‘You Called Me a CHILD KILLER!’ Norman Finkelstein vs Israeli Activist | Marwan Barghouti Son Speaks

26:37I said free Palestine.

26:44Piers Morgan:After McLemore's removal or all other support acts quit the tour and his first concert since the controversy exploded, here's what Ed Sheeran told his fans. This week the criticism was about something much more important and I've had to take and make difficult decisions and I am making mistakes and I'm so so sorry. I don't want to disappoint fans and I've never wanted to be an activist musician but this has put me in the middle of an important and passionate argument about freedom of speech and the most complex political issue on the planet. I am deeply worried about the idea that venues should pre-approve content of performers.

27:21This happens in so many places that I perform around the world, but it should never happen in the free world I have tried in my career not to be a political commentator of any kind because I want my music and shows to be about unity Not division about humanity not politics

27:40But this is a humanitarian issue and I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore What happened in Israel and at the Nova Music Festival on October 7th was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate. My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilians' lives, of children's lives. And the systemic injustice we're seeing unfold in the West Bank cannot be overlooked.

28:15Piers Morgan:Well, joining Norman, who's going to stay with us, in the studio is Israeli commentator Hen Mazig and alongside Winston Marshall, who has cancelled himself from Mumford & Sons and now hosts the Winston Marshall Show. Well, we also have Glenn Greenwald, host of System Update, joining us from the States. So welcome to all of you. Winston, you are the cancelled musician of the panel today, albeit you were uncancellable, it transpired. You know, it seems to me... I don't know each year or not. Well, I've interviewed him once, and, you know, from what I gather from people who know him well, he's a really nice guy, possibly badly advised here, maybe doesn't have that many good advisers around him, actually, apparently makes a lot of these calls himself.

28:57Piers Morgan:Always wanted to be non-political, non-partisan, and now finds himself right in the middle of the most toxic partisan debate imaginable and seems to me to have made a series of bad decisions. One, putting McLemore on the bill to start with, knowing what he's like, knowing his history of dressing up like Shylock on stage and so on. I think there's a clear pattern of anti-Semitic antics by McLemore that ought to have given Ed perhaps pause for thought on an American tour right now. But then secondly, Ed Sheeran bowing to the whim of a billionaire stadium owner, Robert Kraft, who he just decided he didn't want to have someone saying this in his stadium, perfectly entitled to do that.

29:46Piers Morgan:But actually, it might have been better, looking back, if Red Sheeran would go, well, if my support acts aren't allowed, I'm not going to play either, and called his bluff. I suspect that might have resolved things. And then now, all his support groups have all gone and disowned him. He does a kind of tearful, slight Mia Culper on stage and then plays both sides and so on. It's not that I even disagree with what he said. I kind of broadly do agree with the way he outlined his views about it. But he's now become political, having said he never would. And it just seems to me every step of this, he's made a mess of it.

30:21Piers Morgan:But I don't view him as a villain. What's your view? Free Palestine is the new Black Lives Matter. It's the new silence is violence. It's this new sort of rhetorical trick used to sort of morally bully people into taking a side. And unfortunately for Ed Sheeran, he's ended up in the middle of that sort of, in the middle of the picket line and been forced to choose which way to go. I think there's a few things that could be true at the same time, which I think you've pointed out. Firstly, it was absolutely wrong for Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots and the stadium that they were playing to cancel him, Matt Clamore.

31:01They should not have done that. It's not against the First Amendment, but it's against the spirit of the First Amendment. Of course, they have a right to decide who is and is not in their venues, but he shouldn't have done that. It is also true that, as far as what I've seen with Macklemore, he said some things that are pretty nasty. I mean, on this very tour, he was going, he's kind of calling out to Jews in the audience, hey, if I call out a genocide, I'm not attacking you. Sorry, if I was going to a gig and someone said, hey, to all the white people, here, just so you know, and sort of reference something that's going on in Australia, I'd be like, this is completely, why are you bringing up me being Jewish?

31:40I didn't come here for that. It's a family night out. But this was known about Macklemore before the tour started. You don't book Rage Against the Machine and then halfway through the tour say, sorry, lads, just play the songs, but no communist stuff, right? This is, you know, you know this in advance. So that was a big mistake. As for Ed Sheeran, look, I don't personally... I know you said you agreed, Piers, with what he said. I don't personally agree with his... where he landed in describing the war in Gaza. Nevertheless, the pressure he has been under... I know. I went through it myself. For me, it was Black Lives Matter at the time and Antifa.

