 Jay Fidel, this is Global Connections, and we're talking about war crimes against Israel with an historian from UH, an old friend, Peter Haffenberg. Welcome to the show, Peter. Thank you very much. It's good to see you. I wish there were circumstances were better, but it is good to see you, as always. Well, you know, it seems like ancient history, not to use that term, it seems like ancient history now, and it's what, 12 days post the horrific massacre in the Kibbutzim, just outside of Gaza. And it's like we've been through so much since then. The whole thing with Netanyahu's attempts at vengeance and the various precision bombing over Gaza and the humanitarian issues raised by Palestinians. And now, most recently, the hospital issue just a day or two ago, and the attempts to bring those 20 trucks in from Egypt, which Egypt has resisted up to this point. And my most remarkable reference is all these other countries, Arab countries have riots over the hospital affair, even though the evidence, to me, and to Joe Biden and to the American military seems clear that this was an errant rocket from Islamic Jihad, and it was not an Israeli bomb. Everything that the Israelis have produced shows that, including most powerfully a recorded conversation and intercepted conversation between two Arab groups where they, one informed the other that it was an errant Islamic Jihad rocket and not an Israeli bomb. So anyway, here we have all these events taking place after the massacre, after the taking of those hostages and the rape of those hostages, marching them through the streets naked, beheading of children, all that. And it's funny how the fickle finger of the media works. They rather spend time telling you about the tragedies of humanitarian results of the bombing, which, in my view, was by the Islamic Jihad. So here we are, and we have to get our head straight on what happened and what is the relative magnitude and concern about what happened on October 7th. So my first question is the title question of the show. In your view, knowing what you know, you're an historian, you studied a lot of atrocities that have happened in our world, was that war crime? Okay, thank you very much. Let me first of all say what I always say. I only represent myself. I don't represent the university. And war crimes as war crimes, just legally defined, are being practiced by the Hamas operatives. They're terrorists, they're not militants, they're terrorists, let's call them what they are. And I think that the Israelis and most Americans also recognize that what is being done in Gaza can be considered a war crime. It is certainly against the law to target civilians. The Israelis don't target civilians, but civilians are being victims. The siege itself could be considered a war crime. Now, I think we have to, what you said, you said many important things. You began, you ended with the maybe the most important. We got to step back for a minute, get our hands on minds and on what is going on and try not to see it through righteous rage. And in that case, war crimes according to both history and the letter of the law are being committed. That does not equate them. It doesn't mean the war crimes are of equal magnitude. It says nothing about the justification. In many cases, I think folks would argue that Israel is fighting a just war as Michael Walzer has written about brilliantly. The problem always is in war. Can you fight in a just and ethical and moral way? And nobody is blameless regarding this. So the very succinct answer is yes, then we need to step back, recognize why it's happening and take measures. Now, one fundamental difference, fundamental difference is that the Israeli military does not set out to deliberately kill Gaza or Palestinians in this case. But the elimination of water and energy, electricity, et cetera, means the results is essentially a war crime result. On the other hand, let's be quite clear. Let's have some moral clarity on this. Hamas's charter from day one until this very day calls for the murder of all Jews. So they're not making a distinction between combatants and civilians. The Israelis try to draw that distinction. So there's certainly no doubt that the actions of Hamas and their supporters are not just war crimes. I mean, Hamas is exercising essentially genocide. I mean, their goal is to kill all Jews. That's genocide. Genocide in the case of the Israelis is I think an abused term. There is no genocide in Gaza. There are war crimes, there is behavior which we don't find ethical or moral, but the goal of the Israelis is not to kill and eliminate all Palestinians. Yeah, wait a minute though, Peter. You ascribe war crimes to the Israelis, but they have said why they have gone in and done the bombing. They've said that there's infrastructure in there in which the Hamas is hiding behind civilians. And they have said that they wanna knock off that infrastructure so that they can have a ground invasion which doesn't result in an awful lot of