Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza | Lex Fridman Podcast #463

They end up chanting in front of him, "Viva Lamuete, long live death." They have their counterparts today. They are the people who who taunt Americans, Westerners, Israelis, and others with lines like, "We love death more than you love life." The following is a conversation with Douglas Murray, author of The War in the West, The Madness of Crowds, and his new book on democracies and death cults. We talk about Russia and Ukraine and about Israel and Gaza. Douglas has very strong views on these topics and he defends them brilliantly and fearlessly. As I always try to do for all topics, I will also talk to people who have different views from Douglas, including on the next episode of this podcast. We live in an era of online discourse where grifters, drama farmers, liars, bots, sickopants, and sociopaths roam the vast, beautiful, dark land of the internet. It's hard to know who to trust. I believe no one is in possession of the entire truth, but some are more correct than others. Some are insightful and some are delusional. The problem is it's hard to tell which is which unless you use your mind with intellectual humility and with rigor. I recommend you listen to many sources who disagree with each other and try to pick up wisdom from each. Also, I recommend you visit the places in question as Douglas has, as I have, or at least talk face to face with people who have spent most of their lives living there, whether it's Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, or Russia. Let's try together to not be cogs in the machine of outrage, and instead to reach toward reason and compassion. There is no Hitler, Stalin, or Mao on the world stage today. Plus, there are thousands of nuclear weapons ready to fire. Human civilization hangs in the balance. The 21st century is a new geopolitical puzzle all of us are tasked with solving. Let's not mess it up. This is the Lexman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Douglas Murray. What have you understood about the war in Ukraine from uh your visits there? Just looking at the big picture of your understanding of the invasion of February 24th, 2022 and the war in the 3 years since. Well, I mean, several things. There's a political angles which are forever changing. But on the human level, as as you know, if you visit troops, frontline troops, you have that admiration for people defending their country, defending their homes, defending their families. I'm struck by the way in which that is at a remove from the sort of political noise and the media noise and and much more. Um, it's very easy to get caught up in the twos and fros of today's news, but uh that to my mind is is that's the single thing that struck me most in my visits there uh is just um the the people I've met who who are fighting for a cause which at that level is unavoidable, undeniable. So the thing that struck you that's different from the the media turmoil is just the reality of war. Yeah, of course. I mean um you know people who uh have either lived under Russian occupation from invading armies and then come back out into the world having been liberated as in late 2022 or the people now organized most recently there in recent weeks who were just getting on with their job as soldiers uh whilst the world was talking about them. When were you there? In early on in this escalated war of 22. Yes, first time was in uh I was with the the Ukrainian armed forces when they retook Kersan and I was back in recent weeks and was there when the Trump Sinski blow up happened. In fact, I was with I was in a Ukrainian dugout at the front lines when I was watching it. How's the morale? How's the way the content of the conversations you've heard different on the from the two visits separated by I guess two years one level I mean nothing has changed much you know it's a sort of it it's not a a total standoff because intermittently each side gains territory from the others but it's it's not I mean there have been no very significant military gains by either died in the interim period. I think uh my experience of the the soldiers, the people of Ukraine early on in the war, there's a intense optimism about the outcomes of the war. There's a sense that they're going to win and the definition of what win means was like all the territory is going to be one back. Yeah, I I certainly uh on the front lines facing Crimea was uh became quite familiar with people who thought that the Ukrainians in late 2022 would even be able to get Crimea back. And that struck me even at the time and I said I I thought that that was an overreach. And uh now I think the people the soldiers at least in my experience when I visited the second time are more exhausted. The morale, the dreams, the certainty of victory has has maybe faded from the forefront of their minds. Well, 3 years of war will tire out anyone. What did you think of the blow up between Zilinski and Trump as you're uh sitting there in the dugout? Well, it is it was a very uh disturbing place to watch it from. Perhaps anywhere would have been. Um, and I mean obviously it was a meeting that shouldn't have happened. It was far too early. Why do you think so? There's not enough actual pathways to peace on the table. Well, I think the mineral deal I mean I love the fact that everyone's now an expert in Eastern Ukrainian mineral deposits. But I think uh as I've learned and we'll talk about Israel and Palestine. I'm learning that everybody's an expert on geopolitics and the history of war on the internet and now mineral deposits obviously. Yes, the I'm really speaking at the edge of my mineral deposit knowledge here, but no, I mean I from what I could see, the deal that that uh the American administration was trying to uh get the Ukrainian government to sign was was sort of too early to um forced. The Ukrainians weren't were ready to sign a deal, but were obviously under intense pressure. Um, and I think certainly Zalinski wasn't expecting to actually wasn't expecting to go until pretty much the day before. Um, was obviously visibly tired and exhausted again as you are after that amount of pressure for that long a time. And um no, I mean the thing that struck me and I I said this in my column in the New York Post from there that uh the thing that struck me was I said to some of the soldiers I was with uh you know what do you make of this? And um you know, one of them just said to me, well, you know, we're advised not to follow too closely the ins and outs of the politics of this, you know, and um but of course, everyone has Instagram or scrolls and among dog pictures and the you know, the hot women or whatever is um you know what happened in the oval and uh but what struck me was this same guy and saying, "I've got a job to do." Right. And uh there's a clarity and a wisdom to that. But uh your job is is is bigger than that, right? Is to understand the politics as well. And what do you think about the politics of that moment? Because that was a real opportunity to come together and make progress on peace, right? And it from by all accounts was not a successful step forward. I don't think by any account it was a successful step forward unless to some extent it was a play but from DC to say to Putin look we ded off Zalinski and you know now give us something. That's the only uh remedial idea I have about what might have been behind it. But I think it was just one of those extremely uh I mean just awful political moments. Um, Zalinski was obviously deeply irritated by the the the interpretation of the war that he was hearing from Washington. Uh, it was only a week after the Trump comments about Zalinski being a dictator. Um, and people in the administration implying that Ukraine has started the war. And I think that's that must be for Zalinski a pretty Alice in Wonderland situation to be in. And uh I had significant sympathy for him in finding it bewildering because it would be bewildering. I think the sad thing to me also on the mundane details of that meeting and just the unfortunate way that meetings happen, I think it's true that he was also exhausted. Yes, there was a of a of a reporter that was asked a question about outfit in a way that listen Zilinski, everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. He's an emotional being for better or for worse and there's a dumb of a reporter Taylor Green's boyfriend. He is. Yeah. The things you know. See, you're a real journalist. He's he's from one of the the new I'm all for opening up the White House press pool and all that sort of thing, but it means that you get some people in who are sort of yeah from Blogland. There's nothing wrong with that, but it it means that you get somebody who will do something like that. The problem with that interaction as I saw it was that the that guy asked that well disrespectful question and uh I I think it was disrespectful and I I'll very quickly say why. I mean, I think that I think that when a man comes from the realm of war into the realm of peace, the people in the realm of peace should have some respect or at least concession that the other man has come from the realm of war. And that if you're sitting in a political environment where you talk about people being destroyed and decimated and defenistrated and much more to a man who's for whom none of that is metaphorical, I think that's extremely hard to to accept. Um and I think that probably also at that moment there was a sort of sense of you know Zilinsky is being disrespected by being asked about what he's wearing when as everyone knows you know Churchill during World War II used to wear his fatings uh on foreign vis to remind people you're coming from the realm of war and I think that probably in that in that moment one of the things would have been going through his head would be. But I mean, if if if this was Putin sitting here being assaulted by a journalist, you know, you'd you'd hope your host stepped in and defended you. I mean, if let me try this