0:00

This episode of Navara Live is brought

0:02

to you by listeners like you. Thank

0:04

you. Welcome

0:09

to a Friday night edition

0:11

of Navara Live. I'm Michael

0:13

Walker, my usual Friday co-host,

0:15

I think is in Norway

0:17

speaking to civil servants. I'm

0:19

not sure if it's about fully automated luxury communism,

0:21

I should have asked really, but

0:23

we'll find out about that next week I'm

0:25

sure. In Aaron's place, you

0:28

are in the very capable hands of

0:30

David Adler, with the progressive international and

0:33

good friend of the show. How are you doing, David?

0:36

It's great to be here. I had a question

0:38

for you, Michael. How is the audience different on

0:40

a Friday night than it is on other nights?

0:42

Is it more focused or do people usually sort

0:44

of play in the background of the parties that

0:46

take place kind of across the city and the

0:48

country? I don't know about people

0:50

watching it. In general, the Friday shows, because it's always

0:52

me and Aaron are a little bit maybe weirder. So

0:55

I suppose we maybe pick some of the sort of the

0:57

more unusual topics from

1:00

the week, because Aaron

1:02

always has sort of these very interesting

1:04

pockets of historical knowledge, which I actually

1:06

think, David, you are very well

1:08

placed to sort of step up

1:10

to that challenge of having interesting pockets

1:12

of historical knowledge that the audience might

1:15

not have expected. Very big

1:17

shoes. Aaron, if you're watching, I'm going to do my best to

1:19

fill them. We will be

1:21

talking tonight about the situation in Haiti,

1:23

which remains tense after gangs took control

1:25

of the country. The prime minister has

1:28

resigned. It doesn't seem to have satisfied

1:30

many people. I mean, the United States

1:32

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called

1:34

for Netanyahu to go, the Democrats waking

1:37

up to, I suppose, the

1:40

real electoral burden that their alliance

1:42

with Netanyahu has caused them up

1:45

until now. And on question

1:47

time, they invite on a

1:49

right winger who denies that there

1:51

is a shortage of food in Gaza. It's a

1:53

pretty shocking clip from a pretty shocking

1:55

guest, I have to say. Stay tuned

1:57

for all of that first, though. So

2:00

when the hell will Rishi Sunak

2:03

call a general election? Get

2:05

your answers to us. You can do

2:07

so on YouTube, super chat, or you can

2:09

tweet us on the hashtag, Navara Live. And

2:11

let's go straight into that first story. On

2:14

May the 2nd, there will be

2:17

local elections across England and Wales,

2:20

but there won't be a general election. This

2:23

was Rishi Sunak last night speaking

2:25

to ITV West. In

2:27

several weeks' time, we've got elections for police and crime

2:29

commissioners, for local councils, for mayors across the country. They're

2:31

important elections. And not the general election. That's what I'm

2:33

focused on. There won't be a general election on that,

2:35

Dave. But when there is a general election, what matters

2:38

is the choice. The non-existence

2:40

of a general election might not seem

2:42

like a massive political story, but it

2:44

has sent speculation into

2:47

overdrive about when one might

2:49

actually be. And

2:51

the independents think they've got the scoop,

2:53

they say. The

2:55

general election date revealed after

2:57

Rishi Sunak rules out May

2:59

poll. And here's what they

3:01

write. Downing Street sources told The

3:03

Independent that the date has been pencilled in

3:05

for the second Thursday in October. It

3:08

is understood that the PM is unlikely to

3:10

wait until mid-November, since it would clash with

3:13

the US presidential election. Number

3:15

10 dismissed the claim as speculation, but did

3:17

not deny the date. A government source said

3:20

the PM will announce the date. Until then,

3:22

everything else is speculation. About

3:24

how to judge these Downing

3:26

Street sources' story. I'm

3:29

not sure if the Telegraph normally have big scoops, but they've

3:31

definitely got a lot of clicks from

3:33

this particular story. On

3:35

the pros and cons for waiting to

3:38

call for a general election, I

3:40

found this tweet this morning interesting. It's

3:42

from Christian Cowley. He's a political correspondent

3:45

at The Express. He used to be

3:47

at Guido, so presumably well-connected in the

3:49

Conservative Party. He says, the positives for

3:51

waiting for a general election. Many

3:54

will likely improve, but he says by how

3:56

much voters will feel the National Insurance Tax

3:58

Act will lay. Inflation reaches 2%,

4:00

possibly. And

4:02

the interest rates is possible. Forage may

4:05

be too distracted by Trump election to

4:07

play proper roles. So that would

4:09

be sort of why you might want to wait

4:11

all the way until November. I mean, possible Rwanda

4:13

flights. I can't see any of those shifting it,

4:15

to be fair. I'm not sure Christian Cowgy can

4:17

either. He's sort of clutching at straws in the

4:19

same way that conservatives are. As for

4:21

the negatives, these are much more substantial. The

4:24

local elections will likely be terrible. This

4:26

will almost certainly spark renewed leadership questions among

4:29

Tory MPs. Rwanda flights possibly

4:31

tangled up in court again. Small boat crossings

4:33

will resume in full flow during the summer.

4:35

It could even increase on last year. And

4:37

we've got even more negatives. Israel-Gaza

4:39

could be resolved, lessening labor tensions,

4:42

unknown scandals, and repeat poor political

4:44

management. Looks like Sunak's

4:46

clinging on. The longer you wait, the

4:48

more desperate you seem. And more reform

4:50

defections. So potentially more people could move

4:53

to reform UK, likely Anderson.

4:55

Now that point about Israel and Gaza

4:57

might seem especially cynical.

5:00

So you're looking at this really, really deadly

5:02

conflict. You've got loads and loads of civilians on the

5:04

brink of starvation, 30,000 people dead. And

5:07

you're thinking, oh, would it be

5:09

bad for our electoral chances if

5:12

this were to clear up, you know, if there were to be peace?

5:15

Well, apparently it's not too far fetched that

5:18

that is really going into Tory calculations. Ministers,

5:21

in fact, are apparently genuinely worried that

5:23

peace might break out in the Middle

5:25

East. You hear extraordinary claims

5:27

from Tory MPs, including this one, Jonathan,

5:29

from a minister who said to me

5:31

that they are worried that there might

5:34

be peace in the Middle East. And

5:36

that might help Labour because they're currently

5:38

suffering because of what's going on in

5:40

Gaza and that severing relationship between their

5:42

traditional Muslim vote and that party. Extraordinary

5:46

comment because we're in extraordinary times. They're

5:49

worried there might be peace in the Middle East. David,

5:52

I know in your home country, you

5:54

don't get to have these incredibly

5:57

exciting speculations about when an election will be

5:59

called. because it's written in your constitution and we

6:01

do get to have that here. Somewhat

6:05

sociopathic isn't it? This idea we're really worried there

6:07

might be peace in the Middle East and therefore

6:10

some of Labour's problems with

6:12

its voting base will be

6:15

resolved. So it

6:17

seems that that Tory Minister at least was

6:20

wishing that there isn't a ceasefire and that

6:22

the conflict with the conflict will continue but the the

6:25

genocide or war continues. Yeah but

6:27

I think this Tory Minister has learned it

6:29

from the Republican Party of the United States.

