Judging Freedom - Prof. John J. Mearsheimer: Death and Destruction in Gaza - International Implications

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

In this enlightening conversation, we are honored to host Professor John J. Mearsheimer, a leading expert in international relations, as we delve into the critical topic of "Death and Destruction in Gaza: International Implications." Professor Mearsheimer brings his unparalleled expertise to shed light on the profound consequences of the conflicts in Gaza, exploring the ripple effects on the global stage.Our discussion transcends the immediate humanitarian crisis, delving into the broader international implications that arise from the ongoing turmoil. Professor Mearsheimer will guide us through the geopolitical landscape, examining how the events in Gaza reverberate across nations and influence diplomatic relations. This conversation promises to offer deep insights into the intricate web of political, social, and economic ramifications tied to the strife in Gaza, providing a comprehensive understanding of its impact on the international community. Join us for an engaging dialogue that seeks to uncover the layers of complexity surrounding "Death and Destruction in Gaza: International Implications."#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.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, December 15th, 2023. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago joins us in just a moment on death and destruction in Gaza and the legal implications of that for the United States government. But first this. Justin Fultano here. I love being a spokesperson for causes that I believe in, and one of them is

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the leader in this area of investing for the past 25 years. 800-511-4620. And don't forget to ask about a gold IRA. Find out how diversifying your portfolio from stocks and bonds into gold and silver can give you peace of mind, the peace of mind you deserve. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. And when you speak to these good folks, tell them the judge sent you. Professor Mearsheimer, welcome back to the show, my dear friend. Thanks very much for your time. Professor, as we speak, literally, the President of the United States is twisting arms on Capitol Hill, those that are still there on a Friday afternoon, trying to persuade them to vote yes on his request for $68 billion in aid for Ukraine. And his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, is in Tel Aviv trying

to persuade Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the death, destruction, and slaughter in Gaza. Question for you. Can the United States say no to Ukraine and Israel? And if it does, what happens? Well, I think it's quite clear that with regard to Ukraine, because of sentiment in the House of Representatives, we are effectively going to say no with regard to the $60 billion aid package. I mean, the Biden administration itself desperately wants to give Ukraine that money, but it can't get it through Congress at this point in time, unless the Biden administration pulls a rabbit out of its hat today. And I don't think that's going to happen. So I think effectively, we're saying no to Ukraine for the foreseeable future. With regard to Israel,

it's hard for me to imagine us, the United States, the Biden administration, saying no to Israel. I mean, what's happening here is that the Biden administration understands full well that what Israel is doing in Gaza is not in the American national interest, number one. And two, it's not in President Biden's interest if he's interested in getting reelected in the fall. So what we're trying to do is subtly in public and maybe forcefully in private, put pressure on the Israelis to change their behavior in Gaza. And my guess is that won't succeed. But the Israelis in Gaza have purposefully massacred civilians and intentionally starved the population. And this couldn't have happened without United States assistance. I don't know how you can answer this. I'm going to ask you to get into his head.

How can Joe Biden sleep with himself at night? I don't know. He's probably telling himself stories like many Americans are that, you know, create a narrative that bears little resemblance to the facts. But they don't recognize that. And therefore, they think that by supporting Israel down the line, we're on the morally correct side of this fight. How else could someone like Biden justify what he's doing? I mean, Biden is one of those people who is constantly talking about how deeply committed he is to human rights and the rules-based order. You would think that someone like that would be behaving in a very

different way with regard to Israeli behavior in Gaza, but that's not the case. The Israeli government officials speak of the human beings in Gaza in the most repellent ways. They say things like they are subhumans. We're going to turn a conunis, I believe a regional capital or regional city in the southern part of Gaza, you can elaborate on that, Into a soccer field, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem said that Palestinians should be buried alive. When was the last time we heard language like this from government officials about people in another country? It's hard to remember. It was a long time ago. Look, what's going on here is that the Israelis over time have enforced a brutal occupation on the Palestinians, mainly in the West Bank and in Gaza. And when you do something like

