Gaza Death Toll Hits 25,000, Israeli Parents Storm Knesset | #NovaraLIVE

Welcome to Navarra Live. I'm Michael Walker and I'm joined by Ash Sarkar. Thank you for joining me this evening. Thanks for having me. It's a pretty heavy news day but I can't think of anyone I'd rather make sense of the chaos with than with you, Michael. Yeah, we do have some heavy stories this evening. David Lammy is confronted over Labour's position on Palestine. Of course, it's not the confrontation that's heavy but rather the broader context there. Benjamin Netanyahu is humiliating Joe Biden again and again and again and doing so in an intentional way. We'll explain why. And Lucy Fraser is the latest Tory culture secretary to come for the BBC. You can see if you think she hits or misses. A quick notice, our downstream with Yanis Varoufakis on February the 14th, Valentine's Day, is unfortunately sold out. Thank you everyone who has already bought a ticket. Make sure we have your email address somehow, I think, if you want to get earlier access to these things. Sign up as a supporter probably. I'm Navaramedia.com forward slash support. Israel's war on Gaza has hit a grim and tragic milestone. In just 108 days, the IDF's bombing campaign and ground invasion, as well as Israel's punishing siege on the territory, has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians. Nearly 10,000 of those killed have been children, including newborn babies. The UN has called Gaza, quote, a graveyard for children. There are still more than 8,000 Palestinians missing, presumed buried beneath the rubble of destroyed towns and cities. And some 63,000 have been injured by bombs and gunfire, leaving countless Palestinians with lifelong disabilities. According to Save the Children, more than 10 children per day have lost one or more limbs in Gaza. It's been an unimaginable onslaught. And yet, this was a headline in the New York Times this morning. Deaths in Gaza are declining. Never mind the 25,000 already dead. The good news is the number of Palestinians killed has halved over the last month. That's the message from the New York Times. That article is accompanied by this graph. It shows that Israel isn't currently killing as many people as it was in October, around 350 per day on average at its peak. Now, it's killed about 200 per day over the last month. The article gives this diagnosis of the drop in Israel's murder rate. For more than a month now, the Biden administration and other allies of Israel have been urging its leaders to scale back the war in Gaza. A more targeted battle plan, these allies have said, could reduce civilian casualties while still weakening Hamas. Some Israeli officials have made the same argument. It's now clear that Israel's leaders have followed the advice, at least partially. Maybe, or maybe, Israel has simply realised that it can save on bombs and bullets and let disease, hunger and the cold carry on the job for them. Last week, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported this. Half a million Gazans are suffering from acute hunger. They say let that sink in. They say according to the UN, Israel is creating conditions that are making life in Gaza impossible, but Israeli leaders are unbothered. Meanwhile, UNICEF has reported a 2,000% rise in the cases of diarrhoea amongst children in Gaza, a sign of the deterioration of child health in the Strip. Now, that makes this conclusion drawn by the New York Times in the aforementioned article hard to take. They say this. Israel has responded to international pressure in ways that suggest its harshest critics are wrong to accuse it of wanting to maximise civilian deaths. Ash, what do you make of this New York Times article? Are they right? Does the fact Israel is only killing 200 people a day prove their critics are wrong? I mean, absolutely not. 200 people a day is an exceptionally high death rate, considering just how small the Gaza Strip is and how short the conflict has been. If you compare it to something, to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has been described as a war crime, some have even gone as far to describe it as genocide. I don't think that it amounts to genocide, though it most certainly is a war crime. What Israel has done to a much smaller territory, a much more densely populated territory, is completely out of this world. It is beyond all comparison. Israel has killed more civilians in Gaza in just three months than Russia has during the entire course of the war. So this idea that Israel's critics are wrong, that would only apply if you consider a reduction in deaths per day to 200 as being some great act of charity. It really isn't. It is not an act of humanitarian philanthropy at all. I think what this reveals is two things, which is, I think you're right, Israel's moving to a new stage in the war, where it is able to not use quite so much expensive military hardware and allow its large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure, from power to health care facilities, to water, to food and aid not being allowed in, allowing these conditions to immiserate the Gazans even further. We're seeing widespread disease, diseases which are associated with poor sanitation and lack of sanitation facilities. We're seeing a 300% increase in miscarriages, so pregnant women losing their babies because of the conditions in which they have to continue their pregnancy. And just today it's been reported that young girls, women who have had to flee their homes, have been reduced to using pieces of tent fabric as sanitary wear, so using tent fabric as sanitary pads. That's undignified, it's humiliating, and it's something which will contribute to the spread of preventable disease. You're entirely right to say that it's merely a new phase in executing total warfare on the people of Gaza and it is not an easing of conditions at all. I think the other thing that this reveals is the sort of media political context that Israel operates in when it comes to the West. So I'm thinking here about America and also in Britain. I think that the political and diplomatic classes have been taken aback by the scale of Israel's assault on Gaza. I think they've been taken aback by some of their most dearly held platitudes that it's Hamas and Palestine who get in the way of a two-state solution rather than the simple fact that Israel does not fucking want one. They've been genuinely shocked. So there has been, I think, an attempt to go, hey, can you guys not be so just outrageously fascistic and brutal and out of step with international law? And in scaling back military bombardment but maintaining the conditions of siege, then you create conditions for the Western political and media class to go, see, Israel is a sort of reasonable democratic partner in the Middle East. See, they do listen to international