‘I STAND By It!' Nicholas Kristof DOUBLES DOWN on NYT Israel Brutality Report - With Eric Weinstein

I went to the West Bank to talk with Palestinians who experienced sexual assault firsthand by Israeli soldiers, settlers, and prison guards.That was meticulously fact -checked.I stand by that piece.The Times has stood by that piece.

What Israel is trying to communicate is, please don't tell us how to survive, because if we listened to you, we would have been dead ten times over.And Israel is not wrong about that.How many civilians have been killed in Gaza?

If you just do, literally, like my kindergarten math of doctors...But John, just to be clear, do you have a number or not?50 ,000 minus the number of combatants that the IDF have sent.

I've asked you multiple times how many civilians have been killed and you don't know.Therefore, your assessment is bullshit.President Trump reportedly berated members of his own party yesterday in a bad -tempered meeting with Senate Republicans on the Iran war.Several Republicans initially defied Trump to pass a war powers resolution which symbolically ordered him to end military action or get their permission first.But while the endless MAGA schisms are fascinating, they're not the main barrier to peace, and Trump knows it.Israel is bitterly opposed to the US deal with Iran and has made his feelings known.

The ink was barely dry on the memorandum last week when Security Minister Itamar Ben -Gavir posted, Besides the casual threat of genocide, Israel's opposition to peace has practical implications.The U .S.clearly can't keep the Hormuz Strait open with military force.Iran is ready and very willing to close it if the Israeli bombs keep hitting Lebanon.That's why Vice President J .

D.Vance, who's charged with selling the deal and getting it done, is losing patience.

Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.And he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower.If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.

Well, successive US presidents stood by Israel throughout the war on Gaza, even as many of its traditional allies expressed shock and alarm at the scale of civilian suffering.But just as the US met the limits of its power in the war on Iran, Israel is discovering that the limits to its power are met by challenging America's interests.All of a sudden, Trump and Vance are sounding a lot like the many commentators who've been chided as Islamists or anti -Semites, or criticizing the most moral army in the world.

Too many people are being killed.And you don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses.

You know, you're a country of nine million people.You can't just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.

Well, for now, the vice president is bearing the brunt of the backlash.Congressman Randy Fine called his recent comments disgusting and inappropriate.Little Ben Shapiro called him, quote, weak and ridiculous.Later in the show, I'll be joined here in the studio by Eric Weinstein, who's both a close friend of JD Vance and a strident supporter of Israel.For his analysis, we'll begin the show with somebody who understands very well the implications of interrogating Israeli operations.New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, faced a ferocious outcry for his work last month.

and amid the appalling attacks on his employer and his family, a former Biden envoy likened him to a Nazi propagandist.Well, Nick Kristof joins me now.Nick, great to see you again.I used to interview you a lot when I was at CNN.It's great to see you.Good to be with you.

And when it all blew up last month,I told people, I know Nick Kristof.I've known you well.I've interviewed you many times.You don't win two Pulitzer Prizes by just plucking stuff out of thin air and publishing it.Obviously, it's the elephant in the room, so let's get it out of the way.

What is your feeling now, we're a few weeks later, about the enormous furore that erupted over your report, which was entitled The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians, and was about the treatment of Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons.

Well, I had certainly expected an enormous amount of pushback, as had the Times.But, you know, what happened, I think, exceeded that.Now, that includes the threat of multiple lawsuits, including threats from Prime Minister Netanyahu.So, you know, I don't want to go into it too much.But I would just say that, look, that was meticulously fact -checked.It was based on conversations with 14 people who had been sexually assaulted.

whose accounts were carefully corroborated.The Times has stood.I stand by that piece.The Times has stood by that piece.Subsequently, the U .N.

issued a report on sexual violence by Israel against Palestinians that put Israel on a blacklist for precisely this and disclosed new rapes of Palestinian prisoners.And so, you know, I think it holds up.And I mean, look, at the end of the day, here's, you know, I mean, I've covered prison rape in the US, I've covered sexual violence in Burma, in Sudan, in Ethiopia, all over the world.And when you dehumanize people, and when you provide impunity for prison guards and soldiers, then terrible things happen.

The specific allegation which gotmost attention and exposed you to most attack, I think, was the allegation from an unnamed person in the report who said he was raped by a dog on the command of a handler inside prison.On that specific...I know you don't want to get into the wider details because of the lawsuit.I understand that completely.I've been on the receiving end myself and you have to be careful.

But on that specific allegation, what do you say to people who say, Obviously preposterous.That could never have happened.No dog can be trained to sexually assault a human being.What do you say to that?

Well, I'd say that, in fact, the evidence is contrary to that, that we know from history that, for example, Nazis, like Klaus Barbie, did use dogs to rape their victims, according to testimony of survivors who'd endured torture by the Nazis.Likewise, the Chilean regime used, likewise, had dogs rape survivors.political prisoners as a way to abuse and humiliate them.And in the medical literature, there are at least three journal articles about humans suffering rectal damage from penetration by dogs.So, you know, this is not something that is impossible.There have been a number of Palestinians who have testified about this.

Have you ever Nick, in all your career, and you've written a lot of contentious stuff over the years, but you've also won awards for it.Have you ever in your career been on the receiving end of such a ferocious attack?And if the answer is no, what's it been like for you on a human level to go through what you've been through?

This would be, I mean, look,I've been shot at.I've been in things that seem a lot more dangerous than getting mean tweets directed at me.It has made me see the degree of kind of bad faith attacks.You know, one of the things that my family has always been proud of is that my dad's family spied on them.They were Armenians.

They spied on the Nazis during World War II.And my dad was imprisoned on orders of the Nazis as a result.And then, you know, as a result of this, On the contrary, my dad is being portrayed as some kind of a Nazi and I'm a sort of second generation Nazi.And, you know, I mean, I can take this, I dish it out, but it does sort of underscore just the absurdity of some of the accusations that the depths to which people will go.

