Bassem Youssef and Piers Morgan. [Picture: Piers Morgan]
It was a stark contrast to the highly satirical interview on Uncensored two weeks prior. Round two of Piers Morgan versus Bassem Youssef was drastically more intimate and cordial, and ironed out the reasons for the “conflict” in Palestine.
The duo got together on Wednesday at The Comedy Store, the Los Angeles comedy club where the Egyptian comedian performs. They discussed the response to their prior interview which raked in millions of views within the first 24 hours of airing, thanks mostly to Youssef’s satirical responses throughout.
After gifting Morgan a traditional Palestinian Za’atar Dip, Youssef calmly spelt out the context of Hamas’s 7 October resistance attack. Jews were cast out of their lands since time immemorial and eventually found refuge in Palestine after the horrors of World War II, he said.
But then Zionists caused upheaval when they wiped out entire Palestinian villages – Deir Yassin, for one – in pursuit of an independent Jewish state, later to be known as Israel. Ever since, Palestinians have been displaced and forced to live under inhumane conditions.
“You’re talking about the atrocities of October 7, so horrible, but in the Arab mind there is Deir Yassin … Some [Zionist militias] talk about it with regret and some talk about it with pleasure,” he said.
Morgan was ready to concede this should never have happened.
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Nakba should never have happened
Shortly after the Second World War, the State of Israel was proclaimed. “Suddenly, in 1948,” said Youssef, “there were 1.5 million Palestinians, three quarters of them were overnight pushed into refugees (sic). This is why it’s called the Nakba, the catastrophe.”
“There was a vibrant Palestinian culture happening over there. Right now, they are erasing this culture. Suddenly I’m seeing of ‘Israeli hummus’ – that’s an insult, ‘Israeli hummus’. Come on! I mean, take the land, leave the hummus. That’s not fair,” he continued.
“To me, it’s pretty clear,” interjected Morgan. “Seven-hundred thousand Palestinians were displaced and it should never have happened. That has been absolutely the root cause for so much resentment.”
He then went on to probe whether there was a “just” cause on both sides. He questioned the behaviour of the “Arab side” in the Oslo Accords. Youssef’s rebuttal was that peace talks were “a kind of passive-aggressiveness”.
Israel would offer peace, he said, but then “suffocate your villages”, something Morgan agreed “has been incredibly inflammatory, worsening the situation [and] putting back the chance of peace”.
Said Morgan, “As it’s gone on, the genuine will on both sides for peace has not existed. I think it’s been a deceit to the world and to the relative groups of people on both sides, actually a betrayal of them”.
Morgan got so far as conceding that the Nakba should never have happened. Bizarrely, though, he appeared unable to grasp the fact that Hamas’s actions were not so much a random act of terror on a “sovereign” state but the manifestation of decades of pent-up anger and resistance. He steadfastly maintained that Hamas was a terror group that ought to be erased, even if it came at the ballooning cost of 9 000 lives.