pressure. See, our diplomatic efforts do work. Whereas, in fact, in terms of the human experience in Gaza, it's really not. It's really, really not. But it allows everyone to give themselves a pat on the back and to return to the status quo in terms of how people think about Israel, which has allowed them to conduct decades-long policies of apartheid, of ethnic cleansing, of territory theft, and in Gaza, the creating of miserable conditions to contribute to the depopulation of the Gaza Strip. And you can pretend that that's not happening quite easily. Because it's no longer a case of quite so many bombs being dropped on the heads of civilians. Really strange sort of congratulatory article from the New York Times. Can you imagine if sort of at Navarra Media, we put out a piece in November last year sort of saying, Ah, Hamas have reduced the number of civilians they've killed by 100% this month. Obviously, you know, many civilians were killed in the October 7th attack. None were killed in November. Since when was this sort of a metric which we should celebrate? They're only killing 200 people a day, right? It's completely bizarre, completely bizarre. An original justification of Israel's war was to retrieve the hostages taken on October 7th. And that was swallowed as a reason by many of Israel's international allies. Yet within Israel, families of the hostages are increasingly sceptical of the country's approach. This morning, some of those families stormed the Knesset, that's Israel's parliament. They held up signs reading, quote, You will not sit here while they die there. The families called for the government to do more to secure the release of hostages. And one woman held up pictures of three family members who were seized, shouting, quote, Just one I'd like to get back alive. One out of three. And over the weekend, protests took place against Benjamin Netanyahu's government and its relentless pursuit of war. Families gathered outside the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem to protest his rejection of a deal that would have seen the hostages released. Netanyahu's reason for turning it down? Its terms included Israel's complete withdrawal from the Strip and the release of Palestinian prisoners, something he said amounted to, quote, Surrender. That comes hot on the heels of Netanyahu's statement on Thursday that Israel should have security control over the entire area west of the River Jordan. Now, that doesn't appear to be something Hamas is going to allow. In a 16-page report released this weekend, Hamas has for the first time given its account of the 7th of October called our narrative Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The report sets out Hamas's reasons for the attack or their stated reasons, the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the oppression of Palestinians. They also deny any Hamas fighters targeted civilians on October the 7th calling allegations to the contrary lies and fabrications. Of course, this document should be treated with the same skepticism applied to official Israeli accounts. Hamas are belligerents in this conflict, not neutral observers. But unlike Israel, Hamas at least say they're open to an international investigation into those events. They say we are confident that any fair and independent inquiries will prove the truth of our narrative and will prove the scale of lies and misleading information on the Israeli side. In the report, Hamas also makes clear that they quote categorically reject any international or Israeli projects aimed at deciding the future of Gaza that only serve to prolong the occupation. So far, Western powers haven't shown much interest in reining in Israeli projects for Gaza. There are though some new signs that the EU may be beginning to move the dial. Top diplomats in the bloc have pressed Israel for a path to a two-state solution. That's reported by France 24. 27 foreign ministers from the member states met with Israel's foreign minister to push for an international conference tasked with coming up with a peace plan. According to a document circulated amongst member states, a key goal would be the formation of an independent Palestinian state quote, living side by side with Israel in peace and security. And it also said that participants should quote set out the consequences that they envisage to attach to engagement or non-engagement with the peace plan. So the idea of consequences is what has so often been missing when Western nations say, oh, we want a two-state solution. Well, what will you do if Israel won't agree to it, right? That's what's been missing. Israel's foreign minister though was at that meeting and he came with a different idea. This is from The Guardian today. The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, has suggested that Palestinians could be housed on an artificial island in the Mediterranean. This is according to sources at the meeting of EU ministers in Brussels. It is understood that Katz presented a video on the concept to the 27 EU ministers as an alternative to the two-state solution. He told them the video referred to a plan made some years ago when he was a transport minister. The intervention has caused dismay in Brussels where the EU representatives were meeting as part of a mission to lay the ground for a comprehensive peace plan. So that's the proposal they came to. They can have an island that doesn't even exist yet. It'll be an artificial island. I don't know if it's the 2 million Gazans or if it's the 7 million Palestinians living in the West Bank in Gaza who are supposed to go and live on this artificial island. I'm not entirely sure what's happening here. Actually, it's 5 million in Gaza and 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, 2 million in Gaza and 2 million in Israel. So I suppose he's potentially suggesting 5 million people go and live on this artificial island. Saudi Arabia is a country with expertise in building artificial islands. They've got a few. That doesn't mean, though, they'd support one for the Palestinians. And its foreign minister this weekend spoke to CNN about the latest Saudi positioning regarding two states. In order for the region to see true peace, to see true stability, and to see real integration that delivers economic and social benefits for all of us, including Israel, we need to see true peace through a credible, irreversible process to a Palestinian state. We are fully ready, not just as Saudi Arabia but as Arab countries, to engage in that conversation. I would hope that the Israelis would be as well but it's up to them to make that decision. But are you saying unequivocally that if there is not a credible and irreversible path to a Palestinian state there will not be normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel? That's the only way we're