32:19I'd call those out. You remember$2 billion worth of damage done across America. 25 people killed between George Floyd and the end of October. A lot of that damage, by the way, was to black businesses. It went against black lives. So I called that out, and I went against the woke mob, as we call it, and they came after me. So as far as I'm concerned, it's a horrible place to be in. It might be that Ed, who, by the way, just has a great reputation. This guy lifts everyone up. He collaborates with everyone. And if you... Actually, this was really interesting to me, Piers. He said, friends and family.

33:05I saw that, yeah. Well, we've seen his cousin coming out trashing him.

33:08Piers Morgan:I mean, Glenn Greenwald, you know, there's a lot of complexity to this. But ultimately, if I'd been Ed Sheeran, I think, having made the decision to have McLemore on my bill, and he worked with him for many years, If I had a stadium owner trying to ban my support act, I think I would have instinctively felt that the smart play, never mind anything else, would be to support my support act and to not let this happen and to say, if they can't play, I don't play. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think that sometimes it's understandable when people capitulate to immoral or unreasonable demands because they're dependent on the financial support they get from their employer or whatever, and they need it to sustain their family.

33:55the idea of being so obscenely rich, talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of net worth like Ed Sheeran has, and then being so needy to perform in Robert Kraft Stadium. And remember, Robert Kraft didn't just ban Malcolm Moore himself. He got other Zionist billionaires who were also owners of the stadiums where Ed Sheeran was planning to go to do the same thing. So it was like a consortium. And to not be willing to stand up to that, like we just heard, you know, oh, I was canceled during Black Lives Matter. Sorry. Like if you are a public figure and you take a position that's controversial, it's totally reasonable to expect that people will criticize you.

34:35And it's a little bit difficult to endure Ed Sheeran self-victimizing in this way, crying on stage when you have in Gaza the highest number of child amputees ever, tens of thousands of children dead. Those are the real victims. The second thing is it's not really true that Ed Sheeran has always wanted to be apolitical. He took, for example, a very clear and definitive stance when it came to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He even did shows to raise money for them. And yes, I realized that that was easy to do in the West, but that's a very polarizing position around the world. And yet he did it there because it was easy for him.

35:11And I do think that people with a public platform have a moral obligation, not in every case, but when there's a genocide happening, would we accept, for example, during World War II, a public figure said, oh, I don't really have an opinion on the Holocaust. I'm not really political. I don't really want to speak out. I don't think we would accept that at all. And then, yeah, finally, I do think that musical artists have a responsibility, especially ones extremely wealthy with a gigantic global platform, to stand up to the kind of censorship that he just confronted. And yet he completely failed to do that, gave a both sides version of this conflict that somehow began on October 7th, even though the Israelis were murdering Palestinian children long before that, including throughout 2023, before October 7.

35:55It was just a whole failure on every level. And I think it comes from this weird need not to ever offend anybody to the point that you're willing to have no principles or values, even though financially you're as rich as you can be for life. Yeah.

36:10Piers Morgan:Hem Masley, I will bring you back in, Winston. Hem Masley, welcome back to Uncensored. Just before we get your response to the Sheeran Fiori. You know, you're an Israeli sitting on this panel. You've just had Norman Finkelstein say Israel is a nation of child killers and explaining why he believes that. What's your response to that? I'm just asking Norman, am I a child killer? That's what you just said. Am I a child killer? I would say the probability is, the higher probability is yes. I'm sorry to tell you that. That's correct. You understand how unhinged you sound? You had such a great career, professor.

36:49It's such a shame that you're throwing it all away with this unhinged, capitalizing to the freaking mob. For what? For what, Norman? For what? You're such an embarrassment to your family, to your people. Honestly, like you're calling me a child murderer without even knowing me, and then you're saying that I am? Did you serve in the IDF? I served as a humanitarian soldier. I worked to save Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and in Gaza. Were you a propagandist for the Israeli army? I served as you... Were you a propagandist during the genocide? That doesn't make you much different than Goebbels.

37:20Do you want me to answer you, or are you just going to call me a Nazi? I think you are the one that's dominating the conversation. Are you calling me a Nazi, and you're calling me a child murderer? You are a rape denier. You spent years writing a book saying that Amit Susna, a victim that said, I was raped by Hamas, you're saying that she, well, maybe you shouldn't call it rape. Like, look at you. You have to have some distancing, man. Come on. And then you're asking me, what have I done? You have to learn to read. The beginning is learning to read. Yeah, I read very well. I'm not sure. If you go through the book I just wrote...

37:55Allow me to just finish. He made an accusation. Oh, you made an accusation? You called me a Nazi and you called me a child killer. Fine, fine. And now he said, I am a dishonest scholar. Yeah, that's not me. It's your colleagues. It's Benny Morris. It's every professor that has critiqued you. Allow me to finish. If you look at a Nazi's honest testimony by the Civil Commission, by the Civil Commission, she never said she was raped. That's the problem. What did she say, Norman? She said, I suffered extreme sexual assault. She said that Hamas Harris held a gun to her head and forced her to conduct sexual assault on her.

