- Bassem Youssef, an Egyptian comedian, appeared on Piers Morgan's program and expressed what he would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he were Israeli.
- Youssef criticized Netanyahu for fracturing the Israeli community, undermining the courts, and misusing money from the United States.
- He also criticized the Israeli government for trading human lives for land and for victimizing itself in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
- Youssef's satirical remarks went viral and received over 6 million views in less than 24 hours.
- He highlighted the disproportionate number of Palestinian casualties compared to Israeli casualties and questioned whether this approach brings peace or ends Hamas.
- The US government's support for Israel's actions was also criticized, with emphasis on the need for restraint and humanitarian assistance.
- The State Department was reported to have discouraged the use of phrases like "de-escalation" and "ceasefire" in press materials.
- The late moderation from the White House was questioned, given the extensive damage caused by the conflict.
- The phrase "Israel has a right to defend itself" was criticized, and a more specific focus on the rights of innocent civilians was suggested.

- The state has the right to defend itself, but this can lead to overreactions or retaliatory actions.
- Palestinians, who are denied statehood, rely on groups like Hamas to defend their interests.
- Israel is accused of killing more innocent people, including children, in their actions.
- The morality of the situation is blurry and the phrase "Israel has a right to defend itself" is debated.
- A podcast episode will discuss the perspective of an Israeli who had a change of heart after a family tragedy caused him to question the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.

Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave react to Egyptian comedian and TV talk show host Youssef Bassem's appearance on Piers Morgan's program in which he pretends to be an Israeli citizen confronting P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu. #piersmorgan #netanyahu  

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Egyptian comedian and television host Bassem Youssef appeared on Piers Morgan's program last night where he expressed what he would tell Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he were Israeli.

Those people went in and they went for 6 hours before IDF forces was deployed, killing our friends, our families, kidnapping our grandmothers and babies and went in.

Prime Minister, after you have fractured the Israeli community and you have f***** our courts, our Supreme Courts, what are you doing with the money being given to you to the United States?

Also, you are carpet bombing Gaza with absolutely no regard to our hostages.

In his hypothetical lecture, however, he continued blasting Netanyahu over the Israel and Hamas war.

How come our Israeli government is trading human lives for another piece of land.

So as an Israeli citizen, I need to hold my Israeli government accountable.

If I was Joe Biden, I would go down and whisper in the ears of Netanyahu and tell them I hate bad investment.

They haunt me, you know, like Littlefinger in Game of Thrones.

But the thing is, the thing is, this is the problem.

Israel always victimizes itself, and I have never seen a victim putting their oppressor under siege and bombing them 24-7.

So he goes on to say there that Israel paints itself as Superman, but it's really Homelander.

He's a comedian and satirist, and with those short clips that we played, it's hard to get a sense of the kind of satirical nature of this clip, but it went mega viral last night.

I think the reason why it was so compelling to a lot of folks is that, I mean, rarely do we see humor applied to a situation as serious as this.

And he was prepared to basically, in a comedic way, concede a lot of the arguments that are made by people who defend the broader project of occupation, saying, look, I would call my wife—I would call her, but she's mad at me for the last time I used her as a human shield, you know, just kind of embracing some of the stereotypes and putting a very human face on what allegations are made of Palestinians and the implications about how they don't value life and I think it went viral because it was I think a really cogent expression of a lot of sentiments and a lot of resentment and a lot of frustration Palestinians have been having but rarely get an opportunity to express on a mainstream platform like that.

I think we have a little bit more from that interview.

I wish it was under different circumstances.

First of all, what is your reaction to what happened on October the 7th?

I mean, we kind of get our news kind of also secondhand because, you know, my wife's family, They live in Gaza.

We haven't been able to communicate with them for the past 3 days.

So we don't know actually what is the, how is, how are they doing, but you know, we're used to that.

I mean, it's just like, it's, it's, it's very repetitive.

We're used to them being bombed every time and moving from 1 place to the other.

You know, it's just like those Palestinians, they're very dramatic.

