“NOT a Journalist!” Israeli Strike Kills Al Jazeera Reporters | Scholars Debate Genocide

Is it true that he was working prior to October the 7th in the media department for Hamas?

There is no evidence whatsoever. You have called Israel cancer. If I told the world that Palestine was cancer, do you know what would happen if I did that?

I would be cancelled, I would be fired.

I get away with it because it's factual. Are you deranged or are you just depraved and spreading the most vile Hamas propaganda I can think

of?

I think both. It's my opinion that the courts are ready to make a declaration that genocide is taking place, that it has taken place.

Israel clearly has other motives. Now, are they perfect? No. But I will say this, you can't call a genocide a-

The killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al Sharif in a targeted Israeli strike has divided opinion across the world. An IDF missile was aimed deliberately at a tent used by journalists on Sunday. Three more Al Jazeera journalists were killed, as well as three freelancers. The deliberate murder of journalists reporting on a conflict is a war crime.

But Israel insists that al-Sharif was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell.

This does not target journalists. In this strike from two days ago, Da'gif targeted Hamas terrorists, an active Hamas terrorist. His position, he had a few positions

in the Hamas terrorist position, but he was part of their rocket brigade. He was a head of the cell in the rocket brigade, and that's who we target. And I think the question is to be asked, why is Hamas and why is Al Jazeera having terrorists on their payroll working as journalists, and why are terrorists also functioning as journalists with press just I think that those are questions that need to be very alarming and we

need to ask them about what's going on in Gaza.

Well the UN, Reporters Without Borders, the Foreign Press Association, the Committee to Protect Journalists and major broadcasters including the BBC say that Israel has not produced sufficient evidence to prove that claim. There are all social media posts by Al Sharif, some verified, some unverified, which indicate clear sympathies with Hamas. There's also photographs of al-Sharif with the slain Hamas leader, Sinwar.

But the BBC's understanding is that he worked for the Hamas media office before the current conflict began and had been sharply critical of Hamas more recently. It should also be noted that Hamas is the biggest employer in Gaza. To this day, it pays the salaries of tens of thousands of people, including civil servants, as the de facto government.

Now, there is evidence that al-Sharif was a former Hamas employee and at some point a supporter. But does the evidence meet the very high bar for somehow justifying a targeted attack on journalists in a conflict which independent journalists have simply not been allowed to see? Well, joining me to discuss all this is the director of Al Jazeera 360,

Jamal El-Sheikh and Middle East correspondent Yotam Konfina. Welcome to both of you. Jamal, first of all, your reaction to this emphatic statement by the IDF that Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas terrorist?

I think it's a disgrace, actually, that people are giving any sort of credence to what the Israeli military is saying. This is a military that has, for the past two years, conducted a genocide, the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetime before, has dropped the amount of munitions that is equivalent to seven Hiroshimas on a besieged enclave that has been besieged for 20 years now, has killed more than 20,000 children.

This is a military that has a history of killing journalists. This is not the first journalist that was killed. This is the latest in a string of journalists, actually, Pierce. If we go through one by one, I'm not sure if we have enough time to go through simply the 270 plus journalists

that have been killed in the past two years alone. But I want to highlight just a few of those that have been killed over the past 100 years, either by Israel, the Israeli military, or by Zionist terrorist organizations. Zionist terrorist organizations here, I'm borrowing the phrase used by the British government

and the BBC back in the early 20th century when there was some sort of credibility amongst establishment media and the British political system. Let's go as far back as 1924, when at the time there was an anti-Zionist Jewish journalist who was Dutch by the name of Jacob Israel Dahan, who was killed by the Haganah, which was one of the key groups

that actually formed the Israeli military afterwards, because he wrote anti-Zionist articles in 1924. Let's go into this century when we're looking at Rafael Chiarello, who was an Italian photographer for Corriere della Sera, who was killed, murdered in Ramallah in 2002.

Or let's look at Shirin Abu Aqla, an American Christian who was killed, murdered in Ramallah in 2002. Or let's look at Shirin Abu Aqla, an American Christian who was snipered by the Israeli military the day they wanted to go in and commit more crimes in Jenin in the West Bank. And not only did they not rest at murdering her on camera, they decided to attack her funeral in front of the world

because of the impunity that Israel has. Let's look at the beginning of this genocide in 2023 when they killed Reuters journalists on the border with Lebanon and they killed Issam there and blew off the legs of Christina Abiasi. There is a string of perpetual attempts by the Israeli military to murder anybody who wants to show the world the truth of what Zionism is and what Israel

does. So the fact that we are here today in 2025 discussing or giving any sort of credence to serial killers, serial liars, as if what they say bears any weight whatsoever, is actually reflective as a shame more onto us as media personalities and as channels and as newspapers, because you wouldn't be sitting down with a serial killer

or a serial rapist and giving them any sort of credence or credibility to what they're saying, you would see that long litany and long list of their crimes and understand that whatever they say means nothing.

Okay, but just to be specific about Anas al-Sharif, what is indisputable is that he clearly had a relationship with Hamas stretching back a number of years. I presume you've done your own investigating into this. It wasn't the first time he'd been accused of this. He was accused of this while he was still alive last year. So what is your understanding of what his relationship was to Hamas in terms of employment or support or otherwise?