38:34That's what she said. That's the quote. Everyone can Google it. I invite everyone to Google it and to hear exactly what it is. My question would be...

38:40Piers Morgan:Allow me to finish. Norman, I want to keep it on. If he's a child killer. No, no, I know. Here's the point. Yes, you are. If I had a Palestinian commentator sitting in Mazig's seat right now, right, would you say about whoever that was, you are a child killer because of what Hamas did on October 7th? Would you use the same broad brushstroke to condemn every single Ghazan in the way you have now condemned every Israeli, including Hamas sitting there, who, to my knowledge, has never killed a child. Or anyone. Right? So I just think when you do this, but you don't want to do the same with Gazans, people will look at it and say there's a double standard.

39:25Because it's not the same thing. Yeah, we didn't create bodies of children that were killed in captivity like Hamas did. Right. Another fantasy. There's footage of Ariel and Kfir Bibas. Come on, have this. Man, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm trying to hold it together. But Ariel and Kfir Bibas were killed by Hamas, and we all have seen how Hamas has transferred the bodies of them. Did you say raped? There is not one... You can't hear well. Do you need a hearing aid? Okay. There's not one single frame, one single photograph, one single digital segment, not one. There were 10 ,000. I hope your audience is listening.

40:07there were 10 ,000 photographs and digital segments of October 7th. 1 ,800 hours. That would take Piers Morgan, if he were running through it, it would take him eight hours a day, seven days a week, for seven months to go through that digital evidence. Of that evidence, there is not one photograph, not one... There are victims who say they were raped. There are victims who say they were raped. Now you're saying they say they were raped. But I'm saying they say they're justified.

40:43Piers Morgan:I've seen reporting by Christina Lamb, who I think is one of the best... I know you think she's... I think she's one of the best correspondents in Fleet Street history. I look at the evidence. Yeah, but, Norman, honestly... I've read the evidence. Are we not spitting horrific hairs here? I mean, you're talking about... He raised the issue. I'm making the point. He raised the issue. I'm making the point. 3 ,000 Hamas terrorists poured over the border and committed 1 ,200 murders. Totally agree. Right? Including setting fire to families' homes, you know, kidnapping a baby, Holocaust survivors...

41:16Piers Morgan:Totally agree. ..dragging women, shooting them in the heads from a music festival, dragging them back to Gaza to treat them horrifically back in Gaza. The idea that somehow, because there's no photographic evidence of a rape that day, somehow that... We're exaggerating the horrors of what Hamas perpetrated. And the reason I think it's important is, again, I can just come back to you just calmly turning to the guy sitting next to you on this panel and saying you are a child killer. And yet if he was a Palestinian from Gaza, I do not believe you would say you are a child killer or you are a Holocaust survivor kidnapper or you are a baby kidnapper.

41:54Piers Morgan:In other words, you wouldn't generalise with a Palestinian the way that you are with an Israeli. Because the Palestinians were not members of an army representative of the Israeli population that went into Gaza, in which there are prolific, copious examples of targeting children, targeting children. The latest U.N. report states the deliberate, Israel's deliberate targeting of Palestinian children. But Hen Mazik didn't target those children. No, no man says I did. But if you participate, which you agree with, if you participate in the mass starvation of Gaza, if you use starvation as a weapon.

42:42I mean, you said I am, and you call me gobbles, and you said that I'm a propagandist. You don't even know who I am. And just because I'm Israeli, do you understand? Do you understand how on the hinge it is? Were you a propagandist during genocide in Gaza? What does that mean? What is it propagandist? Were you a spokesman of propaganda during Gaza? Exactly, but that's your problem. You don't know... You are a propagandist for the extremists. What is a propagandist?

43:02Piers Morgan:Norman, all due respect, some would say you're being a bit of a propagandist for Hamas. For Hamas, absolutely. They didn't abuse any women that day. Well, they blew their heads off. They murdered them in cold blood. They kidnapped them. They tortured them. I mean, you know, some would say your attempt to try and downplay... I never tried to downplay... It does sound like it. Okay, one second. Here, I'm your guest. So I want to treat you with respect. I'm at your dinner table, not at my own. Sure. Who brought up the question of rape? Did I bring it up? No, the hostages that returned brought up the accusations of rape.

43:39And you spent two years writing a book debunking rape victims and telling them that they were liars. That's who you are. And then you called me a child killer. And then you said, I'm like, God bless. So of course I would react to you. You have no distancy when it comes to Israeli Jews. That's your problem. Pierce, when I was on your program several times, did I say I don't quarrel with facts? Did I acknowledge atrocities occurred on October 7th? Did I say they were of a significant magnitude? I just wouldn't want to be the one trying to say, well, they didn't do this, but they did do all that.

