Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh : Is the IDF in Retreat?

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Matt Hoh : Is the IDF in Retreat?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 Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024. Happy New Year to everybody. Happy New Year to Matt Ho, joins us now. Matt, my heartfelt thanks for all the time you gave us last year and my hope and expectation you can share as much time as you can spare with us in the coming year because the fans like you and you educate me every time we talk and it's much appreciated. Thank you, Judge, and happy new year to you, to Chris, to all who are involved with this program

and everyone who's watching it and listening. And yeah, I am very grateful to have been able to come on here this last year and be a part of something that I believe is really making a difference in terms of how people understand this world and how people then take action with this world. And we're up again. I'll tell you, I get to interview people and say things that in my 24 happy years at Fox, I would not have been able to say and people I would not have been able to interview. So it's liberating. And the response, as you know, has been overwhelming. We went from 93 subscriptions to 258,000. So that's in two years and it's very deeply gratifying. And so onwards to half a million now, which I think as long, I think is there is the audience

for that. And the question just becomes, how do we ensure that this type of information, this type of programming is spread widely? And so I'll throw it out to those who are listening and watching to spread this, to share this, to let people know. Well, we have people like you and McGregor and McGovern and Johnson and Ritter who are courageous. I mean, we just had Scott Ritter on live from Moscow with one of his colleagues, and the two of them were very courageous. And it's just

like you and I are about to have a very candid and refreshing conversation. Is Israel losing the war in Gaza? Well, I mean, tactically, we've spoken about this type of thing before, right? There's levels to warfare. There's tactical, there's operational, there's strategic, and then overall that is the political. And certainly on the tactical level, if it's just as simply a game as it is to many people, including commentators on other platforms, just an issue of scoring wins and losses just by the devastation, the number of people it kills, Israel can be seen as tactically winning. Operationally, it is moving forward in the sense of successfully getting to a point where it can implement a real ethnic cleansing campaign. I mean, it's already begun one, but really to ensure that Gaza is emptied of the Gazans of the Palestinians. So operationally, it is moving

forward with that. But then strategically and politically, you look at where does this go, though? What happens here? The world is against it. The world was already against it, but now that has solidified. It is now facing a charge of genocide in the International Crime Court of Justice brought forward by South Africa. It is facing a rebellion on the high seas led by the Houthis of Yemen in terms of blockading Israeli ships from reaching Israeli ports. I mean, so then but also to the isolation, isolation. And then as well, then how does this end its security problems? How does this bring stability to Israel? And I think many in Israel think that the way you get to that is through ethnic cleansing, is through this genocidal campaign. But there are

also those who realize that that's simply not possible. You're only going to end up with something worse than what you have now, whether it's an aggrieved Palestinian population that has now this catastrophe larger than any of the previous catastrophes. If that's, you know, somehow believable, but it is. But then also to the threat that could come from the expansion of this war, whether it is now going to take that war into Lebanon, whether that war could then expand to Syria, bring the Iraqis in, of course, bring the Iranians in. Quite possibly, we've talked about this, Judge, bring the Turks in somehow. You could have an issue with the Egyptians. I mean, so you have a history of these Arab-Israeli wars where the background and the context is often left out. Well, why did these Arab nations go against Israel? Well, the reason why is because they were going to defend the Palestinians.

Why did they, quote, gang up, unquote, on Israel? Well, because they saw themselves as being responsible for the Palestinian people as the ones who have to do something to prevent ethnic cleansing, to prevent genocide. And so we see that again. And so when you look at this question of whether Israel is winning or not, yeah, in the short term, on a day-to-day basis, on just the perspective of how many buildings are destroyed, how many people they killed, how many bombs they have dropped, sure. In that case, the Americans, we won in Iraq then, we won in Afghanistan then. But, you know, overall, though, when you look at the larger picture, what does this lead to and what can come from this? What

are the second, third order effects? And does this really bring actual stability and security to Israel? Not just, you know, military type security, physical security, but what about economic security? We've seen the Israeli economy hemorrhaging right now because of this blockade, because of this blockade of Israeli ports, but also too, because of the wider effects of this war on Gaza. We can get onto that, but also in the political aspects, how does this affect the Israeli public when you have people like Bezalel Smotrich or Itmar Ben-Gavir, these far right nationalists getting their way? Where does that lead the country politically in terms of just

