Speaker unverified: belief

Transcript context

…So first of all, you have complete freedom to backtrack and we’ll go there with you. Obviously we can’t cover every single year, every single event, but there’s probably critical moments in time. Can I respond to something relating to that, the Lebanon War? I looked at the book that he got this from and what the quote was from. It sounds cold to say it, but war is tragic and civilians die. There is no war that this has not happened in, in the history of all of humankind. The statement that Israel might take care not to target civilians is not incompatible with a diary entry from someone who said they saw civilians getting killed. I think that sometimes we do a lot of weird games when we talk about international humanitarian law or laws that govern conflict, but we say things like, civilians dying is a war crime, or civilian homes or hospitals getting destroyed is necessarily a war crime, or is necessarily somebody intentionally targeting civilians without making distinctions between military targets or civilian ones. I think that when we analyze different attacks or when we talk about the conduct of the military, it’s important to understand, prospectively from the unit of analysis of the actual military committing the acts, what’s happening and what are the decisions being made rather than just saying retrospectively, “Oh, well, a lot of civilians died. Not very many military people died, comparatively speaking, so it must have been war crimes,” especially when you’ve got another side, I’ll fast-forward to Hamas, that intentionally attempts to induce those same civilian numbers, because Hamas is guilty of any war crime that you would potentially accuse. And this is according to the Amnesty International, people that Norm loves to cite, Hamas is guilty of all of these same war crimes, of them failing to take care of their civilian population, of them essentially utilizing human shields to try to fire rockets, free from attacks- Essentially? Essentially, yes. I’m just saying that, essentially, as in terms of how international law defines it and not how Amnesty International defines it. But Amnesty International describes times of human shielding, but they don’t actually apply the correct international legal standard- You don’t know what’s the correct international law- I know absolutely- You haven’t a clue- No, I absolutely do- You haven’t a clue because you can’t find it on Wikipedia. You can’t find it on Wikipedia- But I’m just saying… Believe it or not, Norm, the entire Geneva Convention is all on Wikipedia. It’s a wonderful website. But I’m just saying that on the Hamas side, if there’s an attempt to induce this type of military activity, attempt to induce civilian harm, that it’s not just enough to say, “Well, here’s a diary entry where a guy talks about how tragic these attacks are.” attempt to induce this type of military activity, attempt to induce civilian harm, that it’s not just enough to say, “Well, here’s a diary entry where a guy talks about how tragic these attacks are.” See, I think the problem with your statement is that if you go back and listen to it, the first part of it is, war is hell, civilians die. It’s a fact of life. And you state that in a very factual matter. Then when you start talking about Hamas, all of a sudden you’ve discovered morality and you’ve discovered condemnation and you’ve discovered intent, and you are unfortunately far from alone in this. I’ll give you… You know who for me is a perfect example? Wait, hold on. We’re [inaudible 02:42:14]. We don’t need examples- No… Oh, go ahead. The false equivalency of the two sides is astounding. When Hamas kills civilians in a surprise attack on October 7th, this isn’t because they are attempting to target military targets and they happen to stumble into a giant festival of people that- Well, they did happen to stumble into it. They did, but- And they killed 300 people in the music festival- But when they stumbled into it, that wasn’t an issue of trying to figure out a military target or not. They weren’t failing a distinction. There wasn’t a proportionality assessment done. It was just to kill civilians. Even the Amnesty International in 2008 and in 2014, and even today, will continue to say that there’s likely types of attacks- Look, I don’t think you’ll find anyone who will deny that Hamas has targeted civilians. You gave the example- But there’s a difference because- … of suicide bombings during the Second Intifada. Facts are facts- Sure, but I’m just saying that the Hamas targeting of innocent civilians is different than the incidental loss of life that occurs when Israel does- Whoa, the incidental loss of life- Genocide is the intentional mass murder- Well, genocide is a entirely separate claim. Yeah, but the idea that Israel is not in the business of intentionally targeting civilians, I know that’s what we’re supposed to believe, but the historical record stands pretty clearly- No, it doesn’t. I don’t believe it does. You’ve written about it yourself- Well, when you say historical, do you mean in the ’40s to the ’60s, or do you mean over the past- I would say from the ’30s of the last century to the ’20s of this century. The way you characterized it, I think the best example of that I’ve come across during this specific conflict is John Kirby, the White House spokesman. I’ve named him Tears Tosterone, for a very good reason. When he is talking about Palestinian civilian deaths, war is hell, it’s a fact of life, get used to it. When he was confronted with Israeli civilian deaths on October 7th, he literally broke down in tears in public- But he understood that one is deliberate and one isn’t. He understood that. No, that’s what he tried to make us understand. No, he was speaking facts. The Hamas guys who attacked the kibbutzim, apart from the attacks on the military sites, when they attacked the kibbutzim, were out to kill civilians. And they killed family after family, house after house. The Israeli attacks on Hamas installations-…

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