Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Israeli Military Superiority is a Myth.

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Discover the truth behind the legend of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as we explore their military might with a seasoned expert. In this revealing discussion, we peel back the layers of myth to scrutinize the real capabilities of what's often hailed as the Middle East's most elite military force. Beyond the historical triumphs and daring operations, we examine the IDF's reliance on reservists, the young age of its high-ranking non-commissioned officers, and the practical consequences of this on their leadership and effectiveness.#russia #ukraine #USMilitaryHistory #Israel #Gaza #ceasefire #hostages #Ukraine #zelenskyy #Biden #china #IsraelPalestine #MiddleEastConflict #PeaceInTheMiddleEast #GazaUnderAttack #Ceasefire #Jerusalem #prayforpeace #hostages #Israel #Gaza #ceasefire #hostages #Ukraine #zelenskyy #Biden #china #IsraelPalestine #MiddleEastConflict #PeaceInTheMiddleEast #GazaUnderAttack #Ceasefire #Jerusalem #prayforpeace #hostagesSee 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 Wednesday. What day is today? Such a confusing week. December 27th, 2023, a belated Merry Christmas and early Happy New Year's to everyone. Larry Johnson is with us on this. Is the Israeli military superiority just a myth? But first this. Judge Napolitano here. I love being a spokesperson for causes that I believe in, and one of them is the soundness of money. We don't have that anymore. The markets are casinos. The Fed is printing cash like it's going out of style. What is the government doing to my money?

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Welcome here. I belated Merry Christmas and early Happy New Year to you and your family. Thank you, Josh. stated differently. Is there some structural differences between that military and, say, more conventional militaries that you can explain to us? Yeah, Israel's lived off a legacy of some past exceptional performances, let's call it. I mean, they were caught with their pants down in like 67, 73, but they recovered very quickly and won a victory, especially in 73. Then the raid in Entebbe where they rescued hostages. That was considered, you know, very remarkable. So Israel gets this reputation for being, oh boy, the most exceptional military in the Middle East.

But then you start looking at the facts. It is a reserve force. That means reservists, they will go through some basic training. And then periodically throughout the year, you show up on weekends to get trained. And there may be a two or three week period where you do some additional training. But what caught my attention the other day was I was looking at a casualty list. There were nine Israeli soldiers that were killed. All but one who was 28 years old. Everybody else was under the age of 23. And you said, well, you know, that's what you'd expect, young guys, except they all carried the rank of either staff sergeant or master sergeant. Now, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army is a guy who's about 26, 28 years old.

They've been in for a while. They're seasoned veterans. They know how things work. They've, you know, they've come up him the title. But he does not have the experience or background because these staff sergeants, master sergeants, they're really like officers, non-commissioned officers. They're supposed to be leaders and to have experience.

I don't care who you are when you're 19. You don't have experience. So are these people being promoted too quickly or given titles and authority that are not justified by their lack of experience? Is that the essence of your criticism? Well, yes. And look at the performance, or let's call it the lack of performance of the IDF in Gaza. You know, they're not making progress despite what they say. The only progress that's being made is in depopulating the civilian areas with aerial bombardments from primarily aircraft.

Just, you know, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago when three of the Israeli hostages broke free of their Hamas captors, took their shirts off, came out waving a white flag, and they got shot by two different Israeli soldiers. So this was this again, this illustrates a situation in which they're poorly led, poorly trained, and the rules of engagement are very questionable. This wasn't just one soldier making a bad mistake under pressure. This was two guys. So that shows you you're dealing with something that's systemic. And this is one of the reasons that Israel struggled in 2006 against Hamas when Israel invaded southern Lebanon, thinking that they would quickly oust and take care of Hezbollah, and they ended up getting beat and heavy to pull out.

Two questions that come to mind. One is, you are being critical of the infantry, the people who are on the ground with weapons that they can carry? Hasn't most of the death and destruction been caused by the Air Force and by artillery? And two, isn't this death and destruction intended to kill civilians? Short answer, yes. And let's recall that on October 7, when Hamas launched its massive attack, again, this illustrates the Israeli army was caught completely unawares. They had intelligence warning them about this. They didn't take it seriously. And then the next thing you know, they're getting their bases overrun. The Galani Brigade, which is, you know, one of the elite, very elite units, 72 of their soldiers were killed by Hamas that day.

