Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke : Israel vs Gaza & The elephant in the room.

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Alastair Crooke : Israel vs Gaza & The elephant in the room.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. Today is Thursday, November 9th, 2023. Our dear friend Alistair Crook joins us now. Alistair, always a pleasure, my friend. You have been writing extensively and given all of us much food for thought. And much of it is about Israel and Gaza and the externality, the long-term effects on other parts of the world. And I want to discuss that at some length. But before we do, one or two questions for you to unpack with respect to Ukraine. Last weekend, the commander in chief of the military, General Zelushny, gave an interview to The Economist magazine, which you and I read regularly, in which he said that the military is at a stalemate. The military conflict is at a stalemate. He was denounced by the Zelensky administration. Within two days, the following happened. His chief of

staff was murdered when a booby-trapped birthday present exploded in his face, and President Zelensky announced that there will be no elections in 2024. Can you connect the dots? Yes, this is the endgame, and the regime in Kiev is starting to fragment and come apart. And the Russian national security advisor the other day said, you know, there are some sane voices out there and they're beginning to sort of break away from Zelensky and particularly the hardliner inner circle who are really ultra-nationalists

and will not concede or have any discussions of any sort. I mean, they're really the absolutists. And you're beginning to see it. Zaluzhny very clearly positioned himself away from Zelensky. And then we had, yes, as you say, the assassination. And I think what we're going to see is the slow defections away out of Kiev. And Russia is waiting to welcome people who they can talk with seriously. So the endgame's happened. The military side of it's over. And now we've moved into a sort of new phase of moving gently towards some sort of political outcome. I don't think there's about to be negotiations. That's still a long way off, I think. But we're now in the sort of between times. Whether it's because of the steadfast resistance on the part of the Republicans in the House of Representatives

or the focus of the United States government on Israel or a realization that what you just said is more likely than not? Has the West, led by the United united states lost interest in ukraine oh yeah i mean of course what happened in in israel and in gaza is completely absorbing the attention and whether it is in brussels or in washington i mean they can't escape that so that the attention is completely gone away from the ukraine And the money is gone, too. Even the EU can't give it any money at the moment. It's just promising some small sums, but they can't give them any large sums. So money is gone.

The weapons aren't coming. There are not enough men to fight. And really, the whole system, I mean, it is just slowly breaking down essentially. So, yes, it's over. I mean, that's part of it. The kinetic part of it is largely over, except that Russia is moving quite quickly on this town called Adyavka, which is quite a fulcral city just next to Donetsk from where much, I mean, it's the most offended city in the north that the Ukrainians still hold. And that is going to, that is on the point, I mean, the Russians

are really putting men into that, 40,000 or more. I mean, you know, this is serious. They're intending to finish that. And I think that's going to be another point at which we'll see probably more defections, more military commanders deciding to call it quits and ring up friends in Moscow. So what happens to President Zelensky? He can't engage in negotiations because the Nazis on his right wing will kill him. He doesn't want to leave. He doesn't want to run for re-election. What does he do? I think when Zelushny or some other military commander has got a critical mass of support, then he'll be told to go to Italy to his Tuscan estate and be off with you and take your money and go. And I think the United States is ready for

that. It's very clear that they want him gone. There's been so much negative journalism about Zelensky of late, which shows that they are also bored with Zelensky and want him to go. Switching gears to the other hotspot, Israel is destroying Gaza. Can it destroy Hamas? Well, it is certainly succeeding in destroying Gaza. I mean, it is leveling, particularly Gaza City. It is leveling the city, but it is also destroying the civilian infrastructure it is destroying schools and hospital entrances and also the solar panels which powered the hospitals also the water supply for the hospitals also the bakeries and this is clearly an effort to remove the population from the north

and to force them because, you know, there's just no food. There hasn't been bread in Gaza for some days. There's hardly any water to drink or wash. They're under continual threat from the air. This is not Hamas. These are just civilians. But Israel is threatening to level the whole of Gaza and wanting to remove, displace the entire population of the north down to the south. Now, at the same time, in Gaza, Hamas is not affected by this.

It's deep underground in these tunnels. They're not sitting in the hospital. They have their own hospital about 60 meters underground. They have their own stores. They have their own mechanical equipment. And they're at a level that is too deep for the Israelis to be able to reach them. So their main fighting forces is not present. It's noticeable.

