“DANGEROUS Game Trump Is Playing…” Iran-Israel ft. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Prof Marandi & Avi Shlaim

26:50Piers Morgan:I think it's a ridiculous thing to say. But, look, we'll agree to disagree on that. What does that have to do with Israel? Wait, wait, wait, Pierce. What did... Judaism and Israel, don't make them equal. You're basically attributing all the atrocities that are taking place. And the Zionist regime, which does this to Palestinians, yes, I could easily envisage them doing it to people in New York, including to Jews. But when you say the Jewish population in New York, you are basically equating the Israeli regime and Mossad with Jews. No, no. And what people like I are doing is saying, no. I'm saying the idea...

27:34It's like saying... I'm saying...

27:35Piers Morgan:No, don't misquote me. It's like saying Muslims are... Hang on, hang on. Don't misquote me. I'm saying that the idea that you're putting forward, that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, worked with Al-Qaeda to commit the appalling terror attacks of 9-11, it is particularly reprehensible to put that forward as a narrative, knowing that there are over a million Jewish people living in New York. Why would Israeli... What does that have to do with anything? Why would Israeli intelligence... What does it do? First of all, the Jewish population in New York has nothing to do with it. So many Jews died in the Twin Towers.

28:12Piers Morgan:The idea that... Of course! So what you're saying is you're accusing the Israeli government of the time and Mossad of deliberately murdering many Jewish people in New York. Why would they do that? Well, first of all, if this is offensive, go and watch Tucker Carlson's documentary on 9-11. And the questions that he raised are the very same questions that I have. It just doesn't mean they're true. And I've never met Tucker Carlson. It's because Tucker asked him. It doesn't mean they're true. I encourage you to watch the documentary. I saw it. I watched it. And there are major questions that need to be answered, and the United States won't answer them.

28:55Piers Morgan:You know what? I don't... I couldn't disagree with you more. But, Professor Mirandi, it's always good that you come on Uncensored and you take the questions and we have this debate. I think it's important, so I appreciate your time. Thank you. Joining me is an esteemed historian. His new book is entitled The Cauldron, The Making of the Modern Middle East. And Simon Seabag Montefiore joins me now, who I think you prefer to be called Seabag Montefiore for the purposes of this interview. Sometimes. Seabag. Let's call you that. I like all guests to be addressed how they choose. The cauldron, the making of the modern Middle East.

29:30Piers Morgan:Since October 7th, I've hosted myriad debates on here. Of course. Often extremely lively, volatile, sometimes outright shouting matches between quite intransigent groups of people, both of whom make utterly compelling and passionate arguments why they're the real victims in this never-ending conflict. At the heart of your book, what is the argument you make? Well, first of all, it's a history book. It's a balanced history book. And the whole point about it is it steps back from that sort of hyperbolic shouting match, which you've sometimes hosted on your show. Yeah. I mean, I don't... And being part of.

30:11Piers Morgan:I don't choose it. Sometimes it happens because people feel unbelievably passionate about these things. That's partly because of the crazy era we're in of social media, where everyone is kind of rage-click-click-baited into a frenzy. So the whole point about this book is it's a step back, and that's why it covers the last 125 years. It isn't just about the Israel-Palestine. It's also about Iran. It's about the creation of Turkey, for example. It's about the creation of Saudi Arabia. It covers from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey down to Yemen and Sudan. And all of these things need to be discussed too.

30:45But I would say that a bit of perspective can help us understand where we are. with the creation of Israel and with the creation of the other big states. I mean, everyone's obsessed with Israel, of course. It's the issue of the moment. But, you know, you really need to go back, as I do in the book, to the Ottoman Empire, how it worked, and also the creation of other states. I mean, Saudi Arabia. My book opens with Saudi Arabia being conquered by Ibn Saud, King Abdulaziz, who created Saudi Arabia in 1932. He storms Riyadh with 40 fighters, climbs over the wall, gets into the harem of the governor, and when the sun rises, he jumps out, fights the governor and founds, by conquest, over the next 30 years, a new kingdom.