So this was not armed guys killing, murdering children and women. This was a straight-up fight against guys that had uniforms and guns, ostensibly, and didn't use them properly or responded poorly. And then also remember that the helicopter pilots were the ones who shot up all those cars that were fleeing the raid, that desert party. They admitted it afterwards. They were hitting and blowing up cars with their rockets, and they didn't know who was in the car. They were just making the assumption that it was all Ham rockets, and they didn't know who was in the car. They were just making the assumption that it was all Hamas, and there were several Israeli survivors of that that

testified, no, they were getting blown up by their own troops. So, you know, what we're talking about as far as this military, it's really, it's undisciplined. That's what comes across, that it is undisciplined. The rules of engagement have them doing terrible things. How does this bode for the military if they are forced into a guerrilla warfare in Gaza? Yeah, well, it's not going to be just in Gaza. It's also the fighting's underway up north along the lebanon assyrian border so the hezbollah has just been ratcheting up the pressure bit by bit uh israel is not in a position to fight a two-front war they do not have the manpower

they don't have the logistics chain to sustain it. And they're going to get bled out. That's what this is. They militarily, they have better weapons equipment than Hamas by light years ahead. But they're suffering significant casualties. And they can't, you start off with the belief that you can kill your way out of the situation, but they're finding they can't. And the more they get embroiled in trying to quell all the attacks in Gaza,

that's going to be more costly for them in terms of losing personnel. And they can't afford that because it's not like they got a ready supply that they can go to and say, okay, well, we've lost 1,000 guys. Let's just get this other 1,000 in. Have they already exhausted their supply? I hate to use the word supply.

We're talking about human beings. Yeah. Of reservists. In other words, did they call up all the reservists that they have or are trained for this kind of warfare? You're not going to put 70-year-olds in guerrilla warfare. Well, let's be clear. They were never prepared for this, never trained for this kind of warfare. They have been largely functioning as police against people who've been imprisoned in what you know, some call Gaza the largest open

air concentration camp in the world. So, you know, learning to conduct urban combat operations, they're getting on the job training. And, you know, you see a lot of them, there's the one picture of this one Israeli soldier lighting up a bong of all things in a window. And next thing you know, the Hamas puts an RPG through the window and kills him. So, you know, just having situational awareness of using cover in an appropriate manner so that you are hidden, both cover and concealment, that you're hidden, and with cover you're protected. So yeah, they're learning as they go. They still have some reserves that can be thrown into it, but again, these are

untrained reserves. They don't come in. Okay, back to guerrilla warfare. Who do you give odds to on prevailing if it is reduced to guerrilla warfare, whether it's in Gaza or in the West Bank? Well, I think Israel will ultimately prevail, but at a terrible cost. I mean, they will have bled themselves out in that victory. And, you know, because just as we saw, as the Germans did to the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish fighters back then held off the Nazis for a month, but were finally overwhelmed. They only had very limited, a couple of pistols and rifles.

They didn't have any sophisticated weaponry at all. So for a military unit like the Israelis, yeah, they're going to ultimately roll over and crush it, but at a terrible cost to themselves. They're losing men they can't afford to lose because they are such a tiny country. It's only 6 million, 7 million. Got it, got it. Here is Secretary Blinken right before Christmas saying that it's hard to believe what he said. A, Hamas is the problem.

B, the Israelis are the victims. And C, this could be over tomorrow if Hamas laid down their arms. Cut number eight, Sonia. Israel has been very clear, including as recently as today, that it would welcome returning to a pause in the further release of hostages. The problem was and has been and remains Hamas. They reneged on commitments that they made during the first pause for hostage releases.

And the question is whether they are in fact willing to resume this effort. We believe that, as we said from the outset, Israel has not only a right but an obligation to defend itself and to try to make sure that October 7th never happens again. Any other country in the world faced with what Israel suffered on October 7th would do the same thing. What is striking to me is that even as, again, we hear many countries urging the end to this conflict, which we would all like to see, I hear virtually no one saying, demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that. This would have been over a month ago, six weeks ago, if Hamas had done that. And how could it be that there are no demands

made of the aggressor and only demands made of the victim. This, to me, sounds like the United States government is endorsing state terrorism on the part of the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Yeah just it's a complete fantasy uh about the nature of that situation uh who was it that had military bases surrounding gaza was it hamas no it was israel uh and had active surveillance measures focused to contain those people inside a fence. That's Israel, not Hamas. You know, perspective depends on, you know, where you sit depends on what you see. So when we watched the movie, The Great Escape, where, you know, the Rockford Files guy is breaking out of a German prison camp, we're cheering the prisoners.

Well, that's what happened on October 7th. The prisoners broke out of the camp and they broke out with two objectives in mind. One, to try to destroy the Israeli military units that were keeping them hemmed in. Two, take hostages that they could use as bargaining chips because Israel had been locking up people without due process, by the way, over many years. And it has thousands, tens of thousands of Palestinians in prisons. So, you know, this is, it's not like Israel was sitting there minding its own business, you know, sitting at the beach, under a beach umbrella, reading a book, and some bully came up and just started beating them up. You know, great story to justify what's going on, but the

facts are the facts. Right now, you've got over 20,000 Palestinian civilians dead, over 8,000 children murdered, over 50,000 wounded. Hamas didn't inflict anything approaching those kinds of casualties on Israel. You talk about disproportionate response, and you, by virtue of your judicial background, you understand that perfectly. It's just like, you know, if someone spills hot coffee on you, that doesn't give you a right to shoot them. Correct, correct. Now, I understand what you're saying. What I don't understand, and you're right on the mark in terms of international law, but there's no enforcement mechanism for international law, which requires proportionality, which is what you're arguing. But what I don't understand is why the world doesn't seem to care.

