I Was Asked What Death Toll Would Be Acceptable

I think the argument is here that the amount of people who have been killed and displaced seems to be rather substantial uh particularly in Gaza over 70,000 uh you know men, women, and children are believed according to the UN to have uh been killed in the process of of the war in Gaza. >> Well, um what number would suffice for you as uh acceptable uh in Israel's response? >> Well, I think if the number the most liberal number would of Hamas was about 20 to 30,000, I would think that you would keep the focus on that as opposed to leveling 330,000 buildings. >> Okay, so in terms of the numbers if we break it down, you also have to ask yourself we're not like looking at these things in the abstract compared to uh Utopia. We're looking at these wars in the context of wars previously and what's comparable and I think you know that Israel has the lowest civilian to combatant ratio in any urban warfare of this kind which is kind of unprecedented for this to be happening under this context, but I don't know Hamas thousands of Hamas terrorists go into Israel on October 7th, they have somewhere between uh 30 to I don't know it's like 40,000 to 60,000 in terms of military and militant terroristic active fighters, they enjoy widespread support amongst the population, they've turned Gaza effectively militarized it into a terrorist state lit with a tunnel infrastructure in which they're you know keeping hostages throughout the war and they're operating in terms of uh acts of terrorism against Israel acts of aggression against Israel. So to me, they're fully accountable for what uh transpired afterwards. Israel you're saying you're pointing to the >> When you say they are fully accountable, you mean the Palestinians or do you mean Hamas? >> I mean Hamas and those who support aid and abet them are fully accountable. If you're a UN worker and you participated in October 7th, if you're part of a population in which you're assisting in aiding and uh keeping a hostage kidnapped. I mean listen to the testimonies of hostages that came back. There were not people out there trying to free them, call them out. You didn't see people in the streets protesting Hamas's actions on October 7th. Quite the contrary, you saw large amounts of people celebrating and cheering in elation, spitting on the bodies of dead Israelis as they were marched and paraded through the streets. You don't see the same thing like that on the other side. I think it's a false equivalency. And so, I think Israel has every right to if if Hamas is using civilian infrastructure, if it's using buildings and committing acts of war against Israel and firing from such buildings, then I don't understand why when you point to a building that's been destroyed, that in and of itself makes it illegitimate if Hamas is operating operating out of it. >> Well, there's such a thing as collateral damage and acceptable loss. And I think the the argument is it's not acceptable the amount of innocent people who have been killed so far. >> Yeah, that's very easy to say, right? But in terms of actual actually applying it to a war, you have to take it as a case-by-case basis and evaluate. The fact that even Israel takes all these measures and steps to evaluate collateral damage and what's a just response, I think reflects Israel's value system in a way that we never hold the Palestinians to that standard. You never hold Hamas to that standard. >> [music]