31:36Turkey, too, is a country that's created in a very similar way to Israel, in fact. And I know you're keen to talk about Israel, but... No, I think this is all very relevant. You can't really understand this era and the era we're in today, without looking back at this... ..at how these states were created, Israel is, in fact, quite typical in the way that the states of this region were created. We're still seeing the fallout from the end of the Ottoman Empire, the end of the Persian Empire too, and Iran is only comprehensible this... Now, if you want to understand what President Erdogan is doing, for example, which is a pretty big question now, and where Israel's going to stand amongst the great powers of the region, you've got to go back to the beginning and the creation of Turkey, which most people have forgotten about now.

32:26And that's one of the missions of the book. It's like all the 19 states of the Middle East, how were they created? How do they get to where they are today?

32:34Piers Morgan:You said on X, the cauldron is out now. It almost killed me to write it. It was both the most satisfying and most challenging book I've written, a work of love, but also a trial by fire. Just elaborate on that. Well, I mean, it's what we were saying. I mean, this is a subject that is now the object of hyperbolic rage across the Western world and in the region and on the streets of our big cities, on our universities. But I have an almost passionate mission to try and explain this region to people that often have very, very narrow viewpoints and narrow understanding of it. Why? Because partly because this is a great story and people should know it, and this book is written to be enjoyed as a great drama with giant titanic figures in it, nation builders, tyrants, terrorists, etc.

33:34But also, if you do look at the regions where there are vicious ethnic feuds, like, for example, the Turks and the Kurds, all the Israelis and the Palestinians most notoriously, all the north and south of Sudan, the only way that you're ever going to get peace is a recognition of the story, the narrative, the tragedy, the sins of the other. And that is one of the missions of this book, and that's why it's a labour of love, partly because I love the region and I love the people, most of them, and partly because, you know, Israel-Palestine, for example, you know, that can only be solved when both sides recognise each other's tragedy.

34:18And that has to go right back to the beginning.

34:20Piers Morgan:I remember a piece Jonathan Friedland, the Guardian journalist, who's a Jewish man, and he wrote a very good column in which he said, you know, if I really worked hard at this from a dispassionate point of view, I could write a very good argument for both the pro-Palestinian side and the pro-Israeli side about who really has the right claim to be the real victim here. And it was a really interesting, thought-provoking piece because he wasn't coming at this from a completely blinkered view. He was like, look, I get it. I get that this is very complicated. People feel very strongly about it. There are these competing claims to land.

34:58Piers Morgan:A lot of it is driven by ethnicity and religion and other things. it appears on the face of it to be intractable. Do you see hope? Yeah, I do see hope. First of all, it is all about victims and oppressors and so on, but actually I don't take that approach in this book at all, nor should any of us, because it's a lot more complicated than that. And actually, I don't sort of favouritise any particular victim or favouritise any oppressors or colonialists or any state or any people. Everyone counts or no-one counts. It's whether they are Sudanese or Gazans or Palestinians, Kurds, Yazidis or whatever.

35:39But you're absolutely right that it does look intractable. The truth and matter is that all Tefnik feuds can be solved in the end. We're at a particularly tragic moment when everybody is at their most bruised and everybody is traumatised now in both peoples. If you're talking about that particular conflict, And, you know, I don't think anyone's going to be able to negotiate a settlement towards this in the next sort of six months. But, A, it's essential that, you know, conversations start again properly. And, B, there are plans. I mean, I am a great... You know, I tell the story of the Israelis in here, but I also tell the story of the Palestinians.

36:23I'm a passionate believer in Palestinian self-determination, as I am an Israeli self-determination. You might think this is like, this is now a kind of dreamy, kumbaya approach. It isn't. It's the only way this is going to work. Both sides have to take hits. Both sides have to make sacrifices. Both sides have to agree to compromise. Does that look likely now, looking at what's happening on both sides, with Hamas the dominant, most dynamic force on the Palestinian side, with the far right the most dynamic force in Israel? It doesn't look likely now. But between 1985 and about 2010, more than 20 years, there was a majority on both sides who believed in a negotiation and sharing.

37:08There are always going to be large constituencies on both sides that want to drive out the other, if not liquidate them. And that's a reality of Middle Eastern ethnic feuds. But there only has to be a majority on both sides. It's happened before, it can happen again. And it is the only way this is going to work.

37:29Piers Morgan:But I think, you know, it's been interesting sitting here doing endless debates for years now, since October 7th, about the journey I've gone on about this. And you and I have discussed this, you know, privately, and I'll probably share a cafe together. And, you know, I would categorise my journey as being... I thought what Hamas did on October 7th was one of the most despicable terror attacks in modern times. I thought Israel didn't just have a right to defend itself, but a duty to defend its people, not least because Hamas was saying publicly, we want to keep doing this. I then began to get real misgivings about the scale of what was coming back and the number of Palestinians that were being killed and what was happening to Gaza and expressed so.