that, you basically have to create a story that the individuals that you're oppressing are animals, that they're subhuman. So actually, there is a longstanding tradition among Israeli leaders of referring to Palestinians as cockroaches or human animals. This is not the first time we've heard this rhetoric. And again, I want to emphasize, this is not from a handful of extremists in Israel. This is from Israeli leaders. So we've heard this before, but what's happened in the wake of October 7th is that that language has begun to proliferate, and Israeli leaders are talking about the Palestinians in absolutely horrible ways, and they're talking about doing absolutely horrible things to Gaza. You want to remember that there was one Israeli minister, again, this is a minister in the government,

who talked about the possibility of dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza. Yes, yes. This morning in Israel, the bodies of three Israeli hostages were recovered. And, of course, the IDF described in graphic detail what happened to these four people. As we came on air, the Washington Post reports that the IDF says it mistakenly killed those three hostages, mistaking them for Hamas fighters. Now, it's inconceivable to me how it could mistake them for Hamas fighters, but this brings us to another Israeli excess, and that is its known policy of intentionally killing its own, the so-called Hannibal Doctrine, in order to avoid the messiness of having to negotiate for their return. Does any other country do this? Well, leaving aside the Hannibal Doctrine for a second, it is possible that the Israelis inadvertently killed these prisoners. And this is a case where the Israelis inadvertently killed other Israelis.

I mean, you want to remember that when you get into a firefight and people are shooting at you and you're responding, it's never totally clear who you're going to end up killing. And by the way, this happened to some extent on October 7th. It's quite clear that on October 7th, a good number, we don't know what the number is, but a good number of the Israelis who were killed were not killed by Hamas. They were killed by the IDF. And I find that hardly surprising, given the nature of the fight that was taking place. It is hard to discriminate in those situations. Now, the Hannibal Doctrine is a very different matter. The argument there, or the claim there, is that what the Israelis do is that if it looks like an Israeli soldier or even an Israeli citizen is going to

be captured by Hamas or some other terrorist group, to use the Israelis language to describe those groups, then the IDF will kill those Israelis so that they don't become hostages. And the logic here is that Israelis have such a high regard for human life that if hostages are captured, it will be almost impossible for Israel not to pay an enormous price to get those hostages back. So it's better to surreptitiously kill them, better for the IDF to surreptitiously kill them rather than have them become hostages. And there is a great deal of evidence that there is this Hannibal doctrine in practice inside of Israel. That's murder. I guess you could call it that. Okay. Does the IDF do anything? Has the IDF been doing anything to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza?

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Yeah, I think that that's true. I mean, first of all, you want to understand that the Gaza Strip is a densely populated area, and the Israelis are dropping huge numbers of bombs on the Gaza Strip. They have already dumped an enormous amount of bombs. Many of those bombs are dumb bombs. That means that they're not precision-guided bombs. The estimate is that 45% of the bombs they have dropped are dumb bombs. And furthermore, many of those dumb bombs they've dropped are very large. They've been dropping 2,000-pound and 1,000-pound bombs on Gaza. And those kind of bombs, bombs of that size, are going to do enormous damage. So it's unsurprising that when you look at the number of buildings that the Israelis have destroyed, the estimates are that they have destroyed or

damaged up to 100,000 buildings, right? And if you compare this to the American and British firebombing of German cities in World War II, you get a sense for what the Israelis are doing in northern Gaza. The estimate is that in northern Gaza, the Israelis have destroyed or damaged 68% of the buildings. This is in northern Gaza, 68%. When we firebombed Cologne, the number was 61%. 61% buildings were destroyed or damaged. With Dresden, it was 59%. Hamburg was more than northern Gaza. It was 75% of the buildings were damaged or destroyed in Hamburg, which we firebombed and effectively burned much of the city to the ground. Compare that to Gaza, 68% of the buildings. This is stunning. Here's the president's national security advisor,

number six, Chris, Jake Sullivan, responding to a reporter question about the use of these so-called dumb bombs. Almost half of the 30,000 bombs that have been dropped on Gaza have been so-called dumb bombs, imprecise. If there was a real intent to protect civilians, wouldn't they be using much more precise, smaller munitions? When it comes to the issue of the bombs, the type of bombs that Israel is using, what I would say is that different types of munitions require different types of military operations,

meaning the method by which bombs are delivered that don't have the tail kits on them is different in terms of how the planes fly, in terms of how the targets are selected. And they all go through the same process, a process by which Israel selects targets and tries to distinguish between targets that hit Hamas and those that might take the lives of innocent civilians. At the end of the day, what we have consistently said is that Israel has the intent to make sure that it is drawing those distinctions clearly and in a sustainable way. And we want to see the results match up to that. That's a conversation that I had in full with them today and yesterday as well.