going to get a benefit. The Israelis were in the process of normalizing relations in the days before the 7th of October Hamas attack. So, presumably, some of the strategists in Hamas will say, oh, this has been to some degree a success. Also, of course, with disastrous consequences in the short and medium term for the people of Gaza. But while EU foreign ministers discuss possible peace conferences, Israel's war on Gaza threatens to ignite the wider region around it. An airbase housing US military personnel in western Iraq came under missile fire on Saturday with the US blaming Iran-backed militias in the area. Two of an estimated 17 ballistic missiles and rockets fired at the site made it through the base's defences. The US say no soldiers were killed but that an undisclosed number are undergoing evaluation for traumatic brain injuries. Since the 7th of October there have been 140 attacks on American troops in the region and 70 personnel have been injured. The veracity of the attacks raises the possibility that a soldier will be killed with potentially devastating consequences in terms of diplomacy, in terms of the risk of wider war. Speaking to the New York Times, Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller said this, the administration confronts a problem without a risk-free solution. They don't want to strike Iran directly for fear of escalation which only widens the margin for pro-Iranian groups, including the Houthis, to strike at US forces. At some point, if US forces are killed, they'll have no alternative but to respond directly against Iranian assets. Now, Ash, what this all suggests to me, sort of these latest developments we've got through, is the extent to which, I mean, maybe Israel does, I don't know, maybe they're keeping their cards close to their chest, but many of the people involved here, especially sort of Israel's Western allies, do not have a plan. Right, so you've got the EU, the EU countries sort of brought Israel to a meeting, their stated intention of being there was to say, we're being really tough this time, you really need to give the Palestinians a viable state. And then the Israeli foreign minister's like, how about we build them an island in the ocean? And yet still, we're giving them diplomatic support, even though they sort of come with that joke of a proposal to a meeting such as that. At the same time, the Americans are now risking having a fight with multiple countries and groups in the Middle East, all for the kind of state that proposes silly things such as islands in the sea. And also, you know, we've had Americans for ages sort of saying, oh, they have the right to get their hostages back. The parents of these hostages recognize, because it's blatantly obvious, that the way to get hostages back isn't to bomb the territory to smithereens, it would be to negotiate. So just, the whole thing just seems like a, well, I mean, it's a very bloody mess with bloody consequences for the Palestinians, but in terms of the protagonist here, chaos. Well, the thing is, it only looks chaotic if you don't look at the very simple objectives of, I think, first, Israel and secondarily Hamas. So let's just look at Israel. The purpose of Israel is very, very simple. It is not getting the hostages back because, you know, if you want to bring back your hostages alive and well, the best way to do that generally isn't bombing the shit out of the territory where they're being held captive. I'm not an expert hostage negotiator, that just seems to me to be something that's fairly obvious. So the objective is not, and it has never been, since October 7th, to get the hostages back, because if that's what you wanted, your priority, first and foremost, would be negotiation. They don't want to negotiate with Hamas. What they want is, as you've said many times before, to change the facts on the ground, to destroy Gaza, make it uninhabitable, and therefore make it more likely that the Palestinians who've had to flee will never be able to come back. You'll speed up the process of depopulating Gaza with the eventual aim of annexing portions of it, one day the whole thing. That is what the Israeli state wants. They do not want a viable Palestinian state. What they want is the gradual eradication, sometimes the very speedy eradication of the Palestinian people from the land of historic Palestine, so there can be a greater Israel. And the only thing that's holding them back from doing it the most brutal way possible is that they would lose the military aid and diplomatic support from the powerful Western nations, which enable them to carry out this program of ethnic cleansing, which has been going on for decades, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. So that is the very, very simple thing for Israel. They don't care about stabilizing the region. They don't care about whether or not this embroils the US and Britain into another forever war in the Middle East. Actually, that's quite a good thing. It's quite a good thing for them because that means that they've got guaranteed military aid and support coming from some of the most powerful nations on the planet. So then the second thing is what about Hamas' strategy? Now, one of the most stupid things to have come out of this period of conflict has been every single UK pundit coming out with the same pathetic bleat, saying, oh you can't explain too much otherwise you're condoning. No, you're a journalist, your fucking job is to explain. The reason why they don't want to explain is because they're worried about us being seen to be condoning what Hamas do and they're worried about people screaming at them on Twitter, they're worried about the government jumping down their necks. And that means that you've ended up with, I think, a very misleading narrative about Hamas. The misleading narrative about Hamas is to present them as being totally devoid of strategy. It's almost like they're this animalistic, malevolent expression of pure evil and all they want to do is kill as many Jewish people as they can and that's all that motivates them. They don't have a sense of strategy, that they don't have military or indeed political goals. Now, I've been thinking about it for a long time now, since October 7th, trying to go, well, if you're Hamas, why would you carry out the atrocities of October 7th, the biggest breach of Israeli security, pretty much in the history of the state, certainly since Benjamin Netanyahu has become, has led governments in Israel. Why would they do that? I think it's because of the direction of the Abraham Accords. What Netanyahu, for a period of time, very successfully argued to Arab states is that, look, we'll give you trade, we'll give you security coordination, and you just have to let go of this whole Palestinian statehood issue. You just have to let it go. And I