The sort of perverse irony is that Benjamin Netanyahu and his Israeli government, they have barred and continue to bar international journalists from operating freely in Gaza.The only journalists allowed in are with the IDF, embedded with full control by the IDF.Nobody else is allowed to go in and do their job, even though we're supposedly in a ceasefire period.It's made no difference.And at the same time, He's threatening, we'll see whether he goes through with it because he's threatened this before and then didn't go through with it.But he's threatening to use the full instrument of the Israeli government to sue you and the New York Times over this report.

Like I said, there's a perverse irony there of somebody suppressing freedom of speech in Gaza by not allowing journalists to do their job.And in a way, using the whole force of his government to try and, I guess, silence you, scare you off, bully you, whatever you want to come to terms with.use.What do you feel about Netanyahu...Well, what do you feel about both of those things?One, the ongoing ban of journalists being allowed in, and secondly, the fact he's using the government to sue you guys.

Support for Uncensored comes from Dose for Cholesterol, a simple and reliable way to take control of your own health.Cholesterol can be an issue for many people, some for lifestyle reasons and sometimes just bad luck.But you can get ahead of it.Dose for Cholesterol is extremely convenient.Just a small daily shot, which tastes like mango.No pills and no powders.

It uses naturally occurring ingredients like turmeric.So you know that you're not putting chemical garbage into your body.This is a way to take more control of your own health, which could help you delay the more intense conventional remedies.They'll send it straight to your door for zero hassle.New customers can save 35 % on your first month subscription by going to dosdaily .co slash peers or simply entering peers at checkout.

That's dosdaily .co slash peers for 35 % off your first month subscription.

I mean, I've tried very hard to get into Gaza since the beginning of the war, you know, volunteering with medical organizations, this kind of thing.And like myself, you know, all journalists have been barred.Many aid workers have been barred.Doctors have been limited, even when they volunteer to go in.But it's not just Gaza.You know, in prisons, the Red Cross, had been banned from visiting prisoners.

Lawyers had often been banned.And that's the kind of context in which you get impunity and which you get abuse.And so I would just hope that these kind of allegations about serious sexual violence of prisoners would be investigated.and would lead to access by the Red Cross, by lawyers.In fact, the Israeli Prison Service wasn't even letting its own Israeli inspectors access.And just investigate.

And if you think I'm wrong, then prove me wrong.But open up the doors and allow that kind of access by the Red Cross and others.

But this principle of using a government to sue journalists, to sue a newspaper over a report, what do you feel about that?

Well, it's a threat.I mean, we'll see if it happens.I mean, look, I have full confidence in what I wrote.You know, people, you know, as I said, I've been, you know, Worse things happen than getting sued.Right now we have journalists in covering wars around the world who can be killed tomorrow.You know, I've been denounced, but a lot worse things are happening to journalists around the world.

It's very interesting to watch the changing mood about Israel, particularly in America, where for the first time you see a majority of Americans have a negative opinion of Israel.And I saw Joe Scarborough talking on MS Now yesterday about the Bibi Netanyahu effect, as he put it, which is, if you want to know why Israel is so unpopular, if you want to know why in New York you're seeing a lot of wins for Mamdani -supported congressional candidates, it's because, and he said all roads lead to Netanyahu, with this relentless bombing.Let's take a little look at what he said.

children and women in Gaza with bombing that looks indiscriminate on TV day in and day out for years, that you're going to be able to level half of Lebanon, that you're going to be able to continueto allow thugs to run wild in the West Bank?and brutalizing Palestinians, brutalizing Christians in Bethlehem, brutalizing Christians across that area along with Palestinian Muslims, especially Palestinian Muslims, blowing up Catholic churches in Gaza.You can blame all of this on Benjamin Netanyahu.

What do you feel about what Joe Scarborough was saying there?Because I reposted it saying I completely agree.I mean, I just think that in the end, if you look at the actions of this particular Israeli government, I think Netanyahu did this dirty deal with these unbelievably hardline characters like Ben -Gavir and Smodrich, whose mission seems crystal clear.They just want to basically ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out of Gaza, out of the West Bank, out of southern Lebanon.And Netanyahu, for political power, preservation purposes and to avoid, presumably as well, the criminal trial that he's facing but keeps being put off, that it kind of suits him to keep bombing places.

So I think that there's something to that.And I think that Netanyahu has certainly, you know, made things much worse ever since he first came into office in the 1990s.But I also think it becomes too easy and a little bit too glib to focus everything on Netanyahu.I mean, the truth is that the war in Gaza and the way it was carried out, leveling entire city blocks, you know, that had the support of a broad swath of Israelis.Much of the settlement policy has very broad support.I think likewise, a very aggressive policy in Lebanon.

has broad support.And so I think that if we have a new Israeli prime minister, as we may have this fall, you know, I think there will be some improvement.And Ben -Gavi hasbe in the cabinet, one hopes.But I think that there will still be some really hard line policies toward Gaza, toward Lebanon.And this is not just personal, although that magnifies it, but also structural.

And you know, your point about how US opinion has changed.That's absolutely true.And it's interesting, because it's not so much an ideological divide.It's really a generational one.Yes, it is that Even young Republicans are much, much more sceptical of Israeli ties than older folks.And the Democratic Party, because it was being led by Biden, who was so supportive of Israel, it hasn't really fully made that transition.

But Democratic voters themselves, they're going to pull the party toward this much greater scepticism toward Israel.

Just quickly, Nate, what is your overview of the Iran war, which Donald Trump is clearly desperate to get out of, the narrative which was painstakingly laid out actually by the New York Times in a brilliant piece quite early on, that Trump You know, ultimately, it's his decision to take American forces into war, of course, but that he had been persuaded of the merits of doing this with the Israelis by Netanyahu, by the head of Mossad in this big meeting in the White House Situation Room, and that Netanyahu laid out this series of events.You take out the Ayatollah and the top people, then the IRGC kind of collapses from within, the people rise up, and it's all going to be a clean revolution.But of course, only the first bit happened.And in fact, the Ayatollah got replaced by his even more hardline son.The rest of it didn't happen.And you have this asymmetric war where the Iranians worked out if you just shut this little strait of water and chuck a few missiles and rockets at the neighboring Gulf states they can hold everyone to ransom.