the Israeli public? So, I mean, that certainly is my estimation that they are not winning this war, that they are losing it. And every day they continue on with this ethnic Clemson campaign, as well as this fascination with potentially expanding the war. We just saw today Israel launch strikes into Beirut, which killed the deputy Hamas commander, also a number of civilians as well. But this idea that they will, or there's at least an element within Israel that wants to expand this war, you know, where would that lead to? Here's number three, Chris. Here's a summary of the South African complaint and a summary of the Israeli response at the International Criminal Court.

You tell me which is the more credible of the two. South Africa's court application says Israel's acts are genocidal in character, intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group. Israel has rejected the claim, calling it blood libel. In a statement, it said South Africa's claim lacks both a factual and a legal basis and constitutes despicable and contemptuous exploitation of the court. It seems to have a factual and legal basis to me and probably to you. Right, right. I think you're going to see for Israel and its defenders, including our government judge, the United States government, which by the Genocide Convention of 1948, there's a clause in there that makes other parties complicit. in the genocidal acts of other countries. And certainly, I think by any standard,

our government has met that requirement as well, as well as the fact that there are U.S. laws where genocide is illegal. So you see our own government, Judge, in violation of both U.S. federal law and international law. And I think if you look at that South African complaint, the factual basis of it, while versus the Israeli response, the emotional basis. And I think that what they're falling back upon, the Israelis will fall back upon, is their relationship with the U.S., that nothing will matter as long as the U.S. backs them. And the U.S. is going to back them because the U.S., you know, to get into larger issues of how corrupt our political system is, is owned in many ways by the Israeli lobby, at least in this case. So, you know, the Israelis see no real need to take this

seriously as long as the U.S. is backing them. I mean, certainly the Israelis are, there are parts of the Israelis society that are very concerned about this, but at least for the far right, those in Netanyahu's government, I think they can, they feel like they can thumb their nose at this as long as they're holding the U.S. by its nose. Isn't Joe Biden being utterly reckless by deepening the American involvement, the American complicity in war crimes, exposing himself and his administration, perhaps, and there's no statute of limitations on any of this stuff, perhaps in a different era to the types of prosecutions we saw after World War II?

I think Joe Biden and those with him in Washington, D.C. have the same view as Israelis. Well, we'll just pass a law in the U.S. Congress sanctioning the International Court of Justice. We'll just condemn it ourselves. And you can see the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate doing that. We've already done that with the International Criminal Court, forbidding the International Criminal Court from ever investigating U.S. war crimes. But with this case in the International Criminal Court of Justice, I think the U.S. feels the same way. We'll just do the same thing. We'll just sanction them.

We'll thumb their nose. Who are they to bring this up to us, the empire? And the blindness, all of this, right? So just not the moral corruption, the moral rot that this further expands and carries forth. But also, too, just the practical aspects. Look what's happening in the Red Sea. All these ships that have to go around Africa now because of the Houthis and they're probably not Boston whalers, but that's more or less the type of boat they're operating in. They're shutting down about a fifth of the world's global sea trade. And haven't other countries refused to join the U.S. naval fleet there?

Right. It really is the same cast of characters. None of the Arab nations, none of the Gulf nations decided to join, with the exception, I think, of Bahrain. And I don't even know what their commitment is. Many of the European nations that joined, uh, this, uh, this fleet, this American led fleet to stop, uh, this, you know, what the Yemenis are doing, uh, you know, are sending a couple of officers to do staff work at the U S fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Uh, and the British, the British seem to be the ones who are the most excited about this. The Times of London reporting this weekend that the British military has plans to launch strikes into Yemen alongside of the Americans. I mean, the British, I think,

they are our predecessors. We inherited their empire. And so they want to go along with us to keep that spirit alive and to hold on to what they once had. And because they have an arms industry as well that requires these sorts of things. They have politicians that are betrothed to the arms industry as well as their own fantasies of imperial ambition or being good servants of the empire. But the idea that rather than stopping the genocide, which is all the Yemenis are trying to do, this is what they are. And so it's very admirable how they are acting, what they are trying to accomplish. But rather than just stopping the genocide, we are choosing to pursue this new phase of a conflict, possibly re-sparking the war in Yemen, which has killed 400,000 people, which has been quiet for two years now.