6:31

Now if you look at Donald Trump really

6:33

since October, this is

6:35

of course the leading presidential candidates, the

6:38

biggest mouth perhaps on the planet, someone

6:40

who can't resist saying whatever and whenever

6:42

he pleases. What's remarkable is

6:44

the absence of conversation around Israel and

6:47

Palestine. And

6:49

what's shocking about that is I think

6:52

two things. One is because I

6:55

think that there is pretty broad

6:57

consensus on his highly

7:00

Islamophobic base that

7:03

of course any

7:07

strain or any visible evidence of an

7:09

Islamic movement led by brown people in

7:11

the Middle East would need to be

7:13

squashed by American bombs and bullets. We

7:15

saw in the GOP presidential

7:18

debates the genocidal rhetoric

7:20

that was touted by Republican candidates,

7:22

kill them all, exterminate them all,

7:24

smash Gaza to smithereens. But

7:27

what's remarkable about Trump is how little he's

7:30

spoken about Israel, how little he's

7:32

mentioned Palestine in Gaza and

7:35

it's tough to tell if that's a

7:37

kind of Tonsu type of don't move

7:39

or make a move while your enemy

7:41

is having trouble politically with

7:44

the respective kind of cross-pressure in

7:46

their own party. But it certainly

7:48

reflects that this cynicism, deeply cynical,

7:50

you might call it genocidal cynicism,

7:53

is not exclusive to the Tory party in

7:55

the kingdom but rather is something that is

7:58

being studied. rigorously

8:01

by their friends across the pond. Yeah,

8:03

it's interesting that Donald Trump isn't exploiting it because I

8:05

suppose in terms of UK

8:07

domestic politics, I think what's going

8:09

on is that the Tories

8:12

want to raise the stakes when it

8:14

comes to the Palestine issue because they think

8:16

that some

8:19

white voters will be turned

8:21

off by left-wingers going on

8:23

demonstrations against a genocidal

8:25

war because they're trying to sort of say these

8:27

are all actually Muslim extremists who Labour will support

8:29

and it's only the Conservatives who are going to

8:32

get Muslim extremists under control. Obviously, ridiculous narrative, but

8:34

you can see why they want to push that.

8:37

And then Labour sort of trying to

8:39

downplay the issue because they've got a really

8:42

weak position on Palestine that doesn't please their

8:44

base. And also they know that sort of if

8:46

you were a somewhat Islamophobic

8:48

voter, then the more you were

8:50

talking about Gaza protests, the more you were going to be inclined

8:52

to think, oh, that Kia Starman guy, not

8:54

sure about it. So there's this real sort of, yeah,

8:58

incentive on the part of the Conservatives to talk about

9:00

Gaza and incentive on the part of Labour not to

9:02

talk about it. It

9:04

makes me surprised somewhat actually that in the

9:06

United States, Donald Trump isn't banging

9:09

on about this. So it

9:11

sounds like you're somewhat surprised about this as well.

9:13

Do you have a sort of a go-to theory for why it

9:16

might be? Yeah, I think it

9:18

has to do a lot with the idiosyncrasies of who

9:20

is Donald Trump. It's not that the Republican Party is

9:22

silent on this. I mentioned the GOP debates, but every

9:24

day people are going out from the kind of leadership

9:27

of the Republican Party to slam the

9:29

radicals and the Democratic Party on its

9:31

progressive fringe, people like Rashida Sleep or

9:34

Ilhan Omar who have stood up for

9:36

ceasefire. I mean, you can see those

9:38

tweets plastered across the internet. What's

9:40

interesting is Donald Trump as a

9:42

figure. I think

9:45

that we could get into a long conversation about those

9:47

political idiosyncrasies. Part of it has to do with

9:50

a very

9:53

ecumenical or syncretist foreign policy

9:55

agenda, which is very much

9:57

about deal-making. I think... that

10:01

part of what Donald Trump sees in

10:03

this conflict is protraction and

10:05

Donald Trump's whole thing is get

10:08

deals done, no need for protracted

10:10

conflict, precision strikes, look what we

10:12

did with Soleimani, we're able

10:14

to basically close these things up quickly

10:16

and not drag the US into longstanding

10:18

conflicts like the open-ended one

10:20

we've launched without congressional approval against the Houthis

10:22

in the Red Sea. So I think that

10:25

there's something to do with Donald Trump's very

10:27

particular foreign policy views that mark a kind

10:29

of departure from where the US

10:31

security apparatus is, where

10:34

the Republican leadership is, formal leadership

10:36

I should say in the Congress, and

10:38

where certainly the Democratic leadership is, which

10:40

is a more traditional tic-tac to open American

10:42

foreign policy. I'm sure we'll talk a

10:44

bit more about this later, but I

10:46

think it speaks to a certain pulse

10:49

that Donald Trump really has on the

10:52

country and on public opinion

10:54

and he can, this is

10:56

not necessarily a winning

10:58

conflict, I think he can see from

11:00

a mile away that, when Israelis are saying, we're gonna

11:02

be doing this for months, if not years, that's

11:05

something that I think Donald Trump wouldn't

11:07

wanna put his fingerprints all over. Let's

11:10

talk about the Democratic leadership because they

11:12

do finally seem to be recognizing at

11:14

least sort of in words

11:16

that their support for Benjamin Netanyahu has

11:19

become a drag on Biden's reelection campaign.

11:21

They of course haven't followed it up

11:23

with actions yet. Chuck

11:25

Schumer is the majority leader in the Senate.

11:28

The fourth major obstacle to peace is

11:31

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,

11:35

who has all too frequently bowed to

11:37

the demands of extremists like

11:39

Minister Smotrik and Ben Gavir and

11:41

the settlers in the West Bank. Joe

11:44

Biden was asked about that speech today.

11:47

Senator Schumer contacted

11:50

my staff, my senior staff, he's gonna

11:52

make that speech, and

11:55

I'm not gonna elaborate on the speech,

11:58

he made a good speech. And I think

12:00

he expressed a serious

12:03

concern, not only by

12:05

him, but by many Americans. Joe Biden

12:07

was at the end of a meeting

12:09

with the Irish Taoiseach there, which is why you

12:11

could see that badge of the American flag and

12:13

the Irish flag. And I presume why he's wearing

12:15

that green tie. David,

12:17

is this significant? I

12:19

feel like the language around Netanyahu is

12:22

getting tougher from Democrats. I suppose two

12:24

questions. Is it significant geopolitically? Will it

12:26

sort of change their policy vis-a-vis the

12:29

Gaza War? And then does it make sense

12:31

electorally? This is,

12:35

I remember being on this show over the past few

12:37

months, Michael, and making the same argument that

12:39

we are so far in the

12:42

United States from any serious pursuit

12:45

of accountability, let alone

12:47

justice for the crimes

12:50

of the Israeli governments before and after

12:52

October. And so these are

12:54

very calculated and very measured steps that

12:58

really don't bear any consequence

13:00

in terms of US-American foreign policy.

13:02

These are measured in kind of

13:04

centimeters, not even, you know,

13:07

we don't have to pull out a

13:09

kind of measuring tape to see how

13:12

we've not really moved in the direction

13:14

of any kind of boycott sanction or

13:16

divestment, let alone even beyond

13:19

a stern talking to. My

13:21

sense is that what's happening is that the leadership

13:23

of the Democratic Party is that they realize that

13:25

there's a problem and they're triangulating between

13:27

the problem that they have, you know, and

13:30

the policy position that they won't

13:32

change, which is this basically

13:35

blank tech support for

13:37

Israel. And so I think there's

13:39

a high degree of coordination. I think, you know,

13:41

when Joe Biden says Chuck Schumer called my office

13:43

and ran that by me, I

13:45

think it's a funny way of describing how

13:48

decision making is happening inside the upper echelons

13:50

of the DNC. This was

13:52

a highly coordinated, you

13:56

know, approach to basically

13:59

Dropping. Seeds or recognition

14:01

or some. but all you know,

14:04

Crumbs recognition for the so called uncommitted

14:07

go to trade disturb it's it's a

14:09

democratic Party about the ongoing genocide in

14:11

Gaza without making any substantive booze is

14:13

Erica which notable that nothing Chuck Schumer

14:15

said that speech couldn't have been said

14:18

a year ago. Five years ago. Ten

14:20

years or twenty years ago. You.

14:22

Know these are not novel. Observations

14:25

about Netanyahu is longstanding for titian

14:27

with the most extremist elements of

14:30

the genocidal fringes of the Israeli

14:32

far right. What's

14:34

notable is their timing. And

14:36

that timing is to coincide as a

14:38

kind of a t the measure with

14:41

a growing discontent. And so the Democratic

14:43

Party Now we have a lot of

14:45

opposition about the future, this activity campaign,

14:47

or how relates to a Pax massive

14:49

packets to unseat progressive in Congress and

14:51

what that means, the broader looming election

14:53

and in November, Twenty Twenty Four. But

14:55

I don't think that we should be

14:57

fooled by some of the rhetoric that

15:00

is coming out of the Dnc leadership

15:02

that seems to be, you know, tough

15:04

Netanyahu. I'm not least because it he.

