need, that was
what the Latian official position was.

Speaker 3 (01:37:03):
Actually.

Speaker 1 (01:37:04):
Let me just respond to one of the things that
the point that you made earlier in the form of
a question that a lot of people I've seen it
out there, So I think it's worth kind of trying
to answer directly, said, it can't be a genocide because
they've only killed thirty three thousand people. You know, if
they wanted to do a full genocide, they have the capacity,
they have the bombs.

Speaker 2 (01:37:23):
To kill all two million plus people.

Speaker 5 (01:37:25):
So a argument, but five of their population, right.

Speaker 1 (01:37:29):
Why wouldn't they do it? And so one you'd say, well,
thirteen thousand children far too many. But you know, more
more importantly than that, you would say they they've killed
the number that they can sort of get away with
at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:37:42):
But the goal is not killing in death.

Speaker 1 (01:37:44):
The goal is domination and the ethnic cleansing of the region,
the clearing out, the thinning out of the population. And
so you don't actually need to kill two million Palestinians
if you can drive hundreds of thousands of them to
their countries.

Speaker 2 (01:38:02):
If you're talking about genocide, you have a genesip with
one hundred people. Theoretically, the number of people killed isn't important.
The intention is important. But it's hard to make an
argument for genocide. Setting aside genocide, Oh sure, well, I
mean like the attacks happened in response to that, would
that would be the answer to the question, why haven't
they killed more?

Speaker 3 (01:38:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
I guess, but the problem is just absent. Any there
just isn't strong. It's the weirdest genocide ever. If you're
dropping leaflets saying, hey, flee to the south, most of
the military tip is going to come to north, or hey,
we're working with fifty two organizations. Try to open up
boarders is generally in the south. Why why did they
bomb the north? Everywhere? No amass like military strongholder has

(01:38:42):
always been the South. Why did they go to the
thought there were literally nine hundred people that they happened
to this, by the way, what happened to that three story,
three D rendering of a command center that we saw
under a Schiffa hospital, the one with the you mean
the one where they released the footage of the massive
tunnel the bomb shelter.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
There are tunnels, yeah, in Gaza, But where was the
command center we're all told existed.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):
I don't When you're saying command center, are you looking
for like a one? I'm not the one that intelligence
has corroborated everything that is real said and they said
they arrived at Oh that's nice of it was intelligence. Well, listen,
if you can believe Russias instead of the United States,
I can't. I can't help hold on if you want
to believe paul On. Actually wait, I'm curious if Hamas
were to make a statement about a particular thing, would

(01:39:23):
you believe that more than the United States? And the
idea of corroborating their statements? Who would you believe more
on that?

Speaker 3 (01:39:29):
I don't think you can trust either of them.

Speaker 2 (01:39:30):
That's why you look, you think it's equal amounts of trust.

Speaker 3 (01:39:32):
I think yes, that's about distrust.

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
That's unbelievably because because we believe governments generated hold on,
who do you trust then? For your for a third
party verification?

Speaker 3 (01:39:42):
Human rights organizations were re report.

Speaker 2 (01:39:44):
Things from the idea f and from Hamasy.

Speaker 3 (01:39:47):
Look, and they do independent investigations as well, and they
do comparison.

Speaker 2 (01:39:50):
They're independent investors. Have you ever read how they actually
come up with the numbers. They'll call a hospital and say,
what's your list of people that are dead? And then
they look at the register and they go, oh, well,
it seems like the names exist, and then they write it.
That's it.

Speaker 4 (01:39:58):
It's the same thing that you do with polling and
population counting and stuff. You take samples, and based on
that you extrapolate. You can't go and investigate every single
last thing that happens.

Speaker 2 (01:40:06):
Doing sample working all that that would be interest. That's
not what they do. If you read how these engines
actually then they include their methodlogyally you can read it.
They'll say we contact they'll say this has been third
party investigator. Hamas has ten thousand. But also these guys
actually third party verified. And then when you read their methodology,
say we contacted the gods and help indistry and that
they told us as.