We're choosing to pursue that path of restarting that war, as well as whatever else could come out of that, whatever else of type of unpredictable consequence could come from expanding this war in Gaza to Yemen. We're choosing to do that rather than stop sending our bombs and artillery shells and hellfire missiles to aid the Israelis in committing genocide. Why do you think that Israel is pulling thousands of troops out of Gaza and why would they announce that they're doing it? Yeah, the reports I read of that, Judge, I felt like they were kind of truncated, those reports. So whether or not other troops are being rotated in, which would make sense at this stage, you're at a two-month mark for the ground forces in Gaza, 60 days. So I could see where they would be rotating their infantry and armor units

out and new fresh ones in. But there's also, hey, look, the West Bank right now is a powder keg. What was going on in the West Bank prior to October 7th with a couple hundred Palestinians gunned down by the Israeli military, by the border police, by the settlers, the thousands that are held in Israeli prisons. Just the daily humiliation that the occupation in the West Bank does has been just supercharged, as we know, in these last few months. We spoke briefly about Lebanon, the possibility of the war expanding into Lebanon. And then of course, the constant fear, but in many parts desire for a further war into Syria, into Iraq, into Iran. And of course, we have those here in the

United States that are just cheering that on. There are conference rooms throughout Washington, DC that are picking back up the holidays today, so excited about the possibility of bringing Iran into this, of connecting Iran to Yemen, because Yemen's connected to Gaza, plus the overall belief that this is all orchestrated by Iran, that Iran is some kind of a puppet master throughout the Middle East. So you have many in both Tel Aviv and in Washington, D.C., as well as London, who want to see this thing expanded, not just the arms makers, but the politicians, the ideologues, the cretins that inhabit most of the think tanks in Washington, D.C. These are the people that want to see this thing expand.

Here's an interesting summary, number six, Chris, of Israel pulling some thousands of troops out of Gaza. We will allow the soldiers to gather strength for the next activity, says the Israeli military spokesman. They could be needed on Israel's northern border. Over the weekend, militants attacked from Syria and Lebanon. Israel retaliated, striking Hezbollah targets. The threats to Israeli as well as U.S. interests also extend to the Red Sea. Iran sailed a warship into the waters today, a day after the U.S. Navy engaged four Houthi boats from Yemen that attacked a commercial ship, sinking three. And over the weekend, Tel Aviv once again saw protesters demand the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And tonight, Major,

he was dealt another blow. The country's Supreme Court struck down a controversial law that would have limited the judge's powers. Not an auspicious start of the year for prime minister netanyahu that's another another very divisive uh issue authoritarian in my view uh on his part but i'm interested in your military analysis of sending troops home if you're going to send 20 000 troops home so they can rest be with their families take their their uniforms off, take showers every day. Do you announce it? No, I mean, you don't telegraph it in any sense of what you're going to do next. But why they made it so public, I'm not really sure, other than maybe to give some perception that they're winding down their campaign, even as they are saying through other channels,

including through the IDF, that this war in Gaza is going to last throughout this year. You know, no one in the Israeli government is shy about saying that this war is wrapping up anytime quick, that, you know, there's going to be no Netanyahu moment where he lands on an aircraft carrier, right, with a mission accomplished banner anytime soon. So, you know, I mean, but there is this and you would think that because so much of this comes goes back to 1982 and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Right. And that horrible occupation that created Hezbollah, right, just was it was a nightmare for Israel, of course, a nightmare for the Lebanese. You know, I mean, just the whole, what that war did in terms of just gross instability and what it created,

