Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke (fmr British Diplomat ) - Evaluating Israel's Moral Justifications

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Unpack the truth surrounding the Israeli Defense Forces' claims about the Hamas headquarters in Gaza. Our expert guest dissects the misinformation and gives an eye-opening perspective on the reality of where the headquarters are located. This episode conjures a similar incident in 2006, where false intelligence led to misconceptions about the whereabouts of Hassan Nasrallah's command center in Beirut. Prepare for an enlightening discussion on how such false narratives are often disseminated, with a revealing example involving the recruitment of the Philippines in Lebanon by the Israelis.Brace yourself for the second part of our conversation where we scrutinize the devastating aftermath of these military strikes on innocent civilians. We share heartbreaking stories of premature babies' emergency evacuation to Egypt, the death of hundreds of sick people unrelated to the war, and the tragic toll on children's lives. This episode is not just about the conflict, but also the collapse of morality and values in its wake. Moreover, we explore the damaging effects this has on Middle East diplomacy, particularly on the efforts put forth by the U.S over the last two decades. Our guest paints a chilling picture of the escalating resentment towards the West. Tune in for this powerful and enlightening conversation.#AlastairCrooke#IsraelEthics#MoralJustifications#ThoughtProvoking#EthicalDebate#IsraelPolitics#HistoricalAnalysis#PoliticalInsights#SocialContext#NuancedExploration#EthicalConsiderations#MoralDilemmas#CriticalThinking#IsraelDebate#globalethics #Israel#Hamas#Gaza#IsraelPalestine#MiddleEastConflict#PeaceInTheMiddleEast#GazaUnderAttack#Ceasefire#Jerusalem#PrayForPeaceSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, November 20th, 2023. Does the Israeli government really believe that the Old Testament guarantees Israel all the land from the river to the sea? Alistair Crook will analyze that and other mistakes of the Netanyahu government in just a moment, but first this. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Lear Capital. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital because it's the right thing to do because the government is regulating too much and printing too much money and reducing've done. I know the folks at Lear. I trust the folks at Lear. I've worked with the folks at Lear, and I use their advice when it comes to my investing in gold and silver. You should do the same. Call them at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com.

You'll have a very nice conversation with a very knowledgeable person who will send you literature to read, which you can review with your spouse and your financial advisor, and then you can call them back and decide what you want to do. Why Lear? Lear has 25 years experience and thousands of five-star reviews and a 24-hour risk-free guarantee. And when you have this conversation with the Lear representative, you'll find out if you can qualify for a $15,000 gold bonus. So call Lear now, 800-511-4620 or learjudgenap.com. Good morning, Alistair. Welcome back to the show, my dear friend. So the IDF told the whole world that it would discover the headquarters of Hamas underneath a hotel in Gaza and that it would show on national television the Hamas leaders coming out of the bowels of the hospital with their hands up,

and it didn't happen. What went wrong? False intelligence. Again. Again. And your listeners on this channel would have been aware, because I said before, a couple of weeks before, that Hamas were not under the hospital, were not there.

I knew because they have these deep facilities underground and the facilities include their own hospital. I mean, really deep. I'm talking about 70 meters, meters multiplied by three for feet, very deep down underground and that's where they also have um all their resources their storerooms and their armories and their mechanical um structures for food for for digging so i knew they weren't under that but obviously they'd been fed in in intelligence to suggest that's where they were.

And this was the same game that I saw and I wrote about in 2006. Hezbollah was very clever. I know how they did it. There are a lot of Filipinas in Lebanon that work, and some of them work in the Hezbollah area of Dahi in Beirut. And they told them all the information, and they'd been recruited by the Israelis. And so they fed this false information of where Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah and his command center was located in Diya, and they bombed it flat.

But there was no Hassan Nasrallah. There was no command center there. It was somewhere quite different. And the same thing has largely happened here. They've been fed this intelligence. Obviously, Hamas has learned a thing from Hezbollah and is managing the intelligence very well. And as a result of this, premature babies had to be rushed in ambulances. from Hezbollah and is managing the intelligence very well.

