The world collectively holds its breath as it awaits a massive attack on Israel is anticipated by the Islamic Republic of Iran. This comes after the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital city of Tehran. The international consensus is that the conflict between the two countries is going to get much much worse.
Piers Morgan brings together veritable experts on the region; speaking first to former Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett. Naftali puts the blame for the violence squarely on the shoulders of Iran, and says Israel’s efforts indirectly defend the West from harm. Then, Piers moderates a blazing row between political scientist Norman Finkelstein and Israeli historian Benny Morris. The two trade barbed words over what the assassination of Haniyeh and what it could lead to. The most frightening contention; that Israel may resort to nuclear weaponry.
00:00 – Introduction
01:40 – Naftali Bennett on ‘imminent’ Iran attack
11:20 – Norman Finkelstein and Benny Morris debate Iran/Israel
17:30 – Who’s escalating conflict: Iran or Israel?
23:00 – Does Israel have nuclear weapons?
32:55 – Why Finkelstein trusts Iran over Israel
38:10 – Latest on war in Gaza
41:30 – “Is this ethnic cleansing?”
54:40 – Piers says goodbye until September
Published on August 8, 2024 (YouTube)
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Piers Morgan: As we recall this debate, the world is still waiting for an Iranian attack on Israel. Ayatollah says that Iran has a duty to take revenge after Israel assassinated Hamas Chief Ismael Haniyeh inside Tehran and killed the top Hezbollah commander in Beirut. Whatever form that response takes, Israel’s proxy war with Iran is in danger of becoming a direct and deadly conflict. And whatever happens over the coming days and weeks, the big questions remain the same. Both Israel and Iran see each other as an existential threat. So who has provoked who in the fractured decades since the Iranian Revolution? Does war with a common enemy strengthen Israel’s alliances in the Middle East and beyond? And what is the future for a besieged Palestine as the world’s gaze turns to geopolitical war games?
My two guests are authoritative voices with deeply contrasting views on the historical context and a moral framing of a perilous moment for the world’s peace. Many of you repeatedly asked us to bring them together. And I’ll be joined in a moment by political scientist Norman Finkelstein and the eminent Israeli historian Benny Morris. But first, I’m joined by the former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Mr. Bennett, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
Naftali Bennett: Thank you.
Piers Morgan: Where are we in this war? Because it seems to the outside world that we could be on the precipice of a much wider war in the Middle East, which could have catastrophic consequences.
Naftali Bennett: Well, this wider war has been waged by Iran for the better part of, uh, 30 years. Because Iran has developed a very smart strategy of creating an octopus of terror, whose head is in Tehran, sending its tentacles all across the Middle East—to Iraq, to Yemen, to Lebanon, to Hamas—and building these proxy armies that serve Iran by creating chaos, hitting Western targets, and targeting Israel as well. So, this war has been waged on a one-sided basis. The new part is that Israel is hitting back.
Piers Morgan: You said that Israel has a duty to punish Iran for what it’s been doing. What should that look like? What is punishment? I mean, do you believe eventually that Iran needs to be toppled completely? Is that not something that, again, would lead to a stratospherically bigger problem?
Naftali Bennett: Quite the contrary. I believe that the Iranian regime has to be toppled. Iran’s regime, the Iranian Islamic Republic of Iran, is the epicenter of terror. It’s the source of about 80% of the terror in the Middle East and beyond, of the chaos. It’s destined to fall. And it reminds me a bit of the USSR in the 80s. It’s a corrupt, old, unconnected regime—incompetent, despised by its people. This regime will fall. The Iranian people will be free again. The question is, how soon? Will it be in two years, five years, or 30 years? And I believe that the West, by taking action—especially economic action—can accelerate the demise of this horrible regime and bring a much better future to the Middle East and the world.
Piers Morgan: Israel obviously has been extremely active in the last week in taking out senior people from Hamas and Hezbollah. By doing that, you would have known that you would face retaliation. How big do you think that retaliation is likely to be?
Naftali Bennett: I think we’re confusing cause and result because we are fighting back in a war that they started. And in your introduction, you talked about it almost as a symmetric situation, but it’s not. We have no issue whatsoever with any of our neighbors. We don’t want to dispose of them; we don’t want to annihilate them. But Iran wants to annihilate Israel. Hamas wants to annihilate Israel. Hezbollah wants to annihilate Israel. So what we’re doing is a defensive war against Iran, against its proxies, in order to defend ourselves and, by the way, protect the West from this big wave of radical jihad terror. It’s a wave that we are—Israel, in a sense, is the wave breaker in the middle that is defending the West from this wave. We have really no choice. When someone says, “We want to annihilate you,” shoots rockets, and arms about seven different proxies to kill you, you’ve got to fight until you win. And that’s what we’re going to do.
