Judging Freedom - Prof. John J. Mearsheimer: Netanyahu’s Grave Mistakes

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Prof. John J. Mearsheimer: Netanyahu’s Grave MistakesSee 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 Thursday, August 1st. I almost said July. August 1st, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor, thank you very much for joining you. I missed you. Two quiet weeks while I was away, being sarcastic, of course, but thank you for joining us. Among the events that took place during our two-week hiatus was Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to the U.S. Congress, and it was as advertised. There were 58 standing ovations and a 55-minute speech. What is the geopolitical significance of Netanyahu's rapturous reception by Congress? Well, I think that most people around the world

were not surprised by what happened. This isn't the first time he appeared before Congress and was treated like royalty. I mean, this has happened before. And most people around the world understand full well that basically the Israel lobby owns Congress, and they can pretty much get anything they want. So it's not surprising in that sense. But the fact is that it further embarrasses the United States. It makes us look like the world's greatest hypocrites. We are always talking about international law, a rules-based system, and so forth and so on, the importance of human rights. And here you have a war criminal. He is a war criminal. He is a leader who is in charge of a genocidal campaign in Gaza, who is being wildly cheered by most of Congress. And this just does enormous damage to America's

reputation. And it will be a stain on our reputation for the foreseeable future, as it should be. What turned my stomach was my own conclusion that those people standing for him, they don't represent me, They don't represent the American people. They represent the donor class that got them elected. Very few had the courage not to go. Congressman Thomas Massey, a longtime friend of mine, the only Republican, and maybe about 100 Democrats, although many of those Democrats that didn't show, like Kamala Harris, for example, voted for and supported all the appropriations to Israel. They just didn't want to be seen in the same room with the war criminal.

Well, I'll give those people who didn't go credit for not being there. You're absolutely right that normally they would support Israel hook, line, and sinker when it comes to the funds and weapons that they need to kill Palestinians in Gaza. But nevertheless, the fact they didn't appear when Netanyahu appeared on Capitol Hill is a minor victory, and I feel good about that. Yeah, I agree with you. Were you surprised that he was so bellicose that he offered no peace plan? In fact, he didn't mention peace or the concept of peace at all. No, I was not surprised that he was so bellicose. I also was not surprised that he told a handful of lies, bold-faced lies, which, of course, Congress just lapped up. And it's very important to understand on your point about the peace plan what's going on here

is that we in the United States or we in the West are hoping that he will come up with some sort of agreement to go along with a ceasefire and then some sort of agreement to go along with working out a viable political solution for dealing with Gaza over the long term. He, of course, has no interest in doing either one of those things, which is very important to understand that. Basically, what he is interested in doing is ethnically cleansing Gaza. He wants to drive all of the Palestinians out. He's not interested in the ceasefire. He wants to do everything he can to make Gaza Palestinian free. Well, he just presided over the murder of the chief negotiator on the other side, and of the team, there's the fellow they killed, and of the team of negotiators,

he was the most moderate, pushing for the ceasefire most aggressively, and they executed him. Yes. I mean, this is just a way of not putting Netanyahu or the Israelis more generally in a situation where they have to maneuver to kill any meaningful negotiations for a ceasefire. If you kill Hanyei the way they did, you can say that that is why we're not having any peace negotiations. But how can you be taken seriously at the negotiating table when you murder somebody on the other side of the table? I realize he wasn't literally on the other side of the table, but he was calling the shots.

They're not interested in being taken seriously at the negotiating table. They're not interested in going to the negotiating table. As I said, their basic goal is to cleanse Gaza. All right, then they have been duping, and maybe it's easy to do, Joe Biden and Tony Blinken since October. This is no surprise to you, I hope, right? Of course, that's what they're doing. And Biden and Blinken are not very sophisticated when it comes to thinking about Israel. One could argue

they're not very sophisticated about international politics in general. But with regard to Israel, with regard to what Netanyahu is doing, it's very clear that Netanyahu is in charge, and he manipulates Biden and Blinken as he sees fit, and they go along with it with a smile on their face. Here's the Algerian ambassador to the United Nations at the Security Council. You'll see the Israeli ambassador, rather than politely listen, pull the earplug of the translation out of his ear. I've never seen that before, but maybe that's what happens at the Security Council. Cut number 14, Chris. We are on the precipice of a catastrophe. This morning, Israel committed an act of terror by assassinating Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, violating international law, violating the

sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Everything he said was truthful and documented, correct? Correct. And the Israelis don't even want to talk about it. Add to that, before we get to where this is going, the killing of a Hezbollah commander in Beirut under the pretext, if you can believe this, if they expect people to believe this, that he killed fellow Arabs who were playing soccer in the Golan Heights. It's inconceivable to me that Hezbollah would do that, but that was the excuse for blowing him away in Beirut.

How many more of these staged assassinations can these, in foreign countries countries of people who are not engaged in violence, can the Israelis get away with before this blows up? Many, many more, because the United States protects them at every turn, and the United States has accomplices in Western Europe. So there's nothing to stop the Israelis here. What people have to understand is the power of the Israel lobby. And you saw this clearly when Benjamin Netanyahu came to Capitol Hill on July 24th, right? That's the Israel lobby at work, or what you like to call the donor class at work. And we protect Israel no matter what. So they can start wars, they can do pretty much anything, and the United States will protect them. And indeed, it's quite clear that we will not only protect them, we will arm

them. I don't know what more to say. What will happen if Hezbollah attacks in a very forceful way. There's Kamala Harris. She obviously didn't have a problem shaking his hand in front of the cameras there. She just didn't want to do it in the Congress. But what happens if they ramp up the violence with Hezbollah and Iran gets involved? This will not be good for us, and it will not be good for Israel. What you want to understand here, and I think this is something that most Americans don't understand. Please explain.

Israel is in really deep trouble. It's in really deep trouble today. And more importantly, it has no way out. They were unable to defeat Hamas in Gaza, number one. Number two, they're stuck in Gaza, right? They're not getting out. And you remember, they left in 2005 because it was a hornet's nest. They're back in there. Number three, they have no meaningful military solution against Hezbollah.

They cannot defeat Hezbollah. And with regard to Iran, even if they get into a war with Iran and they launch lots of missiles and rockets and aerial attacks at Iran and do a lot of destruction, Iran will still be there. And Iran, by the way, is on the road to acquiring nuclear weapons. So they have all of those external problems. Then they have these wicked internal problems, which we saw on display earlier this week surrounding these nine reservists who were arrested for gang raping a Palestinian prisoner. And by the way, that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the horrors that the Israelis have been inflicting on the Palestinians. But anyway, these nine reservists who engaged in this gang rape were arrested. And the end result is that

ultra-rightists broke in to two different army bases to reverse this arrest. And if you look at the performance of the police and you look at the performances of the reservists in the IDF, some of whom joined with the protesters, you see that the Israelis run the real risk down the road of a civil war. And finally, you want to understand that what's on display these days is manifest evidence that Israel is heavily dependent on the United States. They cannot fight these wars. They cannot continue like this without American support. We have given them $18 billion in 2024. Just think about that. $18 billion. And we helped them in their military fight with Iran on April 14th. We are giving them all sorts of weaponry. They need us. They need us to provide diplomatic support. So this is not quite the independent country that Israel likes to think of itself as. It is heavily dependent on the United States. So when you take all these factors

into account, you then ask yourself the question, how can they get out of this? Attack Hezbollah in Lebanon? Are we serious? They did this in 1982. They did it in 2006. It was a disaster. Their army is worn out from what's happened in Gaza, where they haven't beaten Hamas. They would be insane to invade Lebanon, even if we were to help them. So how do they fix that problem? How do they fix the problem in Gaza? All of these problems are unfixable. They are in trouble, and they are digging deeper.

