Sunak Attacks House Of Lords Over Rwanda Bill, Israeli President Stokes Regional War | #NovaraLIVE

Hello and welcome to Navarra Live. I'm Moya Lothi-McLean and tonight I have the pleasure of being joined by Dahlia Gabriel. Dr Dahlia Gabriel. Oh hello, thank you so much. It's so nice to be with you, Moya. I always love our little team Navarra Live takeovers. Our little teletexts. Well tonight we will be looking at rising tensions in the Middle East while Israel's president accuses Iran of being an empire of evil. We're asking, does he have any grounds for that claim? Meanwhile the mother of an Israeli hostage found dead in Gaza claims he was killed by the IDF and Argentina's president attacks socialism and radical feminists, don't forget about us, as the world's elite gather in Switzerland. Plus we're announcing a very special February event so stay tuned. Over in the House of Commons the clown show is back on the road. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is celebrating a Pyrrhic victory after his Rwanda bill passed its third reading. Now this is the bill that is attempting to bypass a Supreme Court ruling. That ruling judges that the Rwanda deportation scheme is unlawful because Rwanda is not a safe country to send asylum seekers to. Rishi Sunak has decided the best way around this problem is to sign a treaty with Rwanda and pass a bill that says, well, it is safe. Genius. Sunak managed to get the bill through the Commons with only a minor Tory rebellion of 11 MPs voting against it. That wasn't because they thought it was too harsh, no. The rebels were Tory right-wingers, including Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, who think that Sunak's bill does not go far enough. Sunak was so relieved to get the bill through he decided to indulge in a little light politicking this morning as celebration. This was Sunak speaking at a Downing Street press conference. The Rwanda bill has passed. It's now time for the Lords to pass this bill too. This is an urgent national priority. The treaty with Rwanda is signed and the legislation which deems Rwanda a safe country has been passed unamended in our elected chamber. There is now only one question. Will the opposition in the appointed House of Lords try and frustrate the will of the people as expressed by the elected House or will they get on board and do the right thing? It's as simple as that. Now Sunak's stressing the unamended bit because the Tory rebels put forward a load of amendments which did not pass and that, what he said there, seems like a pretty clear attempt to frame the Lords as an obstacle to democracy, which given the fact it's a House of Unelected Representatives who have direct influence over our political policy, they kind of are. But it's also quite a bold move from a man who wasn't elected by the general public to be Prime Minister and who appointed an unelected man to be his Foreign Secretary by, hmm, making him a Lord. Now doing the media rounds this morning, Policing Minister Chris Philp was faced with defending Sunak's new deflection strategy. I've issued this warning which you say is not a warning to the House of Lords. You've told them that this is all about policy which has been brought up by the democratically elected government. Marking that distinction between the unelected House of Lords and the House of Commons, where does the Foreign Secretary currently sit? Well that's obviously a rhetorical question. David Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, sits in the House of Lords. Parties for many years have had ministers in the House of Lords. So he's not democratically elected, is he? He's not democratically elected, but the government, the government is democratically elected. Well, one of the four major offices of state is occupied by someone who is not democratically elected and sits in the House of Lords. He represents a party, the Conservative Party, that was democratically elected with a significant majority at the last general election. He represents a party that was elected. And who elected Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister? Well, I mean, as you know, we don't have a presidential system, right? In a presidential system, like in France or America, you elect the President. We don't have a presidential system. We have a parliamentary system where the people elect Parliament and the Prime Minister is the person who has a parliamentary majority and very frequently that changes in the middle of the Parliament. That's happened over the last 300 years. So we have a parliamentary system. So the Prime Minister himself is not democratically elected by the people? I mean, this is like Constitution 101. You brought it up. You brought it up when you made the distinction between the House of Lords and the democratically elected government. I'm just pointing out the facts. That's right. And the government, that's right, the government and Parliament are democratically elected. The party that has a majority in Parliament that was democratically elected is the Conservative Party. That's why we have a Conservative Prime Minister and a Conservative government, because the Conservatives were democratically elected at the last general election with quite a big majority. And that's how our Constitution has worked for about the last 400 years. Dalia, Rishi Sunak says that he wants the first Wanda Plains to leave in the spring, but this bill is probably going to be subject to a load of obstacles, committee stage, then it's got to go to the Lords. It might not even be embedded in official legislation until just before the election. We ask again, what is the point? Well, I mean, this is not a serious piece of policy. It is much more accurately understood as a piece of political theatre. And what we mean by political theatre is that it sets out to achieve a set of political goals