Judging Freedom - Matthew Hoh: Beyond Bullets - Lessons from Hamas-Israel Truce on the Power of Diplomacy

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Matthew Hoh: Beyond Bullets - Lessons from Hamas-Israel Truce on the Power of Diplomacy#GlobalSecurity#IsraelQuestion#WWIII#Geopolitics#MilitaryInsights#InternationalRelations#StrategicForecasting#SecurityAnalysis#ColonelMacgregor#GlobalAffairs#MilitaryExpertise#PoliticalRealities#GeopoliticalDynamics#FutureOfConflict#securitydialogue #IsraelEthics#MoralJustifications#ThoughtProvoking#EthicalDebate#IsraelPolitics#HistoricalAnalysis#PoliticalInsights#SocialContext#NuancedExploration#EthicalConsiderations#MoralDilemmas#CriticalThinking#IsraelDebate#globalethics #Israel#Hamas#Gaza#IsraelPalestine#MiddleEastConflict#PeaceInTheMiddleEast#GazaUnderAttack#Ceasefire#Jerusalem#PrayForPeaceSee 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 28th, 2023. Matthew Ho is our guest today. We will talk to him about does diplomacy really work? Does it work in times of vengeance and hatred? But first. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Lear Capital. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital because it's the right thing to do because the government is regulating too much and printing too much money and reducing the value of everything you earn and everything you own. And the best hedge against this is gold and silver. That's what I've done. I know the folks at Lear. I trust the folks at Lear. I've worked with the folks at Lear.

And I use their advice when it comes to my investing in gold and silver. You should do the same. Call them at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. You'll have a very nice conversation with a very knowledgeable person. We'll send you literature to read, which you can review with your spouse and your financial advisor, and then you can call them back and decide what you want to do. Why Lear? Lear has 25 years experience and thousands of five-star reviews and a 24-hour risk-free guarantee. And when you have this conversation with a Lear representative, you'll find out if you can qualify for a $15,000 gold bonus. So call Lear now, 800-511-4620 or learjudgenap.com. Matt, welcome back to the program. Thank you very much for joining us. As always, it's always a pleasure, my friend. I want to talk to you about using the levers of diplomacy as opposed to the levers of violence.

But before we do, just a couple of basics. Did 1,400 Israelis really die on October 7th? And why did the war go on? Why did that initial foray go on for seven hours? And did the IDF actually kill some Israelis that it thought or feared might be taken hostage? So the number is, and good to see you, Judge. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Thanks for having me back on.

The number is 1,200. It was revised down from 1,400 to 1,200, and really no explanation given other, I think, than the assumptions that those 200 were actually Hamas fighters, but they were so disfigured, so badly damaged by the fighting, if you will, that it was very difficult to identify them as Hamas fighters until weeks later. So the number is 1,200 of that, about 400 or so were Israeli military. And that seemed to have been the original thrust of the Hamas attack on October 7th was to go after military targets, one as part of this ongoing war between Hamas and Israel. It didn't begin on October 7th, but goes back decades, of course. And then, of course, but what happens is that as we're as we're seeming to understand better now with time,

what seemed to have occurred is that in addition to that initial Hamas attack on the military targets, undoubtedly there are probably some civilian targets as well, streams and just unorganized masses of Gazans flooded out of Gaza. The fence was down. This was their opportunity to leave. Many of them, I think, went out to see what was out there because they'd never been outside of Gaza before. And others went out to take revenge because they have been kept in that open air concentration

camp for decades. They had had family, friends, neighbors killed by Israel, whether it be during the numerous air wars and ground wars launched by Israel against Gaza, or even during the non-peaceful Great March of Return, where 200 Israelis were killed and thousands were shot. So what you saw was this butchery that took place. Some of it had a strategic purpose. Some of it was just revenge. It was vengeance. It was bloodless. It was, what would you expect if you caged 2 million people for decades? What would you expect would happen? And, you know, undoubtedly the Israeli army killed some Israeli civilians. It was bound