deaths. So the idea is to take the infrastructure out so that they can get at Hamas and they warn them, they do that knock on the roof thing. I don't know how you can call that a war crime. They're merely defending their right to take out Hamas because, and let's see if you agree with this, because if they don't take out Hamas, Hamas by its sworn declaration and constitution and all its expressed intention, we'll do it again. You know, one thing I forget who said this, but somebody famous said this, maybe it was Golden Ma'er. If you let them do it and there is no accountability, they will do it again. And I think that's absolutely clear here. You don't have to talk to Golden Ma'er to know that. If you let them do it without accountability, they will do it again. They'll be attacking some other keyboards, they'll be slaughtering people, beheading them, beheading them, raping them, taking children and so forth. I don't have to go through all of that. You know how bad it was. I agree with you. What we need to try to distinguish though is the justification for war and the Israeli government and society has. Well, you say war, I mean, I don't think it's war when you're just trying to knock off infrastructure so you can get the bad guys. I want to point out something that although there are these little tidbits come out and say, well, you know, the Palestinians don't agree with Hamas, they're there involuntarily. Well, they voted essentially for Hamas and whatever kind of system they have, presumably they have some voice to Hamas, but you haven't heard one word uttered by one Palestinian anywhere saying, Hamas, you've got to stop doing this. Not one word, not in Gaza or anywhere else. So you have to treat them as coincidental. They're really the same in terms of effect. You referred to effect. So I don't feel, I don't feel that. I agree with all of that. The question is, does that justify no water, no electricity, no medical supplies? I know the objective and I know the cause. And those are both just. You know, I woke up by the eighth of the ninth in the middle of the night and I said to myself, siege, because with siege, you don't have to go in. You don't have to bomb necessarily. The loss of life is minimal. And what you're saying is, give us, let my people go. Give us our Israeli children back. And okay, that's why you do siege. That's why they said they were doing siege. So I don't feel that's a work run by any stretch. We want our children back. We want to reverse the war crime. But by the letter of the law, a siege like this is a war crime because you are indiscriminately harming civilians as well as combatants, regardless of whether or not. Well, I don't agree with that, Peter. I don't agree with that. Well, not one Palestinian in Gaza has said, look, I talked to Hamas. I asked them and they rejected me. I haven't even heard that. So I guess the siege. Well, we know that Hamas rejects people by murdering them. And look, this is not a democracy. There was one election. But we're faced with an issue which is not non analogous to World War II where the argument was in order to bring down the enemy even if the enemy citizens did not vote for them, it was necessary to demolish Germany. Now, I don't want people to listen and say, you know, Hamas is Germany, et cetera. But I want people to think about accepting the responsibility for military actions that are in fact against the law. Now, that can be... I'm not sure they are against the law. No, I mean, no, the law says siege. A siege in which... Any siege. Any siege. Any siege. Even a justified siege. Even when they're holding hundreds of hostages and God knows what they're doing, that's against the law. I don't believe that. Well, the international law is pretty clear. Now, if Israelis were besieging a Hamas fort, for example, and Hamas combats, right, how people in a prison in a fort, that's a different issue. The siege is specifically about areas which are disproportionately civilian. Now, we have to be really careful here, right? But you're not changing your mind because they're using civilians. I mean, arguably using civilians as human shields. No, that is not. Now, there's no doubt that there is no doubt Hamas is committing more crimes. There's no doubt. The use of human shields to take the hostages, the identification and murder of civilians, those are all clearly war crimes, okay? But it really doesn't matter because Hamas and most of the Arab countries are not signatories to war crimes tribunal. Okay, but it matters to me. And I will not condemn the Israelis for the siege. I will not condemn the Israelis for anything they have done. The children are still held hostage. They're still there. And I wake up in the middle of the night and I think of those children and I am outraged by the thought. And here we are, here we are on day number 12 and they're still there suffering and their parents and their relatives and their friends suffering beyond description. I don't think the Israelis