that have nothing to do with the actual objectives that are laid out by the policy itself. And the reason that this is an unworkable piece of policy, there's so many reasons. Like obviously, I mean, the morality of it, we don't need to explain that here. It's a heinous piece of legislation. It's deeply immoral. It's awful. But even let's put that to one side. Procedurally and logistically, it's nonsensical. First of all, it's simply in order to be able to execute this plan in its original form, and in the form that the Tories would consider it to be a pure representation of the Rwanda deal, of the Rwanda policy, would literally require us leaving the Refugee Convention. It would require Britain leaving international human rights frameworks that would essentially situate Britain as a pariah state if it did so. So on that basis, even if we say that that happened, and even if the legislation, when the legislation does pass through in a kind of diluted form, so that it can actually be legal, then on a procedural level, you will have so many contestations and appeals on individual basis, that it will be that the system will be so clogged up, that it won't actually achieve the thing that it is set out to achieve, which is to stop refugees and asylum seekers from being able to live in Britain whilst their claim is processed, which is something that they have the inalienable right to do. So it won't actually be able to do that, because there'll be so many contestations and so many individual appeals, that it won't happen in any kind of scale that would make this, from the Conservative's point of view, a success. And then even if all of those obstacles were overcome at a plain diddly, and you could get planes flying out with people, the actual capacity of Rwanda to deliver what the Conservatives have promised Britain, their voters, which is, you know, basically that refugees can't be on these islands until whilst their claim is processed, and instead they're going to spend that time in detention in a foreign country in Rwanda. Rwanda can only accept, even if this all went through as Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman wanted it to, Rwanda could only accept in the first five year trial period, 1,000 asylum applicants. 1,000 asylum applicants over five years. Do you know how many applications for asylum there were just last year? 74,000. So the numbers are completely meaningless. And yet the reason that we see the Conservatives go, like, trying to make every headline and putting all their public political energy into this unworkable policy is because ultimately it's a way of kicking the can down the road on what is a completely unviable politics that they have laid out, an unviable promise that they have made to their voters, which is A, that your life is going to get better if there are no refugees and asylum seekers in Britain, and B, that we can somehow maintain this contradiction which has always underpinned the British border system, which is essentially migrants being necessary for the economy to run and yet being unwanted and being undesired. And that's always been something that the Conservatives have had to play with, because in order for London to function as the financial centre that it functions as, it needs low-wage migrant workers that are not going to be bound to the kinds of workers' rights legislations and frameworks and ability to unionise and organise that local workers are able to, that local workers have. And so that kind of contradiction, by bringing in and making something as unworkable as the Rwanda policy the centrepiece of this conversation, you essentially avoid the really difficult things, which is that the kinds of promises that the Conservatives and frankly the Labour Party, these far-right promises of ending immigration to Britain or ending refugees in Britain, has become, it's like you can not have to deal with the actual politics of that, and instead attach yourself and create this ridiculous barometer that will never actually be able to materialise. And when it doesn't materialise, you can blame every single institution but yourself. You can blame the institutions that you want to weaken, things like legal frameworks, so-called lefty lawyers, woke mob, whatever you want to call it. You can blame these institutions, stir up hatred and dissent against these institutions, and basically deflect that blame and say that those institutions are the reason that we can't implement the kind of policies that we have told you will make your life better. Therefore, we don't have to talk about the fact that those policies are A, not possible because of the contradiction that lies at the heart of them, but also that even if we did execute those policies, your life wouldn't actually get better because refugees and migrants are not the reason that you are experiencing a decrease in living standards. So by attaching themselves to this kind of endless political theatre and this endless battle against the courts and this endless battle against what is logistically and legally feasible, they are able to not have to address the actual core problems of this kind of anti-migrant politics, which is yes, specific to this particular Conservative government at this particular moment, but is also actually kind of an existential problem that has existed in British politics as far back as you can possibly remember, which is the reliance upon the British economy on quote-unquote foreign-born labour, whether that is labour that comes in, that migrates into mainland Britain, or it's labour in the colonies and the neo-colonies, the necessity of that labour and yet the revulsion and the racism and the desire to dispossess the people who do that labour and the need to devalue the people who do that labour. That contradiction has always underpinned Britain and will always plague it until