Pierce, you have several photos hugging Cristiano Ronaldo. It doesn't make you a Manchester United fan. President Donald Trump has a number of photos with Jeffrey Epstein. I'm not sure if he's a human trafficker or a child molester. The fact that somebody has pictures, in fact, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has met Khaled Mishal, the head of the Hamas, four times

during the period that Al-Sharif met Hamas leaders. The fact that journalists take pictures with people means nothing whatsoever.

Yeah, but that wasn't my question. So if that is the evidence that we're meant to go by. No, but Jamal, Jamal, you want, but that's not the only evidence, as you know, and I, listen, I just want to try and get to the, the facts here. And it's difficult because a lot of misinformation is being deliberately put out on social media to smear Anas Al Sharif. I didn't know him. You, I presume, did know him. And I, you know, it appears, and we're going to go to our other guest in a moment who has a lot of damning allegations to make, which I will then come back to you about. But from

your understanding, is it true that he was working prior to October the 7th in the media department for Hamas? In other words, was employed by Hamas, or is that not true?

There is no evidence whatsoever that has been independently verified by any credible organization that gives that whatsoever. But you know what? Let me let me entertain this

ridiculous assumption that some people are making to try and smear and try and defend the indefensible for a serial killing entity that has killed, like I say, more than 270

journalists in the past less than 24 months. If there was somebody who worked for the media, for argument's sake, for the media entity of a governing body or political party in any, let's say, in Ukraine, and the next day the Russians decided to send an armed drone without presenting any of that evidence, without trying to arrest them, without trying to arrest

them, without trying to accuse them of anything whatsoever, and murdered them in a civilian area in front of a hospital, a hospital which they, by the way, destroyed and demolished and burnt out and claimed was a Hamas cell and it evidently wasn't, which is Al-Shifa Hospital. And we can go into the litany of lies that they use to justify bombing and destroying hospitals and universities and schools.

Is that justifiable? The fact that we're even having this conversation is bizarre to me when we are watching live streaming of a genocide that these journalists have been risking their lives, risking their lives in this ridiculous hope

that the world will wake up one time, one day and see that our collective humanity is being massacred by an unhinged group of people who because of their impunity and because we've drunk the Kool-Aid for the past 70, 80 years and because media, mainstream media in the West has gone along with it, they can get away with anything.

So the fact that this discussion even is taking place is bizarre. If you're stressed about back taxes, miss the April deadline or your books are a mess, well, don't wait. The IRS is cracking down. Penalties add up fast. Five percent per month, up to 25 percent for not filing. Tax Network USA can help. They've assisted thousands of Americans from employees to business owners and people who haven't filed for years. They have direct access to powerful IRS programs and expert negotiators on your side. Tax Network USA knows how to

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words involved in Hamas combative operations, would you accept he would have been a legitimate target? It's a hypothetical, but would you accept that if in that context, he had been a Hamas commander and that was established as a fact, would you accept that it was a legitimate strike?

Pierce, if you don't mind, because if we go into hypotheticals, it's never ending. Al Jazeera abides by Ofcom. It is a multi-award winning institution that has been acknowledged for its brave journalism, its award winning journalism, be it the RTS awards that we've won on numerous occasions, Emmys, Peabody's, and so forth. Anas Al Sharif is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who risked his life in the face of

the most barbaric military ever to be seen in modern history over the past 22 months. What we should be discussing and what people should be looking at is how on earth we have allowed for ourselves to normalize a discussion around the targeted

assassination of a 28 year old father of two who all he did was stand in front of a camera and tell people what was going on. The basis and the premise of journalism is to speak truth to power, is to report that which those in power do not want reporting. Right now those in power do not want reporting. Right now, those in power have made us believe that the premise of reporting is to take for granted what they said in some sort of subconsciously racist way because his name is Anas al-Sharif

and not John Smith, that there is some sort of possible plausible justification for murdering him in cold blood in the evening in a flimsy hospital tent outside a burnt out hospital and that is what the public of the world knows now even though the media is still slow to catch up that this is a disgraceful

lie that nobody is willing to stand for ever again. Okay, okay. Let me come to your time, Confino. Thank you for your patience. You're a Middle East correspondent. You've done a lot of research into this, and you believe you have damning evidence to support the IDF claim. I understand that Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas combatant, terrorist, whatever people want to call him. What is your evidence for this? And I will then go to Jamal to respond.

First of all, I don't have damning evidence that he was a Hamas member. That's also not what I tweeted. All I did was I tried to explain to the world that the way that he was glorified by other journalists as some sort of a hero who spoke truth to power is nothing but a lie because I plowed

through his Telegram account just to see which kind of person he actually was. And Piers, I've carefully put out all of the documentation, all of the screenshots of everything on Twitter for everyone to see. It is without a doubt a person who not only supported Hamas outright, he had friends who were Hamas combatants who he mourned when they were killed. He commemorated slain Islamic Jihad leader Abu al-Baha al-Atta, who was killed in 2019.

He praised October the 7th as it was happening. He praised a terror attack that killed seven Jews outside a synagogue in 2023. He called it heroic. He called it heroic when a Palestinian terrorist went into Tel Aviv and killed three people. So I'm not here to say that Anas was a Hamas member because I'm still going through the evidence and I'm waiting for more evidence from the IDF. But what I will say is that I will not put myself in the same category as this guy who

openly praised terrorists and who openly supported Hamas because that's not what a journalist does.

