Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: US Lured Into Battlescape in Gaza, Yemen ,and now Iraq

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Alastair Crooke: US Lured Into Battlescape in Gaza, Yemen ,and now IraqSee 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 15th, 2024. Alistair Crook is here today with his take on the presentations at the International Criminal Court and the big picture look at the failures of the Biden foreign policy establishment. But first this. Justin Faltano here. I love being a spokesperson for causes that I believe in, and one of them is the soundness of money. We don't have that anymore.

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diversifying your portfolio from stocks and bonds into gold and silver can give you peace of mind, the peace of mind you deserve. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. And when you speak to these good folks, tell them the judge sent you. Alistair, welcome back to the show, my dear friend. I want to talk to you at some length about a recent column of yours arguing that the Biden administration has been lured into battleship Gaza. But just before we get there, did you have a chance to observe to the extent it was feasible to do so? And if so, do you have any comments on the presentations made at the International Court of Justice on Thursday and Friday?

Thursday of last week was the presentation of the South African case against Israel, and Friday of last week was the presentation of Israel's defense. Yes, I did. As you probably are aware, the first day was pretty well blacked out across the entire media in Europe and probably in the United States too. There was almost no coverage of the first day when the South African case was made. And only on the second day when the defense, Israeli defense, was the coverage. And then the BBC and Sky started coverage. But on the day before, they did not. So it was blacked out completely. Now, the case made, I'm not a lawyer, but the case made by the South African prosecutor, if you like, in this. A young woman, Irish woman, was very, very eloquent, well put together.

She made telling points, particularly about the sense of using 2,000 pound bombs, which, dumb bombs, not guided, not smart, which have a lethal range of so many meters, can't remember exactly, but there's a circle around them and anything in that circle will die. And then there's a circle beyond that, which is even bigger and involves severe damage, injury to it. And the point she was making that these bombs were being dropped,

dumb bombs, no targeting, in sort of circles that overlapped. So it was just killing people, inevitably, simply because of the mechanics of the bombs. And she said, this is an example. Why didn't they use smart bombs? Because the aim was not to be smart and target. The aim was to take advantage of these radios. Now, that was her case.

That's what she made. But she made it very, very persuasively in the court. Isn't it troublesome that the Western media blacked out the South African presentations? I mean, for my production team to watch it, we had to go to Al Jazeera. None of the alphabet networks in the U.S., including the one for which I worked for 24 years, covered it. None. And now you're telling me the same thing happened in Western Europe. It's 2024 and these governments

still think that they can block out news that they don't want us to hear? I think so, and I think it's getting even more, I think it's getting more pronounced. Someone sent me the statement from the Davos meeting that's taken place, the World Economic Forum. And that is all the main document is totally about how to control discourse, how to block it. They're frightened that there's going to be half the planet is going to elections one way or another during this coming year. All Europe is going to elections for the European Parliament. And they're terrified. And so the main point, it was mentioned time and time again, how to stop the discourse around.

So, yes, it's getting worse, not getting any better. Is the Biden foreign policy, are Joe Biden's instincts on foreign policy hopelessly outdated, put into his brain in an era when the world was so different than it is today? They're certainly outdated. They come from a different era. The Obama era, when there was still the idea of a two-state solution in Israel, which he sabotaged. Biden deliberately undercut Secretary Clinton when she told Netanyahu at the time, you really, you have to stop the settlements.

You have to stop them now. And if you don't do it within 24 hours, it's going to affect our bilateral relations in a traumatic way. And a rather stunned Netanyahu got in touch with Biden, who said, don't worry, this is just hotheadedness in Washington. Ignore it. I'll take care of it when I get back. And that was really the first and only effort by a U.S. president, really, to say, to put discipline, if you like, to exert an attempt to control what was happening in Israel. And since then, I mean, only in December, Biden was saying, you know, my one objective, my one objective is really to protect Israel. That's all. Nothing more. Finish. Just to protect it. I apologize for going back and forth, but we found a nice clip of the Irish solicitor making the argument, which impressed you so, in behalf of South Africa.