it can really reckon with, you know, the reason why Britain is the richest country, is one of the richest countries in the world. And until that is reckoned with, they're going to constantly have to grapple with this contradiction and they're going to deal with it by attaching themselves to the endless battles against the court via these unworkable pieces of legislation. Going to war has always been a useful distraction policy when things are going, to use a technical term, tits up, but you don't really address the prime causes of that. But instead of a war with other countries, we are going to war with our own institutions. That is the modern Conservative Party in a nutshell. Rishi Sunak might have got the Rwanda bill through, but it did cost him two party chairs and a parliamentary aide at last count. Lee Anderson and Brendan Clark Smith both resigned their senior party positions to protest the bill. Shane Stevenson, a private parliamentary secretary in the business and trade department, also resigned in order to vote for rebel amendments to the bill. Of course, Lee Anderson couldn't depart his role in dignified silence. He gave GB News this interview on changing his no vote to an abstention at the last minute. Last night I resigned as a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. That was a difficult decision, but I think the right thing to do, you know. Tonight I was going to vote no. I went into the no lobby to vote no because I you know, I couldn't see how I could support the bill after backing all the amendments. I got into the no lobby. I spent about two or three minutes with a colleague in there. The Labour lot was all giggling and laughing and taking the mic and I couldn't do it in my heart of hearts. I could not vote no, so I walked out and come out. So I've abstained. I wanted to vote no, but when I saw that lot in there laughing, there's no way I could support them above the party that's that's given me a political home. As someone commented on X, principles are what you have until someone laughs at you. GB News political editor Christopher Hope, who is a colleague of Anderson's, lest we forget, seemed bemused that Anderson's thick skin couldn't see him through to back a no vote. You seem quite crestfallen, Lee. I am. I'm gutted, mate, to be honest with you. It's not a nice thing to do to watch your mates go into one lobby and you go into the other. Like I said, I went into the no lobby to rebel. This is the key word at the moment. But once I saw the Labour lot sniggling and taking the mic, I thought, you know what? Well, haven't you got a thick skin, come on. I've seen you go toe to toe with the left, left of the other. But at the end of the day, my mates are going in one lobby and I'm in the other and they're taking the and the other. Tell us what they were saying then. They were just sniggling and pointing and laughing. Oh, Lee Anderson, you know, he's coming back to the Labour Party and all this. I saw that, I thought, you know what, off. It's like the playground antics. It is, it's playground politics. If anyone knows about playground politics, it's surely 30p Lee. Luckily, there are four other Tory Party deputy chairmen to fill the gaping hole left by Anderson and other colleagues to fill the gaff gap too. Therese Coffey, former minister for destroying the environment, decided to challenge Labour's Yvette Cooper earlier in the House of Commons on what she thought was a blunder. Now, Cooper had just referred to the government in Kigali and that's when Coffey took a noble intervention. Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's important to speak in this bill today. I have to say I was somewhat astonished by the speech of the shadow Home Secretary, who can't even get the name of the country right, talking about the Kigali government. We're talking about Rwanda, you know, a respected country that has recently been president of the Commonwealth. Talking about Rwanda. Kigali, of course, is the capital of Rwanda, a country that Therese Coffey deeply respects, obviously. Cut from the end of that clip is the little laugh that Yvette Cooper gives as it dawns on her, what's just happened? Some fantastic camera work going on in the House of Commons there. Therese Coffey could not let sleeping gaffs lie though. Here's how she tried to explain the error. Some keyboard snipers moaning that I criticise the opposition for referring to the Kigali government, not the Rwandan government. I would not call the French government the Paris government, nor the Scottish government the Edinburgh government. Why disrespect Rwanda? Why disrespect Rwanda indeed? I just know that that country is sick of being pulled into our shenanigans. And they're actually starting to say so. Rwandan President Paul Kagame told reporters yesterday that the total £290 million being paid to his country for the UK's deportation scheme could be returned if no asylum seekers arrive. Even Rwanda's president thinks what is so far free money because no one's been sent there is too much hassle for all this fuss. And that's a man who's been accused of backing ongoing ethnic cleansing in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Tory is once again distinguishing the UK. Israel's war on Gaza appears to be sowing increasing discord throughout the Middle East. But speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Israeli President Isaac Herzog wanted to point the finger elsewhere. There is an empire of evil emanating from Tehran, spending billions of dollars in arms and money and people's well-being to derail the entire stability of the world and the region. They've attacked the United States forces two nights ago. Openly, they have proxies all over the region, quietly lurking to undermine any peace process and any stability of the world. And that is exactly what we are seeing. And they have to be