have a choice. They have to do everything possible. And unfortunately, it's not enough because what has happened since then has blurred the image and people forget. And as the days and weeks drag on, they will forget more. And as a result, hey, the hostages will remain. Maybe they'll be involved in some unholy bargain. What does Hamas want? They want 7,000 Palestinian militants and Hamas people released from Israeli jails in return for the 200, 300 hostages. Richard, I think maybe that's the end of the game here. But you know what that means? I go back to my point. We'll have this again. We'll have it again. It'll play out the same way, except worse. There'll be beheadings and rape and pillage and slaughter again. And if I were in Israeli, I would do everything in my possible to stop that. We're in fundamental agreement. And the keyword is condemnation. I don't think condemning Israel and creating some moral equivalency is correct. But it is also acceptable to say that this is a just war. The end result is really the life or death of Israel. And therefore, we are committing acts which are illegal. And there's no country which cannot claim that. And that's all I'm saying. So I'm not using war crimes to beat down the Israelis. You asked me here as a historian. And so I'm giving you an objective view, which is that it is a just war. Israel has full right to defend itself. It is a just end. No country wants to sit next to a group of people who are committed to their elimination. Hamas is genocidal. Okay, so that's A and C. How do we get to B? And unfortunately, and it is unfortunate that B is going to include actions which international law says are war crimes. And the sad fact is there is no alternative. And Hamas and the Arab world and everybody else beyond Israel is responsible for that. But that's not a moral condemnation of Israel. So we're agreeing on really the most, in many ways the most salient points, right? The war is totally justified. The end result is actually rational to get rid of Hamas. Okay, that's rational. But getting from A to C because of the context, right? Hamas and the Palestinians always wanted to talk about context. Well, because of the context, regardless of the cause of the context and the cause goes way back. And we can talk about them at least in general some other time, right? It's very easy just to blame the occupation, right? There are pogroms against Jews on the part of Palestinians well before there was a state of Israel. The grand mufti, the leader of the Islamic community went to Berlin to talk to Hitler. So this idea that somehow it's only the occupation. Now, the occupation might have prevented it from being resolved, but killing Jews does not require occupying Gaza. Historically, there's always been time for that. Okay, the response though is yes, you need to stop killing Jews. You, the rest of the world are not taking care of this. We need to take care of it, absolutely justified. The difficulty is, and look, there's no way out. The difficulty is this is an embedded terrorist organization which has surrounded itself with humans. It's built tunnels. It has dug up water pipes and used them as rockets. It has not held an election in 20 years. This is by all accounts, a fascist regime, by all accounts. It uses terror, it uses racial, originalist purity. It has total disregard for individualism. It wants world dominance. Okay. And it kills anyone who opposes it. Absolutely, and we're told, is that a crime? And so, well, its charter is to kill all Jews. And it seems to be they are also willing to kill any Christians and Muslims who don't agree with them. I'm sure the Baha'i are on their list as well, as peace-loving people. That's, they are fascists. Now, the question is historically has always been how do you respond to fascism? And historically, the only successful antibiotic or penicillin to fascism is essentially to destroy that state or government. And that has always, always included, right? The death of civilians. So in this way, a parallel, I mean, people talk about 9-11. I'm not convinced of that analogy. I think as I spoke to other people, World War II gives us an analogy. World War II was against fascism. The only way to defeat fascism in the end was to destroy Germany. That's how it's defeated. And that meant brutal street fighting, brutal, right? So in that case, I don't think either Americans or Israelis need to think that they are being condemned. They need to recognize that the facts of history, unfortunately, mean that if you're gonna take out a fascist government, and that could include a fascist society, right? It's not as if all people in Gaza do not agree with Hamas, right? Not everybody does, but certainly some do. The unfortunate, I mean, you asked me as a historian, right? Not a moral philosopher or an ethicist. You asked me as a historian, well, history is. You need to destroy. You can't convince a fascist regime or fascist society to sit down. It is geared on purity, on violence. In