FINALLY Piers Morgan Says Israel’s War Has Gone Too Far

While South Africa accuses Israel of genocide at the International Criminal Court, the majority of Western politicians and journalists have remained relatively quiet on the atrocities in Gaza. After Hamas' attack on October the 7th, pundits and politicians were queuing up to offer their condemnations. Government departments even raised the Israeli flag. But with the Palestinian death toll hitting 24,000, many pundits and politicians seem relieved at the chance to move on to other things. Instead of focusing on a potential genocide in Gaza, editors at the BBC, ITV and Britain's newspapers have decided a factional fight within the dying Tory party is the real news we should be focused on. And that's when they're not talking about King Charles' prostate. Perhaps they prefer to ignore the daily deaths of children in Gaza rather than risk the flak they might get for actually challenging Israeli apartheid. Now, to his credit, Piers Morgan is still focused on Israel-Palestine and after 100 days of war, he's belatedly stopped defending the indefensible. The civilian death toll in Gaza is testing the upper limits of proportionality. More people are dying every day than in any other conflict in modern history. Israel has no plan for life beyond the war except occupation or anarchy. And the nightmare scenario of a conflict engulfing the region is edging closer to grim reality with US-led strikes on Yemen and fears of war in Lebanon. Prime Minister Netanyahu, pandering to extremists who prop up his government, says nothing, not even the International Court of Justice, will stop him. Israel has dropped almost 30,000 bombs and shells on Gaza in 100 days, eight times more than the US aimed at Iraq in six years of war. It's true that every war in human history has taken many lives, clearly many innocent civilian lives, but 24,000 people in three months, with God knows how many more beneath the rubble, is that still a proportionate response? Every day of this war, I've asked that question of many guests. From afar, it's looking increasingly like the answer is becoming no. It's true that the Allied forces killed masses of innocent people in Dresden, in Hiroshima, and beyond to defeat the Nazis in World War II, but that was 79 years ago. We created systems of international law to make sure the atrocities on both sides would never be repeated. It's true this was Israel's 9-11, and there was no public appetite for restraint back then, but that yearning for justice took the US into two disastrous and deadly wars. Shouldn't Israel learn from those mistakes? And it's true that Hamas is an oppressive, misogynistic terror group, which hides in tunnels and uses its people as human shields, but 85% of the entire population has now been displaced, 70% of Gaza's homes and half of its buildings are damaged or destroyed, only 8 of its 36 hospitals are running, 2 thirds of schools and 100 mosques have been damaged by Israel's bombardment. Is destruction on this scale really what it takes to eradicate Hamas? And if the answer is yes, why are they still in charge? When will Israel provide some evidence that it has a plan for life after this war, for the Gazans and for Israel, and that that plan is remotely workable? There are major unanswered questions about this war with major consequences for the world. So that was only part of his sort of big intro speech. He did also sort of pepper it with lots of condemnation of Hamas barbarism, whatever you think of. I mean, I think they committed war crimes and I don't think attacking civilians is ever justified, but I don't think he gets the balance quite right, but it is quite powerful. Someone who has been very much open to the Israeli side of the argument over the past 100 days is saying this has now gone too far. And Helena, I want your thoughts on this because I do now actually think that the mainstream position, sometimes when I go on mainstream media and the person who I'm on with isn't actually necessarily a political journalist. There's someone who is sort of an influencer or reports on different things. The mainstream opinion now is that Israel did have a right to respond to the October 7th attacks, but they've gone way too far, gone way too far. That to me is the mainstream position. But to me, to sort of avoid making that argument, I've just seen lots of journalists and politicians sort of go silent. They just sort of stop talking about this because it's a bit embarrassing. I feel like sort of Piers Morgan sort of standing up and saying, no, this has gone too far is a good thing and we would be in a much stronger position if all journalists and politicians were willing to sort of say the same. I think that throughout this conflict, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I have to give some credit to Piers Morgan. He has been asking similar kind of questions for at least the last month, if not longer. He's had a lot of pro-Palestine guests on his show. He's not being shy about including both sides of the debate. Not that I think that it's much of a one, but credit to him for at least having people on. And because I think he's had so much interaction with people who aren't just pro-Palestine because they see the devastation and they feel some kind of empathy, but people who've done years of research, people who are completely immersed within the conflict, people from our side of the political spectrum in terms of how left-wing we are. I think that because he's had so much direct interaction with people who have shown him things that he wouldn't otherwise have seen and perspectives he wouldn't otherwise have seen when it comes to the kind of mainstream media outlets, who, as you say, don't really have much of their own opinions and certainly don't have huge amounts of knowledge about the history and the intricacies of the situation, that's taken him to a place where there's nothing that he can do to defend it and therefore he has to say something like this. Although what I will point out, the idea of him saying, well, Israel said they want to be able to use this stuff to eradicate Hamas. Of course, I think that this is, of course, a fool's errand. As Aaron Bassani pointed out when he was on GB News debating this very issue, every single building that you bomb is going to radicalise another Palestinian. The support for Hamas in the West Bank has increased by up 30 points in the most recent poll. That's a huge, huge leap. And so this idea that they can bomb their way to the removal of Hamas is completely nonsensical, because even if it's not Hamas in name, it'll be Hamas in terms of ideology, based upon their reaction to the current crisis. The other thing I would ask of Piers is, why now? Why is this your point at which you believe things have gone too far? You know, 25,000 potential people dead, scores more injured or missing, potential millions displaced at this point. When the people he had on his show were talking about the issues and calling for a ceasefire and bringing up all of these points months ago, two months ago over that, when he had his interview with Hossam Zomlot, it was a month into the crisis, and it's taken him this long. I mean, credit to the guy for at least getting to this point now. But you have to say, we were here way, way previously when we could see what was going to happen. And I don't want to say, I told you so. But I do want to think that maybe if he can get to this position, there's room for other people to move as well. What I think is that personally, lots of people are moving to this position, but they would prefer just to not talk about it. Because if you come out really strongly against what Israel are doing, you receive flak, you might feel uncomfortable. And to me, I feel like the people who are going out in the media and actively defending what Israel are doing is shrinking. But instead, what we're just getting is sort of silence. People are just happy for the news cycle to move on, as I say, to topics as important as the Princess of Wales, having what seems like a fairly routine operation, or Prince Charles or King Charles now having a swollen prostate. So I think it's really time for people to stop saying, oh, oh, the Gaza war, isn't that something, everyone knows about that, that's something in the past. No, this is still going on. 250 people a day are still dying. The genocidal intentions of Israel are no less strong than they were three months ago. But people seem to think, we can move on to other things now, let's not reassess our priors. Because heaven forbid we do that. Heaven forbid we admit that we might have got this a little bit wrong.