think, because these Gulf monarchies are not democracies, they are not answerable to their populations. And the populations, of course, of Arab countries is very, very pro-Palestinian. I think that a gamble was taken, which is like, yes, we can time this, we can do this now. So we can have normalized trading relationships. That's good for Gulf monarchies. It means they get an awful lot of money. And also, if there's increased security cooperation, that bolsters the Gulf states against their regional opponent, which is, of course, Iran, with whom the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have been fighting various proxy wars for the last few years. And for a while, Israel was able to get away with that. I think what Hamas did on October 7th was say, okay, this is going to lead to an absolute flattening of Gaza. I don't think that there's any way that Hamas could have been taken aback by the ferocity of Israel's retaliation. I think they were somewhat priced in. The ultimate goal was to derail that process of normalization between Arab states and Israel, because I think the calculation made by Hamas is, if you continue along that route, there is absolutely no future for any kind of Palestinian state whatsoever. Now, I think there are, of course, ways in which you can challenge that, both morally, in terms of the tactics that were used, and also strategically, whether or not losing more of the territory of Gaza, but derailing the process of normalization between Israel and the Arab states gets you closer or further away from that goal of Palestinian statehood, but I think that that was the strategy that was there. This isn't something which the political or the media class talk about openly in the U.S., and certainly not in the U.K. In fact, we just fall back on these platitudes of like, oh, Israel's a democracy, it's the only democracy in the Middle East, and oh, of course, everyone wants a two-state solution, when that hasn't had a working relationship with reality for very many years now, and so I think that's why a lot of this stuff looks so chaotic. I think it's because we're being utterly failed by the very people who are supposed to be informing us about what's really going on, because instead, they're just falling back on sloganeering. I was just looking at Twitter, and Jake Wallace-Simon, so he's the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, he's been at the Conservative Friends of Israel lunch, and he's just quoted Rishi Sunak as saying, a country that attacks its neighbours is one that must never be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Now, Israel invaded Egypt twice, 1956 and 1967. It's invaded Lebanon twice, 1982 and 2006. It bombs Gaza every five years or so. So the idea that a country that attacks its neighbours is never allowed to have nuclear weapons, perhaps we should try and take Israel's nuclear weapons off them. They've got nuclear weapons, and presumably this is intended towards Iran, and I'm actually trying to think of the time Iran has attacked its neighbours. I mean, they have used proxies, there's sort of been strikes on neighbours, but it was Iraq that invaded Iran, of course backed by the West. So I mean, if we're talking about countries that invade their neighbours, also a somewhat strange sort of construction, because why is it worse to attack your neighbours than a country on the other side of the world? Who starts the most wars? Who started the most wars since the Second World War? It's kind of been America, right? This idea that, oh, Iran's too aggressive to have nuclear weapons, but Israel can have them, America can have them, seems somewhat disingenuous to me. I'm not sure this is proving the point that Jake Wallace-Simmons and Rishi Sunak think it does. Well, also, look how many fronts Israel is fighting on. So it's been bombarding Gaza and has launched a ground invasion. It's conducting raids in the West Bank. There was a bombing in Damascus, which has been allegedly carried out by Israel, targeting I can't remember if it was Hamas or Hezbollah operatives. Please, someone in the comments correct me. And you've also got the ongoing skirmishes, airstrikes in southern Lebanon as well. So if you want to talk about attacking your neighbours, Israel is the neighbour from hell! It would have been in one of those ITV series of the late 90s and 00s of neighbours from hell. That would be Israel! It's very true. Beirut as well. They've bombed Beirut just in the last couple of weeks, haven't they? So yeah, it's very, very bizarre. Learn some history, Rishi Sunak and Jake Wallace-Simmons. Unless this is Rishi Sunak being subversive and saying Israel should hand their nuclear weapons back. I doubt it somewhat. You know, this show is only possible because of your kind support. If you are one already, thank you so much. If not, please do go to www.NirvanaMedia.com forward slash support. That link is in the description. Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammie was interrupted three times by pro-Palestinian protests during a speech this weekend. Sky News captured the second and third interruptions here. I want change through power, not through protest. So, let me pick up where I left off. Crisis entered our lives. Rather, the moment when the patient either begins to recover or begins to slip away. And the word itself, crisis. You know, it's change through power, not protest, my friend. We all want a sustainable ceasefire. Now, I get the power, not protest line, right? I'm fine with that. I'm fine for them to say, we're not here to protest. We want to get into government. We want to have power. The issue I have with this, though, from this Labour frontbench, what will they do with that power? There was, you'll remember, a vote in Parliament on whether to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and David Lammie abstained. So why is he happy to call for a ceasefire on stage to a crowd of supporters but not to do so in the actual halls of power? That's not power over protest. That's protest over power. And I'm also worried that Labour have more interest in being in office than being in power. They're different things, let's remember. Now, here's another intervention from David Lammie this weekend during an interview with Michelle Hussain. Would Labour be prepared to recognise a Palestinian state independently of what the Israeli government is doing? Yes. We are committed to the recognition of a Palestinian state. We want to work with international partners to achieve that, and there are a number of countries in the developed world saying that they believe the time has come as well. But obviously you're doing that in conjunction with that two-state solution that is required, and this is a critical moment that comes out of this crisis, and we've got to seize that opportunity. So I