'STAND For The Dead Soldiers!' Israel 'PR Crisis' Over Iran & Hezbollah War

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0:30Piers Morgan:This government has to be very careful now that it doesn't drive more and more people to hate Israel. You said Israelis should stand up against Benfrius Moutrich, but they're going to be voting for them in larger numbers in the next election. The siren is now. We should remember also the Palestinian victims at this moment. He doesn't stand up for the dead soldiers, so he's not really Israeli. He's a foreign-funded hater. There's not one party that represents you. You're out. The Arab parties, they represent him. You would have been murdered by Hamas on October 7 if they got close to you as well.

1:06Piers Morgan:It may come as a shock to viewers in the many places where the Iran war is deeply unpopular, but some communities in Israel staged a protest this weekend against the ceasefire in Lebanon. Israel sees its war on Hezbollah as inseparable from Iran war. Most Israelis support it. And there's every chance that Netanyahu will suffer big political consequences if Trump decrees an early end to the war that Netanyahu persuaded him to start. In any case, the state of Israel could be living with the consequences of Netanyahu's decisions for many years to come. Many formerly reliable allies of Israel eventually condemned the war in Gaza and moved to recognize a Palestinian state.

1:40Piers Morgan:Well, today, the Spanish government will formally ask the entire European Union to sever its ties with Israel over its violations of international law. And here in the United States, where it matters most, support for Israel is cratering. The days of unanimous bipartisan support are done. Young people have turned in droves. Gen Z, that rising generation, look at this. A cross party there. Three quarters of Gen Z say they sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis. That's a massive sea change. Well, every candidate to succeed Donald Trump as president, whether Democrat or Republican, will now have to take a position on this profound change of public opinion.

2:18Piers Morgan:Democratic presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel, who's Jewish, is calling for the U.S. to end preferential treatment for Israel altogether. We don't subsidize Great Britain buying weapons. We don't supply or financial assistance to Japan. Israel's a very wealthy nation. There should be no more taxpayer support for what they want to do. And they get the same deal that any one of our allies do. They have to abide by the laws of the United States if they're going to buy X weapons. And that's how it should be constructed. Jake's point, and I agree with this, is the prime minister went to this president like he's gone to four other presidents.

2:52And every one of the other presidents said, not a chance of we doing that because the equities are not worth it. This president bought it. He has responsibilities as commander in chief. And I think he made a big mistake for it.

3:05Piers Morgan:Well, all of this amounts to an extraordinary unprecedented shift in a country where presidential candidates traditionally rank their support for Israel on a scale of nine to 10. Whether Israel can do anything to remember this is unclear. What is clear is that photos of the IDF attacking icons of Jesus with a sledgehammer are unlikely to resolve the situation. Joining me to debate all of this is former Israeli hostage negotiator Gershon Baskin, retired lieutenant colonel and IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus, Ishai Fleischer, the international spokesperson for the Jewish community of Hebron, an advisor to the Israeli government, and Gideon Levy, author and commentator for Haaretz.

3:42Piers Morgan:So welcome to all of you. Jonathan Comricus, let's just start, if we may, with this appalling image of an IDF soldier in southern Lebanon attacking and destroying an icon of Jesus Christ with a sledgehammer. This has now been confirmed by Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu said today, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon. I condemn the act on the strongest terms. We express regret for the incident and for any hurt this has caused to believers in Lebanon and around the world. And the IDF itself posted on X, the IDF views the incident with great severity and emphasises the soldier's conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of his troops.

4:31Piers Morgan:The IDF is working to assist the community in restoring the statue to its place. You know, a priest in Debel said the cross was part of a small shrine in the garden of a family living on the edge of the village. There will be many American Christians, Jonathan, who are already probably reeling if they're Catholic from President Trump's constant attacks against Pope Leo. But they're now looking at this and thinking, why are we supporting this attack on Iran with Israel if the IDF in Lebanon are desecrating icons of Jesus Christ? What would you say to them? Yeah, I wouldn't. Hello, Piers. Shalom from Israel.

5:15I wouldn't make any connection between the two different things. One is American foreign policy, the pursuit of defeating the Iranian regime, making sure that they don't have nuclear weapons, and protecting Americans and American interests from a future significant threat against the U.S. That's one thing. That's the why the U.S. is fighting against Iran. It has absolutely nothing to do with this reprehensible act, criminal act, by an Israeli soldier. I hope that what the prime minister said and what the IDF has publicly said will happen, that there will be swift and transparent disciplinary measures.

