Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Netanyahu - Ploy or Reversion?

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Alastair Crooke: Netanyahu - Ploy or Reversion?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, January 22nd, 2024. In a moment, Alistair Crook will address what is Netanyahu's goal? Is it to defeat Hamas or to get the hostages returned? And can he possibly do both? But first this. Judge Napolitano here. Do you know that we the people have reached 34 trillion plus in debt? It's unsustainable and it's growing. Our government is addicted to printing money and it's not going to stop. And if you believe that, as I do, then you need to understand why gold prices of gold to rise and it could reach $3,200 an ounce. Listen to some of the stats that I pulled from this report. They make a very strong case for the likely surge in the value of gold.

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It's a free report. It's free education. Call 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. And when you talk to my friends at Lear, tell them the judge sent you. Alistair, welcome here, my dear friends. Is Israel a democracy? Does it believe in equal rights for all, or is it a theocracy? Well, it's neither. It's a special case, and it's always been a special case. Zionism, because it is open to all Jews living anywhere in the world to return to the land of Israel, Zionism was always predicated that for that there must be land and electricity and services that are available to anyone coming in and living and coming to

Israel. And that therefore for that there must be special rights, special administrative, special land, special rights and control over the land, water resources, all those things, and that therefore others cannot have the same rights. So it is essentially, it sounds almost a paradox, but it is basically exclusionary inclusion, exclusionary in that the Palestinians are out of it, but they are included in it. And this is really the fatal flaw. And this is what all of the problem is about at the moment. by which they need and insist on special rights for Jews over territory which is inhabited by a substantial proportion of non-Jews, by Palestinians, who won't enjoy those same rights. So it is essentially different. It is a democracy for those that have special rights and not for those who have none.

So if you define a democracy as equal rights for all, it's not a democracy in that traditional definition. I mean, suppose I, as a Roman Catholic, bought a home in Tel Aviv or in Jerusalem. Would I have the same rights as my Jewish neighbors? Not according to law, and also because it's intended to have different layers. So, I mean, it depends where you live, but if you live in the green zone, it's different from if you're living in, we call it the occupied territories, the West Bank or Gaza. They are very different rights. So there are different geographical rights. In the West Bank, Palestinians have to use different roads from those that are used by Jews and settlers in the

West Bank. Different administrative rights, where you can work, how you get work permit, and different also security rights, because the Palestinians are subject to intervention by Israeli forces, armed forces at any time at the discretion of Israel. So they're kept in a chronic uncertainty. This is the second sort of paradox to the whole situation, or if you like I would call it also a flaw in the Zionist system, is that in order to give absolute security or in order to try and give security to Jews living anywhere on the land of Israel, you had to create chronic insecurity and instability for non-Jews living in the Zom territory, i.e. the Palestinians. They live in deliberate insecurity as a part of a process to give Jews living in the territory security. How about non-Jews that are not Palestinians, like

my example of a Roman Catholic moving to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv and purchasing land and expecting to have the same freedom and political rights as his Jewish neighbors. Is that unrealistic? Does that happen? No, it doesn't. You wouldn't have it. And furthermore, I mean, the aim is to have Jewish law, halakha, eventually to be established over it. And you are excluded, and you're excluded from certain aspects of life by not being Jewish. It is, as it's made very clear by Israelis over the years, the state of Israel is a Jewish state. That means and is a state for Jews living there and who have special rights and special accommodation given to them because they're Jews. What is Netanyahu's goal in the war?

Is it the defeat of Hamas or is it the return of the hostages? Well, now it's neither um I think the hostages are you know this is something that is important to a sector of Israeli public opinion very clearly and also to international opinion um but as you will recall um a little while ago there was an assassination in Beirut, in the Dahir part of Beirut, which is an open part. I mean, it's not sealed off or anything. I know it quite well. And he was assassinated there along with others in a block, an apartment block there. What perhaps is less well known is that he was the negotiator on hostages. I think I've described before that actually, you know, the decision making is done in Gaza by the military wing, if you like. The Kassam Brigades are in charge of

the hostage negotiation. Not those people sitting in Doha. They really, for some time now, I mean, it's a separate, it's really a separate organization almost. They're not in charge of what is happening in Gaza. Why would the Israelis assassinate somebody with whom they were negotiating? Well, it's not the first time. When I was doing a negotiation some time ago, a long time ago, in order to establish a CISFA, and I had the agreement of Hamas from the Damascus Political Council, from FATA, And I informed the Israelis that a ceasefire was about to begin

the following day. And then I was woken up at four in the morning by Solana, who was a high representative. And he said, have you heard the news? And I said, no, what's happened?

