Judging Freedom - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Will Biden Stop Netanyahu?

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Will Biden Stop Netanyahu?See 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 Friday, March 22nd, 2024. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel, always a pleasure, my dear friend. There is a little breaking news about a shooting and an explosion at a theater venue in Moscow. There's at least 12 dead. Apparently, it's a scene of chaos, and there's no indication yet as to who or what caused it or what the extent of the damage is. We'll obviously get to that if news comes in while we're on air with the Colonel. The breaking news in the area of the world that you and I have been discussing, Colonel, has to do with the UN. I mean, this is quite a turnabout for the United States, and I'll be anxious to explore your thoughts on it. The United States, of course, offered a resolution for an immediate and long-term ceasefire. It included a condemnation of Hamas,

as did the prior resolutions that were offered by other members of the Security Council, which the United States vetoed. The one this morning was vetoed by Russia and China, and of course the Secretary of State, in his inimitable way was critical of them. and Tony Blinken to authorize this resolution in what must have been defiance of the Israeli donor class in America? I think it's a little more sophisticated than that. And I don't mean that term in a positive sense. They didn't demand a ceasefire. What they did was they demanded a determination of a process to get to a ceasefire. If you parse the language really closely and what you see there is what, and this is why the Russians vetoed it, particularly the

Russians, but others too. And I'm not just talking about the Perm 5, I'm talking about the Big 15 and the Security Council. What they did following that was define what it would mean to determine the process, or this is pure, pure Blinkenese, and certainly said Bidenese, determine the process to get there. And that process would be orchestrated and demanded and confine itself to what has already happened with the United States diplomatic process. Now, that's a convoluted way of saying that Israel and the United States will determine the process that determines the ceasefire. Well, that's not a ceasefire, Colonel.

No, absolutely not. And then there's one other aspect of it. They backed off their strong statement that they should not go into RAFA with major military force. And they just completely nullified that. They just said, okay, if you're going to do it, do it circumspectly.

That worries me tremendously, more than the obfuscation over the ceasefire. And then the third thing is our ambassador. Now, our ambassador, as I'm sure you have noted, is black. She must go to the bathroom in the UN Security Council spaces every time she pontificates a U.S. position. she must go into the bathroom when she has to go look in the mirror and say, how can I be who I am right now? I mean, here she is talking about not just all the things that blacks went through in this country for 100 plus years. She's talking about women and children and whole families being wiped out right now. And she's saying these things. And what she said in response to this was, in essence, a warning to any of the 15 or the five.

You're going to come in with a resolution. We know you are. And if it doesn't recognize the, quote, determined process, which includes Israel and the United States, and they're conforming everything to their wishes, we'll veto it. That's what she was saying, we'll veto it. This is gamesmanship and wordsmanship, Colonel. Our colleague, Professor Sachs, who is an economist, produced a study on the five levels of the famine. And he indicates that hundreds of thousands of people are in level five, meaning they're within a week of dying of starvation. Colonel, is the United States of America using starvation as a means of war by refusing to be serious about sending aid there? Why don't we send trucks there? Is the IDF going to shoot our trucks? They are indirectly, of course, doing that. And I take your question at its value. I wonder why. Just as I wondered when

Dick Cheney put his finger in Colin Powell's chest and told him, you're not the chairman anymore, you're the secretary of state. So confine your comments to the secretary of state's role and not the chairman's role. I said, boss, how come you didn't stick your finger in Dick Cheney's chest and say, you little pipsqueak, I work for the president, not you. Right, right, right. Here's Secretary Blinken. I mean, this is really hand-wringing at its worst, but I don't want to prejudice him in your eyes. I want your thoughts on what the U.S. was trying to achieve at the U.N. and what kind of a message he heard from what happened at the U.N. Sonia, cut number two. Can you tell us in practical terms what the U.S. was trying to achieve with the resolution that was put forward at the United Nations today?

And then on your conversations today, you described in broad strokes some themes that are familiar. I wonder whether you delivered or heard any messages today that are new and different from your past conversations here? So on the resolution, which got very strong support, but then was cynically vetoed by Russia and China, I think we were trying to show the international community's sense of urgency about getting a ceasefire tied to the release of hostages, something that everyone, including the countries that vetoed the resolution, should have been able to get behind. The resolution, of course, also condemned Hamas.

