Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: (Fmr. British Ambassador) - Will Israel Self Destruct?

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Alastair Crooke: (Fmr. British Ambassador) - Will Israel Self Destruct?Could the International Court of Justice's latest ruling truly topple Israel's moral high ground? Join me, Judge Andrew Napolitano, alongside Alistair Crook, as we dissect the court's findings which suggest a plausible case for genocide by Israel, casting a shadow over the Western world's narrative of moral superiority. We examine the shockwaves sent through global politics, assessing the ramifications it could have for the United States, given its staunch alliance with Israel. In an age where the media often sidesteps sensitive geopolitical landmines, we dive into the conspicuous absence of mainstream coverage on this groundbreaking verdict and what it might mean for the future of international relations.With tensions in the Middle East at a knife-edge, we scrutinize the recent attack on American soldiers stationed near the Jordan-Syria border, unearthing the complex web of strategic interests and regional power plays at work. The conversation shifts gears to the volatile nature of border politics and how Iran's involvement could amplify the stakes, potentially igniting a broader conflict engaging the United States, Iran, and Israel. Moreover, I illuminate the United Kingdom's position, evaluating its military capabilities and political will to engage in these rapidly escalating events. This episode is a deep dive into the intricate and often hidden machinations of Middle Eastern politics and their far-reaching consequences.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Call 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. And when you talk to my friends at Lear, tell them the judge sent you. Alistair, good day, my friend, and welcome to the show. Thank you for your time and all of your thoughts. There's still an effort on the part of the United States to undermine the ruling of the ICJ. We'll play a clip in a few minutes of Admiral Kirby insisting that his original characterization of the allegations against Israel as meritless still stand. I doubt that that's the way the rest of the world views it. But my question to you is, did the ICJ burst, the International Court of Justice, burst the Israel bubble of moral rectitude.

Yes, very clearly it did that. It said there was a plausible case of genocide, and there was a plausible case that it was intent on genocide, Israel was intent on it, and there was a plausible case that it was intent on genocide. Israel was intent on it. And there was a plausible case that it may be committing acts of genocide. But this is so important. And of course, the rest of the world was watching it all. In Europe, it was pretty much blacked out on Friday. On France, it was almost nothing. In the UK, it was only the Financial Times. The rest of it, I mean, it was very, very silent about the judgment, which I think speaks to the fact that people realize

that this is a really important event. And that's why it's been, if you like, disappeared from the pages. But the rest of the world have already seen it and listened to it and were watching it on their phones, the judgment given. And that is a very important element because, you know, for all this time, no one dared say anything. Your language was monitored. You were very careful of what you had to say. And then suddenly the ICJ ends that and says it themselves, that the actions that were being taken by Israel could plausibly be called genocide.

And of course, that's going to affect not only the rest of the world who are going to pursue it, and it's not over yet. And it'll come up with the, probably in the Security Council after the 30-day limit is when Israel is required to report back to the court. But it's also other people are going to come with other cases to the ICJ about past behavior. And of course, it is conflated, has been conflated with a Western claim. It's not just the Israeli claim, but the Western claim to moral rectitude, to a moral vision for the future, which is unassailable and is the vision for all. And this has exploded that too. So it really is going to change.

It's going to change politics. It's going to produce a shift in politics, in people's thinking because of what was said in that. And suddenly the moral rectitude of the West, Israel, and the bigger West behind it, has suddenly been put into question by an international jurist. By putting into question the moral rectitude of the West, do you think there was a hint, an implication, a warning that perhaps the United

States could find itself in the dock for its material, substantial, financial, political, military support of genocide? Well, as you know, I'm not a lawyer, and so I can't answer it correctly. But I think prima facie, the answer is yes. But also, I think certain individuals must be in the frame and must be very concerned and probably are being careful about their wording. I don't know if you've noticed or if your viewers noticed, for about three weeks now,

we've heard nothing about the rules-based order any longer. It's gone from the discourse. Brinkham used to use it, I think, pretty well every other day. And now suddenly no one talks about the rules-based order because the rules-based order has just turned on the West and said, actually, you're not as morally probity. There's not that moral probity that you think you have. You've actually been guilty, potentially, plausibly, of serious crime. Why do you think this is so downplayed in the mainstream media in the West? I mean,

it's almost across the board. If you were to look at the deadlines of the mainstream media on Saturday morning, no condemnation of genocide, no finding of genocide. Of course, if you listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu, he blasted it. If you listen to the foreign minister of South Africa, she embraced it. But the mainstream media picking sides as it does, how moral is that for the mainstream media to remain silent on an issue of this magnitude? They're highly embarrassed, but it's more than that. I mean, it is going to shake the power structures because the Israeli project has been at the heart of Western politics, not only foreign policy, but also its domestic politics, because this was something that was unassailable. The moral rectitude of Israel couldn't has empowered platforms, platforms like which we call generally the lobby. by the moral rectitude of that particular, of Israel as a project, and therefore somehow as supporters of Israel and as the guarantors of Israel, then the West as a whole becomes, if you like, shares in that moral probity that we've ascribed to Israel. Moving from the moral to the military, is Israel no longer

feared by its Middle Eastern neighbors? Yes, that is the case. It's been happening for some time, a big change taking place. But more importantly, Israelis now believe that Israel is not feared. Not only internally within Israel, i.e. they are subject now to a new level of insecurity in the land of Israel, but they don't see, they believe that outside of Israel, they are no longer feared as once they were, and this spells insecurity and an existential threat. And so there is a sort of mass psychosis forming of insecurity and existential threat that, you know, what is going to happen to the Zionist project?