And the reason they're digging deeper and the reason these problems keep getting exacerbated every day, in my view, can be stated in one word, Netanyahu. Again, you don't want to blame it all on Netanyahu, and you want to remember that there are people to the right of him inside of Israel. He is basically a centrist. He is not an arch right winger. There's no left to speak of in Israel. There's sort of a center and a far right and a right. And Netanyahu, you can put him in the center or on the right. He's not on the far right, but there are people to the right of him. And if Netanyahu were to go away tomorrow, the basic problem that I described would not change. Also, I would note to you that you cannot underestimate the responsibility that the donor class has for causing this problem or causing the set of problems that Israel faces and perpetuating those problems. The donor class makes it almost impossible for the United States to put any pressure on Israel to act in smarter ways. The government of the United States, for all its

faults, has understood for a long time that Israel is pursuing suicidal policies, especially with regard to the occupation. But we cannot put any pressure on Israel simply because of the donor class. So you want to remember that Israel is digging deeper and deeper and deeper. It is getting more and more support from the donor class than ever. When the right-wingers broke into the prison, did they successfully extract the nine IDF prisoners, or are they still incarcerated for the horrific crimes that they committed? No, they're still incarcerated. They broke into the first base, at which point the Israelis moved the prisoners to a different

base north of Tel Aviv, and then the protesters broke into that base. But by that point in time, the security forces inside of Israel had forcefully moved to shut down the protests, and therefore the prisoners remained in jail. And after that first break-in, the Knesset actually debated in immunity for IDF members who abuse and torture Palestinians. And at the same time they debated that, they debated whether or not it should be lawful to put a bullet between the eyes of Palestinian prisoners, uncharged, unprosecuted, unconvicted, because they need bed space, they need room in their jails. What kind of a democracy has debates like that?

The question I would ask you is why do they even need to have these debates? They just do this as a matter of course. This is the way the Israelis act. All you have to do is look at the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations and what happens in Israeli prisons to understand that this is commonplace behavior. I would guess the debate was because they wanted to satisfy the right if this passed, and it was proposed by the Likud, by Netanyahu's coalition, so it presumably will pass when there's a vote. But if it passes, then those nine guys are set free. Well, are you going to be surprised if that happens? No, I'm not going to be surprised, but my stomach is going to be turned

that things like that happen under our eyes and still we give them money. Is there anything the Israeli government could do that would cause the American government to say enough is enough? Not that I can think of. I hope I'm wrong. Or would it take a President Max Blumenthal before something like that is going to happen? Well, it would be very nice if Max was elected president

and he could override Congress at every turn and then execute a more rational policy toward Israel. But as you and I both know, that's not going to happen anytime soon. But I just want to say one other thing on this, Judge. It is important to understand that Israel's reputation does matter. It's hard to say exactly how it matters at this point, but Israel is doing enormous damage to its reputation inside the United States and outside of the United States, around the world. We live in the age of instant information. Everything that happens inside of Israel is almost everything of any consequence is filmed. And those videos that result are sent around the

world. There are stories on the front pages of newspapers and so forth and so on. So people are well aware of what's going on here. And this, by the way, is why you have this real disjuncture between public opinion in the United States and how Congress acts towards Israel. The lobby is able to basically use its leverage on policymakers or politicians to get what it wants, but it's having the devil of a time controlling the discourse because it's so obvious to people what Israel is doing. And as is the case with you, I believe it's repulsive to huge numbers of Americans and huge numbers of other people outside of the United States. Does the United States have any credibility in the international diplomatic community? Well, it has some, but it's diminishing

for sure. Why is it diminishing? Because of the obsequient behavior towards Israel? Yes, in good part because of how we have reacted to the efforts of the ICJ and the ICC to hold Israel accountable for its behavior. I think for most people around the world, the ICC and the ICJ are held in very high regard. Lots of people around the world really care about international law, and they expect the United States, which helped create this rule-based order, to obey the rules and to get countries like Israel to obey those rules as well. And when that doesn't happen, it does significant damage to our reputation. Switching gears, Professor Mearsheimer, what is the significance of Russian and Chinese fighter jets right off the coast of Alaska? Basically, the Russians and the Chinese are telling the Americans, we can do to you what you do to us.