think that Biden is right, and I have to say I think Netanyahu's words were unacceptable. Of course the Palestinian people deserve a state, and if they don't, then the consequence of that is either one state in which Benjamin Netanyahu would have to explain how Palestinians and Israelis live side by side with equal rights, or no state in which what he's really saying is occupation and siege continues. I think the whole international world will say that's unacceptable. Now that analysis is fine, right? I don't really agree or disagree, sorry, with anything you said there, but it doesn't answer the question. If a two-state solution is Labour's stated goal, how would they actually exert power to make it happen, right? And they already appear to be going backwards on this question. Labour, under Corbyn, spoke about a boycott of settlement goods. That would exert power on Israel. Under Corbyn, Labour's policy was also to immediately recognize a Palestinian state, not defer that recognition until some undefined set of international negotiations. Under Starmer, and of course under David Lammy, those two policies have been dropped. Under Starmer, Labour will simply condemn Netanyahu's words. Lammy is very happy to say, I disagree with what he said, but that won't make him face any consequences. So I'd say, David, that's the definition of protest, not power, right? You're not exerting power, not protest. You are protesting. Yes, on national radio. Oh, I condemn what Netanyahu has said. Oh, very I'm going to be real with him. I'm going to put my foot down. That was not the right thing to say. Well, force some consequences. Use some power. Or are you afraid to? And there's another problem with David Lammy's interventions on this topic, and that's because even as a form of protest, the force of his proclamations are considerably weakened due to them changing from one day to the next. This was David Lammy on Channel 4 this weekend. When Benjamin Netanyahu says no to a two-state solution, we challenge him, because the consequences of that would be one state where people are not living, able to live equally side by side, or no state at all where occupation continues. And we stand against that. We know what he would also say to you calling now, very vociferously, as I've said, for this immediate truth. Because what does Israel do? Which of its war objectives does it give up? Does it leave hostages behind? Does it accept that the bombing must end before eliminating Hamas? We know that only a truce, only the weapons and bombs being put down, will allow hostages to come out safely and allow women and children to live the lives that we all want them to see. But you want the truce first. And Israel won't do that, will it? I am with the breadth of global opinion that wants to see the fighting end. Again, that's decent analysis, right? That was a fine answer to those questions. It's of course true, there is no military means to successfully returning hostages. It's been clear ever since they were taken on October 7th that the way to get back hostages is through negotiation, not through indiscriminate bombing. It wasn't clear to David Lammy though, because here's what he said to Trevor Phillips on Sky on October 15th. The Foreign Secretary James Cleverley says in the National Newspaper this morning that there will be no resiling from support for Israel. Do you agree with that? I think that must be right. Look, I'm thinking of Céline Ben-Nagar, a young woman who should be completing her maternity leave and is a hostage at this point in Gaza, having left behind her husband and her new young baby. Israel has a right to go and get those hostages. So Lammy agrees there will be no resiling from support for Israel and he says that's because Israel has a right to go and get those hostages. It's a shame it took three months and 25,000 dead Palestinians for David Lammy to realise the error of his ways. Ash, I'm sure David Lammy will say, look, that first clip or that last clip that I just showed there, that was from October 15th, it was just eight days after the attacks of October 7th, of course I've changed my mind since then. But I've got two problems with that. One, the principle has been the same all along, which is that you don't bomb to get your hostages back. A negotiation was possible from day one and my bigger problem is that it took three months for Labour to shift their position on that. Obviously the vote in Parliament on a ceasefire was way after October 15th when he was saying that, but we still had Labour saying, oh no, Israel have every right to continue bombing, they need to get their hostages back, they need to destroy Hamas. Why has David Lammy suddenly changed his tune? Have the facts on the ground changed or does he now suddenly feel that there's sort of enough diplomatic and political cover that he can say different things? And to me this seems like someone who is not only is he not willing to exert power when he gets, if he becomes Foreign Secretary, but he doesn't seem to know what he would do with it if he had it, right? What does he believe? It changes from one day to the next, basically based on what it seems what other people are saying, what people more powerful than him are saying, what the White House is saying. What do you think this tells us about what he would be like as a Foreign Secretary if he does end up in that job? Well, I think that in some ways David Lammy would be a cookie cutter Foreign Secretary for the UK because he's shown himself to be totally lacking in integrity, totally lacking in sincerity and happy to merely go along with whatever the main narratives that are coming out of the United States are. So from lots of people in the world of foreign policy, that's the ideal. That's as good as you can get from a Foreign Secretary. Now, obviously, I don't think that's a particularly good Foreign Secretary, but I think that that fulfills the main concerns that Keir Starmer has had when it comes to dealing with Israel and Palestine under his leadership because he's got two main things that are shaping how the Labour Party respond. The first is domestic politics. Labour don't want to get called anti-Semites again, so quite frankly, Israel gets way more of a pass on committing atrocities because the Labour Party is triangulated on this issue. It signed up to an IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which makes it incredibly difficult to criticise Israel when it is committing atrocities and also is so broadly defined that if you're being criticised and the IHRA is being invoked, really it depends on whether or not people like you, whether people think you're part of the club, whether you're part of the establishment, whether that's going to have a political impact on you. So that's the first thing, triangulating around anti-Semitism in the