Judging Freedom - Amb. Chas Freeman : Why Israel Is Losing Its War

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

Amb. Chas Freeman : Why Israel Is Losing Its WarSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You all know that I am a Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, July 2nd, 2024. We welcome a new guest to the show, Ambassador Charles Freeman. Ambassador Freeman is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, former United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and was famously in 1972 President Nixon's translator when President Nixon made his historic trip to Beijing. Ambassador Freeman, it's a pleasure. Welcome to the show. I understand we have many mutual friends, many of whom are on this show, but it's a pleasure to meet you and I look forward to our conversation. Welcome here, sir. Thank you. Very glad to be with you. Sure. What has become of the stability of Israel as a government, as a free and independent

state, since October 7th? Well, even before October 7th, if you remember, Prime Minister Netanyahu was engaged in trying to reduce the independence of the judiciary in order to save himself from corruption charges in prison. That was very divisive in Israel. October 7 had the immediate effect of uniting Israelis behind a remarkably harsh genocidal policy toward the Palestinians. But that was then and this is now. Now we have a divided government,

not only between the extremists who favor the annihilation of the Palestinians and who back the pogroms on the West Bank, but we also have the military openly deriding the lack of strategy for dealing with the Palestinians on the part of the government. And, of course, the people whose relatives, fathers, mothers, children, siblings were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th, have had no satisfaction. The only significant recovery of hostages occurred during a negotiated pause with Hamas.

But this government is not interested in that. So this is a government that is divided, a society in distress. There are 80,000 Israelis displaced from northern Israel due to skirmishes with Hezbollah in Lebanon. There are 90,000 Lebanese displaced on the other side of the border. And this is a society that is losing people. A large number of people are immigrating. The economy has tanked. It's a pretty unhappy place at the moment. Given the history of the Jewish people in the 20th century in Europe, why is there not more of an outcry in Israel about genocide. Members of the Netanyahu administration, including Itamar Ben-Gavir, admittedly one of the most extreme, but in charge of some sort of a

national police security, almost as if he's the rough equivalent of the head of the FBI in the United States, have called for open slaughter of the Palestinian people. Mr. Ben-Gabir most recently called for the summary execution of all Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are uncharged with crimes, by putting a bullet in their head. Why isn't there more recrimination over that amongst the Israeli people? Well, I think Judaism is a humane religion, which is distinguished really by its emphasis on two things. One is ethical reasoning through scholarship and reliance on the history, the accumulated experience of the Jewish people over millennia.

Israel has departed from this tradition dramatically. I don't see much evidence of ethical reasoning. There is scholarship, but it's devoted to starting up in the science and technology area where the Israelis have excelled. Israelis have essentially been brainwashed. They have brainwashed themselves. Their educational system celebrates the Holocaust, the terrible events in Europe in World War II. A great deal of the population actually had to flee to Israel after its establishment because they were no longer welcome in the Arab world where they had lived peacefully for centuries. And they too have now been taken on tours of Auschwitz

and otherwise made to believe that the Jewish experience of genocide is unique. And in effect, if anybody else tries to appropriate the term genocide, this is somehow a slur on Jews. So it's a very strange thing. The victims of genocide who rebounded with the establishment of the State of Israel are now the perpetrators of genocide and don't seem to be at all disturbed by that. Here is Itamar Ben-Gavir. He's speaking in Hebrew and we have the translation, he's referring to legislation in the Knesset, which apparently needs to be voted on three times before it becomes law. I was unfamiliar

with that procedure. And he says it's been passed twice, the legislation that he's referring to would authorize the summary execution of Palestinian prisoners. Cut number two. Unfortunately, and much to my surprise, I had to inquire recently whether the Nakveth have a fruit basket, as they either have fruit or don't have any and I say in my opinion they should be shot in the head to punish the terrorists, death, and pass the Atzma Yehudit bill in a third delay, but until then we will give them the minimum which is required by law, nothing more than that. So the Atzma Yehuda bill to which he refers would authorize these summary executions. I would think

that Israeli Supreme Court would stop that. It's a very liberal, in the sense of liberal democracy, not in the sense of liberal versus conservative Supreme Court. But how can you say something like this when you're the head of internal security and expect to have any credibility? These people there are cheek by jowl in a jail and they haven't even been charged with a crime. They're just there because of their ethnicity. Yeah, this is fascism. You can't call it anything else. It is entirely amoral, or if not amoral,

not just amoral, but immoral. It is vicious and it has cost Israel a tremendous amount of prestige and respect internationally, including in the United States, where young people, Jews as well as non-Jews, have been unwilling to continue to be associated with this kind of statement and behavior. Let's remember that he's saying shooting people in the head. to be associated with this kind of statement and behavior. Let's remember that he's saying, shooting people in the head.

