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The Amanpour Hour

Interview With Rights Attorney Gloria Allred And Abuse Survivors And Advocates Laura Dauti And April Hernandez-Castillo; Interview With Dean Of Columbia Journalism School Jelani Cobb; Interview With Former Senior State Department Adviser Vali Nasr; ICC Seeks Arrest Warrants Against Sinwar And Netanyahu; Interview With Israeli Author And Historian Yuval Noah Harari. Aired 11a-12p ET

Aired May 25, 2024 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:59:35]

KARA SWISHER, PODCAST HOST: Yes. Both of them creepy.

In any case, what I think it was this huge misstep by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. He has been a very favored person in Washington in particular, because he's the friendly face of tech of late.

But now he looks like Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" stealing ScarJo's voice. It's a little more complex than that, but what it does is everyone didn't understand (INAUDIBLE) taking your copyright. Everyone gets someone taking a very well-known (INAUDIBLE) voice.

CHRIS WALLACE, CNN HOST: And in 10 seconds because she's going to sue them --

SWISHER: Maybe.

WALLACE: Maybe.

SWISHER: Yes.

WALLACE: Does she have a case?

SWISHER: Well, she took on Disney and won quite a bit. So I think she'd certainly embarrass them. I don't know if she has a case.

WALLACE: Gang, thank you all for being here. It was as spirited conversation.

And thank you for spending part of your Memorial Day weekend with us.

We'll see you right back here next week.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, and welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.

Here's where we're headed this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: It took a sickening video of violence for Sean "Diddy" Combs to finally admit and apologize for abusing his then-girlfriend.

LEJLA DAUTI, DOMESTIC ABUSE SURVIVOR AND ADVOCATE: I think a lot of us as survivors will recognize our perpetrators in him.

AMANPOUR: But a week later, we redirect the spotlight squarely onto survivors with an incredible panel of women on both sides of the pond.

APRIL HERNANDEZ-CASTILLO, SURVIVOR AND ADVOCATE FOR INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE: And there are so many women, men, and children who are watching this and I just want them -- I want them to know that they are not alone.

Then the dean of Columbia Journalism School, Jelani Cobb, on balancing freedom of speech and security, and fighting disinformation in a critical election year.

JELANI COBB, DEAN, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM SCHOOL: We haven't come to any real conclusions about what should be done with disinformation.

AMANPOUR: Plus, how the sudden death of Iran's president could reboot its relationship with America.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moving towards the more middle gives more room for the United States to engage Iran.

AMANPOUR: Also, this hour Israeli author and public intellectual Yuval Noah Harari on breaking the cycle of violence in the Middle East.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI, ISRAELI AUTHOR: I think the entire Jewish people is at a historical junction.

And in the wake of my exclusive interview with the ICC chief prosecutor on seeking arrest warrants for leaders because of Hamas and Israel.

KARIM KHAN, ICC CHIEF PROSECUTOR: Nobody is above the law.

AMANPOUR: From my archive when Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic became the first sitting head of state to be tried by an International Criminal Tribunal.

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, FORMER YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT: I consider this tribunal a false tribunal and indictment, false indictment. It is illegal.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London, and we start with the persistent and pernicious violence against women. And the lack of action and accountability to protect them.

This week two more women accused Sean "Diddy" Combs of sexual assault and other offenses. This comes after CNN obtained sickening video of the rapper attacking his girlfriend back then, Cassie Ventura. A horrific assault that Combs has now been forced to confront after years of denials.

Now we won't victimize Cassie again by showing her being attacked, but you can see Combs in this short clip chasing her.

Since it surfaced, we've been scouring the reaction to the assault and we found very little bit focused on the women. Instead, it's been on Combs, his stardom, his business, his career.

In a statement Cassie Ventura said I offer my hand to those still living in fear.

Now worldwide, one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence. And women of color suffer the most. I've been speaking about all of this with an esteemed panel of women. The rights attorney Gloria Allred, along with Lejla Dauti and April Hernandez-Castillo, who are both survivors and advocates.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: April Hernandez-Castillo, I want to turn to you. Did you see the video? I'm interested because some have said people should see it because that shows exactly what happened.

