The Best Israel Conversation You've Ever Heard

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Andrew, you were on the ground in Gaza. What did you see? There is enough aid in Gaza. The issue is with distribution, and we have to once again insert Hamas into this conversation. There are two sides to this war.

Israel is not thinking long-term here because they're assuming that America will have their back forever and so they can do what they want, which I think is a very dangerous position. Is Israel committing a genocide? No. There have been more bombs dropped in Gaza than people have been killed.

You know, either the IDF are the worst shots in history or they're actually taking care of civilian lives. You don't give vaccines for polio to the entire child population of Gaza if you're trying to destroy them. Why on earth would you do these things if all you wanted to do?

was to destroy Palestinians or Gazans as an ethnic group. It just doesn't make any sense. Haven't Israel taken out all the leaders of Hamas already and they just have new ones and they just keep going anyway? Yeah, most of them. And that's one of the reasons I think Israel should have ceased fire.

six months ago. Andrew Fox, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. Good to have you on. We're going to talk about Israel and the war in Gaza above all. Before we do, though, your background is super interesting and super informative and informing for what we're going to talk about. So tell us a little bit about your story. Who are you?

So I did a law degree at Cardiff, graduated in 2003, and I decided that jumping out of planes and running around shooting guns would be a lot more fun than being a lawyer. So I joined the British Army. I did 16 years, served in the Royal West Fusiliers and then the parachute regiments. Three tours in Afghanistan, tours of Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

I left the army in 2021. And for three years, I was a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which is the British West Point. It's where we train our young officers. And I taught behavioral science and war studies. And I'm now a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, which is a think tank in Westminster focusing on defence in the Middle East and societal issues more broadly.

Tell us a little bit about your time serving in combat areas. Did you... Is there any... analogy or comparison to be made with the things you experienced and saw with your own eyes and what's happening in Gaza today in terms of urban combat, you know, highly enclosed environments, civilian population enmeshed with the resistance, if you like to call it that way.

Is there anything that was informative from your time serving? To an extent, the human factors, I think, remain the same. So the stresses that people are under, the planning processes that soldiers have to go through. And there's also that sort of adaptive... um, nature of raw, where you learn as you go along. So the IDF went in in a very different way to the way they fight now. Uh, because they... How so? So, for example, they went in with a kind of armored maneuver.

focusing on an enemy that was embedded in traditional defensive positions. They've had to transition due to various things. So, for example, the pause between Khan unit and Rafa between January and April 2024. Hamas adapted their tactics so they started mining every single building in Rafah.

which meant the IDF had to adopt their tactics and how they cleared through buildings. So there's that adaptive process, and it was the same in Afghanistan with the IED threat. So my first tour in 2007, there's an infantry between commander. It was fairly kinetic. It was pretty much gunfights.

But obviously then the Taliban adopted their tactic to improvise explosive devices, landmines everywhere. And then so we had to adapt. And so there's that continual, it's like a chess game, move and counter move. So that's very similar as well. But... The big difference, I think, between Afghanistan and what's happening in Gaza and to an extent what happened in Lebanon is that Afghanistan was what we call a counterinsurgency. So the consent and the will of the people were...

the main effort for the mission, you know, getting them on side for the government of Kabul, obviously completely unsuccessfully, but that was the aim. Whereas in Gaza, the aim is closing with and destroying the enemy. and, of course, trying to get the hostages back. So it's a very, very different... Why is that? Is that because there's no chance of convincing the population of Gaza that Hamas are the enemy?

So not that Hamas are the enemy, but that Israel are friends. So if you look at Gaz and Telegram groups, you know, there's a really good translate function there. So even if you don't speak Arabic, and my Arabic's very, very poor, you know, I can read the words, but...

That's about it. People in Gaza hate Hamas. They blame them absolutely for the misery they're going through right now. And they have very, very strong feelings and they're not shy of expressing it. That doesn't translate into loving the state of Israel. who've just been bombing and killing them for 21 months. So they're never going to sort of bring the hearts and minds of the Ghazan people with them. So the best they can hope for, I think, is removing Hamas and then...

trying to find some kind of alternate governance once the military campaign is finished. Do you think that possibility of winning over the people, the hearts and minds, was ever on the table if Israel had taken a different approach? No, I don't think so. And if you look at the videos from 7th of October when the hostages were dragged back into Gaza and the cheering hordes of Gaza civilians, the thousands of Gaza civilians who followed up Hamas' fighters on 7th of October to commit atrocities.

in Israel itself. And then build onto that things like the Unruh education system, which has trained Gazans for decades to despise the Yahud, despise Israel and the Jews. You know, this is an institutional decades-long bit of cultural... that I don't think is going to be overcome by a military campaign. It needs a much longer reconstruction campaign, and I don't think that is a problem that anyone has really addressed properly yet. One more question before Francis takes over.

Just to set the scene for our conversation, you mentioned what you were teaching at Sandhurst, war studies, behavioral psychology and things like that. One of the things that I'm a bit of a history buff when it comes to war, but I've never been in the positions you've been or certainly not educated on it. But even to me, it seems like so much of a public discussion of this conflict.

is based on the complete ignorance of war, the realities of war, the way that war has always been, the way that war will always be. So what is it that you see somebody with your expertise? about the way this whole thing is being discussed, that you would like people to be aware of that they're currently not? It's that Hamas have been deleted from the conversation. This is being presented in the media as simply Israel just bombing.

gaza randomly um that's nonsense you know 20,000 plus Hamas operatives have died. 3,000 Israeli soldiers have been wounded or killed on the battlefield in Gaza. This is very much a two-way war. And yes, it has all the... human suffering and civilian death and tragedy that you would expect in any war zone.

but not at any greater scale than any other war, and especially not when Hamas have a deliberate strategy of sacrificing Gaza civilians. And there's nowhere for those civilians to flee to, other than temporary humanitarian zones, because Egypt has shut the border.

You know, if Egypt really cared about Gaza civilians, they would open their border and allow them to flee, just like every other war. Look how many Ukrainians fled Ukraine. And that's one of the reasons why Ukrainian civilian deaths aren't as high as they could be. And yet none of that is available on the table in Gaza. So it's framing this as a war. And that is what's missing from the debate right now. And Andrew, you just said that Egypt refused to open the border. Why is that?

Well, Egypt, of course, used to own Gaza. You know, after 1967, that was entirely Egypt's possession. The Sinai is not particularly safe or stable. There's Bedouin insurgents in the Sinai Peninsula that Egypt is desperately trying to keep a handle on. They've spent a long time getting a grip of the Muslim Brotherhood issue they've had in Egypt.

And I think the last thing they want to do is further destabilize the situation with two million refugees. That hasn't stopped Egypt joining the genocide case against Israel in the ICJ. And yet... They have it in their power to end this genocide immediately by opening the heavily reinforced border gate that you see. So I've been along that border with Egypt and it is an incredibly well reinforced and solid wall.

So that's something that doesn't quite add up there, I would put it to you. So they are pointing the finger at Israel and using the word genocide, which is a very, very, very serious claim to make. And yet they're doing nothing to alleviate the genocide. And yet very few people in the media or political commentators are pointing the finger at Egypt. I mean, how are they getting away with this?

Well, I think we've got a 50 plus, 60 plus year information campaign supporting what Hamas is doing in... In Gaza and to an extent what the Palestinian Authority are doing in the West Bank or Judea and Samaria or whichever we're calling it today. This was a reframing. backed by a superpower, backed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, um, to take the issue of Palestinianism, to turn it against Israel.

and reframe it as oppressor versus oppressed, which of course is the narrative that's been heavily pushed throughout sort of Western academia, Western media. And it is essentially because of that framing of oppressor versus oppressed, it gives...

The Palestinians are free pass to do whatever they want. And it means that Israel is always the bad guy, no matter what happens. And so extraneous issues, like what are Egypt doing? What are the Gulf states doing? What are Turkey doing? What are Qatar doing? getting kind of overlooked completely, because the focus is Israel is the bad guy, and that's really all that matters in that 60-year narrative that's been pushed so hard. And, well...