And we'll continue to do that, including on the type of munitions they use and when they use a certain type of munitions, how those are delivered to ensure that from the United States' perspective, they are fulfilling their obligations, their responsibilities as a state to international humanitarian law. This is hogwash. This is a non-answer that purports to justify war crimes. Look, the Israelis have dropped about 29,000 bombs on Gaza. This is a very small piece of real estate. People are tightly packed in. You want to remember they pushed all those people out of northern Gaza, and they're now even more densely packed in in southern Gaza. They dropped 29, approximately 29,000 bombs.

45% of them are dumb bombs. Many of the bombs they have dropped are 2,000 and 1,000 pound bombs, which for those who don't understand these sorts of things are enormously powerful bombs. There is hardly any evidence that they're going to any lengths to discriminate between civilians and fighters on the ground. And furthermore, I would ask you this, Judge, how can you tell who are the fighters on the ground and who are the civilians on the ground? What we know is that most of the fighters are in the tunnels. Well, if most of the fighters are in the tunnels hiding from the IDF, that tells you that the people that they're killing up on top of the ground are civilians, whether they're women and children. And you want to remember probably about 70% of the people that they're killing are women and children. This is shocking. And for people like Jake Sullivan to get up there, up the podium and try and excuse this and make the case that the Israelis are really going to great lengths not to kill civilians is not a serious argument. $106 or $107 million worth of artillery shells and small sidearm ammunition, $100 million more or less.

In order to do that under the law, either the president or the secretary of defense or the secretary of state, in order to bypass Congress, needed to certify under oath that the purpose of the exercise of the emergency authority was an acute emergency affecting the national security of the United States. Professor, can anybody even make an argument that sending $100 million worth of artillery shells and small arms ammunition is necessary to preserve or deflect an emergency to the national security of the United States? No. I mean, what's going on here is that the United States is joined at the hip with Israel, and we are supporting this operation in Gaza fully. I mean, the Israelis could not fight the war the way they're now fighting it without full-scale American support, and they're getting full-scale American support. And there's no evidence at this

point in time anyway, that the Biden administration is going to back off and stop sending them what they need. And if the Biden administration has to play games to get them munitions quickly, it will play those games. We're in this one for the long term. But these games are potentially criminal. To make an assertion like that under oath is perjury. And who does he make the assertion to? It's just a piece of paper that's eventually filed with the president of the Senate, who's Vice President Harris, the Speaker of the House, because they're justifying bypassing Congress. And Congress has been very amenable to them when they want something for Israel. So I really don't

get this. I think they just wanted to do it very quickly. The Israelis told them they needed the munitions quickly. And the administration didn't want to go through all the efforts that it would take to get it through Congress. But you're absolutely right. Congress would have been a rubber stamp. There's no question about this. But the key point I would make to you is you don't have to worry about Jake Sullivan being punished once this war is over with. Nothing will happen to him.

Unfortunately, probably true. Oh, maybe a Trump Department of Justice would prosecute these people, but we won't go there, at least not now. a well-known journalist, an American who's lived in Israel, whose observations about Gaza are nearly identical to yours, how quickly Joe Biden could put a stop to what's happening in Israel, the policy of the Netanyahu administration. Here's what his answer was. Well, the Biden administration could end the occupation of Palestine tomorrow. They can have a Palestinian state while we're doing this live stream. All they have to do is say no more spare parts for your F-16s, no more F-35s, and it's over because Israel depends, its occupation depends entirely on its direct line to Washington. And Biden won't do that. And Tony Blinken won't do that

because Tony Blinken comes from a long line of Israel lobbyists. Agreed. Well, I think that Max is right that we have tremendous course of leverage over the Israelis. It involves economic aid. It involves military aid. and very importantly, it involves diplomatic aid as well. For a long time now, we could have stopped the occupation if we wanted to. And we did want to, but that raises the question, why didn't we? And the answer is because of the power of the Israel lobby. And as Max alludes to, with people like Tony Blinken in power and even Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan, there's no way the occupation is going to be ended anytime soon. So when you hear all this talk about a two-state solution, we've got to move towards a two-state

solution when this war is over with. The Israelis have already made it clear that they have zero interest in a two-state solution. Then you ask yourself the question, what will the United States do? Do you really believe that we would put any pressure on Israel to move to a two-state solution? I don't think so. Here's President Biden, cut number four, responding to a reporter question saying, oh, Israel, please be more careful. May God protect our troops. Thank you very, very much.