And he said, listen. And I listened. And the Israelis had dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of Salah Shahada, who was the negotiator in this case on behalf of Hamas, killing him and 13 others, including all his family. So it's not the first time. I think it's a very clear signal that as far as Netanyahu is concerned, the hostages are not his first priority, shall we say, and what he's changed now. And he talks now, it's about a war from the river to the sea, from the River Jordan, anything

west of the Jordan to the Mediterranean is now an open, if you like, land. This is the result of the fact that the Zionist project, the project that we've been talking, I was talking about at the outset, the special rights, was turned into an elaborate process, a very elaborate structure by which Palestinians could somehow be disappeared from the system. They had separate roads, separate areas in the West Bank, separateness in Gaza, separate rights, separate positions, and that they were left. This was something that Israel inherited from the 73 War with Egypt,

in which Sharon achieved great success by creating strong points across the Sinai and leaving the Egyptian military to be immobilized at another level. And it worked very effectively there. And that was first transported to the West Bank by the settlers creating these high points, strong points around the West Bank and leaving the other Palestinians, the Palestinians who were living in the West Bank, in chronic uncertainty. No fixed borders, no geographic designation, no clear administrative or political or legal rights. They were kept by the settlers, but not by them.

In this way, they hoped they could manage this fundamental contradiction in Zionism of having one, if you like, sector of the population having special rights and special privileges in a territorial extension where there are other non-Jews who do not have those rights and who one day might, if there was a different political circumstances, demand the same rights, demand equal political rights, demand equal legal rights. And so this was a way of trying to sort of bypass this, I would call it a flaw in Zionism, because it just doesn't work. And this is why they've been saying for many years,

I remember it from long ago when I first wrote about it, I mean, why they say a two-state solution is incompatible with Zionism. I mean, why they say a two-state solution is incompatible with Zionism. I mean, you have to say it is. It's not compatible with a system of, if you like, two-state rights, two-state system working together over the same territory. Here is a clip of Prime Minister Netanyahu using the phrase from the river to the sea. Remember, if you use this phrase on many American college campuses and you have a Palestinian flag with you, you'll be removed from the campus. And a member of Congress, a member of the House of Representatives, who is herself Palestinian, was reprimanded by the House

of Representatives for using this same phrase. But here's Prime Minister Netanyahu using it as he sees fit. For 30 years, I am very consistent and I'm saying something very simple. This conflict is not on the lack of a state of Palestinian, but the existence of a state, the Jewish state. Every area that we evacuate, we receive terrible terror against that. It happened in South Lebanon, in Gaza, and also Judea and Samaria, which we did it. And therefore, I clarify that in any other arrangement,

in the future, the State of Israel have to control on the entire area from the river to the sea. This is what happens when you have sovereignty. This truth I say to our American friends. And I also stopped the attempt to impose on us a reality that will jeopardize us. A prime minister in Israel has to be able to say no, even to the best of friends, to say no when you need to and to say yes when you can. Of course, the reference to saying no to the best of friends is to President Biden

and the United States. So I'm interested in this phrase, from the river to the sea. I'm also interested in a phrase you used earlier, and of course you've written about this and given me a heads up on it, about these indefinite borders. Did Ariel Sharon come up with the idea that the Palestinians should not even know what their borders are. And did he ever say all of Israel or believe, as far as you know, Israel is from the river to the sea? In other words, is this novel that an Israeli prime minister is saying this out loud? Is this as a result of October 7? Or is this something they've always believed, always wanted,

and now think they have an opportunity to achieve? Always wanted and always insisted on. Because a river to the sea, I mean, it depends who says it, but when he says it, when the prime minister says it, what he's referring to is greater Israel. In other words, all the land between the river and the sea, including going up to the Litani in some statements about what greater Israel is and going south into perhaps even the Sinai. And he is indeed copying Sharon, who refused to demarcate space. He wanted to have fluid space militarily. It was a very unorthodox, very novel way of fighting where complete disrespect for political space, for military space, for legal space. He wanted to cross borders. He didn't want to fix any frontiers. Israel still

doesn't have borders. It's still, I mean, they're still under negotiations. And they've always enjoyed that because it gave them more flexibility. And the point of it was, again, as we saw in Sinai in 73, it gave Israel the ability to create strong points, not to have to control the whole ground, but to immobilize the Egyptian army under a matrix of security points sitting above it. This is what is being planned now, is to go back to Sharon's original concept, but to

say our security has no borders, it has no particular space. We're encompassing all of it, and we're going to create strong points above it, a matrix of overarching security. And under that, the Palestinians will be subject and will have the Israeli security enforced on it. And where that will lead, I mean, will either lead, I suspect, either to greater Israel being established, the Zionist project being established across the whole territory of what they claim is greater Israel, or else it will be the collapse of the Zionist project and the abandonment of the Zionist

project because it is no longer working. And this is why it's very important for the West to understand these basics, because simply calling for a two-state solution as a palliative, is really just nonsense. It's a fabulous sort of prospect, but it doesn't actually resolve anything. It is incompatible with Zionism, basically and fundamentally. And this was what was cooked up by Sharon and then later Israelis, this sort of system by which there were two spaces on one land, and one legal space and another legal space is a different level, to bypass this whole problem.