It's about a minute 30 or so. We're going to run it right now. Madam President, members of the court, there is an urgent need for provisional measures to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the irreparable prejudice caused by Israel's violations of the Genocide Convention. The United Nations Secretary General and its chiefs describe the situation in Gaza variously as a crisis of humanity, a llyfn blwch, sefyllfa o ddyfniad ac anhygyrch o ddifrif, lle mae cymaint o'r cyflenwi yn cael ei dynnu ac yn cael ei ddynnu,

a ddim yn cael mynediad at yr hyn sy'n bwysig i'w byw ar y sgail mawr. access to the essentials for survival on a massive scale. As the United Nations Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs stated last Friday, and I quote, Gaza has become a place of death and despair. You know, it's about 30 or 40 minutes long. Those are the opening comments just to refresh your memory and to give our viewers a taste for what you observed and by which you were so impressed. Well, I was. It was both, and I just want to emphasize,

I mean, she made the case on legal terms. That's what was really important. She argued the legal case, and it wasn't just an emotional case. So she went through the points about what constitutes the case of genocide and argued on the legal points, and that was very clear. And I think it seems that others didn't follow through. The defense was These are emotional arguments, not legal ones. Our colleague, Professor Mearsheimer, who watched the full presentation of the South Africans and the full presentation of the Israeli defense team, came to the conclusion that the Israeli defense team didn't, quote, even land a blow or make a dent in the argument put forth by the South African team.

Well, we'll see where it goes. They're going to make some sort of a ruling rather soon. I'd just like to make the point that actually this has suddenly acquired a much wider context and one which we're going to have to take account of. Because for the global south, it wasn't just Israel that was being subjected to this court. It was the West and it was colonialism and what has happened in colonialism.

And so we've had a lot of reaction from even the Yemenis who remind the, how the British did ethnic cleansing in Yemen and others are coming up with all these, the Namibians against Germany and saying, well, there was also genocide in Namibia. And so it's becoming a really, I think, in a way, a sort of a pivot about this next era. It's suddenly brought, suddenly the global south has sort of become, you know, back to the anti-colonial discourse. And this has fed it, even though it was nothing

about anywhere else other than what was happening in Gaza. It has brought these sentiments to the fore. We're going to play a little bit now of the opening statement by Tal Becker, who's the chief legal advisor for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, maybe about a minute and a half. The state of Israel is singularly aware of why the Genocide Convention, which has been invoked in these proceedings, was adopted. Seared in our collective memory is the systematic murder of six million Jews as part of a premeditated and heinous program for their total annihilation. Given the Jewish people's history and its foundational texts, it is not surprising

that Israel was among the first states to ratify the Genocide Convention without reservation and to incorporate its provisions in its domestic legislation. Well, you see where he was going, trying to make an argument from history. We'll see. We'll see how this ends up. But getting back to Joe Biden, you were recounting an incident in which he was in Israel and Mrs. Clinton was in D.C. She called up Netanyahu and said, stop the settlements in the West Bank or it'll have a profound and perhaps catastrophic effect

on the nature of our bilateral relationship. He turns to Joe and Joe says, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it when I get home. And when he got home, he did take care of it. And Mrs. Clinton was thrown under the bus by President Obama after he heard from Joe. I basically have that right. You've thrown under the bus by President Obama after he heard from Joe. I basically have that right? You've got it exactly right.

That's what's happened. And that's, I mean, there were other occasions when he intervened to stop a two-state solution being put on the agenda. This is the same Joe. I'm switching gears a little bit now to Putin, but I'm focusing on the president's mentality, who has such anger and bile and hatred toward Putin. What is the genesis of that? Oh, well, I think it goes back to the fact that, well, I think, I mean, put very basically, you know, I think he finds it difficult that Putin is such a, you know, the smartest man in the room. And that is something that he doesn't like.

And, of course, the other thing was this deep feeling. It was expressed, I think, I may have got this wrong, but Kagan or someone early, one of the neoconservatives who said, you know, we've been suckered by Putin. He's tricked us because we thought he was going to be a sober Yeltsin. And it turns out he's something quite different. We've just been suckered by him. And there was a great deal of anger expressed by him too about that. Has the American foreign policy establishment been suckered by Netanyahu? Has it been drawn into what you have referred to as Battleship Gaza? I'm not sure how widely that is true, but yes, they have. I mean, Netanyahu is adept at managing Westerners and Western politicians. You know, he knows a lot of the Congress by their names and has been dealing with them.