We don't see dead Hamas forces. I mean, maybe one or two, but I mean, not like Ukraine. You don't see it. I mean, I know Israel claims successes, but so far Israel has not got out of its tank and its tanks and its armoured personnel carriers. They like to stay well protected and not get out onto the ground. And Hamas is waiting for the right moment to engage militarily when the Israelis are forced, if they want to finish off gaza as they say they do that means they've got to get out house to house and that's when we'll find them popping out of these what i call throwaway tunnels these are tunnels that you know they expect it's not they're

not deeply hidden they're not deeply dug they're there and then they're just a quick exit for one or two men to get out place an explosive device on a tank quickly go back shoot a rocket at it down the tunnel and then collapse the tunnel so that the israelis can't use it finish they'll never use it again they'll use another tunnel that's how that's how it's operating. So Haaretz, the highly regarded Israeli daily newspaper, reports 330 to 350 IDF killed. Is it possible that more IDF have been killed by Hamas than Hamas have been killed by IDF, notwithstanding Prime Minister Netanyahu's boasts to the contrary? Yes, it's very difficult. I mean, we have to be very cautious of all these numbers that are being bandied around. But there's no doubt that the Israelis are suffering much more casualties.

If you read Haaretz, you'll only see officers' names or described as having been killed. No ordinary ranks. And that suggests that, you suggests that the numbers that they're giving, some people are presenting, are on the low side. We haven't seen any sign from the rubble or anywhere else of someone pulling out a Hamas soldier or even a weapon. I've yet to see a weapon come out of the rubble. I've watched the Jabali camp at the other sites. You don't see that very much.

No, because they're all sitting deep underground, you know, in their dormitories and all of their equipment and their excavation machinery in this huge, I mean, unparalleled really facilities that they've created deep underneath the ground. And so far, Israel has been unable to reach them. So the main fighting force is not engaged yet. Two sides to this question. What is achieved by the slaughter of children and women and utter innocence? And what are the international consequences of such a slaughter?

This is the key. And this is the thing that is, I think, really, that's what I described when the elephant in the room, is that this has nothing to do with destroying Hamas. Hamas is underneath the earth, far down. What it is, is actually making parts of the north of Gaza, first of all the north of Gaza, unlivable. No bread, no water, no equipment, no facilities. Forcing, if you like, a displacement, a cleansing of the whole of the north of Gaza. And it's quite clear from what they are saying is that this is intended.

This is intended really to persuade the population to put more pressure so that they will, they hope in due course, although there's no sign of it at the moment, they can get rid of them altogether from Gaza and into Egypt, into the Sinai Desert. Although Egypt reaffirms time and time again, no, we won't take 100, we won't take 1,000, we are not going to take any more. But at the same time, the Egyptians are getting very fed up, and they've said so now, at the way Israeli is stopping and restricting the humanitarian assistance. It's rationing it, trying to put more pressure on people to leave and, first of all, to move to the south, and then it will be more pressure on the south. There have been a displacement, but there were,

my estimate's about 900,000 still in Gaza City, in the north. I guess maybe 50,000 are now on their way to the south, the displacing are literally as refugees trying to get out of the bombing in the north. But the civilian loss, I mean, this is really mobilizing and radicalizing the world, watching these videos and the children dying and their parents dead. And I think you've seen some of the people even playing on CNN who've come back from Gaza saying how terrible the slaughter is.

It really is something very, very, I mean, this is ethnic cleansing that is taking place. This is the elephant in the room for Biden and for the United States and for Europe. They are tied to a process of ethnic cleansing, which is driving the Middle East nuts. The passions are getting higher and higher. And at the same time, what we see in Israel, increasingly, people are talking in apocalyptic terms about the future. They talk about the Palestinian civilians there as not being innocents in the word of one cabinet member. And they're talking about what the settlers are doing in the West Bank. These are our biblical lands increasingly we are seeing it turning into an eschatological debate about the biblical israel and these people who are attacking us and killing us

like the amaleks did stress on thousands of years ago so i, it's becoming much, much harder for anyone to intervene when the mood turns like that. And just to be clear, over 80% of Israelis, left and right, share those sentiments about wanting to, if you like, erase all Palestinians from Gaza. I mean eradicate all Palestinians from Gaza because they feel there's no innocence. They're all complicit because they have had and they have nurtured a Hamas within themselves that therefore they are part of it and they cannot claim to be non-combatants at all.