5:55This is a soldier who I don't think he is fit to serve, definitely not in combat, and maybe not in the IDF at all, and should be punished for desecrating a religious symbol. And I think it's absolutely contrary to everything that we stand for. I could only wish that, you know, I saw your tweet, which got a million views, and I've seen lots of other coverage of it. Obviously, the usual people are out there feasting, not necessarily you in this category, but the usual anti-Semites feasting on this reprehensible act by an IDF soldier. Didn't see these same people even tweet when, you know, hundreds of Christians were massacred in Nigeria or when churches were bombed and desecrated by Muslims in Syria.

6:41or Iran or Iraq or any other place, or when Christians in, Arab Christians in Palestine are forced to flee out of persecution by Sunni Muslims. It is something special when Jews are caught on camera doing horrible and indefensible actions to Christian symbols. But I suggest that we put, you know, we check and treat everything as, you know, equal. Last thing I'll say, and I think the prime minister said it pretty clearly, if we put things into context and to answer the question of, you know, Christians supporting Israel, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians are safe. Israel is the only country where there's freedom of worship in the Middle East.

7:28Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has a growing and safe Christian population, where Christians are participating in public and political and economic and academic life. They are free to choose every profession, and they live very good lives, excellent lives, like me and many others do in Israel, contrary to everything else that happens in the Middle East. And I think that is important context. But to summarize and to be very clear, reprehensible, shouldn't have been done. I hope swift action is taken. And I hope that people can, you know, look beyond this, which is clickbaity and very interesting on an internet level, and recognize who the real villains and who the real people in the Middle East who are religiously intolerant, those are the fanatic Muslims.

8:15They do far worse than bash the head of a statue, as insensitive and horrible as that is. They take the lives of Christians themselves, or they persecute them. So let's keep that into perspective as we continue speaking.

8:30Piers Morgan:Yeah, some might view the actions of the IDF soldier to be a pretty extraordinary example of intolerance, actually, particularly of someone else's religious beliefs. But let me come to Gideon Levy, because this dovetails with a very disturbing report that Haaretz, the publication that you write for, put a report out over the weekend featuring anonymous interviews with former IDF soldiers detailing atrocities they'd witnessed in Gaza. One described serving in Khan Yunus in southern Gaza in December 2023 when a platoon noticed suspicious figures and fired. He said, when we got to a destination, I realised these weren't terrorists.

9:08Piers Morgan:It was an old guy and three boys, maybe teenagers. Not one of them was armed, but their bodies were riddled with bullets. Then the battalion commander came over with his people and one spat on the bodies and yelled, this is what happens to anybody who messes with Israel, you sons of bitches. Another soldier described a shooting at an army outpost in southern Gaza. She said suddenly the soldiers on watch noticed five Palestinians crossing the line they weren't allowed to cross, heading for northern Gaza. The battalion commander gave an order to overwhelm them with fire, even though they hadn't been confirmed as armed or anything like that.

9:40Piers Morgan:A tank started shooting at them with its machine gun, hundreds of bullets. Four of the five Palestinians were killed. A few hours later, a bulldozer buried them in the sand. The article also describes a sniper who shot people seeking aid and drone operators who killed civilians. And there was a lot more very, very shocking detail in this investigation. So you put it together, you know, much as people will listen to Jonathan Comricus and understand context is important. But the combination of that appalling image of this IDF soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus with this report in your publication, it certainly is testing extremely hard, I would argue, this constant refrain we hear that the IDF is the most moral army in the world.

10:31I can assure you that Jonathan will say that those were exceptions. you will bring more and more testimonies by soldiers and you will always hear the Israeli denial the Israeli self-denial there will always be Jonathans who will explain us that those exceptions don't tell us the full story they will talk about the context and I want to talk about the context the context of the soldier who broke this culture this culture of Jesus And the context of those horrible and horrifying stories that we read last Friday in Haaretz is the same context. An army who is now preoccupied in a brutal occupation for decades now cannot behave otherwise.

11:24You cannot maintain such an occupation for so many years and remain human. It doesn't work. didn't work in any other occupation in the world. And the best thing that people like Jonathan can do is once to look at the truth and to admit it, because we, first of all, need it. We Israelis. What will make people realize that we grow a monster in front of our eyes? What will make them be convinced that we crossed any possible line? You know, Pierce, there are six million uprooted people now in the Middle East, wandering around from here to there. Part of them lost their homes forever in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran.

12:18Are we really proud to be a country which creates such a reality for six million human beings? isn't it the time once to look at the truth and say yes we went too far our megalomonic dreams our belief that only by force and only by military force without any restraints will solve the problems i don't deny there are problems they're enemies they're dangerous but look what we are doing. We are now in all forms around, refusing to any ceasefire. Thanks God we had Donald Trump to stop these two wars now. Otherwise, we would continue it forever. And the Jonathan's will justify. And they will never acknowledge that something went wrong, that something is sick, basically, not exceptions.