mind of Keir Starmer and I think David Lammy as well, it just means going easy on Israel. And the second thing is completely abandoning whatever vestiges of anti-imperialism remained in the Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn stood down as leader. And I think this is the real reason why Corbyn was so dangerous to the establishment. It wasn't so much about his domestic economic policies. It wouldn't put the UK that far out of step with Scandinavian countries or even Germany. No, I think it was about the fact that there would be a significant reorientation of the UK's foreign and defence policy. There would certainly, I think, be action on Israel's failure to move towards a two-state solution. It's continual flouting of international law with the expansion of legal settlements and maintaining a blockade on Gaza. And I think that there would be an ending of a version of the special relationship with America where we're their most special little guy because we're effectively a lapdog. What Keir Starmer and David Lammy want to do is restore the credibility of the UK in the eyes of establishment foreign policy circles, which goes, look, wherever America leads, we'll follow. And we've seen that happen in quite practical ways. So this isn't just about what is sayable, what is thinkable, what is politically convenient to either ignore or admit at different times. We're seeing that in terms of the UK participating in airstrikes on Yemen. And this is, I think, a completely bananas military operation. Very, very open-ended. Very, very broadly drawn objectives. Huge significance for escalation and further destabilization of the region. You're playing, I think, a very dangerous game when it comes to making Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabian infrastructure more likely, which breaks the data on Saudi Arabia and Iran. It also ratchets up the stakes of a potential direct confrontation with Iran, which nobody serious actually wants in either Britain or America. This was a very, very badly planned military incursion into Yemeni sovereignty. But the position of Keir Starmer and David Lammy was, well, we want to do the bombs first because that's what America wants to do. And then we're going to raise the really important questions about why we're doing it in Parliament later. Now, that is the very definition of not even bolting the sable door after the horse has already gone. It's sort of like debating whether or not you should bolt the door after the horse is already halfway to Harrogate. It's completely ridiculous. But that's what they think being a serious political operator means. And sure, you'll get the applause of The Times and The Guardian and The Observer, but ultimately, I think you're consigning Britain to more of its kind of international death spiral that we've been in for decades where we have, I think, done things which have destabilized the Middle East and ultimately have had significant blowback on us as well. And I don't see the judgment of David Lammy as being particularly insightful or countervailing to that tendency. You had a brief break with it with Jeremy Corbyn, and now it's back to regular scheduled programming. When people talk about New Labour, you can criticise them in loads of ways, but they were fine for the NHS. The waiting list did go down. Education got more money. There are a number of arguments you can make where New Labour did some decent stuff. The one thing I think pretty much everyone in the country agrees with, nearly everyone, at least a super majority, is that the foreign policy of doing whatever the United States wanted to do, which led us into the illegal war in Iraq with catastrophic consequences for the region and for us, frankly, that was the worst decision Tony Blair and New Labour ever made. And now, in the first international crisis in the Middle East since Kirstein was elected, they've made it their mantra, we will do whatever the United States does. If you had any sort of concern, distrust, worry, oh God, Labour, they must be better than the Tories. Kirstein, I can't imagine he'll be as gung-ho as Tony Blair when it comes to starting new wars. Then you've got this opposition, Kirstein and all of his frontbenchers, who any kind of military action they're willing to rubber stamp the Tories want to enter into. And they're very explicitly saying, we just follow the United States when it comes to foreign policy. Like that hasn't gone catastrophically wrong before. If I was trying to reassure people, I would be putting out the precise opposite message, we'll be like New Labour but without the Iraq war. That to me would seem like a fairly popular offer, but it's just completely bizarre. I don't know who this is for. And we've said this before on this show, so when it comes to Kirstein being very, very reluctant to say he'll increase taxes on the wealthy, in fact, Rachel Reeves now suggesting they might reduce taxes on the rich, that is not for the electorate. The electorate don't want lower taxes on the rich. They want higher taxes on the rich. That is for the business elite and the Murdoch press. That is to say we are reassuring the business elites that Labour are not going to do anything, let alone to harm you to even inconvenience you. Labour are not going to do that. And this signposting when it comes to following America to do anything, that's not to the public. Again, the public do not say, you know what I want to do? I want to elect a government that just does whatever the Americans do, regardless of the consequences. That's not what the median voter wants. What he is doing is he's signposting to the military establishment, I mean you could say to the deep state, but also to some of these establishment newspapers and the like. He's saying, you don't have to worry about us. We are not going to rock the boat. We are going to do whatever the military establishment wants to be done. That's us. You don't have to fear us. So while they say this is so that we can win round voters, Jeremy Corbyn didn't speak to ordinary people, in many ways he did end up being alienated from ordinary people. But not really when it came from his reluctance to enter wars in the Middle East. That was one of his popular policies. Very, very keen to dump that now that Keir Starmer is in charge. Is Benjamin Netanyahu intentionally humiliating Joe Biden? Well it sure seems like it. Last week the Israeli Prime Minister said this. In the future the state of Israel have to control the entire area from the river to the sea. This is what happens when you have sovereignty. This truth I say to our American friends. And I also stopped the attempt to impose on us a reality that will jeopardize us. A Prime Minister in Israel has to say no, even to the best of friends. Now that clip should have been embarrassing to Joe Biden for