We've used the word genocide already. It's already come up, so let's delve right into this. Are Israel or is Israel committing a genocide? No, no, emphatically not. Look, there's a key factor to genocide, and that is the dolus specialis of the intent. OK, so normally if you committed a crime, went to court, it would be the burden of proof would be beyond reasonable doubt. OK, so 90% plus certainty that you'd committed the crime.

But the dola specialis, it's 100%. It cannot be anything else for it to be intent for genocide. And if you look at the fact that Israel has sustained 3,000 casualties, that Israel has the capability to end this tomorrow. If they really wanted to wipe out 2 million Palestinians, they have enough firepower to do that.

And they've demonstrated that repeatedly over the last year, that they have firepower beyond anything. Even, you know, even the UK could bring to bear, quite frankly, and yet they're not using it. There have been more bombs dropped in Gaza than people have been killed.

You know, either the IDF are the worst shots in history, or they're actually taking care with civilian lives. You don't give vaccines for polio to the entire child population of Gaza if you're trying to destroy them. You don't... facilitates twice the amount of food aid going into Gaza as was going in before the war, if you're trying to kill everyone.

You don't put ground troops into harm's way and have 3,000 families in Israel who are now having to deal with the death and the injury of their loved ones. You know, why on earth would you do these things if all you wanted to do was to destroy? Palestinians or Gazans as an ethnic group. It just doesn't make any sense. And the intent that is inferred by some of the very dodgy statements that Israeli politicians have made, and I think we should face this head on.

Modric is a former football player, mate. Luka Modric has nothing to do with what's happening in Garza, let's just be clear. to one side. Um, but the, uh, you know, Smotswitch and Ben Greer have said outrageous things that are completely unacceptable, but they're not in the direct decision-making chain for the war. Mm-hmm. and the allegations against Netanyahu, against the old defence minister, Yoav Dalin.

they're completely taken out of context. Andrew, can you not see, though, and this is where I genuinely have a lot of trouble with this, can you not see that, let's say, Britain and America invade Afghanistan, which they did. We can argue about whether that was the right decision, whatever. And the finance minister of Britain goes out and starts making the sort of statements that Smotrich has been making. And you go...

Like, OK, he's the finance minister. Maybe he's not in charge of the war decisions. But if he is in the cabinet and allowed to be in the cabinet while making those claims, that can't be anything other than. a reflection of what that government sees as the right thing to be saying.

Yeah, up to a point. And I do agree with you. And I would utterly condemn everything that's come out of their mouths pretty much during this war. You know, they are absolutely advocating for genocide and ethnic cleansing. And...

whilst I don't necessarily agree with sanctioning them as the UK government has. Actually, it might be no bad thing if it gets them to sort of dial back a bit on that absolute nonsense that comes out of their mouths. So I'm fairly relaxed about that when it comes to what the UK government has done in respect to those two politicians.

The way the war is being fought is through the war cabinet, not the government cabinet. And that is now pretty much Bibby and the Defence Minister, and that's pretty much it. I think Gaddy Eisencott, the old head of the IDF, was there as an observer. I don't know if he still is.

But really, this kind of lives and dies now with Bibi. He centralized everything under his control, working direct to the IDF, who are showing very, very strong resolve in pushing back against some of the madder plans that have been suggested.

But either way, it doesn't pay out on the ground. So even if you take the intent out of it, the actions on the ground aren't genocidal either. Because significant numbers of the enemy and Hamas are getting killed. And they're allied militant groups, of course.

And when you're closing in on one-to-one ratio between fighters killed and civilians killed, then I think that suggests to you that perhaps they're not just trying to kill indiscriminately. But also people go, look, Andrew, come on, there was a food embargo.

That lasted months. I think the last time I checked, I think it was three months that it lasted. Started early March, went right through to June. This is inhumane. Children were starving. You had people, you had surgeons and doctors coming out and saying. People are so physically weak that when we operate upon them, the operation goes well. They're so malnourished that they then end up dying. This is awful, inexcusable, a war crime. What do you say to that?

I mean I don't necessarily disagree. I mean I don't think Israel should have put an embargo on food. You know, it's not something I would support. However, if we look at the statistics, twice as much food has gone into Gaza during the war as beforehand. It's over 3,000 calories per person per day, which should be enough to survive on.

During the ceasefire period in early January, we saw enough food going into Gaza that should have lasted between three and six months for every person in Gaza. We know Hamas is hoarding the aid supplies. We know... that they have warehouses full of aid that they have been using to withhold from the population so they can control them and so that they can sell it to pay their fighters. We know that the UN has...

bucket loads of aid that has already been cleared for distribution by Israel queued up at Keram Shalom Crossing in the south of Gaza, and yet the UN won't distribute it because they won't work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. So, whilst on the surface...

It looks appalling, and I agree, and I still state again, they shouldn't have done it to put an aid block in. That has now been lifted. There is enough aid in Gaza. The issue is with distribution, and we have to once again insert Hamas into this conversation. there are two sides to this war.

Israel is trying to feed people. Hamas are trying to retain the aid themselves and starve their own population. And the UN is refusing to deliver food because they won't work with the IDF and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. So you can paint Israel as the bad guy. But that would be completely devoid of nuance and completely devoid of any balanced assessment of the situation. Well, I'm glad you brought up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, because when doing research for this interview...

The problem is, Andrew, is you're looking at this and this is somebody whose job it is to ask experts like yourselves questions. And I'm reading articles that are in The Guardian. Let's not even mention Al Jazeera, but you're reading articles in The Guardian and they paint one picture.

You see the UN come out and say something. You see the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation come out and say something else. And you've got political commentators of all shapes and hues with their own particular narratives. And you're looking at this and you're going... I don't know what's true. What is actually happening? Is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, do they just randomly shoot at people, which is what some people are saying?

And then two of their operatives were injured because there was a grenade attack. I mean, I guess my question is, how do you know the truth and what is going on? I think what you've perfectly illustrated is the fact that there are two wars going on in Gaza. There's what's actually happening in Gaza, and then there is the entire bubble of media and information maneuver that's going on around it.

And that information campaign is designed to enable Hamas's survival. It's designed to force the Israelis through international pressure to a ceasefire. And it's working to an extent. You know, we saw that letter just this week from 28 countries telling Israel to ceasefire.

and curiously omitting the fact that it was Hamas who turned down the last Seeds Fire deal. So there are two wars going on here. Now, it is very hard to find out what's going on the ground. It's my job to do that, and even I have struggled over recent weeks. I had a degree of a breakthrough yesterday. And what we're looking at with the GHF is at the moment four distribution sites. So just for people who don't know, let's just talk about what the GHF is, what they're appointed to do.

Why were they appointed it? Who are they? So part of the problem with defeating Hamas, which is Israel's war aim, is that Hamas has retained control within Gaza by leveraging the aid. So they seize it. They sell it. And that helps them control the population and pay their own fighters. So what Israel has tried to do is come up with a way to separate the people of Gaza from Hamas. OK, they're probably not going to do that conceptually. They're probably not going to say...

We now love Israel, but physically separating them so that Hamas can be destroyed and their command and control over Gaza can be deleted. And so what Israel has done is seized control of the aid delivery mechanism.

So they make sure that the aid doesn't get hijacked on the way to delivery points. And they make sure that when people come to the delivery points to collect the aid, it's not then getting nicked by Hamas. Now, once people leave the delivery sites, there's obviously challenges there, but...

You know, this is a far more effective way of getting aid for free to people rather than Hamas selling it to them. Because people at the GHF sites have expressed surprise when they receive aid that they haven't had to pay for it.

For some of them, this is the first aid in the entire war they've had that they've not had to pay for. Now, if we can start unpacking the issues here, first of all, there is the issue of thinking about it from a military tactical perspective. You have to secure the site. So there has to be that secure delivery site before people can come to it and take the aid. That is done intimately by contractors, former American service personnel most usually.

The wider bubble of security for that secure distribution site is secured by the IDF. And where the shootings are coming in is when people are coming up to the SDS, the secure distribution site, to get the aid. They're being held back by the IDF so they don't flood the site and get trampled, which happened the other day. They tried it without the IDF securing it and there were 19 people killed in a stampede for food.

