Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: How Strong Is the Resistance to IDF?

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Alastair Crooke: How Strong Is the Resistance to IDF?See 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. where I had a splendid time giving a lecture that I believe was well received and engaging in a lot of intellectual discourse with friends of mine, foremost among whom is our guest today, Alistair Crook, will be with us in a moment on, is there a resistance in the Middle East to Israel's slaughter? And if there is, how strong and how well coordinated is it? But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. If you have $100 in the bank, it still shows $100, but you can only buy $76 worth of goods with it. Why is that? Inflation has reduced all of your

savings, all of your buying power and mine by 24%. And gold is largely immune from that. Gold keeps its value and goes up. If you want to learn how gold will soon hit $3,200 an ounce, call Lear Capital. 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Get your free gold report. Same experts who predicted the 23% rise that I've enjoyed have predicted this $3,200 an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Alistair, my friend, welcome back It was wonderful all the time we were able to spend with each other

And our friends very much appreciated your intellect Your thoughts, your analysis As does the audience this morning Is there, well morning where I am It's afternoon where you are Is there a resistance, so to speak To the Israeli government practices of killing indiscriminately Palestinians in Gaza? Is there a state resistance? Not state-led resistance, but an axis of resistance, yes. And the axis of resistance

includes movements. It includes groups that have come together, if you like, to support the Palestinian cause of liberation from occupation, as they understand it. And it is based, and what it is, is you asked how strong it is. Well, it depends how you look at it. And if you look at it as a series of discrete components who have no tactical strength overmatched very clearly by israel in each case that is hamas hezbollah the iraqi resistance um and also the hussis in yemen you could say well you know it's a weak resistance but if you understand it as a strategic composite, then it looks very different. And its great weakness is in Israel is not so much its lack of firepower or the lack of its military or its financial resources, but its great weakness, and we've seen it before, and we've heard people like Brzezinski talk about it from 2002, the great weakness is that Israel sees itself as the only

victims of victims. They are the victims, and they don't see anyone else as victims. They see themselves as the victims, and because of this, they overreact, and they react in a way which loses support in the world, loses support even in the United States by making them appear rather like the South African supremacists who who regarded others as subhuman as something that you just dealt with we had Lindsey Graham I think on yesterday in American television uh saying you know this is is what you have to do. And he was talking about Hiroshima. He didn't suggest they should be nuked, but he said, give the Israelis the bombs to do what they've got to

do and must win this war. So give them all the bombs they need to win this war, which they must win. And that, I think, expresses the real weakness in this process. And all of these resistance have a plan, and it has been formulated over years. It was trialed, first of all, in Lebanon in 2006 war, when tunnels were first, if you like, used operationally. They have a different system of communications. And in the case of the Palestinians, Hamas in Gaza, I mean, it is the fact that understanding the Israeli psychology they have played into it by going to what happened in Algeria. And I call that a revolutionary warfare. It's brutal warfare.

It is violent warfare designed to produce such a complete overreaction that not just the Palestinians are mobilized, but the whole of the Islamic world is mobilized, and indeed parts of America and Europe are mobilized. And consequentially, and in parallel, Israel becomes isolated and loses the strength that it has of its position in terms of diplomacy, in terms of being able to mobilize states against it. So it is a real resistance. You look at it, all these components, including the economy and the siege on the economy and

the disruption internally, it becomes not a whole series of discrete tactical elements which in themselves are not powerful enough to defeat Israel. Take them together, see them strategically, understand that this is a new type of warfare, and you understand that it is actually strong enough and poses an existential risk to Israel. For it to pose an existential risk to Israel, wouldn't the, I'll use your phrase, my dear friend, axis of resistance need to involve state actors? Are mean, if this can't, are you speaking of the Arab street? Are you speaking of Arab intellectuals and academics? Or are you speaking of this attitude amongst the Arab street and Arab academics making its way into state actors? sort of like the demonstrations on college campuses, I think you could argue,

made their way into Joe Biden's policy when he said, no more bombs if you're going to attack RAFA. Well, that's a very good parallel. That's exactly partly what it is when I say that because of what the region has experienced, I mean, from Baghdad and Libya and elsewhere, they didn't want, and particularly Syria, to see the United States coming into the war, being drawn into the war by Israel and destroying Beirut and destroying Damascus or destroying Tehran, and all its infrastructure would take another 10 years to repair. So the nation states that, if you like, are allied with the axis of resistance, stand back from the action and support it, but not in a literal way.