President Biden, do you want Israel to scale back its assault on Gaza by the end of the year? Do you want them to tone it down, move to a lower intensity phase? I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives, not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful. He's obviously not using the tools that are available to him to compel it, like as Max just ticked off, to compel Israel to be more careful. Yeah, I mean, Tony Blinken recently said that far too many civilians are being killed in Gaza and far too many civilians are being wounded. And he said we want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them. That's what he said. We want to do everything possible. Stop the bombs, Tony.

Yeah, I mean, this is not serious. I said Tony, I meant Jakeake you're right you're right we're going to play switch gears to ukraine if i may we have a montage of clips of president biden starting out by saying putin has lost the war uh we're in it for as long as it takes then he says we're in it for as long as we can. Then he says, well, Putin might win the war, and if he does, it's going to result in Americans, American boys fighting Russian boys. We'll watch the clip, we'll talk about it, and we'll compare it to President Putin's four-hour, we're not going to run the full four hours. Press conference yesterday. First, President Biden all over the place. Putin's war of conquest is failing.

Russia's military has lost half its territory it once occupied. It's worth fighting for, for as long as it takes. And that's how long we're going to be with you, Mr. President, for as long as it takes. We'll do it. And we're advancing this goal by providing them the support Ukraine needs now on the battlefield and helping them strengthen their military over the long term. The fact of the matter is that I believe we'll have the funding necessary to support Ukraine as long as it takes. The American people can be and should be incredibly proud of the part they played in supporting Ukraine's success. We'll continue to supply Ukraine with critical weapons and equipment as long as we can.

If Putin takes Ukraine, he won't stop there. It's important to see the long run here. He's going to keep going. He's made that pretty clear. If Putin attacks a NATO ally, then we'll have something that we don't seek and that we don't have today. American troops fighting Russian troops. American troops fighting Russian troops if he moves into other parts of NATO. Well, obviously, that last statement, which he made earlier this week,

is radically inconsistent with his other statements. But again, we have a president of the United States attempting to terrify members of Congress, principally Republicans in the House, on the basis of a long discredited domino theory that if Putin, quote, takes Ukraine, which he said a hundred times he doesn't plan to do, the last thing he wants to do is govern Ukraine, somehow that's going to result and that's going to trigger NATO and produce American boys fighting Russian boys. What do you think of the president's rationale, Professor Mearsheimer? Well, I think, you know, the rationale makes no sense. As you say, he's not bent on taking Ukraine. He doesn't have the capability to take Ukraine. First of all, he'd need well over a million troops to conquer it and to occupy it. And it would be a nightmare in the end. So

that's not going to happen. And the idea that he's bent on conquering other countries in Eastern Europe is an argument that just doesn't hold up. So I think this is just a simple case of threat inflation. And what President Biden is doing, and it's understandable from his perspective, is he's trying to do everything he can to get Congress to release that money, because he has promised Zelensky and the Ukrainians that he would be with them for the long term. But it looks like there are a lot of Americans and a lot of Republicans who have given up on Ukraine and think that it's throwing money down a rat hole. And since they control the House of Representatives for the foreseeable future, it's going to be very difficult for Biden to unloosen that money. And, you know, I think

therefore, you know, Ukraine is in serious trouble. But I'd go a step further. Look, excuse me, whether Ukraine gets the money or not, it's losing the war, right? The real problem here is not money. The real problem here is weaponry. We don't have the weaponry to give the Ukrainians. We don't have artillery shells. We don't have artillery tubes. We don't have tanks. We can give them dollar bills, but that's not what they need. They need the weaponry, and we don't have the. We can give them dollar bills, but that's not what they need. They need the weaponry, and we don't have the weaponry to give them. Have we effectively weakened our own ability to defend our own shores, God forbid, by not having the equipment that you would expect the Defense Department to have available because we gave it away?

