Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Willful Western Blindness Over Israel

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Alastair Crooke: Willful Western Blindness Over IsraelSee 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, August 5th, 2024. Alistair Crook will be here with us in just a moment on how blind, how willfully blind is the West over Israel. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. If you have $100 in the bank, it still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less. Inflation has reduced all of your savings, all of your buying power, and mine, by 24%. And gold is largely immune from that. If you want to learn how gold will soon

hit $3,200 an ounce, call Lear Capital. 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Get your free gold report. Same experts who predicted the 23% rise that I've enjoyed have predicted this $3,200 an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620. Learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Alistair, welcome here, my dear friend, and good day to you.

And thank you, of course, for your time. The domestic events in Israel lately have been stomach-churning. The public reports of horrific torture of Palestinian prisoners by IDF soldiers, their arrest and interrogation, a mob breaking into jails to release them, the police turning their backs to the mob as it enters, the Knesset talking about giving them immunity, the Knesset debating whether or not the jailers should be able to put a bullet in the heads of Palestinian prisoners, uncharged, unprosecuted, unconvicted, just to supposedly provide more bed space. Is Israel still a liberal democracy or is it a dogmatic authoritarian state? There are two Israels. There are two completely distinct Israels at this point. And you're right to highlight those events because they're really quite significant.

Because in a certain way, it was a precursor to what might come if chaos prevails in the context of a sort of conflict or war with Iran and with the other, if you like, members of the resistance axis. Because what we saw were the people that came down. These were, if you like, members of the Jewish underground. There are some nearly 800,000 settlers, and they follow a particular rabbi called Dov Lior. And he is very radical. He was, if you like, a patron of the man who assassinated 29, Baruch Goldstein, who assassinated 29 Palestinians in the cave of the Patriarch many years ago. But he is the one, and he is not just alone. Netanyahu has called him our guide.

He is our guide. This is the man who has a real input into the thinking of the Israeli government. Hardly no one outside of Israel probably has heard of him. He has 105 other rabbis of the same vein who support him, settler rabbis. These are the ones who've been authorizing, if you like, the young IDF to attack schools, to attack hospitals. And they say it's okay. So in a sense, what we saw there was, if you like, a foretaste of Israel going back to something most had thought it had left behind in 1948, into militia. The militia, it was a militia, it was vigilante militia from the settlements who came down and stormed those two IDF bases. And the police could do nothing to stop them. And then the Knesset justified it all. So we may see something of this taking place, akin to a war,

the members of the state of Judea descending in down in order to fight the state of Israel. That's what it signaled. So really a key event hardly noticed in much of the media, but really important, I think. Is there a remnant of the liberal democracy Israel once claimed to have been? Oh, yes. That certainly exists, and many of them are in the IDF. of the liberal democracy Israel once claimed to have been? Oh yes, that certainly exists. And many of them are in the IDF, in senior commanders. I mean, I mentioned, I think in what I wrote about Bugi Ayalon, who was chief of staff

and then defense minister. I mean, he's one of them who looks on, as he puts it, my hair stands on end when I hear what Smotrich and Ben-Gavir want. They want a big war. And he says, you know, they're trying to, it's all supremacist. This is Boogie Ayalon saying this. I included a video of him saying it. And he said, you know, they want this big war and they want to hurry it on because that's the way the Messiah comes more quickly to it. And that in a war that the people become

more emboldened. I mean, the Israeli people, the Jewish people become more boldened and more formed by the prospect of conflict. So yes, there is a sector, but it's not in the government. It is outside of the government, and at the moment, the government which has, if you like, Ben-Gavir and Smotrich is, for the moment, seemingly secure, and Netanyahu's popularity ratings are going up after his visit to Washington. How prepared or how unprepared is Israel for a full-blown war against Hezbollah and its patrons? The Wall Street Journal has a long piece this morning arguing, the Wall Street Journal of all places, but is arguing that the IDF is exhausted, that the volunteer, or well, they're drafted, but I mean, the non-professional army wants to go home.