Speaker 3 (01:40:22):
Like you know, I mean, always interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:40:25):
And you know what's really interesting is that every time
the human rights organizations try to go and investigate, Hamass says,
we welcome a full investigation, and vidital like government tries
to block human rights organization.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):
They welcome a full investigation. This is when this is
an internationally. Are there to interview people and they say,
some of them are kind of nervous to talk to us.
Why isn't a mass opening our gives so that we
can externally validate what's going on?

Speaker 3 (01:40:42):
That nonsense? Use pew is just what did I just say?

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
That was nonsense.

Speaker 3 (01:40:45):
Hamas has reported on multiple occasions that they have basically
verified the credibility of the people who are talking to
them that they are talking to because they have been willing.

Speaker 4 (01:40:54):
To criticize Hamas and say, we disagree with Hamass doing,
we disagree with the firing or prockets.

Speaker 3 (01:40:57):
They are brutal, they are repressive.

Speaker 4 (01:40:59):
So they talked to Palestinians who are perfectly willing to
criticize Hamas for being terrible. But then they say, but
it's not true that they were hiding in our house
or used human shields or whatever. So that's how you
know that when you compare those narratives, it's these really
narrative that is completely baseline.

Speaker 2 (01:41:12):
Do you acknowledge it? I have somebody that real quick
you acknowledge that AMST International has said that they store
munitions in houses. I'll take on to that. I'll take
on to that. So very important.

Speaker 5 (01:41:22):
This is from earlier this month, an interrogation of an
Islamic Jahad fighter. And I'm genuinely curious. This is not
a leading question at all asked by the interrogator of
the Islamic israelly interrogator of the Islamic And that's why
I'm asking. Yeah, in Israel's attention torture asks which hospitals Islamic,
Jahad and Hamas operate in. He says, all of the

(01:41:42):
hospitals now omar to Ryan's point, what's your response, Yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (01:41:47):
Mean just when you look at the levels of torture
that happened inside Israeli, the detention, it's just you can't
take anything in base value of what comes out of
any confessions that come out from people are being interrogated
by Israel, and so that to me is completely meaningless. Yes,
if you put me in his really interrogation center on
my also confessed to whatever the hell these were the military?

Speaker 2 (01:42:03):
Do you acknowledge that Al Shifa Hospital was inhabited by
a fun ton of fighters a month ago when they
did that massive in.

Speaker 3 (01:42:08):
Habit of buy a ton of fighters? I think I
can't verify.

Speaker 5 (01:42:10):
And they were not inhabited by any fighters.

Speaker 2 (01:42:12):
Yeah, there were nine.

Speaker 4 (01:42:15):
Yeah, And there were there were mass graves and near
the unless or hospital that were filled with people who
are wearing.

Speaker 2 (01:42:21):
One set where people have been buried there four months earlier.

Speaker 3 (01:42:24):
They're hands tied behind their back, zip tied. Can you
can you explain to me what threat people who.

Speaker 2 (01:42:28):
Have zero actual and totally by people that were Geolocator
is an ocent account on Twitter that like has looked
at a ton of videos. You can go and you
can look through every single video.

Speaker 3 (01:42:39):
Two is who debunked those?

Speaker 2 (01:42:42):
Is that is that we're doing to buy a Twitter account?
You can look at all the videos yourself. If you don't,
you don't trust the id F, You don't trust the
United States, you don't who do you trust?

Speaker 4 (01:42:50):
And trust human rights organizations whose job is to investigate
these things.

Speaker 2 (01:42:56):
I don't think any human rights organizations said one percent
we found Ala zero.

Speaker 4 (01:43:01):
They can't say it's one percent because Israel will not
let them in and they can't actually go on.

Speaker 2 (01:43:04):
Ad INURR act ward zone for Al Shifa? Do you
acknowledge that there was a huge two week fight there
between the IDF and militants, Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:43:12):
Near Alzhiva Hospital.

Speaker 2 (01:43:13):
I think there was a fight and Al Shifa hospital.

Speaker 3 (01:43:15):
Yeah. I don't know that it was inside the hospital.