Unfortunately, the IDF have limited options, and they're using an option to control the crowds, which frankly isn't very good. They're trying to use warning shots to do it. That's certainly not how the British Army would do it, I don't think. We do use warning shots, we absolutely do, and I've seen civilians hit by them as well, so this does happen.

But it is a suboptimal way, I would suggest, of putting crowd control measures in place. But how I would turn that on its head is just like, what are the other options? They're not going to send troops in with riot shields. You know, it's a war zone. You can't do crowd control whilst there's a... You know, a specific threat from Hamas, and Hamas hate the GHF. I think 14 GHF workers so far have been injured or killed.

including the two from a grenade the other day. Hamas are embedding people in the crowds of civilians to try and draw fire from the IDF as well. And the IDF are a bit trigger-happy, if we're brutally honest. So why is that? Why are the trigger happy? Because it's a war zone and because they have wars of engagement, need tightening up. I think they're a bit loose, personally.

Certainly, perhaps not with fighter jets. I think their rules of engagement there are very, very tight. But on the ground with your grunts, your infantry, I think, frankly, they do go a bit over the top on occasion. which is unfortunate and, again, not how the British Army would do it. The news doesn't just tell you what's happening. It so often tells you what to think is happening.

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So you've got this incredibly compact situation. You've got hordes of people who are hungry. You've got supplies that are limited. People are trying to push forward. And the Israelis are trying to control those crowds by keeping them a kilometre back or so before they're allowed to rush into the aid distribution site. you can see, I think even from a layman's perspective, a non-military professional, you can see how many things could possibly go wrong in that situation.

And it's further complicated by the fact there's not enough aid. It's about a meal and a half per person per day going through the GHF at the moment, which clearly isn't enough. The UN have aid that's waiting to be distributed. and they're refusing to do it because they won't work with the GHF because they say it compromises their neutrality. So they'd rather let Gazans starve. And I think there's a lot of questions for the UN to answer over the last 20 months, not just over the GHF.

How has so much aid been seized by Hamas, by humanitarian aid agencies who are supposed to be professionals delivering this stuff? Why have Gazans been paying for it for 21 plus months? you know, the UN is not an innocent party here. And I think there are some very serious questions to answer. And Andrew, you were on the ground in Gaza. What did you see? Absolute devastation.

You know, let's not pretend that Rafa isn't destroyed. I don't think there's any sense in trying to whitewash what's happened in Gaza in the sense of everything being destroyed, but the important thing is why. OK, and if we look at how, you know, I spoke earlier about adaptation. In Gaza City, when the IDF was assaulting through, they would clear house to house, just as we would, going through an urban environment. There was a four-month pause put in before RAFA.

Over that four months, you might remember All Eyes on Rafa as a campaign. Yeah, huge international pressure. Actually, most of the evacuation from Rafa was done by Hamas. They moved people out so that they could then booby trap all the houses. They'd seen what the IDF were doing in Gaza City. They knew they were fighting house to house. And so they decided that if the IDF was going house to house, each house would have an IED.

And I think it's a lot more advanced than people realize. We're kind of used to the idea of IEDs being these kind of pressure plates in the ground like we saw in Afghanistan or Iraq. In Gaza, they are... In the tunnel shafts that go into houses, 57,000 tunnel shafts in Gaza that lead to the tunnels that are 500 kilometers long. You know, they are everywhere. So the tunnel shaft will have an ID. There'll be a camera wired into the tunnels.

so they can watch for the IDF entering. And then they'll be able to remotely detonate the ID when they see soldiers in the house. So at the start of the RAFA campaign, the IDF had quite bad casualties from this, to the point where they had to completely change their tactics.

where they now send a drone into the building first. If there's nothing found by the drone, they send in a dog. And then only then do they send in troops, but even then only in four-man teams rather than platoons or sections to try and minimize the casualties if anything does go back. Now, if that's every other house in Rafa.

That's not a workable option. So as soon as you find the IED, you can't go firm and just call for the explosive ordnance disposal like we used to in Afghanistan. That would take hours. You'd never get anywhere. And so they've quite legitimately just leveled the buildings that are IED'd. Now... that has caused incredibly large amounts of destruction.

Then if that ID blows up, it's going to level the building just the same. Exactly. I see your point about that. So you see this devastation. And you've commented a number of times that the British Army would do things differently. This is one of the reasons that, you know, on reflection. And Francis and I had a conversation about this on camera the other day where we talked about why on balance, while we're not happy about what's happening, goes even remotely. I think it's horrible.

I understand why Israel is doing what it's doing, because I imagine we would do the same thing in their place, if not worse. I mean, look at the response to 9-11. It's the argument. But what you've said is we would do things differently. So can you talk about that? You know, first of the first part, how would the Western world respond to October the 7th happening to us?

And secondly, how should we respond and what is Israel doing wrong? Well, I think when I say we would respond differently, I think that was specifically talking about the tactics at the aid sites. I think we would. So the Israelis don't necessarily have a great deal of logistic experience. OK, so when we deploy a division into the field, it will have an enormous logistical tail behind it.

And the reason we're very good at that is because we do expeditionary wars. Our wars are on the other side of the world. They're in the Falklands, they're in Afghanistan, Iraq. You know, you name it, but they're certainly not, since 1945, anywhere near... the UK. So you have to be very good at maintaining long logistical tails. The IDF is set up effectively for raiding for very, very short wars on their immediate borders.

You know, you can see Israel from the far side of Gaza, if you're on the right spot. That's how close it is. So they don't need to be experts in logistics and perhaps the way that we are. And I think... we would have perhaps used our military a lot more effectively than them.

to deliver the aid, because the RLC for us, for example, the Royal Logistic Corps, they're very, very good at that. The Israelis don't really have an equivalent, and they've struggled logistically, even just fighting in Gaza. The duration of the war has given them logistic resupply issues.

um right on their own border so i think that's what we would do differently that would be a wholly military secured site the aid would be delivered by military troops and we wouldn't be using contractors to do this if it was the british army i suspect but then again

You know, the Israelis haven't got this capability. Growing it from scratch is very, very difficult. They haven't been invading the rest of the world for several hundred years. They haven't been blundering around the planet making fools of themselves. Well, I don't know. The British Empire was very successful for quite some time, actually.

fighting the wars. And then the Americans kicked off. Anyway, but talk to us about the broader picture, because this is a fundamental question for me when I think about this issue. A lot of people think that they're being compassionate when they say that they really care about what's happening and it should be stopped and whatever. But I'm thinking if we were the victims of an attack like October the 7th.

How would we have reacted? How would the very same people who are saying, you know, I can't believe what Israel is doing, what would they be demanding that we do? to the people who did that to us. So the counterargument to this is that some kind of decapitation campaign in the way that we saw in Lebanon, for example, where they were absolutely saturated by intelligence and they were able to pick off all the leaders of Hezbollah.

precision from the air. That option doesn't exist in Gaza because of the tunnels. All the leaders are underground. They have a deliberate human shield strategy. There's one really irritating piece of commentary, which is, oh, every guerrilla force does that. And actually, no, they don't. Not in the way that Hamas have done this. This is unprecedented. You know, yes, we saw tunnels in Raqqa, and we saw tunnels fighting ISIS, and there were tunnels in, you know, all the way back in history to...

digging under the walls of forts and that sort of thing. But nobody in history has ever said, look, kill my civilians. I want you to kill my civilians so that I can make PR gains out of it. And Hamas's leaders have said that explicitly. Like, it's psychotic. We're seeing families being wiped out in Gaza at the moment because Hamas fighters are gathering their families around them and waiting to die.

Because they know that they'll get PR gains, they know they'll go to heaven together, and they know it'll make the Israelis look bad. It's psychotic, and it's a paradigm that I think we really struggle to get our heads around in the West, because that's so alien.

But if you knew you were being hunted, the last thing you would do is gather your wife and children around you. You know, that's how warped these people's mentality is. And they want people to die. And they want their civilians to die. And so that makes it a very different campaign to any that's ever been fought before.