38:13Piers Morgan:And that's a journey I think a lot of people have gone on. And I've become increasingly concerned by the rhetoric coming out of the Israeli government, not least by Ben Gavir and Smodrich, who I genuinely think are borderline psychopaths like the people they're trying to take on with Hamas. And the real sadness at the heart of it, I feel, is for Jewish people around the world, of whom there are only 15, 16 million, nearly 2 billion Muslims, 15 million Jews. I was trying to remind people of the differential there. But the amount of opprobrium coming towards Jewish people the amount of anti-Semitism, the rising anti-Semitism, the fear that so many Jewish people are living in.

38:59Piers Morgan:And, of course, I understand a lot of it comes from genuine anti-Semites, but I also think the actions of this Israeli government are making lives more difficult, not better, for Jewish people around the world. Am I wrong? I'm the biggest critic of this government in Israel. I think they're a disaster. They're the worst government they've ever had. I think various ministers on them are repulsive. Yeah. And they are a disaster for Israel. And many of the things they're doing are a disaster for Israel. You know, for example, in the West Bank, for example, you know, and the messianic kind of hilltop youth in the West Bank.

39:33That has to be stopped, not only because it's totally wrong, but because it's going to destroy Israel. Israel could dissolve into a sort of militia-ized state, like Lebanon.

39:44Piers Morgan:Yeah. But here's the thing. There are ways to criticise Israel. The way to criticise Israel is, like, I think that the Israeli government is a very bad thing. Let's hope another one comes. But meanwhile, let's denounce it as possible. Let's stop it doing the bad things it wants to do. Here's the way not to criticise it, to say, well, I hate the government in Israel because it's part of a Jewish conspiracy of lunatic blood-sucking Jewish bankers who are acting in a weird conspiracy, who control everything, who love to sort of kill people for no reason. And all of this is totally unacceptable, is racism, it's bigotry.

40:21And it has now, you know, achieved a sort of momentum.

40:25Piers Morgan:And I agree with that, and it's fuelled by social media. But I would also say, simultaneously, there's been another disturbing thing, which is when people like me, who have a lot of Israeli and Jewish friends, I have done for many times, been to Israel, that when people like me do exactly what you said, which is criticise the government, As I criticise my own government over the Iraq war, for example, a lot of people immediately say, you're being anti-Semitic. In other words, they try and categorise legitimate criticism of a government's actions with anti-Semitism. I find that insidious too. Yeah, but that is insidious.

41:00And one of the mistakes of this government in Israel has to have been overuse that claim and claim every criticism of them is anti-Semitism, while in fact some of it is actually justified criticism of their conduct. And that has been a disaster for Jewish people all over the world. But it doesn't in any way justify anti-Semitism, nor should it be used to justify anti-Semitism. And, you know, I grew up in a world where I was very lucky. I grew up in Britain where Jewish people have been welcomed. And, you know, that is changing now. And, you know, Jewish communities all over the world are now increasingly frightened, even in America.

41:42And with good reason. And with good reason. And so, you know, people who discuss this a lot, you're one of those people, you know, need to be punctilious and meticulous in the words used. The words really matter. And, you know, I would also apply that to the great sort of... You know, many of the big debaters in America who run podcasts and so on. They have now crossed a line. And, you know, what can't happen in a civilised society, in our open societies, which differentiate us from the horrible societies of China or Iran or Russia, is to have reigns of terror, little witch hunts, cultural purity tests.

42:25Everything has to be discussed openly. Nothing must be taboo. And that is the key. And that is why I've written this book, partly. In this book, you'll find, you know, how the Palestinians didn't get their state in 1948 and how many of them lost their lands, how Israel did get their state. Why did one get a state and one didn't? Because they were both meant to get state.

42:47Piers Morgan:What really happened? And was that moment, talking of cauldrons, was that the fundamental failure by the international community to get that sorted from the start properly? In other words, if it had been sorted properly, we could have avoided decades of mayhem. Yes. I mean, the two things that are most important is Britain was then running out of its empire and what Winston Churchill called scuttling. And this book is filled with scuttles. There was a scuttle from Palestine, the scuttle from India-Pakistan, the scuttle from Aden. All of these ended in complete bloodbaths, many of which are forgotten.

