Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: How the Israeli invasion of Gaza is hurting Israel?

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

#israel #Hama #Gaza #war #peaceWhat are the consequences of a full-scale ground invasion by Israel into Gaza? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thanks for watching! Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, October 27th, 2023. The world-renowned Professor John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, it's always a pleasure. I know you've been traveling around the world, and I deeply appreciate your coming to the show upon your return. We missed you, and welcome back. Thank you. I don't think that we have spoken about the Israeli Hamas conflagration, because I don't think it had happened when last we spoke. So I would love to get, and I know the audience would love to hear your views on this. What are the consequences, in your view, of a full-scale Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip? Well, I think, first of all, it'll be disastrous for Israel if that were to happen. I think they're not going to be successful. There's

no way that they can eliminate Hamas. And in the process, the Israelis will suffer huge numbers of casualties and their position in terms of world opinion will diminish significantly. It's already diminishing at a rapid pace, but it will even get worse. And then there's the whole possibility of escalation. Hezbollah may come in, Iran may come in. Nobody knows for sure what is going to happen in terms of horizontal escalation in this case. So it's all bad news for the Israelis, and it's also bad news for the Americans. Why is the reputation of the state of Israel been diminished in the past three weeks? I mean, they were the victims of this initial attack. I mean, does this go back to the manner in which the state of Israel was formed in 1947 and 1948?

Well, there's three big issues on the table when you talk about Israel's image. One is what happened on October 7th. And there, Israel is in excellent shape because almost everybody in the West and lots of people around the world condemn Hamas on what happened on October 7th. What's also up there in bright lights is the question of what provoked Hamas to do this. And then number two, what Israel's response has been to October 7th. And when those two issues are put on the table, the Israelis end up looking very bad, because most people understand that what provoked this was the way the Palestinians, especially the Palestinians in Gaza, have been treated for a long, long time. And then when you talk about the Israeli response, the Israelis like to say that they have a right to defend themselves. Nobody disputes that. But the question is, how do you defend yourselves?

And the fact is, the Israelis are killing huge numbers of Palestinians, bombing the place relentlessly and in the process doing much to wreck their reputation. So this is really what's going on here. And in the process, doing much to wreck their reputation. So this is really what's going on here. What is the mood amongst Islamic peoples and Islamic governments around the world about Israel, about the plight of the Palestinians, about the two-state solution? Well, it appeared before October 7th that the Arab street had really lost interest in the Palestinian cause. And in fact, Arab governments or Islamic governments, if you want to include countries like Iran, had more or less lost interest in the Palestinian cause. Since October 7th, nobody can make that argument anymore. It's quite clear that both in the street, in the Arab world, and among Arab governments, there is a deep-seated concern for what the

Israelis are doing to the Palestinians now. And with regard to the second part of your question, which has to do with the two-state solution, it's very clear that this Israeli government and the preceding Israeli governments have had no interest in a two-state solution and have been deeply committed to creating a greater Israel. What's happened now is the two-state solution, at least rhetorically, is back on the table in really surprising ways. And the Israelis in the years ahead are going to have to grapple with the fact that lots of people, and I would argue this will include American presidents, will be pushing hard to get a two-state solution because people are going to be looking for a way out of this mess. And the two-state solution is going to appear to be the best way out for a

lot of people. Chris, please have ready, SOT1, President Biden on no status quo in the two-state solution. President Biden, and we'll play this clip in a minute, it's just two days old, President Biden is risking the animosity of many members of his own Democratic Party when he says the following. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, Israel and the Palestinians equally deserve to live side by side in safety, dignity, and peace. There's no going back to the status quo as it stood on October the 6th. That means ensuring Hamas can no longer terrorize Israel and use Palestinian civilians as human shields.

It also means that when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next. And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution. This would require, of course, an entirely new government in Israel, one that did not have Benjamin Netanyahu as the prime minister. Yeah. Just a quick word, Judge, on President Biden. If you go back to Jimmy Carter, who was really the first president who pushed hard for a two-state solution. There's been no president since Jimmy Carter who has done less to facilitate a two-state solution than Joe Biden. Even George W. Bush, for all of his bellicosity and violence, even he called for a two-state solution. Absolutely. I mean, he understood. Condoleezza Rice understood. They all understood.

