Judging Freedom - AMB Chas Freeman: 75 years of Israeli Wars

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

AMB Chas Freeman: 75 years of Israeli WarsSee 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 Tuesday, July 9th, 2024. Ambassador Charles Freeman joins us now. Ambassador, always a pleasure. My dear friend, I'm so happy to welcome you as one of our regular guests. Your insight is extraordinary, and your experience in the State Department and the Defense Department are invaluable to us. So thank you very much for your time and for your willingness to answer my questions.

Does Israel want... Thank you. Does Israel want a broader war? I think Mr. Netanyahu would like that because that would enable him to hold onto power more. But I know that he's at odds with his own military, who recognize that Israel is overstretched militarily. And they also recognize, of course, that they're entirely dependent on us, the United States, to be able to continue their depredations in Gaza. But Mr. Netanyahu on several occasions and other members of his cabinet,

the extremists, have been advocating a war on Lebanon, on Hezbollah, which responds to very real grievances by Israelis in the north of Israel, who have been driven out of their homes by the skirmishing along that border. Yes. Okay. Maybe he can come right back to us. There you go. We lost you for a minute. Oh, dear. All right. Now you're back. Hello. Yes, you're back, Ambassador. Go ahead, please. We've frozen. All right. I think we're probably. I don't know what's wrong here. Okay. I think we're going to start this over again. So those of you that are watching, Chris, if I have this right, we'll stay on the same link. Ambassador,

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Or maybe it's the CIA. Who knows? I hope not. I was asking you if Israel wants a broader war. You were talking about the public adversity between Prime Minister Netanyahu and his own military. You were opining that he is drawn to the hard right by the coalition he needs to stay in office and by a personal will to stay in office in order to avoid other unpleasant consequences that might be visited upon him when he leaves. Yes, that's correct. And I think if there is a war with Lebanon, this time two things will happen. First of all, Hezbollah is very well prepared with something over 100,000 missiles in its possession, which can blanket

all of Israel and bring to Israelis all over the country the experience that those along the border with Gaza had on October 7th and that those in the north of the country have experienced recently. But more to the point, the Iranian government, newly elected president included, have said that if there is a war with Hezbollah, which is their client, not directed by them as a mind of its own, but it is their client, that they will be full bore in such a war. So this is, I think, something that the Israeli military absolutely do not want. And it would be foolish for Israel to do what the extremists in the cabinet are advocating. When Prime Minister Netanyahu comes to the United States in two weeks,

two weeks from tomorrow, and is greeted as a heroic figure on the floor of the House of Representatives in front of a joint session of Congress, notwithstanding the view of many that he runs a criminal apartheid government that engages in genocide, genocidal behavior out of the mouths of his own officials. What do you think his goal will be? Does he want to scare the American Congress into declaring war on Ukraine? Will it be that brazen? Not Ukraine, excuse me, Iran, will it be that brazen? No, I think he's waiting for the reelection of President Trump, whom he has reason to believe he can control. Of course, President Biden is entirely beholden to the Israel lobby and has put up with the most amazing insults and humiliations

from Mr. Netanyahu. I think this is actually humiliating to our country. And the scene in the Congress, the last time Netanyahu came to defy a president and to oppose his policies was absolutely disgusting. There's multiple kowtows to this man who is a very devious, very effective politician who has a perfect record of ignoring American interests and proceeding as he wishes, ignoring American requests for restraint and ignoring American requests on other subjects. So why he should be honored in this manner is puzzling, unless you factor in the immense venality of the U.S. Congress,

which is the slave of special interests that give it campaign money. Right. The Republicans in the House have already stated that one of their goals when he's here is to give him more than, this is ridiculous But their goal is to do that again, notwithstanding what he stands for, what he represents, and quite frankly, the control he has over them through the donor class that funds many of their campaigns. It makes one wonder, Professor Freeman, if we even have a representative democracy in America other than one that represents the people that pay for the campaigns. Well, Benjamin Franklin, of course, posed that question. After the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, I'm sorry to say that it's pretty clear that we are now not keeping the republic the Founding Fathers gave us. We have a dysfunctional government, a Supreme Court, which is partisan and supportive of an imperial presidency, a Congress which can't even fund the government,

which is its basic responsibility, and a president of whom the less said the better. Is it true that as we speak, Hamas has never been stronger. Hezbollah is humiliating the IDF in the north. The IDF is exhausted, and the West Bank is smoldering. I think all of those are true in the sense that Hamas, as the Israeli military recognizes and has said on repeated occasions, contradicting Prime Minister Netanyahu, Hamas is an idea. It is a symbol of and a spear for Palestinian self-determination. And the horrors that the Israeli genocidal activity in Gaza has committed,

plus the pogroms on the West Bank, where there have been over a thousand incidents since October 7th, have provided the Palestinian people with only one alternative, which is to support the resistance, and Hamas is the resistance. But politically, they have never been stronger. Their image in the Arab world and Muslim world in particular has soared to new heights. And of course, as you said, the Israeli military, which is largely reserve military intended to fight relatively short wars, has been engaged in a war of attrition.