They are not willing and are not able to take on Hezbollah. That's the Wall Street Journal's piece this morning. Well, that's perfectly true. And that's right. But at the same time, as I say, you know, actually what Netanyahu has done is maneuver willingly or unwillingly the United States into a prospective war against not only Hezbollah, but against Iran. And, you know, it was quite obviously, I mean, first of all, Netanyahu made it clear what his intent was. We have to have a war against this axis of evil that is led by Iran and consists of Hezbollah and the Houthis and the Iraqi resistance. And we have to prevail.

This is civilization against the barbarians. And the United States has to stand with it. He couldn't have made it plainer. You remember before he went, we talked about it. And I said, this is what I was expecting. And I'm sure that was what certain people in the United States were expecting. Then it came up and it produced this trumped-up pretext for an attack in Beirut on a senior Hezbollah figure, Shukr, who was very senior, quite elderly now, not a sort of fighting man now, not involved in the barracks, the Marine barracks

in 83. I mean, was not involved in that. But it was a whole pretext. Anyone who knows the Middle East knows that Majdal Shams, which was the pretext for the sort of war starting, was a false pretext. The children that were unfortunately killed and injured in this debris of some missile that landed there are Syrians, Syrian citizens,

except for one or two. They're all Syrians. They live in Syrian-occupied land. They regard themselves as being Syrians, first of all. They were not Jews. They were not Israelis. They were Syrians and Syrians who support President Assad and the resistance. I mean, it's ridiculous to think that Hezbollah was going to attack the children of Syria on Syrian land. They know that. Of course they know that. And people, I mean, the mainstream doesn't know it,

but the people who know, know that very well that it was unlikely. So it was unexpected in the sense, because we had this Amos Hochstein, who is the envoy of Biden, who kept coming to Lebanon and saying, look, look, I know, you know, for this attack on these children and so on, there's got to be some sort of return reprisal by the Israel. But look, it's not going to be serious. It's not going to be in Beirut. It's not going to be in the southern suburbs and it's not going to be in the southern suburbs, and it's not going to be near the airport. So, you know, calm down, it's all right, we're talking about token exchange of

conflict, but not intended to start a war. And then what happens? And then we discover, just before what happened to Ismail Khaniyar, that it was precisely in Beirut, precisely in a civilian area, precisely destroying a high-rise block of apartments, and very clearly intended to be provocative, killing this man, Fuat Shafqour, a very senior Hezbollah member. And that changed the whole equation from the Hezbollah point of view, because until now, the war has all been about Gaza or Hezbollah. It's been about Gaza and Hezbollah doing what the Palestinians

asked them to do in support. But this changed the equation. This complete, if you like, lie that was put to the Lebanese authorities, because Hezbollah doesn't talk directly with Amos Hochstein, put to them and told them, not in Beirut, not in a civilian area, not near the airport, and they broke that. And now there is a personal account between Hezbollah and Israel, quite separate to what happened. So we have another different war, if you like. There's a war with Hezbollah, with Hamas in Gaza. And now this

is separate because it's now on different terms. It's not about Gaza any longer. This is about what happened to Shukr and the lies that the Lebanese authorities were told. Then, just shortly after, we discover that Ismail Haniyeh, who is the negotiator for the hostage deal, who was the prime, the head of the political committee, Ismail Tania, who is the negotiator for the hostage deal, who was the prime, the head of the political committee. He wasn't a military person. As you know, I've told you, I knew him. He was assassinated in a revolutionary guard's house.