He speaks the right language. He's been extraordinarily good at twisting and managing European and American politicians. And I think that he is doing that now, gradually pulling the United States where it doesn't want to go into a wider war, a war that could lead to devastating consequences as it widens. And it is widening. It's widened in Yemen over the last few days, will continue to widen in Lebanon, and in Iraq, where there were attacks and where the Iraqis fired cruise missiles

into Haifa and attacked the refinery in Haifa, setting it on fire. So, I mean, it is getting wider. And one of the things that happened, which is very important over this weekend, when Secretary Blinken was having the discussions in Israel, was he was told very clearly, both by the President and by Gantz, the Minister in the Cabinet, that Israel stands by their decisions not to allow the threats to continue from Gaza and Lebanon. So there it is.

It was said outright, you know, this is on the agenda. This is what's going to happen. And we are going to do it. Can Israel legally attack Lebanon? They're both members of the United Nations. I mean, for that matter, can the United States legally attack Yemen, both members of the United Nations? No, is the simple answer to that. No, they're not, because this would be an invasion, an illegal invasion, contrary to international law. And certainly, if civilians were attacked and killed, then it would be a war crime as well. But this is, he intends to push, first of all, they try by diplomatic means.

But over this weekend, the U.S. envoy, Hochstein, made it clear that he's not going to succeed in getting a diplomatic solution, i.e. voluntary disarmament by Hezbollah. I don't think anyone thought he would. But anyway, he failed to do that. And so Israel has now put, through the president and through the minister Gantz, Biden and the White House on notice that he is going to push and settle and bring calm to southern Lebanon, south of the Litani, so that all the residents, the 200-odd thousand residents who are now living in hotels near the Dead Sea, will be able to return to their homes in the north

of Israel. That's what Golant, the defenseman, has promised them, that they can go home. And they're saying, we won't go home, not with Hezbollah, just over the fence on the other side. It could be just like 7th of October, again happening, except it would be from the north, and it would be Hezbollah and not Hamas. We're not going back. So they are committed to moving Hezbollah away from the border, over the Litani. In fact, it won't make much difference. Not a great deal. Because, I mean, Hezbollah has made long-range missiles,

not just short-range missiles. They're using short-range missiles at the moment to attack into a limited area in the north of Israel. But if they want to, they can switch and start to use. They have 150,000 stock of missiles, according to U.S. estimates, and they've certainly got long range. In fact, they have missiles that can cover the whole of Israel. Does.

In their armament. Is it part of Amos Hochstein's charge to talk Hezbollah into disarming? I mean, that would be impossible. Well, he can't. Yeah. Mr. Hochstein is the principal negotiator for the United States. He was born in Israel. He fought for the IDF. He has joined Israeli-American citizenship. Whether he's the appropriate person for this or not, I don't know. Joe Biden made that choice or Tony Blinken or somebody in the hierarchy, but it would be inconceivable that he could talk them

into laying down their arms. Inconceivable. And inconceivable that they wouldn't move from southern Lebanon. You know, they are part of the fabric of life there. They've been there for 500 years. They're not about to leave. It was from families from the south that actually staffed and made the Safavi regime in Iran in the 1700s. They took the families from there to do the legal process, the universities, and to start the state at that time. They're not about to leave that area and go north. And anyway, Hochstein didn't talk to Hezbollah. He only talked to the Lebanese Christian authorities, who are provisional anyway, because there's no legal government at the moment in Lebanon. So they don't have authority in any case,

and they're not going to move Hezbollah out of the south. Let's look at the other side of Israel. There's this strip of land along the Israeli, well, it's Gaza, Israel, and Egypt called the Philadelphia Corridor. I don't know if you know the origin of that name. I don't. And maybe it's a funny or fascinating story. Maybe it's benign. But whatever it is, the Israelis want to put troops in Egypt down there. Now, how could Egypt possibly tolerate the IDF on its own ground? Well, because they're accustomed to tolerating the provisions, the demands of Israel. They've been doing this for a long time. And they usually say yes to Israel. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is what happens. And because I think what it reflects is in the cabinet,

there was a raging row in these last days, I mean, in the Israeli cabinet. And some of the cabinet members are furious that 80 trucks or whatever it was, 40 or 80 trucks should have crossed Rafah with humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. Because it says this is reducing our leverage on Hamas to release hostages. They need to be short of food and they need to be short of all the provisions of life so that under this pressure, they have no choice but to give up our hostages. So this is what it's all about,

is to sort of, because they feel that too many humanitarian, too much food, too much water, and for goodness sake, there's about a quarter of the population there who are starving. I mean, literally haven't eaten in three days in parts of Gaza I mean this is the U.N saying this very explicitly so I mean it's not as if they're sort of having too much food or or provisions coming in but the pressure they want more leverage over the Palestinians there in order to make them so desperate that they hand over the hostages. What will happen if the United States accepts the advice of the neocons, or say Senator Lindsey Graham, and attacks Iran?