You know what is your overview of this war.Has it been as some people believe a catastrophic failure.

It's been absolutely a catastrophic failure.I mean, in a sense, we have had regime change.We now have a harder line regime in Iran, one that is more repressive, one that is more likely to pursue nuclear weapons.I think it's, you know, the risk that Iran has nuclear weapons in five years is now much greater than it was in January.And meanwhile, we've handed Iran enormous amounts of leverage because it has turned out that it can close the strait.So now as we implement this new accord, whenever there is some disagreement and bound to be many, then Iran will say, look, maybe we're going to close the strait now.

Shit, look out.And then I think the Trump administration is going to be inclined to back off.

Yeah.It's been great to talk to you, Nate.I'm about to interview somebody else who takes a position that Netanyahu has also endorsed, which is that the IDF is the most moral army in the world, that they kill fewer civilians in a ratio to combat and stroke terrorists, whatever people want to call the other side, than any army in modern history.Do you agree with that?

No, I completely disagree.And I would note that I know who you're going to be interviewing.And, you know, he is the one person that Israelis always quote for that position.He's not at all representative of what military leaders or retired military leaders or officers think.And, you know, I mean, again, you look at I know Gaza and entire blocks leveled to see what's happening in Lebanon.You know, that is not moral.

And one child a day has died in Gaza since the ceasefire.One child.And, you know, I find that just terrific.

Nick Kristof, great to talk to you again.Thank you very much indeed for coming on Uncensored.

Good to be with you.

Well, joining me now is John Spencer, Executive Director of the Urban Warfare Institute.John, thanks for coming on the show.You've been on before.I appreciate you coming back.We had a little exchange on X and you laid out a very firm conviction that, in your estimation, the IDF is the most moral army in the world.And I was struck, really, I guess, by the fact that all the people that you cited, who you'd spoken to, were, of course, on the pro -Israel, pro -IDF side.

So, of course, they're going to say that.And the criticism that I would level back at you about your claim was simply that if you're only going to do that, talk to the people that effectively have a horse in the race, and journalists aren't allowed into Gaza to work it out for themselves, then it's hard to believe it.What would you say to that?

Well, hi, Piers.Thanks for having me. I really appreciate you in doing that.I will have to correct you on misquoting me that that quote about being the most moral military in the world.That's probably from my friend, Colonel Richard Kemp from the British Army who led Afghanistan forces during the Afghan war.My quote that you called nonsense was that the Israel and the idea have implemented more measures to prevent civilian harm than any military in history.Now that's a Provable fact you asked about the people I've interviewed so over 100 interviews although your previous guest said that he had 14 interviews.

Resting on 3 journal articles and I wish I would have a New York Times spread based on hundreds of interviews and I listed them.for you in that ex post, not just the prime minister, both chiefs of the IDF, the every division commander in Gaza, battalion commander, company commander, doing what we call primary source resource.So I'm not asking them.

They would all say that, John, wouldn't they?I mean, my instant reaction when I read it was, of course, they're going to say that to you.Of course, they're going to say they're going to present a series of facts to you, which endorse this belief that whether you call them the most moral army in the world or whether you call them the one that has spared the most civilians, when the reality of on the ground.I think it's why Netanyahu won't let journalists into Gaza to operate freely.The reality is very different, as even Donald Trump said last week.you know, why do they keep leveling whole buildings to go after one Hamas guy or a couple of Hezbollah people, right?

They are in the process of targeting the enemy.They are killing enormous numbers of civilians.Now, you know, I've had people say to me, yeah, but what about World War Two?What about Dresden?I completely agree.But of course, that was precisely why the Geneva Convention was brought in.

to prevent that kind of thing happening again.And many people think that the IDF has been indiscriminate, not because they're deliberately targeting civilians, but because they are targeting one, two, three enemy combatants, and in the process, killing huge numbers of civilians.And whether you call that targeting civilians or willfully ignoring the civilian casualty reality on the ground, I mean, it makes little difference to the victims, does it?

So it's a great question.So post -World War II, but let me address your question about me just doing interviews.Since I have traveled, and I mentioned this to you, although you argue that journalists can't go into Gaza unless… They can't go in free.So you want them to embed with Tomas.

I want them to do their jobs as they do in every war zone in the world.These are people who do this as a matter of course.I know a number of war correspondents.They've never had a situation where, particularly when it moved to a supposed ceasefire, they're still not being allowed in.I think I know why they're not being allowed in.And I'm curious whether you share my concern that there can be only one reason why a government wouldn't want journalists to operate freely when there's a ceasefire, and that is because they do not want people to know what really happened.

No, so I wouldn't agree with that assessment.Although there are other combat zones and you and I have actually discussed Ukraine and the coverage that I've had in Ukraine on the frontline in Ukraine where journalists aren't allowed.So it's not that this is a unique and the probable answer on why isn't just what you listed, but the embeds that I have done, I'm not a reporter, I'm a war scholar.I went into Gaza multiple times, over six times.So when I was asking a division commander, what are you doing here?I'm actually also watching them operate.

And to your previous guest's question, which I really want to talk about, is that you and others have pinned me as the only person, right?I'm the only one that says this thing.Well, I didn't say that.

I didn't say that.

Nick said that.Your previous guest, right?So, do you know, Sir John McCall, I know you've been on a panel with him, right, the former deputy NATO Supreme Commander, who was very sceptical, almost had similar thoughts to you, then went to Gaza, went into Gaza with six other NATO members and came out and said, no, the harm mitigation measures, which is really important, because we're going to talk about post -World War Two.Would you call the Korean War a genocide, Piers?

Well, I think the definition, the reason I have held off calling what happened in Gaza a genocide is because actuallycountry, stroke state, has ever been found guilty of waging a genocide.That's just a fact.As a country.So I think that it's important that when people throw these kind of words around they understand what it means and they wait for a proper adjudication by proper authorities on whether it meets the criteria for genocide.I have used the phrase ethnic cleansing because I think that is more pertinent to the language particularly we see from certain members of the Israeli government.

