Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Israeli Dilemma: Destroy Hamas OR Free the Hostages?

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Israeli Dilemma: Destroy Hamas OR Free the Hostages?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, January 22nd, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, it's always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for taking the time to join us. Is Israel a democracy or a theocracy? Well, I think it is a democracy. It's not a liberal democracy. To be a liberal democracy, there would have to be equal rights for the Palestinians and the Israeli Jews who live in that country. And there's no question there's not equal rights. But in terms of voting, and if you leave aside

the occupied territories, of course, I think you could make a case that it is still a democracy. Is it a theocracy? I think it's increasingly moving in that direction. There's no question about that. But I think you could probably be a theocracy and a democracy at the same time. But the real problem here is what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. It's just so at odds with basic liberal values. If I bought a home in Israel and lived there as a Roman Catholic, would I be able to vote, run for office, and have the same rights as my Jewish Israeli neighbors? It's very hard to say. I mean, you want to understand that inside Green Line Israel, this is the Israel before the 1967 war. This is the Israel that does not include the occupied territories. And here we're talking

about the West Bank and the gaza strip the palestinians who live inside green line israel have the right to vote and they certainly have all sorts of rights that the palestinians in gaza and the west bank don't have and i would imagine that a significant number of those Palestinians who live inside Green Line Israel are in a position to buy houses even though they're Christians. I mean, because not all the Palestinians are Muslims. Some are Christians. But I'm not sure what the details are of that situation. Over the weekend, the IDF shot a 17-year-old boy in the head and in the back in the West Bank. The boy was born in Louisiana.

There doesn't seem to be any outrage or repercussion by the State Department or the White House. Should there be, or is the White House so blinded by its joined-at-the-hip allegiance to Israel that it doesn't care when Americans are slaughtered by the IDF? The American government isn't going to say boo about this. I mean, there was a case a number of years ago involving a woman named Rachel Corey, who was an American who was in Israel who was run over by a bulldozer. And her family went to great lengths to get the American government to interfere after her death. But the American government didn't do anything. And of course, the most famous case that you know well is the Liberty. The Liberty was shot up in 1967 by the IDF and the evidence is overwhelming

that the Israelis knew that it was an American ship and they destroyed it anyway killed sailors killed a huge number of American sailors LBJ did nothing even LBJ for all of his bravado, was afraid to resist Israel. Well, LBJ had a relationship with Israel that was not that different than Joe Biden's relationship. LBJ was a huge supporter of Israel, and he believed in giving Israel unconditional support. So it's

actually not surprising that Johnson acted the way he did with regard to the liberty. What's more surprising to me is that subsequent presidents and subsequent policymakers have done nothing to rectify that mistake that Johnson made. And justice has never happened with regard to the liberty incident. Aren't Israel's two goals, as stated by Prime Minister Netanyahu, of, well, he doesn't say degrading, defeating, destroying Hamas and bringing home the hostages essentially incompatible with each other? I think they are essentially incompatible. First of all, I don't think he could destroy Hamas. And I think increasing numbers of Israelis are now saying that, including generals and leading policymakers. They've been in there for quite a while now, and they've obviously killed some

Hamas fighters, but they have not come close to eliminating Hamas, and there's no way they're going to do that, especially since they're pulling ground forces out now. But if they were to really go whole hog and bring more ground forces in and try to track down Hamas and kill every Hamas fighter, they would end up killing lots of hostages as well, and they certainly wouldn't get the hostages out. So I think you're right that those two goals are incompatible. You and I have talked about the Hannibal directive. Israeli press reported this morning, and the Netanyahu government has not denied it, that the Hannibal directive, without using that phrase, I don't know what the phrase is in Hebrew, but without using the word Hannibal, that it was put into place on October 7th, and Israeli soldiers did intentionally kill Israeli civilians whom they had reason to believe had been captured or were about to be captured. What country does that? What moral

standard could justify that, Professor? Well, this is a remarkably controversial issue, and a while back, you and I talked about the whole question of whether or not Israeli forces had killed to shoot up as many Palestinians as possible, they were going to end up killing a serious number of Israeli citizens. And I believe there's overwhelming evidence that happened. At the time, it was not clear that the Hamas, not the Hamas, the Hannibal Doctrine had been invoked. And I think that what's happened over time, it's quite clear, is that evidence has now come out that the Hannibal Doctrine was invoked and that the Israeli forces purposely killed some Israeli citizens in the process of preventing them from becoming prisoners or hostages in the hands of Hamas. So you can see now in the Israeli press, it's right there in the Israeli press, evidence that the Hannibal Doctrine was invoked and that Israeli soldiers or fighters employed it.

