Why The West Defends Ships Not Palestinians, Grant Shapps’ Delusions | #NovaraLIVE

Welcome to Novara Live. I'm Michael Walker. I'm joined by Ash Sarkar. Ash, thank you for covering for me on Friday evening. Well, you better have been up to something fun because if you were just sat on your tushy watching the traitors and eating your body weight in shawarma, we're going to have words. I was celebrating my mother's 70th birthday, so I don't think there can be any complaints. What a good excuse, I think, for taking a Friday off work. Coming up later tonight, David Cameron gives a pretty disgraceful defense of Israel's actions in Gaza. Israeli spokesperson, Elon Levy, goes one step further and just straight out lies. We look at elections that have just taken place in Taiwan and what they mean for its relationship with China. All very interesting. Stay tuned for all of that. Despite the American and British bombing of Yemen, the Houthis have today struck a US cargo ship with an anti-ship ballistic missile. The Americans say the ship is unharmed, but it won't inspire much confidence for any ship deciding whether to sail down the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal. The attack follows the US shooting down an anti-ship cruise missile on Sunday. That missile, fired from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen, was aimed at a US warship stationed in the Red Sea. Neither of these Houthi attacks came without warning. Following the US and UK joint bombing raid on Yemen, the Houthis promised a, quote, strong and effective response. Today, they've reiterated that threat to the USA and the country is, quote, on the verge of losing its maritime security. It's in that context of escalation in the Red Sea that Grant Shapps has given his first major speech as the UK's defense secretary, and he defended Britain's role fighting the Houthis. Nobody can say that we did not give the Iranian-backed Houthis every possible warning to cease and desist. We made it very clear. I work very closely with our American allies on the messaging on this. We sent messages direct and indirectly to Iran and to the Houthis to say that time was running out. They decided on the 9th of January to enact an enormous mission hitting or trying to hit a lot of ships. This is a legal activity, illegal activity. We host the International Maritime Organization here in London. We are, you know, if you like, in some senses, the guardians of this international free trade. It matters to us as an economy, which brings 90% of our products in by sea. The guardians of free trade. Now, there were two things to note there. First, the idea that Britain has the capacity to control the world's oceans is straight out of an outdated imperial playbook. We were forced to give up on that vision in the 1940s. I'm not convinced we can revive it now. It's for Britain to keep the seas free. Obviously, of course, free for Britain and their allies. Second, if we really wanted to keep the Red Sea open to shipping, perhaps we could just call for a ceasefire in Gaza. That really would work, right? This isn't happening in a vacuum. We are seeing these actions by the Houthis because of Israel's attempted genocide in Gaza. That is the case regardless of what Grant Shapps says. This is a completely separate situation. I want to stress, it's separate from the situation in Israel-Gaza. It's 2,600 kilometres away. That is the distance involved here. The idea that the Houthis are sometimes... This is a very distinct action. As I said before, we'll wait and see what happens next. Yes, Gaza is about 2,500 kilometres away from Yemen, but you know how far away the Red Sea is from Britain? More than 8,000 kilometres. It's nearly 12,000 kilometres away from Washington. If the Houthis can't really have a legitimate interest in Gaza because they're too far away, then please explain what we're doing, sending warships to the Red Sea. That was a question put to Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy this weekend on LBC. The question is, why is a ship in the Red Sea in a position to be attacked so that we can use that as an excuse to retaliate? Why is the ship in the Red Sea? Jack, the first thing to say is there is a multi-national maritime protection force. It involved 14 nations. I'd urge you to look at the joint statement that was put out. Jack, I'm answering the question now, please. I'd ask you to look at the joint statement that was put out. It sounds like, Jack, your position is that we should sit back and do nothing about it. That's what it sounds like. I'll explain my position. My position is we shouldn't be there in the Red Sea. This is why. The Houthis had never attacked a ship prior to October the 7th. October the 7th happened, disappointing as it was that it did happen at all, but it happened. The Houthis decided to take action after October the 7th. Now the question is, for you as a politician, you have to study the situation and ask why did they take action after the 7th? And you'll have to understand that the root cause of the problem, the root cause, yes, not the periphery cause that you politicians are trying to tackle with, the root cause is the Israel-Palestine problem. If that is solved as number one issue, the Houthis will be out of the picture. Jack, hang on a second. You've just asserted something. I'm coming back now, Jack. Jack, are you someone who have made, I think you probably are, have made your voice heard, maybe joined a protest, been absolutely clear at your concerns about what's happening in Gaza? Jack, have you done that? Yes. Yes, right. Jack, did you do that in a peaceful, democratic way? Yes and passion. Maybe you marched, maybe you protested, maybe you lobbied your MP, maybe you communicated your views in letters and tweets, but did you do that, Jack? And I'll explain. No, no, just answer the question. Did you do that, Jack? Jack, did you do that? Jack, can you answer the question? Did you do that, Jack? I just said, I said yes. Yes, right. So Jack, why are you then defending, why are you defending militia firing on people's lives in the Red Sea, affecting our cost of living, deliberately stoking escalation? Why, Jack, are you aligning with them instead of the democratic order, Jack? I'm not aligning. Yes, you are. You just said it was okay. No, I didn't. It's because of October the 7th. Jack, let me just give you a simple answer, as my mother would have said, two wrongs don't make a right. And you should have learned that by now, Jack. You're an adult. Now, if that was just James O'Brien on LBC, I would have found it frustrating and idiotic. But that guy is set to be our next foreign secretary. And everything he said that was so, so stupid, right? He said, well, you went and peacefully protested against the genocide in Gaza. That's the correct thing to do. Why did the Houthis have to get involved militarily? Now, you could say exactly the same thing about Israel's war. Oh, yes, lots of people had candlelit vigils because of the hostages that had been taken by Hamas and the people who were killed, the innocent civilians killed, right? Why couldn't Israel just do that? Why couldn't Israel just respond with a candlelit vigil to