two reasons. So first, Netanyahu was opposing a two state solution which is the stated preference of the Americans. And second, Netanyahu was explicitly saying he is willing to ignore what Biden wants. He's willing to stand up to the Americans even though the United States sends Israel billions in aid. But this whole situation got worse, it got a lot more embarrassing for the American President because following that clip going viral, lots of people watched it, Biden was asked about Netanyahu's comments by a White House reporter. Are you going to reconsider conditions on Israel aid given what Netanyahu said about a one state? I think we'll be able to work something out. What does that mean? There are a number of types of two state solutions. There's a number of countries that are members of the UN that are still don't have their own military. A number of states that have limitations on them. And so I think there's ways in which this could work. But BBS said he's opposed to any of these two state solutions. Biden said that Netanyahu didn't actually oppose a Palestinian state and that he could suggest a state so weak and powerless that Netanyahu would agree to its creation. Unfortunately for Joe Biden, Bibi wasn't playing ball. And after those comments from Biden circulated, the Israeli Prime Minister tweeted this. I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over the entire area west of Jordan. And this is contrary to a Palestinian state. This is contrary to a Palestinian state. So that is a direct subtweet of Joe Biden. So Netanyahu gets up and says we want it to be greater Israel from the river to the sea. Joe Biden's like, no, no, no, that's not what he said. He's happy to have a two state solution. We just have to give him the right kind of state. Netanyahu almost immediately goes to Twitter and says, I meant no Palestinian state. I was pretty clear. And this is publicly humiliating, essentially. The guy who is sending billions in aid to Israel over a long period of time, giving them full diplomatic cover in the UN. And he is just basically saying we're going to do exactly what we want. And this is bad for Joe Biden because Joe Biden has expended a lot of political capital defending what Israel are doing. Now, of course, it's not popular in American society to say we're going to just completely leave Israel to fend for itself. The American public, more than publics in Europe, tend to be sympathetic to Israel. But no one, I think, in America is saying I'm going to vote for Joe Biden because he has been so gung ho and let Netanyahu do whatever he wants even when Netanyahu is completely ignoring Biden. This has massively caused Biden electoral problems for young voters and also for Arab voters who, there's a lot of them in some key states such as Michigan. Joe Biden has paid a big political cost for his backing of Netanyahu and Netanyahu seems to be actively trying to intervene in the next presidential election to make Biden lose. I don't know why Joe Biden is going along with this. It's also not the first time that Netanyahu has tried to humiliate Democratic presidents in this way. Of the Democratic Party I mean, in this way. When Obama was president, again Obama didn't condition aid to Israel, very, very supportive of Israel, but he did sign a nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu went to Congress without telling Obama, gave this big speech sort of really, really opposing Obama's policy. Now that was unheard of sort of to have a friendly state come and speak to Congress to oppose a sitting president, right? Netanyahu did that to Obama, he's willing to do that to Joe Biden and Joe Biden seems very happy to go along with it. It's just completely bizarre. But there is one man in America more subservient to Netanyahu than Joe Biden and that's his national security spokesperson, John Kirby. Watch this and weep. The president addressed Netanyahu's use of the phrase from the river to the sea in their conversation today. I know the White House has previously said that phrase is divisive. I'm not aware that that specific phrase was discussed. Do you condemn him using that phrase? There's a connotation with that phrase. We've talked about this before. But when you use the phrase river to the sea, it speaks basically to the mantra of Hamas and in their manifesto where they basically describe the geographic bounds of what they believe to be Palestine. And if you look at it on the map, if you go look at the four corners that they describe it, it's basically the state of Israel. They just don't believe it should exist. So again, it's not a phrase that we recommend using given because of that context. But this wasn't Hamas, this was Netanyahu. I understand. I don't have anything more on that and I certainly don't have anything more in the conversation to read out with respect to that. That was just completely bizarre, right? So a reporter is asking John Kirby, and again, this isn't sort of on a street corner. This is in an official press briefing by the National Security Council, sort of one of the highest national security bodies in the United States. And they said, Netanyahu said he wants Israel to be from the river to the sea. Do you agree with that? And then John Kirby, well, we disagree with the phrase from the river to the sea because Hamas used that. We're not talking about Hamas. We're talking about the Israeli prime minister who obviously means something very different to what Hamas means. I don't want to comment any further. Ash, why are Joe Biden and sort of John Kirby humiliating themselves to this degree in public when Netanyahu is not willing to give them any cover whatsoever? Netanyahu seems to just be sort of publicly putting up two fingers to them and they're happy to go along with it. I think it's really important to try and understand Netanyahu. I don't know I'm about to channel my inner Aaron Bastani, but to quote Sun Tzu, know yourself and know your enemy. You need not fear the result of a hundred battles. So let's get to know Benjamin Netanyahu. He is without a doubt the single most successful Israeli politician since the state was founded in 1948. I think he's won the most elections. He's been in power nearly continuously since the late 90s, I think maybe even the year 2000. And he has been highly successful in carrying out his main objective, which is prevent the foundation and the widespread recognition of a Palestinian state. He's a hugely successful politician. And in order to understand how he's achieved that, I think one of the things you've got to look at is the way in which he's positioned Israel with regards to America. Quite famously in some unguarded comments he said, I know what America is. It is a thing that moves. And what Daniel Levy, the former Israeli peace negotiator, told me is that the translation is