44:13Pierce, Pierce, I still care about facts. That didn't happen. There's no evidence that it happened.

44:20Piers Morgan:But there is plenty of reporting to say that it did happen. Excuse me? There's plenty of reporting by people like Christina Lamb and others. I went through... I'm not trying to promote a book. That's not my style. I go through all the evidence in the book. I go through the most recent report that was put out by something called the Civil Commission. There is no material evidence of rape. In fact, even survivor testimony, there is one fellow who claimed he was raped on October 7th. First of all... Why is this the hill you want to die on? I don't want to die on it. There was kidnapping. There was murder.

44:57Piers Morgan:There was arson. Do I deny it? There was stealing babies. Do I deny it? Stealing Holocaust survivors. Who cares about whether you think that they raped someone or not? He brought up that issue. So I should ignore it? It's disgusting. He says, I am the red denier. You're accusing him. You've sat next to a guy. I don't think you know each other. You sat next to him. You immediately called him a child killer. Then you called him a Nazi. I'm saying it's probable. Said he was Goebbels. Then you called him a propagandist. I'm merely making the point, if it was a Palestinian, I don't think you'd apply the same tactics against a Palestinian based on the fact it happened to live in the same place as Hamas.

45:32Piers Morgan:Anyway, Hen, I want to ask you about the Ed Sheeran debate, because it seems to me he, you know, he's in a lose-lose, really. From the moment Macklemore is banned by Kraft and Ed Sheeran allows that to happen, he's kind of hoisted by his own guitar. Many people thought it was cowardly of him. I think it was just naive on his part to think that he could let that happen. He says he couldn't think about it. Well, he could. He could have said, then I'm not performing, right, which would have been probably the morally courageous thing to do, particularly, as it turns out. It sounds like he agrees with most of what Macklemore was saying, right?

46:07Piers Morgan:But I feel very uncomfortable about all of this story, really. You know, I just think we've got to a stage where people are getting bullied into making public statements when they'd rather not about these things, purely to tick somebody's box about their virtue, and I feel uncomfortable with that. Yeah, and that's why Norman and others are making the case that Israelis are Nazis or that we are child killers, all of us. The goal is this dehumanisation campaign is meant to make every celebrity and every artist think twice before not only that they're not defending Israel, but even if they don't say free Palestine, and then we hear arguments that, oh, well, you know, we need them to...

46:45It's about censorship. We don't want them to be censored. But then if someone stood on stage and said, free Israel, those guests would be out here saying, absolutely, cancel all of them. They can't speak. So it's not about free speech. I don't believe it's about free speech.

47:00Piers Morgan:Well, if Macklemore had been saying pro-Israeli stuff, there's no way Robert Kraft bans him from that stadium. So there's the hypocrisy there, right? Absolutely. I mean, there's a wider point, Winston. You've been a top music star. You are. You're still a great musician. But, you know, the truth is, if you've been saying supportive things about Black Lives Matter, you have never been cancelled, right? And I also am curious... And if you say supportive things about Israel, by the way, you're cancelled. Look what happened to Boy George last month. He got dropped. Well, that's true. It works, but it does work both...

47:33Look what happened to Radiohead's guitar player, Johnny Greenwood.

47:36Piers Morgan:Should a support act be doing this at all? If you're supporting a headline act like Ed Sheeran on a massive stadium tour of the United States, Should any support act be using it as an opportunity to score political points that they care about when they're not the headline act? Because if McLemore doesn't do what he did, none of the rest happens. It does seem like, from my perspective, it looks like McLemore has torn down the whole tour as much as he can. And Charles Dejurin under a bus, really. But we don't know exactly totally what's going on behind the scenes. If I may address Glenn from earlier.

48:13Glenn, you said if you get cancelled, boo-hoo. Do you think Macklemore got cancelled, boo-hoo, from the stadium? Does it sort of boo-hoo, you know, tough luck, mate? You said what you said and there are consequences. Is that your position on that? Macklemore actually got cancelled, which is why it's so bizarre that Ed Sheeran is now somehow the victim of cancel culture. There's a huge difference between being criticised and actually being cancelled by a cabal of Zionist billionaires. But Glenn, you just said boo-hoo to me. Does that mean boo-hoo to...? But even Macklemore has said, don't feel sorry for me.

