ट्रांसक्रिप्ट [EN]: Destiny vs Planet Peterson on Israel-Palestine

[music] I just don't understand how there's so much wanted and deliberate killing, so many bombs dropped, so much money on munitions, and yet the civilian death count doesn't seem to be anywhere. >> There's no such thing as a minimum amount of death for a genocide. >> Wait, do you understand that when you say that over and over again that that's not responsive? >> Many, many more points to it than just >> I understand, but do you understand that's nonresponsive to what I'm saying? I didn't even bring up genocide. So you think that Hamas wanted to send them back for free? >> They were to the Amir [music] of Qatar told them, "If you don't do this, I'm kicking you out of Doha." And so yes, there was an order to release civilian hostages. Netanyahu refused it. >> How can why would Hamas a bombshell report in Har would Hamas not just walk them back over them? >> You know, all of Gaza is like fenced off and guarded with like >> So why [music] not walk them into Israeli sniper fire? let all the Israeli hostages get killed. Talk about immediate collapse for Israel support around the world. What? You're telling me that Hamas was like, "We really want to free these hostages right [music] now, but we can't do it cuz there's a fence." That didn't stop them from from crossing it on October 7th. None of this makes sense, right? This is a ridiculous story, right? This is ridiculous. >> So, it didn't happen. >> No, >> you're just saying it didn't. >> Okay. Well, >> that you're telling me that they could have released all these They could have released a ton, but they US intelligence says it happened. >> No. Everyone, please give a warm welcome to Eric Planet Peterson. Big one. Keep it going. Keep it going. Keep it going. [applause] >> Hello. >> Hi. What's up? >> Um, well, this I guess. So, >> um, I kind of want to preface with, um, I watched the conversation you had with Mark Lamont Hill. >> Okay. >> Um, that was like three years or two years ago, three years ago or something like that. I watched that a few days ago and that's sort of the kind of conversation I want to have about this. So talking about like you were saying earlier facts on the ground but kind of casual you know I don't my plan is not to make anything personal or like score score points or anything like that with gotchas or anything like that. Um so just kind of to frontload that. >> Sure. And I just wanted to talk about so I do think that a genocide was committed slash is still being committed um in Gaza by Israel. And I think there's the additional factor of um failing to prevent genocide and failing to prosecute it as well. Anything you like uh right off the bat? >> I mean I disagree with both those points, but I'm sure we'll get into it. Um >> Yep. I think probably the the biggest angle that I'm going to take here is I think that when we're looking at something like genocide, I think we need to look for a country that is trying to eliminate or or do something disruptive or destructive to a group of people. And it has to be something more than just a military operation. It can't be that there's a really bad war that's one-sided in some regards, therefore genocide. Or it can't be that there are war crimes, therefore genocide. or can't be that there are some actors um that aren't even part of like a military cabinet. You're small churches, you're Bengivers. Um therefore, genocide, like I feel like the crime of genocide is is a is a really grand one for a reason. And the idea that we can just take military operations and then say, well, you know, it's pretty one-sided. Therefore, genocide is a thing that I I try to argue against. Yeah. And then and then more importantly, I guess the reason why I don't like the genocide argument as much is because it feels like a thought terminating thing where once you've established genocide, there's only one solution and that's for basically all the Jews to leave to leave Israel and then that's like the only way to to actually solve that conflict. >> Well, to be clear, that's not my position on what I think should happen there. Um maybe a lot of people you've talked to think that. Me personally, no, just for the record. So um for a genocide there are essentially four elements to it as far as I understand. There's um killing, causing harm, which includes not just bodily harm but mental harm, preventing births, and then the uh intent to destroy or like the destruction of a of a group of people. That part's like specifically in the definition that most people use, but includes all those four parts. So do you that sounds fine to you? >> Um maybe I think my understanding of genocide is there's basically there's two elements. You have the um you've got the actus reus and then you've got the men's rhea which is essentially the act can be anything from I don't have all four or five memorized but it's like you can kill a group of people. You can bring about conditions to make their survival impossible. You can um try to find a way to uh sterilize them or prevent the production of new children. Um and then the the men's rhea part is like you have the special intent to destroy a group of people in whole or in part and this is absent like any type of military >> conflict but yeah >> that's the do specialis I think so men's rhea is a guilty mind >> like you know what you're doing uh the rail one that's the guilty act itself and then there's the intent so intent is >> I read through the UN commission report last year I read through the original South Africa case and a couple other things and the uh from what the report says is intent can be established by you know a pattern of behavior. Nobody nobody's ever said we're going to go do a genocide right now and and that's how we're like oh there they admitted it we got you right. Um >> some people in Israel seem to say stuff close to that but I know what you mean. >> We would never we would never demand that level of evidence for somebody to say that. Of course. Yeah. >> Yes. And you know what a set what some random settler says some just absolutely insane thing. That's not like I that's not part of it because they don't really have the power to enact anything except for like the settlers in the West Bank. But I would call that definite cleansing rather than genocide. So I just have like I have my notes here. Um I figured we could just talk about each of the four points. The killing, preventing births, harm, and destruction. Does that sound okay? >> Sure. Although I mean I imagine I'm probably going to agree to some extent that all these things happen, but I think that the the special intent to eliminate a group of people in whole or a part is going to be the thing that elevates a thing to genocide. So like for instance, we can have war crimes. Yep. >> But that doesn't like you can have like collective punishment as like a type of war crime, but that doesn't necessarily mean genocide, right? Yeah. But okay. Yeah. >> I I have that included too. The uh the special intent. >> Okay. >> So if we start with killing, um obviously in a war, you know, civilian casualties happen, a lot of civilian casualties can happen. It's my understanding that it's around 80 to 83% uh civilian casualties. That sounds like a number that you think is reliable. >> It can be. It depends how you're measuring, but yeah. >> Okay. That just consistently ever since even the first two months, which were the most brutal in a lot of ways, that was the number that was brought up. And in the report, that's pretty much the number. So, I don't necessarily um well, no, I don't really at all think that that's the kind of number that you would expect in ju in just a quote unquote bad war, right? I I don't mean to put you on the spot, but what kind of number would you think gets us to the point where this is not what a just a bad war looks like? I think there would be other factors that I would have to bring in to determine whether or not the number is just or unjust to me or I shouldn't say just or unjust but I should say like understandable. So um for instance let's say that we are going to war with um with Venezuela I guess right um and let's say that we wanted to take out a bunch of Venezuelan military installations. If I found that we were bombing neighborhoods I I don't know I don't even know if a number would factor in there. I would just say why are we attacking neighborhoods? That doesn't see I don't understand any justification whatsoever for just like bombing civilian neighbors there. Whereas like for a densely packed metropolitan area or densely packed city area, I might think that like the numbers could skew pretty heavily to one side depending upon how embedded the people are in some particular place. So like one instance or or not one instance but like one issue with Hamas is that Hamas operates in a way to maximize civilian casualties at every single stage of combat. So that's a thing that I have to factor in when I think of civilian casualties in in Israel. >> Yep. So um if we can get into specifics. So there's the question of incidental deaths and collateral damage. Uh but then I think I I just think that there are numerous clear examples of killings that occurred that don't really seem to have any feasible military objective in mind. So, for example, uh like the flower massacre that occurred um when they let they they let a aid truck in and there was flower there. It was at night for some reason and then uh people were fired upon. I don't I don't have an exact number of how many people died there, but um and then Israel, they changed the story on that. At first, they said no gunshots were fired at all. Then they said they fired warning shots. Then they said we were targeting somebody. and they they presented a video, but the video well actually they originally claimed there was a stampede and that's why people died. Um, but then we got reports from the hospitals. Nope, they're riddled with bullet holes. And then there was there was video that they presented as evidence, but it conveniently left out the middle. It shows people gathering and then it shows the stampede with the part missing in the middle. So that's an example of something that I don't think you can make a good case that there was a military objective there. >> Sure. So I guess what So >> I'm curious. Can you give me from start to finish what do you think is the most compelling version of events that happened with regards to that particular story >> for the flower masker specifically? >> Yeah. >> Um as far as what triggered them to begin firing, I that's the part I don't know. What we know is people um went up to >> give me when I say give me like what do you think in your mind because you're presenting it as a situation of like unjustifiable civilian murder. So I'm just curious in your mind what do you think is like the most likely story of what happened there. >> Uh I think they fired at people just I just think it was a act of abject cruelty. we've seen, it was actually Americans that did this, but you know the Gaza humanitarian sites, the GHF or whatever it's called. Um, you saw the video where the guy captured a video of somebody, you know, plunking shots at people as they walked away and one of them says, "I think I got one of them." Now, those were Americans, but that's just an example of that kind of thing happening. So then in your mind, do you think that they sent either real aid or fake aid trucks in with the goal of luring out a few hundred civilians with the joy of just shooting and killing whoever showed up in the hopes that nobody had a phone or what? I'm just in your mind like what's the strongest version of events there? >> Yeah. And I mean >> Yeah. And you agree with what I just said. Do you think that that's like the strongest version of events there that >> it may not necessarily be that the reason they did it was to do that, but it it happened. Maybe a few individuals chose to take that action. I don't think, you know, Netanyahu was on the phone like, "Okay, are they there? Okay, start shooting." I don't think it was something like that. And in this case, you know, this would be an example of like failure to prosecute, for example, because it can just be, you know, if if a rogue battalion or a soldier or individuals do something horrible that doesn't go to the state for their responsibility, but and again, as as crazy as that sounds, it sounds conspiratorial, but why did they lie about what happened? And then why did why present doctorred footage? To me, that is just scream out loud uh like a guilty conscience or trying to cover something up. It's it's also consistent with, you know, they won't allow journalists in there. Uh if why not let the press in there unless you're covering something up or if you don't want people to see >> I mean, don't people complain about how many journalists are killed in there constantly? >> Sorry, I >> don't people complain about like journalists getting killed in active war zones constantly in Gaza? It's really weird because >> Yeah, I understand. Sorry, the echo might be >> the speakers make it hard to hear. >> Sure. Aren't there a lot of complaints about journalists being killed in Gaza a lot? >> Yeah. Over 200, but like they've been we've seen them be specifically targeted uh is one of the problems. But >> like you think Israel is like picking out people in journalist vests and shooting at them because they're journalists. >> Yeah. Um and they have admitted that because they say, "Well, that guy was there on October 7th helping Hamas." quote unquote. They've literally used that excuse before. There's the uh >> Well, that means that they're not targeting him because they're targeting a journalist, right? They're targeting him because they think he's not a journalist, right? >> No, specifically journalists cuz they claimed the journalists were they didn't claim they were like shooting people on October 7th, but they they made this claim that they like did reconnaissance for Hamas, >> which would be a military action, which you're not allowed to do, right? Like a journalist can't take footage of an act like of a of a future combat zone and then return it to an enemy military. Like you would no longer be a journalist. You would be that would be recon, right? >> Yeah. But that's that's just a claim. >> Mhm. >> Um and for you know for 200 journalists uh to have done that and there's a pattern of conduct like you know they'll they've bombed buildings and leveled them because there's a camera on it and they claim well that's a Hamas camera, right? That's I mean that's a claim but I I don't think that just gives you license to take life like that. Um, I mean, as far as as far as other examples, like there's the flower massacre. They've been repeated. The doctors that work there say it's like clockwork when the aid sites open, like especially the the GHF, we just get this huge influx of people coming in, lots of reports of children with single gunshot wounds to the head. If you're if you're spraying into a crowd for crowd control, I mean, that's a horrible thing to do, but that's that would produce a random pattern of >> we would but nobody would ever do that, right? Nobody sprays into a crowd. You would expect there to be a single shot to the head of somebody who's trying to shoot and kill somebody, right? >> Yes. Yeah. And and like they're specifically to the head. So I don't that just seems