https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X_KdkoGxSs
The only name I knew and revered was that of Benny Morris, prominent member of the new Israeli historian. "New historians" is a self attributed denomination (coined by Benny Morris himself) and means that they started, in the 1980's an academic work of actually investigating scientifically recent Israeli history. I had never hear of Lex Fridman, the host, nor of Stephen Bonnell who goes by the very humble alias of "Destiny". I usually do not go on Youtube much. I probably came across Mouin Rabbani and accounts of Norman Finkelstein scholarly works. I admit, however, that I didn't remember their name and would have been unable to tell who they were. Benny Morris, on the other hand, was in my personal hall of fame.
The debate captivated me and I spent a good part of last night watching it. It is kind of long. To me, Stephen Bonnell contribution was only in making obvious the contrast between his repeating Israeli army, government and far right pundits PR talking points and the much deeper knowledge of the three others of the subject. He was clearly out of his depths.
To tell the truth I was really disappointed in Benny Morris's performance. That's a star that fell from my great minds sky. His contribution was useful to the extent that he forced Norman Finkelstein and Mouin Rabbani to make precise a number of points, quotes and statements but also to convey the now classical well accepted dominant narrative in "serious" media. He is obviously very knowledgeable on the entire history of the Israelo-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately he spent much of his time just making statements that were seldom backed with actual facts. Like Stephen Bonnell, he was repeating his belief that Tsahal is an ideal army not targetting civilians and often just speaking the dominant Israeli press and political apparatus narrative without conveying any supporting elements to his blind faith in it. The more the debate went on the more the contrast between, the "pro-Palestinian" participants and the anti-Palestinian side was stark. The latter more and more showing their inability of reasoning upon facts to support their credo and displaying an embarrassing absolute bias against all Palestinians. Benny Morris going so low after his groundbreaking historical work in the late twentieth century was a shock to me. Admittedly I have not read or heard him for many years, but his unscientific, at best ill-informed militant rant was stunning. It showed most towards the end of the debate and left me flabbergasted. The impression was clear of a man trying to backup form his previous outstanding works to just fit in the anti-Palestinian propaganda. At first, Norman Finkelstein, insistence in quoting Benny Morris from his books may have appeared too much. It was certainly not understood by the host Lex Fridman who tried to prevent him for doing so. I believe it is rooted in the respect of Benny Morris's work as an historian on Norman Finkelstein's part and generally it springs from the importance Dr Finkelstein attaches to scholarly books and scientific publications as opposed to wikipedia knowledge or talk-show discourses. It might also have been precisely to point out how much Benny Morris had drifted from important historian work to another cog in the anti-Palestinian propaganda unable to stand by his previous works. It certainly made that point -- to my great disappointment.
Norman Finkelstein was mostly very articulate and surgically precise in both his statement of facts and his reasoning. His opposition to Benny Morris's discourse was very rationally explained. He has very strong and unusual positions but is willing to explain them when not impeded to do so by Stephen Bonnell barely sensical torrential rant.
I was very impressed by Mouin Rabbani's calm and knowledgable reasoning in moments when the others were just shouting at each other. He was the only one in the room to potentially be identified as non-white and I have to wonder if he would have been tolerated to go on ranting surges as Stephen Bonnell was probably by a good portion of the audience. The fact that Lex Fridman made no attempt to stem Stephen Bonnell's logorrhoea was understandable to me. Mouin Rabbani certainly made a great number of points in a very clear way while making the air in the room breathable again at times when the others would insist on verbally assaulting one-another. He showed respect to the fact and the people, contrary to the opposing side. He is not considered a historian but he certainly has shown in this debate that he was equally competent as the official historians in the show and more so than Benny Morris as shown to be on very recent Palestinian history.
One interesting point is that both Stephen Bonnell and Benny Morris claimed time and again and at length that it was impossible that Tsahal would target civilians due to its morality and rigid well organised and humanitarian law abiding chain of command above all in its air operations. Just to be unequivocally proven totally wrong by Israel's own admissions after the targetted killing of World Central Kitchen
It would be an huge task to synthesise the debate but some moments probably deserve it. In the meantime go and listen to :