Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson (fmr CIA Intel): Who is winning in the Middle East?

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

#israel #hamas #gaza #WWIII #iran #Palestine #russia #ukraine Larry Johnson (fmr CIA Intel)_ Who is winning in the Middle East_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 Monday, November 6th, 2023. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, always a pleasure. Thank you for coming back on the show. Good morning. Of course, before we get to the latest on Israel and Ukraine, I just want to ask Israel and Hamas, I want to ask a few questions about Ukraine. Sure. Zaluzny, the well-respected military commander, says the war is at a stalemate, and President Zelensky has fumed over the fact that General Zaluzny thinks that and would have said that. What does that tell you? they don't know the definition of stalemate, and B, I think Zelensky is spending too much time with cocaine that is affecting his judgment and perception. Look, we're seeing the end game already unfold. That is indicated by the number, growing number of newspaper articles that are appearing in publications that previously

had the cheerleader uniform on for Ukraine. Praise Zelensky to high heaven. I mean, we talked last week about the Time magazine article. Since then, you've had articles in The Economist. You've got the Financial Times writing. You had NBC News put out an article. And Zelushny is coming out, and it's not really clear what he's trying to do, because on the one hand, he's painting a pretty bleak picture of Ukraine's prospects, but then still sort of ending with a happy talk that, well, we still have a chance all all we need is some you know more cowbell uh you know give us more weapons more uh ammunition and zielinski is you know he's starting to fire uh some generals and uh senior military personnel i i i see that as a recipe for a coup

at some point i could see the Ukrainian army rising up and say, okay, wait a second. We're not going to let this clown send us to our deaths. And they'll push back. So it's a very chaotic scene. They realize they're no longer front and center. They no longer have mommy and daddy's attention in Washington, D.C. Chris, let's go to the meet the press interview where he drops the F-bomb. I mean, here here is President Zelensky a bit unhinged yesterday. Yesterday on before you go, if you want to share what keeps you going, do you ever feel defeated i have a lot of power but even feeling

strong and have a lot of energy it doesn't mean that we want to fight all our life because the price is high, like I said, because the war takes the best of us, the best heroes, the best men, women, children. That's it. But we are not ready to give our freedom to this terrorist Putin. That's it. That's why we are fighting. That's it. That's why we are fighting. That's it.

It sounds like the NBC News report, which was right before that interview, that U.S. and EU officials have addressed the topic of negotiation with him has not resonated well with him, but maybe he's resigned to it. I don't know. He seemed unhinged there to me.

Yeah, no, he's not accepting it. He's pushing back. And there's a movie out several years ago about Adolf Hitler's last moments, last days in the bunker in Berlin, and it's called Downfall. And it's almost like this is the 21st century version. This is downfall two, with Zelensky now replacing the Adolf Hitler crazy role. And he is out of touch with what's happening militarily on the ground. Ukraine's not advancing, it's retreating. Ukraine does not have the manpower. That's the critical thing. They've suffered so many casualties and they're having so many difficulties in recruiting.

Their recruitment goals, they only recruited 13% of their goal. And the average age of the guys are now 43 years of age, which means you've got guys 50 into their 60s that are serving. And, you know, they may think they're young, but, you know, your body starts wearing out after a point. There's limits to what you can do. Do you give credence to the NBC News report that U.S. officials, I don't know who, Sullivan, Lincoln, Austin, Victoria Nuland, and EU officials have either discussed among themselves or to President Zelensky or to their counterparts in President

Zelensky's hierarchy that negotiations with the Russians should now be considered, something, of course, they could have done two years ago. Yeah, no, this is a clear signal that the administration policy is shifting. This is the people that wrote this at NBC News. They didn't just wake up one morning and go, gee, what am I going to write today? Hey, let's talk about the possibility of negotiations. That's not how it happens. They're in contact with administration officials. It could be somebody that works for Blinken or Sullivan that goes and says, okay, look, here's what's going on.