faced by a very strong coalition. Now, we're no defenders of Iran, which is a powerful state with its own geopolitical agenda. But talk of an empire of evil and proxies quietly lurking seems a simplification at best and a dangerous provocation at worst. Adding to the instability in the region, Pakistan appears to have entered the fray. A Pakistani drone and rocket airstrikes on Iranian territory have killed at least nine people. Four children were among the dead. Several missiles are reported to have hit a village in an Iranian province bordering Pakistan. Pakistan has described the strikes as, quote, a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes against terrorist hideouts. And the strikes came just a day after Iran fired rockets at targets in Pakistan's territory. In Iran, it was initially reported that the missiles were aimed at bases of a Sunni militant group. But those reports quickly disappeared from Iranian media. Pakistan says two children were killed in that attack, with three people injured. Relations between Iran and Pakistan have often been tense, but these strikes seem to mark a significant escalation in hostilities between the two nations, at least one of which has nuclear arms. They come in the context of exchanges of fire between several other states in the region. Jordan is suspected of striking targets in Syria today, killing 10 people. The strikes are thought to be connected to Jordan's Western-backed campaign against the drugs trade. A local journalist told Reuters that the country was, quote, targeting farms suspected of storing drugs before they're smuggled across the border, as well as the main homes and hideouts of known drug dealers. These strikes follow a series of cross-border attacks earlier this week. On Monday night, Iran fired 11 ballistic missiles into Kurdistan in northern Iraq. Iran said that it was targeting a Mossad headquarters in the area. A businessman and his family were killed. Iran claimed the strikes were in retaliation to Israel's suspected killing of several revolutionary guards in Syria over recent weeks. That same night, Iranian ballistic missiles also hit targets in Syria. Following those strikes, Iran's defence minister said this. We are a missile power in the world. Wherever they want to threaten the Islamic Republic of Iran, we will react and this reaction will be proportionate, tough and decisive. At the same time, there's been increased activity in the Red Sea. The Houthis have hit a US-owned ship with drone fire in the Gulf of Aden, south of Yemen, and that followed the US government's reclassification of the Houthi rebels as a terrorist group. In response, the US has now conducted a fourth round of air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. This is Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder. In our assessment, we hit what we intended to hit with good effects. Again, the objective here was to disrupt and degrade Houthi capabilities to conduct attacks. And we believe that overall, in terms of the scope and the number of strikes that we took, we have degraded their ability to attack. Clearly, they maintain some capability and we anticipated that after any action, there would likely be some retaliatory strike. The Houthis have caused massive disruption to shipping through the Red Sea, with insurers refusing to allow many cargo ships to pass through it. Despite Western attacks, the Houthis have vowed to continue blocking passage until Israel withdraws from Gaza. Now, to make sense of all of this and how it fits together, earlier today, I spoke to Gilbert Achakar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS in London. I began by asking him whether Isaac Herzog's evil empire accusation against Iran had any merit. There are several evil empires in the region, the United States being the major one, but what the Israeli president is hinting at is obviously Iran. And it takes a lot of nerve to call any other country evil when your own country is engaged in a genocidal war, as is the case today in Gaza. So Iran have bombed Pakistan, who have now retaliated with several civilians being killed. What's going on there? That isn't related to the war on Gaza, that is not related to the Israel-Palestine issue. That's between an old feud, actually, between Pakistan and Iran. Iran struck inside Pakistani territory in retaliating against a group called the Army of Justice, which Iran accuses of having conducted a series of terrorist attacks, most recently a few days ago, inside Iran. And so that was an action taken by Iran in what is becoming a tradition in this part of the world, where you see that every country just takes the full freedom of striking within other countries' territories in the name of pursuing some enemy. Of course, the United States and Israel have been pioneers in this method, but we can see that it is very dangerously spreading now in this exchange of fire between Iran and Pakistan, knowing also that there is the sectarian division that is involved here between Iran as a Shia country and Pakistan as a mostly Shia country and Pakistan as a mostly Sunni country. On that note, Jordan bombed Syria, which has been reported in the Western press, but this isn't connected to the Israel's campaign on Gaza or Iran's defence of Gaza, is it? It's not, and in the same way that the strikes Monday night conducted by both Iran and Turkey within Syrian and Iraqi territory, that's another example of what I was mentioning, were not directly connected to the war on Gaza, the Israeli war on Gaza. I mean, they were targeting local forces which they regard as enemies. Iran pretended that it was targeting Israeli agents within Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey doesn't have that kind of pretense. Turkey is openly at war with the Kurdish forces that are active in the Iraqi and Syrian parts of