But let's be honest John, when you saw that statement from Ben -Gavir about Lebanon, and burning it to the ground.That is the language of a genocidal maniac.

It is.But I don't want to live in the world where, you know, outlier politicians that make statements that if you took them...

And he's the security minister of Israel.

I think Natali Bennett replied to your ex -post and said he made that title up for himself.

Yeah, but he didn't answer that point.And I replied to him saying, but hang on, this guy is the security minister for Israel.That is his job in the government.He's not a fringe member of the government.He's actually the security minister.

That title, though, isn't what you're inferring.And that's what Natali Bennett, no friend of Netanyahu, said.

No, no, he's not.

That's more like the head of the police.He's not in the chain of command.So when you criticize that list of people, I was demonstrating that I've interviewed or observed in combat operations, both the political leaders that in the chain of command and the actual field commanders operating and watching them take in unordinary, extraordinary steps that no military has done.But do you think, John, on that point...But Piers, you said post -World War II, can I answer that really quick?Sure, sure, sure.

Because you said the Korean War, right?So yes, things that we did in World War II, Dresden, you know, even the blitz of... we don't do that anymore, right?The Geneva Conventions.ButKorean War was a 37 month war.Two million civilians were killed in that war.

That's 54 ,000 civilians a month, every month of the war, 2 ,000 civilians a day, more than actual combatants.These numbers, these lies, damn lies, statistics, even if we want to talk about the numbers of children, which is, according to the United Nations, anybody below the age of 18, half of the population of Gaza is below the age of 18.And Hamas is historic for deploying soldiers from 12 to 18.The average age of a Hamas recruit right now is 16.

But do you believe that the ratio of civilian deaths to enemy combatant terrorist deaths in Gaza, for example, is the best ratio, if you like, that we've seen in modern warfare?Is that your belief?

I stated that early in the war when there are people doing false comparative analysis.

But do you still believe that about Gaza?

Absolutely.

OK, so my question for you is very simple.It's an aggregated...OK, but my question for you is very simple.

What is the...

Hang on, John, let me finish my question.Do you know what the civilian -to -combat ratio in Raqqa was?I will let you answer, but because you've said that, let me just give you my question, which is this.Sure.To make that assessment, you would have to know how many civilians have been killed, wouldn't you?

Yeah.

So how many is it?

So, I take both the numbers that we all have available, I just don't filter them through some prism of intentionality and already - But no pro -Israeli guest has been able to tell me the numbers, so maybe you can enlighten everybody.

How many civilians have been killed in Gaza?

Sure, so I take the Hamas number that they provide, which doesn't distinguish between civilian and combatants, and then I take the one that Israel provides.I have done enough research onall the numbers of any urban battle to understand when do we have a number and then how is it determined?Sure, so how many civilians have been killed?According to Hamas, 72 ,000.And what is your belief?

My belief is that we don't have a number, but if we take Hamas's number and then we compare it to Israel's numbers of combatants, how many fighters do you think Hamas has got?

OK, let's take the Israel number of combatants.So I've asked Israeli ambassadors how many civilians have been killed.They can always tell me how many Hamas have been killed.That's right.But they can never tell me.But oddly, oddly, they can never tell me how many civilians have been killed.

So my simple question for you is to make the assessment that the ratio has never been better than it is in Gaza in terms of combatants killed compared to civilians, you'd have to know both numbers.You have to, right?So my question, again, is simple.How many civilians have actually been killed in Gaza?So that would be a question.

You don't know, do you?Fair comment.You don't know.So when people talk about how many civilians have died, you just started this show talking about an indiscriminate number, a high number of civilians.You too don't have access to information to know that that body...

But you're the one making the claim that the ratio is the best we've seen.I don't think it's unreasonable.I don't think it's unreasonable, John, in that context of that claim to simply ask you that obviously to make that assessment, you must know how many civilians have been killed and how many Hamas terrorists have been killed.If you don't know, I don't know how you can make the assessment.

I mean, I guess you could challenge the qualitative analysis of any war in the history of war.

I'm only asking about your claim.You said it was the best ratio.And yet I'm simply asking you, OK, so what is the ratio?How many civilians?how many Hamas?

And I'm trying to explain to you the qualitative analysis.

Do you know the answer or not?Yes.What is it?

It is based on Hamas's number.

Just give me a number of civilians who've been killed.For you to make your judgment that the ratio is the best in modern times, OK, that's your claim.I respect your right to have a claim, but to back it up, you have to know the two numbers.You have to better tell me this number of civilians were killed and this number of Hamas, and then we can all decide whether that is the best ratio of modern times.But if you don't know, now's your chance to say, actually, I don't know, because I don't think you do.

So that's an interesting viewpoint if you didn't know that I'm comparing the numbers we all have available to the same numbers that we all have available.

So how many civilians have been killed?You said you're a scholar of war.So as a scholar of war who says the ratio has never been better, one last time, how many civilians have been killed?

So let's talk in the Battle of Rafah.

Let's talk about in Gaza since October the 7th, Yeah.In the war, how many civilians have been killed?

If you just do, literally, like my kindergartener, math of the numbers that are available and subtract the number of combatants, because there are no civilians in war, Piers.There's combatants or non -combatants.Non -combatants are those that are not participating in the war.Such as in Gaza, if you're holding a civilian and you're a doctor...But, John, just to be clear, do you have a number or not?50 ,000 minus the number of combatants that the IDF have set.

50 ,000 is what?What number is that?It is the number that Hamas says is leftover of the number of combatants that Israel says.

So just to be clear, you don't want to use the word civilians.how many non -combatants have been killed?I'm struggling to get my head around your maths.

According to Hamas, all of the deaths are non -combatants.

OK.So how many do you think it is?

72 ,000 according to Hamas.

How many do you think it is?It's less the number that Israel has publicly claimed.I mean, to have said the ratios the best we've seen, you've got to know the number.And if you don't know the number, obviously your assessment is bullshit.

Piers, so sure, if the entire history of war is bullshit, every case...

I'm not talking about the entire history of war.You said you're a war scholar.You've been to Gaza six times.You have stated the ratio is the best we've seen.I've asked you multiple times how many civilians have been killed and you don't know.Therefore, you don't know the ratio.