what happened on October the 7th, right? It's a complete non-sequitur, right? There are members of the public in Britain who have protested, right? And so now every other country in the world, every other group in the world, should just peacefully protest when a genocide is going on. No, intervening is, I mean, you might say it's a responsibility, actually, of states and groups around the world. Then, of course, what David Lyman would say, you're defending the Houthis, you're siding with them, you think they're some brilliant group. No, absolutely not. I'm sure I have very, very little in common with the Houthis, right? I'm sure I have very, very little in common with the Houthis. But, I mean, I'm not outraged by the fact that they are trying to interrupt shipping to try and bring the world's attention to what's going on in Gaza. Yes, I'm sure they also have self-interested reasons, you know, they're trying to shore up the legitimacy among the Yemeni public. I'm sure this is not something which is driven by pure altruism. But I'm also not going to oppose one of the few, you know, outfits in the world trying to stop a genocide in Gaza. Obviously, South Africa doing it by a very impressive means, as well. The other thing David Lyman said there, which I think was ridiculous, is saying, are you just saying we should sit back and do nothing, you know, while our ships come under threat? Well, you know, when we are sitting back and doing nothing, when 24,000 Palestinians are killed in Gaza, right, we are exactly sitting back and doing nothing. In fact, we're doing more than sitting back and doing nothing, because we're arming the Israelis. We're giving them the weapons to carry out their genocide in Gaza. Right, so I just found that the most morally obtuse, like, idiotic argument, the internal logic of it didn't hold, let alone it being sort of geopolitically stupid. Ash, comments from Grant Shapps and Rishi Sunak today, both saying, oh, of course, the Houthis have nothing to do with Israel-Gaza. No, it's completely irrelevant, because it's too far away. And then you've got David Lamy saying, why don't the Houthis just peacefully protest like people in London? The thing which worries me most about hearing the series of comments from David Lamy and Grant Shapps is that something terrible must have happened in Westminster for every leading politician to have been kicked in the head by a mule. Because that's the only reason I can think of, for people just coming out with the most vacuous, idiotic denialism when it comes to this matter of the Houthis in the Red Sea. Now, you said, Michael, oh, you know, I doubt I've got a lot in common with the Houthis. The fact is, is that doesn't matter at all. All right. The world is full of people who do bad things, who you have to take into consideration when you're making foreign policy and defence decisions. If it was the case that Britain was morally compelled to drop bombs on every single violent government on the planet, there'd be very few countries left. All right. So dressing it up in these moral terms, which is, I think, very reminiscent of the war on terror, this narrative of, oh, well, if you don't support military action, it means you're automatically supporting the Houthis. That's the exact thing that they said about Afghanistan and the Taliban. It's the exact same as what they said about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. It's a stupid argument. It's a spurious argument. It doesn't bear any reality to the situation, because the reality is this. Israel, in choosing to conduct an indiscriminate bombing campaign, which has killed tens of thousands of people in Gaza, nearly half of whom, or perhaps even more than half of whom are children, many of whom are women, many of whom, the majority of whom are civilians, that has regional geopolitical consequences. So one, the process of normalization between Israel and the Gulf monarchies is imperiled. The idea that the Abraham Accords, the negotiation of trade deals, that that can go on ahead unimpeded, that's out the window. And of course, there's going to be considerations in terms of militant groups which operate in the region. That's just common sense. Now, Israel doesn't mind there being a huge amount of instability in the Middle East. Israel doesn't mind that the Houthis and indeed Hezbollah will take up arms and there'll be more conflict in the region. Because the more that pulls in America, and to a lesser extent Britain, the better for Israel. That means that they're guaranteed military aid and diplomatic cover. Whereas if Britain and America are allowed to continue what they tried to do after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and reorient their military efforts towards containing Russia and Eastern Europe, that's quite bad for Israel. So Israel absolutely does not give a shit about embroiling America and Britain into forever wars. Of course, Houthi activities in the Red Sea have a domestic political component, but they're absolutely caused by what Israel is doing in Gaza. The Houthi demands are very clear. And it's absolutely not a coincidence that these activities in the Red Sea have never happened before. And now indeed, they're happening after the complete and wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza. I mean, these things are obvious. But because we have such, I think, a venal political culture in our country, and because we have, as a nation, been tying ourselves in knots, doing acrobatics to try and justify the unjustifiable, you've got this absurd spectacle of leading politicians denying that what is going on in the Red Sea has got absolutely anything to do with Gaza. They're denying the facts in front of their very face. Now, if that is the basis on which military intervention is occurring, that you've got a culture of deep denialism rooted in both Westminster and Washington, I don't have a great deal of faith that the use of military force in Yemen is going to be particularly strategic, that it's going to achieve its objectives, or that it's not going to embroil us in yet another forever war with absolutely catastrophic consequences for Yemeni civilians, and has an added consequence of making us less safe in the West, and more vulnerable to terrorism. I've got absolutely no confidence in that. Because if you're turning around, you're going, Oh, yeah, this has got nothing to do with Gaza. How are we supposed to trust anything else that you're saying? It's complete and utter nonsense. And I think this is also why I hate this sort of hybrid of politician by day and pundit by night, because David Lammy is just, he's, he's absolutely just driving a wrecking ball through whatever veneer of, you know, insight and intellect that he claims to possess, because what he's saying is ridiculous. It's completely ridiculous. I mean, it's completely stupid. It's just so fundamentally unpersuasive, right? Also, the idea that you can just sort of take out the Houthis with bombs, this has been tried by the Saudis. There was an eight year war, lots of people died, the Saudis spent a lot of money, and now they are desperately trying to withdraw from it. Because guess what, regardless of