Speaker 4 (01:43:16):
Certainly there were there were horror stories of what was
happening inside the hospital.

Speaker 2 (01:43:20):
Two weeks fight. You think there were civilians there are
two weeks.

Speaker 5 (01:43:23):
There's a very clear, I think disconnect here. That is
probably a good point to start getting to, not start
getting to. But like if we want to wind down here, Stephen,
you said that Palestinians fundamentally don't want peace. It sounds
to me also Omar, like you think fundamentally the Israeli
government as it is right now does not want peace.

(01:43:43):
I think we can both agree that there's civilians in
the Palestinian territories and in Israel that would like to
live in peace.

Speaker 2 (01:43:50):
Can I can? I mean, just real quick, if I've
said that it's not peace. Nobody wants peace. That's a
thing that we say in the West because we have
no concept of what anybody's looking for. People want justice.
Right in Ukraine, they could end the war right now
for peace, but they want their territory. They want justice.
Palestinians could say, listen, we're going to go with the
whatever plan where we're broken up into twenty enclays and
of peace. They don't want peace. They feel like they've

(01:44:11):
been expelled from their homelands with international support or for
no reason. They want justice. So to be clear, you
want justice, right, they don't want peace? Yes? Well, what
does the MLK quote, like the White Matter one that
says where some people prefer an uneasy peace or whatever,
to an uncomfortable tension or whatever. There's there's ways to

(01:44:32):
make things peaceful, but people want more than that on
both sides, and they should.

Speaker 1 (01:44:36):
I just think that, and I think it's you in
the end agree with the point that I was making,
because I haven't heard a counter to it, that the
way to defeat the ideology of Hamas is through peace,
not through war.

Speaker 2 (01:44:46):
It's a Now I will sound racist. I don't want
to sound racist. There's a fundamental misunderstanding of the way
that Arab states and Arab people in the Middle East
view Jews and Israel. And to just assume that being
peaceful as then there is a whole mythos, a whole
telg This would have been super fascinating to listen to
Finkelstein expand on if he was capable of more than
insults and atoms. But there is a completely and totally

(01:45:08):
different retelling of history from that region, if from the
eighteenies and onwards, and as long as those histories are
separate from each other, there is no reconciliation that can ride.

Speaker 1 (01:45:16):
I shouldn't even take this seriously. But if Arabs are
just fundamentally racist, wait, hold on, I just I mean
the citizens that live in these places. If the citizens
that live in these places are just fundamentally racist, why
is it the case that when peace is close at hand,
support for hamas and armed resistance plummets. Because I think
that if they're fundamentally just opposed, fundamentally, when they.

Speaker 2 (01:45:39):
Look at Israel and the Jewish people there, the view.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):
From a lot of Arabs is why does their view
change when peace gets wouldn't one of the opposite if
they fundamentally just want to fight with Israel, wouldn't they
actually be more blood thirsty as peace approached. Yet, opinion
polls consistently show that support for armed resistance plummet as
peace becomes more possible. That is the reverse of what

(01:46:05):
would happen if they were fundamentally a violent There's two things.

Speaker 2 (01:46:08):
The one you said it correct earlier that even though
countries have foreign peace, a lot of the Arab sance
countries still don't like Israel and still don't like the Jews.
So that's one thing that even through peace, that opinion
has remained consistent. You said that that it's.

Speaker 1 (01:46:20):
True chomping the bit to normalize with Israel. What these
Arab countries are chomping at the bit to normalize. You're
going to say it's the leaders.

Speaker 3 (01:46:29):
That's true in your case. Also, the contradiction is quite palpable.

Speaker 4 (01:46:33):
Which is on the one had everybody in the regions
just fed up with the Palestinians and they're just eager
to make peace with Israel, And now.

Speaker 3 (01:46:38):
It's like the problems that the people in the region
just don't like Jews.

Speaker 2 (01:46:41):
No, which one is it? Well, it's it's both. I
think that over time, sure, So one is sometimes brave
leaders are the people that are needed to make progress
towards peace. This might come in the form justice or peace,
towards justice, whatever, towards like.