one out. I mean, if if a if a journalist in the Oval Office, if Putin was sitting there or a putitive journalist said to Putin, you know, um, everyone knows you've had a lot of facial work done and, uh, word is you've used the same guy that Berlesi used to use. Um, can you comment on on that? You you'd you'd you'd say, well, that's a kind of disrespectful question for journalists to ask and it's a little bit um off off what needs to be gone over. Uh, and this the same thing with Zalinsky with the outfit. I think it was just petty and and and threw things off in a bad way. Yeah. And it was poorly researched because I think Zilinski was explaining this like 3 years ago at the beginning of the war why he wears what he wears and he's been consistent wearing the same. It's also by the way it's an example of the frivolity of a lot of the of the attempts to attempts to understand what's going on. I mean my view is that is that since actually most people in fact everybody cannot be an expert on everything. One of the things that we always do is to seize on minor and really quite unimportant things. I mean for I mean every site does it. Look at the way in which the American right for years talked about the Churchill bust leaving the White House Oval Office in the Obama years. I I didn't want to hear another darn thing about the Churchill bust after eight years because it just it was in lie of trying to understand and actually critique Obama's foreign policy. It was just an easy shorthand. I think it's the same. We we're always tempted to that. But the thing is I think you mentioned Putin. I think Putin would have been able to uh respond himself to that journalist effectively and he would have done it in Russian. Oh yeah, the language thing was Yeah. So I wanted to sort of lay out several just unfortunate things that happen in these situations and I think it happens in all peace negotiations and it's funny how history can turn in moments like this. I do think there's a reporter combined with the fact that the, you know, with all due respect, but Zilinsk's English sometimes is not very good. Yes. And apart from anything else, if he had have agreed to not done it in English, he would have bought himself the extra seconds in some of his replies that he needed. Yeah. Yeah. And have the wit. The guy is funny, witty, intelligent, you know, he could do that in the native language of whether it's Ukrainian or Russian to be able to respond and get the interpreter. So all of that is really unfortunate because I think on those little moments it's it's a dance and there's an opportunity there. You know, the Republicans, the the right-wing in the United States have a general kind of skepticism of Zilinski and and but that doesn't mean it has to be that way. It can turn, it can change, it can evolve. It's very interesting why it has happened. Why do you think it's happened? I the politics in the United States is so dumb that at the very beginning it could just be reduced to well the left went Putin bad, Zilinski good, rahrh Ukrainian flags. Therefore, the right must go the opposite. It sometimes is literally as dumb as that. Let's each pick a side and call the others dumb. I I had a a line I used recently. Um the necessity of people who live too long online to try to wade their way out of the memes. It is sort of like that, isn't it? Because yes, I mean, I can understand the people who find it very irritating that so many people who would put BLM flags or pride flags or, you know, trans flags in their bio then put Ukrainian flags in their bio despite almost certainly not knowing where Ukraine was. And uh if that happens, the inevitable instinct of a lot of people who aren't really thinking is to say, "That's really annoying. These people are really annoying. I'll sock it to them." But that's where you've got to try to rise above that and say, "Actually, funnily enough, the fate of a country doesn't depend on my tolerance for memes online today." Yeah. So, I think the memes can be broken through in meetings like the one that happened between Zilinsky and Trump. there can been real camaraderie. I've seen the skill of that just recently having researched deeply and interacted with uh Narendra Modi. M here's somebody who has the skill of, you know, for his country, for his situation, being able to somehow be friends with Putin and friends with Zilinski and friends with Trump and friends with Biden and friends with Obama was to go for and that while still being strong for his country and like fundamentally a nationalist figure who's like, you very not globalist, not uh anything but pro- India, India first, nation first. In fact, nation first with a very specific idea what that nation represents. Sure. And that, you know, Zilinski could do all of those things but have the skill of navigating uh the Trump room because every single leader has their own peculiar quirks that need to be navigated. Yes. The obvious one. I mean, I don't want to make it sound like it was all Zilinski's fault, but I mean, the obvious one was at the beginning of the meeting to say yet again, as he has done for three years, thank you to America and the American people and American politicians from across the aisle for your support for my country and it's our need. We're deeply grateful and because he for once forgot to say that. I I think it's not that simple. I think there's a It's not that simple. It's one reason. I think saying thank you, he didn't need to say thank you. There's that was why Vance that was what Vance leapt in on. He's just picking a thing to leap on. There's a whole energy. You have to acknowledge in your way of being that you have been very Biden buddy buddy with the left for the last four years. There's ways to fix that. Listen, these people are complicated narcissists. All of them. Biden, Trump. You have to navigate the complexity of that. And you basically have to say a kind word to Trump which is like showing there's many ways of doing that but one of them is saying uh feeding the ego by acknowledging that he is one of the world's greatest negotiators right I'm I'm glad we're able to come to the table and negotiate together because I believe you are the great negotiator mediator that can uh actually bring a successful resolution to like as opposed to have an energy of Like it should be obvious to everybody that Ukrainian are the good guys and Russia is the bad guys. There's this whole energy of entitlement that he brought. He forgot that there's a new guy. You got to like convince the new guy that this global mission that this nation is on, this war that is in in many ways the west versus the east that this there's ideals, there's whole histories here that this is a war worth winning. You have to convince them, right? Yeah. No, sure. And he obviously failed on that occasion. Um, but as I say, it must be bewildering to have landed in a place where people were seriously talking about Ukraine starting the war, right? And Zalinski, not Putin being the dictator. I I I did the front page of the New York Post the day after the president's comments on that saying that the big picture of Putin just saying, "Right, this is this is a dictator." And you know, I think the people can be uh live enough to be able to recognize that, you know, you can make criticisms of Zalinski or the Ukrainians, but it doesn't mean you have to fall full Putin. And again, unfortunately, a lot of people in our time don't have that capability. Can we go right into it? What is your strongest criticism of Putin? He's a dictator who's very bloody, as repressive as you can be of political opposition, internal opposition. He's kleptomaniac of his country's resources. Has enriched himself as much as he could uh as he has with the cronies around him. uh he's not just acted to uh destroy internal opposition in Russia but has gone to other countries including my own country of birth and uh killed people on there our soil using as it happens weapons of mass destruction. The use of pelonium in the center of London is not good. the use of incredibly dangerous nerve agents that could kill tens of thousands of people in a charming cathedral city like Salsbury. Not good. If the sort of apologist of Putin say, "Well, he's just a sort of tough man who's looking after his house business." Well, I don't think even if you think he has the right to do that, that he should be doing it in third countries, deliberately using uh weapons that are meant to show that you could take out tens of thousands of British citizens. Yeah. I mean, that's just for starters. What do you make for uh Do you think he's actually popularly elected? No. Do you think the the results of the elections are fraudulent? Yes. I mean, do you think it's possible that it's just that the opposition has been eliminated and he's legitimately popularly elected? It definitely helps a chap if he's killed all of his opponents. Something by using the term chap in that context is just uh marvelous. But, you know, I know I mean, but I mean, seriously, you you uh if if if people are worried about this is another of the sort of slightly Alice in Wonderland things recently about Zilinski is people are saying, why why hasn't he's a dictator? Because he hasn't held elections during a total war of self-defense. And it's like, well, you know, if you're really really passionate about free and fair elections in that neck of the woods, you'd at least notice that that Russian elections are not free and fair in any meaningful sense. But this doesn't mean that you have to say that therefore they should have western style elections and and and freedom, that Russia is is ready to go and become a western liberal democracy. It doesn't mean any of that at all. Let's just at least note that this is what Putin is. What do you think is the motivation for his invasion of Ukraine in 22? It's what he's said for years, which is uh the basically the reconstitution of the Soviet Union. Do you think there is u empire building components to that motivation? I would