how, you know, oppressive a group is, regardless of, you know, I mean, the Houthis are pretty goddamn poor as well, right? Everyone thought the Saudis are going to completely destroy this group of ragtag militants, who presumably everyone in Yemen hates anyway, because they're these oppressive authoritarians. Well, they had the advantage of being from Yemen, right? That kind of trumps everything else. If you are an invading power, then beating an indigenous force is going to be really goddamn hard. You can't do it with a few bombs over a weekend. It's going to be a year's long commitment. Obviously, for the Saudis, eight years wasn't enough. This could be a decade's long commitment. You know, how long are we going to be willing to strike missiles on Yemen and around the Red Sea, just so that we can give cover for the Israelis while they commit what's looking a lot like a genocide in Gaza, right? It doesn't seem like a sensible foreign policy to me, which is why we are seeing these politicians tying themselves in knots to say, oh, no, we couldn't just make Israel have a ceasefire and then this would stop. This has nothing to do with Israel-Gaza. This is just a completely coincidental action. The only way we could possibly stop the Houthis doing this is by sending our multi-million pound missile systems over there, right? You've got this big problem as well, where there's this sort of financial imbalance between the drones and the bombs used to strike the ships and then what the Americans have to defend them with. So the Houthis spending sort of £1,000 or so, whatever, for each time they send a missile and then the Western states have to spend millions to intervene against them, right? So it's not a sensible way of doing things. As you've seen, the level of debate in the UK regarding intervention in the Red Sea is idiotic, as Ash intimated, towards it's no better. In the United States, national security spokesperson John Kirby was asked about the risk of war with Iran. Does this increase the risk of a direct confrontation between the US and Iran? We're not looking for conflict with Iran. We're not looking to escalate and there's no reason for it to escalate beyond what happened over the last few days by the Houthis. They are the ones that have been escalating. We're not looking for conflict with Iran. That said, we know that Iran supports the Houthis. We know that they supply them with the missiles and the drones, the same things that they've been using to attack shipping. And we have made it very clear, Iran should stop that support. We have in the past and will continue to hold Iran accountable for the support that they give, not only to the Houthis, but to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and their militia groups in Iraq and Syria. And we're going to do that in concert with our allies and partners. We hold Iran accountable for the support they give to the Houthis. Well, much of the world wants to hold the United States responsible and accountable for supplying Israel with the weapons to commit what looks like a genocide. We hold Iran accountable for giving these people weapons which they then use irresponsibly. How is Israel using its weapons? Now, a reminder of what happened in Gaza this weekend while the Americans and the Brits defended ships in the Red Sea. That young boy was weeping over the killing of all his siblings by an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis. They were living in a tent. But it's not just bombs. There's a siege too. In Gaza City this weekend, thousands took to the enclave's beach to obtain flour distributed by the UN. Israel's blockade of the strip has stretched on for more than three months, starving the population of food, fuel, and medicines. Of course, that's a tightening of the blockade that had already been in place for 16 years. Ash, it's ridiculous to us, but it's going to be ridiculous to the majority of people in the world to see John Kirby, their spokesperson for the National Security Council, say, we hold Iran responsible for what the Houthis are doing while saying, oh, we've asked Israel to try and pay a bit more attention to the civilians, but they've got to do their own thing. Is anyone going to buy that? No, and I think you can see the attitude of the rest of the world when you look at the voting patterns on UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire where the UK is abstaining and the US is voting against, as is Germany. The West is in the minority here when you look at it in the global sense, but because of the economic and military might of America, the backing in terms of arms and military aid that they give to Israel, and the diplomatic cover that we also give to Israel, there isn't a sense of there being a global democracy which can effectively hold Israel to account. When South Africa is pursuing legal means to do so, look at the countries that are siding with Israel. It's Germany, it's Britain, it's America. We are the bad guys here. We are enabling what looks increasingly like a genocide, which is certainly ethnic cleansing and the crime against humanity of forcible transfer. These are things that we've been complicit in from the very beginning. I think that this is the hideous hypocrisy of what you might call the kind of liberal world order, where America and its increasingly antignified little lapdog, Britain, we see ourselves as the moral arbiters of the world. When other countries do precisely some of the things that we've done, which is arming militias, destabilizing entire regions, doing so because it benefits our military industrial complex and also secures geo-economic objectives, that we go, okay, these are what we call rogue nations. No, the fact is that we've been the rogue nations. We've just done it with the benefit of permanent seats on the Security Council. I think that phraseology on this issue with the bad guys is important because I don't buy into these, the West is terrible and the global South is honorable. I think most states act in their own self-interest or at least according to the self-interest of the politicians that lead them. But on this issue, on what looks like a genocide in Gaza, we are the bad guys. When the history books write this up, they are not going to speak positively about Britain, about the USA, about all these countries who not just sort of turn to look away, but actively, proactively supported both militarily, diplomatically, economically, the death and destruction which we're witnessing in Gaza. 24,000 people, 8,000 kids. The idea, oh, why are you siding with the Houthis? To be honest, I don't know enough about what the Houthis do, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be a backer of the Houthis when it comes to whatever's going on in Yemen. On this issue, you know, the issue is which side do you stand on when it comes to what looks like a genocide in Gaza? I mean, they are a bit more honorable than we are. We are on the wrong side of history on this one. Now, does that mean that the Houthis are better than the UK Conservative Party? No, right? But it means that on this particular issue, we are undoubtedly, unquestionably on the wrong side of history. Taiwan has just had elections and while the ruling party has come out on top, there are still worries the results could increase tensions with China. First, some background. Taiwan is a liberal democracy next to China and it used to be part of China until 1949 when the Chinese Civil War ended. That finished with the Communists defeating the Nationalists on mainland China and the Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fleeing to Taiwan. The Nationalists in Taiwan then declared they were the real China and until 1972, much of the world, led by the anti-communist United States, believed them. Of course, now there is no real dispute about who is the real China, but Beijing believes that given China's new wealth and power, it's time to once again make Taiwan a part of China. Now, back to the issues of this weekend's election. The results mattered to the world because each of the three candidates had a different take on the China question. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, has long been viewed as a threat by Beijing. Their candidate, William Lai, had been vice-president for the previous four years, but China feared he would become more hawkish than the woman he served under. The outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, had been in office for eight years. The main opposition in Taiwan is the Kaomintang. Now, they are the party of Chiang Kai-shek who had fought the Communists in the Civil War. However, perhaps surprisingly, they are seen as dovish on the China question, and Beijing made it clear the Kaomintang's candidate, Hou Yi, was their preferred winner. There was also a new party which gained momentum in this election. They're called the Taiwan People's Party, and they appealed largely to the young and focused mainly on social and economic issues, not relations with China. Now, unfortunately for Beijing, the DPP's Lai won the presidency with 40% of the vote. The Kaomintang came second with 33%, and the TPP gained 26%. Lai addressed the international community in his victory speech. We're telling the international community that between democracy and authoritarianism, we will stand on the side of democracy. Taiwan will continue to walk side by side with democracies from around the world. Earlier today, I spoke to Brian Heo, a journalist and activist based in Taiwan, and editor of New Bloom Magazine, which describes itself as a leftist pro-Taiwan independence organisation. I started by asking Brian what he thought the election results said about Taiwan. So the election resulted in a win for an unprecedented third term by the Democratic Progressive Party, which is a centre-left party that has historically favoured Taiwan independence, though it now supports a pro-status quo position. That shows that voters preferred a continuation of the previous administration's policies. That being said, the right-wing parties, the TPP and the KMT, which lean towards innovation with China and are centre-right to right-wing, if they had actually banded together on a joint ticket, they probably would have won. It's only through this divided vote then that the Democratic Progressive Party won a third term. The split between the political parties in Taiwan is primarily not on the basis of left versus right, but traditional left versus right issues overlap onto this distinction in Taiwanese politics that's more between independence and unification. The KMT, the Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party, is historically the former authoritarian party. In the present, despite having been defeated by the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, in the Chinese Civil War, it now favours unification with China. Because it was the authoritarian party, many of the activists who rose up against it during democratisation were more left-wing or progressive. The Democratic Progressive Party, which is now the centre-left party, emerged from the Daxing movement. There are more left-wing elements, more centre-left elements, and there are also right-wing elements to it. But it has a history that is more linked with left-wing activism that has drifted close to the right as the decades have gone on, and has been able to hold political power. The Taiwan People's Party, as far as I understand it, they were appealing more to young people, maybe on social issues. Now, I had assumed that that meant that they were somewhat progressive. Was I mistaken in that? It's actually really interesting because it's really based around the appeal of the party leader, Ko Wenzhou. He is all over the place in terms of political positions. That's including cross-trade relations. He originally said he was cautious of China, but now he's shifted more towards reviving trade deals with China that were provoking backlash around a decade ago. Regarding social issues, he started off framing himself as more progressive, but then he has a history of misogyny, for example, saying that unmarried women over 30 are a national crisis, dismissing female candidates, for example, but also comments are interpreted as homophobic. He is also seen as more progressive, from progressive, now seen as more conservative. Then I think a lot of the young people that support him don't necessarily hone in on that aspect of him. They're attracted to his appeal as a politician that is populist and breaks from established mold, having gaffes and saying things are ridiculous, getting a lot of hits on the internet. To put my cards on the table, when I think about the possibilities of a third world war or something, Taiwan would be a potential hotspot. The idea of hawks getting into power, people who are up for some kind of conflict with China is quite worrying. I tend to feel like, oh, I hope the doves win in the election, the people who are closer to the People's Republic of China. How would you respond to that as someone who lives in Taiwan? I think the interesting thing is the Taiwanese electorate votes every election on the basis of the choice they feel that will keep Taiwan safe and prevent a war, and also prevent Taiwan from losing its democratic freedoms. At present, this is the Democratic Progressive Party, the party of hawks on China. It's a party that calls for deterrence on China, because anyone knows that if you actually do have a war with China, provided they're willing to throw enough people at you, eventually you will lose. Taiwan can never beat China in a war. It can hold off China for a certain amount of time. There might be a lot of deaths on the Chinese side, actually, but then the DPP doesn't hope for a war. The KMT, though, the right wing and the opposition, have framed it as a choice between war and peace, and this is also China's preferred narrative. In that sense, then, they will criticize the DPP as provoking China and saying that deterrence is actually provoking China. Instead, you should be lowering the military budget and returning for trade agreements with China, even though China perhaps will seek to use that as a way to politically influence you, to deteriorate political freedoms in Chinese society. They often will claim that the DPP is actually just overplaying the Chinese threats. They'll even deny war crimes and