Now, I happen to know a person who was in that house when he was assassinated. When I used to go to Tehran, I would meet him. He's a friend from Hamas. And he was on the fourth floor, I think, and Haniyeh was on the second or the other way around. So they were very close together. And he said, you know, they came back, and he came back from the inauguration about 11.30 at night. And then they sat around talking about what had happened in Beirut and discussing that. And then Haniya went up to his room about 1.30. And about 3.30, there was this huge thing that shook the building. He said he thought he was in an earthquake,

but it was clearly he went dashed down and found that his leader was dead, as he put it, and his bodyguard was dead, and that the whole of the wall, outside wall, was missing and the roof was all falling down. And he said, it's absolutely clear it came from the outside. There was a penetration through the wall of some projectile of some sort. So the sense, I mean, for Iran of humiliation, of honor, I mean,

this was their guest staying in a formal guest house, like, you know, the guest house the White House has, you know, like the one. The Blair House, right, right. The Blair House, putting a missile into the Blair House and assassinating a guest like that. The New York Times bought the Mossad version of events, whereby they claimed they planted a bomb two months ago, and they knew exactly what room he was going to be in. Your eyew lodged there as well with with her near so uh there's no doubt about that he was um and i know him i mean you know when he's very reliable a description but the point here here again was just as there was a sort of, if you like, this misleading. You recall on the 13th of April, Iran was persuaded by the West

to moderate its rocket launches towards Israel in response to another assassination, this time in Damascus in Syria in the consulate there of a senior general. And so they actually put up, I mean, it was really just a ploy. They put up mostly slow-moving drones and with nine missiles in it, which did land and get through. And it was intended to be a message, not an attack. But of course, in the Western narrative and in the Israeli narrative,

oh, Iran, you know, instead of getting any kudos for having, if you like, tempered that response and being a responsible state, was that, oh, you know, they sent over these pathetic drones and things and we shot them all down. It was a great success for Israel and the United States. So this time they're not as ready to be persuaded by the West or by Arab states and be told, you know, no, don't do it. No, just do a token.

Just do a token response like last time, like the 13th of April. No, this time it's clear to us from what's happened in Shukr, the assassination in Beirut, and now the deliberate assassination of the lead negotiator by Israel and the place, Tehran, in our guest house and as part of the inauguration of a new president, the most important ceremony. This means the West wants war with us. This isn't now a question of just sort of moderating it and trying to make it easier. They want war. Anyway, that's how it's seen in the rest of the world, in all of the assistant

pro. That's how Beirut see it. And so Iran has decided that there will be a response, which will be from all the four, if you like, resistance actors in this. So Hezbollah, Houthis, and the Iraqis, and Iran as well. And so this is what has been being prepared. And missiles are being put into being taken out of storage and being pre-positioned around the region. And there's been quite a lot of evidence. You can't see everything, but there's been quite a lot of evidence of this apparent. So, I mean, but just to finish, I mean, you know, so when they look at it, I mean, what Netanyahu said,

I mean, he's got America because America now says it will do what it takes to stop the Iranian response. It will protect Israel. Isn't this what Netanyahu, if you like, precisely asked for and was promised? Yes. How unrealistic is his argument that Iran is part of an axis of evil that threatens the United States? Iran poses no threat to the United States. Of course it doesn't.

I mean, Iran is a great power in the region. Don't forget it is a huge population and a huge land, one of the most highly educated people. And they've always had good relations with the West until at a certain point Israel turned them into this mythical enemy. And they did it for purely domestic Israeli interest, because at that time Rabin wanted to change away from what was the peace of the peripheries to peace of the near abroad with the Arab states adjacent to Israel. But to do that, he had to invent a new

enemy. Before that, they were cooperating. Israel was cooperating closely with Iran for many years, even during the Iran-Iraq war. So it was a deliberate decision by, if you like, Israel that needed an enemy to persuade Congress to go on supporting it and see poor little Israel, you know, fighting against everyone. We need to support it. We need to give it the weapons and the money that it needs. So it was a complete switch around that was done by Rabin, who, as you know, later was assassinated. And that assassination was, if you like, approved precisely by that rabbi that I mentioned to you, Dov Lior. He approved it afterwards and gave this sort of judicial rendering