It's quite the opposite of what a journalist should be doing.

How do you know the stuff that we've just been looking at?

It would be nice if you were to direct those words of journalism and advice to the Israeli journalists who've been praising and calling for the leveling of Gaza and for the destruction of every single house and school and university and hospital in Gaza and have been calling for a genocide. That aside, Pearson, I apologize to intervene here, but one thing I wanted to wonder, I mean, was Sherina Abu Aqla, was she a Hamas commander?

Was Tom Herndel, a British photography student who was killed in Gaza all the way back in the early 2000s, was he a Hamas member? Was the line of over, the list of over 200 journalists, the point is, till this day, there's not a single investigation that has been conducted that has convicted a single person, a single person in the Israeli military

for killing more than 400 journalists over the past 100 years.

As you were talking earlier, we were showing a lot of the stuff that you have posted, which appears to come from Anas Alsharif's Telegram account. There are questions about the veracity of a lot of that stuff that's been whizzing around the internet. How convinced are you that what you posted is accurate?

And how do you know?

Look, it's his Telegram account with more than 140,000 followers. He established, he opened the account back in 2017. He posted vigorously for years. It is his account.

It is his reporting. I have no doubt about it.

But look, I don't understand how a colleague of his can defend him when he openly supported Hamas. And if you don't believe the screenshots that I put out, there are many more. You know, you don't hang out with mass murderers. You know, you don't post pictures when you're smiling with Osama bin Laden. The only reason why we accept this is because the world has gone into a mass psychosis and

thrown journalistic integrity out the window when it comes to Israel and Hamas. We're willing to glorify a guy like Anas who's openly a Hamas supporter and to call him a great journalist when he's not. And by the way, Jamal, I went through your Twitter just to see what kind of person you are. You have called Israel cancer. If I told the world that Palestine was cancer, do you know what would happen if I did that?

I would be canceled. I would be fired from every single outlet that I work for within an hour. For some reason, you get away with it because you work for Al Jazeera. I also went through what you did on October 7th.

You put up a screenshot or you commented on- I get away with it. I get away with it. I get away with it. I get away with it. I get away with it because it's factual. Palestine has not bombed seven countries in the past few months. It has not massacred it has not massacred over 50,000 people. It does not have the same bloody record

that Israel has in terms of murdering doctors, in terms of murdering children, in terms of murdering the elderly. Okay, Jamal, okay. Of course, when you look at an entity that is not a man, Jamal, there's nothing that's

a fact. Jamal, hang on, hang on. All right, I want to ask Yotam, you mentioned October the 7th as something that Jamal posted that day. that is, then I have a question for Jamal about October the 7th.

Thank you, Piers. Thanks for letting me talk because Jamal, you've spoken a lot. Please give me time to just explain what this is. You know, if you wanted to, you could have deleted all these things from your Twitter, but you didn't. On October the 7th, you posted a video of Shiri and Ariel and Kfir Biba who were kidnapped

by terrorists in the morning and you're, and I'm quoting you here, I'm reading your tweet, Palestinian fighters instruct that this settler, that is Shiri Bibas, a civilian woman, and her children are protected. Noteworthy that there have been no reports of any children being targeted despite fighters controlling several illegal settlements. Not only are you spreading the most blatant fake news that you can on a day where an ongoing actual genocide has taken place about children not being killed.

I've seen videos of Hamas members executing children. And you're saying you're calling this woman a settler. She lives in Israel proper. She's not from the West Bank. And you're somehow excusing what this person is doing. Then there's another tweet where you're seeing a Hamas, a mass Hamas terrorist inside a bedroom of a civilian. And you're saying a Hamas fighter

filmed inside an illegal Israeli settlement while an elderly settler lays in bed seemingly unharmed. Are you deranged or are you just depraved and spreading the most vile Hamas propaganda I can think of?

I think both.

And I'm sickened to have people putting you and me in the same category. You're not a journalist, you're a Hamas propaganda, and apparently you're also okay with people being slaughtered on October the 7th.

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All right, let me ask you Jamal to respond. Jamal, I'll ask you to respond to that. Well, my question would be a question I asked a lot of guests in the first few months after what happened on October the 7th on the pro-Palestinian side, which is a very simple one, which is do you personally, Jamal, condemn what Hamas did on that day?

Yes, let me respond to what Jotam said first, if you don't mind, because what he's done was he's quoted what has been written. What was written is a very journalistic approach to describe factually in real time what was being posted as a video. So when you have a video of a fighter, he is a fighter with an elderly person in bed and that elderly person is seemingly unharmed,

right? That is a factual description of what the video shows. When the videos that had appeared throughout that time until the time of posting do not show any children being harmed. And you say that there are no children being harmed. That is a factual description of what is happening. Journalism 101 is to describe factually based on what you can verify at the time.

But did you post any videos showing people being harmed? What's at all. So did you show, did you post it? But Jamal, did you post any... Jamal, Jamal... I actually don't know.

Let me ask you a question.

I genuinely don't know.

But surely you'd remember if you posted any videos of people actually being harmed, because Hamas were gleefully reposting their own footage of them murdering and torturing, shooting and attacking people?