And earlier at one point, he justified this on the grounds that the jails were overcrowded and space had to be made. I don't know whether that's his current justification, but this is totally heartless, shameless, and utterly despicable. And it is making israel an international pariah and this will not be easy to recover from if at all talk to us um briefly

ambassador about the relationship between israel and saudi arabia uh the country to which you once were the American ambassador. The latest out of Saudi Arabia is that the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which was proceeding apace before October 7th, is now dead and won't even be discussed without some recognition of a Palestinian state. Is that likely to happen under the Netanyahu regime? I think it's totally impossible to happen. But I'd take issue with the statement that the normalization was a proceeding of pace before October 7. I think what was happening was a Biden administration exercise in fantasy foreign policy posing for the benefit of domestic constituents who want to see Israel accepted in the Middle East. Israel is not really accepted as legitimate, even by those countries in the Middle East that have normalized with it. It is championed by Europeans and North Americans,

and it is regarded by most other countries as a democratic tyranny. That is, an democratically elected government which exercises totalitarian control over half of the population it controls. So this is, in the case of the Saudis, the latest poll showed that 96% of Saudis believed that those countries that had normalized relations with Israel should reverse that and cancel that normalization. What bothers me most about the policies we're following on this issue are that, while it's very clear what the advantage to Israel is of a normalized relationship with Saudi Arabia, it's not at all clear to me what the benefit to the United States is.

Basically, the price of getting this normalization, the offer that we've made is a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia that can only get through the Senate if the Zionist lobby pushes it. And do we really think that, do we think that what we need in the world is another defense commitment? I mean, many would argue where, and I would agree that we are overcommitted. We didn't need a treaty in 1990 to go to the aid of Saudi Arabia and hold back Iraq or to reverse the Iraqi attempt to annex Kuwait. We did it because it was in our interest. Now, if we have a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia, we have a liability. The Saudis get into a war with Lebanon.

Let's say they get into a war with Israel. We don't have a defense treaty with Israel. Are we going to come to their aid? I think this is without any merit whatsoever. Very interesting that your observation, and I'm grateful that you corrected me, about the Biden administration, not for the first time and probably not for the last, giving us a song and dance on foreign affairs to make certain groups in the United States think it was proceeding apace. Is Israel an ally of the United States, Mr. Ambassador? No, not at all. It is a protected state. It is a client state. Alliances involve mutual,

unconditional commitments. That is the nature of our relationship. Under Article 5 of the 1990 Treaty, NATO members have an unconditional commitment to aid each other, although the means by which they do that are to be decided in accordance with their respective constitutional processes. Israel has no commitment whatsoever to the United States. In fact, on the contrary, it routinely rebuffs, rejects, and very insultingly repudiates American policies, pays no attention to American interests, pays attention only to its own. I think every country should pay,

give primary importance to its own interests, starting with our own. And I don't think we should give a blank check to any country and certainly not one that is not prepared to help us if we are in trouble. Of what value, of what geopolitical or foreign policy value to the United States is our relationship to Israel? I ask my question carefully because I'm not talking about domestic political value. Right.

No, I think this is a question which has long been taboo. There are a lot of statements made that Israel is a great strategic asset. It may have been in some respects an asset during the Cold War when, despite its good relationship with the Soviet Union, it mostly stood with us. But even during the Cold War, it was more of a problem than it was an asset. It got us into confrontations in the region with the Soviet Union, including some near-death experiences with nuclear warfare. Israel, until recently, was not a place from which you could fly to any neighboring country. There are pre-positioned munitions in Israel,

but they're for the benefit of Israelis, not for us, as we have seen during the genocide in Gaza, where they've been drawn down. So finally, I would just say, you know, militarily, Israel does nothing for us. Politically, it is an albatross around our neck. Most of the vetoes we've had to issue in the Security Council have been to protect Israel from the consequences of its violations of international law, including multiple Security Council resolutions. So it may be a very important part of our domestic politics, but it is not an asset internationally.

Mr. Ambassador, can the IDF defeat Hamas? No. Hamas is the flag carrier of Palestinian nationalism. I don't think this war is properly characterized as a war between Israel and Hamas. I think it is a war on the Palestinian people, a continuation of the policies that were encapsulated in the original Zionist slogan, a land without people for a people without land. But there were people there. And basically, from the very beginning, Zionists dehumanized the indigenous population and sought to evict it. And of course, in 1948,

some 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes amid mayhem and murder. Now we're seeing the same thing play out in Gaza. In the interim, there was a slow process of digesting Palestinian lands and evicting Palestinians from their homes, often by violence, with the support very often of the legal system, which in many respects is admirable, but which has been complicit in the imposition of something worse than the South African version of apartheid. That is worse than segregation, worse than apartheid in the sense that apartheid was a crackpot scheme to facilitate the independent development of different nations inhabiting southern Africa. There is no Israeli intent to allow any development at all of Palestinian culture. In fact, the entire policy and the dedication of politicians like Mr. Netanyahu over the past decades has been directed at precluding any kind of self-determination for Palestinians. So we have a situation where Jewish Israelis demand and have received the right of self-determination, but Arab, Christian, and Muslim Israelis are denied this.