Kurdistan. These tensions between other countries like Pakistan and Iran, like Syria and Jordan, did we see military action accompanying those tensions before October 7th, or has everything escalated alongside Israel's military campaign on Gaza? All this did not start with October 7th, for sure. But the war that Israel has been waging since October 7th on Gaza has escalated tensions in the region, made the whole situation even more tense than it used to be. And when you have today also the United States striking at will inside the Yemeni territory, the Yemeni forces striking at sea or against shipping, well, usually related to Israeli trade. When you have now an old series of Israeli strikes in Syria for very many years now, you have Turkey conducting, regularly conducting strikes in Syria and Iraq against Kurdish forces. Iran is joining the fray, and now Pakistan. So it's becoming, you know, it's almost the war against all in this part of the world, very, very sadly. And of course, I mean, no one can pretend that there is any kind of international law respected by anybody there, starting by the United States, which gave the example, and Israel, which has been very active on this front. Is there a danger that these separate tensions will just end up with one giant ongoing conflict in that region? And if so, where do different states fall? What sides are people on at this stage? I don't think that at present, at this stage, there is any real risk of general war, general regional war. That's not really on the cards. I mean, the most likely or possible escalation of war or extension of the war, the war that, I mean, this genocidal war, once again, that Israel is conducting against the population of Gaza, the major risk of extension is towards Lebanon. And Israel has been over the last few days, in particular, escalating its discourse and warnings and threats against Hezbollah, in particular, and other groups that are active from Lebanon to engage into these kinds of fire exchange or skirmishes on the northern border for the Israeli state, which is the southern border for Lebanon. That's where you have a real risk of extension. Beyond that, I don't think that there is today, I mean, as the situation looks today, it's very difficult to imagine things going to the level of a real war between any other two states. Does Israel want a wider war at this stage, if it's, you know, escalating the attacks on the Lebanese border and within Lebanon, and it's making sure the spokespeople are pointing fingers at Iran and framing them as this empire behind everything? What is the end goal there? Israel, in the case of Lebanon, is putting demands on the Lebanese Hezbollah, requiring that it withdraws any troops, any forces they have close to the border, and a few kilometers to the north. And they are putting that as a demand, accompanied with a military threat. And the threat is very, very crude, very brutal threat of, I mean, the present Israeli minister of defense last August, so before October 7th and all that, threatened, and I'm just quoting what he said, to turn Lebanon back to the Stone Age. So this is, I mean, and this is actually what they are doing in Gaza today. So Israel is threatening other countries with, I mean, levels of destruction that are absolutely appalling and very, I would say, in this sense, nothing, I mean, comparable can be found maybe since the Vietnam War, or even the Second World War, to find such terrible destruction in such a very short time, just a few weeks or a very few months, you have had the destruction of a complete territory like Gaza. And Israel is threatening Lebanon, or at least part of Lebanon, of doing exactly the same. Let's just go back to Iran for a second. I've heard the term thrown around a lot today, proxy war between Iran and the US. Is that a useful framing at all to think of conflicts and tensions within the region? It's not in the sense that any explanation of what Hamas did by Iran is first a denial of agency for the Palestinians and for Hamas itself. And I mean, a very unconvincing kind of explanation. Actually, Iran and the Iran allies in the regions, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, or the Shia militias in Iraq, clearly expressed after October 7, their, how to say, their, I mean, some kind of criticism to Hamas for not having warned them in advance, or coordinated, or agreed with them on the date of its attack. So it's not at all that. But of course, that fits within the confrontation that exists in the region between Israel, the United States on the one side, plus the Saudi kingdom with its own considerations, and Iran on the other side. So there is this confrontation going on. And all things are linked in this. I mean, that's not a huge part of the world. And you can see the number of conflicts. Just imagine having this kind of density of conflicts in Europe, you would, I mean, that would look like a new world war. So there's a lot of moving parts in this region. But where do you see things unfolding over the next few weeks, months, even the next year? What we can see now is at least at the level of the ongoing war on Gaza, is that Israel is shifting gradually from an intensive bombing campaign into what it calls a low-intensity war, which is actually what they have been doing in recent weeks in north Gaza, that is, looking for the tunnels, trying to destroy what remains from the network of tunnels, and at the same time, of course, destroy and kill the remaining fighters of Hamas there. And this low-intensity war, they are promising to continue for the whole year 2024. And in that, I see also a very clear wager in some way or some way of betting by the Israeli government, and especially Netanyahu, on the election of Donald Trump. So, I mean, this is a year during which Israel believes that the Biden administration is not in a position to impose