But the other thing seems to me, Andrew, correct me if I'm wrong, haven't Israel taken out all the leaders of Hamas already and they just have new ones and they just keep going anyway? Yeah, most of them. And that's one of the reasons I think Israel should have ceased fire. six months ago or so. You think Israel should have stopped fighting? Yeah, I think so. I think after, particularly after Sinwar died, I think there was a really good case to make and declare unilateral victory. And then...

And then negotiate for the hostages on their own terms, rather than this stupid back and forth that we've got going at the moment. Well, sorry to interrupt you. You say declare unilateral victory, but I guess, and look, you're obviously not far more than me. How can you declare unilateral victory if the enemy doesn't want to surrender? Surely you can only declare victory when the enemy surrenders. Well...

I think victory and defeat are kind of unhelpful. I think this is a sort of a slightly, um... A slightly out-of-date paradigm. I think what we have to talk about is in terms of succeeding or not succeeding in your strategic goals. And Israel had three. Defend Israel's borders and prevent 7th of October ever happening again. Defeat or dismantle more accurately in Hebrew.

Hamas and to return the hostages. And I think if you can gauge the percentage to which you have achieved those goals, you can decide whether you've effectively, you need to keep going or not. And I think... We can say for pretty fair certainty that Israel's border is now secure. I'm looking at Hamas's strategic capabilities to push force beyond the borders of Gaza. That's completely done. Hamas.

Most of their leadership, as you correctly say, is dead. Central Camps Battalion still exists, but they're dealing with that as we speak. The guys who planned and who kind of were the masterminds of 7th of October are all dead. Dave's dead. Haniya's dead. Sinwar is dead. Sinwath brothers dead. You know, there is a pretty good, um, command and control, uh, senior leader, um, destruction rate.

and most of the hostages are home, and I don't think military force is going to get them home. So you need to find another way to bring the hostages home, if that is your key concern. So I think if we look at the campaign... you know even as most recently as january and say look in terms of achieving your strategic goals you're about there and now on the flip side of that you are getting hammered on the international stage so whilst you're having tactical successes in gaza strategically

you're being very short-sighted because the world is turning horribly against you. Younger generations particularly are susceptible to these narratives of you being murderous, bloody, genocidal monsters. They're going to be the leaders in 10, 15, 20 years' time.

And they're going to Haiti. And Israel is not thinking long term here because they're assuming that America will have their back forever and so they can do what they want, which I think is a very dangerous position. A lot of people, well, some people have claimed that the reason... I mean, you are...

I think it's fair to say, on the balance of your commentary, very, very supportive of Israel, generally speaking. I mean, I think you talk about the facts, and the facts lead you to that conclusion. But nonetheless, people would, I think, perceive you rightly as being very pro-Israel.

And yet here you are saying they should have stopped six months ago. They really don't need to keep going. This is not helpful. It's detrimental to their long-term objectives. And I think a lot of people would agree with you. And that's where a lot of the thinking comes in is why is this carrying on? And there are people who are saying this is because Benjamin Netanyahu wants the war to keep going because it allows him to be the wartime leader instead of someone.

who's being accused of very serious crimes, offences that he would then have to deal with once the war ends. What are your thoughts on why it's carrying on? Yeah, so I was puzzled. I couldn't work this out for a long time because the Trump ceasefire, huge amounts of hostages released. Obviously, there was all that unpleasant stuff going on with the parades of the ostriches, but bottom line is they did come home. And they weren't able to extend that beyond the 60 days or whatever it was. Now...

I couldn't work out why Israel was so keen to keep going until the Iran war kicked off. That made sense to me then, because it makes sense to keep Bibi's coalition together. So the Smotriches, the Benguirs don't leave because Gaza ceased fire. So...

Netanyahu stays in power to achieve his lifelong goal of striking Iran. So that made sense to me. But now that's done, I still don't understand. It has to be a political reason. It doesn't make military sense to me. The IDF don't like it. The IDF are saying...

you know, we've achieved everything we can realistically achieve militarily. Really? Yeah, that's been publicly leaked. So the IDF are saying, we need to stop this. Yeah, the IDF hate the plan to move people to the kind of what they're calling the concentration camp in the South. a humanitarian zone, whatever you want to call it, the IDF don't like that plan. And I can see why, because militarily it's terrible. You know, the idea of the army having to control 600,000 civilians in that.

smashed up area, all living in... I mean, it's just a recipe for carnage, so I can see why the IDF hates it. So it is political at this point, I think. And I would much prefer them to see the priority of prioritizing bringing the hostages home and, you know, ceding to some sort of demands that Hamas make, because Hamas are not going to be completely deleted.

You know, unless you go full Grozny and start slaughtering everyone, which the IDF has resisted doing so far, I don't see how you can possibly winkle out every last-time ass fighter and leader. By Grozny, you're referring to the Russian bombing of Chechnya where they just flattened the entire city irrespective of it. Yeah, exactly. Because when I've seen certain Israeli officials and ambassadors and so on, their argument is...

Unless we wipe out Hamas, we're going to get another October the 7th. But what you're effectively saying is it's going to be impossible to wipe out Hamas because every time you kill the leadership, there's going to be new people to take their place. Plus...

Let's be fair, the more women and children who are dying, the more you're going to radicalise people, and therefore the more likely people are going to be joining Hamas. Yeah, and so trying to apply some sort of counterinsurgency ideal here where you bring the... the Gazan population onto your side of the argument and you win their hearts and minds. It's just not going to happen. Certainly after 21 months of bombing, it's not going to happen. So...

You've got two options here, really. You accept that people in Gaza are just going to hate you and that you've done significant damage to Hamas' capabilities and credibility and authority. Or... You know, you go down the crazy Trump plan route where you start ethnically cleansing the place and clearly that's not an idea anyone rational could support. Can you explain?

This whole ethnic cleansing thing is a very confusing term for a lot of people, because when I think of ethnic cleansing, I think of people being killed because of their identity, effectively, right? I don't think President Trump is calling for people to be... So when you say ethnic cleansing, what do you mean? Yeah, and you're quite right. You've caught me in a bit of sloppy vocabulary there, in fairness. The...

The Trump plan effectively sees Gaza being cleared out of Gaza and they go somewhere else allegedly until it's rebuilt and then they come back. And part of the problem is that ethnic cleansing doesn't actually have a definition under international law. It's not a... concrete, codified war crime in the way that, say, genocide is. And actually, by calling removing people from Gaza ethnic cleansing, it is co-opting that vocabulary from Bosnia, from Rwanda, where people are being...

cleansed by being deleted from existence, effectively, as opposed to moving people from population center age. So when you use the term ethnic cleansing, and some people do use it in this way, you mean removing the Palestinian Arabs? from gaza yeah i'm gonna ask a question that is going to be super controversial i'm not advocating for this i'm just looking at it from a first principles perspective and i'm going

The borders of Poland after World War II were not the same as they were before World War II. That's because we moved a lot of the Polish population from the area which became Soviet, and we moved them westwards from an area which was German, right? So we moved populations to make a country work.

Poland has prospered since World War II, right? Germans, as you well know, were moved around in a lot of places within what used to be Germany during World War II to other places. Again, to make the post-war countries... coherent and for them to work nobody would say that we committed ethnic cleansing of the polish or the germans or i mean there are some people but you know what i mean right

So forget about the rights and wrongs and the language and the whatever I'm just asking a question from like if you were an alien looking down Would you not say that President Trump is actually the only one being sensible about this? Because if you've got a population who absolutely hate Israel...

Who are going to remain there with Hamas as you're I mean, you're saying they should have stopped. So you leave some remnant on Hamas and a population for them to feed off. This whole thing is never going to get resolved. And therefore, when. Someone like Trump is saying, if you put these people in a place, they're going to have a better life in. Hamas is not going to leech off them and use them. And Israel is not going to have to keep killing them. Isn't that...

Actually, the merciful and better thing, I'm just asking, I'm not suggesting this is the right thing, but it's a question that I think if you're a logical person will come into your head. Yeah, and I think it boils down to agency, doesn't it? I think if you can say to the Palestinian people, look, we're going to take you to another country. You will have a good life there. Your children's peace and security will be guaranteed. This will be far better for you than living in this.