Now, exactly how many people were killed by IDF forces is difficult to say. What we really need here is a major investigation after the fact to determine exactly what happened. It may be the case that the IDF killed a substantial number of civilians, because in the fog of war, that kind of thing can happen, especially if the Hannibal Doctrine has been invoked. On the other hand, it may be that the number is not that large, but who knows for sure. But there's no question that the Hannibal Doctrine was invoked, according to Israeli sources, and that IDF forces did kill some Israeli civilians. With your understanding of the way the Israeli government works, who could invoke the doctrine, a military leader or the prime minister himself? I have no idea. I would imagine that a military leader could do

that, a senior military leader. I mean, they must have, you know, norms and rules that apply in cases like this. It's hard to say what those rules are. You want to remember, this was a very special situation because the Israelis got caught with their pants down. Sometimes when you see something coming and you have time to plan for it, you can then, you know, go high up the chain of command. You can go up to the prime minister and get permission to do X, Y, or Z. But if you're in the fog of war and things are breaking in all sorts of different directions and you're not sure what's going on and you view the situation on the ground as catastrophic, it is, I think, likely, certainly plausible that a high-level military commander, maybe the head of the IDF, would make that decision.

Euromed, which is a European website, reports out of Geneva that the Israeli army has killed 94 university professors along with students, hundreds of teachers, university professors along with hundreds of teachers, thousands of students, that it has intentionally targeted academic, scientific, and intellectual figures in the Gaza Strip, including bombing their homes intentionally. How could that possibly be justified as a military measure? Well, I've not seen evidence of that. I mean, I've heard those reports, but I've not seen evidence of that. Would I be surprised? No. I mean, if you look at what the Israelis are doing in Gaza, they're not just killing large numbers of people and not just

destroying apartment buildings and other buildings. They're actually, I think, taking dead aim at destroying Palestinian culture in Gaza. They're destroying mosques, they're tearing up cemeteries, they're destroying government buildings that are filled with important documents that are necessary for determining all sorts of records about who owns property, when people were born, and so forth and so on. So the Israelis really have their gun sights on destroying Palestinians in Gaza and destroying their culture. So I would not be surprised if the evidence comes out that this is what they were doing. I'm going to show you a clip. It is of the controlled demolition of a building, which was a university building, and then an old hotel or a stadium is destroyed. And then you will see an Associated Press reporter absolutely grilling the daylights out of a befuddled Matthew Miller, the spokesperson for the State Department. I would like you to look at this, and I'm going to ask you after you see it, if the United States government is complicit in this monstrosity.

Based on Saeed's question about the demolition of the university, I don't know if you've seen the video. It's pretty widely available. I have seen the video. But it certainly looks, I mean, it looks like a controlled demolition. It looks like what we do here in this country when we're taking down an old hotel or a stadium. And you have nothing to say? You have nothing to say about this?

I mean, to do that kind of an explosion, you need to be in there. You have to put the explosives down and it takes a lot of planning and preparation to do. And if there was a threat from this particular facility, they wouldn't have been able to do it.

So I have seen the video. I can tell you that it is something we are raising with the governor of Israel, as we do often do when we see raising as what we see to to ask questions and and find out what the underlying situation is, as we often do when we see reports of this nature. But I'm not able to characterize the actual facts on the ground before hearing that. But you saw the video. I did see the video. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know what was under that building. I don't know what was inside that building. It doesn't matter what was under the building because they obviously got in there to put the explosives down to do it in a way that they did. Again, I'm glad you have factual certainty about it. I just don't. All I have is what I saw in the video. I just don't. And I think you guys saw it too. We did see it. And I can say that we have raised it with the government of Israel. And it's not troubling to you? We are always troubled by any degradation of civilian infrastructure in Gaza, but without knowing the actual underlying

circumstances, I'm a little hesitant, I think, for reasons that should be understandable to pass definitive judgment on it from this podium. Does Prime Minister Netanyahu have President Biden backed into a corner over all this? There's no question. I mean, he can do things like this, and Biden may protest and may call him on the telephone and holler at him, but it's like water rolling off a duck's back. Netanyahu doesn't care. There's no punishment here. So, you know, the Israelis feel free to do this. This, by the way, is another good example of the Israelis destroying Palestinian culture. They're making the place uninhabitable.