You know, they're very difficult to kill, very difficult people to kill.

I mean, there's a dark humor there, and I understand why because sometimes.

I try to get to her every time, but she uses our kids as human shields.

I think that 1 of the more poignant parts of the discussion, which went on, I think, for about 30 minutes, and people should check out the whole segment in full, was that he had a printout of a chart that I believe was originally from the New York Times, which has been circulating a lot, which shows a calculation of both Israeli and Palestinian casualty numbers dating back, I think, about 10 years.

Obviously, it hasn't been updated for this current crisis.

But even if it did have numbers for this year, they would reflect the general trend, which is that Palestinian deaths are widely disproportionately outnumber Israeli death.

And the point that he makes about that is not obviously that the Israeli deaths don't matter because there are many fewer than the Palestinian deaths.

But to ask the question about whether or not this belief that so many people seem to have bought into that a retaliation for the horrific events of October 7, that is wildly disproportionate, that kills many multiple times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians died.

At this point, it's about 2 to 1, the ratio of Palestinians dead now from Israelis that were killed on October 7th.

Does that ever have the effect of stopping Hamas, of ending the fighting, of bringing peace?

And if you look at that chart, the evidence would suggest no.

But so many people in the media sphere and the pundit sphere and beyond, we have that chart here, seem to be arguing that Israel has an unlimited right, that part of its defense of itself means continuing airstrikes that are killing a very small number of people who are in Hamas and a very large number of civilians.

Well, I mean, even the US government has not taken the position, right, that the Israeli government has an unlimited- But it has.

But that was part of the frustration that in the days following the attack, we gave unqualified support for Israel's retaliation.

And that means that The blood is also on the hands of the American government, which is 1 of the few governments in the world who had the power to influence Israel to exercise some restraint.

There was just an article, I think we're going to talk about it in another segment, about having to post-peace reporting on people in the Biden administration who don't feel comfortable expressing any desire for restraint or saying anything that reflects any sympathies with the humanitarian plight of the Palestinian people.

There was that memo that went around that asked, that said that you can use a word ceasefire and a number of other kind of peace oriented words in any internal documents.

So obviously there is a culture, and especially in the week or so after the attack, a culture of basically giving Israel the space to do whatever it wanted to do.

And what we've seen is that means is killing a lot of civilians.

And so Basim here was asking whether or not that is well calculated to having the effect of actually bringing peace or ending Hamas?

Yeah, I mean, I just, I don't think it's entirely fair to say, not that I'm 1 to stick up for Joe Biden, but he is, I mean, his comments and what he suggests he's saying to Netanyahu privately, he's urging some degree of restraint, He's calling for humanitarian assistance to be supplied.

And again, I would not provide the military support to Israel if I was in charge of the policy.

He's doing that, which, as you said, does lend itself toward blowback against the American people if Islamic extremists all over the globe see the U.S.

As the primary funder and backer of what Israel is doing in Gaza.

I don't want the Islamic world to see it like that, which is why I think it is very dangerous and reckless for U.S.

But as far as I can tell, it would be better for the Israeli government to have some restraining forces, and It seems like we're serving as 1 in some capacity.

So let me just to specify what I was referencing, The Huffington Post reported that it had reviewed emails, this is I think over last week and last Friday, that official emails that said that quote, State Department staff wrote that high level officials do not want press materials to include 3 specific phrases, de-escalation, ceasefire, end to violence, bloodshed, and restoring calm.

They didn't want people to even say, we want to end the bloodshed and restore calm.

There was additionally this article that a lot of people are making fun of, I think I brought it up before, 2 days ago called Israeli allies have been reluctant to use the R word.

People were joking about what that R word could possibly be.

It was restraint because until probably the last couple of 24, 48 hours or so, any indication that you thought that Israel should moderate its response at all was described as, was responded to rather with the claim, well, you don't want Israel to have the right to defend itself.

Doesn't Israel have the right to defend itself?

And built into that was the presumption that there's no limit to that defense.