So, people have different views. I'm interested in yours.

APRIL HERNANDEZ-CASTILLO, SURVIVOR AND ADVOCATE FOR INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE: I did watch it. I watched it and immediately -- my body felt all of the trauma come back up. And as hard as it was to watch, honestly, I was finally happy that the world can see what domestic violence looks like.

AMANPOUR: I'm going to get to --

HERNANDEZ-CASTILLO: It's terrifying.

AMANPOUR: I'm going to get to your experiences in a moment after I bring in Gloria Allred, as I said, the renowned women's rights defender and attorney.

Gloria, again -- this is a week later, a week since CNN actually was able to get this video and show the world what actually had happened.

What is your reaction to that and to the whole legal process that simply doesn't seem to put women at the center, those women who are clearly victims, as this video shows?

GLORIA ALLRED, WOMEN'S RIGHTS ATTORNEY: You're so right, Christiane, because we live in a celebrity culture. So it becomes all about the celebrity. But what about the victims as you point out?

It was interesting because when Cassie Ventura filed her lawsuit and then, of course, there were denials by Sean "Diddy" Combs and, you know, suggestions that this was all about a payday and he denied that.

[11:04:56]

ALLRED: And also, a number -- the allegations in a number of other civil lawsuits that were filed.

He did that knowing that there was a video, but it hadn't become public. And the reason he knew there was a video was because many years ago, reportedly, he bought that video from the now closed Intercontinental Hotel in Century City. So he knew it was there.

Now, you know, he had to admit it and stop the denial. And he said he was sorry and that he was getting therapy and so forth.

But you know, there need to be consequences for violence against women. That's what we saw in the video. We saw him dragging, kicking, and otherwise treating Cassie Ventura as though she's an object that he owns, a piece of property rather than a human being.

AMANPOUR: I would like to ask you, Lejla, if you don't mind, to maybe tell us what your experience was, what led you to become an advocate?

DAUTI: So, actually what led me to doing my work, because very much like Gloria says, a lot of times we focus on the perpetrator. We become obsessed with the pathology of why they perpetrate, why did they do this? And we stop focusing on the victims and survivors themselves.

So, we become statistics and our identities are completely lost and we're anonymous.

What I found was after fleeing my perpetrator was once it was all said and done and the dust had settled, so to speak, and I was physically safe and I wasn't at risk of the violence -- the immediate violence, I kind of looked around and I thought, well, what do I do now? Where do I go now? Who do I turn to now? And there was just nothing.

And it wasn't even that the support was lacking in quality, it just didn't exist at all. And it was very much a moment where I thought I was desperate to find women somewhere who were just like me, who had experienced without experience, which is why I turned to social media and started sharing stories on behalf of the women in the community.

And pretty much overnight, a community of survivors formed. And it was really indicative of that desperate need to have that safe space where women could come forward and share their stories.

AMANPOUR: What happened to you, if you don't mind saying?

DAUTI: So, what I experienced was non-fatal strangulation. It was -- I mean, it was a diverse amount of violence. It was from pushes and shoves, to black eyes, to non-fatal strangulation, to being thrown through a glass door, which I still have scars on my arm today.

And then on top of that, we've actually got the stuff that really enables the abuse even more, which is the emotional and the mental abuse, which is the economical abuse, which is the gaslighting, the trauma bonding. So, there was a big, big array of abuse that I suffered.

AMANPOUR: Let me turn to you, April, what happened to you?

HERNANDEZ-CASTILLO: I was abused from the age of 16 to about 19 and a half. I was physically and emotionally abused to the point where my abuser nearly took my life. And then I began to have and suffer from suicidal ideations.

And it wasn't until that moment where I didn't want to wake up anymore because of the shame and pain that I felt where I realized at that moment I have to leave. And I found the courage to finally say I'm done. It's enough.

And so, I made a decision to leave and also to live my life and make the choice that I would use it.