actions occurring in China, things such as human rights violations and Xinjiang and so forth, saying that there's not enough proof. So there's that. From your answer there, it seems like people in Taiwan want the status quo when it comes to relations with China. They're not gagging for a war with their giant neighbor, and they don't also want to just be absorbed into the People's Republic of China. Is the status quo sustainable? Obviously, you've got a China which thinks it's now strong, it's wealthy, it's powerful. It's got a leader who seems somewhat determined to reunify Taiwan with China. Is the status quo sustainable? Can it be continued? What would that look like? Yeah, it's a very good question. Yeah, people do hope for the status quo. That's why the DPP won another term in office, because it promised to be the party of the status quo. Yeah, it is a question because China is becoming more aggressive. I think there's still a lot of obstacles to attacking Taiwan. For example, the economic blow would be enormous. China would also be losing upwards of 60,000 troops in just the first few weeks of a conflict. It's very hard to estimate. But then China has not fought a war in 40 years. And you think about just the death toll of the wars we've seen in the world currently. I mean, the assault by Israel and Gaza, or the war in Ukraine, and that's many orders of magnitude higher. And so I think there's a lot actually that prevents China from carrying out military action. But if they actually take Taiwan, they will hope to do so on minimizing the loss of life for their own sake, actually. And so oftentimes, then using elections as a way to influence the outcomes and in a way that's more favorable to it, or trying to discourage Taiwanese from resisting that's what the efforts are focused on. Just to you know, because I know the election wasn't just about or potentially wasn't even primarily about relations with China, could you just give us a bit of a flavor of sort of the domestic issues that were sort of under dispute during this election and what the result might say about them? Yeah, absolutely. Part of it just shows that the cross trade issue is not the only issue Taiwanese care about. There's also the economy, for example, that Taiwan has seen actually quite good economic growth in the past few years, has not trickled down to the common people. Houses aren't affordable, young people have very low salaries, declining birth rates that people are not having kids is because they can't afford that. And so there's all these issues that the parties are aware of. And actually, all major parties in Taiwan agree that these are the issues facing Taiwan. They have various solutions, but they're not substantially different. The main difference between parties is still on the relation to China. And explains also the rise of the TPP, the third party that is more conservative, perhaps, but also more for the unification side, that is appealing among young people because they have an anti-establishment message. TPP, the central left party, they've held office for quite a long time now. And so that leads to backlash against them for failing to address these fundamental issues facing regular Taiwanese people. Britain's Foreign Secretary David Cameron has added his voice to the chorus of Western politicians dismissing South Africa's ICJ case against Israel. This week, you suggested to the Parliamentary Committee that Israel might be guilty of war crimes. I didn't say that. Well, OK, let me ask you this way then. Do you agree with the South Africans that Israel has a case to answer before the International Court of Justice? No, I absolutely don't. I think the South African action is wrong. I think it's unhelpful. I think it shouldn't be happening. Now, of course, I'm not a lawyer, but they are talking here about genocide. They're taking this case on the basis of genocide. And to prove that, you've got to prove that there was intent. Now, you know, I take the view that Israel is acting in self-defence after the appalling attack on the 7th of October. But even if you take a different view to my view, to look at Israel, a democracy, a country with the rule of law, a country with armed forces that are committed to obeying the rule of law, to say that they have, that that country, that leadership, that armed forces, that they have the intent to commit genocide. I think that is nonsense. I think that's wrong. But you can't know that. You can only judge on the basis of what they've done. Yeah, you can judge. You can judge, though, on the basis of what they have done and how they've acted and why they're acting. And to say there's an intent to commit genocide, I do believe that's wrong. So David Cameron's dispute with the South Africans was all about intent. He said that saying Israel has an intent to commit genocide was nonsense, right? He's saying they've got democracy, they've got the rule of law. Of course, they couldn't be trying to commit a genocide, right? They're a country like us. Of course, they couldn't be doing something as bad as genocide. Similar to, you know, it's Israel. It's like, you know, it's a democracy, rule of law. Nothing to see here. It's essentially the argument he's making. Now, he obviously hasn't read the nine pages of the South African submission outlining all the genocidal statements made by Israeli politicians since October the 7th, which we've reported on extensively on this show. And he presumably also hasn't read the Prime Minister of Israel's Twitter feed, right? We will restore security to both the South and the North. Nobody will stop us, not the Hague, not the Axis of Evil, and not anybody else. So that was tweeted this weekend. So much for Israel being a state that conforms to the rule of law, right? We are going to do this regardless of what the Hague says. That is not a country which, to me, sounds like it's committed to the rule of law. Now, I also think members of the British Conservative Party would do well to wind their neck in when it comes to criticizing South Africa's approach to the law and human rights. At the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher branded Nelson Mandela, who would go on to become South Africa's first democratic president, a terrorist. And the Conservative student wing went so far as to create posters like this. Now, the poster read, Hang Nelson Mandela and all ANC terrorists. They are butchers. David Cameron was a student at the time these posters were made. He was also a conservative, though there's no evidence he had any involvement in those posters or sort of wore badges to that effect, which many other young conservatives did. Cameron did, however, make a visit to apartheid South Africa. It was in 1989. He was 23 at the time. And the all-expenses-paid fact-finding mission was funded by a lobbying group seeking to lift sanctions on the apartheid South African regime. I thought David Cameron's answer there was really telling, because basically he didn't engage in any of the facts of what's going on. He didn't engage in any of those questions about intent, which are well evidenced. He didn't engage in any of the questions about the number of people killed, which