425. Israel, Gaza, and the Definition of Genocide

24:47His argument is that senior people within the BBC right up to and including the top decided it was not to be shown. And why not? Well their argument is that what the BBC says is that they were worried that it would lead to claims of partiality. And have they pointed to things in the film that they have they given detailed examples from the film? No they haven't. They haven't and of course what they presumably know is that there are people within the BBC who had agreed that this was a perfectly good film to show. No it comes from a certain perspective because virtually everybody who's interviewed in the film is a Palestinian doctor or nurse or patient or family of somebody who's been killed.

25:28They keep putting the points that are being made. They regularly know the Israeli defence force refused to comment or the Israeli defence force said blah blah blah. So I think it's hard to escape the conclusion that there are you know I've always said my problem with the BBC is that they they do allow themselves to be pushed around by governments, by lobbies, by different people pushing different arguments. And I think they've been pushed around on this and pushed around but not least because as we saw with the Glastonbury thing, the line of attack at the BBC all the time is that they're anti -Israel.

26:02Okay well let me come to the final thing given that what's happening on the ground is so horrifying and I'm I guess don't know whether we should be calling it crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing. Genocide. You've called it ethnic cleansing before. Right and which is a crime against humanity. And from my point of view you only need to see what Gaza looks like, you only need to see 95 % of the buildings destroyed, all the hospitals destroyed, to know that tens of thousands of people have been killed. I mean one of the problems is that this endless fight on social media about fake news and this video and that video is just taking away from the big picture which is that this is the most horrendous inflection of suffering on a population of actual.

26:46So why is the British government not doing more? And let me let me put it in absolutely kind of brutal way. David Lamy, our foreign secretary, made a blistering speech in May in which he absolutely explicitly stood up and talked about the horror and yet we continue to train IDF soldiers. RAF planes continue to fly over Gaza. No comment has been made by the British government about the fact that the Americans are sanctioning British citizens who help the International Criminal Court. British citizens who provided advice now having to move their money to protect themselves and the British government isn't speaking up for them.

27:28What on earth is wrong? How is it possible for David Lamy on the one hand to describe this horror? And on the other hand the government to continue to providing military assistance, training, flights and not standing up for our enloy. Well the other thing that's worth pointing out on that was there was a sort of rather horrible irony last week in David Lamy met the guy that we met a while back president Al -Shara. So he's now the president of Syria, ex head of Al -Qaeda and David Lamy met him at a time when the Labour government is prescribing Palestine action as a terrorist organization. I don't think Palestine action remotely in the same league as Al -Qaeda were.

28:11I think what David Lamy would say is that he has put sanctions on for example Ben Gavir and Smotritz sanctions, they have come cut back on some of the arms sales etc. But I don't know the answer to be absolutely frank. I think it's if you go through all the countries in the world and it's quite hard to get an exact position but roughly 95 UN member states have now effectively said that they think this is roughly 6 % of countries have given the sense that they don't think it is and that's US, UK, Germany, Australia. And that's very strange again because we're run by our primacy as an international lawyer.

28:46Why is he not waiting for the international criminal court to come to a ruling rather than coming out and saying it's not genocide before the court is ruled? Or just all the I think need to do is constantly to be saying as they should have done from the start, they keep saying Israel has a right to defend itself which is true it does. But that does not mean they have a right to do whatever they want without regard to international law, civilian life and the future of Gaza. And I think if only they said that every time that these issues, these things happen. But I think the other thing, sorry to go back to the BBC, but I think the fact that partly because I suspect of this rail, there's been very very little coverage of this stuff, of these kids being killed in the queue for food.

29:38On the today program, on the main 10 o 'clock news, it's a pretty low level story. And I think that of itself kind of puts less pressure on the politicians to come out and say what, and by the way I said I come when we was here or on the BBC last week, but I made the point. I think one of the reasons for Labour's current standing is actually the point you've just made. Why are they not speaking up more for human rights, for Palestinian people and calling out the absolute horror of what's going on? And I feel a bit, to be honest, I think we've taken too long, I've taken too long to come to this point because I think we've tried to be fair.

30:15But I find it impossible, I find it impossible to watch what's going on. It's impossible to defend this. Yeah, and I agree. Netanyahu has been at the White House. This documentary has now shown in real careful forensic detail, the Shattering of Health System. The Israeli Defence Minister has now announced that he's trying to create a, essentially a prison camp, 600 ,000 people on the Raffa camp in Gaza. The Security Minister and the Finance Minister continue to call for the expulsion of the people and international processes against Israel are frozen because the UNESCO won't cooperate. It's sanctioning people working for the International Criminal Court and our own media is finding it very, very difficult to deal with this.

31:03I think we should return to this in a section also in question time, so I'd like to talk also about what's happening in the conservative party and what they are doing or failing to do around the system in Britain. But let's take a seemingly intractable, difficult, international problem that's brudging you grain.