Speaker 1 (01:46:58):
You haven't answered that question though, which when when peace
becomes closer. In the moments where there's news that a
deal is getting closer, yes, support for armed resistance among
Palestinians goes down. Agree, that's the reverse, yes, of what
would be the case if they just fundamentally hated Jews
and just wanted violence And you have that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:16):
We've heard the teas apart. When I say that they
fundamentally have these opinions, I don't mean that they want
to fight and go to war. Forever. I'm just saying
that there is an Arab mythos around Jews that all
of them basically believe in in terms of they're in
the European transplants that have unlimited support from the West
for whatever action they want to do, and they don't
belong there, and then there's like a different telling of
historical events that have happened. That doesn't mean that he's impossible.

(01:47:37):
It doesn't mean that there's not ways to work out.
We've seen peace of treaties have happened. They just require
very strong leadership and sometimes those leaders even have to
pay the price. So for instance, when Saddat made peace
with Israel, he was assassinating because they thought it was
a Western sellout like and it happened to the to
the Israeli leader as well, who was also assassinated for
by a fariziois for that peace deal. So peace is possible,

(01:47:58):
It just it takes really strong, great leadership. It Arafat
was never that leader. You should feel that especially.

Speaker 3 (01:48:07):
Certainly was not a rejectionist. That's fine here, what I
want to test.

Speaker 5 (01:48:10):
To Omar for closing thoughts, and then we'll go back
to you, Stephen.

Speaker 3 (01:48:13):
Sure Omar.

Speaker 4 (01:48:14):
All right, So when we talk about just just set
up the regional dynamic real quick, you have the region
in general. The people of the region are extremely furious
by the way Israel treats Palestinians. That is the primary
reason behind the hostility that exists towards Israel is because
people see day in and day out on their TV
sets what is happening. Unlike in the United States, where

(01:48:36):
you can barely see that kind of thing on mainstream media.
Al Jazeera does broadcast what Israel is doing to Palestinians,
and they get a very very clear and accurate view
of what Palestinians are suffering under. And so the people
in the region are in solidarity with Palestinians against that
brutal occupation, against their displacement, the ethnic cleansing and slow
motion that happened and in some cases not a slow
motion in particular periods in Israel's history. And they see

(01:48:58):
this fundamental injustice day in and day out, on that
level of racism, and they're enraged by it. But you
also have a lot of governments in the region that
are US clients. They're on the US team in the
blue sense of the word, and This is uncomfortable for them.
They want this conflict to end because they would rather
be on better terms with Israel and the United States.
They want that dynamic to end, and so they also

(01:49:18):
want this conflict to end, which is why we had
things like the Arapeace initiative. They want to see just
an end to the occupation. Just give the Palestinian something,
can we please like make this work? And Israel faced
that with complete and total rejection over and over again,
because you have the political end of the political spectrum
within Israel right now is just completely off the charts. Yes,

(01:49:39):
you have some super progressive marginal leftists in Israel. You've
got the Palestinian citizens of Israel who serve in the
Israeli Knesset and so on, and they have.

Speaker 3 (01:49:49):
No power effectively in Israeli society.

Speaker 4 (01:49:51):
And the bulk of it ranges from the Nataniaho Bank
Veer coalition, which is stomp Palestinians until no end, brutalize
them in the worst ways possible and hopefully throw them
out and finish the Nekba towards the other liberal end
of the spectrum in the Israeli sense, which is just
maintain permanent and occupation, but let it be a humane occupation.

Speaker 3 (01:50:10):
Let's just you know, control them and let everything be fine.
And yeah, we do won't give them.