43:25So in 47, 48, Britain handed this over to the UN and they were particularly nervous about it because they'd just done another very similar scuttle, another partition, India-Pakistan. in 1947, in which 12 to 14 million people were killed. One to three... 12 to 14 million people were driven out of their homes. One to three million people killed. Just astounding numbers. So Britain panicked, the Attlee government, and they gave the problem to the new UN. And when the UN devised the petition plan to give an Arab state and a Jewish state, they divided Palestine into seven unsustainable, unsustainable, indefensible segments and just did nothing to enforce it.

44:10And Britain just left. And so they just left them to fight it out. The two communities started to fight for more than six months. And then on May 15, 1948, the British just left, scuttled out, ran out of there. And five Arab states invaded the new state of Israel, determined to drive the Jews out and into the sea. But in that war, 750 ,000 Palestinian Arabs either fled or were driven out of their homes. You know, the numbers of those two are laid out in the book. And out of it, the Israelis and the Jordanians managed to seize the most territory. All the Arab invading states hoped to get a bit of Palestine for themselves, which is why no Palestinian state was created.

44:59and the real vectors of 1948 were, of course, Israel, which just had to survive, though it was nine miles wide at its narrow...

45:07Piers Morgan:Well, I remember interviewing Netanyahu in Jerusalem for CNN in 2011 or 12, whenever it was, and he did a very effective thing, I've talked about it a few times, when there was a big mat behind his desk in his office, and he said, watch this, and he put his hand on Iran and he put his hand on Saudi Arabia and he put his hand on Iraq And he went round all the big states there and he said, now watch this, and he took his thumb and he put it on Israel, right bang in the middle. He said, now do you see the problem? And as a way of simplifying the whole thing, it was very effective because you've got this tiny, tiny place of Israel surrounded by much, much larger Arab states.

45:50And yet it looms very large and that's why everyone thinks, you know, Israel's this kind of new sort of military superpower, building an empire. No, the territory is tiny. And that's one of the reasons why it would be challenging to have two states in that narrow territory. It really would be challenging. And I want to see a Palestinian state, but it has to... The two states would have to recognise each other and allow each other to function.

46:14Piers Morgan:And you also have to have people on both sides leading who want a two-state solution. Yeah. And one of the things we look at... Because at the moment, neither side wants a two-state solution. No, because we're in a situation of terrible trauma. Do you see any parallels with Northern Ireland? Well, people always ask about Northern Ireland. British people always ask about Northern Ireland, especially with army connections like you. Yeah, yeah. But actually, it's so different. I mean, British people love saying this. It's actually totally irrelevant. At its height, the Northern Ireland... The IRA, the provisional IRA had 300 gunmen.

46:48300. Hamas alone had 40 ,000 armed troops. Hezbollah has 50 ,000 troops and thousands of missiles.

46:57Piers Morgan:So the scale is bigger. The actual dispute in terms of people thinking it's unsolvable, and then I remember in the... I was running the Daily Mirror in the late 90s, when finally you got leadership who really wanted to make it happen. That's the point. In the UK, you had John Major, then Tony Blair. In America, you had Bill Clinton, you had Senator Mitchell and others. and there was a concerted will that whatever it took, we're going to do this. I mean, I think the parallel I would make was you've got these warring, intractable sides killing each other for decades and then ultimately they both had to give.

47:31Piers Morgan:They both had to give up stuff. You know, we had to stomach people on the political wing of the IRA suddenly being in government and Sinn Féin's now the major power in Northern Ireland. In other words, these things can be done. Yes. But they need leadership that actually wants it to happen. And also these movements need to be ready to convert themselves into political movements, and they need to understand that they will be allowed to exist as political movements. And leadership is the thing. The leadership has been terrible. You know, part of what's happening... You know, the nightmare that's happening at the moment in the conflict is because of appalling leadership on both sides.

48:08Hamas, of course, is just a genocidal terror organisation. but this Israeli government is extreme and those ministers are just beyond the pale. Then you've got a sort of corrupt octogenarian running the Palestinian Authority. If you look back in history, and this book is filled with these people, there are amazing people who risk their lives. King Abdullah of Jordan was negotiating a very sensible plan where he would rule on behalf of the Arabs what are now regarded as the West Bank. And he was negotiating with Israel, and Ben-Gurion, Israeli Prime Minister, was talking to him, a route straight through to Gaza where they would have a port.