It's taken huge losses. Its reputation, which has been described by Mr. Netanyahu and others as the world's most moral army has been replaced by an image of the world's most criminal army. And many people in Israel have left. I suspect if they get into a war with Hezbollah, that could be the coup de grace for the whole Zionist experiment. This is something Mr. Netanyahu must take personal responsibility for. You spent a number of years in Saudi Arabia as the American ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Have you ever seen a cleavage between the Prime Minister of Israel and his own military, the likes of which we see now? No, this is very unusual. Of course, the prime minister is not the commander-in-chief of the Israeli military as our president is.

But no, I mean, this is really unprecedented. Many people have described Israel as a military with a state rather than a state with a military. Mr. Netanyahu has insisted that it's the latter. But the fact that the military in Israel, which are the idols of Zionism, has turned against the prime minister, has spoken out realistically about the prospects for Israel if the war continues on the same basis, if there is no strategy for dealing with the Palestinian

issue, this is really unprecedented. How badly, well, before I get to that, since we were on last, Ambassador, two profound and significant reports have been released, one by the British medical journal The Lancet, which argues that 186,000 human beings have died in Gaza, 8% of the population, and the other by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which revealed text messages and emails demonstrating conclusively the order given on October 7th to engage in their so-called Hannibal option, a euphemism for murdering their own people before they can be taken as hostage. And Haaretz has concluded that more than half the Israeli deaths on October 7th were caused by the Israeli military. We'll start with the Lancet. Is that number startling to you, 186,000 dead? No, not really, because if you have been watching what the Israelis have been doing, dropping huge bombs all over Gaza, sniping at anything that moves and forcing Palestinians to run hither and yon with their meager personal possessions, starving Palestinians deliberately.

I think the figure that the Palestinian health ministry has been citing reflects individuals whom they have identified. They have identified roughly 40,000 individuals. We have known that there are many, many more buried under the rubble, but they're also, given the chaos in Gaza, many who've not been reported at all as dead. So I think the Lancet's projection of deaths, which is what it is, it's not a account, is plausible. And it shouldn't surprise anyone. If you think about the intensity of the bombing that has gone on now for nine months, you get a result like that. On the Haaretz report, before you respond, Ambassador, here is one of your former colleagues, although I don't think you actually worked with him. He's the State Department's present spokesperson, Matt Miller, who doesn't believe what his eyes tell him.

Cut number 14. I wanted to ask you first if you read or heard about the Haaretz report on Israel employing the Hannibal directive on October 7th. So I did see that report that moved over the weekend. And that's the limit of my knowledge. I was seeing that report from Haaretz. Does that make you change your position or your perspective on what really happened that day that the Israelis may be responsible for killing a majority of the people that died on that day? Boy, it certainly does not, Saeed.

I don't think there's any question that it was Hamas. Just let me finish. I don't think it's any question it's Hamas that is responsible for the overwhelming number of deaths on October 7th. This is what the government suggests should pass for its official explainer of government foreign policy. There have been, I cannot recall a moment when the United States government or the Department of State had less credibility internationally than now. And that is because of what we've just seen, which is blatant equivocation, not to say lying. You know, there is a famous Jesuit who said, the truth I always tell, but not to everyone and not all of it. But in our case, we are telling no truth at all.

And I think we've done huge damage to our credibility internationally with this sort of behavior. On the deaths on October 7th, some brave alternative journalists, including people whom you know and I know, Aaron Matté, Max Blumenthal, early on reported that the Hannibal directive had been invoked. Therefore, for the last nine months, I have been frankly disgusted when I hear that Hamas, the Hamas broke out on October 7th and killed 1,200 Israelis. Actually, the number fluctuated

a bit. The fact is that from the beginning, it was clear that the majority of those killed were not killed by Hamas. Some may have been killed by other Palestinians, civilians, but the majority were killed deliberately by the IDF in order to prevent the sort of hostage bargaining that has dominated the news for the past nine months. Does any other country, to your knowledge, has any other country in the post-World War II era directed its military to slaughter its own civilians, preferring their death to their capture as hostages. I'm not aware of any.