to happen. You know, that type of crossfire, that type of confusion, the fog of war you hear about. When people see the gun camera footage from the Apache helicopters, from tank crews, and you see how hard it is to actually, you know, decipher what you're looking at, to really get a good identification of what you're looking at, that's what the gunners are seeing. That's what the vehicle commanders or the pilots are seeing. So it's not like they have a better optic system than what we're seeing through their gun camera footage. So you can kind of understand how hard it is for them to differentiate between civilians and fighters. And in all that confusion, innocent people were killed. Do you understand if there was intentional killing

by the IDF, this sort of Hannibal strategy, as they call it, to kill people that they knew were in danger of becoming or had already become hostages? Right. And the Hannibal directive is something the Israelis have had for a couple of decades. It's named after the general Hannibal who killed himself rather than being taken prisoner by the Romans. And the idea is that it is better to have dead Israelis than captured Israelis. And this particularly always seemed to pertain to the Israeli military. It's better to have a dead Israeli soldier than to have a dead Israeli soldier than to have a captured Israeli soldier. And I don't think that that was initiated on October 7th. I mean,

what occurred there in those seven hours for that type of decision to invoke a directive like that, I think that's too quick. I think what you saw was the reality of combat. People get killed by people on their own side because it's messy, it's ugly. People are rushed, they're scared. They don't know all the circumstances. They can't see things clearly, on and on and on. And that's how you end up with the Israeli army

killing many Israeli civilians. It's one of those things of warfare and just one more reason to make, not the instrument to be pursued. The, um, uh, Hamas people have about 200, uh,

Israelis and a few Americans, uh, uh, restrained. Uh, the Israelis have a few thousand Palestinians are restrained. Why are the restrained Israelis called hostages and the restrained Palestinians called prisoners? Well, this goes into the propaganda that we've talked about so much, the language bias used, the language preferences, the vocabulary utilized to make sure that one side fits the narrative

it's been assigned. So we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, right? Where even when you're talking about the children that are killed, whether they be Israeli or Palestinian, you know, it's something four or five times more often Israeli children are labeled by the U.S. media as innocent than Palestinian children are. And so you see this as well, where the Israeli hostages or prisoners or captives or detainees or whatever the right word is for them, those children are described as children. Meanwhile, you'll see in the American press that the Palestinian captives, hostages, detainees, prisoners, who our children are described as people under 19 years old or as minors. So you see that purposeful use of language to strict to this kind of moral narrative, this

Manichean description of this war of good versus evil. And that goes right to what the Israeli prime minister will say, right to what American members of Congress will say. Even the White House alludes to that this is a war of civilization against barbarism. These are not real people. These are animals. Their lives don't count. On and on and on. And, you know, that's something that we have seen throughout, you know, particularly the warfare of this last century, all these American wars in the Muslim world, a dehumanization, an othering of our adversaries, of those that we are killing, trying to make it so that their lives don't count,

that they don't matter as much, that they're not real people. And you see that with the language our media chooses to use. It just backs that up. I want to segue into the diplomacy that's been going on. but in order to do so, I want to play this clip. It's cut for Sonia. This is one of the ministers of Qatar who was involved in the actual negotiation and what his aspirations for the negotiations are. It's in English. The main focus right now is, and our hope, is to reach a sustainable truth that would lead to further negotiations

and eventually to an end to this iteration of violence, to this war. And we have always said that we need the push of the whole international community to make sure that that happens. However, we are working with what we have. And what we have right now is a provision to the agreement that allows us to extend days as long as Hamas is able to guarantee the release of at least 10 hostages from their

side. There have been some minimal breaches which which have been noted by by both parties but they did not harm the essence of the agreement and the agreement is still ongoing we are monitoring of course everything on the ground however we don't monitor we don't have anybody on the ground in russia and therefore we rely on the reports for coming from the ground and coming from both parties. And our job as mediator is to get that information across and to resolve these issues between the two parties before they escalate.