So it's getting very, very much more fraught, the sex site. and they cannot claim to be non-combatants at all. So it's getting very, very much more fraught, the sex act. If Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing, if it is intentionally slaughtering innocents, these are clearly war crimes. Israel is using American equipment and ammunition to say nothing of American popular, moral, political, and PR support? Is Joe Biden, is his administration, is the American government complicit in these war crimes? You know, what the Israelis say is,

of course, they're moving these people and persuading them forcibly to go because they're starving, is for humanitarian purposes. But that's entirely bogus. This is ethnic cleansing that is taking place. And as I've tried to explain, you know, this isn't, I mean, the war on Hamas is not involved. Hamas, you know, 60 meters beneath the surface.

They're not engaged in this at all. They're not killing Hamas. It's not saying we have to do this because, you know, 60 meters beneath the surface. They're not engaged in this at all. They're not killing Hamas. It's not saying we have to do this because, you know, Hamas might pop up and then suddenly kill us. Hamas are not in the hospitals there. They have their own hospital buried underground, which is where they are going. So it is entirely that.

And what concerns me is the time is running out for the United States and for the Biden administration, which has tied itself so closely to this operation in Gaza. Time is running out because sentiment in the United States, in Europe, but more around the world is getting impassioned about what they see, because they see it much more clearly in the rest of the world, what's happening, because it's all over their television stations 24 hours. Is this a danger to American national security, the general international recognition of the fact that the Israeli ethnic cleansing is paid for by the US

taxpayer of course of course and that's what it's seen everywhere I mean whether it's in the Global South but that doesn't matter so much but everyone sees you know the the the airlift of heavy lift airplanes. And the United States announces it. They're sending, you know, 270 tons of new bombs to Israel, which has already dropped 25,000 tons of bombs on Gaza. And I mentioned that because, you know, in Hiroshima, the big nuclear bomb that was dropped in that was only 15 kilotons, 15,000 tons. Israel has already dropped 25,000 tons.

And, of course, the United States is rushing more bombs to Israel to meet its needs. And this is why the sentiment in the region is becoming dangerous in places like Iraq. And I just want to emphasize, because I know some of these people, the Hadash, which they call, they term as sort of Iranian linked militants, are not that at all. Some of them are. Some of them are Shi'i and are very close to Iran, very close to Iran. But many of these people are actually Sunni and Shi'i, and Sunni and Shi'i mixed. And these are Iraqi nationalists. They don't take their orders from Iran. They are militia in their own right.

Some of them are very wealthy. They're well-armed. And at the moment, they are attacking American bases, the 12 bases in Iraq, regularly, every day, and now are increasingly using sophisticated cruise missiles. They call it the Al-Quds 1. But it's a proper cruise missile, which is at supersonic speed. Very hard for America. It's being pushed really hard there. That's why last night the United States attacked because they believe all these, the stories that they're sort of Iran linked, they believe the stories, so they attack bases again in Syria. The Syrians turned on their targeting mechanisms on the air defences

but did not fire at the two F-16 or F-15 Israeli planes that crossed in and bombed these. Nine people, nine Iranians or nine people associated with it were killed in these attacks. So the pressure is mounting all the time and it's getting more dangerous um and more difficult if you like um to curb this um to curb the crease and stop it increasing is the same as we've seen Yemen just shoot down the Yemenis the Houthis shot down a Reaper, a 32 million American surveillance drone. It's not unmanned, but it's a drone.

But it's an expensive drone, one of the top end of them. They shot it down the other day. And in the north of Lebanon, the exchanges with Hezbollah increase all the time. What is the purpose of the American strike forces, the aircraft carrier surrounded by other offensive ships in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the Red Sea? Well, it's a sort of default response from the Pentagon. You know, let's send these big ships. I mean, actually, those big ships are the most vulnerable things.

I don't know why America goes on with these huge aircraft carriers because they're so vulnerable to modern missiles. And Hamas has modern anti-ship missiles. It has very sophisticated anti-ship missiles. And Hamas has modern anti-ship missiles. It has very sophisticated anti-ship missiles in its armory and has used them before. So it's not that. But, I mean, what we're seeing and what the resistance, the unified resistance front, as they call themselves, are doing is slowly heating up place after place.

Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon. It's a sort of slow, careful, managed escalatory process that is taking place to increase the pain on the United States until it does what Hassan Nasrallah said. We will not go further into this conflict, any of us, any of the unified resistance, providing Hamas is not in danger. If survival is threatened, then all options are open and we will do what we think we need to do. They didn't withdraw, but for time being, but the idea that they're all wanting Iran or Hezbollah wanting to dive into a major, huge war, the people have got it wrong and therefore the aircraft carriers are irrelevant. This is a slow boiling of the American defense frog until it experiences enough pain to make sure that Israel stops the civilian deaths in Gaza. However, I don't know and I don't think that America is able to stop Israel in its present mood because passions are raised there.