Piers Morgan: You talk about fighting until you win. Israel’s been fighting now for many, many months against Hamas in Gaza, and yet there’s no sign of the total victory which Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to achieve. When is that victory going to come? What would it look like—victory over Hamas—and what is the future in Gaza?
Naftali Bennett: From my perspective, victory is a simple thing: it’s Hamas surrendering, raising a white flag, releasing the terrorists, and us taking all the Hamas leaders and fighters, putting them on a ship, and shipping them away from Gaza. And then we can begin rebuilding a new Gaza. That’s what victory looks like. That’s what we should be shooting for. I do agree on one thing: I’m unhappy with the conduct of the war from the Israeli side—that it’s being prosecuted way too slowly, at a very low intensity. I would call it 5 to 10% intensity. That’s not how you win wars. You’ve got to fight all in. And if there’s any criticism I have, it’s that we’re not doing this quickly enough and with enough intensity. Granted, there’s tremendous pressure on Israel to slow down and slow down, but we should not cave into that pressure.
Piers Morgan: Over 40,000 people in Gaza have been killed so far. Many, many more wounded. Obviously, a number of those are Hamas terrorists—it’s estimated around 15,000 or so. But that still means that well over 20,000 innocent civilians, including many children—well over 10,000 children now—have been killed. And as you know, Israel has been losing a lot of international support because of the way it’s been prosecuting its war. Do you not have any qualms when you talk about going harder, much harder—you saying it’s at 5-10% intensity—if you were to go at 80-90%, presumably the death toll of civilians, if you did that, would be exponentially higher. Can Israel, and this is really the big question I guess, can Israel continue to prosecute the war with such huge civilian loss as it goes after Hamas? Or is there going to be a point when international objection to the way Israel is prosecuting it becomes overwhelming?
Naftali Bennett: Piers, we’re fighting a war against total evil that wants to annihilate us and wants to annihilate your way of living—the free world, liberal way of living. You know, your grandfather was a hero in the Second World War, fighting in Burma against the Japanese. Was there a certain threshold of how many Japanese civilians would die, and at that point, you stop the war? The West leveled 66 cities—I’m not talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I’m talking about conventional means—and you knew that you had to defeat Japan. You knew you had to defeat Germany at whatever price it would take. We have to defeat Hamas at any price.
The actual numbers are factually very low compared to other urban warfare. We’re talking about 15,000 terrorists that have been killed. I don’t believe the Hamas reports, but let’s even assume that they’re anything near reality. You’ve got about 5,000 civilians who naturally die. So we’re at about a 1:1 ratio of combatants to civilians, which is incredibly low in urban warfare. But I can tell you, Piers, that we are resolute. We are determined to fight until we beat Hamas. And it takes time. We’re not going to sit with a stopwatch and say, “You know, it’s been 10 months now; we stop and let a genocidal regime continue trying to kill Israel.”
Piers Morgan: But I think the big concern, Mr. Bennett, is that Israel appears to have no plan for what happens when the war ends. It’s basically leveled large swaths of Gaza, a lot of the homes have been completely destroyed, and you know, a million and a half people displaced. Where are they going to go? Where are they going to live? Who’s going to oversee Gaza? Obviously, you will not believe that Hamas should have any involvement in any power going forward. I would agree with that. But who is going to have power in Gaza? Who is going to run the place?
Naftali Bennett: Actually, we have a fairly coherent plan for a new Gaza. The necessary condition is to fully defeat Hamas, just like Nazi Germany was fully defeated. And then we will retain security and defense responsibility for the foreseeable future so Hamas cannot arise again. At the same time, we do not want to govern the civilians in Gaza. So we will identify—and we’re in the process of identifying—competent local leadership that will take care of governing Gaza. We’ll bring in highly qualified people from the Gulf—Saudis, UAE folks, whoever wants to fix it—and primarily Egyptian involvement. And we’ll begin rebuilding a new Gaza, clean of terror. That’s a bright future. But in order to reach that future, we have to cross the bridge, which is to fully defeat Hamas.
Piers Morgan: Naftali Bennett, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
Naftali Bennett: Thank you, Piers.
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Piers Morgan: Well, now to put this into perspective, returning to the Uncensored Political scientist Professor Norman Finkelstein and Israel’s preeminent historian Benny Morris, welcome to both of you. Let me ask you first of all, Norman, well, thank you. I’m glad we brought you two together. I’ve got to say a lot of people have been asking us to do this for a long time, to bring you two together. You’re both very eminent historians, obviously with different perspectives on this whole conflict, which goes back to, well, decades and decades and decades as we know. I want to start, if I may, by talking about this situation with Iran. We’ve just heard from Naftali Bennett there, Norman, his perspective on the fact that Iran wants to eradicate Israel and is using all its proxies to try and do this, whether it’s Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis. That appears to be unquestionable. Do you question that premise? I mean, do you have any doubt that Iran is involved in a multi-tentacled approach of trying to destabilize and eliminate Israel?