trust most my friends in Eastern Central Europe who certainly do think that there's a reason why the Baltic countries are the countries that are spending highest in percentage of GDP on defense and it's because they're very worried. I I don't think they're faking it. I don't think they're faking it for me or for anyone else. I think the Lithuanians, the Latians, the Estonians and others are genuinely worried for the first time in some decades. Do you think there's a possibility that uh the war continues indefinitely even if there's a ceasefire and the peace reached, the war will resume? He will seek expansion even beyond Ukraine. Yes. And uh the most obvious thing is that if Trump manages to negotiate a ceasefire, it'll be a temporary pause and whoever comes in as president after Trump, uh Putin will use the opportunity to advance again. Uh yes, again, one of the things that I have heard from parts of the American right and others is that all he wants is Ukraine. that that's all he wants and that he has no history or of rhetoric or actions that suggest anything else. And again, it's one of the reasons why it's useful traveling to places and seeing things with your own eyes because I very much remember being in the country of Georgia uh after Putin tried to invade in 2008. So I just again people don't have to be the greatest supporters of the Ukrainian cause just to recognize that that it doesn't seem to be the case that that Ukraine is the only thing in Putin's vision. Do you see value and uh maybe depth and power to the realist perspective of all this? you know, somebody like John Mir Shimemer's formulation of all this that uh in these invasions of Georgia of Ukraine, it's using military power to expand the sphere of influence Mhm. in the region in a cold calculation of geopolitics. It's interesting. One of the one of the fascinating things about the last few years is there's been an act of sort of necromancy of certain figures who were totally totally debunked. uh um in the area of Ukraine, Mia Shimmer and uh in the case of Israel, people like Finkelstein and uh it's been interesting cuz these are people that one hadn't heard of for some years because um they were not listened to for usually for good reason. But by the way, first of all, I'm very skeptical of the term realist in foreign policy because most people to some extent will say that they are a realist in foreign policy. Very few people are surrealists in foreign policy. Very few people are unrealists. I would like to meet them. A surrealist foreign policy analyst. We did mention Alice in Wonderland. So yeah, I mean maybe we should introduce the term, but I mean if you want to say if you want to look gimlet out, eyed out across the world, you you're you're a realist. I think the steelman of their argument would be Russia has or believes it has a sphere of influence and is regrettable, but there's very little we can do about that. That would be about the best version of that argument that you can make. Well, to expand on that, Steelman, isn't this how superpowers operate in the dark realist/s surrealist way? Meaning the United States uses military power to uh have a sphere influence over the whole globe really. Uh, China appears to be willing to use military power to expand its sphere of influence and political power. Yeah. More importantly, in the case of China, political power, non-kinetic warfare to take over areas, Hong Kong being the obvious one. But behind that, isn't there always a kinetic threat? Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah. I mean, you disappear some book sellers and and uh students are protesting. Of course. I just but but to go back to this. Yeah, of course. Okay. Countries believe they have or or would like to have spheres of influence. I do think at some point that the so-called realists on that have to try to decide how much leeway that allows you to give to a fairly rapacious uh regime. Uh and it's not I mean it's it's not the easiest calculation always to make. You have to work out whether or not for instance it is true that if if Russia had if Putin had managed to go all the way to Kiev in the first weeks of the war in 22 he would have gone straight on to other places and you know maybe he would have done maybe he would have taken his time. Maybe he wouldn't have done and this is a very fine calculation that changes every week let alone every year. you know, my friends in Georgia, I thought were um wildly off the mark when they were believing that after 2008 they could get, for instance, either NATO membership or EU membership. And I I thought that was completely unlikely and I still think it's unlikely and almost certainly undesirable for Europe and for NATO because you you've got to be very careful as and obviously this is one of the issues with Ukraine and has been since the '90s is, you know, are you going to set up a trip wire to start World War II? And that's not a small thing to consider. So what do you think the uh the peace deal might look like? And what does the path to peace look like in Ukraine in in the coming weeks and months? I have thought it would be uh regrettably the Ukrainians seeding some territory in the east and then um making sure they rearm uh during whatever peace period comes afterwards and probably all four territories of uh dasparation. You couldn't lay any of that out because it has to be negotiated on. But I I mean I think that and I think the ease with which non- Ukrainians are currently speaking about Ukrainian seeding territory is is concerning because these territories include hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens who do not want to live under Putin's rule and people who have families in the rest of Ukraine and and and much more. And um uh you know I I recently interviewed children who had managed to get out of the Russian occupied areas and um it's it's it's brutal for a Ukrainian to be growing up in that territory. So I when people say well obviously you know Donetsk has to be given to Putin I I think that that is not as easy a thing if you're in Ukraine as it is if you're sitting in New York say um and by the way I think that on the issue of there is a school of thought that that is that obviously President Trump to some extent was was floating in recent weeks which is that if if a deal is done a business deal in relation to minerals or anything else. You get this great you get a kind of buffer zone of American businesses and investment and therefore American business people in the region which would effectively warn Putin not to invade. I don't uh follow that idea because not least there were Americans in the regions that were invaded in 22 and they left fast and we know from Hong Kong and other places that just because there are international financial interests in the region does not mean that a dictatorship will not either um militarily or covertly take over. I I don't I don't see American miners as being an effective buffer zone against Putin. By the way, what did you um learn from talking to the children, Ukrainian children from those regions? Well, I mean, it's it's it's heartbreaking because the only schooling is u Russian schooling. Uh obviously teaching the Russian language, Putin's view of history, and effectively indoctrination. and and people can quibble with that term, but it's Putin indoctrination schools and any children or families that do not want that effectively have to hide and um not go out. And there were I spoke to children and parents who'd had school friends who for instance the Russians set up in 22 and 23 uh uh summer camps uh for the children of some of the areas that have been occupied and the children went off to the camps and then they didn't come back but they were just stolen. Um I mean it's thought that around 20,000 Ukrainian children have been stolen in this fashion. That's not a small thing. It's not got very much attention, but um yes, I mean, children who would hide whenever the Russian troops came to the door. Uh one teenage boy who described to me how when his mother was out, a a woman came around to the house, knocked on the door, um and gave him his papers uh and said that he had to attend the next week to sign up for the Russian army. This is I mean this is this is this is not good. And that's obviously what life is like for thousands of people behind the Russian lines in Ukraine. I just I just have it in mind when people say things like you know well obviously these regions have to be handed over. It's not it's it's very very hard if you're Ukrainian to concede to that. Yeah. And even if they are as part of the negotiation handed over, I think it'll probably be generations or never that that could be accepted by the Ukrainian people. Absolutely. And I would have thought never. What do we know about this kidnapping of children, the stories of the thousands of children that the the Russian forces kidnapped? Um, some of them were in orphanages in Eastern Ukraine. Not all by any means, but some were. And it's a very complicated story actually because many children were taken from their families. Uh many the Russians said, "Well, look at these Ukrainians. They don't even look after their children. Therefore, we will look after them." And I was I was recently when I was there looking into this story because it's it's a very interesting question as to why it hasn't had more attention. You know, one thinks of, for instance, the abduction of the Chibbach school girls some 12 years ago now in northern Nigeria and that appalling abduction of 300 girls by Boka Haram uh completely gained the world's attention and I was very interested into why the Ukrainian children who'd been taken by the Russians had not gained similar attention. There's a slight similarity with the war in Israel which I'm sure we'll come on to. But uh I do think that one reason is that they were effectively hostages and the Ukrainians knew this is this is my estimation of the terrain is that the Ukrainians knew that if they made a great deal about