Therefore, your assessment is bullshit.

Sure, sure, Piers.The entire study of war is bullshit.

I wasn't talking about the entire study of war.I was simply talking about the war in Gaza.John Spencer, thank you very much.No, no, but you say civilians have died.We've run out of time, I'm afraid.I gave you multiple chances to answer, and you couldn't answer.

But I appreciate you coming on the show.Thank you very much.Well, as we discussed earlier, the vice president's tough talk on Israel has earned him the ire of many of the Iran war's most ardent cheerleaders.Dr Eric Weinstein is both a friend of the vice president and a supporter of Israel.And I'm delighted to say he joins me in the studio.Eric!

Piers, great to be here.This is like having a state visit.

Normally, I'm put into a mysterious van and I never don't fall over.

You were very Eric when you arrived.You looked at me and said, God, you've got a massive head.But then you caveated it by saying, obviously, if you had one that big, you would have a lot of brain in it.Well, I'm clearly playing second fiddle.It's great to see you.You're in London to take part in the ARC Conference, which is Alliance for Responsible

Citizenship.Now, this is an annual gathering that unites thought leaders from around the world to promote traditional Western values, free enterprise and individual responsibility.Now, there are a lot of people in America who have been led down a path, I think wrongly, that London, in particular, it's the kind of epicenter of the end of Western civilization as we know it.That we've been overrun by marauding foreigners, particularly Muslims, and there's no way back.We're under siege.We're collapsing.

Blah, blah, blah.I live in London.I have done since I was 20 years old.I don't recognize this characterization of my city.Do you sense that when you're here?The food got a lot better.

Yeah, it did.It did.

Yeah, I mean, I think I think Edgeware Road You know has been an epicenter of great cuisine and I think London's gotten a lot more interesting I think what people are really reacting to is things that they don't know how to talk about And so as they react they become less less good versions of themselves I think one thing is that there was a sense that during the Tony Blair era there were forces Reshaping the society that nobody seemed to have asked for I think that that's true I do think that there was a lot of binge immigration so that one of the great features of the UK is is that there's a UK software product that you could load on to anyone's shoulders, you know, we have like Stephen Bartlett who certainly doesn't look like a traditional anglo -saxon in the US but you know comes across as perfectly British and so part of Part of what the problem is, I believe, is that you took in too many people too quickly, didn't give enough time for the assimilation, because nobody wants to lose that special quality that is British sensibility.I don't think we care quite so much as to who's running the program on which computers, but that would be an absolute tragedy.

I mean, what's interesting, I mean, like, you know,absolute merit to that.It's what most people, I would say, genuinely feel concerned about.We've let too many people in too fast.And it has changed the way our country feels to people.But how do we deal with this in a way where the solution is not a kind of anti -reaction to having Foreigners in our country where if they come from a different culture, they're the enemy and we got to get rid of them Sure.

I mean I think part so I'm having an unorthodox piece of advice.I brought two cab drivers to tears Crossing London this trip.

I'm not giving them a tip.

Well, I Certainly tried that by speaking in rudimentary Urdu and being really unflinching about the problems.Yeah, sure and I think that, for example, a lot of what's going wrong in the UK is that you're talking around your Muslim population rather than talking to them because many of them are incredibly ashamed of some of the things that are being ascribed to all Muslims.Right.Right.And so, you know, strangely enough, I had a Bangladeshi cab driver last night who knew some Hindi and some Urdu.You know, he basically spent his whole life here.

And when I tried communicating with him, I managed to tell him that my wife's uncle had taken the surrender of East Pakistan as a Jewish general in the Indian army and had not accepted the surrender of the sidearm.of this surrendering general, because they wanted to preserve honor.And he says, why am I so emotional?Why am I crying?How do I keep in touch with you?I think that in many ways, the problem is, if you're going to let in all of these people, it's time to go back to being the UK.

The UK used to have a foreign service leader.prided itself by understanding every culture with which the British Empire was in contact.and my feeling is, is that more traditional white Anglo -Saxon, English, and the like, need to learn the languages of the subpopulation, communicate directly to them, and also learn the sort of ethnic sensibilities, because shame and family are powerful ways to restore order.I think that by poking a hole in the social order to defend the, Imagined racism you're gonna create real racism.There's something if the landing pictures at Heathrow Spoke of British confidence and strength rather than see how diverse we are.Yes You would look less pathetic.

You look somewhat pathetic from overseas Yeah, and I think that's not help that we've had seven prime ministers in ten years, which is clearly ridiculous, right?It's ridiculous.I mean it just shows a rudderless country, doesn't it?But you really do have to deal with the fact that the grooming gang thing was, let's assume it's exaggerated, there's a core of truth there, that if we don't actually stare at it, it undeniably happened, and it undermined thousands of young almost exclusively young white girls were raped and abused by almost exclusively gangs of British Pakistani Muslim men.That is inarguable.The stuff that is problematic to me is that you get people with their own agendas who suddenly come out with their own report which says 250 ,000 girls were right that's not a fact that's just them extrapolating certain numbers and guessing and i think we should be i think people should be more precise about what is factual which we know from the investigations how many have been arrested how many times they were accused of

committing crimes and so on, which is a huge number.The whole thing is disgraceful.And the cover -up was completely disgraceful.But I do think it's important that we don't then wildly exaggerate with guesswork when you've got a real set of details you can tackle.

I, in many ways, agree and disagree.The problem is, is that when you indulge in what I would call the hyper -liberal form of illiberalism, where you have an exaggerated... liberalism, you're just tolerant of everything.You are consigning the next generation to hypo -liberalism, which is what you and I are also...I mean, I sense we are in violent agreement.

I think we are.We are.There's no question.I mean, I try to explain to people the grooming gang scandal was a horrendous scandal on a very widespread level.It went on for many years.There was a cover -up from top to bottom.

of law enforcement, of authority, of politicians, of police, and so on.And it was a complete disgrace.And it was done because people didn't want to say who was doing these crimes and operating in these gangs and who they were doing them to, for fear that it would create racial tension.When, of course, by not dealing with it, it's created way more racial tension.Exactly.So it had the opposite effect to what they thought that their cowardly cover -up actions would create.