Norman Finkelstein: It’s hard to begin with a starting point because unless you know the starting point, you can’t understand what follows. But let me begin with a book that Benny Morris himself wrote. It’s called Israel’s Border Wars, and I highly recommend it. It’s an excellent book, and it goes back to the early 1950s. At that time, the Hitler was not Iran or the Ayatollah. The Hitler back then was a fellow named Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. He was an Arab nationalist, and Israel from early on was determined to topple him—not because he was carrying on any aggressive activity against the state of Israel, as Benny Morris documents quite exhaustively in the early years of Nasser’s regime. He was focused on internal development, not on the state of Israel. But Israel always feared, and it fears to this day, that an Arab leader might modernize the state and become a threat to Israeli regional hegemony. And so from early on, as Benny Morris exhaustively documents, Israel kept provoking Nasser, provoking Nasser, provoking Nasser until in February 1955 they carried out a major military raid, killed about 50 or 60—Professor Morris can correct me—Egyptian soldiers, and that slowly escalated until the 1956 Israeli-British-French invasion of Egypt.
Now, there are two lessons to be learned. Number one, the war had nothing whatsoever to do with Nasser’s aggressive, Hitler-like assaults on Israel. It had to do with the fear of a modernizing Egypt. That’s the first lesson to be learned. The second lesson to be learned is once Israel has a country in its crosshairs, you cannot stop it. It will keep escalating and escalating and escalating the provocations until the country is forced to react. And then, once it reacts, Israel unleashes—in the case of 1956, it was together with the UK and France—unleashes its full force. That same pattern—you saw it in 1982 when Israel kept escalating and escalating the attacks, kept escalating and escalating the attacks on Lebanon until the PLO was forced to react. Israel invaded, including Benny Morris who was a soldier during the war, committed the most horrible atrocities, and killed the estimates that run between 15,000 and 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians. The same pattern happened in 2008. There was a ceasefire in Gaza; it was agreed to in June. Israel decided it wanted to attack Hamas, needed this escalation. Mr. Morris… Mr. Morris, you are not the moderator. Piers Morgan is the moderator. When he tells me to stop, I will.
Benny Morris: Norman Finkelstein, stop telling people a distorted story, okay? He shouldn’t allow you to lecture with such distortions supposedly based on my books.
Piers Morgan: Here’s what I’ll say, Benny Morris. Here’s what I’ll say. I will absolutely give you the exact same amount of time to respond to everything that Norman is saying. I can guarantee you that. Let him just finish his point.
Norman Finkelstein: The same thing happened in 2008. There was a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. The ceasefire was holding up. Israel decided it wanted to attack Hamas in Gaza. And so on November 4th, the day Barack Obama was elected president, when there was the distraction of the American election, the US on November 4th attacked Hamas, killed several of its militants, and that quickly spiraled into the Operation Cast Lead that began on December 26, 2008. And the same thing is now happening with Iran. Iran is now in the position where Israel will keep ratcheting up and ratcheting up and ratcheting up the assassinations and the provocations until Iran is forced to react.
Piers Morgan: Let me go to Benny Morris because I would have an issue with—I certainly have a big issue with the conclusion there, because it seems to me, Benny Morris, that the ratcheting up has been going on from the Iranian side. But I’ll let you respond to what Norman Finkelstein said.
Benny Morris: Okay, I’m not going to give a lecture in history here, but Norman supposedly is basing himself on my books, and my books don’t actually tell the story Norman says. I’ll give just one or two words about the past. Nasser unleashed—allowed in the beginning and then later organized and unleashed—terrorism against Israel. He received Soviet weaponry with which to confront Israel, and Israel felt itself forced to retaliate, to preempt him, and went into the 1956 war in alliance with Britain and France. I won’t go into the history. Listen, the main problem now isn’t Nasser 60 or 70 years ago. The problem is Iran. Iran has a policy—has had a policy since the Islamic regime took over under Khomeini, and announced as well by his successor Khamenei (still the supreme leader)—to destroy Israel. That’s their policy. They announce it day in, day out—not just the leaders but the generals, everybody around power there—who says the same thing: Israel must be destroyed. And they want it destroyed because they are an Islamic regime, they are anti-Semites, and they want to dominate the Middle East. They see Israel as sort of a promontory of the West in the Middle East, as an enemy they have to overcome before eventually attacking the West itself. That’s the bottom line for them. And Iran, for decades, has been building up these proxy forces, especially with rockets, especially the Hezbollah, and Hamas. And Hamas has been rocketing Israel for the last two decades. And Israel, I think, has been extremely restrained, both in relation to Hamas and in relation to Hezbollah. But especially—and here I think Netanyahu has been ruling Israel for about the past 15 years—he has been over-restrained, if you like, weak, weak-kneed even, cowardly, and not confronting Iran much earlier.