this was it were more than they did that the that the children would effectively be the most effective bargaining chip. And I do think there's considerable truth in that because if you look at for instance the way in which um pressure has been put on the Israeli government by the Israeli population about the kidnapped Israelis, you'll see that it it's it's a pretty effective tactic for uh any uh totalitarian regime or terrorist group to operate in a way that means that the population of the country you're attacking pressure their government to do something in terms of concession. It's it's a it's it's a very effective tool and I think that story was partly played down not just outside of Ukraine but also within Ukraine partly for that reason. As a truth seeker, as a journalist, how do you operate in that world where at least to me it's obvious that there's just a flood of propaganda on both sides? Now of course when you go there and directly experience it and talk to people uh but those people are still also swimming in the propaganda. So unless you witness stuff directly sometimes it's hard to know like I I speak to people on the Russian side and there's they're clearly first of all hilariously enough they almost always say there's that there's no propaganda in Russia. Of course. Uh, which makes me realize I mean you you can be completely lied to. Maybe I am in the United States as well and just unaware. Um, maybe Earth is run by aliens. Maybe the Earth is flat. So, I don't know. Maybe you've taken mushrooms. I have before this and I finally see the truth. And it's you that are diluted, Douglas. Okay. But uh back to our round earth discussion, round earth shills that we are uh how do you know what is true? You you can tell it when the bare facts become not true. Like you can tell it when somebody is willing to claim that everything caused the invasion of 2022 except for Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine. Yeah. There's a there's a hilarious thing that happens and I think you've actually speak about this that uh people are generally just much more willing to criticize the democratically elected leader always always so the interesting thing that happens is these wise sages that do the narratives of like NATO started the war right which there is some interesting geopolitical depth and truth to that like that NATO expansion created complicated geopolitical context whatever for But they forget to say like other parts of that story. Well, yes, of course. I mean, and I mean, of course, to some extent, it's rather, you know, there's a there's a very the most irritating type of question asker at any event is the person who says, "I was disappointed that in your 30inut talk you didn't address X." And I tend to say, "Well, looking forward to coming to your next talk where in 30 minutes you'll cover everything that could possibly be covered." Um, there's always stuff that's going to be left on the sides. There's always going to be stuff that's left unressed. There's always going to be other angles. There's always going to be somebody else who who who who has this interesting perspective and you can't cover it. Nevertheless, if you cover everything other than the central things, then it's suspicious. Many years ago, I was at a debate in London and there was a debate about the origins of World War II and uh Pat Buchanan talking of necromancy was one of the the the the speakers and um Andrew Roberts historian was one of the people on the other side and at one point you know they got so completely stuck into issues of iron ore mining in Poland in the mid you know something like this and the moderator I remember it was just it was just a melee and the moderator turns to Andrew Roberts and says Andrew Roberts why did World War II begin and he says World War II began because Hitler invaded Poland and it was a magnificent moment because everything had been a marsh they were just so lost in all the intricate and clever and interesting things that you can talk about about the origins of a war that you you you forget to mention the thing that's most important. And certainly my experience as a journalist and writer is that one of the reasons why you need to go and see things with your own eyes is because people are certain to tell you that what you've seen with your own eyes didn't happen or hasn't happened and it helps to steal you. Yes. for that moment. It's a gradual thing that happens where the obvious thing starts being taken for granted and people stop saying it because it's like the boring thing to say at a party and then all of a sudden over time you just almost start questioning whether whether you know like the obvious thing is even true. I don't know what that how that happens psychology. Yeah, I think it does. I I think it does. I've observed it in a lot of different places which is the important thing is the only thing you do forget. Everything else is what you remember. And some of us are for some reason wired in a way where we we don't we try not to forget the important thing. Remember the obvious thing. Yeah. Yes. And as you say not wanting to be the boring guy at the party who reiterates what is true cuz what a douchebag you'd be if you were that guy. Nobody likes Captain Obvious at a party. Okay. Is it possible that Donald Trump is a mediator, a successful negotiator that brings a stable peace to Ukraine? It's possible. We'll have to see. I think it's just too early and complicated to tell. That he wants to bring a peace seems to me to be obvious. He stated it a lot of times. Um whether he can, we're just going to have to see. It's extremely hard to see some of the parameters of the peace still. And I would suggest that the most one not the the most difficult, but one of the most difficult is that there is no peace guarantee on paper that the Ukrainians can possibly believe. I I just it doesn't matter because we've we've we in the west we some of the countries in the west have said it before that we'd secure their their peace and we haven't and so what other than NATO membership which is not possible in my view what other than NATO membership would reassure the Ukrainians that they are going to have their borders secured and the peace of Ukraine secured I I can't see I think uh there's not going to be ever a guarantee that you can trust. I think the way you have a guarantee implicit guarantees by having military and economic partnerships with as many partners as possible. So you have partnerships with uh the uh the Middle East, you have partnerships with India, perhaps even with China, with the United States, with many nations in Europe. All of which still suggests that if there's enough financial interests in Ukraine, they would prevent another Russian invasion. There would be financial pressure. Yeah, there would be uh you know, Russia needs to be friends with somebody either China or the West. Um I I think a world that's flourishing would have Russia trading and being friends with the West and the East. Thought it would be ideal. It would be ideal if if if they if the regime in Moscow wanted it. But that's that not I mean again you get into the thing of you know people accused of Russophobia. that I mean um the I I do believe that after the fall of the wall uh Russia was illreated by the west not treated with the uh some of the courtesy that it required I do think that and at the same time that doesn't justify uh the actions of Russia in the last 20 years right but let's descent from the surrealist to the realist it's very possible for Russia to uh be on the verge of military invasion of these nations and that being wrong while also not doing it because they're afraid to hurt the partnerships with the West and with China. It's possible, but the alliance they formed with this sort of rogue alliance with China to a considerable extent, North Korea, not useful. uh and Iran is um something they seem to find bearable. It's not a very it's not a very good alliance in most people's analysis, but it's an alliance. It's bearable, but I don't think maybe you disagree with this. I don't think the Russian people or even Putin uh wants to be isolated from the West. I think it wants to be friends with the West and with the East and with everybody. He just also wants Ukraine, right? And there's How Does the Rolling Stones song go? Which one? Um, not the satisfaction one. Sympathy with the devil. That's the one. You got me on that one. No, like there there's interests where there's expanding the sphere and influence. That's one thing on the table. But that can be put aside if you want to maintain the partnerships with these nations. And uh if Ukraine has strong economic partnerships with those nations, then that prevents Russia from invading. I think the premise is one that I've seen before. Um there was a famous uh what was his name? Norman Angel. He wrote this book which was a fantastic bestseller in his day where he believed that Europe would be in a period of endless cantian peace because the prospect of European powers going to war was so economically unviable. The book was reissued after World War I. Um, and I never got the second edition, but I assume it was significantly rewritten. That's a very kind of cynical take that just because the book is wrong. I'm not saying just a bookstore. I'm saying that that the idea that cooperation on an economic and other levels is any significant preventative device to madness breaking out is is not something I see. Could deter some people. It could deter some very very rational economically driven actors. But it it fails to take into account all of the other things that motivate people to go to war and to invade and to go mad. Okay. Well, I would argue that in the 21st century, one of the reasons we have much fewer wars is because of the much more gloss tools here on this on the geopolitical stage. One of them is that we're just much more interconnected economically, globally interconnected. and that that is always a present pressure on the world to keep peace. There's