But then it blew up on the 7th of October when Hamas exploded out of Gaza and destroyed that sort of concept that they were being contained by this complex structure, and also blew up the idea that it was possible to have security for Israel on one hand and massive insecurity for Palestinians on the other. Both these concepts were blown up, and a two-state solution, which is all the European Union and others are talking about, including Washington. I mean, where is this two-state going to be? I mean, according to the law, 224, 338, the original UN Security Council resolutions, it includes all the West Bank and Gaza. Well, what are you going to do about the West Bank? I've already said that it is people by nearly 800,000 settlers now

who are armed and zealots and have absolutely no intention, whatever any government says, of abandoning. These are fanatics. I've been to them. I've spoken to them. They are really radical people, even the Israeli army. And look at the Israeli army in the West Bank. It's basically a reservist army, but also it is a settler army. Most of these people, when I was in Israel, I saw the big transformation of the Israeli army into becoming a settler army. It used to be managed and led by the kibbutzniks, the people who lived in the kibbutzis. But then it changed and the settlers took command over the main points of this army. So you're not going to be able to use the Israelis to remove them. Who's going to remove nearly a million Israelis from West Bank?

I mean, there's no discussion that is serious about these things. It's just new, fabulous sort of ideas that people are using just to manage the problem. Okay, we can't solve it, so we come up and we'll say Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states will do this and the other things. And they know that's not going to work. It's impossible to work. And so now we are faced with Israel going the full Sharon, as I call it, and trying're going to operate militarily from the Litani right

down to Egypt, and the Palestinians will be paralyzed within this matrix that we're going to construct. And what is the answer from the West? They just come up with ever more fabulous ideas that somehow Saudi Arabia is going to resurrect the Palestinian Authority, which is going to persecute its own people. I mean, you know, wasn't that what they tried for 20 years in Afghanistan to get someone to preserve the government in Kabul? And then what happened?

It collapsed in 11 days. They weren't going to go on killing their own Afghans. Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu's latest. I'm not sure if this was today or over the weekend, but it's very fresh and it's very netanyahu we continue the war on all fronts we do not provide immunity to any terrorists not in gaza not in lebanon not in syria and not anywhere else whoever tries to hurt us we hurt him regarding our hostages to date we have returned 110 of them back home, and we are committed to returning them all. This is one of the objectives of the war, and military pressure is a necessary condition for its completion. I work on this around the clock.

But to be clear, I reject outright the terms of surrender of the monsters of Hamas. In exchange for the release of our hostages, Hamas demands the end of the war, the withdrawal of our forces from Gaza, the release of all the murderers and rapists of the Nuhba, and leaving Hamas intact. If we agree to this, our warriors fell in vain. If we agree to this, we will not be able to guarantee the security of our citizens. We will not be able to return the evacuees safely to their homes. And the next October 7th will only be a matter of time. October 7th will only be a matter of time. How do you read this? I think it's, you know, I said to you earlier, and it's not been much publicized, but Saleh Arro, who was assassinated in Beirut, was the hostage negotiator. He'd been in Doha

just earlier. The people in Doha, the Hamas leaders there, are not the negotiators. The negotiators are in Gaza. The decision makers are in Gaza. And there is a complicated process of communication. And he was the link in it. So it's pretty clear that Netanyahu is saying, because we're going to the big war now, the big war where we're going to take control of the entire security space of greater

Israel, you know, the hostage issue is not an issue for us. And the rest of what he's saying is what I was really trying to sort of suggest is, you know, he's saying if we accept Hamas's terms, if we accept, you know, an all-for-all hostage exchange, which is what Hamas wants, i.e. six and a half thousand Palestinian hostages that are in prison to be released, and we accept the humiliation, I mean, how do you go on with the Zionist project? The Zionist project is then upended, is destroyed, and either they have to abandon it then and then invent something else. But there is no alternative for most Israelis. And I have to say with this, he has the support of most Israelis. The latest polls show 75% of Israelis wanted harsh measures in Gaza to continue and were upset with the idea of them being sort of transformed into a modified, less aggressive mode to suit the American demands, they wanted it to continue and for Hamas to be excluded, and they want Gaza to

be returned to Israel, essentially. They wanted it to be depopulated. Since last we spoke, there was quite a brouhaha in the Israeli war cabinet. And the former Israeli military chief of staff, a retired major general, went on Israeli television and made an argument, more or less the opposite of what we just showed Prime Minister Netanyahu saying. We've already lost the war against Hamas. We can't defeat them. We can't get rid of them. There should be a ceasefire. We should negotiate and we should get our hostages home. Is Bibi still in domestic political trouble once the war is over?