that this was not a murder because it was an attempted treachery and therefore it was legal in Jewish law. So this is the complex thing that we're dealing with. How does the rest of the West feel about this? How does the EU feel about this? How does NATO feel about this? Is it likely that if war comes and the United States actively engages to defend Israel that the United States will be alone? No, I mean a lot. Unfortunately, I have to say that. I mean, you know, the European Union has no backbone, no spine to it at all. It's been accustomed in these last four years to doing exactly what the White House tells it to do. So many of them will do it. And you've seen Italy and others have been, as head of the G7, pleading with Iran,

oh, look, you know, you mustn't do anything. You've got to restrain yourself. They never turn around and say to Israel, you ought to restrain yourself. You know, it's not Iran that provoked this. You did this double assassination precisely into provoking a response from Iran. So you ought to be sorting it out, not asking all the rest of the West and America to come and assist us and help you with what you did.

You made your bed. You should lie in it. Anyway, it looks as if this is going to come. I imagine that Iran is still going to try and control the, if you like, the escalatory ladder as best it can. But my view is that once we go down, once the missiles start to fly, and, you know, I think that you're going to see them, what is going to be quite different.

First of all, there's going to be no advance warning. Secondly, you know, they're not going to be slow old drones. They're going to be high performance, smart missiles. And they're going to come from Iran. They're going to come from Hezbollah, and they are going to come from the Houthis, and they are going to come from Iraq. I believe missiles have been moved, have been pre-positioned. This is why we've been in a sort of period of some delay while these missiles have been taken out of deep storage by Iran. Some of them are being put quite close to Israel, sort of 12 minutes, you know, flight time from Israel.

So, I mean, we're talking about quite different, it's not going to have three and a half hours to get ready for the next one. And also, Iran is using is Russia has lent Iran its most advanced EW electronic warfare system with a range of 5000 kilometers, believe it or not. So, I mean, we'll see what happens. As we speak, I don't know his first name, last name Shoigu, the former defense minister of Russia, now the head of the, there he is, Sergei Shoigu, now the head of the national, their equivalent, the Russian equivalent of the National Security Council, is in Tehran.

This has to be causing the Israelis nightmares, doesn't it? Yes. I mean, there's been a continuous flow of transport planes from Russia to Tehran in these last few days, including bringing that electronic warfare system. So yes, it will be causing heartburn, not just to Israel, but to the famed NATO machine that this should be happening. Already, it started that the GPS is not functioning properly in Israel anymore.

So that thing has started. I don't know, of course I don't know what he's going to say. He's going to see the president, he's going to see the head of the National Security Council, and I don't know what he's going to say. I mean there are two alternatives. One is that he might be coming to sign, finally actually sign the agreement, the security agreement with Iran, which was held up because of the assassination of the last president, not the assassination of the helicopter accident of Pesachian, only just happened on the day that Haniyeh was assassinated. And it needs a signature.

That's all. It's all agreed. It could be that, or alternatively, he may come and bring some intelligence that he is not prepared to put in any form over the airwaves, but to pass it on in person. What is the nature of the electronic equipment that Russia is lending to Iran? What does it do? It interferes with the electronic systems of the missiles so that they misperform or they crash or they blow up. It scrambles the electronics of the missiles. That's what it really does. The Russians are very advanced in this.

It would scramble the electronics of Israeli missiles. And Western missiles and American missiles. I see. Not so. I remember a few years ago, the Americans had a destroyer in the Black Sea and the Russians were complaining about it and they flew an aircraft across it and the whole ship went blank, went completely black. They couldn't even actually steer it at that point. That was some years ago and a very close encounter, but the Russians have very good. That's why the Ukrainians are

struggling, because they do have very good electronic warfare systems. And they've delivered these latest ones, which are with, it has a mast that is about 36 meters high, very high. Several of them. And has a range, it said, of 5,000 meters, which will certainly affect American and NATO. Of course, because there are British aircraft and Cyprus who will be expecting to be involved in any exercise, as well as Jordanians who've always, as usual,

volunteered their assistance to NATO. So that sort of thing has been, but we don't know what. There's been a succession of military transports. You can see them being tracked. They're coming from a commercial firm that does basically munitions transport. In your recent piece, after summarizing the horrors of Israeli domestic life, you used a very strong and powerful phrase to describe Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu in 2024 as Mein Kampf in reverse. That was not actually my words. They came from the former Chief of Defense Staff,

