Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Israel’s War Without Limits.

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Alastair Crooke: Israel’s War Without Limits.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 Monday, September 23rd, 2024. Alistair Crook will be here with us in just a moment on Are we going to be watching a war without limits in the Middle East? But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70%, and gold has increased by 60 percent. Do you own gold? I do. I bought my gold in February 2023 and it has risen 33 percent. You've heard me talk about

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And thank you, as always, in advance for your time and for your thoughts and your analysis. It's Monday morning here in the east coast of the United States. The sun is just coming up and we were awakened to the news that the Lebanon Health Ministry has indicated that in the past eight hours, the Israeli attacks have killed 100 Lebanese and injured 400. What's your take on where this is going? Well, first of all, there needs to be, I think, some clarifications because quite clearly Israel is betting on escalation. Netanyahu says, you know, we're going to escalate to de-escalate. And if that sounds a tautology, it's not really what he means is we're going to escalate in order to try and force Hezbollah to agree to a settlement by which they remove all their forces from

the south and that then the displaced residents of Israel can return to their houses in the north. And it's being presented as a huge and massive painful loss inflicted on Hezbollah since both the Pager attack and, of course, the assassination of Ibrahim Akhil and several of his colleagues in a bunker underneath a building in Beirut. Look, these were undoubtedly painful losses, but these were tolerable and also tactical losses. First of all, it's being presented as they lost all their communications and they're unsighted and this has been a great victory because now they can't communicate. Well, that is pretty much nonsense. Even before 2006 war, I was there during that war.

During the 2000, even well before the 2006 war, Hezbollah had moved over completely to optical fiber communications with the military. They don't use pages and they don't use, if you like, walkie-talkies. Who was using the pages? The police? I was just going to explain. That's what I call civil Hezbollah.

Hezbollah manages a huge slice of Beirut and the country, and it has to provide order and law and order and security. And so when you go into Dahir, the main Hezbollah part of Beirut, I mean, there are police checkpoints. These are all the people that have walkie-talkies and pages. They are effectively a sort of civilian police. It is not the Radwan military forces. It's not the special forces. They never use any of those equipment. The main thing is optical communications. And even they will use actually messages passed by courier in preference from using any form of technical communications secondly uh the point of this is um the these um that these

communications um survived in 2006 and hezbollah has an operational practice even if they lose communication totally even if the headquarters is destroyed the war goes on that's how they plan it that's how they train their people even if there are no communications people know what to do it has all been prepared well in advance and so uh you know that is not such i mean is terrible what happened to them but these are mostly if you like, civil support people, their logistics, their medical support. They're not the fighting force that were so badly injured during this attack. It was obviously a humanitarian disaster for many, many families. But it wasn't, if you like, a strategic disaster

for Hezbollah as is often being presented. And secondly, even when you take the assassination of Ibrahim Akil in that apartment block in Beirut, he was a very senior Hezbollah official. And so were the 14 others that were with him from Red One. But you have to understand that in Hezbollah they have young officers. When, after the 2006 war, I was taken to meet the military commanders of Hezbollah, I think I have, it was a special privilege. They were all about 21, were so impressive. They were very professional. They knew exactly the length of a trench to dig

to stop a Makovit tank. They knew how to do it. They knew all the details of their trade. They were very impressive. Well, that was a long time ago. That was 2006. These people are actually in their prime now, and they will be coming into the leadership. And secondly, there is a practice in Hezbollah that everybody at a senior level, prepares and grooms his successor and must do so. It's obligatory. So even Hassan Nasrallah grooms and prepares his successor, even though we don't know who that is at all. But that is standard practice.

So it's just, you know, like a slot. The people who've been prepared, who will be younger, they won't be in their 60s or 70s, like the older Kada who've just been sadly killed. But, you know, these are going to be young, fresh, quite, you know, forceful young men who know their job and have been doing it for a long time. So it wasn't really such a strategic um if you like um uh loss now what is israel is betting on very much is that um it's betting for this that by escalation they can force hezbollah either to withdraw or or or alternative alternatively rather like we have with Zelensky in Ukraine, they can force Hezbollah into an overreaction which might bring in a bigger war but bring in the Americans in support of that

bigger war. But for the moment they have bet on escalation, dominance, escalating to de-escalate, first the pages, then the assassination of Gil, and then they're banking on what is termed intelligence and firepower to push Hezbollah into an agreement. But first of all, there was no agreement. Amos Hochstein was in Lebanon, but he was acting basically more for the Israelis than for the Americans. And it was a complete failure, the attempt to get some sort of diplomatic agreement. There isn't one. I mean, it's been talked about, but there was no agreement.