a lot of money to be made from peace. There's also a lot of money to be made from war. There's just there's a lot of uh interest tension and I I'm just presenting one of the tools that a leader should be using. The alternative is what military force that is an interesting one sometimes a useful one but unfortunately it has its downsides also. And after 3 years of war and the hundreds of thousands dead, you have to start wondering what are the options on the table. I agree. I'm I'm obviously for economic cooperation, but my only caveat is not to think that that is something which is of ultimate interest or even at the top of the list of interests of uh despots, tyrants, extremists who want something else. Yeah. But uh can you read the mind of Vladimir Putin? No. A lot of the ideas I hear about peace is Putin bad victory must be achieved NATO membership required. Yeah. There's this kind of like but what's the what's the there you have to come to the table to to end the killing is one and uh to have different ideas of how to uh have a nonzero chance of peace. So that you know the options are it seems to me the only option not the only option but the likeliest option is a lot of strong economic partnerships. There's of course other radical options. There's uh there's uh Russia joining NATO or something like this or there's um giving you know doing flirting with World War II essentially giving nukes to Ukraine or something like this. There's like crazy stuff or a totally new military alliance with France and and and Britain and Germany and uh European nations and Ukraine or some weird network of military power that threatens Russia in some way or maybe some big breakthrough partnership between India, China and Ukraine something like this just some really out there ideas and I think that's how the Well, that that's how the world finds a balance and realigns itself in interesting ways. And look, it could be. I I I hope you're uh I hope your idea is right. Um I think it's about the well certainly the most peaceful way for this to be resolved. My only caveat as I say is and also never forget to factor in that people want different things in this world and some people don't dream as you dream. I think we'll talk about that. So in your new book death cults that one is an easier one for me to understand to the story that you're describing. I am more hesitant to assign psychopathy to leaders of major nations. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm not by any means urging you to regard Vladimir Putin as a millinarian madman who cannot be in any way understood. I think he could be negotiated and reasoned with from your lips to God's ears. Can you steal me on the case for and then against Zilinski as the right leader for Ukraine at this moment? Is he the right person to take it to the the the point of peace? We'll see. If if if if he can, then he then of course he is. You know, he deserves enormous respect for galvanizing his people, for being elected in the first place, for galvanizing his nation at a time of incredible peril, um, for playing the international game of getting support for his country. Well, um, and sometimes the person who does that, not there are many people like that, can be the person who also brings about a peace deal and sometimes not. I think there's a degree to which he may have seen too much suffering of the people, the land he loves to be able to sit down at a table with a world leader who uh did the destruction and to be able to that is very hard compromise on anything. That's that's possible. Again, it puts the onus on him though. sort of slightly presupposes that Putin doesn't have the same human instinct on that. It is extremely hard. I've noticed this in a lot of conflicts. It's extremely hard the way in which outsiders come in and others who haven't seen what you've seen or gone through what you've gone through and say, you know, it's time to get around the negotiating table and just, you know, you think you didn't see what I saw. You didn't go through what I went through. who you'd tell me. Goes back to that thing of the the visitor from the land of war and the visitor from the land of peace. The visitor from the land of peace can easily talk about getting around negotiating tables, but the visitor from the land of war has seen other things. And um it's it's very hard for somebody who hasn't seen it to tell the person who has that they should act differently. And the sad thing about humanity is both the the person from the land of peace and the person from the land of war are right. Yes. That's a struggle. That's definitely a struggle. It's it's like asking somebody to forgive. I've seen that at a lot lot of ends of conflicts. People say, you know, the important thing is that we forgive and move on. And then the other person says, you know, your child didn't die of shrapnel wounds. Yeah, this is, you know, I got a lot of heat for interview with Zilinski. By the way, people privately, the people that messaged me is all love and support. Even the people that disagree in Ukraine, soldiers, uh, people online are ruthless. They're misrepresenting me. They're lying. People online are ruthless and misrepresenting and lying. Yeah. Good god, Lex. You've discovered a new uh phenomenon. I'm a real radical intellectual. Nothing misses your eye. I see the truth and I'm unafraid to point it out. Uh, no. There's a degree this this idea that you need to compromise with the person with the leader of a nation you're at war with and in so doing to some degree are forgiving their actions because the actual feeling you have is you want it to be fair. And the definition of fair when you've seen that much suffering is for him and everybody around him and maybe even all of the people on the other side to just die because you've seen too much suffering. But the the other side of that is yes there's children that have died but you go coming to the negotiation other children from dying. Yes, of course. And so like there is just you had this kind of way of speaking about it embodying that perspective that it's naive to say to come to the negotiation table and it is for a person from the land of war but the very smart intelligent and not naive person from the land of peace that is often right in some deep sense about the long arc of history for them it does it is the right thing to come to the negotiation table to end the more killing. The one thing I would add to that though is, you know, don't forget that it it's also depends on whether or not there's a clear shot of winning. Sure. If there's a clear shot of winning, and that's a the most important the most important thing in wars is not uh final negotiations or anything like that. It's simply winning and losing. And if you have a clear shot of winning and you can take it and you're near it, um then having somebody else come in and saying, "Uh, why not stop just before victory is is is very hard." That's one of the complex one of the many many complexities of the conflict we're talking about. You know what's the the other big complexity of that? Because the clear shot of winning is like a man walking through the desert seeing water. Uh it could be during war. It really is an illusion. So here's what happens. The really complicated aspect of negotiation is in order to negotiate peace from a place of strength, you have to have victory in sight. Yes. And so the temptation from that position is to not negotiate, is to keep pushing forward to achieve victory. And this I would say uh hindsight is 2020 but this is the failure in 22 and two occasions to achieve to negotiate a ceasefire and peace. One in the spring because there was a Ukraine was in a real big I would say position of strength he have having fended off the Russian forces around Kiev. That's one. And then as you mentioned in the fall of 22 with with Hersan and Hardgave had a lot of military success. They were in a place of strength and from that place they've decided to keep going because victory was in sight. But that was also an opportunity to make peace. It's perfectly possible. Yes. That's the hard thing. It's very hard. It's all hard. But I'm just again it's victory can be won in wars and is often won in wars. Uh and you're right, they can also grind on because nobody has the capability to make a breakthrough. Uh it's a case I mean the wisdom about civil wars tends to be that they sort of burn out after about 10 years or so uh for similar reasons. When you're in the war, can you actually know that a victory can be won? It's a very good question. And um you mean troops on the battlefield or military leaders or political leaders? Military and political leaders. It just feels like like I said man in the desert seeing water. I think there's a sense that victory is so close. There times there's times in a war when you feel like victory is close. No, you're right. It's and it just slips away. Yes. It's an interesting insight. It's like the way in which um there's a there's a force in nature which is that if you amass an army [Music] um amassing it will pull you in to using it. Yeah. Extremely hard to amass an army somewhere and then say let's go back. Yes, you're right. No, it's it's one of many many interesting aspects to warfare. I think the sad thing about successful wars, at least in the modern day, is it takes a great military leader, which I would argue that Zalinski really unified Ukraine in this fight in the beginning of the war. Mhm. You have to be that. And like you said, after either you amass the army and have military success to be able to step back and make peace that those two just don't often go hand in hand because again as a wartime leader, especially one who has seen the suffering firsthand, walking away is uh is tough, especially also combined with that just the realities of war where there is probably corruption that there There is things you know once the war ends there has to be investigations because the war wasn't won you might not turn out to be when history looks at it