It's really quite remarkable what they're doing here. This was a university that the Israelis had occupied. So there was no threat of Hamas being in that building and using it as a human shield. Of course, the Israelis will make the argument that if they hadn't destroyed it, Hamas would eventually use it as a human shield. But once you go down that road, you reach the point where you can destroy virtually every building in Gaza. And in fact, you could end up killing every civilian by simply making the argument that that civilian would eventually be a human shield. And this, of course, is where we're at. And this, of course, is why Israel is in big trouble in front of the International Court of Justice and is in the process of being accused of genocide. This is more evidence of genocide. I'm going to use

your phrase, the destruction of Palestinian culture. Not the killing of Palestinian soldiers or killers, but the destruction of Palestinian culture. Shooting a boy in the back of the head, desecrating a cemetery, destroying a school, blowing up a mosque, whatever the pretext. It's genocide, is it not? Yeah, I think there's no question in my mind that what's going on is genocide. As I've said, I think the South Africans provided a compelling case before the International Court of Justice. What I actually find quite surprising is given the fact that the Israelis are involved in this difficult subsequent to the two days of testimony, that the Israelis would have backed off somewhat and they would have used rhetoric that made it

look like they were not committing genocide. You see a tiny bit of that, but in fact, what you see is, if anything, they are ramping up their assault on Gaza and not, again, just going after civilians who they're continuing to kill in large numbers and not just destroying, you know, apartment buildings and office buildings, which they're continuing to do, but they're doing things like destroying university buildings and destroying mosques and destroying hospitals, all those sorts of things that, you know, lend credence to the argument that they're guilty of genocide. I just don't understand it, unless you want to make the argument that they just don't care. They think the Americans will protect them at every turn. They can do anything they want, and so be it. Well, that was my next question.

Because of the control over the government that the Israelis have through AIPAC and the donor class and various other means, can they get away with just about anything? Do they really have to fear that Biden will call up Netanyahu one day and say, that's it, the planes are not coming. The spare parts are not coming. The ammunition is not coming. It's hard for me to believe that will ever happen. I hope that I'm wrong, but I would not bet a lot. I just had to close the door for a minute because Chris is... Forgive me for that. I had to close the door for a minute because Chris is... Forgive me for that. I had to close the door because the dog is excited about somebody in front of the house. No problem. Yeah.

Why is Biden bombing the Houthis? I mean, you have warned us for a year now, or not a year, but we've been talking for a year. You've warned us since October 7th about the dangers of a widening war. If Netanyahu wants a wider war for whatever reason, so that they can take over the West Bank and take over the Gaza Strip from the river to the sea, is Joe Biden falling into Netanyahu's hands? I don't know to what extent Netanyahu influenced Biden on the whole question of going on the attack, going on the offensive against the Houthis. It seems to me that that's a decision that the Americans made pretty much on their own, that the Biden administration made. Why they decided to do that is beyond me. Almost everybody says there's no way they're going to defeat the Houthis or stop the Houthis from attacking ships in the Red Sea. This is a losing

strategy from the get-go. And there was this clip that was on the internet last week where Biden admitted that the attacks were not stopping the Houthis. The American attacks on the Houthis were not stopping the Houthis from attacking ships in the Red Sea, but nevertheless, they were going to go on. I think we've now launched seven major offensives against the Houthis, and there's no evidence that it works. And there's no evidence that it's ever going to work. So we've gotten ourselves into another quagmire. It's just it's hard to believe. Chris, can you run that clip, please?

Here we go. Are the airstrikes in Yemen working? Well, when you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes. At least he's being honest, as absurd as that statement was. Yeah, it's just very hard to say, you know.

I mean, you think about American foreign policy, you know, in recent years. We just do so many foolish things that it's hard to make sense of what policymakers are thinking when they, you know, launch these operations. This is, you know, just makes no sense at all. Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu. I think this is number six, Chris. Earlier today at his defiant best, probably for a domestic audience, but at his defiant best. We continue the war on all fronts. We do not provide immunity to any terrorists, not in Gaza, not in Lebanon, not in Syria, and not anywhere else. Whoever tries to hurt us, we hurt him. Regarding our hostages, to date we have returned 110 of them back home, and we are committed to returning them all.