48:53In later peace negotiations, Sadat, you know, risked his life to do this. Nasser was going to negotiate. Rabin lost his life. Rabin lost his life, and, you know, I knew Chimon Peres very well. He was the sort of Israeli leader that we need. So, you know, on all these fronts, we need brave leadership. There's been terrible leadership. But on all sides, there are lots of decent people who could lead this. And you're absolutely right, there just needs to be a point, which we may be getting close to, when everyone is so sick of the blood, sick of the killing, sick of the tragedy, sick of the intolerance.

49:30And in all these communities, there are huge constituencies of people that respect each other, that want to live together. together. They may not like the way Israel was created. They may not like the way the Palestinians, you know, have fought Israel. But actually now is the time to respect each other's histories and stories. And that is what this book is, I'm hoping, does.

49:52Piers Morgan:Two quick points before we finish. One, how significant was the Iranian revolution in 79 in bringing us to where we've got to in the Middle East? One's got to realise that, you know, Iran is so important. It's a huge country and it's one of the main sources, referring to your point at the beginning. Of course, the Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the destabilising aspects of this. But then so was the Cold War. And now so is Iran. And Iran, you know, really, everything about Iran, you've got to go back to the beginning of the century. You've got to go back to the two Pahlavi Shars. But you're absolutely right.

50:291979 is one of those dates, one of those revolutions, very like the 1789 French Revolution, 1776 in America, 1917 in Russia, that is a complete game-changer. And it's a game-changer because not only does it bring Ayatollah Khomeini, extraordinary, ruthless revolutionary statesmen to power, but it also unleashes a battle within Islam, where the Iranian revolution is, of course, a Shia revolution, but it also unleashed a new anti-Western radicalism across the whole house of Islam, including the Sunnis. And that battle is still going on. One way to look at what's happening now is a battle for the nature of Islam between a pro-Western, open to ideas, open to technology school of Islam and another school of Islam that is intolerant to the West, that is intolerant to its own people and that doesn't care so much about the living standards and openness of its society, but is a radical resistance towards any Western influences or towards openness within Islam itself.

51:39And that is one way of looking, if we step back, what's happening right now.

51:44Piers Morgan:You've been seen by some as a kind of direct counter to the so-called new historians, a very influential group of Israeli scholars who emerged in the late 80s, including our next guest, who are much more critical of Israel as a colonial regime that they say developed into a genocidal regime and so on. And in recent times, they've been joined, and some would say surpassed, by a growing tide of a very influential online opinion from the far left, people like Norman Finkelstein, an isolationist right, Tucker Carlson and others, who argue that Israel is a cornerstone of all problems in the Middle East.

52:20Piers Morgan:And you sum it up in the book by saying, This is just the latest chapter in the West's strange, proprietorial interest in the Holy Lamb. It started in the late first millennia after Christ and is still going strong. Between 1914 and the 2000s, the spirit worked in favour of a Jewish state. In the last 20 years, the same obsession has inverted against it. The emotive ideological campaign to replace the Judaic Republic with the state of Palestine is ostensibly secular, but often has the feel of a religious movement, even a crusade. Really interesting. analysis of that. I guess my final question would be, and we may have already answered it with the talk of leadership, but how does this get reconciled?

53:01Yeah, I mean, it can only get reconciled with leadership. By the way, those new Israeli historians, their work is all in the book and is kind of encompassed in it.

53:11Piers Morgan:And do you respect their arguments? Very much. I respect a lot of their points. I don't respect narrow ideological analyses of these very complicated and to do with the United States and to do with the United States. The key point is one you've touched on. The West has this weird fetishistic obsession with the Holy Land for all sorts of reasons to do with our Christianity. We think we're in a post-religious era. In fact, look at the wording of the crime, the purity tests, the credos. It's almost a religious movement. But the only way to solve this is realism. You know, the West has a great history, and this new anti-Zionist movement, as much as the pro-Zionist movement that came before it, is in contradiction to the reality.