the good guy and a leader doesn't want to a leader always wants to be the good guy. So there's just all psychological complexities that are and you look at this whole picture uh in in the basic sense if you want Ukraine to flourish if you want humanity to flourish you just ask the question okay so what is the thing I would like to see there's so many historical analogy you can give but just surely not rewarding Putin's action ictions in any way would be a good way to deter him and other dictators from trying to grab land in the future. So yeah, and but this it's nuanced because like you it's very probably good to be the boring person at the party that says dictatorships are bad, uh democracies are good. Many of the ideals of the west democracies are better better. Yes, that sounds like animal farm but yes two legs better but yes democracy is better and uh invading countries is bad. Uh but World War II is bad too. So after you say something is bad, what's the next step? Cuz military intervention in a lot of these conflicts it'll be about deterrence. Yeah. But what's what's effective deterrence that we're going to have to keep going over for a long time to come? My question is how can we achieve peace in April, in May, right? Not like the adults at the table all seem to tell me, well, it's a process. It's complicated. you know, there it just feels like this is a thing that might go into the next winter and there's still um maybe initial ceasefire and the ceasefire is broken and there's more people dying. Sure. And it it's that mess. It seems like civility and politeness ignores the fact that people are dying every single day. I mean, of course, like we all almost everybody, not everybody, but almost everyone would like the killing to stop immediately. Of course. No, like I I think that is the boring thing at the party. Yes, but they don't say it often enough. Not often. There has to be a frustration. There has to be a frustration. I don't understand why Putin, Zilinski, and Trump can't just meet in a room together without signing anything. Leaders meeting and discussing and like the human connection there. There's so many layers of diplomats. It's the problem I have with a managerial class. I don't they they schedule meetings really well. They don't get done. And I I I would love it if people got done. So the soldiers get done. They have they're fighting the reality of the war. And then the leaders have the capacity to get done on the on the scale of nations and geopolitics. But like this diplomatic meetings and No, I agree. I share your frustration about At the same time, I think um I share your frustration because I've seen it all a lot of it, you know, with my own eyes. I mean, there was a batan as I was with the other week and they were hit just after I left their base and you wouldn't believe what a thermabaric bomb can do to the human body. And I share your frustration with that. At the same time, one of the things that happens if you are rushing is that you do, and I've seen this elsewhere, you you will put pressure on the people you can pressurize, and you will not put enough pressure on the people you can't pressurize. And that is one of the worrying things that could happen with this. simply you can put America can put extraordinary uh diplomatic, financial, intelligence, military pressure on Ukraine and it can put significant pressure on Putin, but it's much easier to pressure Zalinski and that's one of the many things that makes it harder is that the temptation to rush for peace except accepting that peace is the most desirable thing, accepting the horrors of war, which you know we can linger on, but you accepting all that. If somebody says we've got to get peace today and the three of them around a table, the most likely thing is that it'll be that it'll be the person who you can pressure most easily, who will be the person that you pressure and as a result have an outcome which yes might stop the killing as soon as possible, but might also set up a situation which rewards the aggressor and effectively punishes the victim. And that's an extremely ugly and common thing to happen. Yeah. And that's the other boring thing to say, the boring truth that uh the easy shortcut here is uh is to punish Ukraine and you just have to not do it. Let's keep being the boring people of the party. Yeah. Well, nobody's going to invite us. All right, let's go from one complicated conflict to uh perhaps an even more complicated one, Israel and Palestine. Can you uh take me through what happened on October 7th as you understand it and as you outline at the beginning of the book? Well, the book on democracies and death cults is a mixture of firsthand reporting and observation interviews and a wider reflection not just on the war that's been going on since the 7th October but the war that's been going on a lot longer and also I suppose on the what for me is one of the overwhelming questions which I'm sure we'll get to which is the reaction in the rest of the world. Obviously on the 7th itself it was a brigades size attack on Israel from Gaza. Uh Hamas broke through the security fence and uh attacked all the softest targets they could. Uh they swiftly overwhelmed things like the observation base in Nahal. They ran through the communities in the south uh very peaceful peace neck effect communities of the kibbutim as they're called communities um and murdered and raped and burned and kidnapped and of course they from their point of view had the great good fortune of also coming across hundreds of young people dancing in the early hours of the morning at a dance party and rampaged through that with RPGs and Kashnikovs and grenades and hammers and more and uh got within well 20 kilometers into Israel on places like Offakim and Sterat important towns and carried out their massacres there as well. We now know that the plan was that Hezbollah did the same thing from the north. Hezbollah joined in the war within 24 hours by starting firing rockets again in very large numbers into northern Israel from southern Lebanon. But the plan was that they would do the same thing from the north and carry out similar massacres there and effectively be able to meet in the middle and gar Israel from the center. The interesting reason why I think it'll be found out in the future, but why they didn't coordinate better was Hamas didn't trust any line of communication to Hezbollah to let them know exactly when they were going to do it that wouldn't be in it that wouldn't be intercepted. The Iranian revolutionary government in Thran, which obviously funds Hamz and Hezbollah and trains and arms, knew of the plan. It was a very successful attempt to annihilate the state, but they didn't get close to that, but they got worryingly closer than people might have thought they were capable of. I think from the Israeli side, uh it was obviously one of the most, if not the most catastrophic intelligence and military failure since the foundation of the state. And I think there are several reasons why. One is a perception problem. What a lot of military commanders and others described to me as the conception, the conception that had prevailed in Israel for some years and security military establishment was that Hamas were content with being corrupt and governing Gaza and you know lining their pockets and living in uh Qatar and becoming billionaires. But that like many other terrorist groups and you know cults that they would end up becoming just corrupt and not losing their ideology but the ideology becomes secondary. That's the first thing was there was just a massive error of the conception in Israel and then then there the multiple manifold security and military failures of the day and leading up to the day. Um and there will be a there already have been quite a lot of people held to account for that and there doubtless will be in the future as well. Um the the single uh thing I heard which I heard most and which was most distressing in a way was the number of people who described to me you know who survived the massacres in the south who said that you know they'd said to their children don't worry the army will be here in minutes and they weren't you know many places it was many hours till the army got there. Um and there are reasons for that. There are some reasons that will be military failings, leadership failings. Other things were very I I discovered were very human failings. I don't want to overstress the failure of the army because actually certain units and things got down very fast. There's a unit of Dan who got down to the junction you know by within about an hour 90 minutes of the massacres starting and joined in the fight and then there were self starters who I write about in the book extraordinary people who just like broke orders and just realized the magnitude of what was happening and said we're needed in the south go and fought very hard for hours days in some cases but the complexities on the ground were unbelievable. I mean, as as usually happens in warfare, but what they call the fog of war is a very real thing. You you you know what it's you can see it in hindsight, but you can't see when you're in it. And one of the things that made it very complicated was for instance Hamas coming in uh taking uniforms off dead Israelis uh wearing them uh coming in with Israeli style um apparatus on them. There's a Muslim doctor I quote in the book I interviewed who describes how he was going to his he's an Israeli Muslim Arab and he was going to he's a doctor he was going to his shift at the hospital at 6:30 in the morning the rockets start coming in because the rockets started first and then the the full invasion and he described to me how um you know he's one of the members of this group hat the United Hatsella which is a first responders group and um they sort of, you know, they get an alert and it tells them that, you know, a car has crashed nearby and they they they put on their uh, you know, first aid kit and so on and go and he got one of those