What you yourselves have been calling an open-air concentration camp for 20 years. If you want to go and we give you some money to do that, then great. I think I've got no problem with that whatsoever. I think if you're rounding people onto trucks at gunpoint.

and forcing them out with bayonets, then I think we're in a very different and dark place. And I think that's the key. And are you suggesting that you'd have to do that in order to get people to move, basically? If you wanted all of them out, I suspect you would have to. Right, I can see, yeah, I definitely wouldn't want that to happen, for sure. But then I come back to my point, but then this is never going to end. And that's kind of the problem with the Middle East. I mean, look around Israel.

You know, we kind of zero in on Gaza, but we forget the issues in West Bank. We forget the issues in Lebanon. Even this week, Hezbollah have refused to disarm at the request of the Lebanese government. Hezbollah are still a global narco trafficking, people trafficking, drug smuggling.

Weapons smuggling crime syndicate that operates in South America and in Europe. You know, they're still incredibly powerful and far more powerful than the Lebanese government. So that problem hasn't gone away, even though perhaps their supply line to Iran has been cut off. It's an oversimplification. to suggest that Hezbollah is done just because that's a thing. Syria, as we speak, is descending into a basket case of jihadi slaughtering minorities.

Iran just this week have started trying to launch ballistic space rockets again, which clearly demonstrates their long-term intent to maintain some sort of power in the region. Qatar still. having their fingers in many, many pies around the Middle East, designed to destabilise. And Turkey, of course, are heavily involved in northern Syria, and some of the worst militant groups in Syria are governed by Turkey. And so...

Whilst we hone in on Gaza and resolve that situation, you know, if people voluntarily emigrate, great. If they don't, the problem, as you say, endures. But this is the Middle East. It's never going to be completely peaceful. And it's just one tiny small part of the problem compared to what is a much bigger and more challenging paradigm.

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For an additional 15% off, it's also available at select GNC locations near you. That's Q-U-A-L-I-A life.com slash trig. for an extra 15% off your purchase. Thanks, Aqualia, for sponsoring today's episode. Sorry, go ahead. And I was going to say, every time you talk about this situation... You always come back to one country, which is Iran. And Iran's effective modus operandi is to destabilize the entire region and fund terrorist groups.

Will there ever be peace in the Middle East when you have the Ayatollah in power in charge of Iran? No. No, I mean, look, any country in the world that just had the beatdown that Iran has suffered. might consider it twice, except those countries that are run by religious zealots. But they believe the Mahdi is coming back. They believe for that to happen, Israel has to be deleted. It is the motivating...

kind of agency behind everything they do. And that's just not going to change because they've been spanked. It's just not going to happen. And so regime change is probably the only thing that we can...

We can say in Iran that will make a difference, but that comes with a whole load of other problems as well. So there's always second, third order, fifth, sixth, seventh order effects in the Middle East that quite often are impossible to map and predict. And that's why we have to be very careful about... And we've seen it go badly wrong again and again and again. So I guess what should Israel do?

What should the US do? I mean, because if you're saying non-intervention, that's kind of the position I'm... starting to come to. I wouldn't want regime change to be happening in any of these countries because if you just look at the history of it, it's always gone appallingly badly. But then if you leave the Ayatollah in charge, this is what you're going to get. It's... But isn't this exactly, Francis, the point I was making with trying to get Andrew to comment on earlier, which is...

A lot of the media discussion about this is sort of utopian in nature. It's like, well, we should have a gray option, therefore a gray option must exist. And it's like, no, these are all shitty options and you don't have any good choices here. Is that basically where we are? much i mean i think the the human mind seeks simplicity you know cognitive fluency is a very well established psychological phenomenon where we look for the easy answer

because our brains are overloaded. There is no easy answer in the Middle East. There never is. And I think the way forward here is perhaps to look at two metrics. First of all is the deterrence metric. How do you actually deter malign actors from doing stuff? And that's very tricky. Yes, you have the conventional deterrence that Israel has demonstrated in abundance. How do we economically deter?

Iran from putting its tentacles out around the region. How do we diplomatically deter Iran? You know, there's elements to this that we need to consider in depth. And again, no easy answers. And I certainly don't have the solution. We can also look at expanding deterrence. perhaps missile defenses for the Gulf states that are friendly and co-opting Israel and normalization.

you know, that could be a really good incentive. Because they're all concerned about Iran. Yes, absolutely. So if you extend the missile shield to them, they feel more secure. Exactly. And therefore, they're more likely to cooperate economically with...

like-minded fellow travellers. And once economics starts working and people start getting richer, and malign actors start seeing the benefits, actually, of playing nice rather than playing nasty, then perhaps that's a direction we could lead people in. So there's a huge amount to consider here across all of those different metrics, and there's no one simple silver bullet. But isn't it also the problem, and let's just be honest about this, you're dealing with nutcases. These are...

They're worse in that case. They're ideologically possessed. They believe these, quite frankly, horrific ideologies.

You know, where they will put their own women and children in the firing line because they believe that they're going to go to heaven if they die. So that's ultimately the best solution. For them, it's a win-win because... Israel look terrible. They are martyrs. They're going to go to heaven. And you're looking at this ideology, which is just rampant throughout the Middle East. And you go.

It's impossible to defeat, isn't it? It's impossible to defeat and it's always going to be like this. Or is that just defeatist? I mean, when you say it's across the Middle East, I mean, I think you have to be slightly... more reserved than that. I mean, I think you can pinpoint certain hotspots, certainly, where this psychotic jihadi mentality is dominant. But...

You know, we've seen in countries like Saudi Arabia, like the UAE, that there is a path for Islamic, pretty hard-line Islamic countries, to a slightly more moderate outcome. And I would suggest that the key to all of this is Saudi Arabia. They've shown it can be done. They've got Mecca and Medina, statements from Saudi Arabia. They're kind of... I mean, they're not quite like the papacy and Catholicism, but, you know, they're about as punchy as it gets in the Islamic world.

If Saudi Arabia show a leadership piece here, then that's a really good thing. But unfortunately, Saudi Arabia won't do this without a solution to the Palestinian problem. And that is why. Gaza and the West Bank are so critical because they are the key to unlocking Saudi acceptance of Israel and therefore greater prosperity and acceptance across the whole region. But what is a solution to the Palestinian problem? At the moment, I think it feels like...

the United Palestinian Emirates. We've seen a very... Kind of tempting teaser of this in the last couple of weeks with the Emirates of Hebron, where the elders, some of the elders have got together and said, hey, we'll join the Abraham Accords, we'll acknowledge Israel.

Now can we do trade and get richer? You know, there's plenty wrong with that model in terms of whether these EMEAs even have the authority to do what they've done. There's all sorts of debate around that. But actually, I think if that works, if that can be made to work...

and you do see Hebron suddenly getting richer and finding the benefits of peace with Israel, you can carry other moderate Palestinian voices with you and then the hardliners will be isolated and eventually you reach a point where you've got these... separate Emirates who can then work together and create that Palestinian state that they've been after for so long. But it's a very long journey, loads of road bumps, but I haven't seen a better.

I think two-state solution is firmly dead at this point. I think that's fair. We need to look for a better way. Which brings me to a question I was going to ask you, because one of the claims that people have made, including in discussions I've had with people... And I think it's largely false because people misrepresent Israel allowing Qatar to give money to Hamas in order to fund.

basically civilian life. But they keep claiming that Israel funded Hamas. And when I looked into it, I think it should be fair, there are some allegations that Netanyahu allowed Hamas to rise. Because it divides Hamas and Fatah, and it means that the people who control the West Bank are not the same people who control Gaza. Therefore, there's less likelihood of a serious push for a Palestinian state.

To what extent is the current government of Israel even interested in a solution to the Gaza question? Well, I think they're voting today on the two-state solution and ruling it out completely. So I think... 0% right now is the answer. But when we look at what happened in Gaza before the war and the funding of Hamas, I think there are two things that went on here. I think correctly you've identified that divide and conquer was part of it.