the case of Hamas and in the case of Nazi Germany, it was also devoted to a kind of martyrdom in which death is glorified, right? Israelis do not glorify death, quite the opposite. The I.I. No, but you know what, I wanna go to this point. You mentioned earlier that these countries which have all these protests about the hospital and the like, and they don't mind condemning Israel for what they see as war crimes at the hospital, even without evidence. And okay, even though they don't ascribe to the law about war crimes, as you mentioned. So I find that really interesting. So they'll charge Israel with war crimes even though theoretically they're not agreeing to the law about war crimes. Okay, that's predictable. We knew that was gonna happen. We have to give credit to Hamas for setting up the public relations that way. They were on Israel within minutes after that explosion and they knew exactly what they were doing to incite violence all over the Middle East, great move. But what troubles me as an academician and a historian, a professor, if you will, but not on behalf of any particular university, okay? I am so troubled with the reaction in this country. There are people that never protested the slaughter of the Israelis, but who protest the quote war crimes, end quote, of the way the Israelis have tried to respond to the slaughter of those young people and the hostage-taking of those young people. In this country, on our campuses, they protest against the Israelis, but they never protested against the slaughter of Israelis. Can you explain that to me? Okay, I see you only have six minutes. This would probably take at least three or four Talmud sessions. So let me just share a few points and then I'm happy to come back because that is in and of itself a discussion, right? Anti-Semitism in the U.S. and anti-Israeli sentiment. First of all, there have been protests clearly, sickening protests, but they still are on a minority of campuses among a minority of students. And I think we gotta be careful here. Most Americans and most American college kids are indifferent about the Middle East. There are those who fully support Israel and don't necessarily feel it's their place to politicize a campus. The other minority, and it is a loud minority, but it's a clear minority, takes up the long tradition of anti-Semitism, the long tradition of what seems to be supporting the underdog. I mean, Israel still has, and in many cases, has been victimized by its own success. It is clearly the underdog, right? It is surrounded by countries that are either outwardly hostile or refused to recognize it. It is a democracy with its own internal issues. It is not Goliath, but the Palestinians and the Arab communities in good part because remember three or four military defeats have been able to take what has always been on campuses an inclination to side with the underdog and defining the underdog in a certain way. I also see that a lot of the protests, from my point of view, again, not as a professor but not representing the university, I see many of them tinged with critique of the US, which makes it really ironic since the US supports the Saudis and the US supports Egypt, both of whom write violent human rights. But if you look at the rhetoric and we're taught to take language seriously, like when the Hamas Charter says they wanna kill Jews, I take that seriously, right? That that's not a piece of myth, it's not a fabrication. And I do take seriously that some of the argument, and this is not to justify it, this is to explain it, while some of the argument is clearly anti-Semitic and clearly anti-Israel and clearly for the underdog, much of the rhetoric is also critiquing American society and American foreign aid. Now, I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong, I'm just saying that is the lens by which. So if you look at a lot of the discussions, it ends up being anti-Israel, Hamas, pro-Palestinian, and then a series of issues, right? Black Lives Matter gets folded into that US support for regime in Central America. That wanna be very clear, right? This is not approving of that or justifying that, it's sitting back as a social scientist and saying, let's take the language, let's take the thinking seriously, which does not excuse in any way any other parts of it. Because some really are Jew haters, we have to recognize that Jew hatred is out there as well. All right, so in order to address that, we also need to think about the other issues, all right? I don't know if that answers it, and I'm happy to come back and talk about what's going on on campuses, including our campus. I'm very happy to talk about that. I see we only have a couple of minutes, so. Well, let me go to my- Because I don't know if that's very satisfying answer. No, because it's not satisfying in the sense that, we're talking about war crimes here, and it really strikes me as remarkable that people who ostensibly are studying, including history, can make the conclusion