48:43I'm not a victim. I'm extremely wealthy. I'm safe in my life. The real victims are people in Gaza, which is the kind of perspective that a rational person should have, not, oh, I'm a public figure. I've been expressing polarizing views and now I'm being criticized. Everyone feels sorry for me. This is the pathetic grievance that people have been invoking because they're being criticized. And nobody, by the way, was demanding that Ed Sheeran take a position. Ed Sheeran hadn't taken the position on Israel and Gaza for three years. Nobody was angry about that. Nobody was harassing Ed Sheeran. I mean, somebody made the point, Glenn.

49:17Piers Morgan:On that, somebody made a very valid point that there's no record of Ed Sheeran publicly saying anything on his stage after October the 7th, for example, right? So, you know, for all the attempt to portray himself as non-political, he has Macklemore as his support act, knowing what he feels. He lets Macklemore say what he say without any condemnation from Ed Sheeran. It's only when the backlash comes that Ed Sheeran feels compelled to say what he says. I think he shouldn't have said anything. And I certainly think crying on stage when this debate really comes down to Macklemore saying it was a genocide in Gaza and, you know, too many children are being slaughtered, it seems a little bit me, me, me and self-pitying.

49:56Piers Morgan:So I don't think that Ed's played this at all. Totally. I think he's been very naive. Let me ask you, though, Glenn, before we wrap up here, you know, I think there's been a fiery exchange here between Norman and Henn. and I understand why, when Norman turned to Pen Mazik and says you are a child killer... I said probably. OK, but how do you feel about that, Glenn, when you hear that? I mean, I do think there's a difference between a democratic society that constantly ratifies certain policies overwhelmingly. I mean, they elected Netanyahu, they probably are about to again. Even if they don't, it won't be...

50:31The alternative won't be somebody who thinks there was too much force used in Gaza. If anything, they may think that there wasn't enough. but and i also think here's very quickly that as a journalist i don't think you should be so dismissive of lies that are told kind of like oh hamas is bad so just say whatever you want about that there were so many lies spread in that first week that they beheaded babies they cut wombs out of babies out of women's wombs that they uh bake babies in ovens it's like saying oh who cares about i would say they were quickly debunked i remember those stories

51:06Piers Morgan:It was 40 beheaded babies. None of that was true. Mike Huckabee just said it again this week. He repeated it. And to be clear, it's not true. And I think we had it in the first week we were on air after October 7th. I think it was repeated here. And we then made it clear there's no actual evidence for that. The difference between that and the rape allegations, sexual assault allegations against Hamas, is that Norman says he's seen no photographic evidence. No material evidence. But I have seen a lot of evidence reported by the likes of Christina Lamb, who's a fantastic award-winning foreign correspondent, from her interviews with people who say that they were sexually abused and raped.

51:43Piers Morgan:Oh, for sure. There may not be footage of it. There may not be footage of it, but it doesn't mean to say it didn't happen. It's not correct. She couldn't get the interview. I'm just dying to ask Ken one question, because Norman said, the reason I say this is because you seem like a propagandist for the IDF. On this question of starvation and the Israelis using starvation as a weapon, Hen, what was your position on that? Did you deny it? Did you justify it? Or did you denounce it? When Itamar Bankvir threw in the war, it's such a nice gotcha. If you look at my X account, you would see that I condemned it and actually supported the people that were protesting, the Israelis that were at the Gaza border calling to allow humanitarian aid.

52:21And for five years in my military service, I worked to provide humanitarian aid, and I was liaising with Unrat, the Red Cross, and international organizations in the West Bank, in Gaza and in Hebron. So, I mean, you all immediately decided that because I'm Israeli, I am a Nazi. And that's the problem. You guys are not able to see how fanatic you are. I don't think that anything changed your audience. Let me ask Glenn.

52:43Piers Morgan:Glenn, in the context of his response, which is pretty robust, to put it mildly, what would you say? It's not. It's not. He mentioned Ben Gavir. This had nothing to do with Ben Gavir. It was Yov Gawant, the defense minister, who in the very first week said, we are not allowing anything into Gaza. No food, no water, no medicine, no fuel, nothing. These people are animals. And then for the next two years, multiple times, the Israeli government blocked all food from entering Gaza to the point where the population, as Norman said, half of whom are children, were starving, starving to the point of famine, as every organization said around the world that monitors it.

53:18And I want to know, what was your position on that? And I said that they deserve to have humanitarian aid. I said that continuously. All I said right now is that I condemn what Benkvir said. And yes, and I think what Yoav Gallen said, he said later that he meant Hamas. It wasn't clear that he was speaking about Hamas. And the action was problematic. And I was calling it out. I still call it out. What's your point, Glenn? What are you trying to prove here? Are you trying to prove something about me? Are you trying to prove something about me? Pathetic. The Israelis did one of the worst things possible, which is use starvation as a weapon for collective punishment against a population, half of whom are children, every potential candidate that might become the next prime minister, if Netanyahu doesn't, agrees with that policy, never has denounced it.