15:06

It's. Very clear in it's own, by it's

15:08

own measure, that it's not coming with any. Ah,

15:10

stick. Really? There's no actual

15:12

attachment to the end of that

15:14

decoration, about any meaningful change and

15:16

the Us approach to supporting Israel

15:19

ah and are fueling the the

15:21

genocide that's. Ongoing. I

15:23

got. I were across the Occupy Post interest.

15:26

In terms of as a pack challenges we

15:28

as boot we haven't talked about those on

15:30

the show has sars our records of us

15:32

that a pack is sort of that the

15:35

big Israel lobby in the United States and

15:37

they've been funding candidates to try and primary.

15:39

I'm sort of left wing pro Palestine. Democrats.

15:42

Said presumably like were seated to leap. To.

15:45

Talk about our be as it had any success or has

15:47

it's sort of slots so do we just not know yet?

15:50

Oh. no we we know this is what makes it

15:52

a very funny for me as a us american observer

15:54

who lived in england for a long time because they

15:56

are you know you use the phrase i miss lobby

15:58

and you're accused of being some kids territorial anti-Semite,

16:00

whereas in the U.S., not only

16:02

do we have a Zionist lobby

16:04

in the abstract, we have an

16:06

organization called APAC that funds millions

16:08

of dollars openly and proudly into

16:10

the electoral system to

16:13

unseat their enemies and to enthrone

16:15

their friends. They've

16:18

been extremely successful with this agenda. They have kind

16:20

of rankings, you know, like the NRA has rankings,

16:22

how good are you on Second Amendment gun rights

16:24

in the United States? You know, APAC, sort of

16:26

how good are you on Israel?

16:29

And of course, you know, this is stunning.

16:31

It's a very strange state of

16:33

exception that we make. You know,

16:36

people get accused of dual loyalties

16:38

in the United States. We take

16:40

this very seriously. If you're a

16:42

dual citizen, Ilhan Omar, oftentimes

16:44

the progressive Congresswoman for

16:47

Minnesota gets accused a lot of

16:49

times of dual loyalties. But

16:51

meanwhile, APAC will support fundraisers

16:54

for the IDF, a foreign army

16:56

inside on U.S. soil. They'll openly

16:58

be advocating for, you know, the

17:00

Israeli government and its policies from

17:02

inside the U.S. political system. Now,

17:05

APAC has a problem in the U.S.

17:07

and it's one that we've discussed in the

17:09

show many times, which is that for a

17:11

long time, they had a basic monopoly on

17:14

political speech, expression, mobilization around the Israeli question.

17:16

And then our generation of young Jews in

17:18

the United States basically began to build a

17:20

movement. I wouldn't yet call

17:22

it anti-Zionist, but Zionist critical movement from the

17:24

United States that was much more sympathetic to

17:26

the cause of Palestinian liberation. And that made

17:28

a big, big problem for APAC, because

17:31

all of a sudden there were people on campus

17:33

and people marching and doing sit-ins in

17:36

places like the

17:38

U.S. Capitol building in Washington,

17:40

D.C., saying, you know, not in our name, we

17:42

won't be part of this APAC. So this is

17:45

split U.S. American

17:47

Jewish movement between these kind of

17:50

forces aligned with APAC

17:52

and those against. So

17:54

let me just quickly run through the present conjuncture

17:56

because it involves kind of a two-step move. So

17:58

what's What's happening on

18:00

the APAC side is that APAC has

18:02

raised $100 million. I

18:04

want to repeat this because I think the English,

18:07

or I should even say British ears, it's such

18:09

an astounding number of amount

18:13

of financing that could flow through our electoral

18:15

system legally, $100 million

18:17

that's exclusively dedicated to unseating some

18:19

of the progressives who have been

18:21

critical of Israel. We

18:24

stand at a major risk of losing up

18:26

close to maybe a half of the so-called

18:28

squad of the progressive bench

18:30

in the US Congress. People

18:32

like Cory Bush, people like Jamal Bowman, who

18:35

are really at risk of being unseated through

18:37

a very successful funding campaign because they get

18:39

two bites out of the apple. One is

18:41

to the primaries process, which is the first

18:43

poorest level at which you can unseat a

18:47

candidate in your own party to take their

18:49

spot in a general. Of course, you can

18:51

fund a Republican or an Independent to unseat

18:53

that person in a general election. So

18:56

APAC is just funneling money into this process. It's

18:59

not just funding funds, TV ads, anything you want. That's

19:03

a real danger. Now,

19:05

in the opposition to that, we've seen

19:07

a coherence, the alignment, a new coalition

19:10

of anti-APAC groups called

19:12

Reject APAC. That's a lot of

19:14

our friends, Justice Democrats, a

19:17

lot of these more progressive groups that have gotten

19:19

together to say, okay, we need to fight back

19:21

against this. The problem is it's just extremely expensive.

19:24

Where are you going to find millions and millions

19:26

of dollars to fight back against APAC? And one

19:28

of the good attack lines from the progressive left

19:30

is to say that as

19:32

this process of Jewish-American polarization has

19:35

taken place, the more reliable allies

19:37

for APAC, as the contradictions

19:40

of the Zionist project become

19:43

increasingly visible, increasingly violent, has

19:45

been the straight up alignment with the Republican Party.

19:48

Just absolutely getting into bed with people like

19:50

Stephen Miller, with people like Jared Kushner, with

19:52

people like Donald Trump. So one of the

19:54

lines that's now taken root in the progressive

19:57

wing of the Democratic Party is these are just

19:59

Republicans. You know, how dare

20:01

any sector of a Democratic Party face with

20:03

what they consider to be an existential threat

20:05

to our democracy in the form of Donald

20:07

Trump, align themselves, let alone

20:10

accept millions of dollars in donations

20:12

from a nakedly,

20:15

you know, not trans partisan, but right

20:17

leaning Republican party, the creation that yeah,

20:19

it's dedicating a certain agenda, but is

20:22

willing to spend millions of dollars to

20:24

dethrone your party's representatives

20:26

in service of an increasing majority in

20:28

House and Senate, and of course, in

20:30

the presidency for Republicans. So

20:32

that's the fight that's kind of taking

20:34

place. And so this is when, you

20:37

know, people talk about, oh, is Gaza

20:39

or is Israel becoming an issue across

20:41

the electorate? Sure, I think public opinion

20:44

is, you know, moving in ways that

20:46

signify that raise the salience of Gaza,

20:48

the Palestinian question for many voters. But

20:51

regardless, there is going to be over

20:53

$100 million pummeled into our electoral system

20:55

that is going to be decisive in

20:57

many key swing races,

21:01

both inside and out of the Democratic

21:03

Party, that is going to be determined by

21:05

these designers lobby, whether we like it or

21:07

not, whether the preference for, you

21:10

know, the genocide is salient or not, whether

21:12

there are kitchen table issues or foreign policy

21:14

issues that are dominant in people's minds, that

21:16

money will still be hugely decisive in many

21:19

of these key races. Going

21:21

on to our next story, three

21:23

days after the resignation of Haiti's

21:25

Prime Minister, gang violence in its

21:28

capital, Porto Prince, shows no sign

21:30

of abating. This is part of

21:32

the most recent report from ABC

21:34

News. Haiti

21:37

is collapsing. The

21:40

country has been ravaged by two weeks

21:42

of chaos, of

21:45

bloodshed, of

21:48

intense fighting and horrific human suffering

21:50

with no obvious way out. Porto

21:55

Prince is no stranger to gang violence,

21:57

but an unholy alliance has emerged between

21:59

the most powerful armed group. Now

22:03

unified behind this man,

22:05

Jimmy Chercier, aka barbecue,

22:08

the unelected prime minister, Ariel

22:10

Henri resigned on Monday after

22:12

agreeing to a transitional government.

22:14

Henri now out after weeks

22:16

of horrific violence led by

22:18

barbecue, Haiti's most notorious gang

22:20

leader. He and his

22:24

soldiers have launched massive coordinated assaults

22:26

around Port-au-Prince for nearly two weeks.

22:29

Dozens of police stations, many destroyed,

22:32

gang members even showing off stolen

22:34

body armor, constant assaults at the

22:36

airport forced it to shut down

22:38

too. The people he

22:40

says he's trying to free ordinary

22:42

Haitians are being decimated by the

22:44

fighting. The violence has

22:46

paralyzed Port-au-Prince, a hellscape

22:48

now cut off from the outside world.

