How Biden’s Policies Are Prolonging the Gaza War: Eugene Kontorovich

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “Israel is fighting Iran on every front, so that America doesn’t have to.”

In this episode, I sit down with Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, one of the world’s preeminent experts on the Israeli–Arab conflict, and a professor of international and constitutional law at George Mason University. We get an update on the situation in Gaza and the current status of the war, and try to separate fact from fiction.

“Israel is ready to win this war. If Joe Biden had not told Israel, ‘Stand down. Don’t take out Rafah,’ this war would have already been over. Israel is weeks away from winning this war. There’s one last battle to be fought. And then Joe Biden has basically turned on a red light,” says Prof. Kontorovich. “Israel does not want a repeat of Joe Biden’s Afghanistan in Gaza, right, with Hamas taking over again.”

Is Israel on the verge of victory, or could this be another forever war? Is Biden helping Israel, or hindering it? And who should control Gaza after the war? Is a two-state solution really viable?

“Hamas shoots civilians trying to escape the conflict. Why? Because they need them in Gaza to serve as their own human shields,” says Prof. Kontorovich. “Every time President Biden says ‘We should have a Palestinian state,’ he’s teaching Hamas and other Islamic terrorists: The way to get what you want is murder babies.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

*Big thanks to our sponsor for this episode Patriot Gold Group. Check them out here: https://ept.ms/3sr5LhH

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Eugene Kontorovich, it’s such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Eugene Kontorovich:
It’s great to be here again, Jan.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please give us an update on the situation in Gaza right now. What is the overall status of the war?

Mr. Kontorovich:
The war has been overwhelmingly successful, both from Israel’s military objectives of keeping its civilian population safe from another October 7th, and also from the objective of protecting innocent civilians in Gaza.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let me jump in. This is very different from what we typically hear, because a lot of Gazans have lost their lives.

Mr. Kontorovich:
Let’s talk about what has actually happened since the war started.
Israel was invaded by thousands of Hamas members and also random civilians who killed over a thousand Israeli civilians in a country of less than 10 million people. It was on the magnitude of five or six 9-11s. They tortured, mutilated, raped, and took hundreds of hostages captive. That’s how the war started.

Since then, Israel has been fighting to eliminate Hamas in Gaza.
Even by the account of Hamas, which there’s no particular reason to trust, about 30,000 people have been killed. Perhaps half of them have been Hamas fighters. When you talk about the people who died in Gaza, it has been at least 50 percent Hamas fighters. That creates one of the best civilian-to-combat casualty rates in modern warfare.
That is to say, there has not been any war that has been free of civilian casualties. Name whatever war you want to. In World War II, millions of German civilians were killed by the allies as a result of the war. The goal of a law-abiding military is to keep the civilian casualties down to some reasonable amount.

But typically, when the United States has fought in Afghanistan or in Iraq, civilian casualties have been three times, four times, or five times that of military casualties. In other words, for every enemy soldier, there are three or four enemy civilians that will die. By having this amazing ratio, Israel has achieved what is actually a miracle by the standards of modern urban warfare. It is even more amazing because Hamas has had a specific strategy of trying to have its own civilians killed.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please explain that for us.

Mr. Kontorovich:
Hamas understands that it cannot defeat Israel militarily. If Israel has the will to fight, which it does, they will beat Hamas. Hamas has one strategy and it is working perfectly; maximize their own civilian casualties. By the way, this is an evil tactic that no force has ever actually done to this extent in warfare.

They’re not simply ignoring international law. They are what I would call reverse-engineering international law. General law says certain things are legitimate, military targets. Certain things are protected and civilians are protected.

You cannot directly target civilians, though collateral casualties are tolerated by the laws of war. Hospitals, places of worship, schools, all enjoy some level of heightened protection. But that is where Hamas locates all of its operations. Every school and every hospital in Gaza was turned into a Hamas base.

Why? Because either way they win. Either Israel says, “We shouldn’t attack it because it’s a school and there’s going to be a big controversy,”
or Israel does attack it, which is allowed under the law of war. The law of war clearly states that placing military objectives in a civilian area, in
a protected area, does not protect the military target. You are not going to get immunity. You’re not going to get safety by breaking the law of war.