alerts at one of the junctions and uh realized there was a car that something had happened and there were some dead bodies and he he stops and he sees these men dressed as soldiers. Uh, and they start and he's wearing his hats gear and they start firing at him and he just thinks, "What the hell? what the hell is going on? And uh they turned out to be Hammaz dressed as Israeli soldiers. They uh used him as a human shield to try to protect from any air assault and in the end they shot him and left him and he survived. He's a very very brave man. Um so there was a lot of confusion like that. There was a girl whose father I interviewed, she was at the Nova party and uh I met him at one of the reunions of the party in the weeks after and the reunions of the survivors and the family and so on and he described how in the last moments of his daughter's life, she phoned him on her phone like a lot of people. you he reassured her that army would get there and so on and and her boyfriend was shot in the head and was lying on her lap and she was obviously panicked and they managed to get into a car and escape the party but they went to a a community where they thought they'd be safe in the south of Israel and they were told to stay where they were by somebody who she said was a policeman and he wasn't the policeman he was Hermes dressed as police and uh she died she was shot and and killed as well And um so there was a lot of confusion like that. Uh it it hopefully we you know the world will find out exactly what went wrong. Israel will find out exactly what went wrong that led to this catastrophe but I mean it it was a a complete catastrophe. Do you have a sense of how such an intelligence failure could have happened? So there's a a bit of a temptation to go into conspiracy land because it's such a giant intelligence failure. It seems that there was um some manipulation on the inside for political reasons or for you don't need to go into conspiracy land. I mean I think there are people who say that there were parts of the intelligence network and so on that were trying that were withholding the information. I don't know again people will find out. Um there's an awful lot of politics inside Israel and uh it's it's it's hard to know that at this stage. I think most people are sort of still Israeli and not Israeli including people who are anti-Israel who just believe that you know Israeli military and particularly intelligence dominance is so so strong that there must have been some kind of conspiracy otherwise how could this have happened? I don't think you need to go into that. I think that I mean for instance some of the young women at the observation base have are on the record. They've said I've spoken to them myself and they who said that they had been warning in the weeks running up to the 7th that they were seeing uh maneuvers and training by the border which suggested that Hamas was was going to do something like this. and they say that they were ignored that you speak to some of the more senior commanders about that and they say the thing is that this stuff was happening all the time. So it's very hard it's very hard to know at the moment. Can you talk through your understanding of who and what Hamas is, its history and u the governing ideology of this group. Well, Hamas in a way quite easy to understand because they they say what their ambitions are. They say what their beliefs are. They've seen it said it from their governing charter onwards. And you also have the advantage with Hamz that they as it were in trying to understand them is that they they tend to do what they say and um act on what they believe. The primary aim of Hamas is to destroy the state of Israel and then see they're not an unusual group. Sadly, the the bit of it that is hard for some people to understand I think is that is that they really do mean what they say and that they really do mean what they say they want to do. And I give a number of examples in the book of this. But I mean the most uh obvious is the case of Yakya Sinoir, the Hamas leader who is generally regarded as having orchestrated and and um arranged the 7th of October. He uh we know a fair amount about him because he was in prison in Israel in the 2000s for murdering Palestinians in Gaza. And uh he was released in the prisoner swap for the he was one of the more than 1,000 uh Palestinian prisoners inside Israel who was released in his in a swap for Gilead Shalit, the abducted Israeli soldier. and uh Yaya Sininoa in prison in Israel um talked to among others a a dentist who ended up saving his life because Yaya Sinoir had a brain tumor and uh this this dentist identified this and uh actually sent him to the hospital and the Israelis famously uh removed the tumor and and and saved Sino's life but this dentist used to speak to him in in the prison fairly regularly and and was related not least to the New York Times his conversations with Sinoir and uh Sinoir said in one of those conversations he said you know he said at the moment you Israel are strong um but one day you'll be weak and then I'll come and uh that's that's what he did. Is it a hatred of Israel or is it a hatred of Jews? Is it on the level of nations or the level of uh religion? Both. It's both. I mean originates from a religious mindset, but it's of course political as well. Um I mean the Hamas charter of course some people sort of think the Hamas charter is of no significance and I often notice this slight of hand that that that people do again it goes back to what I was saying earlier um forget everything other than the most important basic things but the Hamas charter uh among other things quotes the hadith that you know the end times will not come until all of the the the the rocks and the trees shout out oh oh Muslim there's the Jew behind me come and kill him. And uh that that is so Hamas is both obviously anti-Israeli obviously and anti-Jewish obviously. Um it's it's uh and by the way I mean um one of the many painful stories I tell in the book is of the fact that so many of the people in the communities that they attacked. It's not as if there'd be a right community to act and a wrong community to attack, but that many of the communities they attacked were communities which deeply deeply dreamed of the idea of living in peace with their Palestinian neighbors. Uh there's a woman who whose name has become relatively famous since certainly famous inside Israel Silva who was a peace activist who spent every weekend um driving Gazan children from uh the border to if if they had very like rare medical needs that could not be seen attention to within inside Gaza would drive them to Israeli hospitals. And she spent every weekend doing that. worked for all of the sort of left-wing peace neck organizations in Israel. And you for a for a while after the seventh, her neighbors and others thought that uh she had been taken captive into Gaza and actually there was a hostage poster for her and there were appeals by the various peace nick organizations for Hamz to hand her over. But it turned out she'd been burned alive in her home. And this wasn't discovered for quite a long time because there was so little DNA left of her that it was very hard to identify the remains as being hers. Um, so there were there were a lot of just a lot of people in the Gaza envelope as it's it's called in Israel in the area around Gaza who who would have been the people who, you know, wanted to live peacefully with uh the Gazans someday. And those there's a certain among the many it's not an irony but just among the sort of pains of the day is that is that so so overwhelmingly these these were the people that that Hamas brought hell to the response to October 7th by Israel. Can you steal me on the case that Israel went too far? Well, the case that that started from very early on that that critics of Israel had was the claim that I I think I first heard it on about the 8th of October before Israel had done anything in response was the claim that uh Israel must act proportionately in response. And I I have a critique of this that I've often expressed which is that there is such a thing as proportionality in warfare. Um, and at the same time, Israel is always accused of acting disproportionately. And the proportionality that the rest or much of the rest of the world seems to think Israel should express in warfare is to is to have an equal um an equal level of suffering or killing on both sides. I I don't think there's any um uh law of war that says that, you know, if you kill 1,200 people and you kidnap another 250 that as it were, the other side's allowed to do the same back. But that's what a lot of people think. And then when they see the death toll escalating on the Gazen side, they say Israel has acted disproportionately and has overreacted. That one is a is a is is tricky because you know it's it's it's my belief that I mean again this is a basic thing but it has to be stated that 9 million citizens of Israel if you extrapolate that out to what the 7th of October would have meant in American terms you'd be talking about uh a day on which if if the attack had happened in America where 44,000 Americans were killed in one day and 10,000 American citizens taken hostage. Nobody can tell me that if such an atrocity occurred that America would not do whatever it needed to destroy the groups that had done that and to retrieve the hostages who've been taken. So just on that point, I agree with you 100% America would do would hit hard back and I think a lot of Americans would feel justified in that. But it's also possible that uh the military-industrial complex and the politicians would do something like the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which means extend far beyond hitting back and actually do a thing that's destructive to everybody, including America financially and the flourishing of America and the flourishing of humanity broadly and the region and the stability and the war on terrorism. uh if that's a real thing. Uh the