Piers, I genuinely do not remember every tweet that I've tweeted. My tweets are public, people can see them, there's nothing to worry about. To be honest, the thing is there is a very clear derailment here of a discussion about the brazen assassination of not one, not two, but seven journalists by the Israeli military in a civilian area, in a hospital, to come and talk about my own personal tweets. I'm more than happy to come after on another episode and discuss all of those. There's nothing to hide there.

No, no, okay.

And that is irrelevant to what I'm talking about here.

All right, Jamal, Jamal, Jamal, we can talk about more than one thing at once and they're all interlinked. So in answer to my question, do you personally condemn what Hamas did that day?

This is not a discussion at all that I'm going to get into, Piers. Why? Because I'm here

to represent Al Jazeera to talk about the murder of Ali Salih. It's a very straightforward question. You've been very, very condemnatory. Can I talk for a minute? Jamal, Jamal, Jamal, Jamal, hang on please. Jamal, you've been very, very condemnatory and I've allowed you to talk at length in your most about Israel and the IDF and that's you're perfectly entitled to that opinion but I'm also perfectly entitled in the question of balance you talk about truth to power and and being fair as a journalist I don't think it's unfair to

simply ask you if you as an Al Jazeera representative whether you condemn the terrorist attack on October the 7th because I thought that it was one of the most despicable things that I've ever witnessed as a journalist in my entire life.

Now that's your opinion and you're more than happy, you know.

But what is your opinion?

That is your opinion and you are more than welcome. I'm going to tell you now, if you don't mind, that is your opinion, you're more than welcome to it, right? If Hamas is to kill or target or arrest any, I'm speaking now as a journalist and as my capacity within Al Jazeera, if they were to attack or kill or harm any journalist,

I will condemn them instantly within the capacity that I'm talking to you now. If you are asking me, let me borrow the words of the great Muhammad Ali boxer. Let me borrow the words of Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali, when he was trying to be conscripted

to fight in Vietnam, told you what? He said, no, no, Viet Cong called me an a**hole and no Viet Cong tried to enslave his people. I'm telling you now as a journalist, Hamas did not kill my people as journalists, my colleagues, they did not detain.

So when you're telling me you've been very condemnatory, I'm being very condemnatory of an Israeli military that has killed more than a dozen, more than a dozen of my own colleagues within Al Jazeera alone, that has destroyed our offices. And this is what we're talking about.

Yes.

Yes, we're talking about actually a number of things.

Can I respond please?

Well, one second, Yotam. I'm just going to give you one more chance, Jamal, because you've avoided the question and you may have your own reasons for doing that. But you talked very strongly against the IDF and Israel and what they have done. And I think it is entirely reasonable for me to just ask you one more time. You don't have to answer, but it'd be very telling if you don't, in my estimation.

Do you condemn the slaughter of so many civilians and the kidnap of so many civilians on October the 7th?

I condemn the slaughter of any civilian anywhere in the world. It's as simple as that. And that is my personal thing. I do not believe a single civilian, regardless of their race, regardless of their religion,

regardless of their political belief, any civilian anywhere in the world should be killed. And that is a consistent belief that I have always had as a human being that believes in the sanctity of human life. And that applies to regardless of who the perpetrator is, had as a human being that believes in the sanctity of human life and that

applies to regardless of who the perpetrator is there is no justification for the deliberate killing of any civilian regardless of their gender their age their skin color their religion whatever their beliefs may be

okay thank you. I got a clear answer there.

Let's go back to you, Yotam. Now what I would like to hear, if that's the case,

Mr. Yotam.

No, you spoke for 20 minutes straight.

Listen, it's enough now.

I will conduct the interview. I will conduct the interview, if you don't mind, Jamal. Let me come back to Yotam. Yotam.

Go ahead. Listen, if I had just done the same interview as Jamal had done, I would have committed career suicide. But Jamal gets away with it. No one gives a shit because he works for Al Jazeera and nobody cares because he can quite literally sit here and escape and then avoid condemning Hamas, lie about what happened on October 7th, lie, lie, lie, and you'll get away with it. If I said anything even remotely close to what he did, but like the reverse, done.

You would never see me in the media again because we hold my kind to a different standard than we hold people like Jamal, a guy who works for a network who's funded by Qatar, a state that employs modern day slavery, that bans homosexuality, that deliberately, deliberately oppresses women. That kind of person, by the way, who's also having Hamas leadership in that country, he sits here and lectures us on journalism.

Hamas and Al Jazeera are the same thing. You won't find an Al Jazeera journalist inside Gaza who covers demonstrations against Hamas, Hamas executing civilians, Hamas using hospitals, schools for military purposes. You won't find it because you know what will happen? They'll kill them. There's actually a good Palestinian journalist

who is right now fearing for his life. He's one of the few who dared go up against Hamas inside Gaza and his name is Omar Abu and I'm texting with him. He is scared to death because Haas have been after him because he actually does his job,

unlike Anas and unlike Jamal who are mouthpieces of Hamas

and it's sickening

to sit here and listen to it.

But Yotam, just to be clear, do you accept, because the BBC says that this evidence that Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas commander is insufficient, as do many other bodies, many have attacked this around the world in the journalism community as you know, do you accept that if hard evidence does not emerge that Amas al-Sharif was indeed an active Hamas commander, then what happened in the direct targeting of him and his journalist colleagues from Al Jazeera and those working with them was a war crime.