Once the war is over is the critical point of that, isn't it? Right. Who knows how long that will be? And he calculates that it's going on for a long time with the change. But I have to say, it would be very, very hard for most Israelis. And he is right on this, I think. I'm not taking a side or anything, but I'm just saying the facts as they are, that most Israelis would be horrified that if all Palestinian prisoners were released

for the hostages in Gaza. They don't have that in mind. They would like a few people to be released, perhaps, like we saw earlier, but to release all. And that's Hamas' demand, all for all. In other words, they're saying, we deny your whole security paradigm over greater Israel, West Bank. And here, we're not prepared to accept it. And we are releasing these people, forcing you to release them as the first stage to liberate our territory from Zionism. And, you know, I'm not sure. It's, you know, he would be asking a lot for Israel to accept it because there's no alternative. Do you think Israel is in danger of imploding? Yes, because it's overreaching. This, which we've just described as sort of trying to put a military matrix across the whole of greater Israel, includes Hezbollah.

And it includes, of course, the West Bank, which is on a knife edge now. So they are really overreaching and taking a big gamble. Now, I don't know what the agreement is with the Americans, with the White House, about the war against Hezbollah, but we're getting closer and closer. You will recall only yesterday four more Hezbollah leaders were assassinated by Israel. And we've seen the rise in tensions with Iran. What is going to happen from that? Is America going to join in?

Is it going to support it? Or is it going to leave it to Israel? I mean, he's taking it. And Israel is taking a huge gamble to save Zionism by taking on Hezbollah, as well as Hamas, as well as the West Bank forces. So, I mean, it's a big gamble. Is the shelling of the Houthis by the United States likely to widen, to expand the war? It already has, because the reaction to this was in Iraq, when 20 ballistic missiles were

fired on the big American base, Ain al-Assad base. And there were many American, the US forces that have the latest, the Patriot missile defense system, and it didn't, it wasn't effective. I don't know the exact figures, but obviously many of these ballistic missiles reached the target. And there are heavy casualties. There is a lot of talk that there were four American deaths. I can't confirm that. But there is a lot of speculation that there are American deaths this time in this attack. But 20 ballistic missiles, not just rockets or drones, were fired from Iraq, not from Iran, within Iraq at Ain al-Assad. And that clearly is not unconnected to what was happening in Yemen. Does Prime Minister Netanyahu want to expand the war in order to draw the United States in?

Yes, of course. I mean, this is the trap he set for the United States. And I keep, I've been saying, I think, on this program to you that I think that what he is trying to do is precisely that. I mean, he'd love it to even extend to Iran, not just legitimizing of his action, which is already given, but to see actual support, American support, because Hezbollah is a formidable opponent. It's not like Hamas. It has 150,000 missiles, sophisticated, new, trained, experienced forces on the ground. I mean, it'll be a very different and very much tougher war. But it seems that inevitably we're going that way. And inevitably, America is going to get drawn in more deeply, not only in Yemen, but I know there's a lot of pressure on the White House now to really send a clear, hard message in Iraq to the forces there. And that will escalate it and we will find the Americans drawn into more and more, if you like, responses against attacks on American bases in Iraq and Syria. If there is a wider war, will the British be involved,

or does that depend on who's the prime minister at the time the war widens? You know, it embarrasses me when you ask me about what the British policy will do. I couldn't resist. So I'd prefer, I mean, they'll do whatever they're asked to do. That's the short and long of it. They'll do that. But, you know, they said when they joined on Yemen, and I thought it was a very foolish commitment to make, they said, oh, this is just going to be a one-off strike on Yemen and the Houthis, and we don't have any intention of going into war against Yemen. Well, why did you fire all those missiles into it, if you knew what they're like? I mean, it was very silly, if that was the basis of your decision. Alistair, my dear friend, thank you very much. Always a pleasure. I know you're traveling. I appreciate very much, as do the folks watching us now and later, the time and analysis that you've given us. All the best. Thank you very much. Thank you. Of course. Top, absolutely top of his game. Coming

up later this morning, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern this afternoon, Kyle Anzalone, and the great Professor John Mearsheimer. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.