And you had various politicians, as we've discussed, saying they wanted to raise Gaza to the ground.

And there wasn't a moderating force on that until, I think, there were all these protest movements around the world in the United States of America that were supportive of Palestine.

And eventually, finally, we got some moderation out of the White House.

I don't like the phrase, Israel has a right to defend itself, because I'm hesitant to ascribe rights to governments or to states or to countries in general.

I think it would be better phrased as, the Israeli people have the right to defend themselves, or people who are attacked in an unprovoked manner, who are not combatants, who are civilians and innocent, have the right not to be gunned down in their homes or at music festivals, that kind of thing.

I think a little bit of specificity helps, because obviously, the state has the right to defend itself, well a state could feel provoked or encroached upon for any number of reasons that then lend themselves to an overreaction or retaliatory action.

I mean, that's interesting because the implications of that are some people like Palestinians who have been denied statehood, at least in the eyes of our government, and who do rely on groups like Hamas, who are characterized by our government as terrorist groups, to defend what they see to be the interests of their people.

It seems like in that framing, they have even more legitimacy.

To no, because they're targeting innocent people indiscriminately.

Well, I mean, the argument here is that Israel is also, whether they're targeting or not, killing volumes more innocent people.

I think a third of the 3,000 lives that have been lost on the Palestinian side of things now are children.

And if it's just individual human beings making the decision about what they need to do to defend the interest of themselves or their communities, then we get into this situation where I think actually the morality of what's going on here is even more blurry than it already is.

I'm not interested in getting into a debate about the particular phrasing, Israel has a right to defend itself here.

I do have an episode of my podcast coming out tomorrow where I talk to a former, an Israeli former, he was formerly in the army, obviously everybody has to.

His dad was a general and his grandfather was a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

He was very much brought up as an Israeli, proud, never questioned any of the things that was told about the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, and then had a change of heart after a tragic family event where his niece was actually killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber.

That caused him to think harder about what was actually going on for the people of Palestine.

He very much brings that question to the foreground on my episode.

I am still resolving how I feel about that, but it was a really interesting kind of thought experiment about how much that particular phrase does in terms of work to kind of validate some of what might be described as overreach on the part of the Israeli government.


Speaker 0: Egyptian comedian and television host Bassem Youssef appeared on Piers Morgan's program last night where he expressed what he would tell Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he were Israeli. Let's watch.

Speaker 1: Those people went in and they went for 6 hours before IDF forces was deployed, killing our friends, our families, kidnapping our grandmothers and babies and went in. I want to ask you Mr. Prime Minister, after you have fractured the Israeli community and you have f***** our courts, our Supreme Courts, what are you doing with the money being given to you to the United States? Also, you are carpet bombing Gaza with absolutely no regard to our hostages.

Speaker 2: Gen Yussef is not Israeli. In his hypothetical lecture, however, he continued blasting Netanyahu over the Israel and Hamas war. Take a look.

Speaker 1: How come our Israeli government is trading human lives for another piece of land. So as an Israeli citizen, I need to hold my Israeli government accountable. If I was Joe Biden, I would go down and whisper in the ears of Netanyahu and tell them I hate bad investment. They haunt me, you know, like Littlefinger in Game of Thrones. But the thing is, the thing is, this is the problem.

Israel always victimizes itself, and I have never seen a victim putting their oppressor under siege and bombing them 24-7.

Speaker 0: So he goes on to say there that Israel paints itself as Superman, but it's really Homelander. He's a comedian and satirist, and with those short clips that we played, it's hard to get a sense of the kind of satirical nature of this clip, but it went mega viral last night. It already has over 6 million views. It wasn't even posted 24 hours ago. I think the reason why it was so compelling to a lot of folks is that, I mean, rarely do we see humor applied to a situation as serious as this.