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Yes, absolutely, peers. I'm not here to justify the killing of journalists. That is not what I'm doing. That's what people misunderstand. This is a twofold discussion. There is A, do we have evidence that he was a Hamas member?

I'm still plowing through it, trying to figure it out. B, was he actually a journalist? And I think we need to have this discussion because today you can put and hang out with the Hamas people, spout their propaganda, glorify terror, and then go out and report again. In my book, that's not journalism. And I want to ask you, Piers,

back when you were editor-in-chief of the Daily Mirror, would you have employed somebody who applauded 9-11, hung out with Osama Bin Laden,

and then went out and did coverage for you on the ground? Well, my answer about Anas Al Sharif is more and more... hang on one second Jamal, I'll come to you. Jamal, I will come to you. He asked me a question. Jamal, he asked me a question, let me respond to that. I believe there is more and more evidence coming out, some of it clearly reliable, some of it not reliable, about Anas al-Sharif. And I will reserve final judgment about this until we know a fuller picture. But as things stand, I have not seen any concrete evidence that he was a Hamas commander. And

if that is not the case, if what the IDF has said is not true, then this has been a despicable slaughter of journalists and that is a war crime. And I do think that Jamal is completely right to keep pointing out that over 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed in this war so far. They're the only journalists allowed to operate in Gaza, which in itself, hang on, which in itself is disgraceful and a stain on this Israeli government.

I've been on Netanyahu about this for many months, that he's got to let journalists in to do their job. And if the only ones that can do it keep being killed, it is one of the most perilous places now in modern history for journalists to operate. And as a journalist, you asked me how I feel as a journalist, I feel that that is a disgraceful set of circumstances. However, I'll come back to you, Jamal, here for this. If it does turn out that Anas al-Sharif, if there is concrete evidence produced that he was a Hamas commander, would you revise your position that this was an unjustified

attack?

So there's two things here with that question, Piers. Naturally, if it transpires that anybody who works within Al Jazeera turns out to be not who they are, then of course there is a revision of anything. And that as any professional institution, you would do that. That is something.

But to even justify extrajudicial killing, let alone of anybody, without any sort of trial, without any sort of transparency by a military, like I say, if you don't mind, I'm just going to go through a few numbers because it's not just journalists that we're talking about here that have been killed. You're talking about more than 800 teachers and education staff at universities. You're talking to, according to Doctors Without Borders,

more than 1,000 medical staff in the past 22 months. Civil defense staff, more than 122. Ambulance staff, more than 144, including the 15 paramedics that the Israelis said buried in a mass grave and said, oh, by mistake, they weren't and so forth.

My point is what is happening right now, and this is the framing that needs to take place if we are to salvage what little left we have over our humanity and what little left we have of journalistic credibility and the mainstream media in the West,

is that the framing and narrative is this. Israel is currently committing genocide, epistemicide. It is trying to gut Israel, gut Gaza of every single profession that is there. It is not simply trying to make it unlivable. It is trying to ethnically cleanse it and get rid of anybody who has any capacity within Gaza to build or rebuild a society. Therefore, any accusation or justification

that comes from a military that is so hell bent on killing humans, we're talking about more than 20,000 children, Pierce. 20,000 children is almost the amount of children that are in West Sussex. You're talking about the amount of hospitals that are in West Sussex. You're talking about the amount of hospitals

that have been destroyed is equivalent to the amount of hospitals in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, the second, third and fourth largest cities in the UK. So when we're talking about that, how on earth are we even giving any credence

to what they're talking about when they want to justify? Shireen Abakle, like I say, Shireen Barclay, a Palestinian, American, Christian reporter.

OK, I'm going to have to, Jamal, Jamal, look, here's the bottom line. We're going to have to bring this part of the debate to a conclusion. The bottom line for me is that what happened on October the 7th was a despicable terror attack and that Israel had a moral duty to defend its people from further attacks. My issue with what's been happening this year is that it is increasingly moved away from any form of justified self-defense into what appears to be an attempt to take over Gaza, expel all Palestinians and that to me would be ethnic cleansing and a war crime and I do think

the way that journalists have been treated and it's complicated because clearly some of those journalists have been established to have been active members of Hamas but many have not and so it's a complicated situation as it is with many wars and the issue about Anas al-Sharif really comes down to one thing if he was an active Hamas commander, then you could construct an argument as Yadif have done, that is a legitimate target, although many others died in the same strike and there's a different argument about collateral damage when other people are killed

if you target a terrorist. However, and this is really important, however, I have not seen enough evidence to suggest he was an active commander and if it turns out that he wasn't Then what we witnessed was a war crime. I've got to leave it there. Thank you both very much for the Discussion. I appreciate it

well

Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to push for the total occupation of Gaza Was greeted by his critics with a pained sigh of I told you so Many have long argued that the real objective of this war was occupation, control and forced displacement. With the exception of the United States, there has been or near unanimous condemnation from world leaders who clearly want to distance themselves from a period which history may judge in the most severe terms. A few weeks ago, I interviewed genocide scholar Omar Bartov,

a former IDF soldier, who said this war is now clearly a genocide. Many people responded, some to substantiate his conclusion and others to entirely refute it. As the IDF now barrels into another escalation, we're going to have that debate. Well joining me now to debate this is Professor William Shabazz. He's a genocide expert and international law specialist at Middlesex University.