anything on them, even if it wanted, which it hasn't really shown any willingness for until now. And secondly, they may, I mean, they believe probably, like a lot of pollsters today, that Donald Trump is well in a good position to be re-elected as president, which would give a major boost to Israel's wildest projects in the region. And all this talk about a Palestinian state and the rest are just, I mean, hot air now, presently. That was Gilbert Ashokar speaking to me earlier today. Now, we have some breaking news. The Guardian has reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there will be no Palestinian state after the war in Gaza. Speaking at a news conference, he said, quote, in any future arrangement, Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan. This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do? Netanyahu added that he has, quote, told this to the Americans, also saying, quote, the Prime Minister needs to be capable of saying no to our friends. For months, we've been documenting the atrocities Israel has been carrying out in Gaza. Amongst the latest is this. This is al-Isra University in Gaza, where the IDF reportedly laid 315 mines before blowing it up. Beziruth University has also alleged that lots of valuables were stolen from that university. Now, according to the university's Facebook page, the IDF has been using it as a military base for the last month, which begs the question, if your military has occupied a building for a month or more, and if it has enough access to lay over 300 mines, is it really a legitimate enemy target? Or is it a war crime, the wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure? Today, though, we want to turn our attention to Israel's atrocities committed not on Palestinians, but on Israelis. This is from Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The IDF has said that three Israeli hostages were killed in tunnels under Gaza, and they may have been poisoned or suffocated. Two of the hostages were Ron Sherman and Nick Bezir, both 19 years old. The teenagers were also both IDF reservists taken into Hamas captivity from a military base near the Gaza border on the 7th of October. The third hostage found dead was Elia Teledano, a Tel Aviv resident who was at the Nova rave attacked by Hamas on the same day. Their bodies were all recovered in December from a tunnel in Jabalia, northern Gaza, near where Hamas commander Ahmed Randor was killed by the IDF. But a military investigation into the cause of death of the two soldiers has now revealed that there was no sign of gunshots or trauma, and its report goes on to say this. At this stage, it cannot be denied nor confirmed that they were killed due to strangulation, suffocation, poisoning, or as the result of an IDF attack or Hamas operation. Leaves it pretty open. The IDF also says a toxicological exam is now underway. But the mother of Ron Sherman, one of the soldiers, has claimed that he was killed, quote, not from accidental gunfire, not from crossfire, but from premeditated murder, bombing with poison gas. On a Facebook post, she went on to say this. Ron was kidnapped because of the criminal negligence of all the senior officials of the army and this damned government, who gave an order to eliminate him in order to settle a score with some terrorist from Jabalia. Oh yes, they also found that he had several crossed fingers, apparently due to his desperate attempts to escape the poison grave that the IDF dug for him when he tried to breathe fresh air, but only breathed IDF poison. My love, who would let me die in your place? What a nightmare you went through, death in terrible agony, and all at the behest of the IDF, which you trusted and valued so much, and the Israeli cabinet. Now those are obviously the words of a grieving mother, distraught at the loss of a young son. We don't have any proof that the IDF was responsible for Ron Sherman's death, but they do illustrate an increasing distrust in the IDF and also growing skepticism about the most prominent of the Israeli state's public justifications for the war, namely the safe return of hostages. And they come in the context of the IDF admitting that they have gunned down three hostages, shirtless, waving a white flag, and calling for help in Hebrew, just last month. Adding to that uncertainty are the events of October 7th, which centered on one location in Kibbutz Biri. 13 Israeli civilians were killed in what is now known as Pessi's house after the IDF fired tank shells at it. There were only two survivors, Yasmin Porat and Hadass Dagan. Haaretz reports this. According to Porat, after she was released by her mass terrorist, she was questioned by the police special anti-terror unit and told them that there were about 40 terrorists and 40 civilian hostages still in the house. Dagan was among the hostages inside the house where she says an Israeli tank fired two shells at it. She was the only Israeli to survive and she has confirmed Porat's account. The New York Times has also reported this on the events at Pessi's house. As dusk approached, the SWAT commander and General Hiram began to argue. The SWAT commander thought more kidnappers might surrender. The general wanted the situation resolved by nightfall. Minutes later, the militants launched a rocket-propelled grenade, according to the general and other witnesses who spoke to the Times. The negotiations are over, General Hiram recalled telling the tank commander, break in, even at the cost of civilian casualties. The tank fired two light shells at the house. The general wanted the situation resolved by nightfall. What a chilling phrase. The families of those killed in Pessi's house have now demanded military investigation into the actions of soldiers on the ground that day, according to the Times of Israel. The deaths of those civilians at the hands of the IDF, as