13:13I was today in the West Bank. I'm there every week. There's no exceptions anymore. The pogroms of the settlers together with the soldiers, together, planned together, committed together. This is not an exception. This is an army of occupation who cannot operate otherwise, but become more and more and more brutal. And here we see their result. And the result you just showed with someone like Rahm Emanuel, who speaks Hebrew, who spent some years, I think, in Israel. For him, it is enough. He says enough is enough. Not me, the self-hating Jew. Someone who was a real genuine friend of Israel says enough is enough.

14:01And you will hear more and more of those voices. And the only way to put an end to it is, first of all, to recognise, to realise that something is wrong with us, for God's sake.

14:17Piers Morgan:Well, strong words there. Isha Fleischer, you know, the Rahm Emanuel comments I thought were very striking. He's a very high-profile American Jew, basically saying it's time for America to stop treating Israel as an exceptional country that is worthy of our billions of dollars of support. They should be treated the same as everybody else. And that comes with the backdrop of this Pew Research Centre survey showing that more than 60 % of Americans now view Israel unfavourably, up from 53 % only last year. Now, you know, I'm old enough to remember when these kind of numbers would be utterly unthinkable 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

14:59Piers Morgan:So, you know, as somebody like me who loves Israel as a country, loves Israeli people, has many, many Jewish friends around the world from L.A. to Sydney to London, and has become increasingly critical myself of the Israeli government, this one, and how it's been behaving and critical of many of the actions of the IDF. at the behest of his government. You know, I share this sentiment, which is Israel, this government has to be very careful now that it doesn't drive more and more people to hate Israel, which is clearly what is happening. Are you, as somebody who advises the Israeli government, are you aware of this potential crisis?

15:47Piers Morgan:Are you concerned about it? or do you not care? Yeah. So of course, we're concerned about Israel's image around the world. There's no question about it. And there is a crisis. There's no doubt about it. It's fueled in part by anti-Israel media and by very serious work by anti-Israel elements. They might be in Qatar. They might be in Russia. They might be in Iran. They might even be in China via TikTok. And we've lost market share. There's no question about it. Actually, I could talk about that a lot, but we are certainly concerned about it. No doubt about it. We're concerned about it. But that doesn't mean that we can give up our fight to exist.

16:21Jewish people haven't been liked for 2 ,000 years, and yet we were persecuted. And now we're not so liked, but we're still persecuted, but we can fight back. And just in a few minutes today is Israel Memorial Day. There'll be a siren here, remembering all the folks that fell in Israel's wars. But if you ask the average person, the average Israeli who's sitting in cafes, he thinks this war is just. He knows that we've got to push back bad guys. He knows that we have to restore life to the northern communities and to the Gaza envelope communities. We've got to restore that life. We can't allow the jihad to come and crush us.

16:54And that's what Iran has been doing. It's been creating a chokehold with its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. They plan to murder us. They plan to destroy us. And they did a pretty good job on October 7th. Now we're pushing them back. And the average Israeli is proud of the war that we have fought. And the fact that we're not as liked around the world, that's really a shame. It's too bad. People like Jonathan doing an amazing job explaining Israel. But with regard to Rahm Emanuel's statements about money to Israeli armament, I agree with Rahm Emanuel. Let's not receive any more handouts. Let's make what really these funds are.

17:37Let's rename them, which is Joint Development Funding for Munitions. Israel is real-world testing, battle theater testing, the F-35, and it's generating tons of sales around the world because Israel is actually the best ally the United States has, the fighting ally. Look at the NATO allies. They've been getting money for years for defense. They've done nothing to defend the United States. They're just receiving handouts. Israel has shown itself throughout this process as strong economically, militarily. And I think there's going to be a shift back at the end of this war and people see who's standing.

18:14Piers Morgan:But you know what I would say? OK, but what I would say to that, Isha, is that, you know, I remember in the Iraq war, one of the most devastating images that came out of that war was the Abu Ghraib image of American troops abusing Iraqi civilians. And it shocked America, profoundly shocked America, and caused enormous damage, actually, to America's reputation, to American military's reputation, and so on. This image that came out overnight of this IDF soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus Christ, I don't think it's as bad as the Abu Ghraibid's, which were truly appalling and involved a lot of people.

18:55Piers Morgan:But as a singular image, you know, when you're trying to persuade a country like America, which is majority Christian, so has hundreds of millions of Christians living in it. When you're trying to persuade them of the validity of committing the American military to a war that was clearly being driven by Benjamin Netanyahu to promote Israel's interests. When you're trying to do that, hard to imagine a more damaging image to come out than the one we saw that came out overnight. Because it'll have hundreds of millions of Americans asking themselves, why are we fighting with these people? OK, so first thing, that image is not a win and it should have never been done.