But secondly, I think there was a genuine belief on the Israeli side that by putting money into Hamas and Gaza, it would keep them peaceful. And that they would spend it on retaining power and kind of keeping the place relatively peaceful. And there was a bit of an exchange of fire in 2021, which was against PIJ, passed in in Zambia Jihad. And Hamas played quite a clever confidence trick.

to say, hey, we're not the problem. We're not the crazies. It's those PIJ lunatics. They're the ones you need to worry about. And that actually really successfully suckered the Israelis into seeing what they wanted to see. So there's an element of cleverness by Hamas. And yeah.

And Israel, I think, just played their cards completely wrong. And my goodness, didn't they? Didn't they pay the price of that? And the other thing is you mentioned that one of Israel's war objectives was to secure the border. I can see why after October 17th, you'd be pretty keen to do that, obviously.

Why wasn't that border already secure, Andrew? That is a question that I haven't heard a convincing answer to. So there's a couple of things. First of all, there was a huge intelligence failure. The female observers in Nahal Oz talked about... Having seen rehearsals, having seen Hamas practicing for the attack, they passed it up the chain and it was overlooked for a variety of reasons.

Why did you emphasize that they were female? What are you saying? Because I think there's an element of sexism. As in these girls are freaking out. They're having an episode or whatever. Yeah, I think there was an element of that. And, of course, also they were abducted and murdered and raped and killed on the day of...

the attack itself. There were a bunch of SIM cards, Israeli SIM cards, that lit up inside Gaza just before the attack. That got overlooked as well. So there were big intelligence failures. But what I think is underestimated on 7th of October is the... sophistication of Hamas's attack. Now, the fence wasn't just a chain-linked border fence. This was a five-deep security fence with, you know, underground tunneling.

with remote control machine guns on top, with barbed wire and cameras the whole way along. You know, this is about as solid as a fence can get. And so what Hamas had was what anyone in the Western army would recognize as a combat engineering team. They breached the burns. They had explosive charges to blow through the fence to get their vehicles through. They had fire support onto the gun towers to take them out using drones that dropped grenades. This was a very sophisticated military assault.

And that's why the fence was breached. It's because Israel ignored the intelligence. Very similar to 9-11. They had all the pieces, but nobody put the picture together. And because Hamas knew what they were doing, and they had a very good engineering setup to get through the fence. And where are Hamas getting this sophisticated equipment and tactics and training from? Well, a lot of it they make themselves. So some of the Fermabaric warheads for RPGs, they were made in armories inside Gaza.

There was a lot of armed smuggling coming through from Egypt. And then, of course, there was the coastal region where they would smuggle stuff in as well. So a combination of making it themselves and it getting smuggled in from other countries. You know... I'm really glad that we're actually talking about October 7th because when I talk to people, just regular people, there's so many, and I never realised this, but conspiracy theories are springing up around October 7th.

One of them is, why did it take so long for the IDF to respond? It took hours upon hours upon hours. Why was that? So, first of all, it was a holiday. There was complacency on the Israeli side. They sent far too many troops home from the Gaza Division. Secondly, the military bases on 7th of October were the direct target of Hamas. So the base at Reim was assaulted.

command and control was dislocated, totally disrupted in the Gaza periphery region, which was just Hamas being, again, making a very good and sophisticated military plan. Now, if you've got troops... and the north of the country that you're trying to mobilize. That's not as easy as a phone call saying, get down to the south now. To compare and contrast with the British Army, our highest readiness company. is at 48 hours notice to move. So that's moving 48 hours from getting the phone call.

You have to get the troops back to base, back into uniform. You have to get the weapons out of the armories. You have to get the ammunition issued. You have to get the vehicles signed out. You have to give orders.

you have to establish command and control and radio networks. You know, this stuff is really, really complicated. And I think that's why what we saw on the first hours of 7th October was just dribs and drabs of special forces units who were ready to go because they are at a much higher readiness.

You know, our highest SF, I think, are at one hour notice to leave. So, you know, they're much, much better set up to respond so quickly than the conventional army are. And then you just saw those lone half-ago heroes who just picked up their weapons and went for it and did incredible things on the day. But to get a conventional force, even back into uniform, given a set of orders and moved from A to B, takes a lot of time.

in peacetime, never mind when there is a psychotic terrorist massacre going on in the south of your country. So I think we can be a little bit kinder to the IDF than perhaps some of the critics that you're talking about. Because the reality is, is this happened on... Netanyahu's watch. And he needs to accept responsibility for that. There's also the other conspiracy theory, which is he was secretly happy that it happened because

it meant that he wouldn't have to confront the corruption charges and the very serious charges that have been levelled against him. Or alternatively gave him an excuse to go and do to Gaza what they've done. I mean, I would...

I can't disprove a negative. I mean, I can't prove a negative, sorry. I mean, where's your evidence for that would be my take. This is wild supposition that I don't think has any tangible or concrete evidence to back it up. Yeah, none of those things ever made a lot of sense.

To imagine the leader of a country allowing thousands of its citizens to be treated in that way is hard, even with whatever you think about the person involved. One of the things I have found really, really shocking, Andrew, I discovered this. In two instances, one, I did a discussion with a guy called Safety Namas on our channel who wanted to debate this war with me.

And another one was when I went to the pro-Palestine protests here in London and documented it, again, available on our channel. The number of people who effectively... deny that any sexual violence happened on October the 7th, who claimed that it was effectively just, you know, a military-on-military engagement in which none of the rapes that are alleged to have happened, none of this other stuff, even though...

Quite a lot of, I mean, the rapes are not on camera, but, you know, we've seen video of guys throwing grenades into shelters with these kids and then getting the coke out of the fridge afterwards and things like that. What do we know about what actually happened on that day? And also, why do you think people are pretending it didn't? Or why do they believe it didn't happen? We know a huge amount.

You know, as you correctly identify, Hamas filmed it and broadcast it themselves. You know, this isn't really a matter for debate when it comes to the massacres. We also have the Roberts Inquiry, which was a British House of Lords all parliamentary group.

UK-Israel report into the seventh-hour table, which is fantastically comprehensive and intimately evidenced. So that's a very good document I would point people's thoughts. And what does it say? What happened? It talks about the slaughter in mass. And it talks about each individual that was killed, and it goes into detail about what actually happened on the day.

But then you can walk the ground. I mean, I've been to Beari, I've been to Reim, I've been to the Nova site, I've been to Nahalos and Neros, and, you know, I've walked in human ashes. where the fires that burned were so intense they had to get archaeologists in to identify the bones of dead Israelis, where families were burned. hugging in the fire because that was their last moment on Earth and they wanted to be near their own families. You know, this is the most brutal thing I have ever seen.

even including my three tours of Afghanistan. I mean, it doesn't show you the sexual assault evidence, because quite understandably, the Israelis haven't released that. You know, what rape in history... Do people demand that all the evidence be put out into the public domain? It's ridiculous. It shows no respect for the victims and no respect for their families. There is evidence, and I have seen it.

So there is a very famous 47-minute video that shows the massacre of the day. That's something that a lot of journalists and people have seen. If you go to a base in Israel just north of Tel Aviv called Blilot, they have the sexual assault evidence. pack there, which certain people invited to see. And I'm sad to say that I am one of them. I went with a military delegation of senior retired generals from around NATO and the US.

I have never seen grizzled 35-year career soldiers reduced to that kind of fury and... horror is the only word. It's the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life. You know, I get chills just talking about it to you. And I won't go into, again, I won't go into details about what I've seen, but it is absolutely unquestionable that sexual assault happened. And on top of that, I have spoken to people who witnessed it.

and who can tell the stories of what happened that day. This was brutal, that people deny it is disgusting, and it's simply anti-Semitic. You know, I haven't used that word really much today, because I think a lot of... That word is sometimes overblown. I think people read into it. With Robinhood, not only can you trade individual stocks and ETFs, you can also seamlessly buy and sell crypto.

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People overuse it, and I think it's very unwise of them to do so. And I agree with you completely. But I think there is an anti-Semitism in not believing Jewish women when they say they're right. Do you have at least $50,000 in your 401k or another retirement account? If so, listen up. The global landscape is increasingly unstable and over $4.2 trillion...