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33:58Welcome back to the Respondent. Welcome back to the Respondent. It's going to be almost a combo. And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, we haven't covered Russia Ukraine for a long time and it's one of these stories because it's been going now for two and a half years where people lose focus. So quick summary, there was a big uptick in Russian attacks in the autumn. That was a really, really intense period. It then dropped down somewhat after Trump came in and it's massively upticked again. There's been a huge increase in Russian attacks and there are two things really going on on the ground. One of them is the Russians have got much more aggressive about targeting Ukrainian UAV pilots, drone pilots, and hunting and isolating their logistics.

34:39And the second thing is that the American government is not providing patron missile interceptors. So these are the surface -to -air missiles that you need to take out Russian ballistic missiles in particular, the esconder systems. And without the Patriot defense, Ukraine is terribly, terribly vulnerable. And that means that Russia is steadily pushing forward. Okay, over here. We talked a lot about Israel in the first half and I think another reason why it is utterly absurd for Donald Trump even to be considered as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. This is the guy who said, as a campaign stick, I can end this war in 24 hours.

35:17And it's getting worse and worse and worse. And he hasn't used his power and leveraged the air. And he certainly hasn't used his power leverage with Putin. I mean, actually, there's a different way of looking at Russia Ukraine at the moment. And that is given the unbelievably difficult circumstances in which they'd be fighting this war from the beginning, but particularly I would argue now. They are doing an amazing job. And I read an extraordinary thing the other day, I come up where I saw it, but it was essentially about how when this war is over, Ukraine is going to have the most advanced, best developed armed forces, particularly the use of modern warfare.

35:55So we hear a lot about the Russian drones. And we see the Russian drones as they're sort of flying into buildings. The parliament blocks in Ukraine. But the Ukrainians are developing this drone technology at an extraordinary rate. So I think, again, we have to look, you were sort of quite critical in the first half of the UK and other governments have they done enough to call ours going in Israel. I think there is the case to be made that for all the the words of support that have been given from the US under Biden, the US under Trump and the big European governments, I think the Ukrainians are entitled to make the case that both on military support and on sanctions, they kind of haven't had all that they could have had.

36:33Absolutely. And the Ukrainians are showing again and again that the most pessimistic scenarios, which is that they would collapse immediately when America began to wobble, which is what people were hoping around Putin, hasn't been true. They are absolutely determined to keep fighting. Again, I was very lucky to talk to Jack Watling from RISI, who very kind of called me from a plane when he just was leaving Ukraine. He points out that on your optimistic scenario that if Ukraine can hold through to next year, Russia is of course not in a very strong position because the oil price is well then and the oil price is really what keeps that economy going.

37:11But this is really where the question is, if you really wanted to have an impact on Russia, what you would do is you would go after these shadow fleets. And in particular what you do is you would pull full EU sanctions on any country that's moving Russian oil and you would close the straits of Denmark. You'd stop the ships going through 60 % of Russian oil is going through the straits of Denmark. To do that, you would need the European Union, you'd need the Danish Navy, you'd need the British Navy and everybody else to come together. You could do it without the US, but you'd have to get the Europeans together and you'd close the straits of Denmark and you would have to plan for Russian response.

37:47You'd have to manage that escalation. You can do that. I don't think that this is the edge of a third world war, which is what people will imply, but Russia will definitely bark and respond as you begin to shut down those shadow fleets. But if you do it in a reasonable way, measured, have everything thought out, Europe could really inflict serious damage on the Russian economy and put pressure on them to stop this war. So will they do it? I remember right at the start of this war, was this trust foreign secretary when the whole thing was starting? I think she was and I can remember her saying, I don't know why this just popped into my head.

38:22I can remember her saying that they won't be stupid enough to invade and if they do, we are ready with the toughest sanctions that have ever been imposed on another country. Good talk made for headlines, which is you've constantly told us is what she cares about. I check this out. There are several hundred banks in Russia. How many of those banks were targeted when we were going after the so -called Swift systems? Seven. Out of several hundred. Out of several hundred banks. So you go after them, you get the headlines and then the money just get moved around. We've talked before about how the oil getting cleaned in different parts of the world and India is a big, big importer, China, massive importer.

39:05And Europe itself continues to buy oil. And this is also difficult with Trump. So I don't have to keep going about Trump, but I think he is such a consequential figure in all of these disputes. And there's this really strange pattern going on. So like I said in relation to Netanyahu, a few days before they met, we're days away from a ceasefire. We're going to get a ceasefire. It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be marvelous. And he's got a cycle with Putin that goes like this. I've got a great relationship with him and I think he wants peace. He then has a phone call with him. And literally, immediately after the phone call they had last week, they had the and then he goes straight into, I'm not happy with him.