At the moment, the Iranians are threatening revenge against Israel. Hezbollah is threatening revenge against Israel for knocking out several of the leaders of these proxy forces, which I think Israel has every right to do and to have done. And maybe a major confrontation is on the cards between Israel and Iran. The major problem for Israel, incidentally, that hasn’t been mentioned—not by Norman or yourself—is that Iran not just wants to destroy Israel but is busy building or trying to build nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel. And Israel should have taken these nuclear installations out before the Iranians approached weaponization and didn’t do so. Perhaps we’ll hopefully, if there is a major clash with Iran, do so now and use the opportunity to destroy the nuclear installations which they built in order to weaponize and build nuclear weapons. The problem is for Israel is that Israel may not have the capability to do it by itself. It may be able to damage, but it may not be able to actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project. And for that, it probably needs American help. And American presidents have been very reluctant, like Netanyahu, to confront the Iranians and so far haven’t done anything except talk about not allowing Iran to have nuclear weapons, but haven’t actually done anything to stop the Iranians.
Piers Morgan: Before I go to Norman to respond to that, can I just ask you, Benny Morris, does Israel have nuclear weapons?
Benny Morris: I don’t know. I’ve never been invited to Dimona or wherever they stockpile them, so I don’t know. But most Western intelligence agencies say Israel has a nuclear stockpile. They say that Israel has at least 200 nuclear weapons, and I assume they know what they’re talking about.
Piers Morgan: But we know exactly how many nuclear weapons the United States has, Russia has, China has, the UK has. Why is it that the world has no idea how many Israel has? And why is it, when I ask Netanyahu directly that question, he refuses to answer?
Benny Morris: Because Israel has always had a policy of ambiguity in relation to nuclear weapons. Israel believed that as long as it didn’t announce that it possesses nuclear weapons, it wouldn’t provoke other countries around to try and possess them themselves. Ambiguity was seen as the best policy. I’m not sure that was right, but that was Israeli policy. But I think the world, as I said, does know that Israel does possess these weapons.
Piers Morgan: Norman Finkelstein, it is odd, isn’t it, that we just don’t know? I mean, there’s Benny Morris sort of casually saying that Israel may have as many as 200 nuclear weapons. I’ve certainly never heard that from any member of the Israeli government—they refuse to even acknowledge they have one.
Norman Finkelstein: Benny Morris is an odd bird—I’m using a euphemism there—because he says one thing and then he says another thing. He’s like quicksilver; it’s very hard to pin him down. So I won’t go back to the early 1950s—people can read the book Israel’s Border Wars. I read it three times, so I think I know it pretty well, and people can decide for themselves.
Let’s move to what Benny Morris just had to say. Benny Morris has, since 2008—that’s the earliest date I’ve noticed—every two years, he publishes an op-ed in some Western newspaper, and sometimes in the Israeli newspapers, calling for an Israeli attack on Iran. Now, Benny Morris now says we don’t know whether Israel has nuclear weapons. Well, that’s a very odd thing for him to say, because Benny Morris has been explicitly blackmailing the West since 2008, saying, “If you don’t”—meaning the United States—”if the US doesn’t join in an attack on Iran, we,” meaning Israel, “have no alternative except to use non-conventional,” that is to say, nuclear, “weapons.”
So if I can quote him now, “It is doubtful that its conventional capabilities will be sufficient to destroy the Iranian nuclear project. Then non-conventional weaponry will have to be used to stymie the project, and many innocent Iranians will die. But the Iranians will have brought this upon themselves by bringing to power and leaving in power a leadership that will have forced Israelis to do what was necessary in order to survive.”
So, Benny Morris, who doesn’t know whether Israel possesses nuclear weapons, nonetheless says Israel will have to use non-conventional weapons, and he says many Iranians will have to die—maybe millions, maybe tens of millions—but they deserved it because they… Mr. Morris, you can laugh till kingdom come, but I’m quoting your words. But he said that’s okay because they voted for the regime.
Benny Morris: No, this is absurd. This is absurd. I… Israel… No, let me respond. Let me respond.
Piers Morgan: Hang on, hang on, Norman. Let Benny Morris respond.