are all well evidenced. He just said, this is ridiculous. Israel are like us. You can't possibly accuse a democracy with the rule of law. Now, obviously, there are big questions about Israel being a democracy. It's an apartheid state. It's not a real democracy. It has some democratic elements that look like us. It has a rule of law, which is more similar to Europe than other parts of the world. But democracies are perfectly capable of committing atrocities, especially when it's outside of their own borders or when it's done to other people. Exactly. This idea that a country, a nation, is somehow inoculated from the accusation of genocide on the basis of having some kind of parliamentary democracy is complete horseshit. You can have managed democracies, number one. You can have anti-democratic elements within a society for particular kinds of people. You can have democracies where there is, in fact, strong public appetite for the kinds of actions which South Africa are describing as genocide and intent to commit genocide in Gaza, which is exactly what we're seeing in Israel. 96% of the population think that there isn't enough bombardment of Gaza over the last three months. They want to see more firepower being used. So having a democracy is completely coherent with conducting a genocide. I think that when you look at the specifics of Israel, how it was founded in 1947 and 1948, the massacres which took place in the run up to the establishment of the state of Israel and shortly after, I think that you can say this is a continuation of its origins as a state rather than a departure from its history so far. I mean, Rashid Khalidi put it very well. The idea of Israel was to create a Jewish majority state in an Arab majority territory. Now, if that's what you want to do, you have to conduct some form of ethnic cleansing. There is no non-violent, humane way to do that within the sort of timescale that Israel wanted to achieve it. You have to deny that group of people who are already there their rights wholesale. That's exactly what happened in 1948. When you look at the maintaining of an occupation, the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, that's not consistent with a sort of liberal democratic state. That's consistent with a settler colony. When you look at the blockade on Gaza, when you look at the conditions that were imposed on Gaza before October 7th, the fact that food and fuel imports predominantly had to come in through the illicit tunnel economy because the legitimate imports which were allowed by Israel were totally throttled. The fact that the majority of Gazans were living without clean drinking water before October 7th, well, that doesn't spell a democracy where all the people there, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, are free to flourish in peace and in dignity. That is the actions of a profoundly violent state, which doesn't want a certain group of people on the basis of their ethnicity and their religion to live in that territory. So genocide, to me, is completely consistent with all the things that Israel has done since 1948. It is not a departure from these policies. It's of course an intensification and an abhorrent one at that. It is a worsening and it's undeniable, but it is a continuation of the very beginnings of Israel as a nation state in 1948. The idea that states like ours can't do atrocities, I just find stupid, right? It's idiotic, it's juvenile. It also seems to be a little bit racist, right? Saying, the country like ours, they're our allies, they couldn't possibly do terrible things. Why not? Right, look at the facts in front of your eyes. Last week, South Africa argued at the International Court of Justice that there is genocidal intent behind Israel's actions in Gaza. Their case included a lengthy dossier of genocidal statements made by the Israeli officials. But while the ICJ case was being heard, Israeli government spokesperson, Elon Levy, was in the UK busily defending the indefensible. And for once, Britain's journalists seemed to be doing their job. On news night, Victoria Derbyshire put some of Israel's genocidal statements to him. This is your president. It's an entire nation out there that's responsible. He's referring to Gazans. Have a look at this, the next one. We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba. Nakba, as people know, is a term for catastrophe. After the 1948 war, a war used by Palestinians about ethnic cleansing. And we all have one common goal, erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Can you see why some people believe that you absolutely don't want Palestinians any longer in Gaza? We think we have been very clear, both in word and in deed. In those words? Well, Mr. Vachouri does not make decisions on security matters in Israel. We think we've been very clear, both in word and in deed, that the people of Gaza are not our enemy. Our enemy is the Hamas regime. And that is why we have gone further than any army in the history of the world to try to get civilians out of harm's way. I'm going to bring you back to the words of those politicians, if I may. We're now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba. Nakba, the Palestinian term for ethnic cleansing. Those are the words of a government minister in your government. Let's talk about a little bit of historical context, what the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba. I'm just asking you about those words. No, so I want to talk about that word Nakba. When the Palestinians use the word Nakba, they are referring to the consequences of the decision in 1948 to try to scuttle the creation of a Jewish state under the UN General Assembly resolution. They declared war in 1948. That war of annihilation did not go their way and there were consequences as a result. And how is that relevant to what your government minister has said now? Because what he is saying is we want to get rid of these people. No, we do not want to get rid of these people. That's what he said. No, we have been very clear in word and in deed as a government and as the prime minister and the defence minister have said, that we urge civilians to get to safety in the safe zone. There were consequences as a result, right? So that's how he's talking about the Nakba, right? The Nakba, so the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Very, very well documented, including by historians such as Benny Morris, by Ilhan Pape. And they show, you know, definitive proof that people were driven from their homes never to return, right? And he's saying, well, that was just a consequence of their actions, a consequence of the Arab states not being happy to have a majority Arab place, Palestine, a majority Arab country being divided, right? You can say what you like about that. I don't think it's unreasonable to oppose a state, a majority Arab state being divided and given to another people. But there we are. People disagree on that. What's not the case is that any kind of pretext like that would justify ethnic cleansing. The spokesperson there seems to be suggesting, well, there were consequences as a result, right? And that seems to be how they're thinking about this, right? Hamas