But what it will do is increase the civilian casualties on the side of Hamas.
Then you have the international community attacking Israel for the civilian casualties that Hamas has purposefully engineered. There has never been a military that has fought like this, even Nazi Germany, the model for an evil force. They didn’t care about the Jews and they didn’t care about the gypsies, but they did care about their own civilians.

When they were fighting on German soil, they were fighting to reduce their civilian casualties, not maximize them. Hamas wants to maximize their civilian casualties and wants to maximize damage to hospitals, because that creates international pressure. That creates a certain kind of response.

We hear, “Look at all these civilians dying in Gaza,” which will get the United States and other Western powers to intervene. It creates the media headlines we see in the New York Times that Israel is killing Gaza children.
Their only hope of victory is to have Israel’s Western allies step in and hold it back.

That strategy is working for them. Israel is winning the war on the ground. Hamas is also winning its own war to run up the Gaza body count. By the way, they’re only winning because the media is letting them win. Again, by any objective standard, the civilian casualties are extraordinarily low, lower than Afghanistan, lower than Iraq, and lower as a proportion of combatant casualties. Nonetheless, there are some civilian casualties, and that is being weaponized to stop Israel. That is the current situation of the war.

If you recall, before the war started, all sorts of experts, including American generals, said, “Israel cannot win. It’s going to be a massacre for the Israelis. With the tunnels, there are going to be ambushes.” Apparently, an American general sent to advise Israel predicted on the order of 20 Israeli casualties a day. Thank God there has been nothing like that.

In fact, Israel has done an amazing job of beating Hamas. Now, Hamas has retreated with many of the Israeli hostages, including women, children, and even babies, to Rafah, which is a city on the Egyptian border, where presumably they have tunnels. They’re hiding out there with the hostages.

Israel now needs to take this last stronghold. But the United States says, “Wait, no, that’s it. You can’t do this.” It’s kind of like a cancer treatment where you get rid of most of the cancer, and then for the last few cancer cells, you say, “That would be too much to get rid of them.”

The leaders of Hamas know that if they climb out of those tunnels as survivors, they win. All they need to do to win is stay alive, and then they will be able to rebuild. How are they going to rebuild?

Their major ally is Iran. President Biden just released sanctioned funds to Iran, so they’re going to have the money from Iran. They’re going to have vast popular support, because they stood up to Israel and didn’t lose.

Their defeat needs to be like the defeat of Nazi Germany, an absolute defeat. It needs to be like the defeat of the Soviet Union, a total defeat. If they are left standing, they will regroup and they will do it again. How do we know they will do it again? They have repeatedly said they will.

Top Hamas officials have gone on Arab TV over and over again, saying, “October 7th was a great thing. We want to do it again. We will do it again.” They think it was a victory for them. In a sense, they are right. Who was talking about a Palestinian state before October 7th? Nobody. They have raised the profile of their issue by murdering their own civilians.

Why? Because the international media and the Western powers are rewarding them. Every time President Biden says, “We should have a Palestinian state,” he is teaching Hamas and other Islamic terrorists the way to get what you want is to murder babies. On the first day, people will say, “It’s bad what you did.” On the second day, they will say, “But now, what can we give you?”

Mr. Jekielek:
We hear about Hamas using human shields. Please outline for us the evidence around this whole picture.

Mr. Kontorovich:
In the premise of the law of war, the basic requirement is what’s called distinction. Distinction means combatants have to distinguish themselves from the civilian population.That’s where uniforms come from. When you think about it, uniforms don’t make sense. If a bunch of hostile people are trying to kill you, everyone dressing the same is just like putting a big shoot me sign on yourselves.

But you wear uniforms so that the people with the uniforms become legitimate targets, not the civilians. You don’t put your bases in civilian areas. You don’t use protected places like hospitals. There’s a reason Israel does not put their headquarters underneath a hospital. It’s so the hospital will not get targeted.