like wanting killing of people. Um >> when we say children, what are the ages that we're talking about and where are these people found? Well, it's going well for the specific cases with the uh with the food aid that's in uh like an extremely they they bulldoze the earth up and create these banks so they can observe them. It's tightly controlled. There's very little space in Gaza that's not part of the buffer zone. I think like 75% of Gaza, I'm not sure about today, but has been in a in a buffer zone. So there's just there's almost no space for these people to operate in. So yeah, that's where there I mean the age ranges it's I I don't know what the youngest person that got shot in the head was. I don't know what the oldest quote unquote child that got shot in the head was. I don't have access to that. I just know the people there are regularly reporting this and I just I don't see how kids can be military targets. >> What are kids though? What do you mean when you say kids? What are we defining as kids here? Um, I don't know if the the UN has a standard definition of anybody under 18. >> Under are we are we going to the Hamas recruits 16 year olds, therefore >> Well, they do and much younger, but I'm saying like there's a big difference between like a six-year-old and like a 16y old, right? >> Uh, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying children to like to I'm not saying that as a PMIC tactic to tug on people's heartstrings, but like there could be no possible like if you're killing children, then that that's just the end of it, right? It's just we say women and children in these kinds of contexts because we're pretty we're all pretty damn certain that women and children aren't uh part of the militia or anything like that. So, it's just to it's just to paint a broad brush and describe. So, what is it's a tmic or whatever attack, right? It's it's to >> it's to invoke the idea of a six-year-old generally, not like a 15, 16, 17 year old that might be trained with weapons and is like a enemy combatant, right? >> No, I I I don't know. I thought I explained it pretty well. We we use that term to describe this is a cohort of people that were almost certain virtually none of them are taking part in any hostilities or anything like that. Now, yeah, like maybe there are well, not maybe there are, you know, like 16 year olds that are in Ham, but what percentage of the population is it? Like we we don't have a number. >> Why don't we have a number? >> Sorry. >> Why don't we have a number? >> Um, I don't know why we don't have a number. >> Couldn't Hamas publish that number? >> I They probably could. Do you think Hamas has Hamas taken a single step in the past 22 years of rule in the Gaza Strip to do anything whatsoever to reduce the amount of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip? >> Um, no, not really. I think >> has taken actions that induce civilian casualties. This might be booby trapping bodies, booby trapping homes. It might be having civilians placed on top of buildings where military assets are underneath. It might be operating out of places like Alshifa hospital. I'm only going by the stuff that Amnesty International itself has reported, ignoring even what the IDF says, but like Hamas does things to induce the most amount of civilian casualties as well. Yeah. >> Yeah, that's true. But in like like the specific cases we're talking about, you can't make a Hamas tunnel argument for a go for a for a humanitarian site. Are you sure? >> For for a truck that's bringing in flour. >> Okay. Do you know how many areas that Hamas has agreed upon with Israel to set up as a safe zone for people to collect food at? >> I don't know a number off the top of my head. >> Okay. It's very low. It's less than one. It's zero. Hamas has done absolutely zero work to ensure that there are any safe zones for humans to exist in that they won't operate militarily out of. Every single safe zone for humans have been has been declared unilaterally by Israel. Sometimes Hamas will operate out of these, sometimes not. But um I agree that civilian casualty, you know, is is not good. It's in some cases it's tragic. But the idea that Hamas does everything it can to facilitate and to maximize the amount of civilian casualties and then the onus is on Israel at every single stage to try to reduce them and the only side that ever gets protested for whatever reason seems to be the Israeli side. Even when Hamas is still actively holding hostages, it's like it makes me very suspicious about what it is we're trying to actually accomplish. I guess with all the criticisms of the ongoing war effort, >> you know that civilians never lose protective status even if they're being used as human shields. >> That's arguable. Um there's there's modes of analysis. One is called continuous combat function where you can have civilians that are partaking in military operations where it's questionable whether or not you could analyze them as members of combat or not. So, for instance, if a 100 civilians decide to march in front of an enemy battalion to shield them from fire, are they actually human shields at that point such that like the enemy battalion is using them in a way they shouldn't be targeted or have they become part of the combat function of the enemy? I mean, it really depends, but um I like technically what you're saying is kind of true. Like an enemy can't just hide amongst like one commander amongst 10 million civilians and say, "Well, I dare you to nuke me." And you can say, "Well, screw it. We can kill infinite numbers of civilians." But I guess the issue is that when people talk about human shields in Gaza, they talk about this like this is an exceptional thing that maybe happens occasionally as opposed to the fact that this is just the rule of how Hamas operates in a 24/7 manner in the Gaza Strip. You don't ever see them dying in uniform because they don't wear uniforms. You see them operating out of a number of civilian areas. They do. Even Amnesty International has said this. They said it in Protective Edge in 2014. Um they've said it in Castle. They've said it in I think even in the current conflict people have talked about it. We've seen video footage of like the civilians being rushed into different hospitals where they said that they never took people into hostages or into hospitals with hostages, whatever. So, I guess my my issue is that like Hamas operates in a way that demands and tries to maximize for civilian casualty. We've been told a million times that this is the most densely packed area on the planet when it comes to people. But for some reason, the casualty number, the death number is still around, I think it's like 74,000. And I just don't know why there wouldn't be so many more civilian deaths if I'm to believe that Israel is trying to genocide a group of people when the enemy combatants are trying every single thing they can to maximize the amount of civilian death there. So we're like in the abstract those are all fair arguments. They're fair points but I'm trying to bring up like a few specific examples. I mean, I just I don't I don't buy that in the middle of the day, people going to these humanitarian sites uh and they're getting shot there is I I just don't buy that the Hamas presence there is what led to that. >> Why is the death count so low for that then though? Like why aren't there like 500,000 dead if they're so keen to kill people that they're just indiscriminately shooting and murdering random people going to humanitarian sites when you expect the number of dead civilians to be in the hundreds of thousands at least? So I don't know if we're doing a thing like like you're asked like earlier I asked you what's the number where it starts to become like this definitely doesn't seem excusable. It seems like we're we've kind of reversed that back to me. there's no such thing as a like a minimum threshold for genocide. In fact, in I was reading uh I think it was maybe in the Rwanda case, uh deaths don't even need to actually occur. It just if you are setting up a situation with the intent that it can bring about um huge numbers of civilian deaths, then that counts as one of these guilty acts. But again, but I'm just saying that like the argument that we're running with right now is that at these GHF sites, soldiers are indiscriminately shooting at and murdering civilians for the LOL. It's just epic and based and they just want to kill random civilians, but somehow that civil the death number is 70 is like around 74,000 I think. So if people are just randomly shooting and killing civilians, that's your argument. Why isn't that death number so much higher? I feel like it would be so much higher if they're just randomly shooting and killing whatever civilians they see. or do you think they only do it sometimes when it's on cell phone video or >> the vast majority of people that have been killed has been killed with, you know, bomb blasts, not with gunfire. Um, and there hasn't really been very much humanitarian aid that's been given out to anybody. But >> what do you mean by that? >> There have been uh there was a total siege right away and then in 2025 there was the 11week siege. Uh, at no point has an adequate amount of material ever flowed into Gaza. How is it that we don't have like a mass starvation event where at least thousands of people if not tens of thousands of people are dying or if it's been I don't know how long have you would you say that like there's been a cessation of aid into the Gaza Strip that there aren't so many people dying of starvation I guess. >> So I I am going to I have stuff about starvation. It's just in a different part of this. So I promise we'll talk about it. I'm not like running away from it. I promise we'll talk about that. But I'm just trying to look at a pattern of behavior here where no feasible legitimate military objective is there shooting people at the aid sites, the 15 paramedics that they killed, then they buried all the evidence and lied about what happened. We only know what really happened because we found a cell phone on one of the the dead paramedics and he recorded what happened. Um the like the Hind Rajab killing I think was really inexcusable. It seemed like it was >> that was the poet guy, right? >> That was the girl that was trapped in the car. >> Oh, never mind. Okay. >> Yeah. Um uh and attacking you know aid convoys and stuff like that. But >> and then just so that I understand. So your explanation for all of these is this was just soldiers decided to just kill people for because they wanted to for no good military reason. They were either bloodthirsty or angry or Yeah. It doesn't have to be every single case. I can believe that that in some of the cases like with the food aid, I mean the people they don't have food and so they they swarm the food aid and there are there are gangs in Gaza because that's just what happens when you have societal collapse. And so I can believe that there are some cases where some sort like it's just bedum and warning shots are fired and there's like collateral damage that comes that or one guy starts shooting and another guy like when Alex Prey was killed, somebody says something and that makes the other guys freak out and so they just start firing that on a case-byase basis. I it's not like I think every single instance has been like definitively genocidal, but it's about how many events like this do we have and then extrapolating a pattern uh from all of that. And then like with respect to, you know, with respect to the bombings, um like on October 25th, right away in 2023, there was this apartment that collapsed and 81 women and children were killed in that. Now, uh, Israel says that they were targeting a Hamas tunnel next to it, right? And this is what you talk about. They they do everything they can to, you know, make the IDF look bad essentially. Something like that >> to induce the maximum amount of civilian death. >> Yeah. Which makes Israel look really bad, >> which they do do, right? >> Yeah. I I don't necessarily have a problem with that. I I think Hamas is no good. I'm in favor of them going away, uh, not not having any power in Gaza or in the West Bank. But it is still also the case that, you know, let's say there's a Hamas tunnel and there's a apartment building on top of it or right next to it. Um, is the building now a legit military target? Well, no, not automatically at all. Now, there is there is um wiggle room in here. If you directly target the Hamas structure and incidentally the building collapses, that's not necessarily a war crime. However, it it is still as bad as Hamas is, that doesn't absolve Israel of responsibility. The international law is that you have to take every reasonable measure to minimize civilian deaths. So, >> does just checking does this real drop leaflets? >> Mhm. >> Do they make phone calls? >> Yes. And >> do they do the roof knocking? >> What was the last one? >> Roof knocking. They drop a bomb sometime. Okay. So, they do take some at least as many as much as we've seen precautions, right? What more precautions do you think they should be taking? >> Well, so when they when they tell people you need to evacuate because we plan on doing stuff here. If people choose not to leave, they don't lose any protective status. >> It's arguable. >> Well, I mean, I think sure, maybe there are uh international crime scholars or whatever that that take that position. I think that that's a fringe position. >> Well, the if you want to be super technical, the ICC doesn't even really apply here because Israel is not a signator to the Rome Statute, but that's neither here nor there. But I'm saying that I don't think it's a fringe position to say that if an enemy was invading my country, if China was invading Miami, honestly, they should just [ __ ] destroy Miami. But I'm just kidding. But if they were to if they were to invade Miami and they were to say, just so you know, we know there are soldiers in your apartment complex. We're going to bomb it. And I were to say, I don't give a [ __ ] I'm staying right the [ __ ] here. I'm subjecting myself in in a way to combat. I know that I'm serving some kind of function to the military that's here. like it's it becomes a lot at the at the best you could say it becomes hazy but like realistically in a way I'm throwing myself towards the war effort like the reason why I'm here is because I know I'm trying to make them not attack an otherwise valid military location so it's arguable here in terms of function what I'm serving here it becomes it becomes hazy at best in the abstract I don't disagree with you but I think the reality of the situation is Gaza is this tiny place and people don't really have places to go and then they they see that people get killed even as they're trying to flee and there's a huge population. >> Why do they get killed when they're trying to flee though? >> I >> sometimes because Hamas is literally launching attacks from the humanitarian corridors, right? Because Hamas will never agree with Israel to actually >> family hints family a tank shot up their car with hundreds of rounds from 50 meters away. They were they were told to evacuate and they tried to evacuate. Um, so like there are people are going to have examples like that or maybe they do have extremely frail and can't move. >> Do you think that the targeting is completely random in the Gaza Strip? If Israel says