Americans know that. The Americans know that. Israelis know that, too. And so this is really what they are betting on that they can push either Hamas, Hezbollah in. And to this extent, we're seeing this massive air attacks taking place in the south and in the Bekaa that you just spoke about. But really what we're talking about is the ineffectiveness of air firepower in these circumstances when put against deep, deep buried rockets and missile elements.

In the beginning, in 23, Hezbollah was losing about 10 men a day. Now, they're not really losing any. There were two Hezbollah that were supposed to be killed, but they're religious figures. They're nothing to do with Hezbollah per se. And most of these, sadly, will be civilian losses. They are heavily bombing the area. And although it's presented as being very clever intelligence and that they're knocking out missile launchers, that too is pretty much bunker. Because what they do is basically they try and find launchers by filming the forest. Because this is mountain area, forest area, very difficult terrain,

deep valleys, little nooks and crannies. So they film all of this, looking for movements, and then using artificial intelligence detection methodology to try and find where someone is moving. It's not done by spies or intelligence per se. It is done using AI, again, to try and spot some sort of movement. And Hezbollah for years, since 2006, have been adept in putting up ghosts and fake missile launchers, fake men, moving them around, fooling the Israelis, who are basically bombing every spot in the forests, hills and valleys where it thinks there's possibly

going to be a rocket launching. You mentioned Amos Hochstein. He's the American negotiator born in Israel and a former member of the IDF. Do the Americans and the other nations involved in the Lebanese negotiation with Hochstein and the Gaza negotiation with Bill Burns now recognize and acknowledge that Netanyahu was never serious in either negotiation? You know, it's difficult to know how much State Department, because originally Hochstein worked from the State Department and had some staff there. All those staff were completely removed. He was involved with the demarcation of oil reserves and things initially.

And after that, all those people who knew Lebanon and who were experienced were removed from the State Department. And then he was moved into the White House. So there's just him and the secretary operating out of the White House. So how much real communication, how much teamwork there is, I mean, is really unclear. It seems more that he was operating pretty much on his own and he was operating much more, I think, as an auxiliary of Netanyahu and the cabinet there than he was of the United States. I mean, to a certain extent, there will have been, but much more it was passing messages from Israel to Lebanon

than it was really looking for a serious settlement. I mean, there was no real deal there at all. And that's probably prompted, if you like, Netanyahu to seek this escalation, to de-escalate, to push Netanyahu. Or if it can't push Netanyahu into an agreement, escalate the war even further so that perhaps it would become a wider war and then the United States would feel obliged to enter it. But Hezbollah has escalated too, just to be clear, because one of the things we're facing again is Israel has put another complete blackout notice on everything.

No filming, no news, no reporting at all from anywhere north of Haifa. That's in the center, really, on the coast of Israel. No news is allowed to be presented. But you do get some because some of the Israelis in the settlements are sending videos, and it's quite clear there's major destruction in Haifa itself, a major port. Hezbollah has reported an attack on an air base in the north. There are attacks going on.

There are rockets continuing. So with all this bombing, all this so-called sort of carpet bombing, it's actually quite ineffective because it's not stopping Hezbollah. And I emphasize here that what we're seeing at the moment are rockets, FADL-1, FADL-2 rockets, which are, I suppose,

broadly similar to HIMARS. I mean, they're not guided. They're not smart missiles. Hezbollah hasn't even begun to use smart missiles. They're using rockets to create destruction of houses. Nearly a million Israelis last night were in the shelters. There have been a huge amount of destruction across the north, and people are in despair about that. And so that is continuing. And I just would add that many of those rockets are being fired, and we have

visual evidence of that from what is called the Iman bases. These are these fired, and we have visual evidence of that, from what is called the Imad bases. These are these deep missile towns that have been dug 90 meters down in the hills of Lebanon, in the hills around that place, and they fire them from 90 meters underground through silos, special silos, straight out onto their targets. But these are not. I mean, so actually what Hezbollah has reacted to these escalations is two things. One is that they've increased the range of the rockets now to 60 kilometers into Israel. So that's a big increase, including Haifa, many of the center parts.