that what happened on October 7th is not worth protesting, but what happened after is worth protesting. Underdog, it seems to me, if you just look at the fact, the underdogs are the Israelis. They're always at the wrong end of these attacks. Every single war since 1948, you know? And historians, the general consensus is that this changed with the Six-Day War. The general consensus is that Israel proved to be successful militarily, able to defend itself. And among the media responses was that the Palestinians and the Arabs are the underdogs. Now, we're not talking facts, right? We're talking public perception. And unfortunately, very often, the two have a wide, you know, Pacific division between them, Atlantic division between them. But since 67, essentially, the view of Israel has changed except for a few key moments. So for example, the Yom Kippur War, Americans recognize Israel was attacked and there was general popular support for Israel. 9-11, there was support for Israel. But as far as the general attitude on campuses or among some of the youth and some old people as well, Israel is attacked from both the right and the left. And let me just finish one thing. When Republican candidates use Israel to beat the head of Joe Biden, that does us no good either, right? Jews and Israel are chess pieces for both the right and the left. There's a lot of criticism and it's justifiable about some on the left that should not blind us to what continues to be essentially the utility of Israel and the utility of Jews for people on the right as well. And that has a long tradition. Right wing anti-Semitism in America has a long tradition. And so when you read about protests against Israel or in favor of Hamas in Europe, I want people to also recognize the intense anti-Semitism among European elites. And they are interested in Israel for trade and weapons and they're interested in Israel to control Muslims. That is no deep sense of love or affection for Israel or Jews. That both extremes have no humanity towards Jews and Israel, both extremes. I think this has been enhanced over recent years and certainly over recent weeks by the press. I have been watching YouTube and cable and conventional news, reading the newspaper, including the Times and the Post. And I have concluded that they're taking a kind of balance, quote, balanced reporting position. And that means that they are carefully reporting all of that anti-Israel sentiment and all the logic in the Palestinian complaints about war crimes by the Israelis. And I feel that's not good reporting. I also feel that social media is being used and the media in general, conventional media, cable media and social media is being used by the Palestinians brilliantly. The anti-Israel people, the anti-Semitic people in order to turn public opinion against Israel. I don't think it was ever quite as accentuated as it is now. And this is a great problem because now, I think public opinion is anti-Israel, even though Peter, it's the young people in those kibbutzim who were murdered brutally and somehow we look around the world and around this country and the media is doing, what's the term, two-sided reporting as if the Jews might have been wrong and being murdered. That's not important. I really feel the reporting has accentuated the problem for the Jews. And I wonder what your thoughts are about whether the media has been responsible. Well, I think that the media, well, you made two points. I mean, one, I'm in complete agreement with that the use and abuse of social media has been very effective on the part of Hamas and their supporters. We know that immediately when the Hamas terrorists used images and hacked into social media accounts of their victims. Okay, I don't think there's any disagreement. The response is that the Israelis and Jewish groups need to honestly, in a sophisticated way, also use social media and groups like Stand With Us Are to promote information, not induce information. I think we're in complete agreement. As far as journalism, I think that we have a world of magical thinking in that it is reasonable for journalists to try to cover all sides without making moral equivalencies. And I think that's in good part the difficulty of people who are watching the news, that they're generating moral equivalencies if they see an image of the kids being gunned down. I mean, 250 kids at a music festival. This is just obscene. And I think you know that many of the kibbutzim on the border were actually peace advocates. I mean, one of the women killed actually drove Gazans to cancer centers in Israel. So the blindness of this rage is self-righteous hatred. But I would say that it's our responsibility as viewers of the media to look at those images and to recognize there are differences. There are distinctions. That's our responsibility. I'm not sure the journalists need to tell us that. Opinion people can tell us that. But I don't think the coverage itself. I mean, you need to see images of the kibbutzim. You