When I was being abused, I was a teenager. And so, I didn't dare share my story. No one knew about my abuse. Absolutely no one, not even my parents. And so, it took me about 10 years to find the courage to finally share

my story. And you know, I grew up with a mother and a father who loved on me, who set the foundation for me.

My mother told me that my voice was powerful. My father was saying, you know, a man should love you and uplift you. And yet, I found myself in a situation where I was fighting for my life in silence.

And I'm so happy that I made it out. And my father is my hero. And I never forgot my father's voice and it really gave me the strength.

And I said a promise when I, you know, survived and I left. I said, I will speak to whomever. I will use my voice because that is what abuse does, it silences your voice.

And there are so many women, men and children who are watching this. And I just want them -- I want them to know that they are not alone. And your voice matters and you matter.

[11:09:41]

ALLRED: By the way, one thing that is common to all of these situations is a power imbalance where the victim does not feel that she has the power, whether it's in the workplace, whether it's in sports, business, entertainment, religion, that she doesn't have the power that the batterer does. So, we have to empower her. And that's important.

But we also have to make sure that we have enough women in office to make sure that this becomes a priority, eliminating, preventing, and imposing consequences for the batterers who commit and inflict these injustices against women.

So we have to have also more women judges and more women in boards, commissions, agencies until we have an equal structure involving women and men and those who are also diverse in many ways, we are not going to end violence against women. We're not going to be able to enjoy true equal partnerships between women and men.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Keeping the focus where it belongs.

And coming up next, the dean of Columbia's Journalism School Jelani Cobb, on fighting election disinformation and how to responsibly cover the first U.S. president to be criminally indicted Donald Trump.

[11:11:05]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Now right after he was first inaugurated, president in 2017, Donald Trump branded the free and independent press the enemy of the American people.

Now, despite fighting multiple criminal indictments, including alleged election interference, and the Capitol insurrection on January 6, he is of course, the Republican nominee.

But with disinformation including an avalanche from Russia and China thriving in siloed online forums and press freedom in decline in the U.S. and globally it'll be harder than ever for actual journalism to defend democracy in the upcoming election.

Joining me now is Jelani Cobb. He's dean of Columbia Journalism School, and a staff writer for "The New Yorker".

Welcome to the program.

COBB: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Ok so what do you make of the challenge for all of us and for you as the dean of the major journalism school of what's happening right now, as I said, this avalanche of disinformation right around yet another important election.

COBB: Yes. So I think this is not a new problem.

AMANPOUR: No --

COBB: No, obviously --

AMANPOUR: but it's getting worse. And the problem that I think we really confront is the learning curve for us socially as democratic societies and professionally particularly in the journalism world. We have not quite figured out the formula that we need in order to address how we operate in a disinformation ecosystem.

And all these things are coming to a head as we see this wave of elections around the world and this is going to be a defining issue.

AMANPOUR: How would you think the mainstream media -- let's just say televisions as you're on television --

Is covering Trump in now, you know, taking everything that he says live and all the rest of it.

COBB: So I mean, I think that we see things like still treating him as if he were a normal candidate, still reporting on him, you know, and the kinds of protocols you would use for a normal candidacy. Not kind of drilling down on facts being susceptible to the distractions.

If he says or does something outrageous and, you know, we chase after it, like a pet chasing a shiny toy as opposed to drilling down on fact after fact after fact, doing the things that are boring, quite frankly the things that are less spectacular, but the things that really go to the heart of saying who this person is, what he actually stands for, what the threats, the potential threats to the United States, our democratic system and the by implication, the threats globally that could be a product of his presidency if he were to be elected again.

Like that's the work that I think that we have to really emphasize.

AMANPOUR: Other the historic examples that you teach at the journalism school, or that we should be aware. I mean, I remember reading, I'm just going to get this a little fuzzy. But I think it was one of the main national newspapers back at the height of McCarthy's lies basically and his red scare and his black lists and destroying the lives of people.

They decided that they would not any longer print stuff that did not --

COBB: That's right. That's right.

AMANPOUR: -- reach the level that could be defended in a court, right.