39:49And then he goes round the cycle to, this is all Joe Biden's fault. Yeah. So as you pointed out, this is an amazing cycle because it's the same cycle that he follows with Israel. So remember, he said, I'm in the middle of peace negotiations with Iran, don't attack them. Netanyahu then orders an attack. Trump says, terrific, wonderful attack. And now it's peace. I've spoken to him on the phone. We're calling it off. And then Israel continues to strike. And he then says, I'm very, very angry with Israel. Turn your bombers back. You mustn't do this. And then Netanyahu turns up in the White House with the letter saying, you've got a Nobel Peace Prize.

40:23And Trump is happy again. And he even says, wow, that means a lot coming from you. That, well, that means a lot coming from you. So, and one of the things that I think Russia senses and Netanyahu's government senses that in the end, they can do almost whatever they want because Trump is never actually going to section them. And he's never really going to withhold the support that he provides for Israel. All the impunity. Impunity. Yeah. We taught before the Trump second term how we felt that Putin and Netanyahu were basically waiting for Trump because we thought it's been shown that he'd be more sympathetic to them than Biden or Kamala Harris.

41:01But I don't think any of us imagined it would be quite this level of impunity. And the other thing just for European leaders, how long we've been talking about this, I think it's $300 billion a euro now of frozen Russian assets that are held in the jurisdictions of the West. And we're still talking about whether this can be used to help Ukraine. And there's argument, well, let's save it for reconstruction. But you know, I just, I just think I was talking to, you know, I was talking to Ukraine, and that's why I'd probably why I've sort of speaking these terms. But they, I think they do feel that they've, their tight, their hands have been pretty tied behind their backs.

41:41And if you think that when JD Vance was saying, you don't have any of the cards, you've got no cards left to play and Trump and Vance were picking up billions of insukin in the White House. In a sense, that's because the West has been taking the cards off them. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that that's the extraordinary horror of what Trump and Vance are doing. I mean, what they're doing systematically is weakening and impoverishing their allies. You can look at it in the way that Trump and Vance presented, which is, we're just asking European countries to pay their own way. But what is the consequence of forcing European countries to spend five percent on GDP?

42:20And we can get into this. I'd like to do a proper episode on this maybe next week. It basically means that countries whose economies are underwater and aren't growing are going to have to cut their health spending and all their other welfare. Are you sure to interview on defense? I begin to shift my view on defense. What's happening when we do? We're spending too much. I think that we are now in danger of spending too much, yes. And I'll try to develop that next week. Okay. Second thing, what happens when Trump announces 25 % tariffs on Japan, 25 % tariffs on South Korea, which he's just done in the last few hours?

42:51He's impoverishing and bankrupting America's allies around the world. And this idea that it's just about America first, he is making the world a worse place by targeting the most stable liberal democracies around the world, undermining their finances, making them poorer, and somehow not caring. And final point, we talk about strategic autonomy, European independent from the US. The fact is we do not have any systems that actually allow us to fire surface to air missiles to really deal with ballistic missiles threats were completely dependent on the US. It's true for many of our weapon systems where most of the components come from the US, but these things in particular, it's extraordinary.

43:33They were developed first in the 1980s. They are very, very complicated bits of kit, because what they have to do is increasingly deal with hypersonic missiles, which are traveling at 2000 meters a second. They have to intersect with their warheads. They have to decouple from your radar system and trigger in. They have to be tested on these incredible ranges, whether US are firing them in the desert in California or they're firing them into the sea. And despite 30 or 40 years of this technology, Europe has simply not stepped up to deal with it. So that our major enemy in Europe, which has Russia have is Scandermissiles, which we have no way of dealing with.

44:15We are completely over -barrel. We talk about the strategic autonomy stuff, but it's not just Ukraine that can't get its hands on the weapons it needs to defend itself. Europe isn't going to be able to get them. And for two reasons, I mean, one of them is Trump not wanting to provide them. The second thing is the Department of Defense, and particularly a guy called Elbridge Colby, whose advising heads for this, which is we want to keep our patron missiles for China, so we're not going to give them to Europe. He is clearly a very, very powerful person within this debate and his regularly portrayed as being one of the forces pulling Trump away from Ukraine towards Russia.

44:50Just one other thing you mentioned about the missiles getting sent returned, as it were getting sent back. For the third time, Hexer, the Secretary of State of Defense, has ordered the return of weapons that have already in the process of being delivered. And then there was one line that really jumped out at me, and I think this was from Peskov, my old sparring partner, Dimitri Peskov, who's still put his press secretary, and he said of the phone call, they did not broach the subject of the paused weapons deliveries. Why not? Why is that not a issue? Why is that not some speak about? I guess what Mark Rutter, who you were giving a very hard time to last week, because of his sequestres.