Bugi Ayalon, Moshe Ayalon is the correct full name, General Moshe Ayalon, the Defense Minister, former Defense Minister and current politician. And this is what he said is the ideology that underpins the sort of hundred or more, if you like, rabbis that work together with Dov Leo, and that he said it just made his hair stand on end when he read it, because he said, you know, he was born from a family of holocaust survivors and and this was terrible to read the sort of supremacist language um that is currently um at least not all of israelis many of them completely rejected but it does have its base in the settler movement, which is, if you like, a prototype army in waiting. I mean, they are vigilantes, all armed and all ready.

And if someone says the word, they will come down from the state of Judea, as they put it, to fight the state of Israel. So, I mean, we are in strange times, and this is why I keep saying, you know, the West doesn't sometimes, I think, appreciate where it is, or perhaps they do, and they're just making use of it because that is what they wanted to come out of Bibi's address. Don't forget that as Bibi was, that's Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu was in Washington giving his address, the head of CIA and the head of Mossad were together meeting in Rome.

So Bill Burns and Bonnier were together in Rome. So Bill Burns and Banerjee were together in Rome for discussions as Netanyahu was giving his address to it. Now I don't know what was discussed there. Are you aware of reports over the weekend of 5,000 US Marines on their way to Israel? I am, but I don't take that, give it much significance because they are essentially, these are for, if you like, evacuation. These are not armed forces used in conflict. These are to provide protection if they're doing, you know, mass evacuations of

civilians from an area. So these, I think, are mostly about that. I don't think they're particularly sort of significant in this, they're readying. But again, you know, it's telling. I mean, you know, you can't just supply these ships to order. I mean, they must have been given their orders and prepared and read it sometime before Netanyahu gave his speech. All of these positions in place and the head of CENTCOM is now sitting in the Middle East trying to bring together, if you like, an alliance of Arab air forces

that will help the Americans to shoot down Iranian missiles again. So, you know, the things have come together in a, shall we say, remarkably surprisingly quick time span after the, because it wasn't so long ago. When was it that he actually gave his talk? I think it was 20, 24th of July. And we're just at the beginning of August. And all these ships are suddenly there. Which is stronger, the Iranian offense or the Israeli defense? Is that, as you know, I mean, I never say things that I can't answer to. This is something...

That's why you have such international credibility. I can't answer that. This will be what we will see in the next period. As you know, both sides claim to have very advanced weapons systems, so we will see as it plays out in the next few days. I do think it will be slightly different because I think Tel Aviv this time, because of what they did hitting the capital in Beirut hitting the capital in iran i think tel aviv not the people but military targets i mean after all the ministry of defense the kiriya is in tel aviv for example

i'm not suggesting that that will be hit but i'm saying there are military targets in tel aviv and i think we will probably see um attacks also Tel Aviv. And that's going to, I think, rattle the population, the civilian population. I'm reading a comment from one of our viewers, and it says, the viewer says, Alistair Crook is the gold standard. So, Mr. Professor, gold standard. Rather a disheveled constant. Thank you, Alistair. It's wonderful to start our Mondays.

It's early in the morning here on the east coast of the United States with you. We are deeply grateful for all of your time and insight and look forward to seeing you again next Monday, same time, same place. Thank you very much. Thank you. All the best. Thank you for now. Of course. Coming up later today.

Oh, I forgot to look who we have later today, but we do have a full day for you. At 10 o'clock, Ray McGovern. At 11 o'clock, Larry Johnson. At 2 o'clock this afternoon, Anya Parampil. And at 4 o'clock this afternoon, Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.