And as a result of this, premature babies had to be rushed in ambulances to Egypt, and hundreds of other sick people whose illnesses had nothing to do with the Hamas-Israeli dispute expired. Exactly. I mean, it's been terrible. And what does this do for the regional and worldwide impression that the Netanyahu government continues to make? Well, we see here a complete collapse of morality. I mean, we have to say that very clearly. I mean, this is just so, the whole thing has become a devastating blow to any form of morality, suggesting that it's okay for infants to die and children to die as part of this conflict. We used to have some values values but they seem to have disappeared

altogether and really what it's doing just to be very clear is for you know 20 years or more america has practiced diplomacy in the middle east trying to bring people on side the abraham accords and all these things that's going down the plug hole. It's gone down the plug hole, effectively. The hatred now towards the West, Europe, as well as America, is getting... I spoke to someone who'd been listening very carefully to the Arabic programs all night. And I said, what did it look like to him? And he said, oh, it's still there. It's still there. But it's turned ice cold, the hatred. It's turned ice cold. And that means people are wanting action, are going to take action. That was the view from someone who followed all of these Arab channels. Does Prime Minister Netanyahu not realize the effect of overt cruelty

repeated over and over again on international television and streaming devices will have on the animosity of the region toward Israel? Overt cruelty. You know, you have to be clear. This is not a glitch in the system. This is the point of the system, is to make it so intolerable that they can. In the 1970s, in an interview with an author who wrote a book about it, about Netanyahu. Netanyahu said,

in the next war, in the next year, we will drive out all of these Arabs and we'll sort out the West Bank, we'll take the West Bank and we'll sort Jerusalem too. So, I mean, you know, this has been going on a long time. I've been following it now for 20, 23 years or so, this change taking place towards the sense that Palestinians can be given these alternatives. And one of the cabinet ministers laid them out and said, basically, you know, it's either you become serfs and you submit to the great power of the Israeli military might, or you leave, or you're exterminated. You can choose. So, I mean, we are moving into a very different psychology,

consciousness in Israel, and increasingly around the world, there's obviously a reaction to that. And that reaction is now becoming one of a cold anchor, which suggests that we're going to see this war lengthening and widening over this period. Well, if the war widens over the period, Alistair, that can only mean a two- or even a three-front war if Hezbollah enters and if any of the other nation-state militaries like Turkey decides to enter.

Is Bibi bitten off more than he can chew? I don't think so. No, he sees this as a sort of an epic play, a great, if you like, metaphysical working out of history. And he sees it in these grand terms and one which will turn him into

a hero for his people. And at the beginning of this war, at the beginning of this war, Golan, the defense minister, said, you know, we have to hit Hezbollah. We have to hit, we have to just take out Hezbollah now. And that was not agreed. And the cabinet came back to it two weekends ago and said,

we need to put a major blow on Hezbollah. And again, there was some dissent and it hasn't happened. But the point of this is who's provoking who? In the Western press, you see, oh, Hezbollah and the Iraqis are provoking Israel and the West. Actually, in this case with Hezbollah, it is quite clearly Israel is provoking Hezbollah. They are actually now attacking the town Nabatea, north of the Litani. That's about 60 kilometers into Lebanon. This isn't the border area where Hezbollah has its forces from which it's firing rockets into Israel. I mean, this is a provocation designed to make Hezbollah react. And then the intent, of course,

and this is what I call the sting of the scorpion, is to pull the United States slowly, slowly into a war against Hezbollah. And if Netanyahu's hope is materialized, against Iran too. But I don't think the latter will happen. I can tell you why, but I don't think Iran will be involved in it, but I do think the escalation is going to come, first of all, against Hezbollah. articles now in The Hill and in The Washington Post telling Biden to get tough with these militias that are attacking U.S. bases, that they said every time there have been three American operations against them as warnings to stop attacking bases, and the next day there are four more attacks, and so on. So there's a sort of crescendo of articles, not by accident,

appearing, saying, you know, you have to mean it. You've got to be tough. The only thing these people understand is being tough. They've got to have their nose blooded. That's in the Hill today, I think. And the American public will say, what are we doing in Syria? What are we doing in Iraq? Don't tell me we're still in Afghanistan. I thought we were out of that mess. Maybe, but they'll also say, you know, our boys, so many of them getting injured, 65 injured. I mean, next thing we know, they'll be killing them.

