Judging Freedom - Col Lawrence Wilkerson A Glimpse into the Underbelly of Global Transgressions and Law Enforcement

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Who holds the reins of international law and what happens when it's breached but not enforced? We confront this terse question, as we delve into the grim truth of global conflict and the unchecked transgressions of international law. Our discourse with Col. Wilkerson is laced with grave topics like the withholding of basic sustenance from entire populations, the forced confinement of these people into specific areas, and the systematic obliteration of their healthcare infrastructure. Drawing parallels with Colen Powell's declaration of #genocide in southern Sudan, we grapple with the gravity of these actions and the underwhelming impact of such classifications sans significant global support.We further enrich our narrative with insights from the Jordanian Ambassador to the United States, who shares the heartrending account of an #Israeli attack on a field hospital in #Gaza. The Col. references Sir Nigel Rodley, a luminary in the realm of international law, whose perspective brings into focus the grim reality - a law is only as effective as its enforcement. This episode is a stark glimpse into the often overlooked realities of global conflicts. We invite you to join us, as we question the role of international law, its enforcement, or the pressing lack thereof, in these unsettling situations.#Israel#Hamas#Gaza#IsraelPalestine#MiddleEastConflict#PeaceInTheMiddleEast#GazaUnderAttack#Ceasefire#Jerusalem#prayforpeace Watch the Full Episode Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4As5pIOYIIoSee 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, November 21st, 2023, Thanksgiving week, a short holiday week here in the United States. Our guest today is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. Colonel Wilkerson, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for coming back to the show. Good to be with you. Are you satisfied from your sources and observations that the goal of the Israeli government in Hamas, excuse me, in Gaza, is to remove the Palestinian people from that part of the earth?

That seems to be the strategy that's developing, and I think you can discover the implements of that strategy in Ben-Gavir and his disciples who are ready and willing to move out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and consolidate around North Gaza as the territory becomes amenable to their presence and to begin to colonize it. to evacuate, to eradicate, to remove all the Palestinian people, civilians, women, children, sick, healthy, from that strip of earth and declare it as part of greater Israel. Do they have the same intentions, I'm pointing over there, on the West Bank? They do, and in the Golan Heights, and as I said, East Jerusalem as well. Slowly but surely, they are moving in, dispossessing the Palestinians who

may be there. In Gaza, there may not be any there initially, because they will have fled, and then bringing in settlers to begin breaking ground on what initially are ramshackle shacks and so forth. But eventually, they will be, as they are in some areas in the West Bank, quite substantial settlements. And the Israeli government will fall in on them with power and water and other things that make them quite livable after a time. In other words, much the way we did in the American West when we drove the Indians out and the settlers moved in. And you know what happened there.

How inconsistent is it with international law to deny a general population food, water, medical care, to drive them to a certain part of their territory and then bomb that territory and to destroy their health care system, destroy their health care system. I think it fits in the definition and certainly the concept of genocide. And I have a lot of familiarity to that because Colin Powell was very much involved when he was Secretary of State in declaring what was happening at that time in southern Sudan a genocide. Now, his president, who had given him permission to go ahead and do that, Powell rarely did

anything that he didn't have presidential approval for in that regard when it was serious. And he did it, and it didn't have much impact. That's the problem with this convention. Unless you get much of the surrounding region, and certainly at least part of the world, the United Nations and others, to agree that it is a genocide and to take action under the convention, it's absolutely useless to make a declaration except to make you feel good. Here's the Jordanian ambassador to the United States, cut six, Chris, on Face the Nation two days ago, pointing out just what you and I have been talking about, that the Israelis dropped leaflets, told people to go to the south, obliterated the north,

destroyed the hospitals in the north, and then the Jordanian government set up field hospitals in southern Gaza. Well, I'll let her tell you what happened to them. I understand there was an attack against a field hospital. Who carried it out? What happened? Okay, we have a hospital, a military hospital south of Gaza City, and now we're going to have a second one in the south of Gaza. Now, the one that was struck was, there's a mosque next to the hospital, and the Israeli military bombarded that mosque, and people were running because they were injured, running to the hospital. And as our military people came out to help them, they got also hit.

So we had seven injured, and now they're OK. They've been taken care of. But we do not find it normal that all the hospitals are attacked. We do not find it normal that we're attacking civilians and collective punishment. This cannot go on, Margaret. This cannot go on. Well, she's being charitable by saying attacking hospitals and the concept of collective punishment is not normal. It's not only not normal, it's criminal. It's criminal under treaties that the United States wrote. Colonel, what is, and I've been asking this of my guests, what is the value of international law if it's not enforced?