No. The fact is the United States is the most secure great power in the history of the world. There's no way that any country could invade the United States. There's no country in the Western Hemisphere that even comes close to having enough power to attack the United States. And for any country in Europe or Asia to attack us, they'd have to come across either the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean, and that's just not happening. So, excuse me, we're in good shape on that front. The Europeans are in terrible shape. The European militaries are in no position to fight the Russians. But the fact is, as we were saying a

few minutes ago, the Russians are not going to invade Eastern Europe or Western Europe. So the Europeans are not going to have to fight the Russians. And by the way, this is one of the reasons the Europeans have spent so little money in defense since the Cold War ended. They don't fear the Russians. And there's, again, no chance that Putin will invade Eastern Europe. Yesterday, President Putin gave his annual four-hour press conference preceded by a 20 or 30-minute speech. Here's a little clip, which is a window into his brain. Listen to what he says, please, and watch his demeanor, and I'd love your thoughts. There will be peace when we achieve our goals.

Now, let's get back to these goals. They don't change. Let me remind you of what we talked about, about the denazification of Ukraine, about demilitarization, about its neutral status. We will agree on demilitarization, about its neutral status. We will agree on demilitarization and agree on certain parameters. During the negotiations in Istanbul, we agreed on them, but then they simply threw these agreements into the oven.

There are other possibilities, either to reach an agreement or to resolve it by force. This is what we will strive for. He's been consistent since day one, has he not? He has. He looks like he feels like he's in control, that events are going his way. And, of course, they are. You can tell from the smile on his face. Vladimir Putin today looks a lot happier and a lot more confident than he did a year ago, and I think that is the case for good reason. Where this all ends up still remains to be seen. I mean, his stated goals are quite vague, other than the fact that he definitely wants Ukraine not to be a NATO. He wants Ukraine to be a neutral state. That's, I think, the one goal that the Russians will not equivocate on.

But, you know, exactly how this plays out, it just remains to be seen. And I think the most important question is how much territory in Ukraine, beyond the territory that Russia now controls, that it will end up acquiring and annexing. Here's someone who agrees with him, President Viktor Orban, on whether or not Ukraine should be in NATO. Why we are here is not to make business. It's not about bargain. It's not about deal. We represent approaches and principles. So to give money to Ukraine is easy to do because in short term, the money for Ukraine is already in the budget. So there is no any extra decision to give it in short term. In long term and the bigger sum of money, my position is that we should give it outside. But we are not under the pressure of the time because the bridging solution is already in the budget.

Enlargement is not a theoretical issue. Enlargement is a merit-based, legally detailed process, which has preconditions. We have set up seven preconditions. And even by the evaluation of the commission, three out of the seven is not fulfilled. So there is no reason to negotiate membership of Ukraine now. Three of the seven have not been fulfilled. As you know, it's a years-long process. I thought it was foolhardy for NATO even to take a vote. He had to veto it yesterday. That's not NATO. That's the EU. That's talking about bringing Ukraine into the European

Union. Of course, Orban feels the same way about NATO. And what he's saying here is that giving that money to Ukraine does not make good sense. And by the way, just to go to NATO for a second, and I think is true to some extent of the EU as well, because the Russian CEU membership is a stalking horse for NATO membership. But the fact is that if you want to help Ukraine, it would be very smart to stop talking about bringing Ukraine into NATO and to stop talking about bringing Ukraine into the EU, because it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. And it just gives the Russians even greater incentives to conquer more territory and to do more to turn Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. So I think what the West is trying to do by bringing Ukraine into the EU and by bringing Ukraine into NATO is not in Ukraine's interest.

Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much. I think you know that this week we achieved one of our goals two weeks before our time period, which was 250,000 subscribers before Christmas in great measure because of the time you spend with us. And I hope you can continue to do so. And thank you for your generosity. You're more than welcome, Judge. Thank you. All right. A great conversation with a brilliant teacher. Coming up next at 3 o'clock Eastern, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. At 4 o'clock Eastern, the roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.

And at 5 o'clock, you and me. Yes, the judge. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'll turn it for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!