22:52

Hospitals around the city show the human

22:54

toll. In this major hospital, no

22:57

doctors or nurses can even make it to

22:59

work to help the patients. Gangs

23:01

have barricaded off entire sections of the

23:04

city to slow down police, attacking

23:06

those who dare cross. It doesn't

23:10

completely hellish. David,

23:13

how should our audience understand what's going

23:15

on in Haiti right now? Our

23:18

audience needs to understand what's going on

23:20

in Haiti in a historical lens and

23:23

you can reach that history all the way back to

23:25

the Haitian Revolution, which many

23:27

of your viewers, listeners will remember was

23:30

the first revolution

23:32

led by Afro-descendant slaves

23:35

against their French colonial masters to

23:37

set themselves free in the first

23:39

country to criminalize,

23:43

illegalize slavery as a result.

23:45

And for that kind of courageous Revolutionary

23:48

Act, they were never forgiven and that,

23:50

you know, reaches from the French demand

23:53

for reparations for their lost colony in

23:56

that century all the way through a kind of twenty

23:59

and twenty-four, twenty and in the 21st

24:01

century colonial domination under the banner

24:03

of the so-called Monroe Doctrine, which

24:05

was the doctrine established now 200

24:07

years ago by the United States

24:09

proclaiming its sovereign rights to govern

24:11

the affairs of its hemisphere by

24:13

the United States itself. And so

24:16

I think it's critical to put this in

24:18

the context of the way the U.S.

24:20

has behaved towards Haiti as if it

24:23

were a colonial possession. We

24:25

led, for example, the ouster,

24:27

the eviction, the coup, and the

24:29

exile of Aristides, the

24:32

popular leader of Haiti. We

24:34

forced out precisely

24:36

for his sovereignty vision, trying to

24:40

free, unleash the country from

24:42

the colonial grips of the United States.

24:44

And that mentality remains today.

24:46

I mean, this is not a context that you're

24:49

going to get in an ABC clip at all.

24:52

But the United States continues to

24:54

basically try to dictate the terms

24:56

of Haitian governance. So that, you

24:58

know, we saw a few years ago, U.S. trains

25:01

Colombian mercenaries that led the

25:04

assassination of the

25:06

previous prime minister and

25:08

then enthroned our guy, Ariel Henri,

25:10

who has just now, as the

25:13

clip noted, stepped down after

25:15

it was made clear he would not be welcome

25:17

to return to Haiti. But

25:19

this is a person that oversaw

25:21

the deterioration, slow,

25:23

steady, violent, brutal

25:25

and bloody of

25:28

the country's social, economic and political

25:30

environment over the past years. And

25:33

some of the United States basically kept in

25:35

power against the wishes of the Haitian people.

25:39

So Henri has now stepped down and

25:41

left this giant power vacuum. But, you

25:43

know, it's critical to see the ways

25:45

in which the Haitian people were crying

25:47

out, marching in their millions for elections,

25:49

for a process by which they could

25:51

resolve their political crisis. And

25:53

Henri kept promising and then revoking the promise,

25:56

promising new elections and revoking the promise to

25:58

keep himself in power with this. stamp of

26:00

authority of the United States. Now

26:02

what's happened now? Now we're in a

26:04

completely deteriorated situation and

26:07

Haitians are fleeing the country, as that

26:10

segment noted, and they're

26:12

intensifying what the US calls

26:14

their migration crisis. It's

26:16

a big problem for the United States because it's

26:19

really hurting the, you know, Joe Biden's

26:21

reputation, which is why in previous weeks

26:23

you would have seen Joe Biden

26:26

try to put together one of the

26:28

most draconian atrocious

26:30

border deals bipartisan

26:33

one to try to curry favor with Republicans.

26:35

This is the same party, of course, that

26:37

was up in arms, crying

26:39

foul, you know, crying crimes against

26:41

humanity when Trump was in

26:43

power pushing similar policies around family

26:46

separation, the denial of basic asylum

26:48

rights. And so all

26:50

of a sudden this has become a real kind of national security question

26:52

for the United States. And

26:54

so what we're seeing now is the US deploy

26:57

a very familiar colonial playbook.

27:00

If you look at what, you know, Haitians

27:02

are actually asking for, they're

27:05

saying, look, there's no doubt that the

27:08

crisis, present crisis in all its dimensions

27:10

requires support the international

27:12

community. It's really an unbelievably

27:15

dire situation in which our friends

27:17

and allies there are absolutely terrified

27:20

to leave their homes, to go

27:22

to work. The country is in

27:24

fact paralyzed, but the US

27:26

in incredibly cynical fashion has

27:29

tried to push through what's

27:31

called the MSS, which is

27:33

a multinational security operation, where

27:36

of course we don't want to send in our own troops.

27:39

So what has the US done to

27:41

avoid sending in its own troops for

27:43

a military intervention in Haiti? And we'll

27:45

get later to the question of the

27:47

efficacy of that idea of a military

27:49

intervention and historical context in which, when

27:51

has a military intervention actually succeeded to

27:53

stem a major security crisis that

27:55

has deep social and economic roots? Well,

27:58

we marched around Africa. and

28:00

looked for an African government that we

28:02

could pay off to send troops on

28:04

our dime to go kill and die

28:07

in Haiti. Now, the first government

28:09

that bid at that is our new client,

28:11

our friend, President Ruto of Kenya, who

28:14

agreed on the basis of

28:16

hundreds of millions of dollars in his

28:18

back pocket to send Kenyan police forces,

28:21

really violent

28:24

Kenyan police forces, really well known for

28:26

their systematic violations of human rights standards,

28:29

to go to a country where they don't speak the language they've

28:32

never been to before to deploy and

28:34

kill the gangs and

28:37

attempt to resolve this situation. Now,

28:39

when the Kenyans came under fire

28:41

for being obviously not even from

28:43

a Francophone country, the U.S. expanded

28:46

its MSS to include Benin. So

28:49

if a thousand police were supposed to

28:51

come from Kenya, two thousand would come from Benin,

28:53

at least they speak French, and they would send

28:56

also soldiers, police

28:58

to a country they don't know they've never been

29:01

to before. So they designed this

29:03

MSS that's deeply unpopular. For example, in the case

29:05

of Kenya, the High Court came out and said,

29:07

this is deeply unconstitutional. You can't just send our

29:09

police forces to kill and die in a country

29:11

on the other side of the planet. And

29:14

the U.S. just said, we don't care, and gave

29:16

Ruto the green light to basically override a high

29:18

court decision to send Africans, black

29:21

Africans to go kill and, you

29:23

know, after descendants living in Haiti.

29:26

Now what's happened in more recent days,

29:28

as the crisis has continued to escalate,

29:30

is that Henri, the outgoing prime minister,

29:33

has stepped down. And

29:35

there's a new process that was supposedly

29:37

overseen by Karikon, which is a community

29:39

of Caribbean nations, to form a kind

29:41

of provisional council that would then lead

29:43

to elections and ultimately to a new

29:45

government. But the U.S. can't

29:47

give up its own colonial playbook. And

29:49

so what it told to that council, it

29:52

put conditions on the formation of that council.

29:55

And one of those conditions was

29:57

that anyone who was on that council, one, couldn't

29:59

have criminal links for

30:01

a Viet Gang member, but two, they had to

30:03

support the MSS. So the condition

30:05

for forming part of the new Asian Council is

30:08

that you need to support

30:10

this military intervention. That's our condition

30:12

for being able to play a

30:14

role in the political resolution

30:16

of Haiti's present

30:18

crisis. Now, why is this military intervention

30:21

such a disastrous idea on top of the reasons

30:23

I named four about these people not knowing where

30:25

they're from, not knowing where they

30:27

are, not speaking the language, not

30:29

understanding the social and political context?

30:32

Well, Haiti just had one of

30:34

these peacekeeping missions come a couple

30:37

decades ago under the auspices of the United Nations

30:39

that led to systematic sexual

30:41

violence and assault by UN

30:44

peacekeepers and a massive deadly

30:46

outbreak of cholera when those

30:49

UN peacekeepers were desiccating openly

30:52

in Haiti's

30:55

water sources that led to

30:57

a horrible communicable disease crisis in

30:59

Haiti. The consequences of both

31:02

of these, the sexual violence and the

31:04

outbreak of cholera, continue to be felt

31:06

by a very traumatized patient population today.