Hamas violates all of those rules. They routinely fight without uniforms on, and this can be seen in abundant videos starting with October 7th up to today. It’s to make themselves indistinguishable from the civilian population. They locate all of their military facilities in civilian facilities.

Their headquarters are in regular apartment buildings, in schools, and in hospitals, like the Al Shifa hospital where there is a terrorist base underneath. There are tunnels that were dug as terrorist hideouts and used to imprison hostages. Weapons are found in every United Nations relief work agency facility.

In other words, they take humanitarian sites and schools and turn them into bases. Soldiers coming back from Gaza now say that it’s even worse than you’ve heard. Every single house has guns hidden in it or a tunnel underneath it. They basically turn the entire civilian infrastructure into a terror base.

As a result, Israel has to make a choice. Let’s say Hamas is hiding out in a tunnel complex—there are hundreds of miles of tunnels in Gaza—underneath an apartment building. If Israel does not target them, they will eventually come out and kill another thousand Israeli civilians.

If Israel does target them, they will also damage the civilian building above.
The law of war allows that facility to be targeted. They’re doing it purposefully, because for them, it’s heads we win, tails you lose. They have absolute disregard for their civilians.

When there are attempts to provide humanitarian supplies to Gaza and civilians, they shoot at civilians trying to take the supplies because they take it for themselves. There was an amazing incident earlier on in the war when a United Nations relief agency tweeted that all of their warehouses of food were stolen by armed men. They didn’t have any more food. Two hours later that tweet was deleted and suddenly everything is fine. We know that Hamas plunders supplies intended for their own civilians,

They also shoot civilians seeking to escape. If they cared about their civilians, maybe they would let them run away. Take a look at any other conflict where there is a war going on. Right now, there are 6 million Ukrainians in Europe outside of Ukraine. Even in Israel people want to escape the conflict. They get on a plane and fly away.

Hamas shoots civilians trying to escape the conflict. Why? Because they need them in Gaza to serve as their own human shields. Of course, they also use the hostages as human shields, which is another massive
violation of the laws of war. They have surrounded themselves with the hostages. They have explicitly said to Israel, “If you bomb us, you’re going to kill your own hostages.”

Mr. Jekielek:
There aren’t a lot of Palestinians that have actually managed to leave. Please explain that to us.

Mr. Kontorovich:
Every war that has been fought in modern times has had large numbers of refugees trying to escape the conflict. Millions of people from Iraq and millions of people from Afghanistan have come to America. President Biden says it’s good for people to be able to seek refuge from conflicts, even conflicts that aren’t really conflicts like bad economies in Latin America, and come to the United States.The conflict in Gaza is the only conflict, certainly of such a scale, which has resulted in basically zero refugees. That is for two reasons.

First of all, Hamas does not let people escape. Even before the war started, people could not freely leave Gaza. It was like there was an iron curtain.
It was like the Soviet Union. They didn’t let people just leave. They made people pay about $10,000 in bribes to get across the border, because they need the people there suffering under Hamas’ rule to then blame Israel.
They want those people there.

Since the war started, it is not only Hamas that does not let people leave. Egypt is the only neutral country with a border with Gaza. Obviously Israel is not going to let enemy nationals come into Israel. But Egypt, supposedly
is a fellow Arab country, and supports the Palestinians. They have a border with Gaza which they have sealed completely.

Mr. Jekielek:
It’s a pretty ferocious looking border.

Mr. Kontorovich:
They have built three rows of massive walls with dozens of tanks parked behind them with their guns aimed straight at Gaza. They will shoot anyone who comes across. Nobody has made it across. Who is the top financial and military supporter of Egypt? The United States.

The United States could pressure Egypt to open the border. But President Biden has never said a word to that effect. Rather, all of the pressure is on Israel to not win the war. If you really care about Gazans, if they are really suffering, why not just let them leave? Of course, the reason is that it would reduce the pressure on Israel.

Mr. Jekielek:
You said Biden is putting all his effort to have Israel not win the war.
Many people say that Biden isn’t doing enough to support the Palestinians, the Gazans. How is he trying to stop Israel from winning the war?