They are giving psychological support, but they are standing back from it and putting the movements first rather than the state. Because always Israel has in the past threatened that if Hezbollah does anything, they will wreak revenge on the Lebanese state, not on Hezbollah does anything, they will wreak revenge on the Lebanese state, not on Hezbollah per se, but the state will pay for it. Their argument is that the state lacked its responsibility to control Hezbollah, therefore

the state will be destroyed as a consequence. And so it's to remove that threat that the nation states fall back. Of course, some of the Gulf Arab states are not participating in this. Many of them or their leaderships have always disliked Hamas and have disliked Hezbollah particularly, been frightened of Hezbollah, frightened of what this sort of spirit of Hezbollah and of resistance could mean in their own societies. So they're not sad if you like to see Hamas or Hezbollah damaged, but equally they are horrified by what's been happening in Gaza

and they are very frightened about its effects on their own populations. So that's what I mean. So the states actually communicate behind the scenes all the time. So if you like, Iran is talking to Saudi Arabia. Iran is talking daily with Moscow. Moscow is talking to China. There is a huge, if you like, unseen in the West, but there's a huge interchange of strategy and thinking that is going on behind the scenes with the movements at the forefront. to take this forward in a way in which it won't lead to all-out war, war across the region which could kill many, many people and destroy untold infrastructure. Is the resistance organized? If I were to use a television phrase, does it have a control room?

Yes, indeed it does, does it have a control room? Yes, indeed it does. And it has a spokesperson. It has, you know, each group also have their own spokesperson. But the overall spokesperson by common consent is Said Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah. And when he speaks, he's speaking for the resistance as a whole. And when he speaks like that, he speaks on the basis of consensus. And you perhaps even in the early days, we saw him actually take out a piece of paper and hold it up and read from it. And he was reading from it because,

of course, you know, he wanted to get the words exactly right because these were agreed across the fronts if you like the france whether it is from yemen or whether it's from iraq whether it is iran or whether it is hezbollah and so he speaks on behalf of all of them when he sets out the strategy they have their own their own spokesperson who talks about the achievements on the day or what their tactics are, because the consensus is about strategy, the overall strategy of the war, which is to, if you like, have control over the flames,

that they can increase the flames of the conflict or lower them or move them from this place to that place, and overall to have control over the whole escalatory ladder. How does it go up? They do not want Israel to control the escalation. They want to be able to control the escalation. So that's what I mean by strategy. And yes, there's a control room. It's not in one particular location. It moves around. And behind that is the second layer, which is the diplomatic, if you like, contacts which are going on. I mean, on the 13th of April, when Iran fired its drones and missiles

as a message both to Israel and the wider world, I mean, there was continuing backwards and forwards between Russia as well as other states with Iran, working out the right way of doing this, the right way to inform people, so that this didn't go astray and turn into some cataclysmic type of event. So that's how it's worked. Speaking of the diplomatic part of this, what are the core issues at the heart of the negotiations for the release of hostages, both the Israeli hostages that Hamas is holding and the thousands upon thousands of Palestinian hostages that the Israelis are holding? What are the core issues there? Well, in the actual negotiations there are quite a few issues, but the core issues are very simple. From the Hamas and from the resistance perspective, and it applies not just to Hamas but to Hezbollah and others too it is the

end of conflict that the conflict should cease not a ceasefire which means something that can be resumed later but a complete cessation and a withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the ground and from overhead, over Gaza, and the provision of humanitarian aid and ultimately of the materials necessary to rebuild Gaza. Those are the principal issues between both of the parties. And for the Israelis, clearly the main issue is to get the return of all hostages that are held by Hamas in Gaza. And they also want to limit the number of Palestinian prisoners