31:09

So I think that what we look at

31:11

Haiti, which is a country that too few people

31:13

talk about, too few people understand, too few people

31:15

are willing to get familiar

31:18

with the complexity of the

31:20

particular process. I think

31:22

it's a very telling conjuncture in

31:24

which we know something must be

31:26

done. But then when

31:28

we look at the toolkit of what must be done, it's

31:31

very telling that we reach for

31:33

a military intervention. We

31:35

have to try in a

31:38

world that is now spiraling into these

31:40

hot conflicts, whether they be in

31:43

Ukraine, whether they be in

31:45

Gaza, to remember that peace

31:47

processes can

31:49

succeed and that peace processes are not conducted

31:52

through the escalation of violence but

31:54

rather through understanding their root causes.

31:58

So why does a 16-year-old kid live in a city like this? pick

32:00

up a pistol. When

32:02

he's looking at the face of his child or

32:04

his sister or his mother or his grandmother, his

32:06

uncle or his aunt and seeing that

32:09

they're scared and they're hungry, what he does is

32:11

we can protect himself, protect his family and

32:13

yes find a way to get some food

32:15

on the table. Now you

32:17

don't fight that with a gun unless

32:20

you want to intensify that cycle

32:22

of violence, unless you want to do as

32:24

we've seen in El Salvador, you know you

32:26

want to pull from that buquele playbook. Yeah

32:28

you can build those prisons and kill those

32:31

people and lead to a kind of pandemic

32:33

of violence that will consolidate authority and lead

32:35

to a totally authoritarian situation or

32:37

you can attempt to build a true social

32:39

consensus on the basis of genuine

32:41

diplomacy and conversation in the liberation.

32:44

Now it's crazy to me, it's sad

32:46

to me that we live in a world in

32:48

which that latter possibility seems like a pipe train, in

32:50

which people can't imagine the idea of sitting down and

32:52

talking about the conditions under which people would disarm,

32:55

demilitarize, in which gangs, you

32:58

know in which a 16 year old kid would say of

33:00

course I don't want to wake up every morning fearing for

33:02

my death and the deaths of my family, of course I

33:04

want to find a way to go to school, to get

33:06

a job, and all these things.

33:08

But the United States systematically refuses

33:11

to have a conversation about root

33:13

causes and this reflects a

33:15

fundamental contradiction, a cognitive

33:18

dissident contradiction in US foreign policy

33:20

and the application of the so-called

33:22

Monroe Doctrine. On the

33:25

one hand the US hates nothing more

33:27

than a migrant. We want

33:29

to systematically criminalize you know the

33:32

pursuit of asylum in our country as

33:35

a bipartisan agenda, we want to

33:37

put you know razor wire along the

33:39

border, want to invade Mexico

33:41

as many Republicans are mentioning. We're very

33:44

very intent on violating

33:46

international law and deporting

33:48

as many people as possible. That's serious,

33:50

we talk about the border crisis non-stop in

33:52

the United States. On the

33:54

other hand we refuse to deal with

33:56

the root causes of that migrant crisis

33:58

whether that's applying in Venezuela, a

34:01

blockade in Cuba, or leading a

34:03

military intervention in Haiti. We

34:05

refuse to address the root

34:07

causes of forced migration that are driving

34:10

that so-called migrant crisis. And instead, we

34:12

prefer options, which is currently on the

34:14

table, and I'm very confident we'll go

34:16

forward, of opening Guantanamo Bay, a former

34:19

kind of black site for the torture

34:21

of the victims of the war on

34:23

terror, to hold Haitian

34:25

migrants that are pursuing asylum

34:27

for the consequences of our own foreign

34:30

policy decisions in Haiti, that

34:32

we just would rather hold them in

34:35

a legal detention on an illegally

34:37

occupied island of Cuba, at Guantanamo Bay, than

34:39

have a conversation about what it might take

34:42

to create the social, political, and economic conditions

34:44

for people to flourish, pursue

34:46

education, live a good life. That's just not

34:48

a conversation that our security apparatus is willing

34:50

to have, because the tool we just keep

34:53

reaching for is more violence, more

34:55

guns, more bullets, more bombs. And

34:57

that is creating this whole ecosystem of forced

35:00

displacement and dispossession, not just in

35:02

Haiti, but through Central America and

35:04

really across the Western Hemisphere. So

35:07

I think everyone would probably agree that the

35:09

root causes of what's going on in Haiti,

35:11

I suppose, however much you know about it,

35:13

right? You don't need to know much to

35:15

see that the root causes are a very

35:17

weak state in poverty, and you can pick

35:19

your explanation for why that is. And I

35:21

suppose I want to talk a bit about

35:23

why that might be, and I think useful

35:25

context, or at least provocative context, let's say,

35:28

something which poses questions, is

35:31

that Haiti shares an island with the Dominican Republic.

35:33

So they both have the same population. So on

35:35

that level, very similar, both just over 11 million

35:37

people. But the two countries couldn't

35:39

be more different, really, other than that. So

35:41

the Haitian economy has been stagnant for decades.

35:43

So in 1990, GDP per capita was just

35:45

under $4,000. Three

35:48

decades later, it's lower than then. So

35:50

it's now at $3,000. Meanwhile,

35:53

in the Dominican Republic, so just next door,

35:56

in the same time, they went from $6,000 per capita to $18,000. So,

36:00

David, I 100% agree with you. The

36:04

root cause is, I'm sure,

36:06

of the violence we're seeing in

36:09

Haiti is the fact that people

36:11

don't have opportunities that they can go for, and so they

36:14

turn to gangs, and then there isn't a strong state that

36:16

can protect you, so you need to join a gang to

36:18

protect yourself, etc., etc. But it's unclear

36:20

to me, and I'm not an expert on this, so this is

36:22

a genuine question, why Haiti

36:25

has had so much more

36:27

of a difficult time than the Dominican Republic

36:29

sort of getting any growth. Because, I suppose,

36:32

there is this argument that it's about the

36:34

slave revolt and the successful revolution

36:37

in 1804, which, yes,

36:39

definitely for sort of 100 years or so. I

36:41

think they were paying back debts, weren't they, until

36:43

1950, so that didn't incur the wrath of

36:46

the world system and would have sort of hindered

36:48

development. But is it still that?

36:50

Is it that the Dominican Republic is rich and

36:53

Haiti is poor because people still won't forgive Haiti

36:55

for having overthrown colonialism in 1804, or

36:58

is something else going on here? No,

37:00

there's a much more recent history

37:03

of intervention that's sort of well-documented

37:05

in its disastrous consequences.

37:07

So I mentioned, of course,

37:09

the coup of Oeres did,

37:11

which was a really important

37:13

point in the trajectory

37:15

of Haitian political economy. So the figure who did

37:18

succeed to create a kind of social and political

37:20

consensus that could have led to a period of

37:22

stability and prosperity for the country, we weren't having

37:24

that. Why weren't the Americans having

37:26

that? My question is about the why. So

37:29

why were the Americans happy to see

37:31

the Dominican Republic become successful but Haiti

37:33

not? As far as I understand, it wasn't that there was sort

37:35

of like communist. It wasn't sort of

37:38

a Cuba situation where there was this

37:40

ideological threat from Haiti. Why did Haiti

37:42

bear the brunt of sort

37:44

of impure aggression, whereas its

37:46

neighbor didn't? That's kind of what I'm getting

37:48

at. I recognize there have been

37:51

these interventions. I'm trying to understand why there might

37:53

have been those interventions. Yeah,

37:55

I think I would encourage your viewers

37:57

to read a bit more about. about

38:00

Aristide and who he was and what kind of ideological

38:02

threat he did actually present to

38:04

the United States, both domestically and in terms

38:07

of his vision for the broader Caribbean. But

38:10

I think it's also important to mention the context

38:12

of the earthquake. The earthquake also

38:14

fundamentally altered the political economy of the country.