And the Zionist project is increasingly boxed in. It's got nowhere to go. And this is why people are getting very frightened because, you know, the Gaza war is not just that it hasn't been very successful. It's been an outright failure. and Israelis are grasping that fact. It's a failure, and it has been the cause of multiple deaths and injuries to Israelis instead of being a vehicle to remove Hamas. And in the north, there are daily exchanges of fire. There are no Israelis living

there anymore, neither near Gaza, nor in the north. They're all displaced elsewhere. And so there's a great existential fear. And this is what prompts Israelis to say, you know, if people don't fear us, if Hamas doesn't fear us, Palestinians don't fear us, if outside Iran and Hezbollah don't fear us, then we can't go on and we must have a victory. And that's why they're talking about shifting the focus away from Gaza to Hezbollah. Hezbollah is known as, if you like, a respective resistance group. If Israel feels it can get a victory over Hezbollah, perhaps all that deterrence would come back, and suddenly everyone would feel frightened of Israel again, and its deterrence would be restored. This is a huge gamble, big risk. They're betting everything on something which may be leading them not to some great heroic victory,

coming back in triumph like a sort of Greek warrior to adulation, but actually maybe to their demise. And this is why Israel might be self-destructing, because Hezbollah is a completely different kettle of fish than Hamas or any of the other groups that they have been facing. This is a major fighting force. So Prime Minister Netanyahu says his government has two goals. One is to rid the world of Hamas, and the other is to return the hostages. Most of us believe those are just the stated goals, but that his real goals are to expand greater Israel from the river to the sea, whatever you think of he's telling the truth or not.

Does Israel have any clear path to any of those goals, returning the hostages, destroying Hamas, or spreading the footprint of Israel proper from the river to the sea? Well, on the first two, no, they don't. I mean, there is not going to be, in my view, a hostage settlement for one simple reason, that the terms demanded by Hamas, if they're accepted by Israel, would end the paradigm of security for Israel because Hamas will have won. And that's unacceptable to many, most Israelis. There was a poll that came out just the other day which showed that 94, that's the peace index poll, that showed that 94% of Israelis thought the level of force used in Gaza was

correct, was justified. And there was only another percentage of 42 or something like that, 43%, that said it was too little and should have been more. So, you know, he is reflecting something that is a mainstream in an Israeli sense. And so the other thing that he can do, can he get the hostages back? Can he defeat Hamas? No. That's why there is such pressure going, coming from within Israel for Israelis to say, how do we break out of this trap we're in? How do we smash the walls down and re-establish ourselves in the Middle East? And the answer is, we need a bigger war. That's the only way we can do it. In other words, the catharsis of war. But it's being fueled by more than that because it's becoming very much an eschatological war now. It is a war in biblical terms, good versus evil, of Amalek. It was in one of the segments before the court in The Hague

where the soldiers were dancing and calling for an Amalek to be visited on the Palestinians. So when you move into that, new sort of energies, new primal forces are released. And that's what's happening in Israel. And, of course, it's meeting a response in the rest of the Arab world. We're there too. I mean, it's becoming something that is increasingly, I've said before, eschatological, but biblical in the sense that this for ordinary Muslims is about, you know, what's happened to Islamic civilization for the last thousand years. It used to be, I mean, one of the

biggest main civilizations in the world, and it's been on a slow, so continuous decline, largely for the last 500 years or so, caused by the West and its frequent interventions in the Middle East. So there's a real sense that this is a struggle that is, you know, an Armageddon type struggle, that one side, a testing of the sides, and one side will prevail and one side will not prevail. And so this is why it's becoming so much more serious. And that's why you see sort of figures like 94% of Israelis supporting the amount of violence, which is horrifying to many in the West. But that's why it is happening,

because it's suddenly becoming a sort of biblical struggle, good versus evil, of Western civilization against Islamic civilization. All these things are now mixed up in it. Can the Israelis expand the war without the United States? And if the answer is they cannot expand the war without the United States, what happens if they do and the United States gets cold feet? What happens if there's a swell of

public opinion over here that the Israelis are slaughtering innocents and we can no longer be a part of it? I mean, that's a question to which no one has an answer. Hezbollah has been very carefully pursuing its equivalents. So it does an equivalent at the moment. Recently, it's been military post for military post, soldier for soldier. Now it's expanding it somewhat, and it is group of soldiers for group of soldiers.

But it has kept within this, if you like, geographical domain, but only until something happens. And I think we're at the moment in a sort of pause where neither Hezbollah nor Israel wants to instigate it. So we see Israel provoking Hezbollah severely, killing their leaders and killing their men from the Radwan force. Why? Because they want and hope that if Hezbollah overreacts and comes back and goes and attacks the depth of Israel, then Biden will have no choice. He will have to come in and he will have to support Israel on this.