more like, it is an easy thing to move. I know how to work this machine that is America. And I think that what he worked out was that yes, Israel is wholly dependent on American military aid in order to maintain its position in the Middle East, while simultaneously denying sovereignty to the Palestinian people. But you still have leverage over America. So one is that America geopolitically relies on Israel, not just for its role in the Middle East, but also its historic relationship with Israel, with Mossad when it comes to Cold War era fighting, its role in sort of covertly operating with right wing militias across the world. Two, Israel of course buys an awful lot of military hardware. America produced weaponry and so is a key customer when it comes to the American military industrial complex. And then the third bit of leverage that Israel has over America is of course the role of Israel's lobby in the United States. AIPAC is perhaps the most effective disciplining tool of democratic candidates that has ever existed. It will pour vast quantities of money into primary races. So you as a politician may well owe your entire career to AIPAC funding. And of course, if AIPAC deems that you are not sufficiently pro-Israel, they'll pour vast amounts of money into negative campaigning as well. So I think that Netanyahu has been able to judge American politics very, very shrewdly. And instead of going, okay, well we're dependent on military aid so that means when America says, please can you stop expanding settlements or can you just ease off the bombing of Palestine a little bit, he's worked out that he's got the room to say no, because I'm willing to use this leverage that we have as a country. So Netanyahu is a very, very smart man and I think that you know, underestimate him at your peril. Don't overstate the role of the Israel lobby in the United States, that's too conspiratorial. But I mean, seeing the President repeatedly sort of self-flagellate himself in front of the nation and the Israeli Prime Minister sort of really just rub salt in the wound and the Americans just keep saying oh no, okay, it's still fine, you know, not saying a bad word whatsoever about Israel, while Israel is basically like putting two fingers up to them. I mean, it doesn't allay any suspicions, does it? A new week, a new Tory culture war, this time it's that old favourite the BBC coming under attack. Current Culture Secretary Lucy Fraser has penned this article for The Telegraph. She calls for the BBC to be held to the highest standards, because that's what licence fee payers expect. But what standards is the BBC failing to meet? According to Fraser, the broadcaster just isn't impartial enough. On Sky News, she tried to justify that claim. Do you think the BBC is biased? Well, I am looking at this from the point of view of the Culture Secretary. That's why I'm asking you. And the evidence shows that there is a perception of bias in relation to the BBC. Do you think, as Culture Secretary, that the BBC is biased? I think that on occasion it has been biased, yes. In relation to what? Well, this report isn't about incidents, but we have seen recently that it's had to apologise for its own reporting, for example, in relation to the attack in the hospital in Israel, in Gaza. What's the difference between mistake and bias, surely? Well, there is a perception amongst the public that the BBC is biased, and as Culture Secretary, it's important that I look at that. I must say, these are issues that I have discussed with the BBC. They've taken on board... Yeah, but I'm asking you about the evidence of bias. Where's the evidence? The evidence of bias is what audiences believe is the content of the BBC and how they... But that's perception, that's not evidence. That's perception. That is evidence. Impartiality is about perception of the things that are being broadcast by the BBC, and the evidence in relation to that perception is that... Perception and evidence are different things. The evidence from Ofcom, having done studies and questionnaires of the public, is that the BBC's ratings in relation to impartiality have gone down, and I and the BBC think that there is more that the BBC can do in order to improve that. Very, very embarrassing. My favourite bit about that, though, politicians do this all the time where they get asked different questions. They say, well, I am here as the Culture Secretary. Keir Starmer does it a lot. Well, I am speaking to you here as the leader of the opposition. I am speaking to you as someone who wants to be in government. I am speaking to you in the Sky News studio. I am sitting here in front of a blue wall just sort of describing anything other than what your position is when it comes to the question at hand. Ash, how do you think the Culture Secretary handled that line of questioning? I think she did exceptionally well. It was, I think, some of the best pieces of fine art clowning that I've ever seen in my life. It's like she trained at Lecoq. Just absolutely nothing was making sense. She was completely flailing around. That takes decades of training to be that ridiculous in public and not shrivel up and die. Well done, Lucy Fraser. I think what this speaks to is we really are at the dregs of the Conservative Party. Rishi Sunak would get an old boot to be in his cabinet because he's really out of options. She is someone who doesn't know the brief, doesn't even have a single piece of evidence to their name. Can't even pick an obvious anecdote. She can't even do what Priti Patel or Suella Braverman in their heyday would have done, which is say look at what Gary Lineker's done. She's just going as a perception of impartiality. She can't even pick up a previous example of a Tory-confected culture war row. So, I don't know. I don't know what happened to Lucy Fraser. I like to think that she's a highly trained clown rather than just someone who wandered in a bit confused from the street and then Rishi Sunak made them Culture Minister. Now, I'm not sure if that's the first clip we've ever shown of her because I wouldn't recognise her if I walked down the street. This is the first time I've really ever thought about Lucy Fraser. She hasn't performed very well, as you say. Thank you, Ash, for joining me tonight. Thank you so much for having me. I'll be back tomorrow night in the co-hosting slot, so if the audience were hoping they'd be free of me on Tuesday, I hate to disappoint them. Oh, and I can tell the audience that that means you're in for a slightly longer shift because tomorrow, Aaron Bastani will be in the hosting chair and he'll be doing a Q&A after the main show. So, if you've got a question for Aaron or Ash, make sure you tune in at 7pm as well as having watched, of course, the usual live show at 6pm. For now, you've been watching Navarra Media. Good night. you