and the type of prisoners that are released in return for the Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas. In terms of the numbers, I mean, in the Gilad Shalit case, which I was involved in, it was over a thousand Palestinians that were released for this one person. The figures are different today, but the Israelis are also trying to control whether it is people that they regard as serious terrorists or who have killed Israelis, whether they're released or not released. Those are the key parts of this negotiation at the moment. And what does Netanyahu want? Is it true? Did he actually say, Alistair, he wants the war to go on for 10 years? Yes, he did say that just before this last round of negotiation. He said it'll probably go on. He wants to be able to go into Gaza at any point. And if you like what the Israelis call, not me,

but the Israelis call mow the grass. That is to kill the militants that they can identify on the ground in Gaza. Of course, they're not on the ground. They're underneath the ground. They're 70 meters or down. So it's not that easy as just going in and mowing the grass as it used to be. And this is what's making it so different from him. Because I think Netanyahu has come to understand now,

and it's taken some time, that this is a different type of war. It's not the war that they're used to of just going in and the aircraft come over and bomb a few targets which are identified as being, you know, militant strongholds or headquarters or whatever. This is very different because their adversary is deep underground. It has a whole network. I mean, there are something like 400 kilometers of tunnels, some of them big tunnels, or hospitals underground.

There's material for building, making arms underground. All these things are underground, and they come up very briefly in small groups, take some action, put an explosive device on a tank, then they're down the tunnel, then they go right down deep. And it's very difficult to fight this type of war. And the Israelis are realizing that they haven't won. You know, all the story about having dismantled 24 battalions is really quite quaint because, you know, this is an irregular, asymmetrical force. They don't operate in battalions. They don't have a battalion commander or an ops officer, majors or anything like this. This is a different sort of warfare that's taking place. And Israel still looks at it in this way, the old-fashioned way that is now long since passed in this period.

They think it's shock and awe. We come in with our aircraft. We bomb everything like happened in Beirut when I was there in 2006. And this is a lesson. This is fear. This will make them bend and come to our will. And this is the solution to it. And it's not working because Hamas is still intact in this underground and it's lost certain amount of its forces, but it's by no means defeated. And they know it's not defeated, therefore they insist

that they have to keep coming back because otherwise Hamas is won. Hamas is intact and in charge of Gaza. Since last we spoke publicly on this show, Alistair, two public events have occurred, both of which either humiliated the Israelis or caught them flat-footed, and I want your thoughts on them. One was the announcement by Hamas that it accepted the terms that the U.S. and other negotiators in Cairo had laid down for the return of hostages and a ceasefire. And the other was the statement by President Biden that he would stop delivering a certain class of weaponry, mainly 2,000-pound and 2,500-pound bombs, which are enormously destructive weapons, if the Israelis enter Rafah in the

same manner in which they entered northern Gaza. A question, did both of these announcements, or I should say did either of them, catch the Israelis flat-footed? The first certainly caught them by surprise. They were completely shocked. They only learned of it subsequently. It was passed, first of all, to Mossad, but you had the chief of defense staff late in the day still trying to say, well, you know, give me a text, someone.

I want to see a text. What's actually been said? What's happening? Yes, it was a very strange incident. I have to put, it's complicated, but put it quite simply, that during the negotiations at which the Israelis were not present, but the Americans were present in Cairo, and at the subsequent negotiations in Doha, at which the Americans, I mean the chief of CIA, Bill Burns, was present also in Doha, changed the text and it reflected almost exactly what I said to you was the main Hamas concern, an end to the war, a complete cessation of war, and the removal of all Israeli forces from Gaza. And so there was then victory declared in Gaza. And this is what shocked the Israelis. And they said, but why didn't the