It's unimaginable why countries wouldn't be able to do that. But I think the fact that we got such a strong vote, despite the veto by two of the permanent members of the Security Council, again, is evidence and demonstration of the commitment, the conviction of countries around the world, notably on the Security Council, to see about getting the ceasefire and getting the release of hostages now. That's what the resolution said. That's what it called for. And I think it showed a strong commitment to that from many, many countries. With regard to the conversations we had, look, this is an ongoing process.

As I said, we really were focused on three things, the hostage negotiations, humanitarian assistance, and Rafah. And it was important that, again, we focus on all three things. I'm not going to get into the details of what we discussed, but I think from my perspective, at least, these were important, candid conversations to have at a critical time on all three of those issues. Do you feel that it will be isolated if it doesn't change its path? Again, what I shared, and I think what they've heard from President Biden as well, directly, is we have the same goals,

the defeat of Hamas, Israel's long-term security. But a major ground operation in Raqqa is not, in our judgment, the way to achieve it. And, you know, we've been very clear about that. But most important, we have a senior team coming to Washington next week. We'll all be taking part in those discussions. We'll be able to lay out for them in detail. I started to do that today, but it's important that the teams with all the expertise lay out in detail how those goals can best be accomplished with an integrated humanitarian, military, and political plan. We'll put all that on the table. Of course, we'll hear from them too. And we'll take it to

next week. Colonel, I'm not a shrink, but that's not a very forceful or self-confident statement. I can't imagine that that moves Prime Minister Netanyahu one inch, one millimeter. Nor can I, nor can I. And he was dissembling about the dissembling in the resolution. As I told you, they backed off their almost demand that the military offensive against Rafah not take place. Now they're softening that. Be kind as it takes place, that sort of thing. And you notice they even had the, I don't know, the channel probably did that, but they put that sort of summary up underneath him saying that. That's a weak point of the resolution, not a strong point. And the ceasefire is so diametrically opposed because Hamas wants a ceasefire. Israel wants a ceasefire only for

a temporary short period and a hostage exchange. And they're wide apart on the hostage exchange parameters too. So that's nonsense to talk about that because it is apparently, and I think I understand why, a non-starter. So you can put it in all the resolutions you want in the world, and unless you're willing to bend some knuckles on the ground and put some arms behind those knuckles, you're not going to get any change in Israel's policy. One thing it did do, and I'm still trying to figure out the language a little bit here because they are ambiguous as hell when they have to be. I understand that. It's an aspect of diplomacy. But it seems to be saying,

you better not start developing those, quote, buffer zones, unquote, which is Ben-Gavir's nice term for we're going to put settlements in Gaza now, just like the West Bank and East Jerusalem. You better not start doing that. I think I see language in there to that effect. So at least that's getting a blow in early that you're not going to do what we know you're going to do. And that is start settling Gaza, just like the West Bank and East Jerusalem. supervised these types of negotiations. What are they like? I mean, do they sit across a table and read statements to each other or do they go off in a corner, arm in arm and try and cut a deal? As a judge, I probably settled thousands of cases from very small ones involving a lady that slips on a piece of lettuce in a supermarket and breaks a finger to gigantic ones that have hundreds of lawyers. And I always found that the sort of posturing got nowhere. But when you break the

sides down and go one on one, you can make some progress. Does that happen in these international negotiations as well, Colonel? It does. And you wear people down. You know that. You pound people in the open forum, as it were, and you get them worn down. And you also get your message in dozens and dozens of time. And then, like you said, you go over in the corner or you go to a coffee break or you go to lunch or you go someplace else, might even be in the men's room or the ladies' room, and you actually solve the problem or get as far as you can. And you come back out and let everybody know that. Well, of course, in this instance, we're dealing with a group of people whose land has been stolen from them for 75 years and another group of people that thinks they have a religious right directly from God the Father, however absurd that may sound, to own the land. I don't know how you reason

with people like that. Well, you just touched on a big aspect of all of this. It's not that Bibi Netanyahu or any of these yo-yos, and I don't use that term loosely, are listening to the ultra-Orthodox, for example, amongst the Jewish community, or listening to the Christians in Bethlehem who are scared to death the Jews are going to drive them out. That's what the bishop told me in 2003, I think it was. No, 2002, after Powell had come back from Amala. I don't fear the Muslims. This is a Christian bishop. I fear the Jews.