So two million Israelis are now under rocket attack by Israel, two million of them. And they are using slightly bigger rockets but not using and this is you know if there is another escalation it could well be that they will then but only only not from hezbollah only if israel starts attacking uh the civilian population if it attacks population centers, if it tries to destroy Beirut and its infrastructure of Lebanon, then we may be in that game. But Hezbollah is carefully calculating and moving the rocket attacks. As I say, you know, the effects of these air attacks are greatly overestimated. It's all done with AI in 2006 equally. It was completely ineffective, and Israel ran out of targets for their air force within six days.

Were the Pager and Walkie Talkie attacks, in your view, a war crime? Who's going to be the end recipient of these things? I mean, you know, they were ostensibly ordinary pages. And sometimes, you know, if you have a pager, you might tell your wife to take the pager out or your daughter to take it out. And indeed, that's what happened. And so children were killed. And there were many people. I mean, this is the inadvertent part.

In the hospital, the AUH hospital in Beirut, there were several, if you like, medical staff who were using the pages, nothing to do with Hezbollah, but they were staff of the American University Hospital in Beirut. And some were killed and some were injured from it. So, I mean, that's clearly criminal to attack. Many, many have had their hands blown off, had their eyes, I mean, lots of people who've been blinded by this. And, you know, these were just ancillary parts of Hezbollah. They weren't the military parts.

It wasn't targeted. The military don't walk around with pages at all. And it's only, as I say, it's about the sort of management of civil life in Lebanon. Don't forget, it is, you know, a state within a state, right? It is, you know, responsible for law and order, for making sure that when cars come in, they're checked, all of that sort of thing. So you need some sort of system of communication for them.

But it's not. I mean, this is just propaganda. So Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was scheduled to address the UnitedF and see what kind of a reception is he going to get? The last question is yours. I'm asking you to leave that at the end. In your term, future, I was there. On present basis, I mean, there's no definitive, but on present basis, they say he's not going.

He's not going to go because of the escalation that is taking place at the moment. I mean, you know, as I say, you know, now two million Israelis are under rocket fire, a million spent the night in the protective basements and elsewhere, in the bomb shelters. I think it's unlikely that he's probably going to go, unless Hezbollah sort of suddenly announced, okay, we'll move from the south and no problem. Of course, that's not going to happen. So, I mean, we're going to see. So, I mean, I think, you know, he will be saying very clearly, you know, the story about 7th of October, how, you know, that is affected,

how Israel is under a threat. At the top of the head of the snake lies Iran. We must all join together. It will be, I think, a sort of repetition of what we had. I mean, what the present conflict at the moment, unless it escalates, really depends on two conditions. I think the first one is, who has the greatest endurance? It's one element is the endurance of the people. So this is, I mean, is it really the case that the residents of Haifa and Central will be able to sustain the damage, the destruction of their settlements and of their

houses? No one is going to school in Israel. They keep getting warnings that they have to go in, if you like, if they have to go down to the basements and to the safe areas. Every few minutes, these warnings are coming. How long will they endure? How long will the economy endure? And against that, on the other side, you have the Shi who have a huge, well-known appetite for both sacrifice and loss. I mean, they see these losses as something that you, you know, it is almost a duty, it's almost a test of your character

to be able to absorb losses like this and continue on your path. I mean, this is this whole Xi history for a thousand years of, if you like, suffering catastrophic killings and massacres and just pushing through it and continuing on, following their path. It goes right back to the grandson of the Prophet, Ibrahim Hussein. And Hussein fought the battle with only 68 men against 3,000 coming from Damascus, went ahead even though he knew the outcome was inevitable. And that is the way, that's why you hear them talking about Kabbalah, why you hear them talking

about Ashura, because they're talking about the experience of the Shi'i over the years. I think it's highly unlikely you will get any sort of change from Hezbollah. So I think we will see Netanyahu continuing to try and provoke, I mean, perhaps more attempts at assassinations. But it's not key people are being assassinated. Now, some of them are just religious figures that are loosely involved with Hezbollah. So who is going to have the endurance for this? How long can it last?

And I think, you know, the window is fairly short because I think Netanyahu understands he is dealing with a, I'm sorry to say this, but a very weak Merrick for this period until the 25th of January, in that he can push and can escalate. And they don't, there is really no response. There's no real answer coming from Washington. I mean, they keep talking about Gaza. You know, couldn't we have a deal in Gaza?