And he was prepared to basically, in a comedic way, concede a lot of the arguments that are made by people who defend the broader project of occupation, saying, look, I would call my wife—I would call her, but she's mad at me for the last time I used her as a human shield, you know, just kind of embracing some of the stereotypes and putting a very human face on what allegations are made of Palestinians and the implications about how they don't value life and I think it went viral because it was I think a really cogent expression of a lot of sentiments and a lot of resentment and a lot of frustration Palestinians have been having but rarely get an opportunity to express on a mainstream platform like that.

Speaker 2: I think we have a little bit more from that interview. Let's watch.

Speaker 3: Great to have you back on the program. I wish it was under different circumstances. First of all, what is your reaction to what happened on October the 7th?

Speaker 1: Oh, it was terrible of course. I mean, we kind of get our news kind of also secondhand because, you know, my wife's family, They live in Gaza. They have cousins and uncles there. And their house also was bombed. We haven't been able to communicate with them for the past 3 days.

Communication is lost. So we don't know actually what is the, how is, how are they doing, but you know, we're used to that. I mean, it's just like, it's, it's, it's very repetitive. We're used to that. We're used to them being bombed every time and moving from 1 place to the other.

You know, it's just like those Palestinians, they're very dramatic. Ah, Israel killing us. But they never die. I mean, they always come back. You know, they're very difficult to kill, very difficult people to kill.

I know because I'm married to 1. I tried many times, couldn't kill her.

Speaker 3: I mean, there's a dark humor there, and I understand why because sometimes.

Speaker 1: Oh, it's not dark humor. I try to get to her every time, but she uses our kids as human shields. I can never take her out.

Speaker 0: So obviously it's very, very dark humor. I think that 1 of the more poignant parts of the discussion, which went on, I think, for about 30 minutes, and people should check out the whole segment in full, was that he had a printout of a chart that I believe was originally from the New York Times, which has been circulating a lot, which shows a calculation of both Israeli and Palestinian casualty numbers dating back, I think, about 10 years. I think it's like 2008 to 2020. It's an older chart. Obviously, it hasn't been updated for this current crisis.

But even if it did have numbers for this year, they would reflect the general trend, which is that Palestinian deaths are widely disproportionately outnumber Israeli death. And the point that he makes about that is not obviously that the Israeli deaths don't matter because there are many fewer than the Palestinian deaths. But to ask the question about whether or not this belief that so many people seem to have bought into that a retaliation for the horrific events of October 7, that is wildly disproportionate, that kills many multiple times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians died. At this point, it's about 2 to 1, the ratio of Palestinians dead now from Israelis that were killed on October 7th. Does that ever have the effect of stopping Hamas, of ending the fighting, of bringing peace?

And if you look at that chart, the evidence would suggest no. But so many people in the media sphere and the pundit sphere and beyond, we have that chart here, seem to be arguing that Israel has an unlimited right, that part of its defense of itself means continuing airstrikes that are killing a very small number of people who are in Hamas and a very large number of civilians.

Speaker 2: Well, I mean, even the US government has not taken the position, right, that the Israeli government has an unlimited- But it has. Exactly.

Speaker 1: Well, no,

Speaker 2: Joe Biden has.

Speaker 0: Well, now he's walked it back, right? But that was part of the frustration that in the days following the attack, we gave unqualified support for Israel's retaliation. And that means that The blood is also on the hands of the American government, which is 1 of the few governments in the world who had the power to influence Israel to exercise some restraint. There was just an article, I think we're going to talk about it in another segment, about having to post-peace reporting on people in the Biden administration who don't feel comfortable expressing any desire for restraint or saying anything that reflects any sympathies with the humanitarian plight of the Palestinian people. There was that memo that went around that asked, that said that you can use a word ceasefire and a number of other kind of peace oriented words in any internal documents.