And I'm joined by Jeffrey Lacks, professor of Law at the City University of New York. Welcome to both of you. Jeffrey Lacks, if I could start with you. This ongoing debate about whether what Israel is now doing and has been doing in response to October the 7th now constitutes a genocide.

Your response.

Well, first of all, I think it's way too premature to make that calculation right now. The ICJ is investigating it. They have spoken out about it already and they have not declared a genocide. They have warned that there is plausible possibility

that a genocide could occur. So they're giving guidance to Israel, but they have clearly effectively not declared any genocide and I just want to point out one thing that a lot of people I've seen on your show and I appreciate peers you give me this time you know people throw out that word genocide and I see it as a trope because

genocide is a very specific definition which I hope my colleague will agree with in a moment which is that you must prove absolute intent. That is the main thing, that the only intent of doing what you're doing militarily is to wipe out either a race, a nationality, a religion, or a racial group.

And in fact, in two of the most egregious cases in history, Piers, in Darfur, Sudan was not even charged, if you could believe it, with genocide. Because one of the things the UN actually said was, there may have been other, as crazy as it sounds, there may have been other reasons why 300,000 people were massacred in Sudan. And another case was Serbia, Bosnia versus Serbia. Same kind of situation where Serbia

was actually not prosecuted. In fact, Piers, no country in the history of the world has been actually found liable for genocide. Israel would be the first ever. So you would have to tell me that Israel is the worst of all the cases that have ever occurred.

And let me just finish this, I'll finish quickly here in terms of Serbia and Bosnia. The court, the International Court of Justice said in Bosnia versus Serbia that we're reticent. We're not gonna, we can't find a genocide here because the only, the only possible inference

from military action has to be that genocide was the only goal of the military action. And be that genocide was the only goal of the military action and clearly that's not the hope I'll get a chance to talk about this more in a second clearly that's not the case in Israel there's a lot of

motivations going on with Israel. Professor Lykes thank you I will come back to you. Professor Chavis the argument from Netanyahu and others on the Israeli side is quite straightforward. They say they have the military capability and the firepower that if their intention was to wage genocide in Gaza they could have done that instantaneously and blown the whole place to pieces in a few days. That is

the argument. What is your response to that argument?

Yes, well, you know, let me start by saying I've been studying this genocide convention, which is the issue here, for more than 30 years. I've taught it, I've written a book on the subject, more than I've written countless journal articles. I've read every judgment of the international courts and tribunals multiple times. I've read every judgment of the international courts and tribunals multiple times. I've read all of the debates when the convention was being adopted. This argument that we hear, which is that they could have killed more people, they had

the opportunity to kill everybody or many more people, and they haven't done it, and so therefore how could they be genocidalidal doesn't correspond to what the judges have said. So Jeffrey Lacks has just mentioned the famous judgment of the International Court of Justice in 2007. They didn't say that genocide didn't take place.

They agreed that genocide had taken place at Srebrenica, where there was this notorious massacre in 1995, over the space of three or four days in July. And when that took place, there were seven or eight thousand Bosnian Serbs who were murdered by the, not Bosnian Serbs, Muslims rather, Bosniaks, by the Bosnian Serbs. And they were, and the women and children were taken to safety. Now, nobody there suggested, credibly, that that couldn't be genocide because they took

people away, they saved people, there were people they didn't kill. They had the opportunity to do that. We know that even during the Holocaust, so I'm not a historian, I'm a lawyer, but I know lots about the Holocaust. I come from a family of Holocaust survivors. I had a great aunt who survived the Second World War in Berlin.

So the Nazis didn't kill everybody. They were prepared to make deals, for example, to trade Jews. They tried to do it with the Hungarian Jews, to trade them for military materiel. It didn't work out. But you know, it's a mixed, confused situation when genocide takes place. And this argument that they could kill more people so it can't be genocide because they're missing that opportunity, it just, first of all, I find can't be genocide, because they're missing that opportunity.

Just first of all, I find it to be wrong, morally wrong as an argument. But more than that, it's been rejected by the courts. It's not an argument that the courts accept. So when I make conclusions about this, I'm doing it as a legal scholar who studied these judgments. I'm trying to understand where this case of

South Africa is going to go. What's going to happen? What are the judges likely to do? That's really what we should be addressing, rather than throwing around the term genocide and saying, well, do I think it's a genocide? No, it is.

No, it isn't. We have to be looking at what the courts decide. And it's my opinion that the courts are ready to make a declaration that genocide is taking place, that it has taken place, and they're ready to do it and are likely to do it in the South Africa case. But of course, I've been to court often enough to know

that you can never be sure of the outcome.

And Professor Schoenis, before we go back to Professor Lacks, on what you have seen, and one of the problems with what's going on in Gaza is that because international journalists have been banned from operating there, it is very difficult to verify a lot of the claims and counterclaims that come out of this war. That is one of the problems. There's no real transparency here.