move to Rafa, do you think your chances of dying in Rafa are the same as dying in in what Gaza city or anywhere in the north? Or if Israel says we're moving north from Rafa, do you think your chances of dying in the north are the same as dying in Rafa? >> None of this is exculpatory. Unfortunately, none of it is like hard and fast because Hamas doesn't agree to any humanitarian safe zones. Hamas will never agree with Israel that okay, this place we won't operate out of and this can be a safe place for civilians. So, what I guess here's my question is from October 7th and onwards, how should Israel conduct war? Okay, this is what I've been trying to get to. So, we have the tunnel in the building right here. Can you actually not think of another way to get rid of that tunnel than to drop a 2,000lb bomb into it? >> I don't know of any. Can you tell me one? >> I Sorry. >> I'm I don't know of any other way to do it. No. Can you tell me one? >> Uh, send the IDF in there like with boots on the ground. >> So, they sent the IDF in to like rescue hostages before and I think it resulted in like the deaths of like 250 Palestinians when they did that. Do you think that it's realistic? That was a that was like a a halfway failed operation. It wasn't it wasn't designed for that as they tried. >> But do you not think that that can't can any operation become a halfway failed operation? Do you think it's realistic to just send the IDF into a heavily populated civilian populated area densely populated where there could be enemy >> combatants? They have all countries have the obligation to take every reasonable precaution. Can you think of a single country in single in a single conflict in all of human history where a country has opted to do that? >> Where they've opted to do that? >> Yeah. That's never happened ever. >> When we invaded Iraq, which was horrendous >> for Mosul, we dropped leaflets and we gave warnings to the civilians and then we went in and we bombed the [ __ ] out of anybody that was left there was basically considered an enemy combatant. We did not say everybody can stay home and everything is chill and cool and we're just going to walk in and we're just going to like knock on doors and see who's there. Like I mean I've listened to people that serve say very differently like uh Jaco Willick or whatever his name is. You know he's he's a military expert. He's been in these situations really early on that I don't know if you listen to anything he says, but really early on in the conflict, he looked at this and he said, "No, this is just this is not." So, you just really are saying it's just not reasonable to >> I'm saying that no sane human being is going to tell you that you can just send super special ops marines in that are capable of fending off thousands of enemy combatants and then getting the bad guys or saving the good guys and and escaping unscathed. This type of military operation that you're describing has never happened in the history of all of humanity and probably will never happen in all of humanity's future. It is not a possible thing to do. No, >> I I mean we just are going to have to agree to disagree on that. >> But to be clear, there's no historical example that you can give that is even remotely comparable to the type of operation that you're suggesting. >> That's not what I that's not the thing I was talking about. Yes, Gaza is very unique in its >> but for Mol or for any other like groundbased or Fallujah for any groundbased attack we've done, we never just send in the spec ops and then they've gone and they fought off everybody and they've gotten out and everything's been good. >> How do we kill Bin Laden? >> Well, that we weren't at war. That was an actual like we weren't at war with Pakistan when we went in to get bin Laden out of a compound, right? >> I mean, would you kill 20 random people to get bin Laden? We knew what building he was in. >> Yeah. But I'm saying that like all of Pakistan was not on alert for a US I don't know if it was a Blackhawk whatever helicopter mission came in. Like we weren't at war with the country. That was like a >> that that's just that's completely not the point. We're just talking about the specific conduct of like what we're doing here. >> Yeah. But there's Gaza and Israel were at war with each other, right? >> There were no compounds in the middle of Gaza in the middle of nowhere to go in and get a person or kill a person. There was a whole entity that was at at war with Israel. No. >> Yes. I'm simply talking about bad guy civilian infrastructure surrounding it. You're just telling me there's no realistic option other than to drop the bombs that have like a quarter mile lethal radius. >> Quarter mile lethal radius. >> People dead. >> Well, a lot of them are dropped on buildings. That's like the theoretical limit. >> Okay. There are very few people dead given the claims of carpet bombing and indiscriminate destruction and death and mass genocide. It seems like of two million people there'd be far more than 70 some thousand dead, right? If that was really what we thought they were doing. >> Do you really think that that's what the that the number doesn't go higher than that? >> Might go to 80,000. >> That's just positively identified people. >> Sure. And I think some people the upper bound estimate for bodies in the rubble is 10,000. So maybe maybe I say 85,000. Even that seems really low if they're indiscriminately bombing and just trying to destroy and kill as much as possible. >> Well, I mean, it's hardly like uh just killing people is the only element of it. I mean, it's one part. It's the part we've been talking about this entire time. Um I don't know on this specific part we might be kind of at an impass. I did I have a few other details about it though. So um like for example they there was this poet I don't remember his name uh he was killed by Israel early on he was actually killed in his apartment building. It was a It was a multi-story apartment building and he was on I think he was on the second floor and they had the means and the technology and the surveillance, we'll talk about that next to hit his apartment. Uh killed him and his entire family, I'm pretty sure, but uh nobody else right now. They have the technology and the ability to do that. But then uh like in uh that uh refugee camp really early Jamba Jambila or something like that. That was the one where it was really early on. It was in October. It was on Halloween in uh 2023. Uh a spokesperson came on CNN and Wolf Blitzer talked to him. That's the photo with the huge crater. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you remember this incident? >> That's not the hospital that you're talking about, right? Al >> No, it was a it was a refugee camp. It's called Jambila. Okay. >> And I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. Sorry. >> I don't know. That's right. >> Um >> um so we know that they have the technology uh both with the kinds of munitions they use and both with the surveillance technology to pinpoint uh kill certain targets. Now, while you're killing a poet, I think that that's an extremely dis that I think that's part of the the uh causing harm. That's part of the mental harm. >> So, just to be clear, your thought process there is they knew the pope was living there. They wanted to target just him and to kill just him and his family with a $400,000 munition targeted especially just for him and his family. >> They have that ability. Yeah. >> And you think, but now they have that ability. You think they did that? >> Do I think that >> they just wanted to kill the poet and his family? That was it. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Okay. >> I mean, they've bragged about they've bragged about uh killing journalists and things like that before. >> I don't think that's quite true, but okay. >> I'm sorry. >> I don't think that's true, but >> um I mean, if I I I've seen a video of it. I mean, I don't have it, you know, on demand here with me right now. >> I think generally when we say bragged about killing a journalist or whatever, usually what they're talking about is they didn't think the person was a journalist. They thought they were serving a combat function. So like in the beginning examples you brought up that they were saying that uh these journalists were serving as reconnaissance. That doesn't mean they're bragging about murdering journalists. They're saying that they're killing people that are serving a combat function for Hamas. Right. >> Difference. It's a periable difference I would say. >> So like another specific example uh on March 18th. >> This is actually when there was a ceasefire still in place at like 2:30 in the morning they uh did a bunch of strikes and 400 people were killed. So, I mean, to me, we've been on this topic for I don't know how long it's been. We've been on this topic for a while, but like those incidents, I just don't see like an excusable mil. I mean they can claim there's a military objective there but when you're when we know they have the technology to be more precise when we know they have the military uh like they have the manpower and the capacity and the and the technology to reduce civilian harm which is a requirement for all countries under international law. I just find all this stuff to be, you know, a really disturbing pattern that's more indicative of they did even if you know like I I can believe them when they say that we did have a target but deliberately choosing to go about it in this way. I mean that that Jay Leno looking spokesman they have, I forget his name. like he literally said, "We're interested in what causes maximum damage, not precision early on." And so I just don't think that this is really excusable conduct. That's that's how I feel. I mean, I'm I'm assuming you disagree. >> So I can grant literally every single thing you say and none of that actually moves us to genocide. I I could argue that there are or or taking your arguments, I could say possibly some of these things rise to the level of war crimes. It's possible. Um the issue that I have so there's several issues that I have going on. So the first thing is that Hamas operates in a way to induce the maximum amount of civilian casualties as possible. Nobody in the west seems to have anything to say about this which is absurd and insane to me. Um I don't know why you're giving me that confused face. If I were to look at your channel then I were to look for actual measurable criticisms of Hamas. Not just like yeah Hamas is bad but Israel's committing a genocide and the IDF are murderers and they're blah blah blah. But like an actual like Hamas needs to go. They're the ones that were at fault for the war. They're the ones that are still holding it hostages despite the fact that Israel's at war with them and supposedly genocide is going on. Would I find a single criticism of like that on your channel, on Professor Dave, on any of the other millions of people that virtue signal over the Israel Palestine war? A single one of those types of criticisms? >> I mean, >> have you ever said that Hamas is at fault for the current war? >> Um, have I ever said that specifically? I think >> have you ever said that Hamas should return the hostages immediately? that there's no excuse for them holding on to those hostages. >> You're not going to find a public statement of me saying that, but I do believe that. >> Okay. >> So, >> do you see the issue there though, right? So, here's my issue. The issue is that Hamas is conducting themselves in a way that not only maximizes civilian pal Palestinian civilian casualties. They have no criticism from the West. >> So does Israel. >> What? >> So does Israel. >> But you know that's not true. >> Well, you think that you think that Israel could have only killed 80,000 people at this point. >> You don't think they could have killed more? Yes, they could have. >> Then they haven't operated in a way that induces the maximum amount of civilian casualties. Right. They're limiting it for some reason. Now, you can argue that they're >> genocide only if they need. >> I never said it's a genocide only. I'm saying that Hamas operates in a way to maximize. >> You said 80,000. You effectively said 80,000 isn't enough cuz it could. >> I never said I never said anything remotely close to that. I said that Hamas operates in a way to induce the maximum amount of civilian casualties and you said so does Israel. But that's not true. How is that true? Because they could have killed more. Right. >> I've been explaining it for the last 20 minutes. The highest attack you said was 400 dead people. Gaza has a population of 2 million. So how is this the maximum amount of civilian casualties? >> Uh as if as if 400 is the only is the number that's >> let's say that tomorrow you became the if you became the dictator of Israel. If I was the dictator of Israel, I want to kill the most amount of Palestinians possible. Do you think that after 2 years my kill count would be 80,000? it. You know that they no rational actor even if they were engaging um in a genocide like this for the most part at le Israel's special because they're you know they have a special relationship with us and they are surrounded by hostiles um they would conduct themselves in a way that provides for you know like a kind of plausible deniability. >> Did Hamas on October 7th operate in a way that provided for plausible deniability? >> No. So that's not true then, right? Has Hamas ever operated in a way that gives him plausible deniability? >> Hamas has nothing to lose. >> Okay. So then the answer is no. So I don't know why you're saying no. Everybody operates this way, right? That's not true. If you want to kill the most amount of civilians possible, you can do it. But Israel clearly does not operate in that way. Now, you can argue that they're trying to camouflage the genocide or do whatever else, but they're not operating in a way to kill as many civilians as possible. >> So it this is a really easy This is a really easy It doesn't even prove my argument. I don't know why you can't just like that's obviously true. If if today Israel was like, I want to kill 1 million Palestinians, they could do it, right? >> Yes, I know. If the entire case, and it's not this isn't my argument. It's that that people like Amnesty International and Genocide Scholars and this uh UN Commission. My claim doesn't rest just on >> I'm not even talking about the genocide. I'm just saying if we wanted to kill the most amount of civilians possible, Israel is not doing that right now. >> Okay. Like >> the fact that you can't even acknowledge that is incredibly concerning. If right now, this is a simple question. If Israel wanted to kill 1 million Palestinians tomorrow or every Jew on the planet disappears, could Israel do it? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, they're not killing the maximum amount of civilians possible, right? >> Yeah. I'm talking about when they engage in operations. When you choose, like specific case by case basis, when you choose to send a 2,000lb bomb into a refugee camp because you think there's one bad guy in there, that's what I'm talking about is >> why would you ever send in a 2,000lb bomb? >> Say that again. >> Why do you send in 2,000 lb bombs? >> Because well, the >> because you're trying to penetrate to tunnels. If they wanted to just carpet bomb the area, they could have done it for much cheaper. You just bomb the whole place and then let everybody underneath the tunnels die. >> I mean, you're treating it dichomous like the the only way to try to get anybody in Hamas is with these bombs that have these huge blast radius. >> It is. It's not about huge blast radius. When they talk about how much they weigh, it's because they're trying to get underneath the ground. It's because they're trying to get into the tunnels that Hamas has dug. There's like more tunnels under this place than any other place in the world. >> Yes. And the only way to get there is with heavy bombs that can penetrate that ground. >> Or do you think Israel drops them for Wait, so hold on. Is your position that Israel drops these because they think it kills more civilians, but they've only killed 80,000? >> Say that again. >> Is your position that they try to drop these bombs because they think this will kill more civilians, but they've only managed to kill 80,000. >> I I would say they're just completely indifferent to the civilian population. >> Indifferent is why would they drop leaflets? Why would they make phone calls? Why would they do roof knocking? Why would they hard people from south to north and north to south that if they were trying to kill as many civilians indifferently or as many as possible? Only 80,000 out of 2 million. >> Again, I'm we'll have to go on to the next thing cuz we just keep going in a circle. >> Well, I'm I'm not even talking about genocide. I'm just saying that you're using these words and I don't know if you know what they mean. Indiffer. Indiffer implies. Like how many Hamas militants do you think exist in Gaza? Like if it was 1 million Hamas militants and 1 million civilians and I bombed a 100,000 people indifferently, then I might expect to kill 50,000 militants and 50,000 civilians all else equal. If the ratio right now is we'll say 15,000 Hamas to we'll say 60,000 civilians, um which is like 1 to four. Do we think that there are 400,000 Hamas militants in Gaza? Probably not, right? They're probably targeting Hamas people. Do you think that Israel targets Hamas combatants or do you think they they really just target whoever? >> Well, they target people other than uh the militants. I would say it's primarily uh that they're targeting >> the militants. Okay. So then that's not indifferent definitionally speaking. That's they are targeting gen like primarily they're targeting the military people, right? >> Mhm. >> Okay. And Hamas is giving them let's assume that Israel was genocidal and evil in nature or at least members of the military were. Hamas is giving them really great cover to do that, right? Because they give no shelter to their civilians. They agree to no safe zones for anybody. They don't do anything to take care of their civilian population. And then they hide as much military stuff as possible underneath or next to civilian places. Are they giving Israel like every excuse possible that they could ever have for cover for killing civilian people? I for the for the millionth time and I I want to move on after this. Israel, all countries have the obligation including take every precaution >> including Hamas, right? >> Yeah. I'm not sitting here saying that in this conflict. >> Sure, but they've totally abdicated that responsibility, right? Why doesn't anybody ever talk about this? >> You can't punish civilians for the crimes of their cohorts. >> No, but you can't prevent countries from conducting war because the other side decides to engage in maximum civilian destruction. >> Have to abide by international law, >> including Hamas. >> Yes. But when one party fails to act legally, that doesn't absolve another party. >> For sure. Which is why you would hope that Israel would be doing things like trying to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, trying to give ample warning to the population when it doesn't inhibit combat operations to make sure that they're warning them before doing the strikes. And when you look at the amount of people that are still alive there despite being told over and over again that they're all starving to death, it seems like that hasn't happened. despite being told that there's indiscriminate bombing or mass bombing campaigns, it seems like there's not, you know, 500,000 civilians dead. It seems like Israel is doing, oh, I don't say their best. Obviously, there are definitely mistakes that we can identify. But when the other side is doing every single thing they can to maximize civilian death on their side and then the other side seems to be taking at least some steps that we can all agree to try to minimize civilian casualty. And we never hear any criticism for the Hamas side. you yourself said you've never made a video calling them out for prolonging the war as as long as possible, for not agreeing to certain ceasefires or for not releasing the hostages or for starting the conflict on October 7th. But then on Israel, we have criticism after criticism after criticism. I mean, like that just seems like an unworkable situation to me. >> I mean, it's sort of a case of I don't feel obligated to go out of my way to just regularly condemn Hamas because I think it goes without saying. They have said that they're Well, I'm telling you what I think. I'm not. >> Do you think the majority of people think that Hamas is at least as condemnable as Do you think that Hamas is as condemnable as the IDF is? >> Yes. >> Do you think that most people that are incredibly vocal critics of Israel feel that way? >> I I don't know. >> Do you think that it would be good to know that before venturing out into the world and giving an opinion on it because it might influence the way you give your opinion? There was a well-known political commentator, I don't remember his name, but I think he just gave an Axio interview where he said that al-Qaeda is more moral than the United States. Poundforound, I think he said. If there are people like that who are large figures, >> pound for pound, we do more terrorism. >> Yeah. So, if there are people that believe that, doesn't it seem like those same people probably also think that the IDF is a more immoral force than Hamas? And shouldn't that like influence how we criticize either side of the conflict? Like, isn't that kind of an important thing to factor in or no? I mean, I I don't really understand why we're going in this direction. Hamas is very bad. I'm in favor of completely eliminating Hamas. >> So is Israel. You agree with the IDF there? Yeah. >> Yeah. On that part, I'm not one of these people that calls Israel it's not real. I'm not one of these people that says the no, I don't believe in a two-state solution. I think it should all be Palestine. I'm not like that's not me. I'm not >> You think just curious for the the Hezbollah? I know there's a little bit of it, but for the Hezbollah pager attack, do you think that was a legitimate way to conduct warfare against Hezbollah? >> Sure. I I know very little about >> when they did the pagers and they blew up all the pages. >> I remember that. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Okay. All right. >> Okay. Um the So, just kind of like one more thing on this point. I don't know if you heard this recently. There was this uh story. There were people uh armed people like a I don't know like a random militia or something like that and they were coming in. I don't remember if they were entering the West Bank or or western Israel but they were coming in from uh Jordan and they were armed and so the Israel was observing them and they were going to launch a strike on them. Have you did you is any of this ringing? >> I'm not aware of this but go ahead. It was really kind of a fascinating thing because um you know they have the drones that do the surveillance and everything. They realized that those are actually Israelis because they could see like the long curly hair that some of the ultraorththodox Jews have. >> Okay. >> So the reason it seems like a random thing to bring up, but we've seen like time and time again air strikes that hit people just walking in a corridor. There was really recently um a kid got bombed and then they do they did a double attack and another at least one other young person I don't know if how many other people uh you know they go to retrieve the body or see if there's anything they can do and then there's this classic double tap. There's a pretty famous video fairly early on. I think it was two young men. It might have been it might have been just one, but he was, you know, walking along a a rubbled street with a bike next to him and they got blown up and killed. And so there's this excuse of, "Oh, well, we thought they were, you know, a combatant or something like that." When they have the resolution, reconnaissance resolution to tell by the curls of your hair, oh, those aren't that's not Islamic jihad or those aren't that's not a militia from Jordan coming into us. That's our people. I really just don't like all the all the accounts of, you know, the bombing of random citizens and all that. I just don't buy that they uh like any of those are oopsies, right? And then there's the AI spying software thing, the Lavender. Um, have you heard anything about that? >> The for like a year ago. Yeah, I remember reading articles about this. Yeah. So, it's this AI and this is a this is a like a a case of basically like military malpractice, right? So, they have these AI things like Where's Daddy? I don't know if LA I don't know if Where's Daddy is like part of the Lavender system or not, but it just it tracks people. They can track people's cell phones like through Pegasus and stuff like that. And I don't know if they do it with drone surveillance or whatever, but they have this AI program that basically looks at people and looks at a pattern of their behaviors. And then the AI has an algorithm that's tuned to predict whether or not that person is affiliated with the Hamas militia. But we know that it makes errors at least 10% of the time. Um, and >> is that bad? >> Yes. And >> 10% of the time is bad. >> The other thing the other thing >> Wait, can I ask you said 10% is bad, right? >> Yes. >> How often do humans make errors? >> What if I told you humans made errors 30% of the time? Is that the actual case here? I mean, this is >> I'm asking you because you told me 10% was bad. >> But there's an issue. You told me 10% was bad, but if we don't know the normal fail rate of a human, we don't actually know if that 10% is bad at all. Right? It might be that 10% is an extraordinarily positive number. Maybe an ordinary human makes a mistake 15 or 20% of the time. Maybe the normal human fail rate is 5% of the time, in which case 10% would be bad. But don't we need the number to compare it to to even know if that number in and of itself is bad? Isn't this just like another copy pasted headline to make it seem like Israel is engaged in some crazy Terminator 2 scheme to murder mass Palestinians, but for some reason the number is still locked at like 72,000 and doesn't seem to get much higher. And so I'm just going to finish my point on this. [sighs] >> The only like human element that comes into that is a person will look at it and this came from 972 Israeli newspaper public journal or something. I don't know. It's Israeli. I know that. Um, the only thing the human ever does is they'll look at it for around 20 seconds and the only thing they do is to check whether or not it's a male. >> Okay. >> Um, I'm just curious. >> This is just an example. >> Yeah, that's an example. That's really bad. Can you tell me what the targeting practices are of Hamas from 2004 onwards from the Gaza Strip to Israel? >> No matter how Hamas No matter how bad Hamas is, that's not exculpatory of Israel's content. I didn't say it is, but I don't know why nobody talks about that. And isn't it kind of doesn't it change doesn't it change >> doesn't it change how we would view it a little bit? >> Like the Palestinians are getting what they deserve? >> No, but like let's say that you had one group of people that was never attacking another group of people and then that other group of people came in and just started >> like Gaz and children. >> What do you mean by children? >> I think everybody kind of We already went over this actually. So, no 17-year-old can hold an AK and shoot and kill somebody or is that a child? >> Again, take what it take the number of children that have been killed in this conflict. It's said to be 20,000 roughly. >> How many of them are six and how many of them are 17? >> 5% of them are likely members of Hamas. Okay. Still 95% of that, which would be what? 19,500. Um, I don't know if that math was actually right. >> I'm just saying that when you say children, you're trying to normatively load that word, but I don't know what that means. I don't know. When you say children, I know that in Yemen, they train people to fight there as early as 6 years old. Literally >> that we use to identify a cohort as almost certainly not involved with military activities. >> Sure. But that doesn't that's not really true though, right? >> Sorry. >> That's not really true though, right? >> To say it's not true 100% of >> I never said 100%. But I'm saying that just because somebody is under >> fast and loose with the rhetoric. >> I'm not being fast and loose. You're the one being fast and loose. You're using the term under 18 to denote a whole group of people that should never ever ever be considered a possible combat or military target. But we know that's not true. That can't possibly be true in the Middle East. We know that lots of people fight with people well under the age of 18. >> I grant you whatever your upper estimate you think is, that's still going to leave an enormous and by far a large majority of uninvolved civilians. >> Okay. I don't know if that's true or not. It might be true, it might not be true. Um, I'm just saying that when you just say children, >> you leave the door open for 51% of the people under 18 in Gaza being Islamic jihad. >> I I don't know the answer to that. Here's something that I do know. I do know that in the United States of America, something that they often say is that the majority of ch of childhood deaths are caused by firearms now in the United States. And that's a huge issue that we need to be concerned with. I also know that if you look at the stats on those numbers, you see 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 and then it explodes in the last 3 years. So to say that the number one cause of childhood death are firearms when 95% of those deaths are happening from 14 and up. That's still tragic. It's bad. I don't want people who are at any age to be dying of firearms. But you're normatively loading that word children are being killed to invoke the mind of like a swaddled toddler or a four-year-old when it could be somebody who's 15 and holding an AK. Somebody who's 17 and is is is part of military operations. Hold on. Wait just real quick. You're laughing. Hold on. Have you watched six-year-old? Have you watched a single >> I'm saying the word child? Therefore, I'm doing pmics. >> Because you are because you're saying child. Why are you saying child? >> Why are you saying the word child? What's the goal when you >> I've explained that three times. So, I'm not going to explain it a fourth time. >> Okay. >> Like, >> you're saying child, but you're trying to normatively load it to make it feel