must. And the videos, the horrible frightening images have been portrayed. And people do need to see the images of Gaza. They need to see what is going on. If you just took a percentage of the images that have been shown to the world in the past 10 or 11 or 12 days, I would say 90% of them have been images of the people in Gaza. And that's not unintentional. I did see one Israeli analysis of the images that have been shown. And they made the case. It was really interesting and how smart it was. They made the case that a lot of this video was phony that it was taken from other times and other places and inserted into the public conversation. It was created as phony news, phony social media. And phony media. And repeated by cable and all kinds of news networks. And it was very persuasive to show that, for example, a building didn't fall in Gaza in the last week. It fell somewhere else in another country years ago. And they slipped that right in. And the Israeli analysis of this was very clear and convincing. And I'm not in disagreement at all. And I would be far from me to be in disagreement. I think, and again, this is not to minimize it. I think, again, we're talking about, as we've talked about several times, the existentialist crisis of too much information, limited knowledge and this compulsion, particularly with cable TV to be the first in line. So if we go back to ABC, NBC and CBS when we were growing up, right? There's one, one show, which did not keep you up to date, but there wasn't the urgency to be kept up to date. So part of my issue is that in the Israelis can go back to other incidents. There's a very famous incident in which Israelis were accused of murdering a Palestinian boy in a gunfight. And Atlantic Monthly did an analysis, for example, the angle of the bullets, et cetera. He's killed by a Palestinian, but that became part of public mythology, one more martyr. But this all begins, right? With the need to see things magically, see things in pure yes and no, black and white, not to think. So it's okay, it is okay to say, to think that the Israelis are committing actions which are illegal and to think that, you know what, at this point, it is necessary, let's explain why. Rather than trying to explain away what they're doing, or trying to explain that somehow they're doing it because Jews are evil, we have to be rational beings here, which is very difficult in an irrational moment and say, what does this look like? So for example, Hamas was using imagery from a video game and that was proven. But if the cable network didn't feel compelled, right? To give you the news immediately, right? CNN, MSNBC, Fox, they're all in a race, right? Yes, they're not only in a race, but they're in a race to show raw meat. They're in a race to show blood and gore. And if that crosses the news editor's desk, he will use it. That has been looked at. You are an experienced journalist now. That has sold ever since probably Cain and Abel, right? The story of gore, the story of violence. And that effect is if Hamas comes out and says, that was the Israelis bombed the hospital and that travels through every media in the world, all around the world. There are virtually hundreds of millions of people who accept that story. When the Israelis come up with a rational examination of what happened and demonstrably show that it didn't happen that way, nobody believes it. They all say the Israelis align. And because the Israelis position was based on an evaluation, it took a few hours. But the Hamas was instant and the Hamas went on the networks immediately. And so the amount of blood and gore and blame against the Israelis was total. They had the floor, so to speak, for hours and for hundreds of millions of people. And that was intentional for, among other reasons, undermine Biden's trip. Because I knew the response would be that the King of Jordan would not meet. Okay, that was, they're not idiots. Well, let's recognize Hamas is a mistake, right? Always in war to underestimate your enemy. Yeah, so that leads me to my last question to you. Okay, so the only other point I was gonna say with, as far as the immediacy is we have the convergence of several problems, right? The immediacy of nudes. What tends to be a bias against Jews in Israel? It's not always there, but it tends to be a slight bias just as there's a bias against African-Americans and nobody would doubt that. Thirdly, media or institutions, and you're seeing this with colleges now, institutions have a very hard time of saying I'm wrong. And to now talk about Islamic Jihad, missile going awry is not just to admit it's their fault, but it's to admit that we got it wrong. And most institutions are not capable of apologizing. Including news institutes, of course. Absolutely, no, it's a business institution. Absolutely, absolutely. New York Times is not gonna apologize. Fox News is not gonna, no, very much. But the other thing is they don't apologize because they also think that they have