38:17

I mean, this was what created this kind

38:19

of whole aid complex. You'll

38:21

remember the stories of Hillary Clinton and

38:24

the kind of way in which the

38:26

US related to the so-called recovery efforts

38:29

in Haiti that were also similarly disastrous, even as pure

38:31

as they may have been in their intent. This

38:33

really, really disastrous earthquake, I think it was in

38:35

2008, put a prince in the capital. And

38:38

these fundamental ways in which the

38:40

US has been basically determined to

38:42

undermine the foundations of

38:47

Haitian, I want to just say

38:49

democracy, but it's sort of institutional

38:51

stability. So these

38:53

are these multiple moments where

38:56

you don't have to be conspiratorial about

38:58

the operations of the US Empire. All

39:00

you have to think is that the

39:02

US is very opportunistic about how it

39:05

relates to Haiti as a country, whether

39:07

that's in supporting officers or taking

39:09

advantage of, for example, the assassination of

39:12

Moises to see

39:14

Henri's assumption of power, this

39:16

unelected government. These

39:20

are moments, critical junctures across

39:22

that line, across those

39:24

three decades of the graph you showed, Michael,

39:26

in which there have been opportunities

39:29

to sit down and pursue

39:31

a kind of process that

39:34

would, again, generate the social consensus

39:36

on which you build a democracy.

39:38

Instead, we've tried to install puppet

39:41

governments, puppet regimes, and those don't

39:44

succeed to ... Those are

39:46

the type of institutions that are inclusive

39:48

and legitimate enough to allow for that

39:50

kind of growth, to allow for GDP

39:53

to flourish. So I think that

39:55

there are really, really critical

39:57

differences. I would discourage your viewers.

40:00

is from thinking that if you look at

40:02

the DR and you look at Haiti that

40:04

there's some kind of natural experiment in thinking

40:06

about what happens if capitalism, for example, is

40:08

applied correctly, or the even much more racist

40:11

view that many people

40:13

attempt to push, that there's something racially

40:16

different about the composition of the Dominican

40:18

Republic and the more Afro-descendant composition of

40:20

Haiti, but instead to look at a

40:22

broader trajectory of institutional rupture and institutional

40:25

development that has led us to the

40:27

present crisis. And I think that what

40:29

we're likely to see and what we're trying to

40:31

avoid, if you talk to Haitians, as I have

40:34

been, they'll tell you, we

40:36

don't have a perfect solution to what needs to

40:38

be done. We know public services

40:41

are paralyzed, violence is spiraling, but

40:44

we do know, we do have enough

40:46

recent experience with a foreign occupation and

40:48

a foreign intervention. And

40:50

it's crazy to us that this sounds

40:52

to the US without advising us, without

40:54

telling us anything. And one

40:57

of the main complaints that Haitians have about the US

40:59

supporting, endorsing and bolstering the government,

41:01

Ariel Henri, the unelected government for so

41:03

many years was this guy never even

41:05

talked to us. We had no idea

41:07

what was going on in our country this whole time. Now,

41:10

those are not the conditions in which a

41:12

stable economy, in which businesses can flourish, in

41:14

which there can be a kind of political

41:16

economy that's functional. And so

41:18

I do think that it has to do with a colonial

41:21

architecture, the way in which the United

41:23

States relates to its Caribbean possessions, that

41:27

I think requires a lot

41:29

of nuance, but a lot of attention to

41:31

those moments when things could have gone differently for

41:33

Haiti, such as with the US government,

41:35

this could have gone differently. And we just refuse

41:37

to let them go differently. And

41:39

right now is another one of those points. Things

41:41

could go differently. But the US is

41:44

imposing the same conditions around support for

41:46

this so-called MSS, this foreign occupation, that

41:48

will lead to another decade,

41:50

another lost decade of violence in the

41:52

country. And that is the kind of

41:54

premonition that I think many Haitians have. And it's a kind

41:56

of warning that we're trying to put out to the international

41:58

community, which as I said before is... paying all too

42:00

little attention to this crisis. And it

42:02

could be all too easily swayed by saying, oh,

42:04

great, well, at least we're doing something. When it's

42:07

something that we're doing is highly cynical, it is

42:09

almost guaranteed to fail. And those are the things

42:11

that raise concerns, not just by human rights, but

42:13

about that graph he showed, about the trajectory of

42:15

political, social, and economic flourishing in a country that

42:17

has suffered so greatly over the past half century.

42:20

Next story, we've got two more to go through. Mehdi

42:24

Hassan is an exceptional interviewer,

42:26

but now he's left MSNBC. He's

42:28

finding himself answering questions instead of

42:30

asking them. He's gone

42:33

on, Piers Morgan, and the most

42:35

interesting exchange concerned Hamas and terrorism.

42:38

It was an act of terrorism and

42:41

Hamas are terrorists. Ask your position. I

42:45

think the Hamas fighters who went into Israel

42:47

and killed civilians and kidnapped babies, certainly I

42:49

would call them terrorists. This is what I

42:52

call Israeli soldiers who kidnap children and kill

42:54

children terrorists. I use the terrorist label more

42:56

freely because otherwise it's just a politicized, empty

42:58

phrase that we just apply to our enemies.

43:01

What I would say Piers, is that I

43:03

find it a problem, and you know this,

43:05

you've joked about all the memes about you,

43:07

this obsession with what we call Hamas, which

43:10

is a question you pose, let's be honest

43:12

Piers, to most of your pro-Palestinian brown

43:14

guests. You don't ask your Israeli or Jewish

43:16

or pro-Israeli guests to condemn Israeli terrorism or

43:18

Israeli war crimes at the start of an

43:21

interview in the way you do. Well no,

43:23

I've been asked directly whether

43:25

I think Israel are terrorists, and

43:28

I've said no. There's an interesting answer from

43:31

Piers Morgan, because he essentially says, well the

43:33

reason I ask pro-Palestinian people if Hamas are

43:35

terrorists, and I don't ask pro-Israeli people if

43:37

Israel are terrorists, is because I don't think

43:40

Israel are committing terrorism. So I only dispute

43:42

people when I personally disagree

43:44

with him. I suppose maybe

43:47

that's a reasonable way to conduct interviews. I feel like

43:49

maybe he should be trying to challenge his own beliefs

43:51

as well as to challenge other

43:53

peoples. Of course, Medeosan

43:56

also sort of opened up the

43:58

possibilities there, because he... Even if he

44:00

doesn't think that Israel are terrorists, why doesn't he

44:02

push those Israelis on war crimes?

44:05

If you don't want to say, do you condemn this this

44:07

act of terrorism? Why don't you say, do you condemn this

44:09

this war crime that Israel have so clearly committed? In

44:12

any case, Mehdi Hassan continues on

44:14

this argument very effectively. Let's go back

44:16

to the clip. I don't

44:18

think they are. I think they had a right to defend

44:20

themselves. The question is, that wasn't the

44:22

point I made, Piers. No, no, no. When

44:24

you have Israeli guests on. No, no, hang on. Let me

44:27

finish my sentence. Let me finish my sentence. Mehdi,

44:29

it's not your show. It's mine. What

44:32

does it say? The whole interview, by the way. So we got

44:34

that out of the way. I'm joking. But the point

44:36

I would make is I think that

44:38

I asked all the pro-Palestinian guests who have

44:40

come on that question quite quickly,

44:43

because I think it reveals a state of mind. If

44:45

like you, and I'm sorry, I didn't realize you had

44:47

in that first piece of the NBC done that.

44:51

So I take back the suggestion you hadn't. And

44:53

I'm glad that you have called them

44:55

that. I don't think you can call

44:57

them anything else. So the moment you have

44:59

a pro-Palestinian guest who wants to avoid calling

45:01

what Hamas did an act of terrorism by

45:04

terrorists, I think it's very revealing about their

45:06

mindset. And I think it's the wrong mindset.

45:09

Here's my problem with that. Why

45:11

is that not applied to Israeli guests? I would

45:13

be fine, Piers, if you had Palestinian guests and

45:15

you begin by asking them, do you condemn Hamas

45:17

war crimes? Because Hamas did on October 7th

45:19

was a war crime. But then you should

45:22

start with Israeli guests and pro-Israeli guests saying, do you

45:24

condemn Israeli war crimes, which have been documented by the

45:26

UN, every human rights group on the planet? You

45:28

don't. I

45:31

watched the interview. Your opening question was, how comfortable

45:33

are you with the way Israel is prosecuting the

45:35

war? A bit of a softball

45:37

to start with. You didn't ask him to condemn Israeli

45:39

terrorism, Israeli war crimes, Israeli genocide in Gaza. So a

45:41

lot of people look at that and they say they

45:44

get your intention, but it comes across as a bit

45:46

of a racist double standard. So smooth.