And we have succeeded in doing that in the past four days, and we hope to continue. It sounds to me as though the aspiration of Qatar and the folks that this gentleman works for and works with is a sustainable truce, not just a three or four day one for the exchange of hostages and prisoners. What do you think? Yeah, I hope to God that's the case. I mean, we have all been witnessing and of course our witnessing is nothing compared to the suffering. Right. all been witnessing, and of course our witnessing is nothing compared to the suffering, right? But we've all been witnessing every day for seven weeks now, videos and photos from Gaza that we wish we had never seen. And if this begins again on Thursday, this killing, these massacres, this bombardment, we're going to see those videos and photos again.

So the human side of this, of course, calls out, stop. But there's also, too, the point he makes at the end there, the escalation. When you have escalation, when you do not have these truces, when you do not have these these events that are meant for people to gain control of the circumstances so that actual negotiations, so that some type of process can begin to end, not just end the hostilities, but find a solution to whatever the grievances and the problems and the issues were. Well, all you have is escalation on top of escalation, response upon top of response. You know, what you're going to get to at some point is cataclysmic. And, you know, this is not just pertaining to, say, Gaza and Israel.

But if people seen what's happening, say, in Korea right now with the North Koreans have put a satellite up in space, but then also, too, they have begun remilitarizing the border. And so you go back to the Trump presidency. Remember, President Trump goes to Korea. He meets with the North Korean leader in South Korea, North Korea. They signed an agreement in 2018 trying to demilitarize their border. I mean, this is a great thing. These are great steps. North Koreans actually start taking apart some of their fortifications and weapon systems on the border. And then what happens? Well, we have to go back to our bellicose ways.

This isn't good for our hegemony. This, you know, on and on China, on and on Lockheed Martin, right? All those excuses, all those reasons, all those rationales come back and we start to abandon that detente. And so what do you see? You see the South Koreans pull out of that agreement. You see the US start sending nuclear armed submarines to Korea. And now the North Koreans have started to rebuild their fortifications on the border with Korea.

And now it's worse. I don't want to get into Korea, but it's worse over there than before Trump's good intentions. Right. The point being is that these are principles. These are things that we see throughout warfare, that when you are allowed the opportunity to talk, when you're allowed the opportunity to negotiate, then these types of things are possible. When the fighting is occurring, when all there is escalation, when all you do is provide the other side with a reason to respond, a necessity to respond, when all you do is give their hardliners, their people who are the warmongers, those who most profit from the war,

whenever you give, so like they're John Bolton's or Lindsey Graham's, right? Or Richard Blumenfall's reason, right? You know, back up what they're saying, give them evidence, if you will, then what do you get out of that? But you see this in countless examples. Remember, we couldn't talk to the North Vietnamese, if you will, then what do you get out of that? But you see this in countless examples. Remember, we couldn't talk to the North Vietnamese, couldn't talk, Brown and Reagan could not talk to

the Soviet Union. We couldn't talk to the Iraq insurgency. We couldn't talk to the Taliban. All that was disproved by talking to them and ending those conflicts or in a safe case of Soviet Union, having massive arms control agreements all right what typically happens during a truce do both sides regroup and get ready to move in for the kill as soon clock strikes midnight and is that what's happening now yeah very often i mean very often that will occur and you know and that that's just that's part of it is both sides have that opportunity to uh to rest refit regroup, replenish, what have you. But it also allows the opportunity for trust to be built because what you're trying to do as well

is that by ensuring that there are no ceasefire infractions, that neither side is violating the truce, you are showing them, you're showing the other side, and you're importantly showing those hardliners, those warmongers on your side, that this can work, that this has the possibility of working, that these are people that we can talk to. So when you see this, when you see a success of the last four days, whereas the Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson did say there have been some minor infractions, okay, minor infractions, but overall successful four days. Do you know if these negotiations were face-to-face, if Israeli leaders were in the same room with Hamas, or if it was all done remotely through the Qatari people? I don't know. I mean,