Benny Morris: As is your wont, you didn’t quote me properly. What I said was that if Israel is unable, with conventional weapons, to destroy the Iranian project, and if the Americans don’t do it in conjunction with Israel or by themselves, Israel will be forced to use non-conventional weapons and attack the nuclear installations—not kill millions of Iranians.
Norman Finkelstein: You said millions of Iranians.
Benny Morris: I’ve never said anything about millions of Iranians. This is pure nonsense. This is pure Norman. Norman, you are lying.
Norman Finkelstein: What do you think happens if you drop…
Benny Morris: You think I’m…
Norman Finkelstein: Professor Morris, what do you think happens if you drop nuclear weapons on Iran? What do you think happens?
Benny Morris: No, not on Iran. Not on Iran. Norman, you’re…
Norman Finkelstein: Mr. Morris, again–
Benny Morris: Norman, you are misrepresenting what I said.
Piers Morgan: Let’s… we can’t work out who’s saying what. So, Benny Morris, why don’t you say what you believe you said?
Benny Morris: Not just what I believe, but what I actually said. I said Israel should, if it is unable to do the work and destroy the Iranian nuclear project before they get nuclear weapons with conventional weaponry, we will have to use non-conventional weaponry.
Piers Morgan: And what was meant by that?
Benny Morris: Let me finish the sentence.
Piers Morgan: But you have to accept when you say that, don’t you? All right, I’ll…
Benny Morris: The question that Israel should use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy the Iranian nuclear plants—not bomb Iranian cities, not bomb the Iranian civilian population—but tactical nuclear weapons could do the job against their nuclear installations in Iran.
Piers Morgan: Norman Finkelstein, so he’s clarified—he doesn’t mean dropping big nuclear weapons into civilian areas, he’s talking about using tactical nuclear weapons to eliminate nuclear plants. What do you say to that?
Norman Finkelstein: What I say to that is actually quite simple. For many, many years, there has been the advocacy of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. In case your listeners are unaware, there’s a nuclear weapon-free zone in Latin America. There’s a nuclear weapon-free zone in Africa. There’s a nuclear weapon-free zone in the South Pacific. And there has been a strong advocacy, because of the dangers of a nuclear war in the Middle East, to turn the Middle East into a nuclear weapons-free zone. The last vote was taken in the UN General Assembly in December 2022. It was a very close vote—very close. The vote was 175 states, including Iran, in favor of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. One against: Israel. And two abstentions: Singapore and the United States.
So I think there’s a very real danger of a nuclear escalation in the Middle East because Israel is—as The New York Times called it this past week—they called Israel a “rogue state.” That’s the euphemism for a lunatic state. Israel is a lunatic state. It has Iran in its crosshairs. It’s determined to escalate, ratchet up the provocations until it could force the US into the war with Iran or, in Benny Morris‘s alternative, to use nuclear weapons—non-conventional weapons—in Iran.
So at this point, I think—I can’t speak for the immediate future because it may be too late—but certainly the prospect of a nuclear weapons-free Middle East would, I think, be the best option. The entire world supports it, except Israel. That’s what the vote shows.
Benny Morris: Can I say something now?
Piers Morgan: Yes, you can, Benny Morris. Your chance to respond.
Benny Morris: I actually agree with Norman that the Middle East should be and should become a nuclear-free zone. The problem is that assuring that Iran would abide by anything it committed itself to would be a real problem. Iran has cheated every UN body that has looked at its nuclear project. It’s cheated about almost everything it does. It’s a regime of lies, which one cannot expect to tell the truth, and therefore Israel can’t depend on a promise by Iran that it won’t develop nuclear weapons when Iran is so big it could do it in a dark corner somewhere in any corner of Iran and get away with it.
So Israel is probably not going to demilitarize in terms of nuclear weapons on the say-so of Iran. But the whole idea of a rogue state—I don’t remember reading anything in The New York Times about calling Israel a rogue state—but if there is a rogue state in the Middle East, it’s definitely Iran, at least in the eyes of most Western governments and intelligence services. Because Iran has been a producer and creator and propagator and promoter of terrorism, and everything it does in connection with North Korea, in connection with Russia, in connection with every awful regime on this planet helps to prove that it is a rogue state. There is one rogue state, one pariah state, and hopefully its regime will vanish in the near future.
Piers Morgan: Norman Finkelstein, let me just ask you—I mean, you seem…
Norman Finkelstein: I would like…
Piers Morgan: Hang on, let me just put a question to you, and then you can comment.
Norman Finkelstein: I want…
Piers Morgan: You seem oddly keen to defend Iran, to paint a picture of this poor country which is being constantly provoked and therefore has no option but to do what it does in terms of helping proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah and so on. Why are you so defensive of Iran when really most independent people look at the situation, they may have just as many criticisms as you do of Israel and the way its government has been behaving, but nobody races to defend Iran. Why are you so keen to defend them?