53:58If you look at what's happening, there's a power struggle now between lots of new powers in the Middle East. That's what we're seeing with Iran, Turkey. Pakistan is now moving on. We're seeing a convergence of all these different theatres. It's a fascinating moment in terms of geopolitics. And who will come out of it? Israel is one player. It's interesting, for example, that all the major military powers now in the Arab world aren't Arab-speaking. You know, they're Persian-speaking, Turkish-speaking, Urdu-speaking, Hebrew-speaking. So, you know, these powers are now competing in a way that they never did before, so we're in a new territory.

54:36In the West, we now have this swelling of this sort of semi-religious movement to demolish Israel and Israeli society. What we actually need is our governments not to take advice from small cadres of furious, raging activists, but actually to be responsible and say, there are Arab societies in this region, there are Iranian communities, there are Kurdish. This is a very complicated region. If you look at the Holy Land, we have an Israeli nation in an Israeli state that isn't going anywhere. It's a nuclear power. It's 10 million people. At the same time, almost, with only slightly smaller numbers, we have a Palestinian nation.

55:18Some of them live in the West Bank. Some of them live under the Palestinian Authority. Some of them live in Israel as citizens with equal rights, and many of them are thriving in Israeli society. And some of them are tragically living in the most desperate circumstances in Gaza, and we've got to solve that problem. that their lot has to be improved immediately. But ultimately, we need to realise that neither of these communities are going anywhere. And our leaders need to show a bit of leadership too.

55:49Piers Morgan:Yeah. And the leaders of the region need to. And that is what we must pray for. Maybe what they should do is read this book and understand their history a little bit more clearly. They should. Perhaps a little bit wider than they're currently allowing their brains to compute. That would be good. That would be good. See you, Bagg. Great to see you. Thank you very much for having me. Really good to talk. I appreciate it. Avi Shlaim is an emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford University, one of the world's leading historians on Israel. He has a rather different view about the country's founding.

56:22Piers Morgan:Welcome to you, Avi. Welcome to Uncensored. Thank you very much for inviting me. You were listening to my interview with Sebag Montefiore. What's your reaction to what he said? One of the issues that you discussed was the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. And I would like to emphasize much more strongly, even than you did, though you made the point that there are two completely different things. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews because they are Jews. Anti-Zionism is criticisms of the state of Israel and particularly Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. But Israel and its friends have tried really hard to conflate the two in order to silence legitimate criticisms of the state of Israel.

57:21And there is the IHRA definition of antisemitism, that's the International Holocaust Remembers Association. And it's a completely vacuous definition, which the government adopted and has been imposing on local authorities and on universities. And it says, the definition says, antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, but it doesn't say what that perception is. But then there are 11 examples that illustrate anti-Semitism. And seven of the 11 examples relate to Israel. Israel has nothing to do with it. So to say the state of Israel is a racist project is anti-Semitic under the definition. And so I think it's very important to insist that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

58:20Of course, it's possible for someone to be both anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist. But then you have to show evidence that his real motive is hatred of Jews. Yes. That's not true in most cases.

58:35Piers Morgan:Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I've been very critical of this current Israeli government, but no more critical than I was of my own UK government when they went to war in Iraq in 2003. That didn't make me anti-British, and I don't think any criticism I make of the current Israeli government makes me anti-Israeli or anti-Jew. Why would it? You know, I don't feel that way. So I do resent it when people use that as a... They try and do it to shut you down. They want to stifle and censor criticism, legitimate criticism, of a state or government. And I really hate that. It's a very insidious thing.

59:18And the previous government, headed by Sir Keir Starmer, pursued that line of blind, almost blind support for Israel. And Kir Starmer described himself as an unconditional Zionist. So his support for Israel was completely unconditional. It wasn't conditional as it should have been on Israeli observance of international law and Israeli respect for Palestinian human rights. And the last government went a very long way in banning Palestine action. Palestine Action is a direct action group. It's nothing to do with terrorism. And yet that government made Palestine Action a terrorist organization. And anyone who supports Palestine Action is now liable to 14 years in prison for supporting a terrorist organization.

1:00:26It's nothing of the sort. So there has been an attempt, concerted attempt by the government and by the judiciary to clamp down on free speech on Israel and Palestine.