Here's the state of play. We need somebody to get this message out there. And boy, NBC News happily would jump on that. They got a scoop. And so when you start seeing these kinds of stories appear, particularly when you have administration officials, usually unnamed, but they're saying these things and it's getting out there, it shows that the policy direction is shifting and it's shifting dramatically. If Zelensky goes, I mean, who takes over, a moderate or a Nazi? It depends on how he goes. You know, so if there is a military coup directed by the Zaluzhny types, I doubt that that would necessarily lead to control of the government by the ass off, you know, the neo-Nazi elements. There's some that say that, you know, Zelensky is hanging on for dear life

because he's fearful that if he does show any inclination to negotiate with Moscow, that the neo-Nazis will whack him, you know, they'll kill him. So it's very unsettled, and the West continues to sort of try to show some support. Von der Leyen, the head of the European Council, she was over there.

But the volume of weapons that are flowing in has been shrinking because it's getting diverted to what's going on in Israel. In Israel, is the IDF running into serious, violent resistance in Gaza? It depends on which propaganda video you want to believe. Well, according to your sources, we're looking for the truth, Larry. Well, you know, so the IDF is putting out what I call the victory videos. Boy, we're moving, we're conquering, we're grabbing this, we're blowing up tunnels. Things are peachy.

Then you get the videos from Hamas and from Hezbollah that show them scampering out of tunnels, blasting Israeli tanks with RPGs, some of them homemade. So what I take is I'll take Fox News for the accuracy and then calling what's going on. They had a report out yesterday where one of the reporters was with one of the frontline Israeli units in the Gaza Strip, hunkered down, reporting that, yeah, the IDF is clearing block by block, but we've suffered over, and he used the phrase, over two dozen losses. So if you've got a company-size element, that's 150 guys,

and you're moving down the street you know so you're suffering at least 10 casualties anti-war.com reports this morning 330 uh idf dead that would be would that be significant or nominal yeah no it's it's significant uh the the war it's sort of the benchmark if you go back to the war, their invasion of southern Lebanon in 2006, they suffered around a total 2,300 killed in action during that entire operation. So this one is just sort of getting underway. It, you know, frankly, we don't have good intelligence about what's going on in the city other than the fact that Israel continues to launch airstrikes against facilities that they say are harboring Hamas troops, Hamas leaders. What we see on the video images are lots of civilians, lots of children that are dead and are severely wounded.

And that's having the effect of further inciting anger in the public around the world outside of the United States. And what we're looking at is an IDF, Israeli Defense Force video, showing what the IDF claims is a hospital being used as the entrance for tunnels and as a place from which Hamas is shooting at Israeli soldiers. If you look carefully, you'll see Israeli soldiers shooting at the hospital. I don't know if there are patients in the hospital or if it's just an empty shell, but does anybody outside of Israel and the United States accept Prime Minister Net there. And so getting that size of a crowd out is significant. Most of the people, though, in the United States are not hearing or seeing those images, but they are being seen around the world. And Hamas itself has been pretty slick in producing propaganda videos. And when I call them propaganda, I'm not saying necessarily they're lies,

but they are designed to elicit an emotion, designed to present a particular point of view, and to get people on board. And when you see those videos, they're professionally produced, and they touch all the right hot buttons in terms of, you know, one of the latest ones they put out showed a mother wailing over her dead children, which is heart-rending. Who's winning the propaganda war, Hamas or Israel? I would say Hamas.

In fact, we said sort of an indication of the Israelis and Bibi Netanyahu realizing that they are coming up short. When they had this one minister in his government the other day during a radio interview, just in an offhanded remark, said, yeah, yeah, we could nuke. We probably should nuke Gaza, something to that effect. Oh, my God. The reaction from around the world was pretty quick

and pretty strong in condemning it. And what was interesting, though, is Bibi didn't wait 30 minutes. Boy, he was out saying, oh, that's crazy talk. But he didn't fire the guy. But he still understood that he needed to get out in front and denounce that story because immediately the Saudis put out a document from their foreign ministry condemning it. And, you know, I've heard last week, a couple of weeks ago, that U.S. officials through the intelligence channels are hearing or saying that, oh, well, you know, Saudi Arabia, really, they're not that supportive of Hamas.