what came from it, how bad it was overall for the Israelis. There are many in Israel who think we just need to do it better this time. And we have that here in the U.S. too. I mean, the comparison between the Israeli military and the American military, you can't get away from it. I mean, these are peas in a pod together. And the idea that, OK, we can push into Lebanon, but we're not going to go all the way north this time. We're not going to go to Beirut. We're going to stop at the, what is it, the Latani River. And we're going to have this buffer zone and we're just going to create this buffer zone around Israel, just like we did. We are going to annex that like we did the Golan Heights. And, you know, but it's a fantasy that has, you know, minor imperial ambitions, basically, because that's what this is about conquest, you know,

fulfilling the greater Israel project, as well as these crackpot ideas that physical security means you have to go and put troops forward, occupy ground, subjugate people, and that somehow that is going to make you more safe when everything we know says that is exactly what creates, what engenders, what makes real violent resistance to you and your project. Do you think that Netanyahu is in danger of losing American support, that the political pressure on Biden would become overwhelming, or do you think that the Israel lobby in the U.S. is so strong that it owns the Congress and the White House? The latter point, absolutely. So whoever the Israeli lobby wants us to support, we will support. But certainly, I think there's room within that to allow for a softer, kinder authoritarian towards the Palestinians. Tony Blinken or Joe Biden or even Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, they would privately but

candidly say, yeah, we prefer to have someone other than Netanyahu. He's a huge pain in the ass. He's exposing us here. He's making things really difficult for us. We can't trust him, et cetera, et cetera. We'd rather have, you know, whoever, Benny Gantz or whoever. But it would be the same thing for the Palestinians, though. And the U.S. position towards the Palestinians will be entirely dictated by the Israeli lobby, whoever is running Israel. What is in it for the U.S. to support Israel? There's no national security interest whatsoever. Is it just the economic connections between the Israeli lobby and members of Congress? That's what I come back to, Judge. I mean, there are relationships between the

U.S. military and the Israeli military. There are relationships between the American weapon manufacturers and the Israeli weapons manufacturers. There's economic, larger economic relationships, because remember prior to, say, 1973 or so, the 70s, most American assistance to Israel was economic. So there's, as Israel was building out its economy, had a lot of support from the U.S. And so those types, a lot of relationships were built. There's a diaspora here, of course. There's the cultural, societal relationships between Israel and the United States. But when you get down to it, like what's the strategic value of this? I just don't see it. It makes the U.S. less safe. It makes the U.S. isolated. It's just not isolated from the Arab world and the Gulf nations, but it's isolated from almost the entire world. You know, and the Europeans, with the exception of the Brits, go along with us in a way that gives me hope that possibly they're going to break at some point. Not just on this, but also too on Ukraine and Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, all these different things. When will the Germans and French finally have the courage to break from us? They know it's

the wrong thing to go along with us. When will they break from us? But you come back to that lobby and the fact that, yeah, we have the larger problem is that we have a political system that is legalized bribery. In some ways, I guess maybe you can characterize it as a protection racket, but it's legalized bribery. And so what you have then is you have AIPAC very clearly, what, two months ago now, saying that they will run a massive spending campaign against anyone who is not on their side when it comes to Israel. So targeting the squad, so to say, saying they're going to spend $100 million in US House races this year, which everyone who understands how much money that is for say seven or eight US House races, that's enormous, right? So that type of power and that

cudgel. And so what you have then you have in legislators in DC, but not just DC, but also the state level. Because remember, you have an Israeli lobby that spreads out throughout the U.S. where you have throughout all these state capitals, these state laws that have been introduced, say specifically to ban the state from doing business with anybody who supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. So if you're in many U.S US states, at least half, I believe, if you are going to get employment with the state, even as say a school teacher, or you're going to be working as a vendor or contractor saying to go to fix the plumbing of a school, you have to sign a pledge saying that you will not take part in the BDS movement.

And that has held up in our Supreme Court, which is a whole other episode we can do about how corrupt our judicial system is. But, you know, I mean, so what you see that is you've got legislators at the federal level and the state level who are either terrified or APAC or very greedy for what APAC has to offer. Matt Ho, always a pleasure, my friend, no matter what we're talking about. Thank you very much for your time and your insight. We'll see you again next week. Thank you so much, Judge. Of course.

All the best and Happy New Year again to you and your family. Coming up at three, Karen Kwiatkowski. And at four, Larry Johnson. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.