I like what you're saying.I fear that there was more social engineering going on on our side of the pond with the Clintons and your side of the pond with Tony Blair.And I still think we don't know the source of it.I was able to, for example, trace some of the hyper liberal immigration in the sciences to 1986 secret study of the NSF, where the National Science Foundation was plotting to lower the wages of American scientists using an invidious mechanism of visas as payment, where visas are no good, no good.to anyone who's actually a native.And so what you see is high trust is even more important than diversity to a society.

When you undermine high trust...

I totally agree.

..then the problem is, is that you open it up to say, I have no idea what's true and I heard this from my friend at the bar.

Well, never has this been more pertinent, I think, than with the Iran war.where it's almost impossible to know what is really going on or who is telling the truth.Now, I say that in the context that J .D.Vance, the vice president, has become the poster boy for this war on the Trump administration side.Obviously, it's a deliberate thing.

He's been out there trying to sell this deal, explain what's going on.You know him well.I want to play a clip from J .D.Vance, which is quite critical of Israel.I think it's quite interesting.

Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.And he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower.If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.

Are you reacted to this by posting the next Israel, which I love, needs to snap out of its delirium ASAP.J .D.Vance is sending a message.Israel needs to listen, not respond, not argue, but listen.Bibi needs to be out of office.

The new PM needs to understand the hybrid war slash cheap drones and missiles changed everything, which I completely concur with.You know, it's been fascinating to me to see this utter disconnect between Netanyahu and his government, particularly fueled by these, to me, psychopaths of Ben -Givir and Smodrige, that as Israel's reputation around the world has got steadily worse, to the extent that the majority of Americans have a negativeview of Israel.And I think it's predominantly driven by the rhetoric of these guys and the actions of this government.No one there seems to either get it or care.Is that a fair characterization?

I think there are people who care who don't get it.There may be people who get it who don't care.And I would put forward the following Let me say some outrageous stuff.Yes, please, please.All right.Come on, Eric.

This is largely a UK problem, Piers.This is a problem of the legacy of Operation Boot.And MI6 really did a number on Iran over the nationalization of oil back in the 50s.And we are looking at the long tail of that.And the MI6 and the UK that did that doesn't exist anymore.The two countries that best understand the clerical threat in Iran are Israel and the United States.

And right now, because they are so out of keeping with the rest of the world, those two countries are correct, and the rest of the world is not getting it.Let me tell you a terrible joke.How do you say London in Farsi?Go on.Diego Garcia.I'm telling you.

That's quite a good joke.Yeah, but the point is they've just communicated that they can reach you.You underestimated their reach.In their framework, they're not psychopaths.They're extraordinarily skilled players.But in our framework, their belief in an afterlife, in the idea that religious life is at the center of government, you're dealing with a game theory of players that you will not be able to control and who can reach Europe and who will be able, you know, there's an unfortunate term associated with pornography called edging.

They have been edging for decades that they are a short distance away from a nuclear war.And that has become a claim.The claim is, oh, Chicken Little, we've always...No, no.They are always close to it.

But there are unstable countries who have nuclear weapons.Pakistan has nuclear weapons.North Korea has nuclear weapons.And the answer is that people don't go and invade them.or try and overthrow their regimes, right?I mean, we look at...

Iran's been dealt with in a different way, and from where I'm looking, 16, 17 weeks in since the war started, to me, it's been a disaster.

Well, they had one plan, and the one plan was, we have a one -time opportunity to decapitate this regime.And had they done that during the 12 -day war, it probably would have worked.But Iran is so skilled, I have such respect even for my enemies.Grudging respect.

I agree.

Yeah.Yeah.So what I would say is, is that they did something no one counted on, but works in the Iranian mindset.The clerics didn't say, okay, we're going to get hit again.How do we save ourselves?They said, you know what?

They're probably going to wipe us all out.They've demonstrated an ability to do it.How do we make sure that our regime survives our own deaths?So rather than trying to save their own lives, they decentralize.

But didn't they also work out very quickly that they had it turned out the most potent weapon of all, and it was the Strait of Hormuz?And if they combined that with attacking their Gulf state neighbours with a few missiles and rockets, they actually held everybody, quite literally, over a barrel.And the worst thing about this deal is that it looks to me like they will maintain the ability to turn that Strait on and off with impunity.And there's not much anyone can do about it.

Well, I mean, I do have to say that the Straits Hormuz in Taiwan are probably the two most gamed scenarios among people who speculate on such things.So this certainly wasn't a question that hadn't been considered.Everybody's done it to death.I think that what's really going on is that there was one plan, which is one and done.It's going to be a lightning fast decapitation.And then all the people who were rioting back in December, January, who will rise up.

But the CIA and the Mossad didn't run them guns.And they found that there was always more support for the regime in Iran as we call it, people claim.And as a result of this, we probably got the first step right, and we thought there would be no second step.And you know, the problem is that Israel is wrong about some stuff here, more right about the danger of Iran than right about the danger of Iran.than anyone else.It was a botched, ham -fisted operation in terms of the follow -on.

The initial thing was executed to a fairly well.So you have this complicated mix.And we've taught people that you can only think in simplicities.Oh, Netanyahu is holding something on Trump and is actually secretly in control of the US.Not true.

But did Netanyahu paint a picture of what could happen, as the New York Times reported quite early on in the war, that just manifestly turned out not to be accurate.In other words, if you decapitate the top, then the IRGC collapses from within, the people rise up.It's all reasonably straightforward.None of the rest of it happened.And it seemed to me, as the weeks and months went on, Trump began to realize it wasn't going to happen.And then how do you extricate yourself from what has become a real mess?

Now, he took a decision in that moment, it seems to me, Well, J .D.Vance could deal with the fallout of this.You know Vance really well.What's going on here?I mean, is that something that Vance will be comfortable about doing?