You're reliant really on the Gaza health ministry on the Palestinian side, which is not the most reliable. I'd be the first to concede that, although historically, that casualty numbers have been broadly accurate. But then you have on the IDF side,

constant dissembling and we're gonna launch an inquiry and investigation, nothing ever seems to happen, denials and so on. And it's very hard for anyone to really get to the bottom of what's actually happening because independent journalists can't operate there. But from what you have read and seen in this war,

what has led you to believe that what we're witnessing here could constitute a genocide?

You know I came to my own conclusion about this over time and cautiously because I have always been hesitant to jump to the allegations of genocide. There are many very spurious allegations of genocide out there. There are some where there's a strong case, but with flaws in it and weaknesses. So I always approach these with, I don't want to say a grain of salt, but hesitantly. I was shocked by these notorious statements that were made in October of 2023 by Netanyahu, by Gallant, and by others, and many subsequent to that as well.

But at the same time, I realized that statements like that, people in the heat of the moment, in their reaction to the events of the 7th of October, that some of it might have been excessive. I was waiting to see how things would play out. And then, of course, to see this terrible destruction that was wreaked on the Palestinians, growing doubts that really the war aims, that the purpose, the purported purpose of the attacks on Gaza were saving the hostages and defeating Hamas did not seem to be taken as

seriously as all that. I think Israel probably, the IDF probably killed more hostages than they actually rescued. And that really there was another purpose at work. And so I combine those things also with the growing evidence of the- I don't even think this is controversial- that the current regime in Israel wants to absorb Gaza and wants to absorb the West Bank and to expand the borders of Israel so that they go from the river to the sea.

And if they do that, as long as the Palestinians are there, they end up with a territory, with a single state, with a population that's about 50 percent Palestinian Arabs. And they can't handle that. That can't work for them. And so they've got to do something with the Palestinians.

And if they had all packed up their bags and left in 1947, in 1967, last year, this year, problem solved in a sense. But the Palestinians haven't done that. They have nowhere to go anyway. But they're perfectly entitled to want to stay where they live, where they belong. It's their home. And they're not, so they're not going.

All of those things take it together.

Professor Lacks, please finish your point.

I think the judges at the International Court of Justice are going to find compelling.

Okay, Professor Lacks, I mean my issue, let me just ask you a question first if I may. The problem I have is that when you listen to people like the finance minister Smodrich or Ben-Gavir, they're now being utterly unashamed in what they believe they want to happen. They want to see the Palestinians expelled from Gaza, from the West Bank. They want to occupy Gaza. They want to take it over.

Smodry was saying it only two days ago, but saying that Netanyahu doesn't agree with him. But he's carrying on having that argument behind the scenes. And I think a lot of the language people like him have used is almost unashamedly genocidal, or certainly unashamedly supportive of ethnic cleansing,

which in itself would be a crime. What do you feel when you hear people like him? And the argument I hear is, well, he's not an influential player in the cabinet, but that's clearly very disingenuous. He clearly has been very instrumental,

and he's clearly behind the scenes driving what many people believe to be an extremely right-wing Israeli government doing things which many Israelis and Jews around the world simply

don't agree with. What would you say to that? Well that's a complex question and I hope you give me a chance to answer this. There's a couple different angles to that question. First of all if you look at history, if you look at one of my heroes Winston Churchill, who I think is also one of yours, he said some pretty crazy things during World War II, too. He said he's going to mete out to the Germans beyond the measure of what the Germans meted

out to the Brits. And nobody talks about that as something that was genocidal. So what one radical, I don't align, if you ask me, do I personally align with those comments that you shared? No, I absolutely do not. And I also want to say to you and to your viewers that I am NOT minimizing even remotely the horrors that Palestinian civilians are suffering. I acknowledge that. I think it's horrible. I

have a ton of students in my class who are Palestinians who I care about, who I love, and who I get along with very well. But if I may, Piers, so I want to actually, you know, I want to validate exactly what you said. I don't align with those people, but I also want to go back.

I really appreciated that Professor Shabazz or Mr. Shabazz, I'm sorry, I'm not sure, did not contest anything I said about the proof of intent. The only thing that matters is intent. And if you have, because, Piers, the designation of genocide has never, never been applied to any country ever.

Israel will be the first one ever. So that's why it's so important. It's not just a term, it's a major finding. And the court has been consistent. I think Mr. Shabazz will agree, that it has to be clear that was the only motive. How else do you explain that in Darfur, 300,000 civilians were killed, that they were not

prosecuted as a country for genocide? It is unbelievable. But what did the court say? There may have been other reasons. So I just want to end with this, Piers. I don't want to take up too much of the time,

but I think this is super important. Israel clearly has other motives. Now, are they perfect? No. Is there a validity to what you're saying? Maybe.

I don't know the real numbers, I'm not going to sit here and claim it's one to one. I don't know that. I could never prove that. But I will say this, you can't call a genocide. And the reason why is Hamas has said clearly that they will conduct 10-7 over and over and over again. So you can't tell me there's not another legitimate motive by Israel going on here.

That's my position. And I think you could call it a lot of things maybe, and we could discuss that. But one thing it is clearly not, and I don't know how Mr. Shabazz can predict genocide when it has never happened before.