That's a very good question. I asked that very same question of Sir Nigel, what are we really accomplishing with actions like those of yours and the rest of the people around this table? And he said, with a quirk and a grin, he said, we're a nuisance to them. We bother them. And what he meant was all the governments of the world who pay lip service and don't do anything when it's in their interest not to. That's what it's all about. But I do think without the international law, without Sir Nig Defense Minister Gallant, who directs the IDF, be indicted by the International Criminal Court, of which Israel is not a part,

neither is the United States, as you know from your experience in the State Department. Let's come back to your previous question and my answer. I didn't mean to be flipped. You were telling a historical anecdote. I didn't think you were flip at all. Well, George Bush and Dick Cheney certainly would be vulnerable to the same charges. Yes. Yes. So will George Bush, Dick Cheney, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, the other folks in Prime Minister Netanyahu's cabinet who pushed him into this, the senior commanders of the IDF, should they be prosecuted for war crimes when they knowingly kill, have killed, civilians? Using Nuremberg as the quintessential modern example of what you're saying, definitely the answer is yes. But I think they're in for something a lot worse than that, even. And here's why I say that. Netanyahu loves to go back and go to the Bible and quote the Bible when it's advantageous for him to do so. Let me quote

the Bible to him. Let me talk about one of the people in that Bible who is revered both in the Christian and the Muslim world, as well as somewhat in the Jewish world, Jeremiah. Jeremiah and Cassandra were the two prophets in the world who, whether it's myth or what, most myth has some reality to it, really could tell the future. Cassandra, of course, predicted the fall of Troy and she died for it. Jeremiah didn't die. Jeremiah predicted that the raucous, filthy lucre got many, many gods before them. Remember Moses and the mount um israelites and one wonders today why they don't use that term anymore it's israeli that's not israelite but anyway jeremiah predicted because of their lifestyle and behavior they were going to be doomed and long came the babylonian

army and i think it was about 587 destroyed destroyed the kingdom of Israel as it certainly existed then. Jeremiah was right, and Jeremiah is revered because he was right. And I think Israel is headed for a similar denouement, that's French, for outcome. Have the Israelis decided that their goal is not to fight Hamas, but to fight the state of Gaza? Have they decided that their goal is not to kill Hamas killers, but to get rid of as many Palestinians as they can? Have they forgotten about their hostages? I don't think they've done the latter. It'd be hard for Netanyahu to survive that. And I'm waiting to see what's going to happen as we're having developments, even as I speak on the hostage situation. But yes, an answer to your general question is absolutely. Now, they're not

going to kill two, two and a half million Palestinians. They're going to try, but they're not going to succeed simply because it's logistically impossible and because the other Gulf states and Arab countries and others like Egypt would probably come in. So what are they going to do? They're going to do what you just suggested to the extent possible, and then they're going to make the life for the remaining Palestinians a holy hell, just as they are on the West Bank, the Golan, East Jerusalem, and anywhere else where they encounter them on land that they covet.

That's their plan. That's their strategy now. And it's riding majorly because of this opportunity, if you will, that Netanyahu found with the 7 October attacks. Colonel, you spent your career in the United States military. How do senior military people in the IDF, colonels and generals, react when they have to send young men, in the case of Israel, young men and women, in to kill civilians? Do they say, I'm not doing this, I'm not going to be prosecuted, this is not what I joined the military for, this is no way to win, this is immoral, this is cruel, this is horrific, or do they just do it? The organization Breaking the Silence, with which I'm somewhat familiar now Cast Lead, which was a small version of what you're seeing now, small in terms of the incursion and the number of people

killed. But I know what some soldiers in the IDF who subsequently left and joined Breaking the Silence or just left, period, I know what they told me about the orders from their battalion commanders were going in and kill everything that moves. Why would we do that? One apparently said back, and I trust this individual, and the answer was because we were told to do it and because that way they won't bother us again if we show them the sword. And that's their philosophy. They think that if they kill mercilessly, that that will be enough to cow them to where they won't have to do it again.

That's the ridiculousness of this, because you can't treat humans that way. They will come back at you as long as there's one of them with blood flowing through his or her veins. Now, correct me if I'm being too much of a legalist and a jurist on this, but is it not unlawful to obey an unlawful order? It is in terms of general law of war, but, and philosophy, whether you're talking Thomas Aquinas and just war theory or whatever, but it is so violated in practice that one could probably do a profiles in courage on those who have actually done something like that. And your book would be, let's say, smaller than Kennedy's book. Colonel, how many deaths or too many deaths? One, in my view, one innocent person's death. Collateral damage is a term that we invented.