Mr. Kontorovich:
First of all, Biden’s policy on the war has evolved a little bit during the war. It began with a speech and a visit to Israel, which sounded largely supportive.
That seemed to anger progressives and Muslims, especially in potential swing states like Michigan, which we know has caused the administration significant distress.

Since then, his policy has evolved to be increasingly critical of Israel. He has implemented sanctions against Israelis, and he has lifted sanctions on Iran. They have begun to restrict and slow-walk and condition arms sales to Israel in the middle of this war for Israel’s survival.

But now it’s quite clear he has told the Israeli government not to attack Hamas’s last holdout, where Hamas is sitting with the hostages, and where Hamas’s leadership is. If you don’t take out Hamas’s last holdout, you are letting them win. He’s basically saying that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas, but not to the point of victory. In practice, it means Israel must constantly live with this threat of genocide and torture and Israel cannot remove this threat.

That’s absurd. Imagine if America invaded Afghanistan after 9-11 not to get rid of the Taliban, but just to knock them around a little. Now, maybe that would be okay with Joe Biden, because of course he left Afghanistan and let the Taliban take over. But Israel does not want to repeat Joe Biden’s Afghanistan in Gaza, with Hamas taking over again.

Mr. Jekielek:
One of the criticisms of the U.S. support of Israel, much as the financial support of the war in Ukraine, is that it’s creating another forever war.

Mr. Kontorovich:
I would say that it’s actually the opposite. It’s not America’s support for Israel that could create a forever war. It’s the pulling out of that support, as Joe Biden is doing. Israel is ready to win this war. If Joe Biden had not told Israel, “Stand down, don’t take out Rafah,” this war would already have been over. Israel is weeks away from winning this war. There’s one last battle to be fought.

Joe Biden has basically turned on a red light, and Israel is waiting or hoping that red light will go away. Joe Biden clearly wants a forever war, because he wants Hamas continuing to exist, and Iran continuing to have their Mullah regime, as a counterweight to Israel. Israel wants to win, and Israel can and will win. I completely understand the position of American conservatives, who don’t want open-ended expensive foreign entanglements.

That’s not what Israel is looking for. Israel is simply looking for the ability to not be stopped before it wins. It doesn’t need help. It needs to do its own thing. If Israel doesn’t win this war, that’s a victory for Iran, and it’s a victory for Islamic terrorism. They’re not going to stop with Israel and they have made that clear.

America should not expect to be spending its efforts, let alone the lives of its soldiers, in foreign wars. Support for Israel allows America to have someone else fight the jihadis before they come through America’s southern border. Because Joe Biden, amazingly, is treating America’s own southern border the way he should be treating Gaza’s border with Egypt. Anyone can come through.

But on the other hand, Gaza’s border with Egypt remains shut. Support for Israel is really crucial for America not to involve itself further, because America doesn’t need to deal with these issues as long as it lets Israel do so.

Mr. Jekielek:
Not entirely, because the U.S. has been providing military or material support to Israel in this process, so they are involved.

Mr. Kontorovich:
America is supporting Israel in this way because this support allows America to basically stay out of the region. It only provides support, it does not send troops in. That is the position of the Biden administration. That position of preventing Israel from winning is likely to entangle America in this region.

For example, Biden, in his State of the Union speech, announced something insane. He is having American troops build a port for Hamas in Gaza. That makes no sense. It’s going to be run by Qatar, an ally of Iran. That is not something Israel asked for. All Israel wants is a clear field to finish this war.

Indeed, the munitions that America is providing are principally to advance the interests of the Biden administration. These are smart guided munitions.They’re JDAM kits to convert gravity bombs into guided missiles, into smart bombs. The administration is insisting Israel use these very expensive, hard-to-manufacture missiles to reduce civilian casualties. Israel could also win this war the old-fashioned way with artillery. There’s nothing illegal about that, but it would increase civilian casualties.

