Show: THE O'REILLY FACTOR Date: April 10, 2002 Head: Unresolved Problem: Interview With Benjamin Netanyahu Byline: Bill O'Reilly Guest: Benjamin Netanyahu O'REILLY: Thanks for stay with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. In the "Unresolved Problem" segment tonight, hard-line Israeli former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before members of the U.S. Senate today. And he isn't pleased about President Bush calling for an Israeli military pullback. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, FMR. ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: The question many in my country are now asking is this,will America apply its principles consistently and win this war? Or will it selectively abandon these principles and thereby ultimately risk losing the war? Until last week, I was absolutely certain that the United States would adhere to its principles and lead the free world to a decisive victory. Today, I too have my concerns.(END VIDEO CLIP) O'REILLY: Joining us now from Washington is Benjamin Netanyahu. You know, I saw you on "HANNITY & COLMES" earlier in the week. And I'm with you about the terrorism deal. There's no question that blowing up children and women is terrorism. And it's got to be fought. And I have no problem with the Israeli government being as aggressive as they can in fighting terrorism,but there is a difference between our fight here against al Qaeda and your fight against the Palestinians. And here's the difference. The Palestinians have some legitimate grievances against the Israeli government, specifically that in their territory, you have hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers,which exacerbate the problem. We, on the other hand, didn't do anything to al Qaeda. They just attacked us out of the blue. So it's not exactly the same comparison. Where am I going wrong? NETANYAHU: Twice. Number one, it makes no difference whether you have a grievance, real or imaginary. Nothing justifies terrorism. That was the first principle that President Bush articulated. Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies terrorism, any more that something justifies Nazism. Hitler had grievances. He thought he was shortchanged. Germany was shortchanged in Versailles. So what? You don't practice Nazism. If the Palestinians have grievances, so what? Nothing justifies blowing up children on the bus. That's the first part. The second part is that their grievances are not real ones in the sense that they constantly say this is occupied territory. Well, it's not occupied territory. It is a territory that is in dispute. It is territory that was seized by Jordan. It's part of our ancestral homeland. That's where Judea is word from -- the area from which Jews come from. We've been there for thousands of years. But nevertheless, it was taken over illegally by Jordan in 1948, and then taken over by Israel in the war of self-defense. The U.N. Resolution 242 says that Israel has to withdraw from some areas, not all of them, from some areas to secure and recognize boundaries. So we have a dispute. O'REILLY: All right. I understand the dispute. NETANYAHU: But mind you, all the Palestinians areas, Bill, just one last point on this. All the Palestinians live under a Palestinian government. They don't live under us. O'REILLY: Understand. NETANYAHU: We're not occupying Palestinians. We have areas in dispute. O'REILLY: What they're saying is that you've made incursions into their territory so that they can't settle there. I mean, that's basically what they're saying. Now is it legitimate to fight terrorism with terrorism? There is no question that terrorism and the suicide bomber is a terrorist, but when you guys go in and level camps and,you know, smash through people's apartment walls looking for the terrorists and do these things, they consider that terrorism. So are you fighting terrorism with terrorism? NETANYAHU: No. That's what the Taliban are saying about you. I mean, the terrorists deliberately target civilians, which is a war crime,and then deliberately hide behind civilians seeking immunity. Well, you didn't give them that immunity in Afghanistan. And you, in fact, used overwhelming airpower. You first told the Taliban and al Qaeda, "Get out, surrender. And if you don't, we're coming in." And you told that to the civilian population. Whoever left, left. And you just went in there and bombed. And I'm not faulting you at all for those civilian casualties. The civilian casualties, both in the World Trade Center and in Afghanistan are the responsibility of the Mullah Omar and bin Laden. Both of them are responsible. O'REILLY: All right. NETANYAHU: In our case, the civilian casualties are the responsibility of Arafat,who both sends his killers to our coffee shops and our pizza shops and hides behind them. O'REILLY: Well, it doesn't matter because -- as a military man,you know it's a matter of degree. You can do certain things, and you can be restrained in certain things. We were restrained in our bombing of Afghanistan. We didn't go in and carpet bomb that whole country. And we could have. We didn't. We surgical bombed them. Of course, you're