It's the Biden administration that has paid hardly any attention to the two-state solution. Is this because of an affinity for Netanyahu? Well, I think that the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government thought that they had the Palestinian problem under control, and that therefore it was not necessary to push the two-state solution. You have to understand, and this was implicit in your earlier comment, that if President Biden were to push for a two-state solution, he'd pay a political price for that, because the Israel lobby in this country is deeply committed to supporting the Netanyahu government, and the Netanyahu government has zero interest in a two-state solution. So it made sense from a political point of view for Biden not to push the two-state solution,

and also it looked like Netanyahu could get away without really dealing with the Palestinian problem. But then it blew up in everybody's face on October 7th, and we are really in deep trouble now, both us and the Israelis. Maybe the reasons you just articulated are why Joe Biden said this, sought to unbiden, Chris. Israel has the right, and I would add responsibility, to respond to the slaughter of their people. But that does not lessen the need to operate in a line with the laws of war. There's no question but that Israel is not complying with the laws of war. And as much as personally I disagree with much of what President Biden has done in his years in office, I commend him for saying that.

I agree with you and I agree with him. As I said before, I think hardly anybody I know denies that Israel has the right to retaliate for what Hamas did on October 7th. But the question is how they retaliate. And if you look at what they're doing in Gaza, it's absolutely sickening. They've killed probably 7,000 Palestinians and about 3,000 of those Palestinians are children. And they've made it very clear. I mean, the IDF spokesman said on October 10th that they are not launching a precision attack on Gaza sites. In fact, they're interested in doing great damage and destruction. They are doing great damage and

destruction, but this is going to tarnish their reputation greatly and make it very difficult for both the United States and Israel to move forward and to put this problem behind us. We're looking at a film of one of the Israeli incursions. Now, there's two ways to look at this. One is, you know, this is a caravan of armored personnel carriers and tanks crushing the wall between Gaza and Israel, using violence to do so and entering Israel. The other way to look at it is they went back home the same day. They did not, in fact, yet begin the invasion. It's almost as if Prime Minister Netanyahu believes his longevity in office will be extended by war and will be extended by this, we're going to crush these people and if innocents die, too bad. But he knows that he's going to have hell to pay if he actually, in the terms of the slaughter of

Israeli troops, two-thirds of the Israeli army are reservists that were just called up. They're not trained in guerrilla warfare. He knows, I think, what you said, the outcome could be disastrous for Israel. Yeah, he's between a rock and a hard place for a variety of reasons. First of all, two of the key members of his cabinet, who are former generals, are interested in turning the ground forces loose and invading Gaza. It's Netanyahu who is hesitating. So that means that his political situation inside his own governing coalition is in trouble. But furthermore, if he invades Gaza, the end result is going to be disastrous. There's no way he's going to go in there and easily roll up Hamas. It's just not going to happen.

What will the American military do if he invades Gaza? So I want to paint this picture for you. There are 20 in it, whatever they do. And we know that there are special forces, your former colleagues, West Point graduates, on the ground in Gaza, and they have taken fire. No report about injuries or deaths. Is the American show of power there helpful or hurtful to diminish the conflict? Well, I think that we are mainly there for purposes of deterrence. And when I say that, I think what we're really worried about is horizontal escalation. In other words, we're worried about Hezbollah coming in, Iran coming in, these various militias that are attacking us or attacking American forces in Syria and Iraq, unleashing barrages. That's what we're worried about. And we want to have massive firepower there and troops there to discourage

horizontal escalation. I think in terms of actually participating in any meaningful way in an invasion of Gaza, that is not going to happen. I think that President Biden would be crazy to do that. And I think that he will let the Israelis handle that one because it will be really messy. And putting American forces in is not going to help the situation. It's not like we have the magic formula that American forces are more efficient than Israeli forces. The mainstream Israeli forces train for this sort of operation, not the reservists, but the mainstream forces. But it doesn't matter how well trained you are, as we learned in Iraq. When you go into places like Fallujah, you go into places like Mosujah, you go into places like Mosul,

you go into places like Gaza, it is God awful bloody and you don't win a quick and decisive victory. And this will be a huge problem for the Israelis in terms of their own domestic politics and in terms of their reputation internationally. Here's the president of Turkey ranting before the Turkish parliament. They have, as you know, a large and sophisticated military, but it's in Turkish. There are subtitles. I'm going to read the subtitles. He's speaking pretty quickly and the subtitles come up and go down pretty quickly, but I'll do my best to keep up with them. Here's President Erdogan just about two days ago. Israel's attacks on Gaza, both in terms of those who carry them out and in terms of those who support them,

are a situation that signifies both murderousness and mental illness. We have no problem with the Israeli state, but have never approved and will never approve of the cruelty it is carrying out like an organization instead of a state. In this picture, the tears that Western powers shed for Israel while turning a blind eye to the cruelty in Gaza is nothing but the biggest example of fraud. Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but a liberation group, a group of mujahideen that is fighting to protect its soil and its citizens. First of all, all sides need to take their hands off the trigger, and a ceasefire needs to be declared at once. Both Israel's attacks on Gaza

and other areas need to stop as well as the missiles fired on Israeli soil. Direct or indirect talks for the release of hostages need to begin and this issue needs to reach a conclusion rapidly. The Rafan border gate certainly needs to be kept open continuously for humanitarian aid. For the war not to spread, all actors need to be responsible and forces outside the region need to stop carrying fuel to the fire under the guise of solidarity with Israel. I call on all other nations that have wisdom and a conscience to put pressure on Netanyahu's government for the Israeli state to return to common sense. I would like to remind of the need to not continue these developments with an understanding of the cross against the crescent. What do you make of that? How do you unpack that, Professor Mearsheimer?