COBB: And so here's the amazing thing about this. The parallels with the Joe McCarthy era in American history are astounding. One of the things that began to happen and as a result, and McCarthy would say outrageous things and newspapers would just print them or put them on the headlines but they had a built-in conflict of interest because if he said something outrageous, you knew that people were going to pick up the paper and buy it. But over the time, as people began to see the corrosive effects of what they were doing they began to correct him in headlines parenthetically.

McCarthy accuses congressmen of being a communist -- parentheses, no evidence this is true. And so there was a learning curve where they recognized the real danger of what they've been doing.

AMANPOUR: And what did that do to his -- the potency of his -- of his lies and his red baiting (ph)?

[11:19:46]

COBB: Well, it certainly -- it certainly made it more difficult for him to be able to do that. And the other part of it was that just as he had been a product of the news media, it was television media that brought him down, you know.

And so it was kind almost immune response --

AMANPOUR: Like Edward R. Murrow.

COBB: Edward R. Murrow, that's right.

AMANPOUR: -- and his forensic digging into it all.

COBB: And that is exactly the case study that we use.

AMANPOUR: Ok. How is anybody meant to know which has the so-called good housekeeping seal of approval in terms of journalism.

COBB: we haven't come to any real conclusions about what should be done with disinformation about whether protected speech includes lies, you know. It's a really complicated area of American law.

And you are, as I said, the dean of Columbia Journalism School and a practicing journalist. How did you grapple with what was happening on your campus. Ther protests, calling in the police; essentially, the struggle between protest and speech.

COBB: Sure. So at the journalism school, we kind of looked at this -- I think maybe slightly differently from other, some of the other institutions at Columbia, because this is something we would report on.

And so we follow the protocols of any news organization. You know, there were some people who were legitimately dangerous who found their way onto campus, you know, who --

AMANPOUR: Outsiders as the police says.

COBB: Outsiders who were -- some far-right groups actually, you know, Proud Boys were kind of a presence there.

And so those are things that complicated the scenario. But for us, you know, we err on the side of free speech and free press at every turn.

AMANPOUR: Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School --

COBB: Christiane.

AMANPOUR: -- thank you.

COBB: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Thanks for being here.

And coming up next. Never let a crisis go to waste. Could Iran's new leadership battle, reboot relations with the United States? Expert insight from former senior State Department adviser, Vali Nasr.

[11:21:41]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're seeing big displays of public mourning here around the country in Iran. Now especially here in Tehran where this massive procession is one -- that is part of the funeral processions to lay to rest the people who were killed in that helicopter crash.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: CNN international correspondent Fred Pleitgen there covering the funeral of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. He was killed in a helicopter crash with the country's foreign minister last weekend.

And one week later, do we know any more about how Raisi's death will affect Iran internally? Or whether it will reshape Iran's relationship with America and the West.

For answers I turned to historian Vali Nasr, who's a former senior adviser to the U.S. State Department.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Vali Nasr, welcome back to the program.

VALI NASR, FORMER SENIOR U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT ADVISER: Thank you. Good to be with you.

AMANPOUR: We want to get your analysis. You're the go-to person about Iran but can I just ask you boldly does his death actually matter? Let's just first take in terms of relations with the U.S. or what Iran might do in its external policies.

NASR: Not really because Raisi was in no way the architect of Iran's foreign policy. And he was not a big voice in redirecting policies on the region or on the nuclear issue or vis-a-vis Israel.

All of these decisions were made by the office of the Supreme Leader and the national security council of Iran.

AMANPOUR: So Vali, you mean that it's really Ayatollah Khamenei, right? It's the so-called Supreme Leader who makes all the decisions and is that likely to change?

NASR: No, it's not likely to change. It is the Supreme Leader who makes all the decisions, but there's a national security table in Iran. And usually the president and the foreign minister could be big voices in there. They could move the policy at least even in certain degrees in one direction or the other.