Here's Admiral Kirby, cut 10, Chris, on the strike groups that you've been talking about and on American national security. You always got to be careful when you're talking about national security decisions. We've said it from the very beginning. We don't want to see any actor escalate or deepen or widen this conflict. And that is why the president has ordered two carrier strike groups to be close by and in the region, both in the Mediterranean and in the Gulf region. We have added air and missile defense capabilities. We've added aircraft squadrons. We have sent a very strong signal that we have significant national security interests at play here. We don't want to see anybody try to take advantage of this fight against Israel and Hamas. Good Lord, that's the opposite of what you just said. Does he know what he's talking about?

No, I mean, you know, and there is a real danger because I've described some of these militia in Iraq. They are not under anyone's control. I mean, these people are strong Iraqi nationalists. They have a religious sanction from Al-Azhar University, from the Ayatollah, from Hamani. Everyone has said, you know, it's right to support religiously. It's a duty to support the Palestinians. So they have religious cover. They have money and weapons.

And, you know, no one can control them. And as this thing escalates and as the continuation of the killings and bombings in Gaza continued. Any one of these groups can go and attack and cause many more deaths on some of these American bases. There are 12 or more just in Iraq. I'm not talking about in Syria. And they're not that well protected.

They're not that well protected. You mentioned earlier the majority of Israelis having had enough with Palestinians and wishing that Gaza would go away. How, if at all, has this translated into political support, if at all, for Prime Minister Netanyahu? Is he likely to be out of office as soon as the war is over? Or has he, as he's done in the past, turned things around to his own favor, even at the price of innocent blood?

I think it's too early to say. But I have said to you before, I mean, yes, there's a huge antipathy towards Netanyahu as a person and responsible, as most Israelis see it, for what happened on the 7th of October. A neglect, if you like, together with that of the military and the intelligence. But this is much deeper. I mean, what we're talking about is the, I mean, let us be clear. They want vengeance.

They want retribution. Scores settled with the Palestinians for what happened on the 7th of October. There's an overwhelming, strong, passionate force. And so even the moderates like Isancourt, General Isancourt and Gantz, who were put in by America to give it a sort of stabilizing effect against the extreme right-wing in the government. But even they are talking, left-wing politicians like Lapid saying, you know, this is our biblical lands. What are these people doing here? They have no, they are complicit. There are no innocents. They are all, if you like, you know, these people have been compromised by Hamas. And so it's fine what's happening.

So there's no protests about the bombing. If there's a protest, it's because the army has been slow and hasn't done enough of going in and cleansing it, as they would like to see it, on foot. A real invasion of Hamas and the removal of the Palestinians to Egypt. Can the United States prevent a real invasion of Hamas and the forced evacuation of two million Palestinians to the sea or to Egypt? I don't think they can. I mean, I think often it's overrated what America can do in these circumstances. And why I say that was I was once attached to Senator Mitchell's presidential fact-finding committee about the first intifada in Palestine. And I remember, you know, the senator would go and he'd have a talk with the prime minister,

it was Ehud Barak at the time, and say, I want these checkpoints lifted around the West Bank. And he was told, it'll be done. And then I would be sent out and I would go out and I'd say, well, let me just check and I'll come back to you tomorrow. And I'd come back and say, yes, Senator, they were all lifted and reimposed within 24 hours. And when he goes back to see the Prime Minister after this and says, but you promised, he gets flustered and picks up the phone and says, what's happened to those checkpoints? I mean, he phones them directly and they come back and they say, he says, very shamefaced, he says, well, maybe next week or the week after, would that be all right, Senator? I mean, you know, it's a game. The army wouldn't have it.

You know, the prime minister says yes, but the army says, no, we're not having that. And so I do think people expect too much from Washington and the United States, particularly because Congress is not in the White House's power on this issue, on the Israeli issue. Israel has huge influence, of course, enormous influence over Congress, the House of Congress in the U.S. Alistair Crook, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you so much for your insight and for your time.

We look forward to seeing you next week. Monday, I believe. Next week. Monday. All the best, my dear friend. And to you. Thanks. Thank you. Coming up later today, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. This is our big brain day. Alistair Crook, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Professor John Mearsheimer. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.