well as the killing of soldiers in Gaza, has led many to question whether Israel is employing the so-called Hannibal Directive in its approach to the war. This is a recent Haaretz piece by journalist Noah Limoni. She calls for an immediate investigation into whether the directive was used at Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7th. The IDF has said it will investigate those events, but only after the war is over. You might think that's a little too late when there are still captives in Gaza. So what is the Hannibal Directive? It was a military protocol formerly used by the IDF until 2016. Created in 1986 following the capture of three Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, it instructs soldiers to use maximum force to prevent abductions. The reasoning behind it? Hostages are given enemy leverage in negotiations, with Israel historically paying a high price in prisoner exchanges for the return of soldiers. Now, the IDF has denied any interpretation of the Hannibal Directive that allows the killing of soldiers, but former IDF soldiers have said that was how it was understood on the ground. Yehuda Sha'al was an IDF soldier during the Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005. He went on to found Breaking the Silence, an organisation of veterans calling for an end to the occupation. Sha'al spoke with Al Jazeera, who reported this. You will open fire without constraints in order to prevent the abduction, he said, adding that the use of force is carried out even at the risk of killing a captive soldier. In addition to firing at the abductors, soldiers can fire at junctions, roads, highways and other pathways opponents may take a kidnapped soldier through, Sha'al said. Sha'al said that the Directive was shared with him and other commanders orally. I've never seen any written text of the rules of engagement, he said. Now, the Hannibal Doctrine was officially revoked in 2016, but suspicions are growing that it is being used in Israel's campaign in Gaza, currently ongoing. Asa Kasher is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv. He's also the author of the IDF's current Code of Conduct. Unlawful, unethical and horrifying is how he has described the IDF's alleged use of the Hannibal Directive in a new interview with Haaretz. Speaking about the Be'iri case, Kasher told Haaretz this. The idea that you would try and prevent an attempt to move civilians into Gaza by firing a tank mortar into the structure they are being held in is intolerable. It's unacceptable from the perspective of army orders and it's unacceptable from the perspective of army values. How is it possible that a high-ranking army official would give a command that so immediately and definitely endangers the life of so many civilians? It's just horrifying. Kasher also described a death cult ideology at the heart of the IDF. The army has in the past and continues to cultivate an ideology wherein sacrificing one's life is revered above all else. We all grew up on this myth of Tel Ha'i that Trump-Eldor's last words was, it is good to die for our country. It's bad to die for our country. That's what every single soldier needs to hear. Well didn't you write the IDF Code of Conduct? Can't you stick that in? But just by way of explanation, Tel Ha'i is the name of the location of an early Jewish settlement in Palestine as well as the site of a 1920 battle which has become an enduring part of Israeli national and military mythology. And Joseph Trump-Eldor was an early Zionist activist who died in that battle. Dahlia, what does the existence of the Hannibal Directive tell us about Israel and the ideology that whole country is built on? It tells us that settler colonialism, wherever it's found, is a politics of death and a politics of destruction. You know, as you outlined, the reason that this directive exists is because there is this understanding that the taking of hostages gives the enemy leverage, right? And therefore, in order to remove that leverage, the enemy being the Palestinians, in order to remove that leverage, you have to basically make it clear that you have to remove that possibility. So to say, even if you take hostages, we will kill you all even if it includes the hostages, right? You know, it's not lost on me that in that quote when he says, how can an army give a directive that would endanger so many civilian lives? I mean, that's the status quo of the IDF. That is what has been happening way before the latest escalation in aggressions. It is the status quo and it's not just something that should be visible when relating to Israeli civilian deaths. But yeah, I mean, this is what settler colonialism is. In order to create a state that has at its heart, that privileges one identity in a place where the majority of people are not of that identity, you have to dispossess and you have to kill and you have to destroy. And I think that, you know, and that has to be an ongoing project. It's why when you look at another settler colonial state like Canada, for example, until 1998 or 1996, sorry, they were essentially kidnapping indigenous children from their parents to put them in boarding schools in order to quote unquote, assimilate them into Canadian Christianity. You look at the state of indigenous rights in the US, in Australia, it's an ongoing project that never ends. And that is what sustains this project. And so I think also, so that's kind of in a more ideological sense that this is going, and this death and destruction turns in on itself as well, of course, as we can see here. But in this particular moment, I think that there is also, you know, the reason that this is being deployed right now and the reason we are seeing this politics of kill anything that moves, you know, Gaza is being mowed down in the most indiscriminate, obscene way. And the reason we are seeing this kind