But Raisi unlike his predecessor, President Rouhani, was not a big voice at that table. And therefore, he was not a big source of support for either talking to the United States or capping the nuclear program, or retaliate against Israel. And his silence or his more muted presence at the table resulted in

that the Supreme Leader and the commanders of the IRGC and the security forces became even more dominant in charting Iran's foreign policy.

AMANPOUR: So what do you think now with the death of Raisi and with harmony having to, I don't know, rejiggle the puzzles, what will happen in terms of its proxies in the Middle East and in terms of relations with Saudi Arabia as also the U.S. is trying to get a grand bargain in the region.

NASR: I mean, the policies were already in place before Raisi was killed the regional issues, the proxy issues are in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards. They sort of were there before Raisi arrived and they will be there after Raisi.

And in terms of normalization with Saudi Arabia. Now this is something that is embraced by the system as a whole and it is the consensus of the system.

However, depending on who replaces Raisi we can have a bigger momentum in terms of engaging the U.S. and the region and perhaps even moving towards some kind of a nuclear understanding with United States.

AMANPOUR: And Vali, what about internally because many times when there are shifts of any kind, whether it's the uprising over the death of Mahsa Amini, or whether it's this, many on the outside, you know, it's like they're sitting on the edge of their seats hoping that there's going to be some internal upheaval that will finally get rid of the ayatollahs.

[11:29:55]

NASR: I don't see that happening now. I mean, Raisi was not that kind of a consequential figure. But it can be -- it can be an important change in Iran. Raisi was blamed for the hijab issue that caused the Mahsa Amini protests and then for the suppression of it.

He didn't do well in addressing Iran's economic issues and was increasingly blamed for the performance of the Iranian economy now.

This means that now going into presidential elections, there's a possibility that the Supreme Leader would allow a more experienced and better-known manager to take over the presidency. Somebody that would be politically more moderate than Raisi.

AMANPOUR: If that pans out, what would your recommendation be, for instance, for the United States or others even in the region, trying to deal with Iran.

NASR: I think that trend with talking to Iran and Iran engaging on de- escalation was already in place. Even if moderately -- more moderate candidate would, would give even more impetus to these kinds of engagements with Iran.

In other words, under Raisi, Iran's foreign policy already hit its most maximum extreme that had been the case for decades and now, moving towards the more middle gives more room for the United States to engage Iran, more room for Saudi Arabia to engage Iran.

And one other factor here is that everybody expected the Iranian presidential election to come after the American presidential election. Now, it's going to come before the presidential election, which allows the new administration in the U.S. whether Democratic or Republican to reboot with Iran more quickly than it had anticipated to be the case.

AMANPOUR: Vali Nasr, thank you so much.

NASR: Thanks for having me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: I once tried to interview Raisi in New York right after the death of Mahsa Amini. But he refused to sit down with me unless I wore the hijab.

Now, coming up next, slings and arrows directed at the ICC after my interview with the chief prosecutor on the arrest warrants for leaders of Hamas and Israel.

And then from my archive flashback to arresting Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, the first sitting head of state to be tried by an international criminal tribunal.

[11:32:16]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

In an exclusive interview at the Hague earlier this week, the ICC's chief prosecutor Karim Khan told me that he plans to investigate Hamas leaders in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity over the October 7th attacks on Israel and the war on Gaza.

He also seeks arrest warrants for Israel's defense minister Yoav Gallant and two other top Hamas leaders.

Naming Netanyahu makes it the first time the court has gone after a democratically elected leader prompting an outcry in Israel and in the United States, where even before the announcements, Republican lawmakers made this direct threat in a letter to the prosecutor, quote, "Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates and bar you and your families from the United States. You have been warned."

Here's what Khan told me in response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KARIM KHAN, ICC CHIEF PROSECUTOR: There's hotheads everywhere, this people that are mature statesmen and stateswomen and leaders. There are those that have fidelity to something greater than themselves whether it's their constitutions. But ultimately it's the rule of law.

The good news is I think for the last two-and-a-half years, we've had very positive engagement with the Biden administration in the United States. We're working across a range of situations, whether it's in Ukraine or Darfur.