Norman Finkelstein: I look at the documentary record. I look at the historical record, and I base my judgments on it. Let’s just take the last point that Benny Morris made, and then I’ll return to your major point.
The last point Benny Morris made—for a surprising change, we agreed on one point. He said that he too supports a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. However, he then said that we can’t trust Iran because it’s a conniving, cheating, deceptive regime, and so we can’t trust it not to build a nuclear weapon. Now, I find that, coming from an Israeli, a very odd statement because Professor Morris must know that it was through deception, conniving, deceiving, espionage, spying, and all sorts of other things that Israel created its nuclear weapons force. He has, for sure, read Avner Cohen‘s book on how the bomb was created, how Israel acquired nuclear weapons.
Professor Morris, according to Avner Cohen, was it by being honest? Was it by being above board? Was it by allowing inspectors to see what Israel was doing in Dimona? Is that what happened, Professor Morris? So isn’t this a classic case of the kettle calling the coffee pot black for you to say we can’t trust Iran after Israel’s record on nuclear weapons?
As even you so shamefacedly and shamelessly say, “I don’t know if Israel has nuclear weapons.” You really don’t? You advocate Israel’s use of them in the event that the US doesn’t join the attack on Iran, but then you don’t know if Israel has nuclear weapons? You’re such a shameless liar. It’s a sad fact. I spent many, many weeks reading your books. I spend many, many months reading your books, and to see how you have degenerated into a state propagandist and a bold-faced liar—it’s very, very sad.
Piers Morgan: Benny Morris, those are some incendiary comments from Norman Finkelstein about you. Defend yourself.
Benny Morris: I don’t think I’m shameless. I think I’ve written truthful books about history; that’s why Norman quotes me all the time. About the nuclear weapons, my assumption is Israel has them, but I’ve never seen them. I’ve never seen it confirmed by Israel that it has them, so it’s sort of up in the air, but we can assume it has them. Why does Israel have nuclear weapons? Well, Norman actually knows why Israel, if it has nuclear weapons, developed them in the 1950s and 60s, and that was because it was surrounded by a bunch of Arab countries that wanted to destroy it. They said, “We will destroy you. We want to destroy Israel.” So Israel was forced to build a nuclear stockpile so it would be able to deter the Arabs should they be able conventionally to overcome Israel.
Israel managed to do that. It never threatened anybody with the use of nuclear weapons, never used them against anybody, even when its army was on its knees at the beginning of the 1973 war. It never threatened anybody with destruction like Iran does. It never threatened anybody like Hamas and Hezbollah do daily, calling for Israel’s destruction. But it did need this nuclear deterrent to stave off animals like the Iranian government.
Piers Morgan: Okay, no one?
Norman Finkelstein: I’m gonna… I think at this point, people have heard both sides, so I’d rather you move on to another question, if you don’t mind.
Piers Morgan: Okay, that’s fair enough. Let’s move on. I tell you what, let’s move on to the latest on the war in Gaza. I want to ask you first of all, Norman Finkelstein, where do you think this war is now? Prime Minister Netanyahu seems determined to continue prosecuting the war until every last member of Hamas has been killed or imprisoned. But in the process, a lot more civilians are dying on a daily basis. How does this war end, do you think?
Norman Finkelstein: Well, I think we have to first get clear on the nomenclature. I don’t believe it’s a war. I actually think the actual, what you might call, battlefield aspect of the conflict has been fairly trivial. I admit, I admit I can’t prove that, but I can say, having followed it fairly closely, that you don’t read in Gaza about any major battles. You don’t read about any major battlefield deaths in Gaza. What you hear is about a person here, a person there being killed. Aside from the fact that since Israel is indiscriminately bombing Gaza with unprecedented intensity, one can say with certainty that a large number of Hamas militants have been killed. But that’s because large numbers of civilians have been killed. So you can guess, roughly speaking, that the number of Hamas militants proportional to the population have been killed roughly in the same numbers as civilians.
The main aim of the assault on Gaza, I think, having studied the record very closely—and here I think I’ve studied it as closely as anyone else—is properly described as a genocide in Gaza. I think the main aim in Gaza has been to, as many Israelis have said, make Gaza unlivable, make Gaza uninhabitable. As the former Chief of the National Security Council, Giora Eiland, who is now an advisor to the Defense Minister, put it, the people of Gaza will have only two choices left: to stay and starve, or to leave. That’s, in my opinion, why Israel launched the assault on Rafah beginning on May 7th. They wanted to finish the job—they wanted there to be nothing left in Gaza so the people of Gaza will have nothing left to return to. That aim has, in my opinion, been largely achieved. The last numbers I read are that there are 40 million tons of rubble in Gaza, and it would take between 10 and 15 years just to clean out the rubble. The rubble is mixed with a lot of unexploded ordnance and toxic substances, so the estimate is 10 to 15 years—not to rebuild Gaza, but just to remove the rubble.