really bad. >> No, can you tell me what I said? >> I honestly don't remember at this point. >> Okay. Well, >> it sounds like you're saying initially you said, well, I'm not actually trying to morally load the word child. However, in military conflict, when we say women and children, we say this to mean people that are ordinarily removed from military. So, what it sounded like you said is I'm not saying this to normally load it, but now I'm going to explain, but what I'm saying is actually normatively loading it. That's what it sounded like to me. Am I was I misunderstanding that or because it sounded like you were saying child is a word that you use to say these are people that ordinarily would never be valid military targets. That was my impression. Is that true? >> Yes. >> Okay. That's called normatively loading the word. When you say child, the implication >> facts facts are normatively loaded. I mean >> some can be but I'm just saying that like >> well then everything is normatively loaded. >> True. That is very that's true. But that's a deep epistemic problem but we don't have to worry about that right now. I'm just saying that when [laughter] we say I'm just saying that when we say >> pedantic, >> we're not being pedantic. It's not pedantic when you say they're killing children. The idea is to make them sound like demons that are murdering people indiscriminately because why else would you ever kill an innocent child when that doesn't really describe to us whether or not the person was an enemy combat or not? We don't know that, right? >> If you want to tell everyone what I meant by that despite my words, then I'll I'll let you do that. That's fine. >> Okay. That's neither here nor there. My issue is that it doesn't seem like most people that are very vocal about the pro Palestinian side of this conflict right now seem to think that Hamas is doing much wrong. I hear these arguments over and over again that the UN has determined that they have a right to resist and they can fight and you know no resistance is perfect and maybe Hamas did a bad but the IDF is a million times worse. Just look at the numbers. I've heard these arguments over and over and over again. Now, maybe they're not arguments that you've made, per se, but you yourself said that you've never really made a video explicitly calling out Hamas because it's just taken for granted that of course Hamas are the bad guys. I can't think of a single genocide or a single military conflict in all of human history where the side that's being genocided is holding hostages against the opposing genociding force. I don't have a a bank of all the genocides that have ever happened and the the tactics that the group being attacked used. >> Do you think that it would have robbed Israel? >> Why are we saying this? >> Because I think that it would have robbed Israel. Could you imagine if Hamas loaded a ton of civilians into a shelter and then Israel bombs them? Do you know how untenable my position would be in this debate when you say, "Well, here was a shelter. It was designated a safe place. Hamas and Israel agreed. Israel bombed it anyway. >> They have done that. >> Not really though because there's not a single place in Gaza. There is not a single place in all of Gaza that Hamas has agreed is a safe zone for civilians. Not one. >> There are virtually no places that Israel allows for safe zones. There are >> But that's not true though, right? Yeah, Destiny. There are reports in there that IDF soldiers have reported when they're watching, you know, they have a perimeter and they have the buffer zone. When people walk into fields to try to like grab like wild either wildly growing crops or just farms that have been just left there, they go there to try to pick food, they're shot at with the intention to kill. Like if you're going to tell me that a person scrging in the wild for food deserves to get shot at, then no. there. And there's no there's no Hamas element to that specifically. That's just wanting and deliberate killing. And >> I just don't understand how there's so much wanting and deliberate killing, so many bombs dropped, so much money on munitions, and yet the civilian death count doesn't seem to be any. >> There's no such thing as a minimum amount of death for a genocide. >> Wait, do you understand that when you say that over and over again that that's not responsive? >> Many, many more points to it than just >> I understand, but do you understand that's nonresponsive to what I'm saying? I didn't even bring up genocide. I'm saying that if I told you if we were playing a video game and I'm like, "There are two million people. They're packed in this area. I've been bombing them like crazy. My soldiers kill them when they go out to pick crops. It's freaking awesome." And I'm like, "Oh my god, 2 million. How many do you think I would imagine you've killed? 2 million, man. Have you gotten all of them?" What? Probably over half at least, right? I'm like, you know, 74,000. You're indiscriminately killing them. You're shooting the people picking crops. You bomb the [ __ ] out of the entirety of the entire. How have you only killed that many? Something is not computing here. Something doesn't make sense here. Does that make sense? What I'm saying that it something is not is not computing here. >> You're just telling me that the number could be higher. >> I'm saying that there's probably a really good reason why the number is not higher. And I understand I'm sympathetic to the idea that it might even be almost certainly is that there are IDF strikes that are rightfully if evaluated by the ICC or or independent parties are war crimes. I'm sure these things have happened. But I'm saying that if you want to account for every single random report that we get on the IDF side, I mean, one thing I got to ask is how many reports do we have on the Hamas side? Hint is less than one. We have nothing. We have no insight whatsoever. We have no insight into how they operate. Well, we know because what can we observe and we observe is they try to maximize the amount of civilian death. So when I see that there is civilian death that has occurred and I see the ratios are about in line with other wars where nobody has tried to induce as much civilian death and as compactly tight an area that has ever existed ever, right? right? In terms of civilians, because I'm told this over and over again, it's the most tightly densely packed area ever. And and then I'm told that the IPC5 standards are, you know, the most starving people on the entire planet. How is it that the number of civilian deaths don't seem to be anywhere where I would have imagined them to be? Something is not honest about that narrative. Something is not truthful about the story that's being told there is what I'm saying. Okay. I we've kind of beat that part to death. I like I've heard you. I've responded to it as thoroughly as I think I can. I would just like to talk about um other points. So >> um how how are we on time? >> Lots of time. >> Lots of time. Okay. >> Sure. >> Um so I want to talk about um uh the uh bringing about destruction, actions taken to deliberately bring about destruction. I want to read you something. Um, article 2 applies to situations likely to cause death, regardless of whether death actually occurs and allows for the punishment of the perpetrator for the infliction of substandard conditions of life if left to run their course could bring about the physical destruction of the group. For example, lack of proper housing, clothing, hygiene, and medical care. So, what would you guess that's from? Um, is that article two uh 2B or 2C of the Geneva Convention? >> It's a it's a so it's not it's not from any of the like legal documents. It's from an actual uh case. It's like part of the juristp prudence of the case. >> Okay. It's not um it's not the Croatia Serbian case, is it? >> Rwanda. >> Okay. All right. That one hasn't been um has that one been fully adjudicated yet? >> Sorry. >> Has that one been fully adjudicated yet? >> Has Rwanda been fully adjudicated? I don't know. I mean, the president or prime minister was sentenced to life in prison a long time ago. >> Okay. >> The So, >> I would guess that you don't think they bungled Rwanda and they didn't play like fast and loose with terms or anything like that. >> Um, what what is the claim that you're making about this? I well right now I'm just asking you do you think that the Rwanda genocide was pretty clear and cut case and that they didn't have to stretch the truth in any way in that >> um [ __ ] me I would have to go back and review my understanding is the ICJ I thought only declared that there was one country that was involved in the perpetration of a genocide which I thought was the 2015 case with between Croatia and Serbia. Um, for Rwanda, they might have argued that there was a failure to on the prevention of genocide, although I'm not sure if they indicated that somebody had >> committed and failed to prevent. >> I don't I don't I don't think that's true, but I don't recall off the top of my head, but Okay. >> Okay. Somebody can fact check the either the president or prime minister. He He's the only person that's ever actually plead guilty. >> Sure. That's a separate thing. Technically the so the ICJ is going to be the one that is adjudicating for entire countries or for the um the prevention of genocide for that treaty. The ICC is going to be the criminal court that's going to individually hold people responsible for committing the crime of genocide or for facilitating genocide. But but sure but go ahead. >> So so I bring this up because this is this is part of the jurist prudence of this case. They are telling us very plainly and this is article 2. If a state actor does these things, they are committing genocidal acts. >> To be clear, part of the Jewish prudence on that though is that there is no other alternative explanation for why they're committing the act beyond the desire for genocide. >> You look you look at the the totality of the evidence, the pattern of behavior, and you infer intent from that. >> Sure. But these often time these are not happening as part of a military conflict. It's after a military conflict is completely ended or it's against a group of people that are not party to a military conflict whatsoever. It's not it's not like I don't there's not a single case of a active waring people and then they've declared like oh and then during the war they genocided them in the war while they were fighting each other. >> What do you think the Holocaust was? >> Do you think that the Jews were at war with Nazi Germany? >> There was a war. So you're specifically talking about the groups >> like the the Jewish people inciting the other group. They're at war with each other. >> Correct. They were So, yeah. So, the Jews were citizens of that. That's what you meant. But I get it now. I don't think Rwanda is classified as a civil war. I think it's just classified as a genocide. It's basically like a a giant mob frenzy they did. We don't The point is not to talk about Rwanda in this case. But for this very last part that they talk about, uh, depriving the group of lack of proper housing, clothing, hygiene, and medical care. Well, that's obviously happened in Gaza. I mean, the whole thing started off with I don't remember if it was uh uh Galant or um the other guy, but they said like we're imposing a total siege. There will be no electricity. There will be no water. There will be no food. um all that kind of stuff. When in the in the pathetic instances of when aid has been allowed to come in, they do things like take out the infant formula specifically. Um they won't they won't let them bring in tent poles because they think a Hamas is going to like get on a horse and joust a tank or something like that. I mean, just pathetic excuses for this kind of stuff. Just to be clear, I just wanted to say because I know you guys love to use these examples. You acknowledge that basically every single building material that went into Gaza for like the past 15 years has been used to build a massive network of underground tunnels and none of it's been really used to better the infrastructure of Gaza, right? >> I don't understand percentage of Do you agree or do you disagree? Do you think that's a fantastic claim that the majority of the construction material that's gone into Gaza has been used to build a vast network of underground tunnels that civilians are disallowed from entering? >> I don't I don't >> You don't even know about that? You have no concept of that? You have no clue of that? You're not sure? >> Majority. >> Okay. >> I do not agree that the major under >> Are you I could be wrong cuz I know Trump did a lot of AI videos. So there's not a lot of skyscrapers in the Gaza Strip, right? There weren't a lot of like Empire State buildings. It went to tunnels, right? A lot of the people >> hundreds of thousands of buildings in Gaza. >> Well, there were >> there there are there's the most extensive underground network of tunnels in like of any place in all of so a ton of and they're not tunnels like they dig a hole with a shovel and like they crawl along with the snakes. They're like decently sophisticated tunnels with electricity running sometimes water running too, right? >> So people can't even live in the most basic rudimentary shelters. People don't live in those shelters. That's just for Hamas to operate out of. >> I I mean, if you're just going to claim all of the aid just goes to Hamas. >> I didn't say all of the aid goes. I'm saying you're acting like it's so ridiculous that Hamas can hijack aid. Meanwhile, these guys like it is the most successful. This is the issue that I have with this conflict is that like one side like every time I say something it's like you understand that Hamas does and and then what I'm saying is like the least controversial stuff ever. You're like and then meanwhile you're like so the flower massacre was when a bunch of soldiers drove in and then they saw civilians trying to grab a flower and they [ __ ] killed all of them cuz they're [ __ ] bloodthirsty. And it's like Jesus Christ. You have infinite transparency on one side the IDF side. You've got people with cell phones. You've got anonymous soldiers reporting things. And on the other side, you've got Gazin civilians that are so afraid of talking to UN raptor reporters because they might get [ __ ] murdered as collaborators by the by the Hamas side if they're even caught talking to somebody without an actual Gazin official present. And and but people act so incredulous about how Hamas operates. Amnesty International, the UN, and all these other bodies have all reported that Hamas has done these things in the past, but for some reason there's only acknowledgement on one side. Like if you want to read through an account of like, well, here's 10 bad things that Israel did. for most of these things. First of all, they're not usually as insanely one-sided as you're saying, like they went in with the flower massacre with the idea of >> both sides of denying infant formula. There's no both sides. >> I don't even know to be honest. I don't know if that's true. But I was also told by the UN that the that there were more people facing starvation under IPC5 conditions in the Gaza Strip than on any than the combined entire population of the rest of the planet. I was told that and the most generous figures right now