Speaker 4 (01:50:13):
Full rights, but they can at least, you know, have
some economic activity and whatever normalize a little bit. That's
the spectrum, and that spectrum will never allow for peace
to exist, because no people anywhere in the world would
except to live without the fundamental right to be free.
And that's what's missing here. And because you do have
a dynamic right now where that cannot peace cannot emerge
in direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, because yes, there's

(01:50:37):
a lot of intense feelings right now, but on top
of that, there is a significant imbalance of power that
if you leave them, you're going to end up with
a repeat of previous peace negotiations, which is Israel saying yeah, yeah,
let's negotiate, while on the ground they do whatever the
hell they want, keep entrenching the occupation, eating up more land,
brutalizing Palestinians more but saying hey, we're negotiating. It's just
it's all it's all charade, And what you need right

(01:50:58):
now is pressure from the outside. I don't care whether
you like Palestinians or hate them, or you think they're
this or that, or same with Israeli as it's just
it's besides the point. You have a reality right now
in which Palestinians are living under a permanent apartheid occupation
and apartheid, and this particular episode in Gaza right now
is a genocidal episode. As an emergency, we need to
put an end to this Gaza episode. But the situation

(01:51:20):
was not acceptable even before the onslaught that is unfolding
in Gaza. You have a situation in which Israel denies
Palestinians the right to live in their own state and
denies them full rights even under the areas that Israel controls.
So they're stuck forever either as subject with no rights,
and they can either take that and be happy with it,
or if they try to fight back in any way,
then Israel will just escalate its violence to levels that

(01:51:40):
are absolutely horrific. Those are the choice of the Palestinians face,
and it requires external intervention. It requires the world to
isolate Israel and say this is not acceptable, This occupation
cannot end. You have to end that occupation, and that
means that you don't get another penny, no diplomatic relations,
no embrace of Israel until there's a change of inn
Israeli policy. And when you look at Russia and Ukraine

(01:52:01):
right now, just we've had a very brief episode of that,
comparatively speaking, when you compare the two things, there are
instances in which Ukraine, for example, I think it was December,
fired a rocket at Belgrade and killed a couple of
dozen Russian citizens, including three children. If in response to that,
the United States said Putin has the right to defend

(01:52:23):
himself and we're going to give him unlimited arms to
fight against Ukraine, everybody would just laugh at you instantly,
You'd be laughed out of the room because that's such
a ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (01:52:30):
Thing to say. So pointing at hamass violence and saying
that the responses we give Israel unlimited weapons to defend
themselves when the broader context is Israel is invading and
occupying Palestinians and robbing them their basic rights and brutalizing them.

Speaker 4 (01:52:43):
And killing them and imprisoning them and torturing them. That
in this context you're going to refer to Israel's right
to self defense is a joke. A home intruder who
breaks into somebody's home with a gun does not get
to claim self defense when they're inside that house. If
the people inside that house get to fight back, Palestinians
are fighting for their land that Israel is not entitled
to taking. Israel does not belong there, and it's time

(01:53:03):
to isolate Israel until that occupation comes to an end.
And that's the only path in which we're going to
see Israel moderate. The reason why sentiments in Israel are
so extreme is because the US has provided complete and
total impunity for Israel. Nobody can ever hold Israel accountable
for anything they've done because the US ensures that that
accountability cannot happen. And that's precisely why we've seen these
reel spectro move to an extreme. And in response to

(01:53:26):
that brutal extreme that is imposed on top of Palestinians,
we're seeing more extreme views also occurring among Palestinians. The
corrective is incredibly obvious and is impossible to miss if
you're being intellectually honest and understand what's actually outful.

Speaker 1 (01:53:38):
So your last word wouldn't cutting off US military aid
and blanket unconditional political support push Israel toward to compromise.

Speaker 2 (01:53:48):
I don't think we have blanket unconditionals for Rozo. I
think they were to do certain things, I think they
would lose, they'd lose hit, lose internal support pretty quickly.
A lot of the people that you like to quote
Harazzer but Salam are literally posted in Israelis or Israeli organizations.
Just one thing before my final statement, do you think
that October seventh was justified the attack? And do you
think civilians were targeted on that day?

Speaker 4 (01:54:06):
I mean, if you separate it out, the part where
they attacked Israeli military could be construed as an active
resistance store, but the part where they attack civilians is
completely unjustifiable. Of course they attack civilians. Of course that's
completely indefensible. So I think that's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:54:18):
I think that the I think that the big I
think the big issue when this conflict is talked about
is that it feels like people only ever want to
tell one side of the story. That we can't have
a conversation on why does the blockade exist, We can't
have a conversation on what does some US do to
induce civilian death? Because some US wants civilians to die
in Palestine more than Israelis do. Why can't we have

(01:54:38):
a conversation about why, I know you're.