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But I think partly it also, I think there's a political... And there is a PR agenda behind this. Because if you were a logical person who knew anything about military conflict, you would go, in every single war in history, when a bunch of men with guns break through their enemy defenses and they find themselves... with enemy women, this is what happens. Let's just be honest. Even in the most restrained militaries in world history, to some extent, it still happens. So in this situation...

It must have happened. I think that's just undeniable, right? But I think the problem is, and I've encountered this directly, if you concede that these militants who invaded Israel on that day committed... committed sexual violence, attacked civilians, killed children, burned people who had nothing to do with being in the military or anything like that, then you can no longer claim that October the 7th was an act of resistance. Yes.

And if therefore it's essential that you deny any violence happened to civilians, it's essential that you deny any rapes happened. It's essential that you pretend that this was, you know, the... The Native Americans kind of rising up against their evil occupiers. Yeah, and you're framing it with that oppressor versus oppressed kind of dynamic, and it falls apart with sexual assault. And I think we also have to extend that to the Arab world as well. I think we tend to be awfully Western-centric.

analysis sometimes. Don't forget that Hamas were talking very much to the Arab world, trying to get them to rise up alongside Hamas and finally destroy the state of Israel. They wanted the West Bank to rise up. They wanted militias of Syria to rise up. They wanted Hezbollah to rise up. And if they're running around raping people, that firmly, again, undermines that messaging that we are noble resistance Islamic fighters who are sticking to the Quran and not...

going as far as the Jews do. And that's why there's been such a narrative as well to push the IDF thing, of which there's no substantive evidence that I've seen whatsoever. When I see these narratives happening and I see the way that people talk about this... Again, it goes back to this point where it's just what makes this conflict so difficult to talk about is that everybody has their own narrative about it. You talk and everybody has an alternate set of facts.

And I guess, how do we solve this if nobody can agree on a basic truth like women were raped on October 7th? How do we actually come to some kind of agreement and reproachment and being able to move forward? It's a really good question. And if I had, you know, if I had the totality of the answer, then I, you know, I think I would be in a...

a far more influential role than I currently am. But, you know, I think there are certain things we can do. And that is making sure that moderate voices are amplified. I think, you know, talking about Israeli moderate voices and Palestinian moderate voices, I think they're the ones that we should be focusing on. We should be trying to exclude the Bengavirs and Smotrichs and the Sinwas of this world and focusing on those people that can be.

persuaded to see both sides of the argument. There aren't many, but the more we amplify, perhaps the more there will be. I do think we need some accountability for our media, I think. You know, agencies like Sky News and the BBC have truly been appalling. Why do you say that, Andrew? They've made no effort to present the Israeli arguments and they've published everything that the Hamas... kind of side of the argument have said. So we did a study on this with the Henry Jackson Society.

98% of the world's media were using Hamas's casualty figures. 3% were using the IDF's figures. You know, they have totally platformed one side in this war and taken everything they've said as reliable. Everything the IDF has said is presumed immediately to be unreliable unless evidence is presented. And, of course, armies can't do that because there are operational secrecy and, you know, there are important military secrets that they can't just reveal.

So there's been a hideous one-sided platforming in this war. And I think we need to find some method of accountability for this, because particularly for a state broadcaster, they were taking, you know, taxpayers' money, enforced taxpayers' money. Like, that's just not good enough. And, you know, things like Glastonbury not cutting the feed when the guy's calling for the death of the IDF. The documentary that was naked Hamas propaganda, you know, there's been no heads roll over this.

And that's really poor. So I think platforming, neutral voices, media accountability. But look, this has gone on for decades. This isn't the first time Israel has fought a war. It's not the first time they've fought a war where they've been hammered on the international stage through misinformation. So this is not a new phenomenon. It's not going anywhere. You know what is a new phenomenon, Andrew? And I was going to ask you this about your time.

How do you think things would have been different when you were in Afghanistan if we had the camera phone? Yeah, I thank God every day that we didn't, quite frankly, for two reasons. First of all...

It's very easy to take stuff out of context if you're filming everything. The blokes did film stuff. And actually, that's how Marine A was caught. He was caught on head cam. So there's actually a plus side to it where there is accountability when people do stuff wrong. And there's been accountability for the IDF when they've made those stupid videos then.

you know, arsing around in women's underwear in people's houses. They've been sacked and disciplined as a result of the fact they captured it on camera. So there is a plus side to it. But to conduct military operations under a 24-7 lens of minute scrutiny is incredibly challenging because war is really complicated.

It's really scary. You're at the heightened end of human emotion when you're operating in a firefight. And mistakes happen, and, you know, people make the wrong choice. And that doesn't necessarily make it criminal, but it certainly looks bad on camera. Well, I was just, you know... I think people who haven't had your experiences won't understand this. So when I think about it, here's how I try to conceptualize it. Think about your job.

whoever you are listening and watching this, or your marriage, or your business interactions, or whatever it is that you do. And imagine that was filmed 24-7. And the worst highlights of that were clipped together and broadcast to the public.

Would you have the same reputation with your friends and family that you do now? I don't think there's a single person in the world who survives that test. No. And then you throw into the fact that these people are carrying weapons. They're fighting other people with weapons. They're operating in...

the most chaotic landscape imaginable with the most intense pressure, 360-degree threat at all times, above ground, below ground, you know, that is going to push you right to the extremes of where you are. capable of going emotionally. And yes, some of the decisions you make when you're at that point aren't going to be the right ones. But that doesn't necessarily make it criminal, and it doesn't necessarily make it...

you know, part of a genocidal campaign. It just means that you're a human who made the wrong choice at the wrong moment in time. And war is generally a thing that's not a good thing. Exactly that. And it's also as well, you get these people watching it and you see them. It's not only with war, you also see with the police. They're going, oh, why don't they, for instance.

There was, for instance, a person shooting at a police officer. They're like, well, why didn't they shoot the guy on the shoulder? Why did they shoot him in the head? And you're going, well, number one... I don't think it works like that in that particular heightened circumstance. And number two, and let's be honest about this, you don't know what you're talking about. So you have people who are civilians.

whose idea of confrontation is them saying to their barista that they'd like one sugar instead of two, and then they think that they've got an opinion on war. Surely, unless you... I don't comment on it because I've never been in war, thankfully. When we were in America, we went to a gun range. And that's where you suddenly realize, like, hitting a giant target at 20 yards in a completely calm environment, that's an achievement, you know.

So it must be very frustrating for someone like you to be hearing narratives like that. It is. And I think a lot of the commentary on this war is utterly devoid of that context. And it goes back to pretty much what we said at the start of the conversation. that this has not been framed as a war. It's been framed as just airstrike after airstrike by the IDF. And actually, when you have 300,000 soldiers from the IDF who've been through Gaza, that's how many troops have served in Gaza.

like some of those 300,000 are going to do things wrong. They're going to get stuff wrong. It's a numbers game at that point. But show me a campaign where the army didn't do something wrong. Our SAS are under investigation with very credible allegations of war crimes. The Australian SAS was... found guilty of, you know, systematic war crimes in Afghanistan. The American army had numerous disciplinary issues in Iraq. I remember Abu Ghraib.

That wasn't like a guy doing the wrong thing. That was like the Zimbardo experiment playing out in real world. It was. And it was the most, probably the most controlled military in the world, you'd argue. Yeah, one of them. And, you know, these things happen, you know. It doesn't make it right. It doesn't mean we can excuse it, but it does mean we should apply the same standard to the IDF that we apply to our own armies, because they actually deal with it in the same way. They do have...

accountability and military discipline and legal discipline for their soldiers when they get things wrong. And that's just what armies should do. And it's no different for the IDF than it is for the British or the Americans or the Australians. And for Hamas as well, because if you're going to be hypercritical of the IDF and their conduct in Gaza, then you also need to apply those standards to Hamas on October 7th.