45:34I guess what he and other European leaders might say is that they can see where this is going, but because they have allowed Europe to fall behind, they're going to need time to fill this massive gap. And the most important thing is to keep Trump as on board as they possibly can during that period. But it's a pretty hopeless situation to be in. My final point, before we close on what has been a pretty heavy session, who do you think are the five most important people in the world to Donald Trump right now? Five most important people to Donald Trump in the world. So I think what he cares about, this is a trick question, obviously, but I believe on the basis of talking to Michael Wolfe and the mooch and others.

46:16So what does he really care about? He cares about fame and money. So the five most important things in the world, people in the world, are people are going to make him famous and rich. Okay. The five most high -secret as follows, Yurgen Vattner Friedners, Azalatoya and Enger, Kristin Klemert and Grie Larson. Are they footballers? They are the current members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee. They will decide. And I've got a great faith in Norwegians. That's the right thing. That's the fame that has met. That's the fame that those the five people who are going to give him the fame that he wants.

46:54Absolutely. I always say, remember when I worked in number 10, I always, people who would side up to me, remember Simon Hart that said he said he thought about calling his book about my knighthood. Yeah. I always had a rule. Anybody who came in trying to use me directly lobby to lobby for them to get a knighthood, I would do everything I could to make sure they did it. And I think we should apply that to the Nobel Peace Prize. If you want one, you don't get it. That's good, even if you get letters from the head of the Pakistan Army star from Netanyahu and the President of Congo. No. No. No, no.

47:28It's not going to work. We have to find a better content next week. It's amazing. Isn't it actually how much President Trump's ego is now bound up with this international state something? It's one of the things that I was most interested in when we were working together on this mini series that we've just done on JD Vance, which is the way in which JD Vance really establishes himself through that staged mad confrontation with Zelensky and the White House. So maybe something just to finish on for a second, which is thinking back on the well, what do you think we learned about JD Vance? What was surprising about JD Vance?

48:01I got a notice. I think the thing that most surprised me looking at his early life in a sense was just how impressive the story is. You cannot take away the fact that he's clearly come from an unbelievably difficult chaotic background. There's an argument as to whether he overstates it, but on any reading he's a pretty impressive person to have turned himself into the figure that he became. But then I think because of this constant changing of his circumstances, I think he is capable of changing personality. I also think with most people they're not really capable of changing personality, but I think he is.

48:35And whether that's makes him a good actor. So when you talk about the meeting with Zelensky, looking back at that, I think he provoked that way more than Trump. And I think he did it because he was in that mode. One, he doesn't believe in forever wars and he wants to get rid of you. Great. Out of their hair. But two, I think at that moment, that's what he thought he had to do most to impress Trump, which right now is one of the big things he wants to do. I thought that was fascinating. And I think this the sense of him as a chameleon endlessly changing adaptions right at the heart of that that many series.

49:05So encourage people to listen. Yeah. So we've got episode four. We're on episode four this Friday of this mini series. And then after that, we're going to be doing a Q &A to see what those who've listened to have thought about it. And you can hear the first three episodes in full right now. Get up to speed before episode four. Just head to the rest of sponetys .com. Join the rest of the politics plus. And that will give you access to go on rule. What does it give you access to? Gives you access to ad free listening. If you get annoyed by ads, gives you early access to tickets for our live shows, which we're about to do at the end of the year.

49:39Gives us access to mini series and interviews that we do only on the rest of sponetys plus and other offers too. Great. Let's do it. Let's just sign up. New episodes of the series will drop every Friday. If you haven't heard episode three, here's a Taster. The price of getting Trump's support is you have to say the election was stolen. You have to say that Trump won the election and Biden is not president. Which he doesn't believe. The shift has been so profound. We're seeing migrants kidnapped our dogs and cats. And what I worry about is the threat from within. Have you said thank you once? To accommodate Trump, to be alongside Trump, to be the vice president and hopefully set himself up to be president.

50:19I mean, he showed so much character getting from point A to where I knew him that you thought that it never occurred to me that character would be the defect actually. That was the death quality. There is some talk that the van's favorite idea for the next election ticket is Van's Trump. A van's with Donald J. This is running me. Correct. How better to keep Trump's senior on board than to have Trump as a name. That's the one about that. Let's talk about that.

50:48Okay, I hope you enjoyed the Taster. And if you want to hear more of that one and episode one and episode two, all you're going to do is science trip plus. So it's super easy to sign up. All you need to do is go to the rest of this politics .com. That's the rest of this politics .com. We'll see you soon for question time where I think we're going to be talking about new parties, Elon Musk, you party, Corbin's, potentially new party, special education needs and British schools, Texas floods. What's happening in the Balkans with Dodik? We're going to touch a little bit on Rachel Reeves, the charts start and we're going to finish with a few lighter questions.

51:21Cool, see you then.