The Americans fly aircraft and maneuver ships up and down the Chinese coastline. And of course, if you think about what's happening with regard to NATO expansion, in particular, what's happening inside of Ukraine, you basically see the United States thinks that it can get right up into Russia's face. And the Russians tell us they don't like this. And we say, too bad. Well, the Russians are retaliating by saying we can play the same game that you're playing. And you saw this, by the way, a few weeks back when the Russians sent a submarine and some other ships off the coast of Florida to visit Cuba. Are there submarines capable of firing nuclear weapons off the Atlantic coast of the United States which could reach

Atlanta or Washington or Boston or New York? I don't know whether they're there now, but there's no question that the Russians have submarines armed with nuclear weapons that can hit the United States. There's just no question about that. And the same thing is true with regard to the United States. We have submarines that can hit China or can hit the United States very quickly. If the Hezbollah-Israeli conflagration gets out of control and Iran enters and Turkey enters, would Russia enter? I think the Russians would be very reluctant to enter, but their hand could be forced.

I mean, if the Turks were to come in, they'd have to come through Syria. And the Russians are present in Syria in rather significant numbers. And if the United States and the Israelis started bombing Turkish forces in Syria. I mean, not only would that involve Syria, it might involve the Russians. And by the way, if you talk about that scenario, you want to remember that Turkey is a member of NATO. You're reading my mind. So what happens then? A NATO member has been attacked under Article 5 by another NATO member, the United States of America, the creator of NATO. You tell me.

I have no idea. No, I have no idea either what would happen. This is why we, I believe, do not want this war to escalate. Here I'm talking about the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. We do not want it to escalate because we can see all these possible ways that that war plays itself out that would be disastrous for the United States. But what I find amazing about American foreign policymakers' behavior on this issue is how foolish it is. And you're saying to yourself, what does he mean?

The Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, has said that if Israel gets into a war with Hezbollah, the United States will come to Israel's defense. This is not something you want to say if you're trying to cool the Israelis' jets. You want to basically convey to the Israelis that they're on their own, and you're not going to bail them out this time, because that greatly reduces their incentive to start a war. But Austin tells them, and here we're talking about the Israelis, that if they get into a fight with Hezbollah, we will come to their aid. This just makes it more likely. I'm not saying it means that it will happen, but it makes it more likely that the Israelis will pick a fight with Hezbollah and then we'll go down the roads that you were describing before, the possible roads where the Turks might come in, the Russians might come in,

and so forth and so on. So you just see here again how foolish American foreign policy is. But that aid would likely come from the sea or the sky. We're not going to send Marines into the Golan Heights or into the West Bank or into northern Israel, are we? No, I don't think so. I think that's extremely unlikely. But to go back to the scenarios that you were positing, what if the Turks come in? What if the Russians come in?

What if the Iranians come in? Then our bets are off. Who knows exactly how this would play out? The thing you want to remember here is that we live in a world of radical uncertainty. You and I can posit all sorts of scenarios that might occur if the Israelis and Hezbollah get into a full-scale fight, but we can't be sure which one will occur. And you can posit some really dangerous scenarios from an American point of view and not rule them out of court. And this, of course, is why we should be doing everything we can to make sure that such a war doesn't start.

Chris, do we still have the clip of President Erdogan? Yes. Okay. Yes, okay. So, Professor Mearsheimer, here's President Erdogan in his own way threatening Israel. Tell me what you think of this. What was our import-export ratio in the defense industry? Where have we come to? But my dear brothers and sisters, let none of these fool us or should deceive us. We must be very strong so that this Israel cannot do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we will do the same to them. There is no reason for us not to. We only have to be strong so that we can take these steps.

This is not the first time he's been harshly critical of the Israeli government, but now he says there's no reason not to enter Israel. Is he a blowhard, or is this a serious threat? Well, who knows for sure. I mean, he's committed himself publicly to doing this. So he will pay a certain price if he backs off. And as you know, sometimes you get into situations where you're boxed in, where you really have no choice. And he may feel that he has to do something to back up those words. It may be the case that he is a blowhard, and in the event, he's afraid to do anything of any consequence. But then again, that might not be true. We don't know for sure. But again, you just see more evidence of the fact that we are out on a slippery slope. And if we're not careful, we could slide into a major war, we meaning the United States in the Middle East, which is the last thing we need at this point in time.