committed some atrocities on October the 7th and there are some consequences as a result. If that involves the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, so be it. And we had a bunch of senior politicians there calling for genocide. And it's true, being shown to the spokesperson, sorry. And it's true, Israeli politicians have also said that they aren't targeting civilians in Gaza. So who should we believe? The ones that say that we are or the ones that say that we aren't? Well, the court will want to incess not just the sum of the statements made by Israeli politicians, but rather what kind of atmosphere those statements have created. Now, their test will be this. What did the Israeli public and particularly soldiers understand by the words used by Israeli politicians when they are making what look like genocidal statements? Now, that's why South Africa presented evidence like this. So that footage shot by an Israeli journalist showed a group of IDF soldiers dancing and chanting while holding automatic weapons. What are they saying? They make reference to the quote seed of Amalek, which needs to be wiped off. Now that echoes the biblical reference that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made at the start of the war. And they also say, quote, there are no uninvolved civilians. In other words, everyone's a target. And that's very similar to what the Israeli president had said. Now, on Channel 4 News, Krishnan Guru-Murti confronted Levi with that piece of evidence. How do you explain that video that was played in courts yesterday of Israeli soldiers singing about Amalek and singing about the fact that there were no innocent civilians? Krishnan, in every war, soldiers may perform things for social media that have absolutely nothing to do with the declared goals of this war. And everyone at every level understands. But it revealed their goals. But this goal, and again, you keep going back to this Amalek reference, refers to the destruction of Hamas. It refers to the destruction of the terrorist organization. It refers to the destruction of the terrorist organization. But in that video, we see them chanting about there are no innocents. The prime minister has been clear, and the defense minister, and the war cabinet, and all those who make decisions, including the chief of staff and all the senior generals, that our war is a war against Hamas and not the Palestinian people. So were those soldiers wrong? Was that chanting wrong? Had a senior officer or a politician come in, would they have said, stop that, that's wrong? I'm not familiar with the particular video. The video that was played in court yesterday? I haven't watched that particular video. I was on a flight from Tel Aviv yesterday during the proceedings. But of course, if soldiers say things that are not in accordance with the military goals of the campaign, that is not acceptable. And the army has already disciplined soldiers on occasions when they have deviated from the discipline and the standards that we uphold. Now, of course, he's seen that video. We've all seen that video. And of course, the soldiers feel totally empowered to chant those things, and then we presume behave accordingly, right? The Amalek reference was made by Israel's prime minister. It was Israel's president who said a whole nation is responsible for October the 7th. Now, it doesn't get higher than that, right? You can't say, well, this was just, this was a, it might have been a cabinet member, but he's not that powerful. This was the president and the prime minister saying exactly what is being repeated by those soldiers. So Elon Levy's defense of Israel doesn't stack up. But will the judges at the International Court of Justice agree? Well, we expect to hear a verdict on South Africa's application for a provisional order in the coming weeks. But whatever they decide, it's not actually clear how Israel would respond. Now, on the News Agents podcast, Lewis Goodall asked Elon Levy this. If the ICJ were to rule against you in the preliminary round, the actual eventual conclusions may take many years, but in terms of their preliminary assessments, will you comply with their stipulations? We fully expect the ICJ to throw out this spurious claim. No, but if they don't? I'm not going to answer absurd hypotheticals. It's not an absurd hypothetical, it's either yes or no. It is an absurd hypothetical, because when you have parents sitting in that courtroom, whose children were abducted and being held as hostages, the idea that an International Court of Justice that is supposed to uphold international law might actually order those parents to stop fighting to bring back their children is an absurd hypothetical. You'll adhere to a court judgment if they rule your way. It's an absurd hypothetical. What kind of kangaroo court would that be? It's an absurd hypothetical. Why are you even signatories to the convention if you are unwilling to commit to abide by the means by which that convention is policed and enforced? What is the point? Lewis, the state of Israel was one of the first signatories to the genocide convention. Genocide was defined... And so I would have thought that the state of Israel would be the first to say that they would want to see that that court stipulations are adhered to for precisely the reasons you are referring to. The state of Israel would like to see international law being applied fairly, understanding that to the extent... In the way that Israel wants. No, in a way that understands that on October 7th, we were the victims of an act of genocide. Now, Alon Levy might be reluctant to say Israel will ignore the ICJ's verdict if it goes against them, although he's very much intimating in that direction. But as we've already said on this show, his Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been less coy saying on Twitter that not even the Hague would stop them achieving victory. Ash, does he believe what he's saying? I mean, the things that were kind of the most obvious lies there were him saying, I haven't seen that. You know, I haven't heard that. I haven't heard them say that. These people are marginal. They're in the cabinet. And then many of the things said by the President and the Prime Minister, right? There is clearly genocidal intent being spoken by people in the highest positions of power in Israel. It's clearly being repeated by soldiers on the ground. And as the South African case is making clear, that is being enacted on the ground. What did you make of those interviews there? So I was actually talking with Stephen Methven, our lovely researcher, who I believe is sitting kind of opposite you and towards the right about this when we were scripting Friday's show. And we were talking about Alon Levy and we were trying to make sense of how somebody can tour the new studios of the world saying things which are not true, which are verifiably false, and do so in a manner which seems completely unruffled. And the only way in which I can make sense of it, and this is, of course, totally conjecture on my part, is that he's an extremely politically motivated individual. It's not that he sincerely believes the things that he's saying, but