1:00:38Piers Morgan:Where did you disagree with Sebag Montefiore in the things he was saying? He was quite right in saying to understand what's happening now, any aspect of the Middle East conflict, including Israel, Palestine, you have to understand the history. And I'm a historian. Yes. And my book is called Genocide in Gaza, but it's a collection of essays, including historical essays. And I say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is made in Britain. Britain is responsible for this conflict. Going back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, when the Jews were 10 % of the population, the Arabs were 90%, and yet the British government supported self-determination for the Jews and denied it to the Palestinians.

1:01:41The history of the British Mandate in Palestine lasted from 1917 to 1948, but I can summarize it for your listeners in one sentence. Britain stole Palestine from the Palestinians and gave it to the Zionists. So I'm highly critical, much more critical than Simon, of the British role in all this. And I'll say something that may surprise you.

1:02:18The situation in Gaza, the genocide in Gaza, is a direct result of the Balfour Declaration because of British support for the Zionist movement from the beginning.

1:02:44A Jewish American intellectual, Noam Chomsky said…

1:02:50Piers Morgan:Yeah, I went to with him. He said, settler Zionism is the most extreme and vicious form of imperialism. and the Palestinians have, Zionism is a settler colonial movement and Israel is a settler colonial state and the Palestinians for the last century have been at the receiving end of Zionist settler colonialism on the one hand and Western imperialism on the other hand, first under Britain and subsequently under America And the logic of settler colonialism is the elimination of the natives. Not compromise, not partition of the land. It's the elimination of the natives in order to take over the land and its resources.

1:03:45Well, we're seeing this more and more on the West Bank, and I think it's disgraceful.

1:03:50Piers Morgan:What we're seeing are criminal acts against the Palestinians on the West Bank by Israeli settlers, and no-one seems to want to stop it. Exactly. The international community has completely failed the Palestinians all along. And Gaza, the genocide in Gaza, is the climax of ranked-wing settler colonialism. And on the West Bank, in the shadow of the war in Gaza, there's been a huge intensification of settler violence and of ethnic cleansing. This is what is going on. But it's not just the violent settlers. They operate with the support and encouragement of the government and with the protection of the Israeli army.

1:04:44So it's not a lunatic group that is run wild. It's the Israeli government that is implementing a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing, both on the West Bank and in Gaza. Let me ask you, because I don't know the answer, how many Israelis living in Israel do you think support this

1:05:07Piers Morgan:and how many are against it? A tiny minority of Israelis share my views. the Hamas-led attack on Israel on the 7th of October 2023 was a real turning point in the history of this conflict it was a horrific attack on civilians and it was traumatic for the Israelis so the Israeli response Israeli society's response to this trauma was from now on, anything we do is justified, and anyone who criticizes us is an anti-Semite. So in the wake of the Hamas attack, Israeli society has gone off the rails, and they can't think rationally anymore. Hence, massive support, something like 90 % public support for the war in Gaza.

1:06:21And initially, there was also support for the Israeli-American attack on Iran. So the war was popular, but Netanyahu wasn't because he never accepted responsibility for the failure of his policies that caused the Hamas attack. The Hamas attack didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened in the context. The context was 57 years of suffocating Israeli colonial rule and Israeli occupation.

1:06:53Piers Morgan:Would you still, notwithstanding that, would you still condemn what happened that day as a despicable act of terrorism? I utterly condemned the Hamas attack. on the 7th of October because it was directed against civilians. And killing civilians is wrong, period. It's wrong when Hamas kills Israeli civilians, but it's equally wrong when the Israeli government kills Palestinian civilians. That is an act of state terrorism. And the Israeli response in Gaza hasn't been directed just at Hamas. It's been directed at Palestinian society as a whole. Therefore, I condemn it. And Israel has been committing many crimes in Gaza.

1:07:48Domicide, which is a destruction of homes. Israel has destroyed 82 % of the housing in Gaza.

1:07:59Medicide, the destruction of the health system, systematic destruction of the health system in Gaza. Scholasticide, the destruction of the educational system. Israel has bombed, damaged or destroyed 512 schools and all 12 universities. But worst of all is genocide, an attempt to destroy the whole of Palestinian society in Gaza.

1:08:32Piers Morgan:Of course, the pro-Israeli side say it's not genocide. If we wanted to commit genocide, we'd just drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza and that would be the end of it. And they say that the death toll is no worse than what the British did to the German civilians in World War II in Dresden and so on. What do you say to that argument? That it's totally baseless, this argument. There is a charge of genocide against Israel. the international court of justice in the Hague is still considering make them it may take them years to find to reach a final decision but in the meantime they have issued orders for preventive measures to Israel.