They're going to be with us. Well, I don't think so. You know, Ray McGovern and I talked about this earlier. Israel is about the size of New Jersey. The Gaza Strip is about the size of Manhattan and a chunk of the Bronx. Is Israel admitting that it has nuclear weapons? Do they not understand that the offspring of the explosion can be a tremendous blowback? Or do they have low-yield tactical nuclear weapons? Or is this minister just filled with hate and he doesn't know what he's talking about? You know, I hadn't thought about that angle until you just said it.

That was a tacit admission that Israel has nuclear weapons, something that they've been loath to admit over the years. As Ray points out, they can't admit it because under U.S. law, we cannot provide military assistance to another country that has nuclear weapons and doesn't acknowledge it. Right. No. And they certainly do have it. I mean, I know that from used to 40 years ago, lived next door to a neighbor who was involved with their nuclear program. And he told me about it. So, you know, they've had them for a while. But but on the PR front, you've seen, you know, Anthony Blinken's running around the

Middle East. So first he went with Bibi Netanyahu. So he's trying, you know, they're playing the word game. We're not going to call it a ceasefire. We want to call it a humanitarian pause. And so he went out and wanted to sell that

line to Bibi Netanyahu. And they met. Blinken came out at the press conference alone. Netanyahu wouldn't be standing there alongside him. Then 30 minutes after Blinken finishes speaking, Bibi Netanyahu comes out and says, basically, ridiculous. We're not going to do that. No. Then Blinken goes over to Amman, Jordan. He's there. He meets with King Abdullah, the Jordanian foreign minister and a representative from the foreign minister of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. There was a whole group. And, you know, he was trying to buy them off to say, OK, hey, support us.

We'll we'll support a two state solution. And they all said, we'll get to that eventually. No, right now. now stop get a cease fire stop israel from killing these children stop them from killing the women uh so blinken goes away empty-handed from that takes off goes to iraq similar result you know he had there he had to dress up in body armor what what a great success we achieved in Iraq with all of our money spent over those years. You start to wear body armor. And then now today he's in Turkey. So Blinken's getting the stiff arm at every one of these Arab capitals. And it's really showing the inept leadership at the Department of State and with the overall lack of vision from the U.S.

on a diplomatic front. So his diplomacy is a failure. Yeah. What is Biden's goal in Gaza? If unconditional support of Israel means what the words mean, then the president of the United States will cause American weaponry to slaughter innocent civilians for what? To get reelected? Yeah. No, listen, he's playing both sides of this, trying to play both sides of it, not doing a very good job of it. First, the initial response was, we're with Israel 100%.

We got your back. And, you know, as we've said before, anytime you hear Uncle Sam say he's got your back, you better be careful. You know, look over your shoulder. But then here's Blinken going around selling his message of two-state. Yeah, oh, yeah, we're firmly on board for a two-state solution. That's what we want. And I guarantee you, most of the supporters of

israel in the united states are going what no no there's not going to be a two we're not backing that so you've got the arab populations immigrants in the united states who are very angry at the biden administration for what they see as facilitating the murder of women and children in Gaza. And now you're going to have more of the pro-Israeli types being very angry at Biden for undermining Israel at its moment of need. So I'm saying it's gotten very messy. Here's cut seven, Chris. Here's Secretary Blinken trying to explain what a pause for aid is. It is important to reaffirm Israel's right to defend itself,

indeed its obligation to do so, and to take necessary steps so that October 7th can never happen again. But it's also very important the way Israel does that. And that's what we've talked to the Israeli government about with taking every possible measure to protect human life, to prevent civilian casualties, as well as to ensure that those who are in need have the assistance they need. To that end, I think we all shared deep concern about the plight of civilians in Gaza,

men, women, and children who need the most essential things to get by. We've worked very hard to make sure that that assistance can flow to them. But it's also one of the reasons why humanitarian pause would be so important, to make sure that we can maximize the assistance getting to Palestinians, that we can make sure that people can move about safely, that they can get to places where they're safe, and that, again, we can make sure that not only is aid flowing in, but those who are responsible for distributing it get in, the right structures can be built to make sure that people can benefit from it. You know, he's trying to walk such a fine line Larry uh everybody condemns