Americans give us a heads up and say this is happening? Why weren't we told this was happening? Well, there are two possible explanations. One, which I think is probably the most likely, is that the White House told Bill Burns, listen, we need quiet in Gaza. We've got to get the level of violence down. We have an election to fight. Whatever it takes, get an agreement, get the hostages released, and get quiet in Gaza. And I think that there was some sleight of hands in the negotiation process,

and it ended up with Hamas accepting it and saying, that's fine, ball in Israel's court now and of course the Israelis were furious and feel betrayed about it alternatively the other rules uh uh probability was it was intended at the first because this could end the government. It was very much. I mean, to say, you know, there would be an end to Gaza and no intrusion again into Rafah would lose the right element within the cabinet and perhaps could lead to new elections in Israel. And so this was really, I mean, strategic for Israel. What is it going to mean? I think that what it means is that it's going to be much harder to get a negotiation or a ceasefire as a consequence. Sometimes, you know, these clever negotiating tactics, and I speak as someone who's suffered

from them and done them myself, I mean, sometimes they have really adverse consequences that you don't foresee at the time. But I think it's made Netanyahu much more determined, much more hard set in his view. And it suits him perfectly. I think I've mentioned it to you before, but Netanyahu, during the period of the Obama administration in Washington, was adept at blaming everything on Obama. And he went to war against him. You recall going to Congress and fighting his, it was to do with the nuclear agreement then, but fighting, if you like, the White House on the ground. And every time he fought President Obama, every time he fought him, what happened? His polls went up in Israel. He got more popular and more powerful. And he does feel that he has huge power in the United States

as a consequence of this, perhaps more power even than the White House. Did he feel betrayed, pardon me, by what Joe Biden said or being the rationalist that he is, did he know it was coming? I would have thought he was quite pleased with it, actually, in a certain sense, because this is exactly the material he wants to show to the other part of the Israeli public that actually, who's preventing our victory? Who's stopping us getting rid of Hamas? Well, it's not me. I want to do this. But who doesn't want this? It's the White House. Right, right. Did Hamas, prior to October 7th, expect an Israeli response as ferocious, bellicose, and genocidal as it has been? And did the Israelis expect that Hamas would be as resistant and impossible to stamp out as it has become? That's exactly what Sinwa expected.

A complete, if you like, overreaction bordering on genocide. Because this is what we've seen, you know, is the reaction. As I say, you know, the only victims they see are their victims, and that they, therefore, they see that the others are not victims at all, and they react in a very strong, forceful way. And this is precisely the calculation, if you like, behind the resistance strategy, because in overreacting, in the context of there being a resistance to access, that because it's not just Gaza, it's West Bank, it is Iraq, it is Lebanon, it is in Yemen. All of these, this is the circle of flames, as it was first described, setting up, which are closing in

and leaving Israel with less and less option, feeling more and more trapped in this because they can't defeat Hamas, they don't know what to do about Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is putting the pressure on. As I say, if you see these things tactically, you don't understand that it's a combination, it's the strategic unity of this that is so powerful. And so Hezbollah have been saying, look, you've got now nearly a million displaced Israelis. Well, you know, if you don't stop in Gaza, we'll make it two million displaced Israelis from the north. In other words, we will control one quarter, if you like, of northern Israel, and you will have no residents there and you will have to

find places and homes for them for two million, and it could be even more at a later stage. So these pressures, then there's the economic pressure, then there's the siege that is stopping material getting through to Israel. The Israelis are feeling very, very fearful. And many of them also are beginning to see this as a sort of beginning of a new Holocaust. Half of, perhaps a plurality of Israelis, particularly those who are very sensitive to this, see this as a new Holocaust coming. The other half of Israelis would like to go back to the status quo ante, but it's not available, not easily available to them, to go back to a form of occupation again, because it's never worked.

Over all these years, since 1948, it's never worked. So they want to, the ones that see it as a Holocaust, see it as a hard Holocaust, that the aim of the resistance is to annihilate Jews. It's not. It is to force the issue of Zionism, particularly Zionism. It's not about necessarily Jews living in the region. It's about the Jews don't live there with special privileges and with

absolute rights and security rights over the indigenous population who share the same land. That's not acceptable. And this is to force the issue on that score. Who will be living in this land has to live on the same civil rights, the same basis as everyone else. There are no special rights, no special security rights for some. And this is just how Jews have lived for hundreds of years in places like Iran, sometimes with greater privileges than the ordinary citizens. So that's what it's all about.