Because this deal doesn't seem to be pleasing pretty much anybody.Will he be comfortable?Has he been set up for it?a fall here?

I refuse to speculate.I'm just going to opt out of certain things because I have a personal connection to JD Vance, which I'm not going to share with your audience.What I believe is, is that he's in an extremely tough spot.He chose his words very well.He's associated with the so -called America first wing of MAGA, which is actually a reboot of a Nazi -adjacent movement to stay out of World War II, associated with Lindbergh and the Klan.JD, I don't think, is a bigoted person, but I believe that he is taken the sense that Americans have that they don't create their own foreign policy.

Unfortunately, we have memetic terms like forever wars that are really not good terms that capture something, but they also distort just as they elucidate.And as a result, he's stuck in a situation where the population has had a sort of self -inflicted 25 -point IQ loss inside the US.And he's trying to send a message to the insane, like Ben -Gurion, I have no idea what that guy is thinking.I do know Israelis pretty well.They have a very strong sense that in order to live in that neighborhood, you have to understand the calculus of the local mindset.

Yeah, but when Ben -Gavir issues a statement in which he says all Lebanon must burn, that is, he's just advocating genocide.He's saying the whole country has got to burn.I mean, he says it in his own words.And he's not like, as they try and make out, he's some sort of irrelevance.He's the security minister.No, no.

In Yiddish, we'd call him a piskudniak.He's a terrible person.Yes.Right.

But I don't think he's good enough for the pro -Israeli side, as they've tried to do.I've left Ali Bennett challenging who I like.I think he's come on my show a number of times.I think he's got a really good chance of being prime minister, and I hope he is.But he challenged me and said, look, ignore Ben Gavir.He's irrelevant.

I was like, he's the national security minister.

He's in a very tough spot.He needs to be silenced, and he can't be silenced.I'd rather have a more honest conversation than I'm in London with you.Sure.And my feeling is that you have to understand the Israeli mindset, first of all, not just of your opponents, which is that is the language And very often it's bluster, and sometimes it isn't.And nobody knows exactly, because in order for bluster to work, you have to have a question.

Does he actually believe the stupid thing that he just said?Let's go farther.There is tremendous suspicion in Israel of American and other diaspora Jews that we are weak, that we don't understand the calculus, that we believe that you can replace the Judaism of either belief in God or picking up a gun and sending your children to war.with something called Tikkun Olam and nice thoughts about healing the world, sort of the equivalent of thoughts and prayers.And so in a certain way, what Israel is trying to communicate is, please don't tell us how to survive because if we listened to you, we would have been dead 10 times over.And Israel is not wrong about that.

And so in part, the world is also using Israel to work out their own frustrations.I mean, here you have effectively an indigenous people come home You've got this incredible expanding colonial empire in green from Morocco to Pakistan.And you have this question about, immediately after October 7th, there was enthusiasm.And so, in part, Jews have this other idea, which is there's nothing we can do about the outside world.The outside world has lost its mind.And in part, you know, everything that...

But much of the outside world thinks that Israel has currently lost its mind, or rather, its government,has lost its mind.

I mean...Bibi Netanyahu has failed quite badly.He's an extremely skilled politician.He's tough as nails.And you have to appreciate that if, you know, if you're asking me, I'm going to tell you this good, this bad, this true, this not true.But right now, what we're having is we're having a moronic discussion.

If I go online and I say anything at all, I've got four or five tweets that use the word genocide from some sort of bot network.So we're all losing our mind because everything is distorted.

But the problem, because I've avoided using the word genocide, for example, about what happened in Gaza.

It's completely incorrect.

Well, because, I mean, as is widely known, no country or state has ever been convicted of waging a genocide.It's just a fact.So why would you start actually if it didn't happen?in Rwanda, for example, why would people start with what happened in Gaza?However, however, I think a lot of bad stuff has happened in Gaza, and I think it's reprehensible that Netanyahu won't let international journalists in freely to investigate it.And he must be covering something up, otherwise he'd let them in.

I don't think so.

Well, I think he is.No, but let me give you a counterargument.Go on.The counterargument is that the rest of the world is not thinking rationally.We never talk about the Tokyo genocide.at the end of World War II.

We don't talk about the Dresden genocide.When we talk about the...

Well, we do, but in the context of the Geneva Convention, we're brought in precisely to stop these kind of things happening again.

No, but my point is that when it was the UK and the US, we hit them hard.And we had to hit them hard and disproportionately.

But there was an acceptance after World War II that notwithstanding that, that the Geneva Convention was brought in, agreed by myriad countries to avoid things like the carpet bombing of Dresden.all the dropping of atomic bombs, and so on.

Let's talk about the resettlement of the Sudeten Germans, which was not called ethnic cleansing, because ethnic cleansing, remember correctly, is a Romanian phrase that came into currency in the 1980s.And quite honestly, everyone is supposed to be smart enough to know that you have to relocate people at times so that you don't have a re -inflicting war.

The problem, it seems to me, for Israel in terms of PR to the world, is that on the one hand, there's this vehement denial of genocide being waged in Gaza.Correct.But then you have the National Security Minister literally, in his own words, advocating genocide in Lebanon.100%.So the rest of the world doesn't understand, perhaps, the subtle nuances of politics in Israel.They just see a senior member of the Israeli government who is openly calling for genocide.

He's a madman.But therefore, the problem for Israel is that a lot of people go, well, they obviously are genocidal maniacs.Look at the security minister.He just wants to wipe out the whole of Lebanon.

And I hope that that pressure causes Israel to throw that guy out of government, never to be seen again.

But Netanyahu won't throw him out, because he's the reason he got back into power.

And if you remember what I said in my post on X, it's that Netanyahu has to go.Yeah, I agree.So again, my point isn't that your intuitions are wrong.My claim is, as a Jew who has lived in Israel, who is left of center, has lots of friends in the administration, I'm in a much more It's a complicated position.You see all sorts of different angles.And if you want my take on it, overall, the simplicity with which we've been taught that we can address these questions is the abomination.