45:49

So smooth. So smooth. So in

45:51

control. you

46:00

do when you're talking to a pro-Palestinian, usually

46:02

a pro-Palestinian brown guest, right? That's how you

46:04

can bring in that racist double standard charge.

46:08

Let's look at our final clip

46:10

of that exchange. And they're talking

46:13

here about why Piers Morgan doesn't

46:15

think Israel a terrorist. People

46:18

do ask me, do you think Israel are

46:20

terrorists? And I've said no, I don't think

46:22

they are. But I have repeated it. Why?

46:25

Well, I have repeated it because I think

46:27

they are. Out of interest, why? They were

46:29

responding to an act of terrorism, so heinous,

46:32

it demanded a massive military response. The

46:34

question for me that's caused me a

46:36

moral quandary is what is an acceptably

46:38

proportionate level of response? And I don't

46:41

know the answer. But I

46:43

don't think you can call people responding to

46:45

an act of terror on that scale, terrorists

46:47

for responding. What you can do is hold

46:49

them to account. The problem is if you

46:51

go to Gaza, if you go to Gaza,

46:53

Piers, and you talk to Palestinians, they will

46:55

say that Hamas were responding. If we play

46:57

the Who Started It game, we go back

46:59

many decades. When did Israel kill? What

47:03

we need to have is when did Israel kill

47:05

1,200 Palestinians? When

47:08

did they kill 800 Palestinian civilians in one

47:11

few hour period, right? In the way that Hamas

47:13

killed those Israelis? But that's not the definition of

47:15

terrorism, how many hours you do it. I can

47:18

mention many Israeli massacres going back to Sabra and

47:20

Chitela, which they oversaw, going back to Kibya and

47:22

Ariel Sharon, going back to Deir Yassine, where rape

47:24

and violence happened. And if

47:26

you want to compare atrocities, the point is to

47:28

have a consistent moral principle, which is to say

47:31

if you kill civilians for a political cause, you

47:33

are a terrorist. On that basis, Hamas have committed

47:35

acts of terror and Israel have committed acts of

47:37

terror. I think that's only fair to say that.

47:39

Yeah, listen, you're perfectly entitled to say it. That's

47:42

such a cop-out. Piers Morgan just moves

47:44

on after that. You're perfectly entitled to say that. Yeah,

47:46

but is he right? He's obviously right, right? You're

47:48

perfectly entitled to say that. It's such a sort of way

47:50

of, okay, back off. He

47:53

was right. The idea

47:55

that you can possibly say it's not

47:57

terrorism if they were provoked is

47:59

just the most, which is Piers

48:01

Morgan's argument, right, it's the

48:03

most transparently juvenile, flawed

48:06

argument if you're going to try and

48:08

call anyone anywhere a terrorist, right? Pretty

48:10

much every act of violence is provoked

48:13

to some extent, right? People don't normally

48:15

just sort of commit random acts of

48:17

violence for no reason whatsoever. So if

48:20

you're saying a provocation means it can't

48:22

be terrorism, then you definitely

48:24

cannot say that October the 7th

48:27

was terrorism, right? Because you can say a lot

48:29

of things about October the 7th, but it didn't

48:31

come in a vacuum, came

48:33

after decades of illegal occupation.

48:37

So I think Mehdi Hassan very much won that. I'm

48:39

torn about Piers. I think on

48:42

the one hand, it's remarkable

48:44

that he's having these conversations on his show.

48:48

You and I spoke about this a few months ago, that

48:50

the Israeli gamble of this protracted

48:52

conflict was that people would stop paying

48:54

attention, that it would go the way

48:57

of the Ukraine war, where the public

48:59

interest would fade, which

49:01

would create more space for them

49:03

to operate with greater impunity. And

49:06

I think that there's some evidence that much

49:09

of the Western media is complicit in

49:11

that game of reducing

49:14

the pressure, of taking the boil on

49:19

accountability or at least

49:21

visibility of Israel's assault on

49:23

Gaza. I think it's remarkable that Piers

49:25

Morgan, as someone who we could have

49:27

expected to basically just stop talking about

49:29

the issue, is having

49:31

these conversations. At the same time, that

49:33

conversation, I mean, could

49:36

have happened. It's like something that could have happened five

49:39

years ago. We're looking

49:41

in the context of an actual genocide

49:44

and an imminent invasion that

49:46

has been already condemned by

49:48

Israel's strongest allies, in which

49:50

an international court of justice has

49:52

ruled that anyone's complicity in the

49:55

violation of its provisional measures,

49:58

such as supplying arms for the slums. of Palestinians

50:01

is a violation

50:03

of international law. Why are we having

50:06

these debates about, you know, who is and

50:08

isn't a terrorist, rather than having

50:10

a debate on how we can basically apply

50:13

those standards, norms, and laws that

50:15

supposedly unite all sides of

50:17

this conflict? So I think there's a double

50:20

risk here. The first risk is the one in

50:22

which the violence, horrendous

50:25

violence, kind of disappears from view. The

50:28

other is that we talk about the

50:30

issue, but in such facile terms

50:33

that don't reflect the gravity

50:35

of the situation, don't reflect

50:37

the consequences of some of

50:40

the more imminent actions

50:42

or daily actions to

50:45

cleanse, perhaps annex this territory. I

50:47

think that that's a secondary risk

50:50

that we need to be cautious about.

50:54

But yeah, always good to see peers get thrown

50:56

in the trash can. Let's

50:58

go straight onto our final story.

51:02

In a week where political debate

51:04

has been dominated by the question

51:06

of political extremism, BBC Question

51:08

Time decided to invite Melanie Phillips

51:11

on their show. Yes, that's the

51:13

same, Melanie Phillips, who demanded that

51:15

Barack Obama explain when and why

51:17

he renounced Islam. Obama

51:19

was never in fact a Muslim. It's

51:22

also the Melanie Phillips who declared

51:24

in the Jewish Chronicle that Islamophobia

51:26

was a bogus label. And

51:29

it's the Melanie Phillips who for decades

51:31

argued that climate change was a

51:33

hoax. Anyway,

51:36

this is what happened on Question Time

51:38

with Melanie Phillips when the topic of

51:40

Gaza came up. I

51:42

live mainly in Israel. I

51:45

come here a great deal. I am British, I will

51:47

always be British. And

51:49

it is a tragedy

51:51

beyond measure that so

51:53

many decent people, well-meaning people

51:55

in Britain have got this completely

51:58

the wrong way around. What's

52:00

happening in Gaza is indeed a tragedy. War

52:03

is terrible. Civilians are

52:05

killed. But what Stephen

52:07

has just said is

52:09

so distorted and so untrue.

52:13

Let me just take you to one or two points that he

52:15

has said. He says that

52:17

the Gazans are being denied by

52:20

Israel access to food and humanitarian

52:22

supplies. This is completely

52:24

untrue. There have been

52:26

hundreds and hundreds of trucks going

52:29

through Gaza. There have

52:31

been hundreds of trucks stopped from

52:35

going through Gaza because the

52:37

food is being stolen by Hamas. The

52:41

Gazans themselves are saved.

52:44

You laugh because you don't know. I

52:46

am telling you. Hang

52:48

on, Melanie, in fairness, the UN says

52:50

that not enough trucks are being allowed

52:52

in and that children

52:55

are dying of starvation. You've got UNICEF saying

52:57

children are dying of starvation. The UN

52:59

has had its own operatives in ANWA,

53:02

the Relief and Welfare Organization, who are

53:04

members of Hamas, dozens and dozens of

53:06

them. They are entirely compromised. Okay, so

53:08

just, Melanie, I'll let you speak, I

53:10

promise. But just to be clear what

53:13

you're saying, when you've got the WHO

53:15

and the UN and the EU humanitarian

53:17

chief saying there is famine in Gaza,

53:19

you're saying that's not true.

53:21

That's what you're claiming. You can go

53:23

on YouTube and see pictures of

53:26

the stocked food markets in Gaza.