That's almost forgotten. It's old news now. No one is talking about the hostages. It's true. Unless there's a strange turn of events, then I think that we will see attempts by Israel. Perhaps the next stage, I mean, if you ask me, how could they escalate? They threaten an invasion. They threaten that they are going to come in on the ground into Lebanon and push the forces. You know, the Radwan forces are quite large, 10,000 men. I mean, this is not just

a little militia, it's a big professional well-trained force going to push them back. I don't think, here I'm just, my own speculation, I don't think after what Israel has suffered in Gaza, that they have the manpower really to go into and to try and invade into Lebanon and to push and engage with Hezbollah and push it back across the Litani River. I don't think, I think they'd need another 10,000 men at least to be able to contemplate, instead of which they've got reservists who are fed up and an exhausted army. And I don't know that they can do that. And if they do, I think they might actually just do short, quick raids into Lebanon,

more for PR, because they'll go in and they'll blow up something. They did something like that recently in Syria, blow up a scientific institute with a lot of fanfare. I mean, it's one that the Israelis have bombed, I think, twice before. I mean, so it's not exactly, wasn't a great surprise or shock to anyone. But what that does, of course, is open up the prospects of what Hezbollah has said for a long time, that if this happens, we will go into the Galilee

and invade Israel. You know, you want to invade Lebanon? Well, Radwan is already prepared, and we will go into Galilee and fight you in Israel. I want to go back for a minute to the civilians that were killed and maimed by the explosions of the pagers. Have the Israelis acknowledged that they did this? Is there any dispute that they did?

Because the American government has not condemned it. Could you imagine if Russia or China or Iran or South Korea did something like that? We'd be all over them. No, they don't admit it formally. They don't admit it. They just say it's attributed. So they sort of smirk and say it's attributed, but who knows. So they don't say anything. And the position of the United States is still basically just to say, well, we support the right of self-defense in Israel, as if this is self-defense. This was not self-defense at all. And it was really horrific. I mean, many, many people lost their eyesight. And these are,

as I say, ordinary. Many, you know, children were killed with them too, having their parents' pages and so on. It was a really sad, sad time. How do you think Bill Burns, the head of the CIA and the chief American negotiator seeking a ceasefire in Gaza feels now that he must recognize that the Israeli government was never, ever, ever serious about a ceasefire and all of his efforts were a facade. I do think there was an element that they really believed that this was possible, even though they never engaged in that negotiation either very seriously. I think there was this, you know, magical thinking that, you know, that they could just put pressure on Hamas through the Egyptians and through the Gatari's and that he would fold. Much as they had this, if you like, magical thinking that the

authorities in Lebanon and the Lebanese army would put pressure on Hezbollah because they never dealt with Hezbollah directly, that they would put pressure on Hezbollah and force it to withdraw. I mean, they have no understanding of Lebanon, none at all, if they thought that, who is going to do this in Lebanon? The army certainly would have done this, because many of them are Shia also. It would have never have happened. There isn't the authority, there isn't the power

to do anything in Lebanon. It is a bankrupt, broken country. It hasn't even got a government. It's quite incapable. But that doesn't seem to have entered in the calculations. They just went on in a sort of pro-former way that they've perhaps been operating for years and years, thinking that the Egyptians would put pressure on Hamas. I've been through that. I've seen that. It doesn't work. And certainly Lebanon just doesn't have any of the mechanism to put pressure on Hezbollah at all. Alistair, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for all this extraordinary analysis,

as always. It is just a terrific, now habitual way to begin our work week here in the U.S. with Alistair Crook at 8 o'clock in the morning, New York time. Thank you, my dear friend. We'll see you again next week. Thank you. Thank you very much. All the best. And coming up later today at 10 o'clock in the morning, Eastern, Ray McGovern at 11 o'clock in the morning, Eastern, Larry Johnson, and at noon, Eastern, Scott Ritter. Let me also remind you, if you are going to be in the northeast of the United States this Saturday, that Scott Ritter, Anya Parampal, Max Blumenthal, Gerald Salenti, and I will all be speaking at the Peace and Freedom Rally in Kingston, New York. A lot of entertainment, a lot of food, a lot of like-minded people, no cost at all. So come and let's get the message out.

And we've also arranged for this to be simulcast to almost anywhere in the world. We'll see you later today. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!