he sincerely believes in the cause, which means that he's got to participate on a battlefield of his own, which is media and communications. Because if you truly believed that the only way in which Jewish people could be safe and secure would be to have a nation of their own, that that nation, sorry if that means ethnically cleansing the people who were already there, sorry if that means denying them statehood, sovereignty, and self-determination, but our need is greater than theirs or more important than theirs. If you truly believe those things, it wouldn't then be all that difficult to say that your contribution to that project would be defending what I think is utterly indefensible. You know, denying the truth in front of your very eyes and, you know, providing communications cover or at least, you know, producing confusion in order to make it easier for that state to continue its objectives of ethnic cleansing and having total domination of the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. I think that's kind of obvious and that's something which, you know, I can almost understand. Doesn't mean I think it's right, but I can understand that if you're an incredibly politically motivated individual, it wouldn't actually be that difficult. It wouldn't actually be that difficult because you're totally convinced that you're correct. There is one other thing that I'd like to add and that's about his characterization of the Nakba as being a result of the Palestinians' failure to make peace. Firstly, that is just historically false. The events which led up to the Nakba include the Arab revolt in the 1930s, which was brutally put down with help from the British, who also trained and armed Zionist militias. Now, those Zionist militias also then formed a part of the militias which carried out the massacres which led up to the Nakba, which resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. So just on a point of historical fact, he's wrong. Also, the choice of emphasis, I think, is completely wrong because to take it away from, you know, historical dates and facts of this massacre and this militia, let me put it this way. If people came to your house one day and they had guns and they had grenades and they had bombs and they said, this is our house now, but don't worry, we're very magnanimous. You can live in the attic or in the basement. If you want to travel between the attic and the basement, you will be subject to humiliating checks, strip searches. Some of you may be detained. And also if I find you in the kitchen, I will kill you. Would you look on those people with kindness? Would you think that they've got your best interests at heart? Would you think that the partition arrangement which allowed you to live in the basement or the attic where previously you had the whole house is a fair arrangement? No, you wouldn't. Would you accept the characterization of being a terrorist or a warmonger if you wanted to fight back against the situation which has forced you into captivity in your own basement or your own attic? No, you wouldn't accept that characterization. And yet, that's exactly the way we look at the history of Israel and Palestine. We look at people who were booted out of their own homes, booted out of their own lands, forced into the territorial minority, the smaller part of the land. And we go, these bad people, they don't want to make peace with the other people who've got the living room, the kitchen, the bedrooms and the bathroom. I mean, when you spell it out like that, it's ridiculous. But that's precisely the truth that Elon Levy, and it's not just him, it's many people who participate in Israel's communications war. That's precisely the truth that they're trying to obscure. It's basically you fought against your dispossession and therefore you're fair game. We can do anything you want or anything we want to you, sorry. Let's end with one more clip of a politician pleading ignorance when it comes to Israel's genocidal intent. Britain's Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has appeared on Radio 4's Today programme where he was asked this. I want to put to you some of the way that people in power in Israel speak. Let's start with the Israeli army where a spokesman said our focus is on creating damage, not on precision. That is perhaps part of the reason why so many Palestinians have died in the last three months. And look, absolutely, there's a difference between supporting, as you mentioned at the top, a country's right to self-defence and supporting each action or even the government of a particular country. What we're saying is that Israel, like every other country, must act within international humanitarian law. But if you say your focus is on creating damage, not on precision, that doesn't suggest operating within international humanitarian law, does it? I haven't heard those kind of comments from ministers, but it's not right. That was an Israeli army spokesman in October, but they have ministers who've said similar things or spoken in similar ways. The Defence Minister said we will eliminate everything in relation to Gaza. The Finance Minister has called all Palestinians Nazis, said that there are two million Nazis in Gaza, referred to the two million Palestinians who live in the West Bank in the same way. The Jerusalem Affairs Minister has said there are no non-combatants in Gaza. You'd have to be ignoring the news pretty hard not to have seen those comments. Not to mention South Africa's case at the ICJ last week. That's really shocking when it comes to Schaap's statement there. I haven't heard those kinds of comments from ministers. This is not just a commentator. He's not just an education minister, someone with a different brief. He is the man in charge of signing off arms exports to Israel and he is willfully ignoring their intentions in Gaza. So he's saying, oh yes, I believe in their right to self-defense. Of course, I would like them to try and protect the interests of civilians, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to send them weapons and then close my eyes and pretend I can't see any of the actions they are taking with those weapons or what they're saying about their intentions in Gaza. That is a criminal abdication of responsibility, especially when it comes to genocide, by the way. Because what the genocide convention implies is not only that it's against international law to commit a genocide, but it also provides an obligation on states to do everything in their power to stop one happening if it is ongoing. So a defense in some international tribunal of just, oh I hadn't heard they'd said that. If you're the guy who signs off the weapon shipments, it's not going to stand up. Ash, thank you for joining me tonight. Thank you for having me, Michael, and hopefully my actually good camera will be working again soon, so you won't be seeing me via the medium of Web Potato next time. Yeah, I was noticing you're a little bit fuzzy. Not in your interventions, of course. Very concise and astute as always. Thanks to all of you for tuning in. We'll be back tomorrow for another live stream from 6pm. For now, you've been watching Novara Media. Good night.