MILLER: I think it is, without a doubt, true that Israel has committed war crimes.

INTERVIEWER: You wouldn’t have said that at the podium?

MILLER: Yeah, look, because I when you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government has had not concluded that they’ve committed war crimes, still have not concluded that.

INTERVIEWER: But your personal view is they have?

MILLER: Well so …

INTERVIEWER: And they were while you were there?

MILLER: But but but … Yes but here let me let me qualify that. There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes. One is if the state has pursued a policy to deliberately committing war crimes or is acting reckless in a way that aids and abets war crimes. That I think is an open question.

I think, what is hard, is almost certainly not an open question, is that there have been individual incidents that have been that have been war crimes, where members of the Israeli military have committed war crimes.

In almost every major conflict, including conflicts prosecuted by democracies, you will see individual members of the military commit war crimes. The way you judge a democracy is whether they hold those people accountable.

INTERVIEWER: but Israel hasn’t been that.

MILLER: That’s my point is we have not yet seen them hold sufficient numbers of the military accountable. I think it’s an open question whether they’re going to.

INTERVIEWER: I’m really struck that you think now that Israel did commit war crimes and yet at the time, and I get why, but at the time you were at the podium and you couldn’t say that, i mean personally that must be very difficult

MILLER: Welllll … So the state department itself had concluded, they didn’t phrase it in these terms, but I think I did at the the podium, a few times, had concluded that it was likely that Israel had committed war crimes, but I do think it’s almost certain that that they have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLYnZWZNlMA (starts at 20m)