Speaker 3 (01:54:39):
Going to get last or you might find inroject on
this point.

Speaker 4 (01:54:42):
Human rights organizations have also By the way, it was
officially Israeli policy to use Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Speaker 3 (01:54:48):
They've done it in the West Bank for many arguing
they have the legal right to do. Yeah, they were
arguing for it. The Israeli Supreme Court bandit, I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:54:54):
To do it is rarely supreme crazy ye, hang on,
hang on.

Speaker 3 (01:54:57):
I'm giving some contest just I think it. Just hear
me out.

Speaker 4 (01:54:59):
This is I thought that I'm going to piece together
that I think will be useful for you to to
think about a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:55:03):
Sure it was official policy.

Speaker 4 (01:55:05):
There was a case in which a palestine got killed
because they do home raids in which the first person
knocking of the door is the Palestinian with Israelis like
standing behind them with the guns to try to get
somebody to come out and cooperate and whatever, and they
don't want to be shot at. And when the Israeli
Supreme Court tried to ban it, the Israeli military establishment
was furious, so this is a really important method of combat.

Speaker 3 (01:55:25):
It protects the soldiers' lives. You can't ban it.

Speaker 4 (01:55:27):
And you know Israel that basically disregarded what the military
establishment said. It was Sho Mofaz who was the defense
minister at Israel at the time all of this was happening.
I think it was in two thousand and five. And
even though the Supreme Court officially banned it, human rights
organizations keep catching Israel engaging in acts of holding Palestinians
as human shields, and Gaza.

Speaker 3 (01:55:47):
And the West bangs it.

Speaker 4 (01:55:47):
Just yes, it happened, and you see it like there's
footage sometimes of holding a Palestinian with a gun over
his shoulder.

Speaker 3 (01:55:56):
Which is which is? Which is the point you're making?
You're making my point, Yes, very quickly.

Speaker 4 (01:56:01):
If the Israeli military things holding Palestinian civilians in front
of them where they're fighting with Hamas saves these rarely soldiers' lives,
it tells you that they don't believe their own lies
about Hamas wanting Palestinian civilians to die, because it would
not be useful if that's.

Speaker 3 (01:56:15):
What they care.

Speaker 2 (01:56:17):
When the idea was using those human shields, how many
how many Muslims were killed. How many Palestines were killed
when they were this is the last question.

Speaker 4 (01:56:24):
I think there was one incident of somebody getting killed
erect yes, you know, okay, don't want to.

Speaker 2 (01:56:30):
Shoot their own No, So it's interesting. So the ideas
idea behind that was when they were engaged in this,
when they were clearing out houses, the idea was is
that if a bunch of ideas shoulder soldiers show up
and start banging on your door, it's going to lead
to some sort of armed conflicts. So what the idea
started to do houses is no, what the idea started
to do when they were proaching houses, if they were
people in the neighborhood of people walking by, they were like, hey,
do you want to walk up and do you want
to knock on the door and talk to the sky

(01:56:51):
because if you go in and you talk the gutes,
do they want to hand me your wall? There's a
reason why. Yeah, you can laugh. But the funny this
is like this is the conflict as you leck. Now,
more people probably die because that policy is gone because
the way that you phrase it is, oh, they got
to go to their head, specificly human shield, which I
think did happen.

Speaker 5 (01:57:06):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:57:07):
There's a reason why when you talk about the policy,
only one person ever died doing it. It's because it'scause
it's a safer way to bring people out of the
home in order to like you have an actual battle syndico,
knock the doork rather than the idea is bank human shield.
That's not a human shield. The human shield. When you
say human on the shielding, the other people know it
was to shield that the IDF doesn't need shields from
the Palestines of the West Bank the.

Speaker 3 (01:57:28):
Human shields, but you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:57:30):
The Supreme Court ruled against it because they felt like
the the ability for them to truly consent the Palestine
is truly consent to knocking in a door was compromised.