Hamas certainly has their people in Qatar. The senior leadership of Hamas lives there. You also have the headquarters of the US Central Command, the El Adid Air Base. I mean, all those types of things. So the American presence is there. And certainly the Israelis can hop on a plane and go wherever. So the Mossad was involved, the CIA was involved, the Egyptians were involved. The Qataris were involved. Whether or not they actually have face to face, I don't know. Were they in the same hotel and there was someone shuttling between conference rooms? Was it all done by telephone? There are reports that there was a breakdown in communications during the talks because of the silence and the communications from Gaza, that Yahya Simwar, who is the political leader of Hamas in Gaza, was quiet for a matter of days, possibly even longer, because he couldn't communicate,

again, because they were under siege and the communications were blacked out, which is, you know, another argument you throw in here. If you don't allow the other side to talk, how can you ever achieve anything if you're not going to hear them out? We had this in Afghanistan, Judge, where it wasn't until about 2013, 2014, that the Taliban were allowed to have freedom of movement where they could designate somebody to get in a car and drive to Kabul without having the worry that a hellfire missile was going to explode through their rear window. So how can you claim that you're trying to have talks and how you're trying to achieve a peaceful solution

when you're going to kill anyone who raises their head from the other side? So that's just another aspect of this that's worth talking about and demonstrating is that if you don't provide those opportunities, you don't provide those avenues, if you don't allow for, say, telephone conversations to come from Gaza, you can never get to a point where you're going to have some type of peaceful resolution. You and I and folks that watch us regularly have been fascinated with the propaganda and the role of the media. And there are certain things that you and I know happened, and I get most of this from Colonel McGregor, our friend and colleague,

that you don't see too much of in the media. There has been a seizure of an Israeli vessel in the eastern Mediterranean. There have been strikes on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria. What are we doing in Iraq and Syria? There have been more than a thousand Hezbollah missiles filed into northern Israel. The IDF has fired sophisticated weaponry 25 miles into Lebanon. There's a hot war going on in the West Bank. And there's a flotilla of a thousand Turkish commercial vessels making their way towards Israeli ports. You don't see any of that in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or the Washington Post. And it's incredibly important. And if this was a movie or a Netflix TV series, right, this would be where the season ends,

right? I mean, with everything that's occurring here, with all the possibilities that, where, my God, what could the outcomes be if this does occur? And, you know, so again, the need to talk, the need to negotiate, not to give the other side an excuse or a reason or a necessity, because all nations are bound, political leaders are bound by the same necessities. They have their own domestic political pressures that they have to respond to. So the idea that Hamas would never have launched an October 7th style attack based upon their constituency being kept in an open air concentration camp is just, you know, the inability of not understanding that inevitability is the same as not understanding of how predictable the Israeli response was going to be to that attack, right? The political pressures that are on these leaders. And so whether it's, say, the Houthi leadership

in Yemen, whether it's the Iranian leadership, the Turkish leadership, the Egyptian leadership, they have to balance it, but they are under enormous domestic political pressure to prove to their people that they are not going to let injustices or crimes occur without because then they're weak, right? Talk to me about the Turks. Could a thousand Turkish commercial vessels make their way onto the shores of Gaza, attempting to deliver aid to the Gazans without the express authorization of President Erdogan? This is not Turkish military. These are Turkish commercial vessels.

The last time this happened in 2014, the Israelis boarded the Turkish vessel, killed an American, killed 10 Turks, and paid 25 million, a pittance, in return for it. So could a flotilla of this size, a thousand boats, have happened without Erdogan having orchestrated? And if he did orchestrate it, what's his game plan? Well, and certainly there were other, after that 2014 flotillas, there have been other attempts to do flotillas to bring, and the idea behind that flotilla was to bring relief supplies to Gaza. So it's people under siege, 2.3 million people living under the control of the Israeli army in terms of what is allowed in and out of Gaza. It's been like that since 2007