They're trying to confiscate my territory. When you get that kind of religiosity into it, when you get religion, whether it's Christianity, Islam, or whatever involved in it, the people who don't give a hang about God in any one way or other aren't driven at all by any Christian or Muslim or other precepts. They use that. They take that religious animosity and that religious hatred and that invective and that obstinance, and they manipulate it for their political purposes.

Well, you got rabbis. You got rabbis saying that the Old Testament says it's okay to slaughter the suckling infants. I'm using their phrase, suckling babes. It's okay to slaughter them. Somehow, the Torah authorizes that. I can't imagine any

level of morality condoning that, no matter what the religious view is. Well, it's the old view of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and to hell with everybody else and let's make the world toothless and sightless. What do you think Netanyahu will do next? He has a million, 250,000 more or less people in Rafa. The normal population is one-fifth of that, 250,000. The additional million, he chased down from northern Gaza. Go to the south, go to the south, you'll be safe.

We're destroying the north. Now they're going to slaughter these people down there. Will he not go in there? Will he exercise restraint, or does he not give a damn what hand-wringing Tony Blinken says or off-the-wall Joe Biden says? I have to imagine that President Biden, through Blinken or maybe even directly, has let Netanyahu know that if Rafa goes down like Khan Yunus did, or the remainder of the operations preceding Rafa, he's going to be in trouble. And so I have to think that he might tone it down just a little bit. And let me give you a personal experience here. The other day, I got a call, and the call told me that the Nasrallah family was trying to get out of Rafah. Well, the Nasrallah family rung a bell with me immediately,

and I realized it was the same family that Rachel Corey had been protecting when she was murdered by an Israeli IDF bulldozer. Isn't Nasrallah the name of the head of Hezbollah? Yeah, it's a fairly common name. Oh, okay. Sorry. Sorry for interrupting. Go ahead. We're trying to get them out right now using the Egyptian agency that does that. It's very costly. There's a pregnant mother. There are lots of kids now. The family's grown since Rachel tried to protect them. But that's just a microcosm of what these people's life is like now. And this was a family that Rachel and two of the women huddled under the window the day before she was killed, the night before she was killed by the bulldozer,

because bullets were coming in from the Israeli forces on the other side of the complex into their bedroom. This is how these people live all the time. Will Joe Biden ever make that phone call to Netanyahu? I'm telling you to stop right now for everything that's been coming to you three and four days a week from Dulles and elsewhere in the U.S. will cease. No, because it will cost him his election. And that's what's going in his head. That's what's working in his head. Look at Schumer. Schumer only came out and made his statements, not because he's a great man or a good man, came out and made his statements because he was afraid of losing those seats out there, like Rick Scott's in Florida, that the Democrats might win. He was afraid of that. So he came out and said what he said, knowing that if Netanyahu went tomorrow and Benny Gantz took his place, the same things would be taking place. And McConnell followed him in suit. It's George Washington's prediction. These people do not give a hang about

America. They don't give a hang about Israel. What they give a hang about is their political power, and they'll do anything to maintain that power. That's what Washington warned us against in terms of factions and political parties. Well, it's come to be. It's come to be in terms that are going to destroy this nation if we're not careful. Did the United States, excuse me, did the West provoke Russia in Ukraine? I'm transitioning, of course. Absolutely. No question about it. I mean, you don't have to listen to John Mearsheimer or many of the voices out there now that are, some of them now, picking up on it because Russia's winning so grandly. But we essentially did everything from 2005 and 2006, really, all the way up to 2014, and then up to the invasion, that forced Putin

to believe, true or not, he believed it, I'm convinced of that, that his security was becoming majorly threatened by the proximity of NATO and its borders. And were Ukraine to be incorporated in that alliance, that'd be the end. And he thought we were going to do it. And so he made his point. And he's been making his point ever since. But Biden, which is more important to Biden? I'm appealing to your political instincts here, Colonel. The money from the donor class or the 110,000 Democrats in Michigan that voted none of the above and without whose support he cannot get reelected. He can't win without Michigan and he can't win Michigan without those people. He's in a dilemma. There's no question