uh the slaughter of Innocence whether it's Hamas slaughtering Israelis or the Israeli military slaughtering uh Palestinians he's got a boss who's 110 percent behind the Israelis. He has a human heart and understands suffering. He's just been rebuffed by Netanyahu. He went to Jordan where the king wouldn't be seen in public with him. We don't know with whom he met in private. That statement was made in Jordan. He looked and sounded terrible, insecure, and without adequate sleep. Yeah he's he's not uh getting a warm reception warm in the sense of friendly he may be getting it warm in terms of some heated commentary and threats hurled at him but what what you're seeing take place in gaza i mean israel they've destroyed they're destroying all the fishing boats, for example, making sure that

the Gazans can't fish, can't feed themselves, that front. They're destroying roads. I understand that the Al-Quds Hospital had to close today, finally, because the roads around it were destroyed, that literally no vehicle could drive there. They couldn't get any supplies in and out. And then, you know, the Israelis have played a double game. They told these people, oh, evacuate the north, head to the south. They did that. And then some of those columns of civilians traveling were strafed and bombed and killed. And so now the Gazans are going, no matter where we go, we're going to be targeted. So you've got this going on. And meanwhile, people are ignoring that Hezbollah is increasing on a daily basis

its rocket barrages into Israel. I think it's just a matter of time before that war front really opens up and Israel is going to have to divide its forces and focus on a northern front as well as what's going on in Gaza. You and I share the same view when it comes to the right of the people to keep and bear arms. However, the New York Times reports this morning that the government of Israel is asking the U.S. for permission to purchase. The U.S. government doesn't manufacture it, but manufacturers here in the U.S. do. 24,000 machine guns.

Automatic weapons, not semi-automatic, automatic. One trigger pull, the entire magazine is empty. They've been unlawful in the United States since 1934. 90 years. That's what the Israelis are asking for 24,000 of them, not for the military, but to give to civilian settlers in the West Bank. Yeah. No, that's stupid. It's crazy. So when you fire full automatic, know you get you get like an ar platform and it can fire full automatic the accuracy of the fire is unless you're very well trained and have extensive experience with it and have shot thousands of rounds through it you're not going to be able

to control it so they start firing and the muzzle the front of the muzzle raises up right and the bullets go god knows where that's number one and just passing these out to civilians that you know this this is nothing but emotional feel-good nonsense fully automatic weapons are in my opinion are stupid in warfare because they they're very difficult to control it's me you're much better off with your regular semi-automatic AR-15. Fire off two or three rounds under control so you can hit your target. That's the point of that thing. It'd be interesting to see what the gun control crowd in Congress,

which is very pro-Israeli, feels about this, because the State Department on Friday evening, when nobody was in town, the New York Times picked this up, sent notice to Congress, as they must. They don't need Congress's permission, but they notified Congress. We'll see if Congress wants to do anything about it. So I don't think they've actually signed off on these $34 million for 24,000 machine guns. I didn't even know machine guns were manufactured in the U.S. It's illegal for everyone, even the police.

It's illegal for them to own. No, no, they're around, and the military has them. But what we have to figure out is, are they talking about a SAW, a squad automatic weapon, which is one of the, quote, machine guns, you know, fully automatic firearms that the U.S. military uses? Or are they talking about selling them fully automatic M4s and AR-15s? So quite a difference. A lot of times it's just people use the terminology wrong. Or are they talking an actual bit like a belt fed machine gun, which that'd be sort of silly to pass out to your civilian population because the weight of it alone is difficult to cart around.

Larry, my dear friend, always a pleasure. Thank you. No matter what we're talking about. Thank you very much. We'll look forward to seeing you on Friday at the Intel roundtable with Professor McGovern. We'll see you then. Thanks, Judge. Thank you.

Thank you. I misspoke earlier when I said Colonel McGregor at 3.30. He's at 3 o'clock today, Eastern Time, the new Eastern Time, Eastern Standard Time. Colonel Douglas McGregor, we'll see you then. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano here. The world is falling apart and the government wants to spend money to try and save it. The Israelis are defending themselves from the greatest onslaught in their history.

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