Transitioning just for a moment over to Ukraine, it seems from all of your colleagues who are on the show and everything that I've been able to see, that things are getting worse and worse for Ukraine and Russia's march westward is inexorable and unstoppable. Do you agree? Yeah. And I think if you look at the mainstream media, it's beginning to catch up with that line of argument. I think that the mainstream media understands now that the Russians are clobbering the Ukrainians. And more importantly, that the Ukrainians have no way of rectifying the problem, or to put it in more general terms, the Ukrainians plus the West together have no way of rectifying the problem. So what's going to happen here is it's only going to get worse. We just can't tell a story as to how Ukraine fixes this problem and stems the bleeding or even reverses the tide, which is what a lot of people talk about. It's just

not going to happen. The Ukrainians are in deep trouble. And finally, the mainstream media is catching up with that story. Do you think maybe there's some negotiations going on that we don't know about through intermediaries? Just as we woke up this morning and found out that the Turks had negotiated this enormous prisoner swap that involved nine different countries, but two people that were very much in focus on the part of the American public, Whelan and Gershkovich, and one person very much the focus, I forget his name, the professional killer in Germany, on the focus of the Russians? Well, I think there is a possibility that negotiations are taking place in the back

channel. I think a lot of Americans are hopeful that once those negotiations get started, they will quickly lead to a resolution of this war in Ukraine. I don't think that's going to happen. I think that unless the Ukrainian military completely collapses on the battlefield, it is going to be extremely difficult to get any sort of agreement. And that is due in large part to the fact that the Russians are making extreme demands, as they should from my point of view. They're making extreme demands. And those are demands that the Ukrainians and the West, or the Americans mainly, will be unwilling to accept. So I just don't see how you can find the actual ingredients that are necessary for a meaningful peace agreement. Where's the woman that started all this? Where's Victoria Nuland today. Well, you know. She's teaching at Columbia University with her friend Hillary Clinton,

although they're probably on summer break, just like the University of Chicago. But I would not blame Victoria Nuland. The person who really started this was George W. Bush. And you could even make the argument that the person who started it was George W. Bush. And you could even make the argument that the person who started it was Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton is the president who started NATO expansion and basically made it clear that we had an open door policy on NATO expansion. George W. Bush in April 2008, of course, was the president who said that Ukraine was going to become part of NATO. But every president since George W. Bush has doubled down on our effort to bring Ukraine into NATO.

Who is it that promised Gorbachev that NATO would never move one inch eastward? That must have been Jim Baker under George H.W. Bush. Am I right? That's correct. And that's before Bill Clinton. That's before Bill Clinton. When Bill Clinton came to office, there was no commitment to expand NATO. And he made the initial decision, I believe it was made in 1994. And Clinton, of course, came into power in January of 1993. And shortly after he came into power, we began to debate the whole question of what to do with Eastern Europe. And at first, people talked about the Partnership for Peace, which was something the Russians could easily live with.

But then we began to talk seriously about NATO expansion. And it's very important to understand that in the 1990s in the United States, there was a huge debate between people who favored NATO expansion, and this of course includes President Clinton himself, and those who were opposed to said that someday this is going to blow up in our face and the Russians are going to react and we're going to have a major conflict in Eastern Europe that's not going to be good. And they, of course, proved right. But they lost the debate in the 90s. And the point that I made to you is after the 90s were over, after Bill Clinton left office, right? And George W. Bush came into power in his last year in office, 2008. That's when he decided that he wanted to cap off his presidency with a feather in his cap. And that feather in his cap was going to be NATO expansion into Ukraine. And of course, that is the principal decision that led to the disaster today. although you don't want to lose sight of the fact that President Obama, President Trump, President Biden have all doubled down on President

George W. Bush's April 2008 decision. Right. Professor Mears-Shamer, thank you very much. Thank you for the recitation of a forgotten history. And thank you for your analysis of what's happening now. My vacations are history. I hope you'll come back and visit with us again next week. I will. And I look forward to it. Likewise.

Thank you. All the best, my friend. All the best to you. Thank you. Coming up at four o'clock Eastern this afternoon, Aaron Matei. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.