And I don't know, but there's definitely a move to sort of increase the price on the militias in Iraq. And then once you get there, very clearly, that if Iran is attacked by Israel or the United States, Israel will not exist beyond that, because Iran has missiles in their silos all around its very large territory, hidden. Each of them is a self-contained unit of forces, and each of them can operate and still continue a war for two years, even if there's no contact with the central command. And why do I say I know that? Well, some years ago, I was asked by Iran,

I was negotiating on the nuclear thing, but I was asked by Iran to talk to Rumsfeld. He was Secretary of State for Defence at that time, and tell him what the Iranian would do in the case of an attack. And I went to the Pentagon. I passed him in the corridor, but I didn't speak directly, but I spoke to his office. And I said to him, listen, this is what you will face if you attack Iran.

Now, I think some of them understood it, of course, but there were others that said, oh, I understand. Doesn't Iran understand that they're dealing with the greatest military power on earth, whose military expenditure equals that of the entire rest of the world so you have there were two sort of reactions to it but uh just to make clear to to people listening on this uh iran has divided itself into a whole series of units with their own self-contained plan for if there's an attack, able to fire rockets. They have very advanced precision rockets, which can cover the whole of Israel.

And it would be to attack Iran is what I call the red pill, the poison pill option, because there would be no Israel after it. And Iran has made that very clear. I mean, this has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. I just want to make this entirely conventional. So, you know, when everyone goes on and on about nuclear weapons in Iran, actually, because of one particularly strategic thinker in Iran, they changed it all and stopped relying on nuclear weapons

and developed a completely new deterrence of, if you like, highly smart cruise missiles and swarm drones. And we saw the effects of those in Saudi Arabia a few years ago and elsewhere. And Iran has all of this, and they're embedded, and they're embedded in the cliffs of the Hormuz Channel. So anything that attacks Iran and Hormuz is shut, no more oil. 30%, 36% of the oil passes through this way.

So it would be madness for America to do that. But therefore, what I think Netanyahu is trying and attempting to do is to get the United States to deliver messages to Hezbollah, military messages from perhaps the ships that are sitting off the coast. Just as happened in 83, when an American wars, about 25 miles, into Lebanon? Because, I mean, on the right, theibbutz in the north and the settlements there, they're not going to go back with Hezbollah just sitting over the fence grinning at them.

Then they'll be too frightened after what happened on 7th of October. We have to move Hezbollah right back from the border beyond the Litani. Why do I keep saying Litani? Litani has been a goal of Israel for a long time because like the Golan, it is the source of water, which in the Middle East is always the most important strategic asset in the region. So they want to take the south of Lebanon up to the river Latane, at least.

And historically, that was, it depends which history you go to, but if you go far enough back up to Lebanon and parts of Egypt and parts of the rest of the Middle East were greater Israel. Is the Netanyahu government messianic? Do they believe that the Old Testament or the prophets in the Old Testament indicate that it's the will of God

that Israel should occupy from the river to the sea? Many, even though they are secular, and Netanyahu, I mean, although he professes it, but he is basically deeply secular, but many of them do believe this, even secular,

because they do believe, I mean, in these sort of key principles that, you know, that Israel is the elect, they are God's chosen people. They do believe also that they're victims, the historic victims of the world. And they do believe that the combination of those two gives them right to do things as they feel necessary. Now, that is widely held even in a secular sense.

But what we're talking about here is the sense that it is just not possible. And this is certainly the view of one of the cabinet amendments that's called Smotrich. And he's put out this plan. And he says we can't live together with the Palestinians. We see this. Their aspirations for a state and our aspirations for israel on the land of israel are incompatible and let's stop kidding ourselves and let's stop trying to pretend reconciliation

or a two-state solution is possible now this is put in in in in in in sort of basic um uh geopolitical terms not in religious terms, but the two mesh together completely, the messianic and this sort of message from Smotrich. And it's getting wide, wide. I mean, this is widely happening. I mean, you know, people just sent me a video of schoolchildren, young children singing songs about, you know, death to all

the Arabs in Gaza. I mean, it's really spreading quite, I mean, it's horrible to see children being brought into this sort of ideology. But it is widely accepted now that the Gazans must either go or be exterminated. I mean, that is a view that is that. I'm not saying all Israelis accept that. I'm certainly not saying people in the United States accept it. But is it a majority? Yes. And now we have 92% of Palestinians saying more or less the reciprocal. There's no question that we could live with the East Israeli people. No question of a Palestinian state. So when Prime Minister

Netanyahu says we will, when the war is over, provide security for Gaza, he's abandoned that. He can't govern Gaza. He wants that to become part of Israel, and all the Gazans dead or gone. Is that a fair conclusion from what the IDF has been doing? Oh, it's absolutely right. I mean, you can see it. I mean, it doesn't take me to confirm it. I mean, you just have to see what's going on in Gaza. They are not exterminating Hamas. Hamas is secure underneath the ground, but they're killing children. They're attacking hospitals.