53:59Yeah, but now aid is going into Gaza. There is been humanitarian aid going into Gaza. And you have been out there largely defending Israel. That people are in front of Israel.

54:08Piers Morgan:The one thing, we talked about freedom of speech, freedom of press in this debate. I do think I can wrap things up by saying the one thing I'm sure we can all agree on is that the ongoing ban by the Netanyahu government not allowing international media to operate freely in Gaza, despite there being a supposed ceasefire, is an ongoing disgrace. Yes. And a terrible suppression of freedom of speech, of a free press, and actually a lot of the answers to the questions could be answered if journalists were allowed to do their job. Which is why they won't be. Which is why they're not allowed. I don't disagree.

54:46Piers Morgan:I'm sure we would all agree that that ban is completely wrong, right? Is there anyone who doesn't agree with that? I'm more interested in talking about what's going on in the West here. This is why I was invited onto the show. We have got the silencing of people, with people disagreeing with them, either using different methods, there's a culture of silencing, and there's a lot of lies. One of the lies that's been a very simple lie here is that of genocide. If you want to look at a genocide, at the beginning of the Second World War, there were 6 million more Jews than there were at the end of the Second World War.

55:20If you look at what happened to the Tutsis in Rwanda, there were a million fewer Tutsis after... But that was never actually... Hang on. I mean, instead... I know, but where's the... And this is why I wanted to get back to Glenn's point. There's a school of lies... Hang on. Hang on. No, no, Piers, Piers, hang on. Please, may I? It's an important clarification, because in the genocide debate,

55:39Piers Morgan:the reason I've not used the word is precisely actually for what you've just said. you cited Rwanda as being a genocide, but that has never been officially classified as a genocide, right? And so I think you have to be careful about words. I believe what we've been seeing is ethnic cleansing, which is horrific, but is not genocide. Now, it may be that history will determine there's been a genocide. A lot of that may be down to whether journalists can get in and do their job properly and work out what's really happened here. But you cite Rwanda as being a genocide, and yet that was never formally declared.

56:13Piers Morgan:a genocide, which is one of the... There were a million fewer. I understand. I think it was a genocide. And they were specifically targeted. But this is the point. It probably was a genocide, but my point being, it was never officially determined that it was a genocide. And for that reason, a lot of people who look at this are reluctant to say it's been a genocide in Gaza. Even when officials say it is a genocide. Because so many fewer people have died in Gaza than died in Rwanda. And that was a classic right of genocide. The population of Gaza was increasing before the war. during the war. We know that 100 ,000 left via Egypt.

56:45We know that 70 ,000 or so were killed in the war started by Hamads that could have been stopped by Hamads if they'd returned their hostages. It was a just war. Horrific things happen in war. War is horrific. No one likes it. But those things, that is the lie at the bottom of this, that there's a genocide. And that is why...

57:05Piers Morgan:There are many scholars who believe... We've run out of time, but there are many scholars who believe that it is a genocide. Including Israeli. Including Israeli, and there are others who do not. Among the liars are Amnesty International, the UN Commission of the Great. You said the UN was lying about the right. Now you're citing the UN? You said the UN was lying about the right. You're right. These are the liars. You can't even keep your story together. Who else are liars? The recent polls show between 30 and 40 % of American Jews think that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza. So they too must be under...

57:42Where is this fall from? They might be misled, but these other people are saying... They must also be suffering from delusions. They must also be ignorant of the facts. Well, a stain on all the liars.

57:53Piers Morgan:But listen, I appreciate it. It's a very passionate panel. I appreciate you're coming on. Thank you very much. Mawam Barghouti is serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for his role in civilian deaths during the second intifada. For many, however, he's a figure of profound hope for a peace process which has otherwise become hopeless. Some Palestinians and their supporters go as far as to call him their Nelson Mandela. Mandela himself compared Barghouti's legal case to the one he faced in apartheid South Africa. Many Israelis still believe he's a terrorist, but many scholars, writers and activists say he's uniquely positioned to unite Palestinian factions and deliver a peaceful second state.

58:30Piers Morgan:And I'm pleased to say that his son, Arab Barghouti, joins me in the studio now. Well, welcome to you. Thanks for coming into the studio. Do you see the parallels with Nelson Mandela, a man who was, of course, categorised as a terrorist by the UK government under Margaret Thatcher until, of course, he came out of prison and the rest is history? Do you see parallels with what's happening with your father? Yeah, of course I do. Thank you so much for having me first. But, of course, I do. I think that if you look at the first person who drew these similarities is Nelson Mandela himself when he said what's happening with Marwan Brawuthi is exactly what happened to me.