Well, I think that his rhetoric is a view that's widely spread, that's widely adopted outside of the United States, Britain, and Israel. I mean, he makes a lot of arguments that I think make sense. And people in the Arab and Islamic world, in the global South more generally, and in Russia and China accept completely. He's interested in stopping the violence right away. And furthermore, he argues that there is a double standard in the West in terms of judging Israeli behavior on one hand and Palestinian behavior on the other hand. I think it's hard to deny that. His comment that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it's a resistance movement, is an argument that one could legitimately

make. I would qualify it by saying if you want to call it a resistance movement, It's a resistant movement that does apply terrorist tactics. I think that what happened on October 7th should be condemned. I think it was a terrorist attack, but I think that it is clear that what Hamas is doing is resisting Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. So again, you can call it a resistance movement, you can call it a terrorist movement if you want, but it is all about, Hamas is all about resisting the Israelis and sometimes using terrorist tactics against Israel. The Jewish people, the Israelis in Israel, have always had a social compact with the government. And that social compact was that every Israeli's back would be protected by the government.

No prime minister in recent years has better personified that. No prime minister has claimed, that's the reason you want me as prime minister. No one has advanced that argument more effectively politically than Benjamin Netanyahu. Has that social compact been destroyed from and after what happened on October 7th on Netanyahu's watch? There's absolutely no question that's the case. And I think that once this war comes to an end, when the dust settles, he will be removed from power. I mean, this is analogous to what happened in 1973, when Golda Meir was the prime minister and Moshe Dayan was the minister of defense. Israel, as you remember, in 1973 was the victim of a surprise attack. It was almost as complete a surprise as the October 7th attack was. And immediately after the 1973 war started, the people of Israel unsurprisingly rallied around

Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, and the Israelis eventually won a great military victory, both on the Golan Heights against the Syrians and in the Sinai against the Egyptian army. But still, shortly thereafter, both Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan were removed from power and their political careers were over. And I find it hard to imagine that that won't happen to Benjamin Netanyahu. And if you look at the public opinion polls in Israel on what people are thinking about Netanyahu, it looks like, to use a phrase that my mother used to use, his goose is cooked. Whatever happened to Vladimir Zelensky? And what's happening in Ukraine while the whole world seems to be focused on Israel and Hamas? Well, I mean, there's no question that Ukraine,

which you and I concentrated on greatly over the past year and a half, has been pushed off the front page. In fact, it's been pushed onto the back page. I think some of that has to do with the fact that not that much is happening in Ukraine. It is quite clear that the counteroffensive, which started on June 4, has come to an end. It was a colossal failure. In fact, it was a disaster for Ukraine. But there is no more big offensive. If anything, the Russians who are now on the offensive in various places along the front lines, but the Russians are not committing themselves to a major offensive at this point in time. So basically the situation has settled down for the moment.

Is Vladimir Putin taking advantage of the Israeli Hamas clash in some way, diplomatically or below the radar? Oh, diplomatically, he definitely is, as are the Chinese. What Putin has said is that the Americans failed to deal with the Palestinian problem, and this is especially true of Joe Biden. And the reason that we have this war in the Middle East now is because of the failure of American policy. He's in effect making the point that I was making before about the Biden administration and the Palestinian problem. And of course, he's making the case for two-state solution, and he's making the case for respecting the rights of Palestinians as well as Israeli Jews. And that's an argument that's music to the ears of huge numbers of people around the planet, including many Jews. So I think that Putin is in the catbird seat at this point in time on this particular issue. And it's the Biden administration that's

in the deep mud. Professor John Mearsheimer, always a pleasure, sir. Thank you very much for joining us. Hope you can come back next week. The viewers love you. Absolutely love you. I'm reading the comments. It's enlightening. It's instructive. It's courageous. And for me, it's a blast. Thank you very much. I'll see you next week. Of course. Have a great weekend. You too. A busy week, a productive week, an instructive week. And of course, the next one's coming up. We're just about at 222,000 subscriptions. We're going to hit that quarter of a million by Christmas. I feel it in my bones.

All my personal gratitude to all of you. Have a great weekend. We'll see you Monday. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!