This is one of the objectives of the war, and military pressure is a necessary condition for its completion. I work on this around the clock. But to be clear, I reject outright the terms of surrender of the monsters of Hamas. In exchange for the release of our hostages, Hamas demands the end of the war, the withdrawal of our forces from Gaza, the release of all the murderers and rapists of the Nuhba, and leaving Hamas intact. If we agree to this, our warriors fell in vain. If we agree to this, we will not be able to guarantee the security of our citizens. We will not be able to return the evacuees safely to their homes. And the next October 7th will only be a matter of time.

A statement was made in response to an interview given on Israeli television, you may know this fellow, by Major General Gadi Eisenkot, who is the former commander of the IDF, retired Major General, now in the Netanyahu war cabinet, who went on national television in Israel and said, the only way to end this is with a ceasefire. The only way to get the hostages back is with a ceasefire. And the best way to end this is for Netanyahu to go and new elections to be held. I would just note to you that Eisenkot's son was killed in Gaza. His nephew was killed in Gaza as well. I think that Eisenkot, like most Israelis who think about big strategic issues, recognize that there's no way that Israel is going to win

this war against Hamas, that Hamas is not going to be defeated. And given that fact, it then makes sense to try to cut some sort of deal so that you can get the hostages back. Because if you continue to wage the war against Hamas in a really vigorous way, the end result is you don't get the hostages back and you don't defeat Hamas. And this nightmare goes on and on and on. And I think what you see here is that Israel is kind of between a rock and a hard place. And certainly Netanyahu is, because if he is seen losing in Gaza, that will be lights out for him. So he has a deep-seated interest in going on and on and not stopping this war. But there is growing sentiment for bringing the hostages home. And at the same time, people recognize that Israel is not going to defeat Hamas. And therefore, I think over time, there's going to be great pressure on

Netanyahu to cut a deal. And this is just evidence of that. You would think that Netanyahu would know that he's not going to defeat Hamas and he better bring the hostages home because if he ends up doing neither, as you say, it is lights out for him and for his political coalition and all the other things they're trying to do, including, you know, restructure the judiciary. And he probably will be prosecuted, the subject of an investigation, and will end up miserable, either stripped of his power and his rights and maybe stripped of his freedom. Yeah, I think that that's basically true. And I think he's holding on for dear life here. And, you know, he's probably hoping for a miracle,

but I don't think he's going to get a miracle. I mean, the fact is that Israel is in really deep trouble. I mean, it's not only that they have a huge problem with Hamas, as we've talked about before, they have a huge problem with Hezbollah. They have all sorts of centrifugal forces at play inside the body, politic involving this basic law that involved reforming the judiciary that almost caused the civil war last year. And then there are all sorts of other differences involving Netanyahu. There's going to be an investigation, I would surmise, involving what happened on October 7th, and he is going to be blamed. He was in charge, and the buck stops on his desk. So, you know, there's just all sorts of reasons that Israel is, you know, in big, big trouble.

Our friend and colleague Alistair Crook says Israel is in danger of imploding for many of the reasons that you just articulated. Do you agree? I think that's too strong. I think that, you know, that's possible down the road. At this point in time, I don't think that that's likely at all. And I'm also just not sure what implode means. Is it possible that you could have fighting between different groups inside of the state? I think that's possible. And I'm not talking about the Palestinians here. I'm talking about, you know, fights among Israeli Jews. Is that possible? I think yes.

Is it likely? I think yes. Is it likely? I think not. If Israel and Hezbollah get involved in a major confrontation, what are the odds that the United States sends either Air Force jets or ground troops there on the side of Israel? I think it's extremely unlikely. I think that the Israeli Air Force will pound Lebanon, and they won't need the American Air Force to do that. They'll need weapons from us, for sure, and we'll give them the weapons, but they won't need the U.S. Air Force. And of course, I think even Biden won't want to join in the offensive against the air offensive against Lebanon. With regard to ground forces, I'm not sure the Israelis would send in ground forces. The last time they sent in ground forces was in 2006, and that did not work out very well at all. And they sent ground forces in in 1982 as well, and that did not work out very well at all. And they sent ground forces in in 1982 as well.