59:09Mandela devoted his life for the anti-apartheid movement. My father devoted his for the anti-apartheid movement as well, which is the Israeli apartheid. He's someone who has been struggling for Palestinian rights for more than 50 years, where he spent more than 30 years in prison, seven years of exile. He sacrificed a lot to devote himself for Palestinian freedom.

59:32Piers Morgan:Ben Gavir, one of the psychopaths on this Israeli government, and I've used that phrase repeatedly and quite deliberately because I think they do enormous damage to Israel's reputation, he posted a video of himself taunting your father in his jail cell, telling him in the video, you will not win, he who messes with the people of Israel, he who will murder our children, he who will murder our women, we will wipe him out. As your father tried to interject, he added, You need to know this throughout history. That was the first time the father had been seen publicly in many years. Many commented on how he looked, that he looked a lot older, gaunt, you know, not very healthy.

1:00:12Piers Morgan:When you saw that video, what did you feel about it? I mean, I felt appalled. I felt really angry because here is a man who has advocated for the peace process, who has supported the peace process, who has supported international law, who's getting threatened by a bully, by a terrorist in Bengvir. And unfortunately, Bengvir is still operating. He's still doing whatever he wants with the Palestinian people, with the Palestinian prisoners. And I think as a son, it was a shock to me to see my father in this condition. And this is important to highlight that my father has been put in solitary confinement right after October 7th, even though obviously he has nothing to do with it.

1:00:54He has been tortured, assaulted multiple times.

1:00:58Piers Morgan:Do you ever get to see him or speak to him? I haven't been able to see him in four years. I haven't been able to speak to him in four years. I haven't been able to hug or even touch my father in 25 years. And this is an experience... In 25 years? Yes. And this is an experience that thousands of Palestinians go through. I wish I was alone in this experience. The opinion polls consistently say that your father is the most popular Palestinian leader. Last month's poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that he would receive 54 % of the vote if he was to be the next president of the Palestinian Authority.

1:01:34Piers Morgan:Puts him well ahead of the current Hamas leader and much further ahead of President Mahmoud Abbas. Do those polls tally with your sense of how popular he is? They do. I mean, he's been consistently the most popular Palestinian leader for more than 20 years. And I think it's very important to understand why. The first thing is my father is someone who's willing to sacrifice for the Palestinian cause. He is very brave in the peace process and very brave in the struggle against the Israeli oppression. The second thing is that he gets his credibility from the street. And this is very important in Palestinian minds.

1:02:15And also he's a unifying figure. My father, he brought all Palestinian factions in 2006 to the prisoners' document, which he initiated. And it drew a clear political vision for Palestine based on the two-state solution. And it got signed by all political factions, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and all of them. And this is very important because we are taking initiatives as Palestinians towards the international law and the application of international law. The problem is that we don't have a partner of peace in the Israeli side. And that's the biggest problem that we're facing. and we're still facing that, and we're paying the steepest price for that problem.

1:02:52Piers Morgan:He was convicted by an Israeli court in 2004 for his role in directing deadly attacks on Israeli civilians during the Second Intifata. It was said he led the Tanzim, an armed wing of the Fatah political faction. He was found guilty of the murder of four Israelis and a Greek monk, attempted murder and belonging to a terrorist organisation, and, as we said, he's currently serving five consecutive life sentences plus 40 years. I mean, when it comes to those charges against him for which he was convicted, what is your view about what he did or didn't do? I mean, you know, virtually Israeli courts see every Palestinian as guilty.

1:03:31If you look at the Palestinian history, more than a million people have been imprisoned. And that includes the worst type of arbitrary arrest, the administrative detention, They justified oppression, apartheid, all of that. So I don't think it's a crazy idea that they would label a Palestinian leader as a terrorist, quote-unquote. And, of course, no Israeli is guilty under Israeli courts. It's a tool of the occupation. It's very important to understand that the Israeli judicial system is a tool of the occupation.

1:04:03Piers Morgan:But do you believe that people were killed on your father's orders? Of course not. My father has been... My father was a violent uprising. Many people were killed. your father was one of the people helping to direct this. Is it not logical that he would have been responsible for deaths even if people want to justify them historically? No, I don't think so. He was a parliament member. He was the head of Fatah in the West Bank, which is the party of the PA that signed the Osla Accords. And I think what happened, we need to go to the real reason why my father was labelled as a terrorist by the Israeli government.

1:04:42It's because he's a true partner for peace. It's because he's a strong, credible leader and someone who would never give up on Palestinians' rights and willing to sacrifice himself.