readers and viewers who essentially are true believers. And to apologize means to challenge that trust. See again, it's irrational. You should trust a news agency in trying to get things as accurate as possible like science. And if yesterday they were wrong, you should trust that tomorrow they'll correct themselves. But instead, we have this partisan, magical thinking where essentially the press are Bibles. Essentially the press is supposed to tell us what we already believe. And ka-ching, ka-ching, the press needs to do that to survive. That's more of an economic than a political. I agree, but that's the reality. And taking that reality. So somebody though has to step up CNN, MSNBC, Fox is not going to. Somebody needs to step up and say, for example, we don't have anything substantial new right now. And if you've noticed over the last three or four days, a lot of the conversation on the news has repeated itself because the governments are clamping down. So you have to admit that people can't be news junkies. It's like the news is like sugar. Okay, but sometimes you just have to step back, savor what you ate before and wait for the next candy bar. But this idea of I'm going to turn on MSNBC every 15 minutes and I'm going to get my high, it is not a rational approach to information. I agree, that's a lesson we have learned in the past 10 or 11 days. What I find interesting too is that when it becomes clear that their original reporting was wrong, instead of saying we were wrong and this is the real deal, they say it's still not clear, holding on to the mistake at the outset. And that is the case in the New York Times. The New York Times, the monument of truth, same thing in the Washington Post, they're not really admitting the Israelis are right. It's not yet clear you understand. Right, and any newspaper though, well, we go back to the sinking of the main, right? And the selling of newspapers with the sinking of the main, which was not sunk by Cubans or Spaniards, right? There was an explosion on the American ship and immediately William Randolph Hearst, right, was saying this spin goes a long way back. And it is fatal in ways other than war as well. It's fatal about welfare, the way welfare is spun, way food access is spun. It is not just, I apologize. With war, it screams at us in the face, but this affects all forms of news and all forms of information. And all forms of public opinion too. And for people of a certain generation, please remember that most, if not all major press outlets argued that there were weapons of mass destruction. Let me go to my last question and I apologize that we won't have time to really get into it, is considering what happened on October 7th, considering everything that has happened and all the vagaries and magical thinking, strangeness that followed it in the media among the public and in this country and on the campuses. Okay, all of that, everything we've talked about today, all the realities, okay? What should Israel do? How will Israel survive this? This is as existential a threat as Israel has had since 1948. How will Israel survive this? What should it do? Okay, so here again, I really, I have no great expertise. I haven't studied Israel as much as I probably should ever could have, but it seems to me there are a couple of things on the table, I know we're running out of time. Okay, one is to bring in, if possible, parts of the rest of the world to stop funding Hamas and to remove Hamas as a military organization. So that's really the first and foremost thing Israel has to do. And we've talked about that that might include committing a siege, which includes war crimes. And then what will happen is Israelis will have to evaluate that afterwards, but it's difficult in the middle of a war to have that evaluation. Okay, that is necessary. I think that Israel is going to have to, and Israelis say this, this is nothing new, it's nothing novel about a diasporic scholar, that they're gonna have to rethink the general policy towards Palestinians. In other words, rethink the West Bank, rethink whether it's a two-state solution, and that's gonna mean the most painful thing for some Israelis, they're gonna have to stop building settlements. And I know that's gonna be very difficult, but there's a lot of anger in Israel towards the Israeli government's policies. And those include, your viewers will know most immediately the judicial reform, but they're angry that the internal security and defense ministry have focused almost exclusively on the West Bank, right? And ignored parts of Lebanon with Hezbollah and ignored Gaza, which is a lot of anger. I mean, if you look historically, these kinds of conflicts, even when they end up with military victories in democracies, lead towards significant, significant governmentals of form and significant policy reform, even if they're victories. So everybody knows the Crimean War and the charge of the Libergate made the most enduring consequence of that painful victory was