53:29

Why are you laughing? Because I'm religious. Have

53:31

you seen them? Why are they laughing? Have

53:33

you seen these video pictures? I have looked at some of

53:35

them. They don't have time stamps on them. I've got to

53:37

point that out. So I don't know when

53:40

these pictures were taken. Okay. I mean, if

53:42

you have proof that they were taken in the last couple of years.

53:44

If you want to look at pictures, Melanie, I'm

53:46

quite happy to send you some pictures and videos

53:48

of the values being bombed in slumper. Yes. That's

53:51

right, Melanie. That

53:54

was Melanie Phillips telling the audience to

53:56

ignore the World Health Organization and to

53:58

ignore the United Nations because she's

54:00

seen some pictures on YouTube.

54:04

The FMP Stephen Flynn then offered to show her some

54:06

other pictures and if he ever got the chance, I'm

54:08

not sure he did, he could have done well to

54:11

show her these. Tiny limbs,

54:13

bones protruding. The

54:18

constant sound of crying, some

54:20

children now facing starvation in

54:22

Gaza. In

54:25

this overrun hospital ward, anxious

54:27

mothers watch on as doctors provide

54:29

whatever care they still can. But

54:34

for some, there is nothing more

54:36

to be done. Three-year-old

54:41

Mila, who hadn't been suffering from

54:43

acute malnutrition, now

54:45

another victim of this merciless war.

54:48

She was healthy, there was nothing wrong with

54:52

her before, Mila's mother says. Then

54:55

suddenly everything dropped, she

54:57

wasn't eating anything, we had no milk,

54:59

no eggs, nothing. She used to

55:01

eat eggs every day before the war, but now

55:04

we have nothing. Across

55:07

Gaza, too many are feeling the pain

55:10

of this deepening hunger crisis. Small

55:13

children, emaciated and malnourished.

55:17

These were little Yezan's final moments,

55:20

his tiny fingers gripped in

55:22

his mother's hand. She,

55:25

like Mila, would not make

55:27

it. Others are still just barely holding

55:29

on, but there

55:33

is no telling how long they

55:35

will survive. Standing beside Mila's body, Dr. Ahmuth

55:40

Salim says many children at this hospital

55:43

are now dying due to a lack

55:45

of food and oxygen supplies. We

55:48

showed you those images last week,

55:50

we showed you a bit more of that

55:52

CNN report. Incredibly powerful, tragic,

55:54

infuriating, horrifying report

55:57

of kids currently starving

56:00

i could be living decent lives but israel

56:02

has decided that they want to carry out

56:04

a genocide or stopped any food getting in.

56:07

Melanie phillips has

56:09

seen a youtube video where

56:11

there are some stop shop. Now

56:14

these videos don't have any time stamps. I

56:17

was made clear by fiona bruce the

56:19

host of question time and

56:21

also two million people live in gaza

56:24

if it does happen that there is

56:26

one shop which is fully stopped that

56:28

doesn't mean. That there won't be

56:30

people dying of starvation as we know that

56:32

are in gaza right

56:35

how you can possibly go

56:37

on national television and say

56:40

the way she said that you know

56:42

you love because you don't know and

56:44

then evidence. Countering the

56:46

world health organization countering the united

56:48

nations countering horrific images like those

56:50

of the whole world can see

56:52

is that she's in a picture

56:55

on youtube. So

56:57

no one or not melanie phillips

57:00

told an ill informed lie which

57:02

if people believe her if they

57:04

believe the lie. Could cost lots

57:06

of lives right if people believe

57:08

melanie phillips that there isn't famine.

57:12

Conditions in gaza than they are more

57:14

likely to believe the israelis to not

57:16

apply pressure on their governments to help

57:18

resolve this or to stop supporting israel

57:21

to carry out this genocide or what

57:23

if they believe it's very

57:25

possible. That that will directly lead

57:27

to more kids dying right this is

57:29

what misinformation can do. I

57:32

wouldn't be the first time that melanie

57:34

phillips has told dangerous on truth from

57:36

the question time platform this

57:38

was from an appearance in twenty thirteen.

57:41

There is no evidence for

57:43

global warming that is to

57:45

say there is no evidence that wait

57:47

please I know that you are an

57:50

audience of open mind. Come

57:52

to the point and get on with it with you please because then

57:54

we can have other people involved in the discussion. Let

58:01

me tell you that the seas

58:03

are not rising any more than

58:06

is in any way out of

58:08

the ordinary. The ice is not

58:10

decreasing, it is increasing. The polar

58:12

bears are increasing in number and

58:15

the temperature is going down, not

58:17

up. As late as

58:19

2022, Melanie Phillips was claiming in

58:22

the Times that climate change was

58:24

bogus. Now, I can't

58:26

imagine there are many climate change deniers in our audience,

58:28

but in case you've randomly found us,

58:30

you're very welcome. Whatever your views, you're very welcome.

58:32

This is my favorite chart showing the reality of

58:34

the situation. It's from the University of Reading and

58:36

has a bar for each year between 1850 and

58:38

the present day, showing

58:40

how temperatures differed in that year from

58:42

the average between 1971 and the

58:45

year 2000. As you can

58:47

see, it's been getting consistently warmer since

58:49

1900 and temperatures have

58:51

absolutely rocketed since 2000. Climate

58:56

change very much exists. That was clear to

58:58

everyone in 2013. It

59:00

was even clearer to everyone in

59:02

2022, but Melanie Phillips

59:05

doesn't seem to have much relationship

59:07

to the truth. No

59:09

matter how serious the issue, she decides

59:11

she is qualified to talk on.

59:14

David, as an American, you might

59:16

have until now been spared the knowledge

59:18

of Melanie Phillips' existence. Do

59:20

I have to apologize for introducing you

59:23

to her or were you? Did you have prior knowledge

59:25

of this woman? You

59:27

know, Michael, my mother is

59:30

a divorce lawyer. It's

59:32

professional. She divorces people. When

59:35

I learned from her practice,

59:37

from these acrimonious divorces, is

59:40

that both sides of divorce sink that

59:43

they're right. That

59:45

no one who's leaving their

59:47

partner and trying to enter

59:49

into that mortal battle

59:51

in a divorce thinks

59:54

that actually the other person was

59:57

the right person and they're the bad one. So

1:00:00

what I learned is that everyone puts their head on

1:00:02

the pillow at night telling themselves some story in

1:00:04

which they are the good ones and everyone else

1:00:07

is the bad ones. The things that they said

1:00:09

and did that day were justified, rationalized, if not

1:00:11

outright. I just... The

1:00:14

thing with Melanie Phillips, I wonder

1:00:17

what is the story that this person can

1:00:19

tell themselves looking back on

1:00:21

these clips over so many years of

1:00:24

public deception, in this case,

1:00:26

of genocidal deception

1:00:30

that she can put her head on the pillow

1:00:32

at night and say, I've done well today.

1:00:36

And this is where my faith in

1:00:38

humanity has been strained to its

1:00:40

breaking point. In the past months

1:00:43

and weeks, these clips

1:00:45

you played, you know, almost brought me

1:00:47

to tears as they always do, these

1:00:49

starving children and the knowledge that we

1:00:52

sitting here in respective capitals

1:00:55

have the power to save those

1:00:57

children and yet

1:00:59

we are determined not to do so. And

1:01:02

how these people that we call

1:01:04

our fellow citizens can go to

1:01:06

bed in the evenings and look at themselves in the

1:01:08

mirror in the mornings and live

1:01:10

with themselves, just struggle

1:01:12

to understand. My apologies. When

1:01:15

you first started talking about your mother

1:01:17

being a divorcee, I thought you were going to tell me that's how you

1:01:19

knew who Melanie Phillips was because she'd

1:01:21

been employed to divorce someone at some point. I've

1:01:23

got no idea if Melanie Phillips is ever divorced,

1:01:25

but your answer was in fact much more meaningful

1:01:29

than some gossip along those lines. David,

1:01:31

thank you so much for joining me tonight. Always

1:01:34

a pleasure, Michael. And thanks to

1:01:37

all of you for tuning in and

1:01:39

come back on Monday. Have a great

1:01:41

weekend. You've been watching Novara Media. Good

1:01:43

night. This

1:01:45

broadcast is brought to you by Novara Media. Go

1:01:47

to novaramedia.com/support. Thank

1:01:53

you.