1:09:30They said there is a risk of genocide in Gaza. They gave Israel orders to stop the rhetoric of genocide and the actions of genocide. Israel hasn't taken a blind bit of notice. Then there is the convention, the 1948 convention for the prevention and punishment of genocide. And remember, 1948, the reason for that convention is to prevent what happened to the Jews under Nazi Germany from happening to anyone again. And that definition is, genocide is the intent to destroy in whole or in part religious, ethnic, or national group. And this is what Israel is doing in Gaza. And the British government has a legal duty under the convention to stop all arms sales and support for Israel.

1:10:34The convention doesn't say member states can wait and see and then wring their hands and say, oh, what a pity genocide happened. The British government and all other member states have a legal duty to stop to prevent genocide, and that means stopping all arms sales to Israel and all defence support for Israel. And under another international court of justice decision, not about genocide, but about the legal status of the occupation, it's the most comprehensive condemnation of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in Gaza. And it says the occupation must end. And Britain and all other member states have a duty to stop supporting the occupation.

1:11:28And I would say the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is the most prolonged and brutal military occupation of modern times.

1:11:39Piers Morgan:I just want to ask you finally about Iran. This war's been raging now for over six, seven months. You read an article for Al Jazeera called Netanyahu's Poodle, arguing that President Trump had been duped by the Prime Minister of Israel into going along with this war. Do you still feel that? And what do you feel will be the consequences now of this war, given it clearly hasn't gone the way that Netanyahu told Trump it was going to go. I absolutely stand by what I wrote. Netanyahu is obsessed with Iran, and for the last 30 years, he has been advocating a joint American-Israeli strike against Iran.

1:12:26No American president until Trump was stupid enough to go along with this mad scheme. But Netanyahu persuaded Trump in his first term to go back on the Obama nuclear deal, the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which was a very good deal, which protected Israeli security. But Netanyahu prevailed on Trump in his first term to not just withdraw from their deal, but to go all out to destroy it. And he succeeded. And now in his second term, Netanyahu persuaded Trump to attack Iran, and he gave him false information. He said to him, the Iranian regime is on its last legs. One knock and it would collapse like a house of cars, and you'll be the victor in this war.

1:13:27And we have seen what happened. And as John Mearsheimer said to you, the war on Iran is the most, the biggest strategic blunder in American history. I couldn't put it better myself. It's been a terrible blunder for America and for the rest of the world. It's been done immense damage to America. and Trump is in a hole that he dug for himself. He doesn't know how to get out of it. So he's issued six military ultimatum to the Iranians and none of them worked. And now he's issued a seventh ultimatum, which is economic, to destroy the Iranian economy. And this isn't going to work. And Netanyahu is the one who manipulated Trump into this war, which has backfired disastrously.

1:14:29And one of the consequences for America is that Iran attacked American bases in the Gulf and in Jordan and attacked American Gulf infrastructure. So the Gulf states are now asking themselves, what's the point of having America as an ally? With friends like that, who needs enemy? So this is undermining the whole structure of the alliance structure for America in the region. And also, Trump didn't realize his aim was regime change. This hasn't happened. The new leadership is much more hardline, hardcore than the previous leadership. And the previous leadership was cautious, and they didn't close the Straits of Tehran.

1:15:34the Strait of Hormuz, whereas this group have closed the Strait of Hormuz with far-reaching consequences for the international economy, and it's Trump and Netanyahu who are responsible for giving them this weapon, which they are using and continue to use, with very far-reaching consequences for the world economy, and for standards of living, the cost of living in America and everywhere else. So it's been a disastrous war. The architect of this war is Netanyahu. And Netanyahu is a genocidal psychopath. and his aim was to destroy Iran and the axis of resistance, which includes the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza.

1:16:42That was the aim, but it hasn't succeeded. This war hasn't achieved any of its aims. It hasn't stopped the Iranian capability of uranium enrichment, It hasn't disrupted the Iranian program of long-range ballistic missiles, and it hasn't stopped American support for its allies. So a comprehensive disaster brought about by Netanyahu and his manipulation of his poodle of Trump.

1:17:23Piers Morgan:Avi Shlaim, thank you very much indeed for coming in. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me. Piers Morgan on Stenson is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask 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.