We have a situation where Israelis demand the right to be secure in their homes, but Palestinians have no such right. And we have a situation where Israelis demand and should receive the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but no such right is afforded to Palestinians. And this is so unjust as to create the current opprobrium toward Israel, and I'm sorry to say, because of our identification with Israel, toward us that we now see internationally. Doesn't Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has claimed that his goal and the goal of the IDF is to crush Hamas, understand that that's an impossibility. How can he even respond to his own military leaders who've taken the unprecedented step of stating publicly that the prime minister's goal is an impossibility? I don't remember seeing this. Could you imagine the secretary of defense or some official in the Pentagon saying that the

president of the United States' military goal was impossible to achieve and we can't do it? Well, the Israeli military are very competent. They're very bright people. They deserve respect in many respects for their skills as soldiers. I do not respect them for the genocidal actions they take, but they're not stupid people. And Mr. Netanyahu is not stupid either. He's a very smart, self-centered, entirely selfish person whose principal concern is to remain in power and to escape prison where he might end up if he were free. So I don't think he believes for a minute that he can successfully destroy Hamas militarily. His objective is the annihilation

of the people in Gaza. If he can't do it by starving them out, he will do it by bombing them or using snipers or whatever other means he can to either drive them out. He will do it by bombing them or using snipers or whatever other means he can to either drive them out of Gaza or kill them. You are a former deputy assistant secretary of defense. You understand the way the American government works. What do people in the Pentagon or in the White House do when the American foreign policy, supported by substantial amounts of military aid, is aiding genocide? Well, we've had some resignations. This is unfortunately not a feature of our political system usually, but some military and some civilian officials have registered their disgust with these policies by resigning. I think you begin by dissenting internally. And there's been a lot of that, I understand. But in the end, the ethos of the American Civil Service,

Foreign Service, and the military is all the same. We swear an oath to the Constitution, and we respect and follow the directions of the constitutionally ordained authorities. And if we can't do that, we have a responsibility to resign. But that is not common, as I said. Do you expect the International Criminal Court to accept the proffered indictments of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant and to issue the accompanying and requested arrest warrants?

I think that's uncertain, given the last-minute intervention of the British and their influence in the court. But I hope the court will follow normal procedures and will not make an exception for Israel. And I hope that we will not do what we appear to be determined to do, that is to punish the court for exercising its routine judicial function with respect to Israel. What will happen in your view, Mr. Ambassador, if the Israelis target Hezbollah, knowledgeable as we are of the history of their defeat by Hezbollah, defeats, plural, by Hezbollah? Well, I think, first of all, we have to bear in mind that Iran has issued a statement saying that if they do that, Iran will be in it full bore.

But my understanding of the military balance is that Hezbollah is more than able to blanket Israel with artillery and missile fire. And I think, you know, if Israel takes on Lebanon in the way that some of the hotheads there are proposing, this puts the entire state of Israel itself in jeopardy. How many people, how many Israelis will want to stay in a place which is subject to bombardment by neighbors who have been, you know, it's been 75 years or so since Israel was established, 76 years, and Israel really has not made a single friend in the region. Instead, it has ruled by the barrel of a gun, and with the aid of the United States, its military superiority

over everyone in the region. This is not a path to reliable security over the long run, and I think if Israel attacks Hezbollah in the manner that it suggests, this could well be the beginning of the end for the experiment, the Zionist experiment. Does the United States come to the military aid of Israel in its battle with Hezbollah? And if so, Mr. Ambassador, in what form would that aid come? I don't think it would come, well, you correct me, with boots on the ground. It wouldn't be the military, the army, joining side by side with the IDF, would it? I don't think so, but the signals have been very mixed.

We've had both statements from the White House that we would be with Israel in a war with Hezbollah. And we've had statements from other administration spokesmen counseling Israel not to do it because we won't be with them if they start such a war. So I don't know what the answer is. I hope we're sensible enough to stay out of it. Mr. Ambassador, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. I've admired your work for many years. I'm thrilled that we could have this conversation. I hope you'll come back again soon. Next time, we'll talk about Ukraine, another debacle of American making, but I'll be happy,

and I know the audience will be happy to hear your thoughts on it as well. It's been a pleasure and it was an honor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador. I very much appreciate his time and I can see from what you have written and the number of you that have that you appreciate him as well. Coming up later today at 11 o'clock this morning, Scott Ritter at two this afternoon, Matt Ho at three this afternoon, Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!