I mean, literally it's never happened before. So to predict it is insane to me because you look at Darfur, if it didn't even happen there, I don't know how you can say it can happen here, where there's a clear genuine motive for Israel to protect their civilians. Professor Shabes, a lot to unpack there, but I mean there is merit to that argument. There's

no doubt that from their own mouths Hamas have made it crystal clear that they represent an ongoing existential threat to existence of Israel. They are wedded to eradicating Israel. It was in their original charter. And they displayed on October the 7th a desire to kill as many Israelis that they could possibly kill in the period of time that they were over the border.

So I don't think there's any doubt that they themselves are genocidal in their intent. But it's a really interesting point Professor Lacks made, I think. If you can't even designate what happened in Darfur with that death count as genocide, would it not be incongruous to categorize what's happened in Gaza with a significantly smaller death toll as genocide? And secondary to that, my point that the rhetoric appears to be leaning towards a form of ethnic cleansing, which to be clear would also be a criminal act.

Is that a more accurate way to describe what may be happening here?

You know, first of all, a couple of clarifications. It's not accurate to say the courts have never ruled that genocide took place. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda issued scores of judgments condemning people for genocide. There are people today in jail as a result of the Rwandan genocide. We have a judgment of the extraordinary chambers of the courts of Cambodia that found that

genocide was committed against two minority groups in Cambodia. People were sentenced to lengthy prison terms there. The Darfur situation, and I think what Professor Lacks is referring to, is it's not a judgment of the court. This never went to the International Court of Justice. It was never taken to the International Court of Justice. It was never taken to the International Court of Justice.

There was a report by an expert body commissioned by the United Nations Security Council and that delivered its report in January of 2005. And that report analyzed the situation and said, you know, this looks like crimes against humanity but we're not convinced that all of the elements of genocide are present. So we could go into the details and look at that report, but it's not as if the question

was ducked or avoided. But it's never been determined judicially either. We have a case ongoing now against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice. There'll be a determination of that as well. So Piers, as to your question now about ethnic cleansing, I know that this is one of the arguments that gets put forward, or one of the explanations, saying it's not genocide,

but it's ethnic cleansing, and that's different because ethnic cleansing is about a different intent. And it's this idea that if you can prove that there's a second intent, then that outweighs or overrules, in a sense, the existence of the genocidal intent. I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's true or accurate in law. You're not going to beat a case in court if you're charged with committing a crime and you say, well, I had another intent as well, or I have another intent as an explanation.

Nobody got off with that kind of a defense. And the argument at the International Court of Justice here is going to be, do all of these elements add up? Now, the International Court of Justice has also addressed ethnic cleansing. And it's addressed in the Bosnian case, and in a subsequent judgment in 2015 that I was counsel in that case. I know that case intimately.

The issue of ethnic cleansing arose as well. And in both those cases, the court said you cannot draw a bright line between ethnic cleansing and genocide. I think it's more useful to think of them as being a bit like a spectrum, but there's no sharp division between them. And they've said sometimes the intent to ethnically cleanse can be genocidal as well.

So establishing the-

Can I just clarify one- Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. I thought you were done. Just one last point, Jeffrey, before you take the floor, and then I'll shut up in a second. But you didn't speak to my point about Srebrenica. Srebrenica with the fact that they actually, they found it was genocide, both the judges of the Yugoslavia tribunal, and then that was endorsed by the International Court of

Justice and they found that Serbia, Serbia was not responsible for committing it, but they were responsible for failing to prevent it.

100%.

We're talking about 78,000 people in a population of about a million and a half, not 60,000 people in a population of two million, but 78,000 people, much smaller.

I'm sorry, I keep interrupting.

And where they explicitly took the women and the

elderly and the children out of harm's way, and yet they accepted that as genocide. Do you disagree

with that? No, no, and I'm so glad. Let me get a chance, let me go, Professor, Professor Lacks, final word to you. We're running out of time, but final word to you. Yeah, no, I agree with everything he just said. I want to clarify because I think there's a little bit of wordplay here. The International Court of Justice has jurisdiction over countries. They have never found any country liable for genocide. What Professor Shabazz is talking about is individuals in the ICC, because the ICC has

jurisdiction over individual people. So if you have specific issues with specific individuals, the I can find it and he knows this is true so it would it my point remains and by the way mr. Shabazz you never addressed this entire interview the issue of if there is any legitimate reason to conduct this military action there is no genocide and that and the International Court of Justice has said that repeatedly so peers I just want to end with this it would be the first time in history and I'm sure he would agree with me, that any country, Professor Shabazz is

talking about individuals charged with genocide. That has happened, and it has happened with, like he said, in that one case with the 8,000 people who were murdered. But never, ever in the history of the world has a country been found by the ICJ guilty of genocide, not even in Darfur. So you would have to convince me and the court that what's happening right now in Gaza is worse than Darfur.

No, no, they never had a case in Darfur.

Okay, it's been a fascinating debate. I want to thank you. I've got to end it there, guys. I'm sorry, but it's been a fascinating debate. I want to thank you. I've got to end it there, guys. I'm sorry, but it's been a great debate. I've got to say, I appreciate the tone that you've both conducted this debate. It makes a refreshing change from some of the screaming matches we've had about this very issue. And I've actually learned a lot, which is also hopefully

what viewers at home will conclude. I've learned a lot about this whole issue of genocide and ethnic cleansing and the courts, which I didn't know before the debate started. So that for me is a big tick in terms of what we're providing to our viewers. So thank you both very much. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate, and entertain.

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