It's a stupid, idiotic term. I used to tell my soldiers, if we go into that jungle, if we go into that place, if we take our helicopters in there, we are not going to kill anybody unless he's shooting at us or she's shooting at us

because in Vietnam, we did have some female warriors. And my soldiers didn't like that. But by the time I had finished my time, my 12, 13 months in Vietnam and that 69, 70 tour, most of my soldiers understood why I had said that and sympathized with me. But think about that for a minute. That's very, very difficult to do because you have the rage going when you see your buddies falling on your left and right. And you wind up with things like the My Lai Massacre because of that. But it's also a failure of leadership when you wind up with something like the My L massacre. We like to think we're different in America. We like to think we don't wage war like other countries do. Au contraire, we do when we're in the trenches. You have to have leadership and you have to have some moral courage. I'm not saying I'm any hero at that, but you have to have some decency about you in order to prevent that. It's going to happen, but to limit it, you've got to provide leadership. And what I find missing so often is that very thing, leadership. And what happens when a colonel or a

general says, this violates common decency, my troops are not going to do it? He's probably relieved of his command, particularly in wartime. Yeah, if he says it high enough up, he probably is going to be. Now, if he says it and he's very circumspect and careful about the way he says it, and I've seen this happen at very high levels, then his superior gets worried. He gets worried about

what might happen if this particular individual were to survive and to perhaps speak to the press. That's the beauty and the power of the press if it's used properly. And other channels, too, will go to the guy above that person's head. And you get to someone who's not willing to commit to that kind of moral outrage, and then you get your purpose served. So it just depends on how smart you are about the way you do it. are so critical of the American overreach? Or does something happen when you retire and you see things from the military, a career in the military, a life in the military, and you see

things differently? I think the former. Based on my experience, more people felt like I did than didn't. The person who wanted to go out and kill, kill, kill, regardless, men, women, children, or whatever, was very rare. Even the periods when rage overtook you were very, very rare in that sense, because usually a good leader would step in. And it's a quality of the American soldier and the American Marines, others in general, to be that way. Now, there are some people now who tell me this is deteriorating in our armed forces, and there are a number of reasons for it. What is deteriorating, Colonel? The concept of decency? Yeah, the concept of decency and good leadership. Bruce Clark used to say, you know, if you walk by a piece of litter on the parade ground and don't bend over and pick it up, you're wrong.

Well, that's a minuscule example of it. But that was Bruce Clark. And he meant it. I'm told that because of the mercenary nature of the armed forces today, the army likes to call it a contracted force. You know, they don't even look for deserters today. The deserter's just gone. He's broken his contract, so why go look for him or her? It's a very different armed force. It's one reason why a group of us, old people like me, are assembled trying to get at least a portion of the force provided by conscription again. How? Put some skin in the game for Americans.

How, I have a lot of issues with the draft. We'll talk about the draft on another day. I'd love to discuss it with you. How complicit is President Biden, Secretary of State Austin, Secretary of Defense Austin, Secretary of State Austin, Secretary of Defense Austin, Secretary of State Lincoln, National Security Advisor Sullivan, et cetera, in war crimes. I commend to every American, indeed every citizen in the world, the bravest journalist I've ever met in my life, Gideon Levy, who gave a speech, and not yesterday or last week, in 2015 at the National Press Club. I happened to be there and listen to it because I was giving a speech that was entitled, as I recall,

is Israel a strategic asset or a strategic liability? And I came down hard on the latter, a strategic liability. But Gideon talked about the nature of Israel. Now, he's an Israeli. He works for Haaretz. I don't know why Netanyahu has left him alive, frankly. He's so courageous, it's incredible. But every person on this globe should listen to that speech. It's on YouTube right now. It's been resurrected. It is a powerful indictment of Netanyahu, but even more so a powerful indictment of the direction Israel has been going in since it left its original concept was a bunch of communists, in most cases, coming out of Europe after Hitler's horrible treatment of the Jews in Poland and elsewhere. They were coming out of Europe and going to a homeland where they thought they could feel safe. They made kibbutzes. They put together communal entities that were more or less what they thought Jews ought to live like.

And then all of a sudden, power, go back to Jeremiah, the same thing that happened to the Israelites when they became powerful and rich happened to Israel. And I don't at all excuse the United States and its capitalist oligarchy and its predatory capitalism, which it imported to Israel. And Israel, frankly, does better than it now. I don't blame I don't leave us out of the blame for Israel's transition in this way, because it is nothing like what it was in 48 and the following year. But if Israel is engaged in war crimes, in genocide, as you've called it, and is using American military equipment, ammunition, and moral suasion, oh, the US has our backs. Is the US complicit, are American senior officials, the president and his people in war crimes? Let me quote Gideon Levy to Levy to you, that brave journalist I was talking about. Every time that F-16 drops a 250 pound Mark 72 bomb and kills three children

on the ground in Gaza, it is your fault as well as Israel's. And he was talking about the United States. I agree with him. 100%. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a man of great courage. Thank you very much for joining us. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. I hope you can come back next week. Thank you, and happy Thanksgiving to you and yours too.

Thank you. All the best. More to come. Matthew Ho at 2 o'clock Eastern today, continuing our crunch time to get a week's worth of your favorites in three days. We're up to 237,000. We might be up to 238 by now. We're just a skosh under 238 when we came on air. I think we'll hit 240 subscriptions by Thursday,

which is Thanksgiving day and happily a quarter of a million by Christmas. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.