And there's no real answer to this. This is why Israelis feel so trapped by it, because they can't gain the big victory that Lindsey Graham was talking about. Give them the bombs, Biden. Give them the bombs to secure the victory that they must have, otherwise they cannot survive. Well, you know, bombing Gaza is not giving them that victory because it's not just in Gaza.

It is across the region really understand the strengths of the resistance. Last subject matter, how unusual is it in a situation like this? And I know that from your experience as a negotiator, no two situations are identical or perhaps even comparable. But how unusual is it for America's chief negotiator to be the head of the CIA? And secondly, do the Israelis trust Bill Burns, the head of the CIA, in his capacity as negotiator? I don't think it's about, I don't think, you know, I've always found in negotiations, it's never a matter of trust. It's a matter of how much integrity they think people have. I'm sure they feel blindsided by the fact that the

Americans did not forewarn them, even if it was ultimately played to the advantage of Netanyahu in this change of negotiation. So they will be very, very weary of the future. I don't think they think for a minute that Biden is actually going to stop weapons coming to Israel. They know that's not possible for him. Okay, they can slow walk them for a short period, slow walk a few of the supplies or one or two supplies, but they're confident that they have sufficient control in Washington to make sure that the weapons supply, that Israel will not be left with defenseless without weapons. But this is precisely why it's so difficult for America to resolve this issue. It doesn't have the standing. And at the moment, Netanyahu is able

to present America as the problem, not the solution. America is being presented and understood by a majority of Israelis that America is the problem preventing us getting the victory and getting the solution we want, which is the decimation of Gaza and the displacement of all the Arabs out of this region, leaving Israelis alone in their own territory with only a few people to tend the gardens and sort of keep the system going. And that's not going to Israel. America does not have the power to do that. And neither does Israel have the power to do it on its own, which is why it's such an intractable

problem that exists and simply we just sort of deal with it with sort of bromides and sort of facile solutions it with sort of bromides and sort of uh facile um solutions it's not it's profound what is your gut feeling alistair on the motivation of president biden to announce uh publicly uh that he would either stop or as as you say, slow walk a certain class of particularly destructive weaponry, the 2,000 and 2,500-pound bombs. Is that motivation a reaction to the student demonstrators in the United States and a fear of losing Michigan? You know what I mean by that, or is it a heartfelt sympathy for the innocents slaughtered in Gaza? It's to try and balance.

He's trying to balance very carefully between the two, if you like, forces in the United States. He's trying to balance. He can see very clearly the electoral disadvantage in Michigan and other states where there is a large electorate composed of those of Arab origin. And again, the other wing in America, you know, perhaps symbolized by Lindsey Graham's comment about, you know, just give them the bombs to finish this off. I mean, they must they need to win this. So give them whatever bombs they need. It doesn't matter. And that is the two things he's trying to balance. And then he introduced, then the State Department said, well, you know, sometimes they use these things humanely,

but on the other hand, you know, it's not humane. It's actually not at all humane. And I think it's satisfying neither can. And what you see is quite a firestorm inside the administration and inside Washington between these two narratives. One is of Israel overreacting, killing civilians, genocide, and the other narrative, Israel must win. We have to win this. Give them whatever they need, whatever weapons they need to win it. Look the other way at the civilian casualties that will undoubtedly

follow from this. Alistair, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for the time we spent together with your family and with our other friends outside of Milan over the weekend. And thank you very much for your time this morning. It's great to be back and great to be able to start my work week with one of the smartest people I know. All the best. Well, thank you so much for that. Of course. Coming up today at 10 o'clock Eastern, Ray McGovern. At 11 o'clock Eastern, Larry Johnson. And at three o'clock this afternoon, Eastern, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano

for Judging Freedom. Thank you.