to entirely redo the English civil service. That's a pretty significant change. I think everybody would argue the Vietnam War led to very significant political and social changes. So I see a lot of internal changes and one of those is gonna have to be a really open public debate about the West Bank. The Israelis are very lucky. Let me just one final sentence. The Israelis are very lucky that the West Bank hasn't exploded in another Intifada. Yeah, I hope so, but that jury is still out. It is out, and the Israelis and the Palestinians have to find some way to move towards a resolution of their issues without it being open warfare. I mean, more Palestinians will be killed and the Israelis cannot really fight a three-front war. Hezbollah and Lebanon. No, that's why I asked my real question. Right. The last question, which is part B of my previous last question, is are we going to all this considered everything we've discussed and your answer just now, are we gonna see those hostages again or should we just write them off as casualties of war? I think if they are not released by Hamas and doesn't seem like they're going to be, there is discussion of US special forces and Israeli special forces going in specifically to where the hostages are, which means quite likely hostages will be killed. I don't think, I'm not very positive about what's gonna happen to hostages because in other situations, hostages are taken and they're very specific demands and then hostages are released. I suppose the only way they will be released without violence will be if Israel decides, as it has in the past, that it's worth giving up a disproportionate number of their own prisoners to free. Remember to 2,000 Palestinians to free Ghalid, the soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas. And the Israelis, again, this is a matter of, there's a lot of rage right now, which is fully justified, right? For a historian to say there was rage is not to say it's not justified, right? Israelis got to sit back and think for a second. Okay, this is a pogrom, has been a pogrom. This is the action of fascists. Is it worth though perhaps for this many lives to get them back and give Hamas the prisoners they want? Yeah, won't that perpetuate Hamas' terrorism? That's the answer, but just like Biden was able to negotiate the return from Iran of prisoners. Yes, the Iranians may, they may continue, that's possible. But are you willing to concede though also that their strategy has been somewhat successful? It has, the last question that springs out of this, just suppose they don't come back. Just suppose Hamas kills them, one way or the other, and they disappear into the historical firmament. Is that a war crime? Oh, there's no doubt. I mean, there's no doubt that Hamas has intentionally committed war crimes and there's a lengthy list. There is no doubt about that, all right? I'm arguing and I'm not alone that Israel has as well, no more equivalency. If those hostages are harmed in any way intentionally, and I could see what could perhaps transpire and it turns my stomach that they kill the hostages and blame the Israeli airstrikes for killing the hostages. I can see that unfolding, right? When the hostages are no longer useful for them, now they'll tell the two tracks and they've always been due tracks. So, Arafat used to give a speech in Arabic and he used to give a speech in English and they were not the same, all right? I can see the same thing happening. Hamas will tell its followers, right, that this has been an ISIS-like murder of the infidels, all right, but they'll tell the Western press and here, Al Jazeera plays a very important role. The Israelis should not censor Al Jazeera. That is the window into the Arab world, all right? It's funny that you mentioned that, Peter, and we're really out of time, but I went and looked at Al Jazeera because I've had a certain amount of respect for them as a window into the Arab world and they are clearly pro-Arab now. They're not giving Israel any benefit that doubt about anything and they're supporting the Palestinians and Hamas. And really my view of Al Jazeera has changed over the past few days. Again, remember to quote, my favorite economist, Keynes, there's no free lunch, no free breakfast, no free dinner. You have to weigh, right? Al Jazeera, now, I'm sorry to mispronounce again, now is very pro-Hamas, very pro-Arab. Is it worth those silencing them for what they could help with in the future? So- So you just have to take it with a grain of salt and maybe a lot of salt. That's the essence of life, right? Your essence of life is not to be cynical or pessimistic, right? But it is to scrutinize, right? To think, this is what they're dealing with, okay? Fundamentally, and I'm sorry to sound so banal, but fundamentally it is to say not all information is knowledge. We got to call Peter. Sorry, okay, see you next time. We had a wonderful discussion, thank you so much. We'll do it again, take care. Thank you. Bye. Shalom. Ciao.