I want to just… okay, let’s move ahead.
Piers Morgan: Let me bring in Benny Morris. Benny, I want to quote you before you respond—a quote from an interview you gave in 2014. You said, “There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide, the annihilation of your people, I prefer ethnic cleansing.” People think that what Israel is doing now in Gaza is a form of ethnic cleansing. Do you agree with that?
Benny Morris: No, not really. I think Israel has been prosecuting a war against Hamas since October 7th because Hamas attacked Israel, slaughtered 1,250 people, took hostages—children, old people, women—250 of them. Women were raped, apparently men as well. Israel decided that this was enough, and the government decided, “We must destroy Hamas,” and that’s what it’s been doing for the last nine months. It’s an organization that well deserves to be destroyed. The organization, Hamas, has fighters—20,000 to 30,000 of them—who have been hiding among the population, in the population, under the buildings, in the buildings, in the hospitals, in the schools, etc. This has necessitated Israel bombing here and there to kill Hamas people, and that’s what it’s been doing. This has caused enormous, terrible damage in Gaza, and it will take years to rebuild Gaza, but it will be rebuilt if Hamas is destroyed. If it’s not destroyed, there will be perpetual warfare between Israel and Hamas, and the civilian population of the Gaza Strip will remain in miserable and terrible conditions. This, incidentally, was probably one of the aims of Hamas when it initiated the assault on October 7th against Israel. They anticipated that Israel would go into Gaza, would bomb Gaza, would kill lots of civilians, and then would, of course, be blamed for it by the international community and hounded by people like Norman Finkelstein intellectually. They expected that, and they probably wanted that. They don’t care about how many civilians die in Gaza because, according to Hamas’s fundamentalist beliefs, they all go to heaven—they’re martyrs, so they shouldn’t even complain about it. Hamas built itself a large tunnel network under the Gaza Strip, some 700 kilometers worth of tunnels, which they never allowed civilians in the Gaza Strip to enter because they wanted the civilians to die outside.
Piers Morgan: Alright, Norman Finkelstein, I mean, it’s hard to… All I would say is it is hard—it is hard to disagree when Morris says that Hamas obviously knew what the response was going to be here. You can’t go into Israel and slaughter 1,200 people and wound nearly 7,000 more in the most grotesque, medieval, barbaric manner and not assume that Israel would respond in the way that it has. So, you would surely agree with that—that Hamas must have known what was going to come back?
Norman Finkelstein: I’ll address that question in a half moment. I would first like to address what Professor Morris had to say, and then I promise you I’ll get back to that question.
Professor Morris says Israel is attacking Hamas. Israel is focused on Hamas, and everything else is, to use the technical expression, collateral damage—regrettable, sad, but collateral damage. So let’s take a report that came out today from B’Tselem, the Israel Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and it documents in excruciating detail the massive, relentless torture that Israel is inflicting on the detainees since October 7th. Now, people worry, justifiably, about the torture that might be inflicted on the hostages in Gaza, but what about the 10,000 detainees now who are being relentlessly, brutally tortured, including sexual torture—not just sexual violence, but beyond the generic sexual violence—sodomy and so forth. Was that targeting Hamas? Are all those 10,000 detainees, who have been randomly collected by Israel, all Hamas?
And let’s assume it was Hamas.
Benny Morris: Can I respond to that?
Piers Morgan: Benny, you will be able to in a minute.
Norman Finkelstein: And let’s assume that Hamas knew Israel would react. Now, I’m asking you a simple question, Piers: does that justify Israel’s infliction of massive torture on roughly 10,000 Palestinian detainees from Gaza who were randomly rounded up since October 7th? Now, one last point, and then it’s over to Professor Morris. Professor Morris wants us to believe that Israel is engaging in a pinpoint war against Hamas with collateral damage. He didn’t use the expression “collateral damage”; I’m using it, but you get the point. So here’s my question. I’ve spent the past eight months reading through the human rights reports. I’ve read the reports of Save the Children, I’ve read the reports of UNICEF, I’ve read the reports of the World Food Program, I’ve read the reports of USAID, I’ve read the reports of the World Bank, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Health Organization.
Now, I ask you, Piers, is it plausible, is it believable, that all these internationally eminent and respected human rights organizations, when they say that Israel is targeting the civilian population of Gaza, is it plausible, Piers, that they are all conspiring in a monumental hoax to deny that Israel is in fact only targeting Hamas? Is that believable?