This is an attempt, and it was laid out by the IDF early on. They said, you know, already 1.7 million Palestinians living in Gaza have been made homeless, completely displaced. Now we are destroying all of the civilian facilities, the hospitals, the schools. I mean, we only have to look

at the videos to see this. They are destroying the hospitals, the schools and everything else. And they say, and the idea of say, so what's there for them to come back to? How are they going to live? What are they going to do? No water, no bread, no schools, no hospitals, no facilities. So yes, it is a very, I mean, this is the plan ultimately. And it's very dangerous for all of us, for the United States, for Europe, for the whole world, because unless this is stopped in Gaza very, very soon,

this is going to widen. And it is going to, I mean, clearly it has all the potential to destroy the West standing for anything, let alone, you know, a vision of morality or moral rights or human rights. It'll destroy us completely. At some point, someone in the Israeli government must be able to say to Netanyahu and Smoketrich and the other extremists, how much death is enough? How much death is too much death? How much cruelty can the world possibly tolerate? They think, as I say, they think that it doesn't matter because the fact that there are still Palestinians that won't accept to submit to overwhelming Israeli military force is a threat to Israel, is an existential threat to the Jewish people. And therefore, these have to be met with massive power and and killed and does that include

uh children and uh women well spotridge says it does exactly that and netanyahu is not alone as I said I mean he said in the 70s yes we're gonna if with another war we're going to try and get rid of all the Arabs, clear the West Bank, and we're going to sort out Jerusalem. So he's a believer, even if he's a believer in a sort of, if you like, an instrumental way, rather than as a very strong religious side. But his cabinet stand with him. There are two elements, two men who are sort of slightly more liberal in it, Eisencourt and Gantz, but even they agree with this. And even Lapid, the leader of the opposition, said the other day, after all of this burning and killing that's taking place in the West Bank, and he said, listen, those people aren't settlers.

Why do you call them settlers, aren't settlers? This is biblical lands, after all. So, you know, it's not that it's just a few extremists. And what I'm trying to say, which is important to get across in Washington, really, in a sense, is, you know, you're not going to change the dynamics of this just simply by doing regime change on Netanyahu. It's not going to. This is much deeper and more profound. OK, you can get rid of Netanyahu, but it's not going to change things. What is the value of international law? Thou sh not kill non-combatants intentionally

if it is not enforced and if there are no consequences to its blatant public violation by a state. Well, the problem is at the United Nations. In order to do this, in order to stop it in this way, order to get, if you like, an ICC resolution, you have to go to the Security Council on that. And at the moment, it is not likely to happen. And if you want to have a resolution, it has to be mandatory.

And in a mandatory resolution, it has to say exactly what authority, what power, what military forces will be used to bring about the mandate. Now, that happened twice. It happened in 242 and Resolution 338 after the 67 and the 73 war to tell Israel it had to leave the occupied territories. Mandatory resolutions, and they were ignored. They were never enforced. And furthermore, U.S. Congress will never allow them to be enforced, unfortunately, because that is just, it is what it is, the politics of the U.S. Congress. Alistair, always a pleasure.

My dear friend, no matter what we're talking about, no matter how troubling the times are in sight, your analysis is so insightful, deeply and profoundly appreciated by the audience and by me. We, of course, have a great holiday in America this Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. I know you wish all Americans a happy Thanksgiving. I do. I do wish you.

I mean, I suppose it ought to be a little bit of a wake for those who recall George III, because it was not a celebration for him or his cause. You took the words out of my mouth. Out of my mouth. Do the British celebrate American Thanksgiving? You don't have to answer. All the best, my dear friend. We'll see you next week. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, so we have, uh, Colonel Douglas McGregor, uh, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Johnson, and, uh, Ray McGovern coming up. We're trying to get all of our regular guests to you, even though we have this shortened happy Thanksgiving week. And we're up to 237,000 subscribers. We should hit 240 by Thursday and easily hit 250 by Christmas. We'll see you later. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.