Well, first of all, I really don't think that the United States, I think this is a bit of bluff. I mean, the United States, you know, makes these comments and we had, you know, the British defense minister telling them, this is a message to Iran when they attacked Yemen. They said, you know, we want you to hold back your thugs on the ground in Yemen. I mean, they're not actually Iranian proxies. They're very independent people. But anyway, yes, the answer is, and Ehud Barak, who was prime minister a little while ago in Israel, wrote a piece for the Time magazine in America. And he said, you know, it's too late. We can't really do anything about Iran.

A few years ago, maybe, but all of the nuclear facilities are deep underground where we cannot reach them. We cannot stop Iran in any case. And they can't stop them for another reason. Because Iran developed what I call the red pill defense. They have buried these long-range missiles capable of striking all of Israel, all around their country. And it's a big country, and it's got hills, and it's got all sorts of places where they can bury it in underground silos. These are all divided up, and they're all run, if you like,

by a team that has instructions that if the command is destroyed, if our communications are destroyed, if there's no more Tehran, you continue with your orders, and there's a dead hand, if you like, process by which they will launch those missiles for two to three years after the conclusion of any hostilities with the United States, and there would be no more Israel. This is the red pill. Yes, America can do damage to Iran by aerial bombing, but at the end of it, Israel would be no safer because it would have been destroyed by these missiles over a period of two years that will pop up out of the ground

from their silos and attack the key targets that are already inserted into their system. They've been doing this for 20 years, by the way, planning this for 20 years. If former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who's also a former general in the IDF, understands this, does Benjamin Netanyahu understand this? Does Joe Biden, do Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan understand this? They must do. They must understand it.

That's why it's a bluff. They must understand it. That's why it's a bluff. They must understand that. And therefore, although Lindsey Graham says bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, he knows that at the end of the day, this will not help America at all because its ally will be the one that will perish in the process, apart from the fact that it won't be an easy, I mean, the fact that, you know, that Americans used to be able to think about overflying Iran and bombing it. I'm not sure that that's the case now. Iran has developed very sophisticated air defense systems,

helped by the Russians. They have some Russian systems, too. It wouldn't be a cakewalk, even if you put aside the sort of underground missiles that are spread around the country. Last topic. Over the weekend, the United States claims that it bombed some installations of the Houthis in Yemen, not mainstream media, but the type of media that we rely on, claims that the damage that was done is absolutely minimal, whether minimal or substantial.

Is the United States in a position, is it ready to engage in a naval war in the Red Sea? No, not at all. I mean, first of all, I mean, you know, recall, I mean, the Ansar love, which the Houthis, the Rupat, have been at war with for 10 years with Saudi Arabia, with America providing the targeting for it. And they've got used, all their missiles and all their weapon systems are buried, like those in Iran. They're deeply buried. They've been taught by someone. They are deeply buried. And they move them around, always moving around all of the time.

This is why the Saudis were unable to do anything in 10 years even with american help and support and what's going on in the red sea is a joke because the houthis manufacture these cheap drones that they fire at these ships they cost about two thousand dollars each and some of these ships, naval ships, I think the French ship recently, but the American ships are firing their air defenses to protect themselves against these little drones, and they're costing a million dollars apiece.

So in one, a few cheap drones fired at these naval vessels will be costing $ or 25 million dollars. And then they have to go and leave the Red Sea, go home in order to recharge because they can't recharge their missiles at sea. So, I mean, they won't be able to sustain this. It's not sustainable. It's just, I mean, one wonders. I know that the defense secretary is in hospital. I don't know if he still is, but I mean, I don't know who makes these decisions in the United States, but anyone will tell you that this is, you know, the Houthis have no problem. I mean, they're actually delighted that they've been made America's number one enemy. They revel in it.

I have to say they, you know, they're a war, you know, warlike people, fiercely independent tribesmen. Alistair, thank you very much for your time today and for your insight. Much appreciated as always. We'll see you next week, my dear friend. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hope it warms up for you. Yes, thank you. Thank you. The reference to it warming up is it's very, very cold here in

the Northeast. It's about 14, plus 14 Fahrenheit. Coming up later today, Professor John Mearsheimer and the man, the myth, the legend, my former Fox colleague Bill O'Reilly. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.