The administration’s insistence on Israel setting the world record in minimizing civilian casualties is what makes these munitions so crucial.
But Israel could win without them, but at higher civilian cost. America should not stop military supplies in the middle of this war. But this is not Ukraine vs. Russia. Nobody thinks this is a stalemate.

Israel is on the verge of victory. After this, Israel will have victory against Hezbollah in the north. These are all fights against Iran. Whether one is an isolationist or a globalist, Iran is an enemy of the United States. America should consider itself lucky that Israel is fighting Iran on every front, so that America doesn’t have to.

Mr. Jekielek:
Hezbollah is a potent force in the north. If Hamas is entirely defeated, Hezbollah takes on the mantle. Could you comment on that?

Mr. Kontorovich:
The attack on October 7th was not a one-front attack. Israel was attacked by Iranian-controlled assets around the Middle East; in Yemen, in Lebanon in the north, as well as in Gaza. Since then Hezbollah has been constantly shooting rockets at Israel and killing civilians on an almost weekly basis. This is despite the fact that Israel has evacuated the entire northern part of the country. Over 100,000 people are not in their homes.

There is now a serious discussion as to whether those kids from the north will even be able to start school in the fall, or remain as internally displaced persons, as quasi-refugees in their own country. The goal of all of these attacks is to make it impossible for Jews to live in Israel.

Currently, Hezbollah has succeeded. They’ve made it impossible to live in the entire northern part of the country. That is not a situation any country could tolerate. You have an entire zone in your country where nobody can live. This is not in what they call the West Bank. This is not occupied territory. This is in lesser Israel. This is not something any Israeli government can tolerate, and this will require eliminating the threat of Hezbollah.

Ironically, United Nations resolutions have for decades called on Hezbollah to be disarmed and pushed away from Israel’s borders. Those resolutions have been completely ignored, which means Israel will have to do it.

Mr. Jekielek:
Post-October 7th, there is suddenly more discussion of the two-state solution. I’ll read you a quote from Gadi Taub in Tablet, “Compelling as it is as a debating strategy or as a form of self-therapy, the two-state solution is sadly no solution at all. Rather, it is a big step down the road to another Lebanon, while producing much greater misery and more bloodshed for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Mr. Kontorovich:
The two-state solution was based on the idea that if only Israel left some territory and traded land for peace, the Palestinians would happily accept it, govern themselves, and leave Israel alone. Everything since then has disproven this. Hamas is shooting rockets at Israel, and Lebanon is shooting rockets at Israel.

Maybe people would say about Lebanon, like they do about Gaza, “If only the Lebanese had their own state, if only they had a country, they wouldn’t shoot rockets at Israel.” They do have a country. It’s called Lebanon. The fact that they have a country makes Hezbollah a much bigger threat.

Because they don’t just have homemade rockets or things they can smuggle through the border. They’re a country. They have all of the weaponry a country can get. They control the Lebanese army.

The biggest difference is you can buy weapons on the open market. Imagine if Hamas had access to fighter planes and artillery for October 7th. There would be nothing left of Israel. A two-state solution means two things. It means Israel abandoning territory, and no Jews could ever live there.

Mr. Jekielek:
Why is that?

Mr. Kontorovich:
Because that is a Palestinian demand. They want territory in which Jews currently live to be part of their state, and their initial demand is that it come free of Jews, so all the Jews have to be evicted. Israel, a Jewish state with Jews and Arabs in it, has a 20 percent Arab population, but a Palestinian state would have no Jews. It’s a unique and morally disgusting demand which the international community humors.

Israel would be sandwiched in the middle of two parts of a Palestinian state, Gaza and the West Bank, eight miles across at the narrowest point.
An attack like October 7th would wipe it out. Of course, they would have much bigger weapons to attack with. Now, what about this idea that if only Israel were to leave them alone, they would stop bothering Israel?

Israel completely left Gaza in 2005. Since 2005, Gaza has had a Palestinian government. Israel doesn’t tax them. Israel does not regulate them. Israel’s only relationship to Gaza since 2005 has been trying to keep them from killing Israelis. There’s not a single Israeli soldier there. That’s how they got a Hamas government.