1:04:52Piers Morgan:Have you ever asked him directly if he killed someone? Yeah. Even the Israeli courts, let me be very clear, even the Israeli courts said that he's never killed anyone. No, but ordered the deaths of somebody. Yes. My father has been always on and off the record, very clear of his refusal of targeting civilians, Israeli civilians or Palestinian civilians, and to abide by international law. He takes pride. And he said that to you? Yes, of course. And he said it also on the record to Lindsay Hilsam, which is the one who did the last interview that he did 20 years ago. He said on the record that I would never condone the targeting of civilians.

1:05:27They should be outside of the game. And this is a clear position that he's taken always and he takes pride in the fact that his work is always based on international law.

1:05:37Piers Morgan:What is your view of what happened on October 7th? I've had a lot of guests on in the years since then. I've always asked everybody on the pro-Palestinian side, you know, do you condemn what Hamas did that day unreservedly? So I'll ask you that question. My position is very clear, which is my father's position. I would never condone the targeting of civilians, regardless where they are, who they are, what they represent. They shouldn't be targeted. And I think we should be very clear. Any Palestinian who would support the targeting of civilians would be a hypocrite because we're suffering from that for three years.

1:06:12We've been through a genocide, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed or wounded. Our children are not living a normal life, so I would never condone the targeting of civilians.

1:06:23Piers Morgan:What do you think is going to happen here. Obviously, everything was thrown up in the air by October the 7th, a horrendous day. My view is that the Israeli response has become increasingly disproportionate and unjustifiable. I don't think there's any intent by Netanyahu to have a two-state solution. There are elections coming in Israel, which may determine that. The big theory, as you know, is that Netanyahu wanted to funnel billions of dollars to Hamas, believing it would create a divide and rule between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Do you think that theory has validity? I think that we need to be very clear.

1:07:08As Palestinians, my father always says, we need to worry about what we can control. And what we can control at the moment is to have a political renewal, a democratic renewal within Palestine. to have a new representative leadership that is ready for a political settlement in the future. We need to remember that as Palestinians, we're the biggest beneficiaries of peace. We're the ones who are paying the steepest price for violence. And I think the last three years have taught the whole world that there is nothing called peace in the Middle East or stability in the Middle East without answering the Palestinian question.

1:07:42A perpetual apartheid for Palestinians is not a peace. That's what Israel is selling at the moment. which is to keep Palestinians under apartheid as second-class citizens in our own land. And I don't think that's going to work. What we can do is that we can have that representative leadership. We can start building relationships and bridges with the international community, encourage the sanctions that have been put by the British government alongside 11 other countries. And I really welcome that position, because one year ago, the recognition of the state of Palestine was a great move in the right direction.

1:08:17But it's not enough. I think that taking steps on the ground will be what will make a difference for peace. And I think the biggest step at the moment is to support Palestinian political renewal and to ask, call for the freedom of my father as someone who can unify the Palestinian people and can be a credible partner for a future peace.

1:08:36Piers Morgan:You've been a brilliant campaigner for your father, regardless of what people may think of him. That's undoubted. You're a very eloquent talker. if he never comes out, have you considered the possibility of taking the torch, the Barghouti torch, and actually doing this yourself? I want people to understand what my father represents for the Palestinian people, and I'm not trying to shy away from your question. I think if you look at... You mentioned Nelson Mandela at the beginning of this interview, and I want to ask you as someone, if you go back to the early 90s and ask the Irish people, the British people, do you envision peace between the two sides?

1:09:19Piers Morgan:Yeah, I think I raise this parallel a lot, actually. And no-one would say yes. And it took, actually, fresh eyes and leadership from John Major and then Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and Senator Mitchell and others to come at this and just be determined to try and force through peace. And at the moment, there's nobody, it seems to me, that is doing that in the region. But many people think your father is the person that can do that. And, you know, talking about Mandela, one of my favourite quotes is from Mandela, which is, it always seems impossible until it's done. Yeah. Sometimes people thought it would be impossible to bring peace in Northern Ireland, and yet here we are, 26, 27 years later, and there's been a lasting peace, not completely perfect, but a lasting peace and an end to the troubles.

1:10:04Piers Morgan:It can be done. You just have to have a will to do it. And my father has that will. I think, you know, even though he's been attacked, assaulted multiple times. Two months ago, he got shot by a rubber bullet in his leg while he was in a cell. And yet he still is committed towards peace, towards coexistence and all of that, but also towards freedom. My father believes that peace can't be divided. Freedom and peace can't be divided. Well, this will only get resolved, I believe, by a two-state solution where Palestinians and Israelis all are afforded the exact same human rights. Until that moment is reached, there's never going to be an end to this.

1:10:45Piers Morgan:And it needs leaders who understand that clearly and work towards that happening. Ara Barghouti, a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate and entertain. And we'll do it all for free. Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical and we couldn't do it without you.