And of course, calling it the Hannibal directive is just a euphemism. It's homicide. It's murder. Actually, it's murder. Nobody's ever going to be prosecuted for it, but it's murder. And then, of course, the United States State Department, as we just saw, mocks it publicly. suffered and how unready do you think it is for a war against Hezbollah, notwithstanding Prime Minister Netanyahu's public boastings? Well, I think the entire course of events over the last nine months, including the exchange of fire with Iran, missile attacks, has brought home an unpleasant truth to realists in Israel, and that is that the IGF does not have the capability to defend Israel against its enemies

unless it is fully backed by the United States and other foreign countries. The majority of the missiles shot down in the Iranian exchange were shot down by us. The Iranians were nonetheless able to get missiles through to selected military targets with great precision. case of Hamas and the fighting with Hamas or with Hezbollah, Israel has come up against the unpleasant truth, which I mentioned earlier, that its army is structured for short wars, not for wars of attrition or protracted combat. There is fatigue, there is dissent, the officer corps, the top brass in the IDF have even broken with their government on these issues. And meanwhile, of course, the hostage issue, which is a major card that Hamas holds, but is also the major distraction from the genocide that Israel is conducting, has gone nowhere. Hamas continues to hold hostages, dead or alive, and very, very few of them have been liberated by the IDF. The only significant release of hostages occurred as a result of negotiations with Hamas, which illustrates a point.

If you want to get the cooperation of an enemy, you have to talk to them. You can't bludgeon them into doing things without talking to them. And, of course, Israel has conducted talks clandestinely through its Mossad and indirectly in Qatar. And at the same time, it has been maligning Qatar to distract attention from its own failure to deal effectively with the issue of the hostages, which is a big political issue in Israel, understandably. Right. Mr. Ambassador, most of the American mainstream media refers to the present horrific events in Gaza as having begun on October 7th, 2023. Didn't it really begin about 75 years ago? At least. You could say that it began 100 years ago

with the Zionist declaration that European Jews should seek the land without people because they had no land for themselves. The statement that this was a land without people was dehumanizing and it was essentially a declaration of a desire for ethnic cleansing in Palestine. And that course of action has been followed ever since. Most effectively initially in, in 1948, when Israel jumped the gun on the United Nations proposed partition and created what the Arabs called the Nakba, the catastrophe of some 700,000 Palestinians being either murdered or driven from their homes. So this is an ongoing thing.

And the settlement activity that has been going on, which has brought some 700,000 Israelis into living in the occupied areas of the West Bank, earlier people in Gaza too, has been accompanied by settler violence, backed by the Israeli army. And it is a slow genocide rather than the decisive one that appears to be the Israeli objective in Gaza at present.

How do you see this ending, Ambassador, in Gaza? At the moment, there is no plan for an end. The Israelis do not want to end it. Mr. Netanyahu keeps saying he's going to continue it until every apostle of every advocate

of Palestinian self-determination is destroyed, killed. That basically means the entire Palestinian people. The world is sitting by while Israel deliberately starves the inhabitants of Gaza, denies them medical care and water. And I don't see an end because our government is entirely complicit in this genocide.

And if Joe Biden is succeeded by Donald Trump, it seems more and more likely with every day, every passing day, there does not appear to be any change in American policy with respect to Gaza. I don't know if Trump's bluster comments about let the Israelis finish what they started, if he means that literally, but I am sure that under his administration, the U.S. would continue its unbridled support. Otherwise, Mrs. Adelson might want her $100 million back. Well, there is something really strange going on in this election campaign. The subject is entirely

can Mr. Biden win the campaign, conduct a campaign, and win the election? There's really no discussion of can he govern for another four years. There are questions about whether he is actually governing now. Who is running things? Who is making decisions? Who is doing the choreography that takes him to the stage where there's a ready teleprompter for him to read from. You know, I find our politics are really deranged at the moment. Well, probably more of the same to come. I hate to end on that bleak note, but thank you very much for your time. As I mentioned earlier, I'm off for two weeks,

but I hope you can come back with us at the end of this month and in early August and for the weeks to come. Thank you so much, Ambassador Freeman. Of course. Coming up, a brilliant man, and I'm honored to be able to question him. Apologies for the internet disruption, but I think we straightened it out. Coming up later today at two o'clock this afternoon, Matt Ho. At three o'clock this afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, both big fans of Ambassador Freeman. And at 4.30, the always worth waiting for, Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.