of seemingly incoherent military strategy that doesn't have any cohesive objective other than essentially to ethnically cleanse the region, to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Well, after that, I think it's time for a bit of community. And maybe it's a bit early to be asking, but what are you doing for Valentine's Day? I know what I'm doing because I'm going to be spending it with Yanis Varoufakis. Well, it's not quite a date, but I am going to be introducing our first downstream IRL where Aaron Bastani will be interviewing Mr. Varoufakis live on stage. Yes, Bastani-Varoufakis link up. You got to be there. And it will be at Earth Theatre in East London on Wednesday, the 14th of February. They'll be covering a wide range of topics, geopolitics, economics, technological change, and asking, is capitalism over? Yanis is in town promoting a new documentary series about his life. I'll also be doing a DJ set afterwards. So if you want to come and watch Aaron and Yanis talk, but also me, spin some tunes, head to nevaramedia.com slash Yanis for tickets. Gets his own code. It's what some are calling the fiery speech given at Davos, the World Economic Forum for the elite, the snooze fest that convenes in Switzerland once a year. That's where Argentinian president Javier Millet went on a wild rant against socialism. Here's how he introduced his speech. Today, I'm here to tell you that the Western world is in danger. And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty. The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. We're here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause. Since there is no doubt that free enterprise capitalism is superior in productive terms, the left-wing doxa has attacked capitalism, alleging matters of morality, saying, that's what the detractors claim, that it's unjust. They say that capitalism is evil because it's individualistic and that collectivism is good because it's altruistic, of course, with the money of others. Gosh, I want to live in Millet's world where there's a collective society around every corner, not a CIA-backed coup. Here's how he continued. The market is a mechanism of social cooperation where you voluntarily exchange ownership rights. Therefore, based on this definition, talking about a market failure is an oxymoron. There are no market failures. If transactions are voluntary, the only context in which there can be a market failure is if there is coercion. And the only one that is able to coerce generally is the state, which holds a monopoly on violence. Consequently, if someone considers that there is a market failure, I would suggest that they check to see if the state is intervention involved. And if they find that that's not the case, I would suggest that they check again because obviously there's a mistake. Market failures do not exist. Market failures do not exist. The idea that capitalism is this great democratic instrument that exists in a world where everyone is starting from an equal point in the first place and that there's no coercion under capitalism. El Loco is producing more potent fantasy than J.R.R. Tolkien. Of course, no barnstorming speech by a Trumpian demagogue would be complete without having a little bash at the culturals and me, the radical feminists. This is how Malay went on. Given the dismal failure of collectivist models and the undeniable advances in the free world, socialists were forced to change their agenda. They left behind the class struggle based on the economic system and replaced this with other supposed social conflicts which are just as harmful to life as a community and to economic growth. The first of these new battles was the ridiculous and unnatural fight between man and woman. Libertarianism already provides for equality of the sexes. The cornerstone of our creed says that all humans are created equal, that we all have the same unalienable rights granted by the creator, including life, freedom, and ownership. All that this radical feminism agenda has led to is greater state intervention to hinder the economic process, giving a job to bureaucrats who have not contributed anything to society. I wish that the interventions of radical feminists would have led to greater state intervention. Well, at least in the UK it hasn't. I'm not sure about Argentina, but my god, the world he is describing, I wish, I wish, I wish, that's all I can say. But it is fascinating. That man got elected, he is now in Davos with the rest of the world's elite. He is, you know, he is there and he's in charge of a country and he's going to be able to impose his libertarian agenda on that country. And as funny as it seems to watch him get up there and hear the translator holding giggles as he's in real time having to translate that bizarre speech with a straight face, the impact, which I think we will see very soon, and if I'm wrong, you know what, I will eat my words, the impact that we will see of policies like Javier Mele's on his general public, the population elected him, will be devastating. It will be devastating. I think it will ruin Argentina. And if I'm wrong, you know what, I will stop being a radical feminist and you will see me in two years time at Davos on stage eating both a hat and saying I will be a libertarian, socialism is the cause of all the world's evils. Dahlia, are you a radical feminist? Tell me, tell me in a minute. Thank you so much for joining me tonight. Thank you so much for having me. I have a feeling that what you just described is never going to happen, but you know, I'd be interested to see it, but it won't happen. I'd quite like to go to Davos just once to see what it's like around, you know, all the lizards. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll be back tomorrow for another live stream from 6pm. For now, you have been watching Navarra Media. Good night.