And that did not work out as well. Well, given that they're stuck in Gaza at the moment, I think that it's unlikely, not impossible, but unlikely that they would launch a major offensive with ground forces into southern Lebanon. But let's assume that I'm wrong and they do it. Do I think the Americans would also send ground forces in with IDF ground forces into southern Lebanon? I think that's unlikely in the extreme. I think that's the last thing we want to do. I could see us participating in an air offensive,

but a ground offensive, no. But again, with regard to an air offensive, they a ground offensive, no. But again, with regard to an air offensive, they don't really need us. What do the American neocons want? Lindsey Graham has publicly asked the president to attack and bomb Iran. But what do these neocons really want? Do they want a regional conflagration in which the United States participates? I mean, who in their right mind could want that? Well, I think there's no question, and you hit the nail right on the head, that they, the neocons and their allies, want to go after Iran. That's the big target.

They think that the taproot of all evil in the Middle East is Iran. Iran supports Hamas. Iran supports Hezbollah. Iran supports the Houthis. Iran supports these militias, is heading down the nuclear road. It now has, according to the IAEA, enough fissile material to make a handful of bombs. And this scares the Israelis greatly. So what I think the neoconservatives and their allies would like is for us to get into a war with Iran that would not only shut down all those other problems like Hezbollah, Hamas, and so forth and so on, but would provide us with an opportunity to destroy Iran's nuclear capability once and for all. Is this likely to work out if we were to bomb Iran? Absolutely not. It's delusional thinking, but it's what you would

expect from the neoconservatives. Just putting up on the screen, breaking news that's happening as we're on air. So this 10.23 p.m. is Israeli time. Israel proposes two-month fighting pause in Gaza for release of all hostages. Israel has given Hamas a proposal through Qatari and Egyptian mediators that includes up to two months of a pause in the fighting as part of a multi-phase deal Axios reported on Monday. The deal would include the release of all remaining hostages held in Gaza, the report added, citing two Israeli officials. This, of course, directly defies what we just saw Prime Minister Netanyahu say in Tel Aviv earlier today, earlier this morning, Israeli time. If this report is true, the pressure on him, political pressure on Netanyahu from the families of the hostages, especially in light of that Hannibal story that came out

this morning in the Israeli press, the pressure on him must be extraordinary. Well, there's no question pressure on him is extraordinary. I mean, the reason that you have the Hannibal Doctrine, I mean, it's important to understand this, is because Israeli leaders understand that any time the Palestinians take hostages, it creates a huge problem inside of Israel, because Israeli citizens become so desperate to get those hostages back. They privilege Jewish life so much that the idea of hostages just offends them greatly, and they put great pressure on the government, the Israeli government, to make some sort of deal to get the hostages back. And invariably, the Israeli government makes a deal, but it's an asymmetrical deal.

It's a deal that's usually more favorable to the Palestinians than it is to the Israelis. And this is why the Israelis do not, the Israeli leaders do not like the idea of hostages. And this is what is at the root of the Hannibal Doctrine. But in this, go ahead. So what is not reported in this piece about Israel reportedly offering a two-month pause and return for the hostages is the flip side of this, which you just mentioned, Professor Meir Sharma. It will probably result in the release of thousands of Palestinians held hostage in Israeli jails, some of whom are children who were born there. Well, it's not, I mean, I've not looked carefully at this story that just came across the wires, but it's not clear that that's the quid pro quo. It looks to me from the headline that you have that the quid pro quo is that Hamas gets a ceasefire for, or the Palestinians in Gaza, including Hamas,

get a ceasefire for two months. There's no question that they would welcome that, but the problem is after two months, you've given up all the hostages, which provide you with tremendous leverage. And then the Israelis are free to go back on a rampage and continue to tear Gaza apart and destroy Palestinian life in that territory. So it would seem to me that this is not a good deal for Hamas to take. I could see Hamas being willing to give back a substantial number of those hostages in return for a two-month ceasefire, but giving them all up, that's hard to imagine. If Netanyahu were able to pull this off, this would be to his advantage because he would take the hostage problem off the table. And as you said before, that is a huge problem for him. Professor Mearsheimer, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your thoughts,

for your time, and for your analysis. Deeply appreciated here and all over the world. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Of course. Of course. Wow. Big brain time with John Mearsheimer. Tomorrow, Matthew Ho, Karen Kwiatkowski, and at four o'clock Eastern, Aaron Matei, the colleague of our dear friend, Max Blumenthal. What's really going on inside Israel? All for you tomorrow. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.