say that about 450 people have died since the start of the war from starvation. There were 60,000 children alone that died in Yemen from starvation. So like the idea that somehow there are more starving people in in in Gaza than every other place on the planet combined, something is not adding up here. And when one side of the story gets told over and over and over and over again, where do you think that puts all of the political pressure internationally on solving the issue? Well, it must be Israel's fault. Like, can you imagine if on day one Hamas releases all the hostages and they build shelters for the civilians to hide in? How immediately >> Netanyahu denied accepting hostages right away? By the way, >> Netanyahu denied after a country launched a mass attack against Israel. He denied them turning over the hostages and accepting Hamas as the rifle leadership of the Gaza Strip afterwards. Of course, he denied that. Why would you >> I'm talking about literally in like the first couple of days. >> Yes. So am I. I'm familiar with the story. Came out a couple months ago or whatever. Yes. describing you're describing a a peace deal. There was no >> a peace deal is I do a massive terrorism against you. I steal some hostages and everyone's go I'll give you these hostages back if you agree not to come and [ __ ] my [ __ ] up. >> No, >> that's what the deal was, right? >> No. What's What was wrong about what I just said? >> I was thinking of something completely different than I am. Was the Wait, was the peace deal you're talking about? Does it involve >> explain it to you? You don't know what I'm talking about. >> Does it involve Hamas dismantling itself and stepping down from being the leaders of the Gaza Strip? >> I'm I didn't even hear you. I'm going to tell you what I'm talking about. The Amir of Qatar because uh a lot of the Hamas and all them hang out in Doha, right? >> Yep. >> So he after um when October 7th was happening and they grabbed all these hostages, especially from the dance festival, which wasn't even supposed to be taking place in that location or on that day. >> Lucky for them. >> Sorry. >> Lucky for Hamas. >> I I'm sure. I mean, they had no problem killing them all, right? When it's not like they ran into them, they're like, "Oh, awkward. Leave." Right? They were like, "Oh, well, it's just Yeah, Hamas is bad." Okay. >> They took a whole bunch of uh they took the civilian hostages. The Amir of Qatar said, "You have to give back what he called the civilian hostages, which was people under 18 and over 50." I assume, cuz Israel has like mandatory military service or enrollments or whatever. that's why like that's a weird that's what civilians are just people under 18 and over 50 but um he told them you have to do that and Hamas is ready to hand them over and Netanyahu refused and then who was I can't remember his name it was when Biden was in there not blinking or maybe it was Blinken but um he was aware of all that too >> why would you ever accept that >> accept your own citizens back that have been captured >> in exchange for not going to war with somebody who just did the biggest terrorism against you in all of human history. >> I have no idea what you're saying. >> The peace agreement is you give me back >> reason to not accept civilian uh kidnapped civilians right away. >> It would have been for a peace deal. >> No, because they still kept a large number of other hostages. >> So you think that Hamas wanted to send them back for free? They were to the Amir of Qatar told them, "If you don't do this, I'm kicking you out of Doha." And so, yes, there was an order to release civilian hostages. Netanyahu refused it. >> How can Why would Hamas a bombshell report in Haram not just walk them back over then? >> You know, all of Gaza is like fenced off and guarded with like >> So, why not walk them into Israeli sniper fire and let all the Israeli hostages get killed? Talk about immediate collapse for Israel support around the world. What? You're telling me that Hamas was like, "We really want to free these hostages right now, but we can't do it because there's a fence. That didn't stop them from from crossing it on October 7th." None of this makes sense, right? This is a ridiculous story, right? This is ridiculous. >> So, it didn't happen. >> No, >> you're just saying it didn't happen. Okay. Well, >> that you're telling me that they could have released all these. They could have released US intelligence says it happened. >> No, you you [clears throat] didn't even know what the story was and now you're just saying >> because this is ridiculous. We can bring it up and we can spend 30 minutes reading it afterwards. But however you're describing this because why would Hamasa just release them then? They could just do that, right? They could just do that, right? >> Couldn't they? >> The again the entire Gaza Strip, it's walled off and blocked off. >> So they couldn't just walk the hostages over. >> You're just not >> I'm just asking. I'm just saying could they not walk it over? Maybe there's something I don't understand about the Maybe the sand is very sinky. Unlike you, I've never been there before. So, I don't I don't know what that border in that specific location looks like. This has been reported in Harets. >> So, Hamas could not just walk civilians. I'm just asking what if you hope he does sue them cuz then it'll go into discovery and we'll find out that Yeah, he is. They couldn't just walk the hostages over. Why not? >> I don't know. But you're just bother fake. >> Because it sounds ridiculous. >> Okay. Well, US intelligence corroborates this story and then sources that Harets works uh with people in Doha. The story has been corroborated. So >> corroborated that the Amir said this or that it could actually happen. >> You're you're just saying nuh-uh. >> I am saying nah cuz that sounds ridiculous. I don't believe that that is as report. I'm sure that maybe there might have been >> saying nuh-uh. I said I am there might have been some attempt to broker some peace deal from somebody in cutter. I'm I'm sure there was an attempt. >> It's not even a peace deal. They weren't even there's no information in there that I saw about it was a a quid proquo. The Amir of Qatar just simply said you have to give back the under 18 and the older 50 just those ones. And Netanyahu refused and I think it was Blinken. I don't remember exactly which guy. But >> why would Netanyahu say yes? Look at how great I am. I just got back. >> I know there there was a press conference on this. um he flew to he flew to Israel and still Netanyahu refused. So then he flew to Qatar and talked to them and then flew back. I I do actually think a few days later maybe some of them uh did get released. I don't remember the full details. You can read it. It's a story in Harets. It was pretty big news last week cuz like I said Netanyahu's really pissed about it. He's threatening to sue them. But I mean, why would an Israeli journal create like you're you're >> harass like the leftwing publication in Israel create negative stories about I'm sure they I'm sure they have every incentive to not you know [ __ ] Netanyahu. I mean go for it. But I'm just saying like this is like a childlike understanding of how these exchanges would happen. If if if it was that easy, Nanyahu would just accept that it just looked like a hero. >> I don't understand how it works. >> You don't know anything about the anything? What do you mean I don't understand how it works? Why would they not accept free hostages? Most of the protests in Israel last year were about getting hostages answer to that question. There's a reporting on the story, however, and you're just saying nuh-uh cuz I don't know. You just >> Okay. >> Don't want to admit one thing or anything like that? I don't know. Like not trying to be personal or anything. It's just this part just seems kind of ridiculous. >> Agreed. So how is how is a so with the the elements of destruction that are laid out in article 2 uh forcible transfer using starvation a total siege preventing the entry of electricity fuel food water means of shelter blocking humanitarian humanitarian aid is it your claim that that's not even that Israel did all of those things >> it has to the absence of an explanation for a military objective. And the problem is with Hamas so embedded in the population, you can almost do anything as Israel and say that it's for a military objective. Not that they should be able to do that, but it's very, very hard to tease those two things apart. >> There's no such thing as international law doesn't apply anymore because Hamas has tunnels. >> I didn't say that, but it is a thing. the jurist prudence of the ICJ when they're determining genocide was a big part of the Bosnian Croatian case and it's what it hinged on was can you make a reasonable inference to something beyond you know a military objective and and that's a huge part because if you're conducting military operations people aren't keen to say that's a genocide now we are for Israel but generally speaking it has to be in the absence of any military explanation you're killing a ton of people for seemingly inexplicable reasons that seems kind of genocidal >> so what do you think is the military explanation for those specific things >> probably that they're trying to root Hamas out of the Gaza Strip and Hamas has not been rooted out of the Gaza Strip yet according to Netanyahu. >> That's not that's not really an explanation of anything. You just said I literally >> you effectively said to defeat Hamas. Yeah. But like what's the actual I guess it was a vague question. So >> I the feeling I mean initial claims made were that Hamas was diverting large portions of aid. Um I think Netanyahu made that claim. I don't think the IDF ever substantiated that claim though that there was some type of mass aid diversion from Hamas. So that doesn't seem to be true. Um it might have been any number. It might have been that they thought that they could have weakened the hold that Hamas had over the population. It might have been that they thought that Hamas or the gangs that were controlling Gaza still were able to do so because of the aid that was still flowing in. Like I mean you could conceive of a million different military reasons why. I'm not saying they're the best ones, but I'm saying that to instantly jump to genocide is a bit premature. >> Nothing I Yeah. I mean nothing I'm saying specifically. Thank you. I wouldn't claim that uh if I pick any one thing out of out of this little book I have. If I can prove one of these things, I've proved a genocide. I would I would not make that argument. That's that's dumb. It requires um like a totality of evidence. So um I kind of forgot where I was going with that, but it's it seems like that's kind of what you're doing here. Like, oh, they did this thing, therefore it's a genocide. No, it's about a pattern of conduct and it's about what actually tell me what about the pattern of conduct fits a genocide that can't be explained with an aggressive war that you're prosecuting against an enemy that is heavily embedded in a civilian population that tries to induce the maximum amount of civilian casualties. >> Okay, I want to ask you a few questions. Do you think >> Wait, wait, can you answer that question and I'll answer whatever you want. >> I I'm not diverting. I'm addressing it and this is how I'm I'm being as good faith as I can. I promise you. So do you think if we asked you know Smootrich and Herzog and Netanyahu and Ben Gavir and whoever else if we asked them does Gaza have the right to exist? Do you actually think that they think yes any of them? Absolutely not. Um I I'm not sure. A right to exist is very vague. I don't know what you mean by that. in in good faith. I mean, these people >> Well, they're completely against a two-state solution. >> Yeah. So, are most of you guys now? [laughter] >> Okay. Well, we're we're not talking about me. I'm not on trial here, and neither are you. Uh >> Well, >> I'm just kidding. Sorry. >> I'm I'm I'm only I'm debating, >> you know, you're my proxy to Israel. So, they're not committed to a two-state solution at all. >> No. No, of course not. >> No. Okay. Well, if we can admit that that's their frame of mind because because again, the responsible party, the the people that would actually be prosecuted in this, it's not the crazy settlers in the in [laughter] don't air strike. It's not the crazy settlers that Louis Thorough interviews, right? They obviously say genocidal stuff. We agree about that. Um, it really matters. And there like there are there are quotes from people that are like in the Knesset or have like a random cabinet position. Like there's this one guy who's the he's the minister of heritage or something like that. He's talked about nuking Gaza. Just insane stuff. But they're not part of like the they're not in power. They're not part of the war cabinet or anything like that. So I'm not talking about them. It really matters what the few people that are responsible for making decisions think and say. So like Netanyahu, he when he addresses, you know, Israel, he does so with that map of greater Israel behind him. He does all these wink wink nod nod. Yeah. Wink wink nod nod to the population. He talks about how he will never leave Gaza. We will permanently occupy it. they the you know the whole like Donald Trump Jared Kushner plan to like buy up a bunch of it and turn it into Gaza Lago or whatever that I mean I wouldn't I think when Netanyahu heard that he was like this [ __ ] is even crazier than I am you know but again it really matters what the people in power say and do. So I think that they have a if not a genocidal mindset, a mindset of like ethnic cleansing of this area. They act they they act like it all the time in their in their rhetoric. The things that they said right away. Netanyahu comparing Gaza to Amalecch. That's a story of a of a genocide, a complete wiping out of people. That's how he described the people that they're going after. I don't know if it was Herszog or Smootrich, but one of them specifically said, "It's not true that there are uninvolved citizens in Gaza. It's an entire population we're after." That really really matters, right? >> No. >> Why? Because I'm not going to take the comments of a population of people on like October 8th in response to the largest terrorist attack in the history of like any current country on the planet and say, "These guys are all committing genocide." You have to look at the pattern of military behavior that's happened from October 7th and onwards. The reality is there's two huge things that hurt these things. >> They didn't though because you can't account for the low number of deaths. You can't account for the lone and you can't account and for some reason it was turned back on a few weeks later. Even the big uh even the big event you were talking about in May or August of 2025 when they did the big blockade or whatever, but sure that was turned off in a in a few weeks. Um the the idea that they're engaged in some genocidal conduct or genocidal pattern of conduct just isn't borne out by any of the numbers ever. And when I look at the people that are the most heav he heavily critical of all of Israel's actions and I ask them what do you think they should do otherwise the answer is never here are better ways they could conduct war here are alternatives that I think they