To say that Israel de facto occupies them is absurd. What kind of de facto occupier would let over 300 miles of tunnels be built right underneath Gaza? They have run their own affairs. You can see by what people choose to do what’s important to them.

They have turned their country into a genocide laboratory with every single part of it geared to attacking, kidnapping, and killing Israeli civilians. They want a state for that? They maintain that they are pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state.

We can’t get this wrong. This is not something where you could say, “Give them a state and see if it works out. Because the cost of that mistake is the end of the Jewish people. We cannot afford that, especially now.

The Palestinians have been trying to get a Palestinian state for some decades now, since the 60s or 70s. It failed in the 60s when they hijacked planes. It failed in the 70s when they hijacked planes. It failed in the 80s when they were targeting Israeli buses and Israeli civilian targets. It failed in the first and second intifada when they started blowing up cafes and restaurants in Israel.

But now that they actually invade Israel, massacre a whole bunch of people and take hundreds of hostages, will it succeed then? What’s the lesson for the Palestinians? If they want more territory there is an easy recipe—murder, torture, rape, and hostage taking. That cannot be the recipe for creating a state. What people has ever gotten a state through a genocide?

After World War II, did anyone say, “Maybe the Germans need more territory. Maybe they don’t have enough territory, let’s give them more territory to keep them from doing this again.” The answer to that is no. They took away their territory.

Mr. Jekielek:
One of the proposed solutions is to have the UN take control of Gaza. What is your reaction to that?

Mr. Kontorovich:
The UN has no capacity to control Gaza. The UN has never successfully controlled any territory. In particular, in terms of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the UN’s record has been a dismal failure. The UN has had peacekeeping missions that were supposed to create a buffer between Israel and its hostile neighbors since 1948. Each one of them was a failure.

There was a peacekeeping mission called the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, based in Jerusalem, that was supposed to separate Israel and Jordan. When the Jordanians started attacking Israel in 1967, they just bugged out and ran away. There was a UN peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights.

As soon as the jihadis showed up during the Syrian civil war, they abandoned their positions in the demilitarized zone, and it was no longer demilitarized. UN peacekeepers in the Sinai peninsula ran away as soon as the Egyptians said they were going to attack.

Now in Gaza, we see that UN agencies were completely taken over by Hamas. There is a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Their very mission is to disarm Hezbollah and keep them from shooting at Israel. Instead of doing that, they become human shields for Hezbollah, and Hezbollah digs tunnels underneath their bases. Such a record of failure is no recommendation for giving them any authority. Even worse than failing, they have been co-opted, infiltrated, and taken over by Hamas.

Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned the war could be over in weeks. How would that play out?

Mr. Kontorovich:
It will be over as soon as Biden lets it be over.

Mr. Jekielek:
There has already been a discussion in the National Security Council about what will happen when the war is over. On one hand, the administration is not letting it be over, and on the other hand, they are discussing what happens when it is over. What do you make of that?

Mr. Kontorovich:
They don’t mind it being over, as long as it’s not on terms favorable to Israel. When they mention the war being over, they really don’t want the war to end with a decisive Israeli victory. They want the war to end with some kind of ignominious capitulation, a trade of a large number of Palestinian murderers for the hostages, and an extended ceasefire that turns into a permanent one, which effectively means that Hamas wins.

The war has been bad for the administration’s support with its base, because progressives think there should be even more against Israel than there has already been. They want to pivot very quickly from this and then play to their far-Left base by rewarding Hamas with a country. That’s what they mean by the day after.

They mean a Palestinian state, which is an absolute non-starter for the day after. There is no Israeli government that would allow that. It’s all a matter of UN control, which is totally not serious. We see the only possible recipe for security in Gaza in the future years is Israeli security control. That does not mean Israel is going to be governing the lives of Palestinians. Israel has no interest in doing that.

But in terms of being the only armed force in the area, Israel is the only power that can keep this area safe. Did anything like this happen from 1967 to 2005 when Israel controlled the area? No. Nothing like this ever happened. That is why Israel needs to reimplement its security control.

Mr. Jekielek:
But that effectively means occupation, correct?