Piers Morgan: Well, no, no. Here’s what I would say…
Norman Finkelstein: I’d like an answer.
Piers Morgan: I will. I will come to Benny for an answer, but my response myself would be that you missed out a report that came out yesterday where the United Nations accepted that I think it was eight or nine members of its employees had been taking part in the attacks on October the 7th. So you didn’t mention that report. So reports can be multifaceted in what they reveal about what’s going on here.
Also, I would say this. I would also say this: as I said from the very start of this, after the scale of the attack on October the 7th, Israel didn’t just have a right to defend itself, it had a moral duty to defend itself. The scale of proportionate response was always, for me, the great moral quandary—how much is too much? And there’s no doubt it’s a particularly difficult war to propagate because you have Hamas living among civilians in Gaza, and the civilian population is 50% under 18. This gives it an almost unique nature, this war, that we haven’t seen anywhere else in the world. So it’s very complicated, it’s not easy, there’s no simple answer. But to come to Benny Morris, I would say this: the problem Israel has is that Netanyahu is utterly determined, it seems, to continue this war, fighting it until every last member of Hamas is eliminated. But this is clearly taking a lot longer than he anticipated, and in the process, many, many thousands more civilians are being killed, and public support around the world for Israel outside of the US has been dramatically reducing to the point where Israel is becoming almost a pariah. And I just wonder how you feel about that and whether there is a way through this that brings this to an end that doesn’t involve killing every last member of Hamas.
Benny Morris: As far as I remember, Netanyahu said that he wants to get every one of those 3,000 Hamasniks who crossed the border and slaughtered Israelis. He wants to get them either on trial or kill them. I don’t know if he’s said he wants to kill every last Hamasnik—and there probably is no such thing, because every day, every week, every month, they probably hire new, recruit new fighters. So that’s an impossibility. But he does want to destroy Hamas as a military and a governmental organization, and that’s something I certainly identify with.
I don’t think that Norman is quoting correctly. I don’t think that all the world’s human rights organizations are saying that Israel targets civilians. I do believe that they say Israel has killed lots of civilians alongside Hamas people, and that’s certainly true. But I don’t really know what the way out of this is unless Hamas gives up the hostages it still holds and agrees to disarm and to stop firing at Israel. Otherwise, this will go on and on until essentially Hamas—as you say, every last one of them is killed, at least in Netanyahu‘s eyes.
Just let me add one other thing: Netanyahu doesn’t really represent the will of all Israelis, probably not even most Israelis at this stage. He’s an incompetent, I think cowardly, and immoral leader. He’s a corrupt politician. All he’s really interested in, or mainly interested in, is saving his own skin and not going to jail on corruption charges and to stay in control of the premiership. That’s what he aims at, and prolonging the war seems to help him do this. So far, the Israeli public says, “Well, we’ll have elections, but only after we finish the war with Hamas.” But now it’s all become very complicated because it’s not just Hamas, it’s Hezbollah, and it’s the Iranians, and it’s the Houthis in Yemen that Israel has to confront. So Hamas has actually been sidelined by recent events.
Piers Morgan: I would imagine that Norman Finkelstein would pretty much agree with everything you said about Netanyahu just then. And I always like to end these debates with some common ground, so…
Norman Finkelstein: I don’t.
Piers Morgan: You don’t? Well, let me give you the final word, then, just on what Benny said about Netanyahu. I assumed you’d agree.
Norman Finkelstein: No, not at all. Because for years, I’ve been reading in the pages of the Israeli liberal press that Netanyahu‘s finished. Netanyahu is finished. Netanyahu will be out. But he keeps coming back. He keeps coming back, like that old camp song, “The Cat Came Back, He Wouldn’t Go Away.” Why? Why does he keep coming back? It’s a very simple reason: Netanyahu is an obnoxious, narcissistic, Jewish supremacist. Let me repeat that—an obnoxious, narcissistic, Jewish supremacist. And in that respect, he’s the perfect mirror of Israeli society. When they see Netanyahu, they see themselves, and that’s why they vote for him.
Piers Morgan: Gentlemen, I’m going to leave it there. Thank you very much. Benny, I can’t keep letting you go back at each other because, unfortunately, we’ve run out of time. We can do it again, though. I think it’s been a fascinating debate.
Benny Morris: Can I just say one more sentence? All of the opinion polls in Israel today say that the majority of Israelis want Netanyahu out. So, I’m not sure he actually reflects the will of the Israeli people.
Piers Morgan: I agree with that. That is indisputably true. But thank you both very much indeed. I’m glad we brought you together.
That’s it for now. Piers Morgan Uncensored is taking a brief summer pause to recharge our batteries. After that, I think you can understand why we all need it.