Otherwise, what it looks like is you're being an apologist. Yeah, or even Hamas in Gaza while the fighting's gone on. You know, actually on the ground in Gaza. You know, where is the accountability for them throwing their own people into the path of bombs on purpose?

I mean, that's a straight-up war crime. You know, using hospitals and mosques and schools and people's houses is illegal. It's a war crime, and yet they've been given a completely free pass on that. Yeah, I've never heard anyone talk about that as a war crime, really, in the media. And by the way, since we're delving into the details, I don't know much about the various conventions that govern the rules of war, but wouldn't...

For you to be recognized as a military force, you don't have to wear uniforms and do all these other things and basically follow the rules of war. If you're hiding in a basement with an IED... Wearing civilian clothes. Wearing civilian clothes. Doesn't that change the entire thing? Yeah, you're supposed to be able to distinguish combatants. That's one of the rules. And they're not doing that. Again, it's a straight-up war crime. And they publish their own videos of them.

firing mortars in civilian areas, wearing civilian clothes. A mortar is an unguided weapon. It's an area weapon. If you're indiscriminately firing mortars, you're guaranteeing that civilian targets are going to take some... Collateral damage from what you're firing. And yet there's no accountability for that. There's no demands that...

Hamas show their collateral damage assessments, that they show their risk assessments and their battle damage assessments afterwards in the way the IDF is. You know, there is a complete double standard here. And you could make the case that there should be. Because Israel is a democratic country with an army that should have accountability. Hamas is a terror group that we expect to behave in the manner of a terror group. But legality aside, the morality here...

It's very clear that Hamas are acting in a deeply, deeply immoral way, and they're getting a free pass, irrespective of the laws of war. Can you... Can you whi... This is the thing I've always wondered about. I remember we had another combat veteran in here, Kelsey Schoen, and we talked about this. It's like, if one side is allowed to have no rules, how can a party that tries to play by the rules ever win a conflict?

And we're seeing that play out in real time in Gaza. And I think there is a case to be made. The law of armed conflict needs looking at. It was written in post-1945 with the conception that it would be used by two fighting armies. What it... didn't, I think, foresee was the era of counterinsurgency and irregular warfare that we are now firmly in. And I think there are elements of it that are effectively handcuffs on conventional armies that perhaps need to be looked at.

Actually, the way they're set up, they encourage the use of human shields. They encourage the use of hospitals and schools by irregular actors because they know, they've seen, that when those hospitals and schools are legally struck...

that are still conceived of as an immoral act and therefore condemned in the international media. So I think there is a case to say that the law of armed conflict is counterproductive when it comes to stuff like this. And it also enables Hamas and the rest of their ilk. to play the long game because they know that Gen Z will eventually come into power and they will eventually be running the United States. And if you look at Gen Z's opinions on Israel...

They are not sympathetic. And a large part of this is because they have been mainlined footage from the war zone straight to their phones. So if you think about the long game, all right. Israel may have won the war, they may have achieved their objectives, but the propaganda war, there's only one winner, and it ain't Israel. Yeah, I agree, and I've been saying that for months.

I think we also have to consider the era of the smartphone, as you say, that instantaneity of imagery on your phone. Now, like, war is horrifying. Like, it is. There's no way around it. You can't fight a war in a clean, you know... sanitized manner that doesn't look horrendous when you see it up close. Um, you know, the very first thing I did in Afghanistan, we were, we, you know, it was my, I was two weeks out of training, straight on tour.

we dropped a 500-pounder bomb, and then we were clearing through body parts in the compound afterwards. You know, this is not within the normal scope of what humans expect to see. And when it's boomed onto your phone as you're sat on your commuter train or in your classroom at school... Like, horror is absolutely the correct reaction to that on a human level. But what you then do with that horror and what narratives then get attached to it is where the problem comes in.

And how do you, you know, how do you, when someone's really upset over seeing a dead kid in Gaza, of which there are thousands, and they're horrified at it? How do you then say, ah, yes, but, you know, under the Geneva Conventions, we were legally able to strike this child and it's legal collateral damage, so what we've done is actually fine. Yeah. You know, how do you make that argument? This is what I wonder about, and it's like...

I just wonder, if we had the internet and the camera phone on TikTok in 1945, I don't even know if we would have won the war at this point. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, look at Carl. 1944, it was absolutely flattened. 20,000 civilians died. Scenes of horror. And you look, you know, just Google, and you'll see how much it looks like Gaza does today. You know, how do you, you know, and I think the...

The difference is, that was a war of survival. People in the UK had been through the Blitz and through rationing and through... hundreds of thousands of American soldiers coming to live in the UK, and they've seen spitfires overhead, and they get that it's a war for national survival. Um, I think it's very difficult to frame that as a war for national survival. with Israel-Gaza, even though I think it is in many ways, because one side has F-16s and the other side does not.

And it looks like a mismatch. So when you've already got an oppressor, oppressed, colonizer, colonial narrative that underpins the whole thing, when you've then got one side with fast jets and one side without... Again, we go back to the emotion of the piece. I think that's a very hard sell on a purely emotional level. And I think that's probably the difference. And it's also, as well, if you look at the population in 1945, a lot of them went through the First World War.

You know, these are people who lived a much harder, tougher life where war was an ever-present threat and reality. If you look at the generation now of which we are all, well, I was a little constant, I was certainly part of. It was our grandparents who went to war. My dad didn't. My generation luckily didn't unless we enlisted and we served. And Gen Z.

Again, so they're even more detached from it. And even the wars that, you know, my generation fought in were wars of choice. They were expeditionary wars that we chose to fight. They weren't, you know, the UK wasn't under direct threat from Afghanistan or Iraq.

Um, you know, indirect maybe, but certainly not. It wasn't a war for national survival. So not only have we not seen wars, um, of the kind that our grandparents or great-grandparents saw, but also the wars we have seen are very, very different. So, you know, we're even further away from that idea of the fact that wars happen. It's a feature, not a bug, of human existence. And unfortunately, they are really, really unpleasant things.

Before Andrew answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. Is there a drive to lower standards within the armed forces in the interest of increasing diversity? And if so, what effect is that having on the ground?

Kristen Maguire asks, would you please speak to the modernity of the concept of war crimes and what qualifies as a war crime? Stephen Davids asks, how much booby trap capability does Hamas have? Endless.

It's so easy to make an IED. I could probably make one with the stuff that's in this room right now. All right, well, if we ever want to start an insurgency, we'll give you a call, mate. You can reward the plastic explosion. Jack, our producer's just perked up. He's got a bunch at home. Don't worry about that. Andrew, it's been really great having you on because I feel like this has actually been the nuanced conversation about this issue that I've never seen anyone have.

Because you either get people who are this side or that side. And what you've talked about is, I think, the facts on the ground. But also, like I say, from a pro-Israel position, nonetheless, you're openly saying Israel needs to wrap this up. and should have done already. And there are definitely some questions about what's happening politically there. We've invited the Prime Minister of Israel on many times. We would give him a fair hearing just as we do with every guest.

So I hope that still happens because I think that it's an important discussion. And I really think this is... brought a lot of value to people who want to hear that kind of conversation. So thanks for being here. We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters in a minute. But before we do, what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we should be? Turkey.

Okay, I think Turkey is a NATO member. It is also heavily spinning in the direction of Islamism. It is a Muslim Brotherhood country. It is... fingers in the pies all over the Middle East, including close links with Hamas and Gaza and some of the really unpleasant organisations in northern Syria. And I think with Iran weakened, Turkey is one of the bigger threats in the region that people are overlooking right now.

Oh, and one thing I'm going to ask you when we go to Substack is about the Druze situation happening in Syria, because that's something, we were discussing it, whether it's something that we really ought to cover in the full episode, but it's like no one's talking about it, but these people are being massacred. Yeah. It's insane. It's as bad as 7th of October. Horrendous. Really? As bad. In terms of the horrors that are being perpetrated and the numbers of people being killed.

All right, well, follow us on and we'll continue the conversation on our sub stack at triggerpod.co.uk. Stephen Davids asks, how much booby trap capability does Hamas have? Endless. Absolutely endless. It's so easy. I could probably make one with the stuff that's in this room right now.

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