could have pursued. It's that it was a genocide on day one and Israel has never had a right to defend itself ever. And actually history didn't even start on October 7th. Every [ __ ] Jew on that place should go back to Brooklyn or Europe or they should live in a Muslim dominated state. This is consistently and has been predominantly the the the the rhetoric given from the pro Palestinian anti-Israeli side literally for the past two years. So when every single statement they try to hang on is well this is genocide and that's genocide and that's genocide and that's genocide. It's like okay well do you think Hamas is genocidal against like Israel you shake your head or whatever but you yourself this is a deflection. It doesn't matter how cringe all the American leftists are. does matter though because it's exactly because of that behavior >> the genocide occurred depends on the pattern of behavior >> in that case and the only thing that matters is the ICJ ruling that's not coming until 2029 and why are we even debating those at that point >> because I think 2027 is when I think the South Africa gets to have their response and then I think Israel gets to do its rejoinder in the beginning of 2029 and then the IC will roll at the end of that and then we'll get to see from there but yeah we don't live at the end of history we live in the middle of history but we still have to like it's not unreasonable or irresponsible to take a look at, you know, what is going on. >> No, I agree. But it is unreasonable. It is irresponsible to take a look at what's going on and try to assign the worst possible word to everything happening because what it does is it shortcuts the responsibility of the global community to have an actual answer for what should we do with this region. There's no solution. You bring up the two-state solution, you that's you realize that's like the ultra zo position now. Most of the insane people in the west just say it should be a one-state Palestinian Muslim dominated state where Jews should be a minority. That's the mainstream position now for the people that argue your perspective. So to say >> actual data on that >> well first well for in terms of data if you look at the polling in Israel Palestine for like the past 30 or 40 years nobody's wanted a two-state solution there. Okay they all hate each other. Number one and number two for all the mainstream voices in the west right now >> minister that that meaningfully sought it and then he was assassinated for his own people. >> Okay people have been assassinated on both sides of the Israeli Arab conflict for their positions of supporting peace or whatever. But I I'm just saying that like right now in the West, what what is the solution for the conflict always seems to be that Israel can't defend itself in any way, size, shape, or form. >> I've never said >> you said that the way to solve it was to send in the the wjack the bald crazy commando guy needs to go in and do all the spec ops in Israel. >> Meaning a person that's not sitting here. >> Okay. Tell me on October 8th, what was the correct response from Israel in the Gaza Strip? it. So, I don't know what the what the uh what they should have done, but the things that they did do I think are clearly wrong. All of them. Not every single thing. >> Okay. You've given me six or seven things out of 10,000 actions, a million actions, 5,000 actions. How many wrong actions can a side I'm just curious. Do you think that the United States committed atrocities in Iraq or Afghanistan? Yes. Remember Abra? Okay. Was that a genocide? Did we genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan? >> No. >> Why not? >> Because it wasn't with the intent to destroy a group of people in like the uh people agree people. There's a general consensus. >> We literally did a we did a war on terrorism genocide. >> We did a war on terrorism with authorization for use of military force that let us go to war with literally any [ __ ] brown country in the entire Middle East. >> What was the objective of invading Iraq? It was >> honest to God, I don't [ __ ] know. I have no idea. It >> was tried to It was tried to It was to try to install uh a new kind of democratic like order for them. >> Okay. I thought I was told initially it was weapons of mass destruction. Okay. But yes, there was that. But there's in addition to that. >> Okay. I don't know why I'm not even trying to attack you here. I'm just saying that like I don't I I truly don't know why Iraq I don't know what possible justification. We can't go to war with a country to just replace their government. As exciting as that might be for America. like that's not really a good reason to just go to war with a country. I'm just saying that it seems like no matter what Israel does after October 7th, all of it is bad because people have already made up their minds on it. And then a lot of the mainstream positions, right? What is what >> I'm going to I'm going to identify specific things like in the first 40 days of the of the war, they bombed every single or they rendered every single flower mill except for one. No, every single one of them inoperable. What militarily does that accomplish? Unless your if your rationale is I'm going to bomb every flower mill, bulldoze every farm, uh we're going to completely block food, electricity, humanitarian aid, we're going to destroy the desalination plants so that Hamas will just be like, "Oh, fine. We give up. You're you're hurting our people too bad." You like, you can't have it both ways. You can't say Hamas um doesn't care about the civilian population and at the same time sell me that well our military strategy here is collective punishment which is wrong but we think it's going to work. You can't you can't have both sides of that. >> Sure. I don't think collective punishment collective punishment in and of itself is defined as a war crime. So you shouldn't never do that. And I'm sure >> they did it. >> Okay. I'm sure there are times, especially in 2025, that blockade you're talking about absolutely amounts to collective punishment, okay, which is a war crime. It's not genocide, but it is a war crime. But what I'm saying is that >> that's not a dichotomy. >> Well, >> genocide is a war crime. >> No. Well, not the ICC technically has different definitions of of these things. I don't think genocide and war crimes are in different categories, but the um what I'm saying is that no matter what Israel seems to do after October 7th, it seems to be the case that their conduct is unacceptable. Um there are civilian casualties that happen. That sucks. But Hamas is operating again in literally a way to to to enact the most amount of civilian casualties ever. That Hamas could have done things on day one that would have completely robbed Israel of any type of even fabricated moral right to conduct that war. that to claim that one side is being genocided while they're holding hostages of the other side is insane. There's no example in all of human history where we've ever made a claim like this. Or the idea that one side is genociding the other while being the only people to facilitate aid to going into that side because only Israel is the one who's doing Hamas is not doing this at all. Right? But they're also genociding them while being the only side to facilitate aid in. These are unworkable standards. And what it's done is it's removed us from a world where we can even criticize Israel. And it just put us in a world where everybody just scream over and over again, genocide, genocide, genocide, genocide, without having any actual solution for any part of the conflict. And and that's why right now, today on on Friday the 18th of 2020, whatever [ __ ] year we're in 26, we are no closer right now to having any kind of idea of what a solution looks like for this conflict. And I would argue the vast majority of the people that talk about it don't even know what a solution would look like to the conflict. Do you have any idea what an ideal solution looks like to the Israeli Palestin? Do you even know what both sides care about or want in this conflict? Uh, I'm not a diplomat. I didn't come here to >> Do you know about any of the prior negotiations? >> Sorry. >> Do you know about any of the prior negotiations about Taboo the Taba Summit in 2000 or the Camp David Accords or or anything about the Oslo Accords or anything about the first or second inif or anything about >> the Abraham accord anything about anything like nothing? There's no part of any of the negotiations that are even talked about to paint it as a righteous genocide. Oh, because >> I'm not painting anything as a righteous genocide. Hamas did all kinds of bad things in the You've come here with a list of You've come here with a list of bad things that you only know about because we have unlimited transparency on the Israeli side because they function as a western style democracy. Despite the fact that a lot of people like to say they don't, you don't have a single thing to say about Hamas. And you yourself have said you've never published a video criticizing Hamas on your channel. But the fact of the matter is is that you don't know anything about what either side wants. You don't know what an actual peaceful situation looks like. All you want is for the fighting to stop, which means nothing. Doesn't mean anything. It doesn't help us get to any possible solution. And it doesn't allow us internationally to put any pressure on anybody for the possible solution. Right now, the thing that people like in your position, not maybe not you, but the people in your position right now, the most pressure that they're applying on Israel is the worst thing for the Palestinians, which is we should just cut off all aid from them completely, which is exactly what the far right in Israel wants cuz then they can basically operate with impunity. So like this this conversation has not advanced the meaningfully any of the discourse on Israel Palestine at all because it's just a massive circle jerk on the on the genocide debate which won't even be solved until the ICJ makes a rolling in 2030. Sure. Um, so I didn't come here to have a discussion on what I think the diplomatic steps should be next. It's not something I've thought super deeply about. Um, so like maybe it was your understanding that that was what we're we were supposed to do. And so maybe it seems like I'm I don't know deflecting, acting in bad faith or whatever. But I'm just putting that out there. >> Okay. But we So we the conversation is you think it's a genocide because you've got five or six acts that were probably bad from the Israeli military. I have a lot more. Um, I have >> How many? 10. 11. >> How many do you need? I know it wasn't supposed to be a number, but it sounds like >> So, this is really ridiculous. >> I agree. >> When an 11week siege occurs, you're counting that as one event. We can call that a singular event, but what does it do? It affects 2 million people. And so to say, oh well, because you only had like we only dropped two nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, therefore it wasn't whatever a war crime or something like that. Like you I don't know. I I don't know how to say that any more clearly, but I just I don't buy that. Seems kind of dishonest to be like, yes, a siege is just one point of data. It's not one point of data. It's hundreds of thousands if not over a million people being emiserated for a purp and it doesn't serve a purpose that they could possibly think it's just like revenge and collective punishment. I want to I have some pretty pictures I want [snorts] to talk about. This goes to the destruction part. So like this is um this is by Rafa, right? So like in the southern part of Gaza, uh around 600,000 people lived in the southern part. So this was it in it's either 2021 or 2022 >> and 600,000 people live there. >> Not not in this specific one, but >> hundreds of thousands of people live there. >> Yes. >> And it was completely It looks like it was completely destroyed. >> Yes. >> Why aren't hundreds of thousands of people dead? I'm not talking about uh they were evacuated from Rafa. What? >> How many? Okay. I I really don't I haven't done much research. Okay. But like for the Rwanda genocide, the people that they were genociding, how many of them did they evacuate first to avoid the genocide? >> Say that again. >> How many people in Rwanda were evacuated first to avoid being genocided? >> Uh none that I'm aware of. >> Okay. That's kind of weird, isn't it? >> You're still you're you're focusing on the killing. And I mean, >> well, the genocide, cuz I thought we were talking about genocide cuz you said this has to be a really narrow conversation on genocide. Now, >> it's not like genocides can't happen in two different ways, but like all >> their homes were genocided. Okay. >> With all these buildings, >> I have a landlord friend. He would say it's like property genocide. >> There's nothing left of any of these. >> Okay. >> Um and it's just I mean it goes on and on and on and on like this. They did this with bulldozers. Um they did this like in slow motion. And then cuz right away the bombing and everything like in the north the buildings that are destroyed you can still see them but they're just it looks like a call of duty map right? They're just completely wiped out. But in the south in the south it's it's really extremely disturbing because this isn't from air strikes. They evacuated everybody to the south in the first phase of the war and then remember all eyes on Rafa or whatever and then they pushed everybody that was in the south into the middle basically into Gaza city and while they were gone with bulldozers they just one by one dismantled virtually every single building. If you go and look at this there's practically nothing standing. It's every single residence and school and um mosque and house or I said residents earlier. Every single one of the methodically rendered an area where 600,000 people were living just it's completely uninhabitable. It's inhabitable in the sense that well you can go there and be homeless and live among the rubble. But that is just I don't see how anything could be more clear that that is the deliberate and wanting destruction of a people cuz destruction of a people isn't killing. Destruction of a people includes also destroying their way of life going at and this also goes into the harm thing cuz going after like religious sites. >> I'm just curious what do you think it's going to look like in 15 years? Do you think it's going to look the same or do you think it's going to be majority rebuilt? >> There's an estimate in the report actually that if you had 105 trucks every single day, it would take 21 years just to get rid of the rubble. >> So you you think that in 15 years from now, it's going to basically look like that still. >> Uh the vast majority of it, yes. >> Okay. >> I mean, we'll we'll meet back up in 15 [laughter] years. I guess we can discuss that. But this this is the part of it that was the most disturbing to me. And then like they deliberately destroyed all the crops too, like all the fields. They just went in there and they're either just not being maintained and so some of them look some of them look green today, but the rest I mean like you can zoom in and there's just like bulldozer tracks everywhere. They just deliberately destroyed the farmland and all of the residents for 600,000 