Mr. Kontorovich:
No, not necessarily. First of all, you can’t occupy Gaza because you can only occupy sovereign countries. Gaza is not a sovereign country, and it would not be subject to military occupation.

Mr. Jekielek:
You hear this moniker, occupation, but Israel does not want to run Gaza.

Mr. Kontorovich:
Israel wants to keep them from doing what they did. That means you cannot allow rearmament by Hamas. You need to be there controlling things. For example, after America won World War II, did it leave Nazi Germany right away? That would have been crazy, because the Nazis would have regrouped.

Mr. Jekielek:
There are still American soldiers in Germany today.

Mr. Kontorovich:
As a formal matter, the occupation of Berlin ended in 1990. Occupation of parts of Japan lasted until the 1970s. There first needed to be a denazification procedure. We cannot have the same people running things who worked with Hamas. Just like after World War II, there was a denazification party. After the war in Iraq, there was a debaathification process.

Anyone with ties to Hamas needs to be removed from government. That’s going to be a very difficult task. But it’s ridiculous to think that things can go back to normal. That would be waiting for another October 7th. What we cannot have, and what there is too much of, is formalistic expressions of sympathy for October 7th.

Of course they condemn what happened, but without a commitment to allow Israel to make sure it never happens again. There’s a lot of sympathy when Jews are being killed. But when they then start to defend themselves from being killed again, all of a sudden the sympathy runs out.

Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned you don’t like the U.N. controlling Gaza. Hamas couldn’t control Gaza, obviously. What about the Palestinian Authority?

Mr. Kontorovich:
The Palestinian Authority, the government of the Palestinians, is split in two. Hamas is a political party, an Islamic political party, which rules Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority is an Arab nationalist party, which rules in the West Bank.

The only difference between the two is that Hamas is more energetic and successful, and Israel is not in Gaza, which has allowed Hamas to become stronger. Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, is not currently able to launch attacks like October 7th, because Israel is in the West Bank preventing it. But we know that they would if they could. How do we know this?

First of all, Palestinian Authority leaders have praised October 7th. They have said that Hamas did a great job and that it was a great thing. We have even found out that members of the Palestinian Authority military units fought alongside Hamas invading Israel. They were in the Kibbutzim.
They were killing civilians.

Concerning the Palestinian Authority, imagine if there were two parties in a country competing for power, and one of them goes and murders and rapes and tortures people in a neighboring country. You would think that would be a great moment for the opposing party to say, “We’re not like them.” It was actually the opposite.

They said, “This is a Palestinian dream, we’re fighting alongside them.” They’re paying salary payments, what’s called the pay-for-slay program, which America has made illegal, to the Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel. They’re putting them on the payroll.

They have not denounced this. They have not tried to arrest or punish anyone involved with this. They would be allowing them to run it, and it would basically be allowing people who supported October 7th to take over, which is absurd.

Mr. Jekielek:
This has been a fascinating conversation. A final thought as we finish up?

Mr. Kontorovich:
October 7th was the worst attack on Jews and one of the worst civilian atrocities since the Holocaust. The only thing more shocking than October 7th was what I would call October 8th, or even October 10th. In other words, what Hamas did was outrageous, but we never had high expectations from them. But the reaction of the international community,
which started accusing Israel of genocide the moment it started to defend itself, that has been heartbreaking.

This reaction of trying to restrain Israel, when Israel is already greatly self-restrained, says, “You are not allowed to defend yourself.” We want to be able to turn the colors of our buildings blue and white when Jews get killed.” But God forbid Jews do something to stop themselves from getting killed. Israel is not going to listen to that advice. It cannot. There’s no choice.

This conflation of so-called Israeli genocide, which is simply Israel’s act of self-defense, is horrific and could also blow back at the West. If Israel’s defense against this attack is genocide, no war anywhere else that a Western country could ever fight in its own defense would ever be legitimate or justified.

Mr. Jekielek:
Eugene Konturovich, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mr. Kontorovich:
Thank you so much, Jan. It was great.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Eugene Konturovich and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.