going to make mistakes and things. But look, let's put that aside. Go ahead. NETANYAHU: Bill, stop. Stop. This is supposed to be a creative dialogue. O'REILLY: Sure. NETANYAHU: So I'm going to stop you and interrupt you. Here's the main point. You were precise and careful in your bombing of Afghanistan. I don't doubt that. We didn't bomb. O'REILLY: No, you couldn't bomb. NETANYAHU: Yes. We used... O'REILLY: You couldn't. NETANYAHU: No, we could. O'REILLY: No, you couldn't. NETANYAHU: We could take our aircraft and do what you're doing in Afghanistan. O'REILLY: No, no, no. It's too dense. It's too much of an urban situation. You couldn't do it. NETANYAHU: No, no, have you seen the villages and towns in Afghanistan? O'REILLY: Many times. NETANYAHU: In Afghanistan? O'REILLY: No, no in New York. NETANYAHU: Let me tell you something. None -- but you haven't been to Afghanistan. What we've done is done what you haven't done. And I don't blame you for not doing it. We've put our ground troops in place right from the start. We've gone house to house, putting our own soldiers at risk. Thirteen of them died yesterday as a result of a kid with suicide bombing dispatched by the Palestinians. They didn't want to shoot the kid. O'REILLY: But like us in Vietnam... NETANYAHU: We put our own soldiers... O'REILLY: But look, Mr. Prime Minister. Like us in... NETANYAHU: ...at risk because we do not want to include -- increase civilian casualties. O'REILLY: All right, but like us in Vietnam, whenever you do that, you're going to anger the local population. There is the danger of soldiers making mistakes, brutalizing civilians. And you know it's happened. But let's go on. I think the only solution to this problem between you... NETANYAHU: Wait, you have the last word on every one of these? O'REILLY: No, no, I just want to get another topic, because you're fascinating. NETANYAHU: Well, let me put something in. We're not -- I must tell you, Bill, Israel is doing what no army in the world would do in the face of this wanton terrorism that by now has killed seven times the number of Israelis proratedas in the World Trade Center. We're going house to house. We're not carpet bombing. We're putting our soldiers at risk. We could finish this thing in two days if we just blanket fired. O'REILLY: I understand. But you understand my point, too. When you do that, you're going to anger the population. And people are going to get hurt that shouldn't. I understand why you are doing it. NETANYAHU: Well, you hurt the population in Afghanistan. You know, so what? O'REILLY: All right, now the solution to this problem in Israel and the Palestinians, in my opinion, is you have you to separate, all right? You have to get a mandate where Palestinians are here, Israelis are here, and in the middle are the U.N. forces to keep you apart. All right? And that way, there wouldn't be infiltration. You know, there would be a controlled situation. Is that the solution that you see? NETANYAHU: Well, I certainly think the Palestinians ought to have self-government. I think we have to have an effective physical lines of separation, but I disagree that the U.N. would do it. We put the U.N. in UNifill and spent tens of billions of dollars on a U.N. force called UNifill to separate Palestinian terrorism from Israel in south Lebanon. The result was that the international forces served as a cover for the Palestinian terrorists. And they thought that Israel couldn't go through them. In fact, it was very difficult to go through them. So in fact, it increased terrorism. No, I think the right thing to do is to remove Arafat's regime that is committed to Israel's destruction, to have Democratic elections in the Palestinian areas. Choose a new leadership that doesn't want to destroy Israel and doesn't use terrorism. Let us negotiate a workable deal where the Palestinians have self-government and we have security. That's equitable. That's reasonable. It will not happen as long as Arafat is there. O'REILLY: All right, but I don't think the Palestinians are going to support that election. One, we have a minute left. Why... NETANYAHU: They can support anything. They don't have a choice. They're governed by the dark dictatorship of Arafat. O'REILLY: Why does Europe hate Israel? NETANYAHU: I don't know. But Europe has a lot to answer for it, because 60 years ago, they did damn all and allowed the Jewish people to be murdered on its soil. And now sixty years later, they side with another mass murdererer, who is murdering innocent people and condemning Israel, the sovereign Jewish state for... O'REILLY: Now you don't know why they're siding with the Palestinians? NETANYAHU: Oil. Other reasons. Many reasons. Propaganda. You name it. Nothing absolves that opaqueness. I think the American people have shone an admirable commonsense. They know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. And the bad guys are the Arafats of the world, the Talibans of the world. O'REILLY: All right. NETANYAHU: Europe doesn't seem to have that sense of clarity. O'REILLY: Mr. Prime Minister, as always, thank you. We appreciate it. |
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