people. Now, if their goal I mean I could see that being like ethnic cleansing or genocide because it's like well we destroyed your homes now go to the Sinai Peninsula which apparently was the was the original plan. >> That was never the original plan but okay >> there's there's a report on that from Egypt is accepting 2 million refugees is never the plan. >> I mean I said it I mean who am I to judge though? I mean maybe who knows but okay go ahead. the report says so you're saying sounds unrealistic so I don't believe it but whatever let's not bicker about that um but yeah the complete demolition of every single residence and every culturally significant area uh throughout there that is just that is the destruction of a group of people I I mean I don't know if you disagree but >> I don't think I would say that's a destruction of a group of people but you could argue that the destruction went way above and beyond what it should have I don't think I would disagree with that. I felt like this war has lasted way longer than it should have. I don't think I would disagree with that. >> Well, let's ask ourselves what does that accomplish at all? It doesn't defeat because there wasn't there wasn't even a Hamas presence there. You don't go into an active hot war zone with bulldozers. Um, that would just that would be catastrophically stupid, right? You're a you're a sitting duck. So what what were they doing when they were systematically destroying all of southern Gaza? Well, we know I mean the IDF soldiers, they record themselves doing it and you know they record themselves doing all those like disgusting heinous things like in Palestinian homes or whatever. But we have all kinds of videos of them talking about this. They set up the explosives. They blow the whole thing up or they go in there with the they go in there with the bulldozer and they just said, "Yeah, we're we're we're just destroying this. Like, we're not going after Hamas right now. We're rendering this place unlivable." I don't see how that's anything other than destruction. >> It is destruction. Definitionally, I don't think it's genocide, >> but it it seems like for some reason in your guys' brains, like it's a binary. It's either genocide or it's perfectly okay. There's plenty of criticism to be had for the way that Israel's conducted itself in the war without having to go to the genocide thing, but for some reason for you guys, it seems like it's literally impossible to acknowledge that there's a single bad thing that could ever happen on this planet that's not genocide. I don't know why. I'm not sure why that is the case, but >> I don't I don't know what that was all about. But >> so when you're trying to argue that like they've destroyed all the homes, how is this anything but the destruction of a people, which is genocide? It sounds like a lot of destruction and destruction of homes. None of that is genocidal. That's not genocide. None of that is genocide. It can all be bad. >> It was systematic and deliberate. I mean, it it happened in slow motion. It took >> it can happen in ultra slow motion. It's still not genocide. >> Okay. So, earlier when you were telling me um you know the 72,000 people or whatever it is, uh if they were genociding them, the number would have to be higher than that. >> I'm saying that if Israel was legitim Hold on. I'm saying that if by your reporting they're indiscriminately shooting and killing and murdering every random person, there's no bloodthirsty sometimes. I just think the number would be higher. That's what it sounds like to me. But you're saying that they're not doing that all the time, just sometimes. And but they are doing it, but not but it's a genocide. Even though the ratios aren't completely off, but like they're not doing it so much that other people will notice even though we've never heard of a genocide in all history that's done like this. But that's that was your argument, but go ahead. >> We have 10 minutes left, guys. >> Sure. Thank you. >> Thanks. Yeah. Um, what I'm saying is, um, to take like if if they went in and like if there were some rogue battalions or whatever, which like there are um, and they did a little bit of this, they destroyed one village, right? Or like two outskirt villages or something like that. That that number is not high enough, I wouldn't think. But this is a coordinated systemic >> Wait, number for what? I thought you said the number doesn't matter for just bulldozing. They just completely eliminated where 600,000 people would live. Now 600,000 is a pretty huge number. >> I this this is why I said I don't see how it's anything other than that. You you render the place where over half a million people were living unlivable. That's destruction on a genocidal level. They could in this case like what you were talking about with the killings. Oh, it could have been higher. They couldn't have done more in the south. They they basically couldn't. Every single thing is just gone down there. They couldn't have done more. So, if I pushed all the people out of Miami and I blew up all of their homes, that's a genocide. If I blew all the homes out, >> it could be an ethnic cleansing. >> I didn't ask if it was ethnic cleansing. I said, "Could that be a genocide? If I blew all the homes out, like millions of people in the Miami metropolitan area, that's a genocide." C Can you say it again? >> If I blow up all the homes of 2 million people, that's a genocide. >> Well, it would depend on what the intent and the other if there are other um actions to go along with that. It would depend like with uh Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people don't consider that um a genocide. Why? because the United States occupied Japan after that and did nation building with them. So the purpose the purpose of dropping the bombs was yes to create as much death as they could to get the United States surrender to surrender but it was about way more than that. Again we occupied Japan and we we it to make it simple cuz we're running out of time. We broke it and we fixed it. There's none of that go there's absolutely no whiff of that kind of intention going on with this aspect. >> So if Trump moves in with the Gaza Beach plan then it's okay now it's not a genocide if we rebuild it with all the Trump resorts and >> it this is such a ridiculous hypothetical. if the Palestinian people were allowed to. >> Hold on. To be clear, the ridiculous statement was that Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't genocidal because after the United States completely obliterated the Japanese regime and the emperor and everything else matters. >> The purpose of >> Hold on. The intent is not do you help the country afterwards. That doesn't determine whether it is or isn't a genocide. >> This is like a really vanilla take. I mean, >> it's absolutely not. It's an completely out there. >> But when Nagasaki weren't genocides, >> weren't genocides because we helped them after. >> Vanilla. >> No, because we helped them after. No, it wasn't genocide because we were part we were at war with them. It was like total war. Why are you looking at me like that? We were at [laughter] war with Japan. Am I crazy? At war with >> We were at war with Japan. >> Yes. That's why we nuked them, right? >> Yes. To get them to surrender because we're at war. Yes. Okay. >> Yes. And it wasn't You have to take into account the totality of all the other circumstantial evidence and what the intent behind it was. Yes. We intended to kill all those civilians for a specific military strategy and then we went in there and rehabilitated the country. We're currently an ally with them. >> We didn't have to go in and rehabilitate it for it to not be a genocide though. >> It sounded to me like a little bit ago you were arguing that there's a really compelling case that it was a genocide >> for for what? For Nagasaki. >> No, I'm saying no, it wasn't a genocide because we're at war with them. But you're saying, "Well, because we helped them afterwards, it didn't count as a genocide." >> A war and a genocide can coexist. In fact, in World War II, that's exactly what happened. >> Well, I don't know if I would. >> Who said no, it wasn't? >> The Holocaust. >> I don't think that Germany was at war with the Jews. I don't think it was like a war against like the Jewish country. Okay, we're we're getting nitpicky about the Jews were not at war against they didn't technically declare war against >> Well, I think that matters a lot because like if for instance, if we were at war, >> I'm just saying that they can happen at the same time. >> I think theoretically they can, but if we if we want to talk jurist prudence, we want to talk to International Court of Justice, typically when you're looking for genocide, military actions can't be an explanation for the behavior. Like that can't be a reasonable inference. Like it can only be explained via like genocidal action. Like if you showed me pictures like that and they were of the West Bank after October 7th. I don't know why. I don't know if you could ever justify that when Hamas operates out of the Gaza Strip, that would be basically inexplicable when it comes to, you know, military behavior. But the fact that Hamas is still >> Do you have a separate explanation other than deliberate destruction for rendering the south of Gaza just flat? >> Let's say that we had a magical gun right here that would kill one of us if we were wrong. And if somebody were to ask you, do you think you could point to a building at random there that there was not a concrete tunnel underneath that Hamas was operating out of? Do you think that you would be more or less than 50% likely to pick a building that didn't have a tunnel underneath it? >> You're asking me if it's above chance that a randomly selected building in the south of Gaza has a tunnel under it? >> Yes. >> No, I don't think it's I think it's less than chance. >> Okay. I don't think people understand the extent to how many underground places were in existence in the Gaza Strip. I I I just don't I don't know how else to like an area with 600,000 people in it is going is going to have if we assume there's 10 crazy right building 60,000 structures a network of tunnels under 60,000 >> isn't it like 140 km reasonable it's not reasonable. I agree with you there 100%. But every single thing Hamas does when they're operating out of here, no civilian shelters. All the concrete and extra labor was going into building all of these different underground tunnels. They use these tunnels to attack Israel in the past. Like >> bulldozing the buildings doesn't get rid of the tunnels. That's the whole point of why they demolish and destroy everything. Yes. Cuz you can't get rid of the stuff underneath without just like taking out everything on top before the before the military operation for this was what they said mowing the grass. And that was another thing that pissed everybody off. It's like, "Oh my god, you go in there, you just you kill some of them and you mow the grass and that's inhuman." And now they're like, "Okay, well, we're just going to [ __ ] you know, destroy all of it." I'm not sitting here defending it. Like I said, I feel like the war between Israel and Gaza has been really hard to defend for the past year. It seems it seems insane to me that they can keep going back in over and over and over again saying, "Oh, there's still Hamas there." I don't know. I feel like it's gotten a little bit I think it's indefensible. I think it's been indefensible for a while. But the problem is, for some reason, there's just like no ground between this is perfectly acceptable and then this is genocide. And like there could be war crimes and there could be uh there could be so many horrible things that can happen in the world that's not genocide but that's that's never I don't know for some reason that's just never a consideration. And then the the the issue on the on the international side for this is that when you have one side of a conflict who's engaged in apartheid and ethnic cleansing and genocide well why would the other side ever think that they need to do any kind of like negotiations or settlements with with with the with the opposer? Like if you're literally talking about an opponent, like who do you expect to negotiate with that's genociding you? Nobody expected anybody to negotiate with Nazi Germany. Nobody expected, you know, we bombed, you know, Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore. We got rid of Gaddafi. >> Israel has sabotaged every single peace agreement. >> What do you mean? Hamas and the Arabs have sabotaged every single peace agreement. >> What? What? What I mean is that through mediators, the US and Qatar, I think, doesn't Pakistan sometimes mediate negotiations? >> No, I don't think so. >> No, maybe it's just Qatar. But between the US, Hamas and whatever the mediator is and then uh in the early stage Israel, they write out a document um for you know a peace agreement or whatever. >> These are like weeks >> Israel Israel gets to look at it last and then they always would add conditions like the complete disarmament >> of Hamas >> of yes >> the people that did the mass terrorist attack against them and took hostages in order to further the war as much as possible. It's a human right still >> human right to take hostages and >> no to be to to have arms. It's also a human right to I'm not I'm not excusing October 7th but I'm just explaining it's also it is an internationally recognized right to uh armed resistance to occupation. No, >> for example. No. >> Yes, it is. >> No. Through civilian death. No, it's not. This is one of the most reported things. It is one of the most untrue things that has ever said about this conflict. You have a right to resist your oppressor. So like if the IDF is there and they're doing something bad and you want to fight against that and you feel like you're being oppressive people, you absolutely have a right to do that. No part of October 7th was justified. No part of attacking say it was justified. What part of Hamas? Every single Hamas attack is an indiscriminate attack by definition. They're launching rockets that are unguided into Israel. Like what part of this is bad? >> What? >> Hamas bad? >> I never said bad. I said it's unjustified. It's not a right to resist. >> Hamas evil. Wicked. Some of the worst people in the world. Worse than North Korea. I wish you guys would make more videos about that >> so bad. >> Final thoughts there, Eric? >> Um, I mean, there are a couple things that we didn't get to, but I want to I have like a random question before this. Did you have any idea who I was? >> Um, I've seen a video of yours. Yeah. >> Okay. Um, I'm just going to say this to be amicable. Um, you were actually like my biggest inspiration to do what I do. Kind of sort of like precoid watching you do debates against like Lauren Southern and Tristan and Darth Dawkins and like some of the greatest hits. Um, I love that I you're incredibly sharp. You know what you're talking about. Um, sometimes you can be a little debate broy, but I think today you were I mean you know I thought this was an honest conversation. You know, I didn't view it as two people trying to win or anything like that. So, I just wanted to say it was it was kind of like funny that I'm talking to you cuz I never thought that would happen. >> Let's have a big round of applause for Eric Planet Peterson. [applause]