Any other ethnic cleansing the world would be in an uproar to the point where governments would be state actors and their militaries would be intervening. Not so here. I mean, the numbers you just articulated, Larry, A, are universally accepted, and B, are astounding. 20,000 killed, 14,000 of them civilians, 7,000 of them babies under the age of seven. Why does the world

tolerate that? Well, and on top of it, Israel tells the Palestinians, hey, flee south, go to the light, go down there, you'll be safe. And then Israel starts bombing and attacking that. It's like they

set an assault lick out for a deer to attract the deer so you can kill it. They gather them into one place and then Israel attacks. Unfortunately, Judge, this is our history. Let's go back to when the Germans were doing this to the Jews of Poland

and Ukraine in World War II. The world was largely silent, ignored it, did nothing. Similarly, when the Hutus got after it in Rwanda and there was mass murder, silence. So this is unfortunately just a historical reality for us. And what I continue to fear is that at some point, there's going to come a breaking point that will lead Israel into a position where it's going to be very, very vulnerable, and that it's going to be crushed militarily by some other country or state that reacts to what they see as this horror. Switching gears, over the Christmas weekend, General Zelensky, the head of military operations for Ukraine, did something he's never done before.

He held a press conference and publicly stated at the press conference he needs more human beings. And President Zelensky, instead of criticizing him, backed him up and said, we now need more human beings. The amount of human beings we need will cost $13 billion, and we need that much in cash. I mean, are these guys down to their last nickel? Yeah. Well, it gets even better after Zeluzhny said that, and then they come out with this

mobilization plan where they're going to mobilize, put into the military disabled people. People with amputations, people with even some mental limitations. Yeah, they're going to put them in. And then Zeluzhny goes, oh, this mobilization

plan, that's not me. That's Zelensky. So yeah, we're watching a desperate play across the board. They are trying to distract attention. They lost the key city of Marinka the other day. And so what did they do? They launched a cruise missile strike on a ship that was under repair in dry dock down in the Crimea. Well, you know, last time I checked, this is not a naval warfare that's going on in Ukraine. So losing that ship, it doesn't affect what's going on on the ground at all. But it provided a distraction that the rest of the world wasn't paying attention to the fact that Ukrainian troops were retreating from an area that they had held tenaciously for nine years. So Russia continues to move and grind forward. Ukraine is in a very desperate situation right now. Also over the Christmas weekend, our friend Jack Devine was quoted all over the place

as making a prediction that President Putin will soon be out of office due to a coup. And he even said it could happen as soon as this weekend, meaning three days from now, meaning the New Year's weekend. There was no articulated evidence. This was just Jack's gut feeling. I'm sure that it was his 35 years experience in the CIA that even brought them to quote him. But how sound or unsound is an opinion like that? I think Jack was doing the eggnog with additional rum added that led him to make such a foolish prediction. But, you know, he is tied in very closely to the Ukrainians and has been for many years.

So it's no surprise that he's doing everything in his power to try to push the Ukrainian PSYOP that Russia's losing, Ukraine's winning. But he doesn't have a single thing to point to, except all of his past predictions have been wrong. Are your former bosses and colleagues in Langley, Virginia, of the view that Putin is about to be overthrown by a coup? Or is this just Jack as an outlier? I think it's Jack as an outlier. I mean, there's, there is not a single piece of objective evidence to support that. In fact, there was an article that was put out by the New York Times claiming that Putin, despite his public bravado and everything he's saying in public, that behind the scenes, he's really wanting to negotiate because he's in trouble. Now, Alistair Crook

and I were both present with a very senior Russian official, And we agreed not to divulge who it was. But the notion, the idea that there are these secret talks going on where the Russians are pleading for mercy is sheer, utter nonsense. Not happening. All right, my dear friend. Thank you for that. We'll try and get Jack on sometime next week. He's off this week to see if he can justify what he said.

Larry, always a pleasure, my dear friend. I know it's a short week, but if we can bring you back with Ray for the Intelligence Roundtable, we will. If not, we'll see you next week. Thank you. Happy to do so, and Happy New Year, Judge. Happy New Year to you.

Coming up, my dear friends, later today at 3 o'clock Eastern, Phil Giraldi on this very topic. How does the CIA decide what to leak to the press? And at 4 o'clock, Ray McGovern on, does Jack Devine know what he's talking about? We already know the answer to that, but Ray will explain it in his inimitable way. Thank you for watching.

We'll see you later. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out. you