war in Iraq and Afghanistan did not maybe succeed in defeating terrorism or even making progress. It probably made more terrorists than not. So there's a justified feeling of hitting back and uh going after somebody like Bin Laden in the case of 911. And then there's just the actual implementation. Mhm. And it seems like the implementation can sometimes um un intended or unintended have consequences that are bordering on war crimes if not downright war crimes. Now this this is a general statement and now we'll look at Israel where things are small land everything is very compact. There's a lot of complexities that are well studied that we've talked about extensively. Well, the two stated aims of the Israelis after the 7th were uh to get the hostages back and to destroy Hamas. And many people said that you could do one, but not both. Um and I actually think they've gone a long way to doing both. By no means everything. There are still hostages as we're speaking held in Gaza, including a young American Um and Hamas is not completely destroyed. It's very very significantly degraded but it's not completely destroyed. But those are the two aims. Um I believe that I mean I've seen as much of the war as any outside observer. I don't know. There are some exceptions maybe, but and so I think I can say with considerable certainty what the Israelis have and haven't done. Um the the oper there were various operations at the beginning, various uh plans which didn't happen like storming straight in and getting for instance as many hostages as possible out of the Shifa complex which is called a hospital but it's a al also at the very least the Hamas command headquarters and um there was a there was a plan to maybe go and uh do that fast but it was it was avoided because of the number of deaths on all sides that would be likely to happen. The Israelis did actually hold back at the beginning. There was a a period of making sure that when they went into Gaza, they didn't do so in any way blind. The Gaza is a very built up area and populationwise is is is um is densely populated. Something by the way which the people who who claim frivolously that Israel has been committing genocide never take account of which is the fact that the garden population has boomed since the Israeli withdrawal in 2005. It's almost doubled. Um but yeah it's a densely populated area and it's an incredibly difficult place for the train of war because of one thing in particular which is that goes back a bit to our conversation earlier. This is a much more extreme example. I mean, Hermes really don't play by the rules. In fact, they they use the rules of war, the laws of war completely to their own advantage. You know, it has to be reiterated, you are not meant to uh disguise your army as civilians. You're not meant to use places of uh care like hospitals as bases for your military operations. You're not meant to use schools and places of worship as operating centers war. And Hamas does all of these things and has always done so. And it does so with the very obvious reason that for them the whole thing is a two for one offer. you you you get to operate everywhere. And if the Israelis operate anywhere, you claim that this is a war crime because how could they attack this group of civilians? These people who are dressed as civilians, these people merely fighting from a mosque and so on. And that's why that's why everybody who's been to Gaza, who's seen the fighting, knows the same thing, which is this is just incredibly difficult difficult warfare of a kind that that American troops have seen in the last 20 years in Fallujah and elsewhere. Uh Kurdish uh militia, the Peshmerga, saw when they were fighting as our frontline troops in the war against ISIS. similar house to house but by no means with the same entrenched uh uh bases. Uh you know again it can't be stressed enough that Hamas has used the years since the Israeli withdrawal from 2005 to build this vast underground tunnel network. And again it's obvious but it has to be remembered when is and I quote one of the Hamz leaders in the book saying this in an interview when they build their tunnels they do so in order that their tunnels are used by them Hamas to store their weaponry to secure their fighters and to hold hostages. They do not build their underground tunnel networks for the safety of guards and civilians avoiding aerial bombardment. And you know the every difference in the world seems to me to exist between a country which does build uh bomb shelters for its citizens and um a government which builds bomb shelters for its bombs. Can you discuss the flow of money here? So, how does Hamas how does Hamas the leadership use the money? So, you started to talk about the tunnels, but how much corruption is there? Can you just lay it all out? Uh because I think that's an it's an important part of the picture here. It's totally corrupt. Every Hermes leader who's uh now dead died a billionaire with a B with a B. To say that they used Gaza's resources or the the the resources that came into Gaza for their own ends is to just vastly understate matters. Um, Hames used everything that came in to build the infrastructure of terror that allowed them to do the seventh and everything since. Um, they militarized the whole of the Gaza. They um by the estimations of troops I've been with there, they every second to third house had weaponry stashed there, bombs, RPGs, Kashnikovs, rockets, tunnel entrances, uh the network that they just embedded all these years was was total. They they they they you know, one of the many many tragedies of this is that whatever you're reading of the rights and wrongs of the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, it was an opportunity for the Gaza to become something else. It could have become a thriving state. It could have been a thriving Palestinian state. It's just that Hamas, like the PLO before them, decided that they wanted to destroy Israel more than they wanted to create a Palestinian state. And that is to the great great detriment of the Palestinians of Gaza, to put it at its mildest. So just to outline here, leadership of Hamas are stealing the money that gets sent by Qatar, by everybody. So they're putting in their pocket and then the by the American taxpayer, by the European taxpayer as well. Yes. Yeah. Well, yeah, but I mean it's not just about the stealing the money. It's it's about using the the money and the infrastructure to annihilate your neighbor. I mean that's those those two things, but the corruption is uh a signal from an economic perspective, but it's also a signal of deep moral corruption because they're screwing over the Palestinian people. Yes. A cynicism. assassinate. Yeah. Okay. And then with the money they do spend on the Palestinian cause, they're not doing that to uh build up no Gaza. They're doing it to uh strengthen the militaristic capabilities. Yes. Of the terrorist organization of Hamas. You have maybe you can correct me on this. um has said that the people of Gaza have some significant responsibility for the actions of Hamas because they've elected them. They elected them. The whatifs are endless, but very unwise of the George W. Bush administration to push for elections in Gaza um after '05. But Hamas were elected and they then 2007 killed the other Palestinian faction that was their main challenger, Fata. Uh killed them, threw them off rooftops, dragged their bodies behind motorbikes through the Gaza and from that point they had total control. And you know this is is difficult because you you can get into the realm of being accused of advocating or in any way justifying collective punishment uh if you talk about this. But it should be borne in mind that you know Hamas had effectively 18 years to run the Gaza and that's that's the time that it takes from the birth of a child to the end of their formal education. And in 18 years they could have presided over and produced a generation of young gazins who were productive. Productive for their people, for their society, for their neighbors, for the rest of the world. And they didn't. They spent 18 years indoctrinating the children of Gaza into a death cult and into a genocidal hatred which obviously is was most dangerous to the Israelis, but it was obviously disastrous for the people of Gaza. And you know there is um there's just if you speak to soldiers who were there in 2014 when Hermes started a war again um one of a set of rounds of war since 2005. If you speak to the soldiers who were there in 2014 going house to house and who were also involved in the war since 2003 they all say the same thing which is the marked radicalization of the Gazin population. the marked increase in just I mean the most I mean it's so benile in a way to even cite it but you know like the numbers of copies of mine camp in Arabic in an average Gazen household the protocols of the learned elders of Zion there are so many whatifs and other paths that Heramaz could have taken but that was the one they took they decided to take the path of using their time in power to build up their infrastructure radicalizes population and encouraged them to believe that they could destroy the state of Israel. And then on October the 7th, they gave it their best shot. Uh and by the way, there is no organized collective punishment of the citizens of Gaza. Collective punishment would just be dropping bombs with no purpose across civilian areas, carpet bombing, this sort of thing. This is simply not what the IIAF and the IDF have done since the 7th. Um, they have been fighting a house-to-house war against this terrorist group. They do do aerial strikes. Gaza is is is very very badly beaten up as a the buildings I mean the the infrastructure that that existed um it's uh there aren't many buildings standing but this is not the result of just wild and imprecise bombing by the Israelis. It's been extremely concerted. it's extremely uh difficult but when people say well this must…

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