So obviously there is a culture, and especially in the week or so after the attack, a culture of basically giving Israel the space to do whatever it wanted to do. And what we've seen is that means is killing a lot of civilians. And so Basim here was asking whether or not that is well calculated to having the effect of actually bringing peace or ending Hamas?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I just, I don't think it's entirely fair to say, not that I'm 1 to stick up for Joe Biden, but he is, I mean, his comments and what he suggests he's saying to Netanyahu privately, he's urging some degree of restraint, He's calling for humanitarian assistance to be supplied. You know, it should be more. And again, I would not provide the military support to Israel if I was in charge of the policy. He's doing that, which, as you said, does lend itself toward blowback against the American people if Islamic extremists all over the globe see the U.S. As the primary funder and backer of what Israel is doing in Gaza.

I don't want the Islamic world to see it like that, which is why I think it is very dangerous and reckless for U.S. Security to be involved in that. But as far as I can tell, it would be better for the Israeli government to have some restraining forces, and It seems like we're serving as 1 in some capacity.

Speaker 0: So let me just to specify what I was referencing, The Huffington Post reported that it had reviewed emails, this is I think over last week and last Friday, that official emails that said that quote, State Department staff wrote that high level officials do not want press materials to include 3 specific phrases, de-escalation, ceasefire, end to violence, bloodshed, and restoring calm. They didn't want people to even say, we want to end the bloodshed and restore calm. That was from the State Department. There was additionally this article that a lot of people are making fun of, I think I brought it up before, 2 days ago called Israeli allies have been reluctant to use the R word. People were joking about what that R word could possibly be.

It was restraint because until probably the last couple of 24, 48 hours or so, any indication that you thought that Israel should moderate its response at all was described as, was responded to rather with the claim, well, you don't want Israel to have the right to defend itself. Doesn't Israel have the right to defend itself? And built into that was the presumption that there's no limit to that defense. And you had various politicians, as we've discussed, saying they wanted to raise Gaza to the ground. And there wasn't a moderating force on that until, I think, there were all these protest movements around the world in the United States of America that were supportive of Palestine.

And eventually, finally, we got some moderation out of the White House. But is that too late? Look at how much damage has been done.

Speaker 2: I don't like the phrase, Israel has a right to defend itself, because I'm hesitant to ascribe rights to governments or to states or to countries in general. I think it would be better phrased as, the Israeli people have the right to defend themselves, or people who are attacked in an unprovoked manner, who are not combatants, who are civilians and innocent, have the right not to be gunned down in their homes or at music festivals, that kind of thing. I think a little bit of specificity helps, because obviously, the state has the right to defend itself, well a state could feel provoked or encroached upon for any number of reasons that then lend themselves to an overreaction or retaliatory action.

Speaker 0: I mean, that's interesting because the implications of that are some people like Palestinians who have been denied statehood, at least in the eyes of our government, and who do rely on groups like Hamas, who are characterized by our government as terrorist groups, to defend what they see to be the interests of their people. It seems like in that framing, they have even more legitimacy.

Speaker 2: To no, because they're targeting innocent people indiscriminately.

Speaker 0: Well, I mean, the argument here is that Israel is also, whether they're targeting or not, killing volumes more innocent people. I think a third of the 3,000 lives that have been lost on the Palestinian side of things now are children. And if it's just individual human beings making the decision about what they need to do to defend the interest of themselves or their communities, then we get into this situation where I think actually the morality of what's going on here is even more blurry than it already is. So I mean, I don't know. I'm not interested in getting into a debate about the particular phrasing, Israel has a right to defend itself here.

I do have an episode of my podcast coming out tomorrow where I talk to a former, an Israeli former, he was formerly in the army, obviously everybody has to. His dad was a general and his grandfather was a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. He was very much brought up as an Israeli, proud, never questioned any of the things that was told about the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, and then had a change of heart after a tragic family event where his niece was actually killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber. That caused him to think harder about what was actually going on for the people of Palestine. And he does want to have that debate.

He very much brings that question to the foreground on my episode. People want to check that out tomorrow. I am still resolving how I feel about that, but it was a really interesting kind of thought experiment about how much that particular phrase does in terms of work to kind of validate some of what might be described as overreach on the part of the Israeli government.

Speaker 2: We'll have more Rising right after this.

Speaker 1: You

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