19:41And both the army and the foreign ministry has apologized and rightly rightfully so. So that's that's the end of that, meaning to say it was it was a bad thing to do. And you're right. It's definitely a harmful image. But most American Christians still know the Bible, and they know that the jihadists are not the Bible. Don't let Palestine win. It'll take over Israel and destroy the biblical story. Israel is a biblical story coming to life right now. The return of the Jewish people, the end gathering, the rebuilding of Jerusalem. It's an amazing story. And most Christians who love Israel will continue to support Israel.

20:13And with regarding to, you threw in a phrase there, which I can't let it slide. You said, you know, this is a war that Bibi Netanyahu has been pursuing to further Israel's interests. This is a war against the fusion of jihadism and communism, which the regime, the Iranian regime, has been promulgating around the world. They want to destroy you, and they want to destroy your London. They want to destroy the United States. They want to destroy Israel. This is a battle for liberty. liberty. It's a global battle for liberty. It's sad that a lot of people don't see that. They think the way you kind of phrase it, which is like, this is about, you know, Israel's security interests or Israel's interest.

20:50No. Or maybe it's about oil and money. No, this is about liberty for the world. It's about it's about a fight against a regime. I heard your interview with the Iranian professor before this panel. And, you know, you were saying to them, like, hey, you can't speak the truth in your country. You can't say what you want. This is a autocratic regime, and he wouldn't admit that. But that's the truth. And these guys have killed their own people. Look at my colleagues on this panel, right? They'll rip Israel, but they'll not mention jihadism or what Iran has done to its own people. The fact that they tried to kill President Trump, the fact that they murdered people in the streets, the fact that they've attacked Israel for decades.

21:29And so this is a just war. Israelis feel that. Bad actions like the destruction of this Christian statue is wrong and will rectify it. But the war is just and we're going to keep fighting and be successful and people will be with us, lovers of the Bible and lovers of Israel will see the truth.

21:51Piers Morgan:Okay. Gersh and Basque, what's your response to that? My response to that is that the war might be a just war, but it's not the responsibility of the people of Israel or the people of the United States to change the horrible regime of Iran. It is the responsibility of the Iranian people. This is a war which cannot be won, just like the war in Gaza could not be won and the war against Hezbollah could not be won. These are political diplomatic struggles that need to have political and diplomatic solutions. There is no military solution here. President Trump could declare the end of the war, but the conflicts are still here, and the conflicts will not be resolved through the military.

22:30I think also, Pierce, I want to point out that the image of the destruction of the statue of Jesus is horrible, but what's even more horrible is the pictures of the destruction of 38 villages south of the Litani River that the Israeli army has done over the last weeks. The cutting off of more than a million Lebanese people from their homes by bombing all the bridges across the Litani River is a much more dramatic image that needs to be addressed because the people of Lebanon are also against Tizballah, the majority of them, and there is an opportunity for a process of peace between the state of Israel and the government of Israel.

23:07But doing the things that Israel did in Lebanon, just like we did in Gaza, and our own military spokespeople, our minister of defense, and other people in our government have said we're going to do in Lebanon what we did in Gaza, we committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. And there are 2 million homeless people in Gaza who are suffering now for five months after the war has ended. And there's no relief there. This is not a Middle East that we can live in or that we should want to live in. There is no majesty in the military might of Israel when so many people in this region are being killed and homeless and destroyed.

23:43This is not a region that we can repair through the might of our military.

23:51Piers Morgan:Okay, Jonathan, you're shaking your head there. Why? I'm shaking my head because voices and opinions that are being shared here by two, you know, esteemed and very knowledgeable professionals. And I say this very respectfully without any cynicism. I've read Gidon's articles for decades and I've seen Baskin's work and we've met and I know and respect both. But I think the irony, the sad situation is that you two, you would have been murdered by Hamas on October 7 if they got close to you as well. They would have murdered you. They would have butchered you. They would have done exactly the same things to you with your high morals, with your sympathy for the enemy, with your warm and genuinely caring hearts for the suffering of the other side.

24:43They would have done the exact same atrocious acts that they did to 1 ,300 Israelis on that horrible day. Jonathan, I don't argue with you. I don't argue with you on that point. Israel had to respond to October 7th, but we didn't have to wage war for two years. Gidon, you mentioned my name four times when you spoke. I didn't interrupt, and I gave you the respect that I think you're entitled to. Please don't. Gershon, sorry. Please don't interrupt. And I just want to say this. I think that you are missing the point, and you are still wearing the October 6 spectacles, and you're thinking through the lens of October 6.