Now, has Buller understand this equation exactly? Over the weekend, three American soldiers were killed and 34 were injured at an American base somewhere, Syria or Lebanon. Of course, the cries over here are for immediate and massive retaliation. Our colleague Larry Johnson reports that the instrument of their death and injury was not a cheap drone, but a sophisticated missile. How dangerous will it be if President Biden accepts the advice of some of the crazies in Congress, like Senator Graham, and bombs Tehran in retaliation? Well, let me go to the first part of your question initially. The Star 22

is probably just inside Jordan, but it is connected in its hub, logistics hub, to Al-Tanaf, which is a big American base, a legal occupation base in Syria, which was put there purposefully to disrupt the supply lines to Damascus. It's on the main road between Damascus and the south from Syria. And that has been attacked before. Now, TAR-22, there are lots of reports that it was basically an intelligence gathering structure. I don't know.

It may be, maybe not. But it was hit there, and there were also hits on Al-Tanakh, I believe, at the same time, but there are no clear details of that, so I can't confirm that. But what I would say is, you know, this context, this background, during this period, the United States has been attacking and killing the leadership of the Iraqi resistance movements, the Hashd, Hashad al-Sha'afadi, and they've been attacking those and killing them. And this rocket was likely a rocket that was fired by a group which is called Hezbollah, but it's nothing to do with the Lebanese. And this is definitely, you know, payback for some of these earlier American attacks on their leaders. And it does put the United States in a very difficult position. Incidentally, you know, it's not even clear which the border there is not demarcated between Jordan and Syria.

So you're never quite sure what's in what. But I think probably Tower 22 will turn out to have been in Jordan. But it was serving this, as I say, illegal base, which the United States has been using for training the insurgents against the Syrian government over the years, and also to block the, if you like, communication lines between Syria and the other states to the south. And they, I think, will think that this was a valid target. What is America going to do? I think we've just seen, before we came on to the session, I saw that the Pentagon

is saying it doesn't really make sense to attack inside Iran. It makes better sense to, you know, retaliate for this outside of Iran, i.e. in Iraq against al-Shahabi or somewhere like that. I come back to what I've suggested all along. I don't think that the White House, I don't think the Pentagon wants war with Iran, and rightly so, because, you know, the United States might lose it, put bluntly. Who wants wider war? Does Joe Biden want wider war so he can run for re-election as a wartime president? Does Bibi Netanyahu want wider war so that the Americans are involved and he can pick some target that he can beat? Well, I mean, you know, if there was an

easy target, that's always a sort of option for someone running for office. But, I mean, this is, Iran certainly is not an easy target at all. It's quite the opposite. It's nothing like Desert Storm and the Iraqis in, you know, 2000. I mean, all that time ago, which was, you know, they were fighting something very, very different. I mean, this is a serious military power with support from Russia. And I don't think he wants that. I think he's still in containment mode. I think you see it all the time. You know, he's trying to sort of contain the Houthis. They're asking China to intervene with Iran to get

China to persuade Iran to lower the flames from Yemen. And they were trying to sort of limit the response to the Houthis. But the Houthis reacted after the last attacks, sorry, the Iraqis reacted after the last attacks by announcing that they were putting the main ports of Israel, Haifa, and all of the ports under siege. And this was being done by missile attacks. There's already been missile attack on Haifa and on Ashdod, the two big ports. And Eilat is already closed. So what I was describing to you, you know, the box, the sides of the boxing in of Israel are getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And Israel doesn't know how to get out. And any sort of solution by trying to do a sort of hostage deal would not be seen as a victory by its own people, let alone the outside world.

And therefore, the only thing you can do is ultimately to go for broke and go for something bigger and try and draw in the United States to support it. Because Israel will, I mean, almost certainly not prevail in an all-out war with Hezbollah. Hezbollah has the means to cause great damage to Israel if it is entertained. So I think for the moment, Biden is trying to find ways to sort of contain this to Gaza and perhaps to Lebanon, but Lebanon, just the south of Lebanon, the south of the Litani. I don't think he wants to see Beirut, you know, like Gaza, sort of flattened and completely destroyed. So I think at the moment, you know, the main aim of the White House is industrial peace, if you like. Industrial peace. Last question. If the war is widened and if the United States

does come to the aid of Israel, whether it's by air power or troops on the ground. Will the United Kingdom get involved? I think it's irrelevant because there's nothing much it can add to the United States at the moment. It doesn't have troops. It has one ship there, which is neither here nor there. It is completely impotent in this sort of struggle. It pretends to be more bigger than it. You know, it pretends to punch above its weight, but really it's in a very dire situation in terms of its ability to do anything militarily. Alistair Crook, always a pleasure, my dear friend.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for your analysis. We'll see you next week. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your analysis. We'll see you next week. Thank you very much. Bye for now. Of course. Coming up later today, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, a new guest, Lieutenant Colonel Matt Holmeyer, who is a very prominent leader in the Space Force of the United States military,

kicked out because he criticized the military for being too woke. You don't want to miss that. Josh Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.