And I've said to distinguish members on the Hill and to the administration that Rome (ph) stature values are quintessential American values. It's against bullying. It's against the untrammeled power against the most vulnerable. It's the rights, the dignity of the individual, it's the protection of babies.

I mean, these are fundamental American values that should engender bipartisan support. Now, of course, this situation unfortunately lies on the San Andreas fault of international politics and strategic interests.

And of course, I've had some elected leaders speak to me and very be very blunt this court is built for Africa and for thugs like Putin was what one senior leader told me. We don't view it like that.

This court is the legacy of Nuremberg. This court is a sad indictment of humanity. This court should be the triumph of law over power and brute force grab-what-you-can, take-what-you-want, do-what-you-will.

[11:39:41]

NASR: And we're going to simply be an -- we're going to be dissuaded by threats or any other activities because in the end, we have to fulfill our responsibilities as prosecutors, as the men and women of the office, as judges, as the registry, to something bigger than ourselves, which is the fidelity to justice.

And we're not going to be swayed by the different types of threats, some of which are public and some maybe not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And yet the Biden administration is also considering sanctioning the ICC but its investigation harks back to another leader who was indicted in the middle of a war.

Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was handed over to a U.N. war crimes tribunals for his role in the wars in Kosovo and Bosnia and the Srebrenica genocide.

From my archive this week, the first time a sitting head of state was tried by an international criminal tribunal.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: in the middle of the night on April 1, 2001, men wearing masks and brandishing automatic weapons came to the Belgrade home of Slobodan Milosevic.

These were some of the same special forces who once terrified the population of Yugoslavia. Now they turned up for the arrest of their former president and the removal of his armed bodyguards.

88 days later, under intense pressure from the United States and Europe, Milosevic was handed for to representatives of the International War Crimes Tribunal. He was flown to a prison in the Hague.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Case number RT9937I, the prosecutor Slobodan Milosevic.

AMANPOUR: At his arraignment, Milosevic played the court as though he was still president.

MILOSEVIC: I consider this tribunal a false tribunal and indictments false indictments. It is illegal.

AMANPOUR: In one decade Milosevic had taken his country into four wars losing all of them. A quarter million dead were left scattered across the Balkans. Despite the blood that flowed in Croatia and Bosnia, it was in Milosevic's own Serbian province of Kosovo that the tribunal's prosecutors saw their first chance to hold him personally responsible for the crimes of war.

When Milosevic's security forces battled Kosovo Albanian separatists, observers were alarmed by what looked like civilian casualties.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One-five, I repeat one-five bodies clustered together, it looks like they were all shot trying to escape, over.

AMANPOUR: This scene from Kosovo in January 1999, would confirm the prosecutor's hunch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's been beheaded?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Affirmative, over.

AMANPOUR: Here at Ratchac (ph) and in places like it lay Milosevic's undoing.

(INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jesus Christ.

AMANPOUR: A few months later, an Albanian doctor shot this footage, 127 mostly old men slaughtered in the hamlet of Izbitzeh (ph). What he saw would match these us satellite photos of graves in the same area.

Slobodan Milosevic is the first ever sitting head of state to be indicted by an international court. And he continues to deny the charges against him.

But prosecutors here at the tribunal say they can prove their case. But proving a president's criminal responsibility will take more than just videotape more than even the corpses.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And it would take years. Milosevic died alone in his prison cell before a verdict could be reached. But almost two decades after committing their crimes, Milosevic's henchmen, Radovan Karadzic and Matko Mladic, known as the butcher of Bosnia, were convicted of genocide and they were jailed for life.

Coming up, Israeli author and public intellectual Yuval Noah Harari on the root tragedy of this war and breaking the historical cycle of violence.

[11:44:28]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

And in our "Letter from London" this week, the bestselling Israeli author and historian Yuval Noah Harari who has been thinking deeply about his homeland and asking how history and the Middle East can escape what he calls the Israeli-Palestinian trap.

He joined me here in the London studio and here's part of our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Yuval Noah Harari, it is always good to have you on this program.