or so. So the idea of that was to be as a relief flotilla, provide assistance, provide aid. And 10 of them were murdered for trying to do that. And following that, the various countries in the region, Greece, Turkey, I believe Italy as well possibly, wouldn't allow other flotillas to go forward. So the fact that you have this armada, basically, right, a fleet above these ships, if the reports are correct. It could not have happened without the Turkish government, without Erdogan saying yes. Now, the question will be, will the Turkish Navy accompany them? I don't know if the Turkish Air Force has the reach and the range to provide cover all the way down there, but you have this possibility where how will the Israelis respond if the ports in the northern part of Gaza have been destroyed? Iis respond if uh the ports in the northern part

of gaza have been destroyed i'm not sure if the ports in the southern part have been destroyed but if these ships do show up will the israeli navy and air force sink them will they kill tens hundreds thousands of people and what will the rest of the world do? I mean, the consequences of this are staggering. And this is one of those things where, you know, reality is much greater than fiction many times, right? Because just as we sit here and talk about this and we contemplate it, the idea of it, the scale of it, the historical significance of it, and the fact that you have, if again, the reports are true, a thousand ships full of people ready to go to die to help the Gazans, to aid the Gazans, to try and not just block the sea, stop the blockade, but to stop the ethnic cleansing that's occurring. This is really historic. And so if this is true,

and this does happen, how the Israelis respond, my God, that would mean the difference between this ethnic cleansing, this genocide, this slaughter coming to an end through negotiated solutions, or a regional war that, as we've talked about before, because of a domino effect of, you know, Israel attacks one nation, which brings in another nation, which eventually brings in Russia, which brings in the United States, and you're in something, you know, you're in World War III. Before we go, when you are back here next Tuesday, will the IDF have resumed its invasion and cleansing and eradication of Gazans in the Gaza Strip, or will we still be in some sort of a temporary holding pattern? Your best instinct on this. The Israelis are prepared to continue doing it.

The defense minister, Yoav Galan, said to the army, basically, be prepared for two more months of fighting. Any time Benjamin Netanyahu or other Israeli government officials speak about this truce, they are forceful in saying how temporary it is. And, you know, when Netanyahu first spoke about this truce last Wednesday, I believe it was, he began by saying the war is not ending. We're going to continue the war. I mean, so they've been adamant that they are not ending the war. So the pressure on the Qataris particularly to keep this thing going is massive. I mean, this is this is maybe we can't be too hyperbolic in the sense of what the Qataris are doing right now to prevent the fighting, to begin again this ethnic cleansing, because there are

two sides to what Israel is trying to accomplish here. One is what they claim, they want to eradicate Hamas, make Israel safer, et cetera, et cetera. Most people looking at this, many of us will say, this is the exact wrong way to do that. You're only engendering support for the resistance. You're only building a more extreme version of Hamas. But then the other side is that it's got nothing to do with that. This is about vengeance and about a continuation of an ethnic cleansing campaign that goes back a hundred years. And so if that's where the Israelis really are, they have no real interest in continuing a truce, in continuing these negotiations, because they want military victory, the victory of the ethnic cleansing, if you will. And perhaps by allowing these prisoner

exchanges to occur, it has released some of the pressure off of the Israeli government that they were under, because the Israeli government was, particularly in the last week or two, coming under very extreme pressure from its own population to do something about the hostages. So perhaps this is just enough of an event to allow the Israeli government to say, hey, look, we did this. The pressure's off. Let's go back to our ethnic cleansing. An unhappy but a brilliant and gifted analysis, Matt. Thank you very much. Thanks for being with us. All the best. Thanks, Judge. Sure. We'll see you next week. Coming up in just 30 minutes at three o'clock, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski on these similar issues. She has a little bit of a different take, but she ends up in the same place. Judge Napolitano. Oh, and we're above 241,000 on the subscriptions on our march to a quarter of a million by Christmas time.

Thank you very much, Judge Napolitano, for judging freedom. I'm out.