Israel is in an extraordinary position.It has to use techniques that it doesn't want to use.We should talk about them.We don't know how.Like, collective punishment is the problem of how do you disincentivize a suicide bomberwho's already willing to give his or her life, and maybe even as a child, in order to inflict pain.

So a lot of our go -to shorthands for, we don't want ethnic cleansing, I agree.We don't want collective punishment.We don't want this, we don't want that.We like the press.Now you've got an enemy who's using press credentials in part as cover.You've got people building tunnels under hospitals and mosques and old age homes, not because, wait, wait one second.

Not because they are human shields.That's completely misunderstood.Sinwar is much more impressive.What he did was he said, you will have to bomb these tunnels and what we want is the video.This is the point I made in that tweet is that hybrid war means that the video of Israeli bombs falling on a hospital or a mosque or an old age home or anything like that is worth so much more in a dumb world consuming video in a particular way that Sinwar, and this is painful to admit, completely outsmarted his Jewish adversaries who pride themselves on intelligence and strategy.

But Trump was right, wasn't he, last week, I think, when he said, look, the problem is going after one Hezbollah guy, two Hezbollah guys, and taking down an entire apartment block is ridiculous.If you keep doing that, I mean, I think it's ridiculous for a different reason to Trump, which is that I don't think this makes the lives of Israelis any safer.I think the opposite.I think it creates more enemies over time.If you are, you know, do I think Israel deliberately targets civilians?I don't.

I don't either.Do I think that they target lone terrorists, little group of terrorists, and don't care about how many civilians are killed in the process of that targeting?Yes, I do.I think we've seen that again and again in Gaza.We've seen it a lot in southern Lebanon now.And we're also seeing at the same time this appalling aggressive...

of settlements on the West Bank with terrible stuff going on which is clearly war crimes.

So you have, I have no question that every war has atrocities and then when you put a bunch of young kids who watch their friend get blown to pieces are going to act in ways that are terrible.This is also true.So it's not just a question of they don't care.I'm sure that there's some vengeance aspect to it.I don't agree that Israel doesn't care about civilian casualties.They do, but they are definitely, to your point, willing to kill a bunch of civilians.

There's a particular calculus of how much can you afford, which the rest of us don't have to consider.My point in all of this, Pierce, is that the rest of us have been at peace for so long that we have forgotten We've forgotten what war is.We think of war as a war crime.Israel is fed up with all of us saying, look, we have to survive.But, you know, if you want my Israel critical perspective, when you don't show up for the hybrid side of a hybrid war that involves PR, presaging what you're going to do, telegraphing, here's how this is going to take place, you're going to be extremely upset, we're going to have the following things.If you recall with my tweets, Right after October 7, before Israel invaded, I said, this is Munkhausen by proxy.

And you have a guy who's going to try to get as many atrocities as he can possibly get, real or optical.on video and, you know, if I pat myself on the back, it took me a little while because he's so damn smart.And one of the things that I really miss is that the Ariel Sharon's of the world really knew the mind of their enemy.They lived in the region.And if you want to look, you know, look at Thomas Friedman's from Beirut to Jerusalem, there's a chapter called Hama Rules about disproportionate violence as a language.When Israel gets tarred with the question of this violence is disproportionate, if Israel

engaged in a proportion of violence it would cease to exist.

Just before we finish I just want to ask you about quantum mania.So you're actually in the UK in your capacity as a financial expert.And many people think, I had Andrew Ross Hawking on last week talking about his book 1929 and whether there are parallels.And he said there are clear parallels.As we're meeting today, there's a big sell -off in tech stocks.We've seen SpaceX skyrocket and now falling back.

Musk became a trillionaire, but even he's not impervious to what's going on here.Quantum media, what is that in simple terms?What is quantum mania?What is this?

Well in part it has to do with The quantum sounds like it should be more physics, but it's really an attempt to use the particular properties that we've considered to be mysterious or even defects of the quantum theory as a technological edge.So the idea that one can encode more information in a qubit with continuous degrees of freedom than 0 and 1.And the idea that certain things would be easier in a different style of computer.So, in part, what we're talking about is, can we break into your encryption and read your love letters, your customer database, and your secret plans to attack?And so, what I find amazing, of course, is that the administration in the US has forgotten that science exists.So in general, if you look at their appointments to PCAST, the Presidential Council of Advisors in Science and Technology, there were 13, 12 of which were like billionaires and technologists, and one guy was a scientist.

So at the moment, we have this weird feature where none of these rich people seem to know any actual scientists.They're not comfortable.They don't dine together.The poorness and precariousness of academic sciencemeans that they don't vacation in the same places.And as a result, the US is basically committing harakiri.

And it is consigning itself to lose its status as the world's scientific superpower.What we've decided instead is that you can only trust people who are motivated by money, because Lord knows what a scientist is motivated by.It might be truth, beauty, fairness.Who knows?

Could we face another 29 -style depression, a proper crash?

You are dealing with something so much more powerful.I mean, my belief is that we are holding no conferences that I'm aware of capable of dealing with the change mediated in neoclassical economic production theory with the move to AI.We've never had any technology chase so many people out.We always said, you know, you can go the next rung up if your rung becomes automated.But this is an old problem, sort of like the Hilbert Hotel, where if you tell everyone move one room, you know, at some level, you just keep getting chased by the AI infinitely up the value ladder.If Karl Marx and Adam Smith were in a room today, they wouldn't be going back to communism and capitalism.

They'd be saying, my God, we just traded everything we know about capital and labor as inputs to production for some unknown new system.And we're not trying to found a new economic theory.And I am absolutely bewildered.Why are we not convening everybody, given that the labor market's about to be completely obliterated?I hope it's only as bad as 1929.

Do you know what?I share your concerns about that.I think, to me, it's obvious that's going to be the big thing.And we're not dealing with it properly.Eric, I could talk to you, as always, for hours.We've run out of time.

But thank you very much.It's great to see you.Great to finally meet you.In person.Next time you're in town.let's catch a bite to eat.

I'll put the world to rights with you.Terrific, sir.Good to see you.Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent.The only boss around here is me.If you enjoy our show, we offer 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.And we'll do it all for free.Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical and we couldn't do it without you.