HARARI: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: And frankly, any program because you're a big thinker and you help us, you know, navigate areas that perhaps we hadn't thought of.

But first I need to ask you as an Israeli, what is your reaction to the ICC request for warrants?

[11:49:53]

HARARI: Well, you know, it's deeply shameful for the citizen of any country when the leader is even accused of such crimes. And I think on a broader perspective, I know that there were a lot of accusations against the ICC of making comparisons between Netanyahu and Sinwar and so forth.

This is really a spin. Trying -- I mean, the question is not the comparison, the question is the allegations and the evidence that backs them.

And the other thing, looking at the whole episode, the whole issue from a broad perspective, is whether we would like to live in a world where leaders are held accountable to international law or not, whether we would like to live in an orderly world, a world of international law.

AMANPOUR: You've said in your -- about, you know, the future, there's enough land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean to build houses, schools, roads, hospitals for everyone. But it can be realized only if each side can honestly say that, even if it had unlimited power and zero restrictions, that it would not wish to expel the other. You were just describing that.

HARARI: Yes.

AMANPOUR: No matter what injustices they committed against us and what threats they still pose, we nevertheless respect their right to live dignified lives in their country of birth.

You say this needs leadership. And currently, you haven't been able to identify that kind of leadership.

And so far, the Israeli prime minister, and as you say, his coalition, does not want a Palestinian State, or even Palestinians to run Gaza after this war.

Where do you think -- where do you see, on the Israeli side, some kind of flipping the switch towards some kind of solution from this untrammeled war?

HARARI: I don't know. At present, the Netanyahu coalition -- it's not only one person, you know, he has a majority of 64 out of 120 Knesset members.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

HARARI: They are all supporting him. I mean, after October 7th, me and many other Israelis, we were sure that this government will fall in a matter of weeks.

It still is extremely stable. It enjoys widespread support. But, you know, history is never linear. And we can still hope that people will come to their senses.

What is at stake, I think, is really -- it's not just Israel, I think the entire Jewish people is at a historical junction. That we need to reflect on the history of the Jewish people, you know, for 2,000 years.

If you go back 2,000 years to the great Jewish revolt against the Romans in the first century CE, it was led by religious zealots who thought that God will help them to defeat the Roman Empire, and they were wrong. They brought a terrible disaster on the heads of -- on the head of the Jewish people. And I think Netanyahu is building up to be the next Simon bar Kokhba, who led one of these disastrous revolts.

And when the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem and the temple, they changed the nature of Judaism. Judaism then was a religion of -- you know, you had the temple and the priests with all the bloody sacrifices, and the Romans destroyed that. And Judaism became a religion of learning. Jews for 2000 years, they were a religion of learning everywhere they

were. And then they built their state. We build our state. And the big question is, what did we learn in 2,000 years?

And if you ask Netanyahu and his colleagues like Smotrich and Ben- Gvir, we learned only the joy of power, of feeling superior, the dark ecstasy (ph) of crushing weaker people under our feet.

Now, if this is what we learned in 2,000 years, this was such a waste of time because we could have just asked the Romans. They could have told us 2,000 years ago how to destroy city and how to enjoy feeling like being superior to others and so forth.

And I think it's a real question that I think Jews should, in Israel and elsewhere, reflect what did we learn in 2,000 years that the Romans didn't already know?

AMANPOUR: Well, I'm going to reflect on that.

Yuval Noah Harari, it's always good to have you. Thank you so much indeed.

HARARI: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And you can watch our full conversation online at amanpour.com.

Up next, was it really her, the latest twist in the A.I. chatbot saga with actress Scarlett Johansson.

[11:54:46]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: And finally, was it ever really her?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCARLET JOHANSSON: I want to learn everything about everything.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you about to reveal something about A.I.?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:59:47] AMANPOUR: This week, Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of copying her voice from the movie "Her" for their new chatbot after turning down their request for licensing. But maybe it wasn't really her after all.

"The Washington Post" now reporting that another actress was hired to play the chatbot months before they asked Johansson.

Don't forget, you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/podcast and all other major platforms. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching and see you again next week.