about that. And I'm sure he thinks about it every night if he's still thinking lucidly. Sometimes I question that. But he is in a political dilemma. He does this, he loses votes. He does this, he loses votes. He gains a few here, but he loses the same amount or more here. So Ukraine is doing the same thing to him. You watch when the polls drop below 55, 54% consistently on American support for Ukraine, which they're going to do, I think, but maybe not before November, then he'll switch. Or when he gets reelected, we can expect the

second term to be possibly more full of moral courage and political courage and good acts by the president if we get to that point. and if he's reelected, who knows? Right, right. Do you foresee, and sorry for going back and forth, Colonel, but I'm fine conversing with you, fascinating. Do you foresee any resistance by state actors to the continued slaughter by the IDF in Gaza, Turkey, Egypt, Iran? I think we're already seeing it. We're seeing it circumspectly because they're scared of us. They're frightened of us. And that's really saying something when you say the southern flank of NATO, Turkey, might be scared of what the United States would do if they really took some serious action with respect to Israel. But Erdogan is positioning himself. He's back in Libya now. He's back in Egypt in a big way, having bought

literally the port of Alexandria and bought the southern tip of the Sinai opposite where the Israelis are building their second Suez Canal. And he's got territory in Somalia that faces the Red Sea. So he's surrounding the area. He's a very astute man. He's one of the few people in the world today that thinks strategically. But they're all frightened of us. They're frightened of our sanctions. They're frightened of what we might do because they've seen what we did. Someone said today, Vladimir Putin, Russia has absolutely no reason whatsoever to trust the United States ever again. Well, I think they're right in that. But I think Putin is enough of a man of the world, if you will, autocrat par excellence, but he is a man of the world to know that he can't do that.

So if we got peace in Ukraine, if we got a negotiated ceasefire and a settlement, Putin would be back trying to establish some sort of warm relations with Washington as soon as he could, because he knows how important that is. The rest of the world, though, lots of people in the world are really thinking hard about how they might oppose us, where they might oppose us, when and how. And that's not good for us. I'd say at least 3 billion people in the world now are fed up to here with the United States of America. Do you subscribe to the view that even though these countries around Israel are run by autocrats, at some point they won't be able to resist the overwhelming sentiment of their Islamic peoples that enough is enough and

you better do something about it? All the scholars in the region that I know, and there's quite a few from all the countries that I know scholars in, from Morocco to Yemen to Lebanon, tell me no. And these are Arabists by and large. These are Islamic Arabists. And they say, it's not going to happen, Larry. It's just not going to happen. Even the ones here in our universities, there are quite a few. Tell me. I wish you were right, Larry. I wish the street would rise up, and I wish the street would have some impact. And yes, it is causing some thoughts on the part of Mohammed bin Salman and others, but it's not going to be actionable. It's just not going to happen. And nothing's going to stop Netanyahu until the war is over and they kick him out and prosecute him.

Yep. And here's what I said the other day. I really believe this now. Sad to say. The realist in me, the John Mearsheimer type of realist in me, says this is going to stop. It's going to stop on a sour note. There are going to be so many dead people, so many wounded people, so many starving people.

And we'll just let it go away. The Arab leaders will just let it go away. And Netanyahu will go to jail. Maybe he won't be prime minister any longer. He'll die. And then 10 or 15 years down the road, we'll do it all over again, because there isn't any solution unless we stop

and make a solution. Two states, one state that's democratic, whatever it might be, but we have to be, we, America, have to be the maker of that solution because no one else will do it. That's the sad state we're in today with our empire. No one else will or can, in some instances, do it. And now we won't either. So this is just going to repeat itself again and again and again. Profound, Colonel. We'll end on that note. Profound. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your eloquence throughout the whole interview, but particularly the last couple of minutes. I hope you can visit with us again.

It's Holy Week. It's a short week. We're going to be dark on Good Friday, but I hope you can visit with us sometime next week if you can find the time, Colonel. Well, thank you for giving me the place to speak. Well, the audience loves you and your numbers are very, very impressive.

All the best. Have a great weekend. You too. Thank you. A great man. Coming up at four o'clock Eastern, your favorite time of the week, end of the day Friday, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with that youngster, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.