Speaker 3 (01:57:38):
Eventually, Israel said, yes, okay, fine, I want to give
me time.

Speaker 5 (01:57:44):
I want it because Ohmar got a good chunk of
time to have final thoughts. So I want to make
sure that you get this.

Speaker 2 (01:57:48):
I gotcha. Yeah. So there's just a refusal on one side, well,
really on both sides. Woun't have a crazy ultra side
is here except I guess maybe. But generally there's refusal
on both sides to acknowledge the trewths of the other side,
but the blockade. The reason why the blockade exists is
because Israel is evil. Hamas doesn't actually do any things
to induce civilians to be killed. Israeli people, Jewish people
don't have any reasonable fears of Hamas. That's why earlier
when I asked if Hamas was in charge of Israel

(01:58:10):
and if the Jews lived in the Godza Strip, do
we think the treat would be the same or worse
or better? We couldn't even get an answer to that
because the obvious answer is Hamas had probably engaged in
a genocidal campaign to kill every actual genocidal campaign, not
one where the people are on the verge of starvation
for twenty five years while the population increases fivefold. Okay,
So this refusal to acknowledge like basic facts of history

(01:58:31):
or the fact that the complication is or the conflict
itself is really complicated. This goes back decades in terms
of how people are disagreeing over who owns what peace
of land, or or who has a right to live
in what place, or whether or not there living or apartheid,
or what a final solution should look like. The fact
that people are incapable of acknowledging both parts of the
sides of this conflict, makes it so that when people

(01:58:51):
are encouraging their particular side, there will never be a resolution.
If you are a Palestinian and you believe that today
you are being subjected to genocide and apartheid, why in
the fuck would you ever negotiate with Israel for and
and thing and and I think both of you said
to yourselves, the international community needs to step in and
solve this problem. And as long as Palestinians think that,
there's never going to be a drive there to actually
reach any lasting solution, because why would you If we're

(01:59:12):
being genocided, we're being apartheided, we live in open air
prisons and concentrations. We're not going to figure the problem out.
Somebody's gonna come save us. And as long as that
is the mentality that is given to the Palestinian people,
they will continue.

Speaker 3 (01:59:21):
To fight negotiating with their oppressors or they could get.

Speaker 2 (01:59:24):
Where they could where all of the And this is
funny too. You can see so many maps in a minute. Yeah,
you can see so many maps that are published from
negotiations between Palestinian negotiators and Israeli negotiators. All of them
are from the Israeli side. There has never been a
deal on the table where Palestinian said this is what
we want and then Israel didn't accept. It's never been
the case that that was it. Negotiations have been horrible.
Cushioners talked about a.

Speaker 3 (01:59:44):
Bus, they recognize.

Speaker 2 (01:59:47):
Talking about error, fat about a boss. The negotiations just
can never be made because there is no negotiating on
the Palestinian side. And that's what we see today internationally,
that it is encouragement to keep fighting and fighting and
fighting until eventually your one state from river to cy.

Speaker 5 (01:59:59):
So we started this by saying we were not going
to solve the problem, and I think that proved to
be correct. We did not solve the problem, but what
we did say we wanted to do was bring some
more clarity about the contrast on both sides. And I
do think Ryan, that we saw a lot of contrasts
and a lot more clarity in the contrast just by
flushing some of this out. So sincerely, yeah, sincerely want

(02:00:19):
to think both of you because this is not always
an easy thing to do, and we all are still here.

Speaker 2 (02:00:25):
So that note, Ryan, any final thoughts, no, no final thoughts.

Speaker 1 (02:00:29):
I'll just leave it at that because if I say anything,
it's just going to and that's right back up, and
we've all got things we.

Speaker 2 (02:00:35):
Got to do, right, that's right.

Speaker 5 (02:00:37):
So Breakingpoints dot Com subscribe. We will be here, remember
now on Fridays, in addition to Wednesdays. Thank you, Stephen,
thank you, Omar, thank you, thank you guys.

Speaker 3 (02:00:46):
Soon

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