Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: From Ceasefire to Crossroads - Decoding Israel's Strategic Choices

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, November 30th, 2023. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for coming back to the show. Deeply appreciate your time and expertise, of course. As we speak, we're at the tail end of the day in the Middle East, and this appears to be the last day of the truce for the exchange of hostages. Both Israeli-captured Palestinian hostages, whom they

call prisoners, and Hamas-captured Israeli hostages. What do you think will happen if the truce is not extended? What will the IDF do next? Well, let's keep in mind where the IDF was when the truce started. They were getting their butts kicked up north by Hezbollah, literally having billions of dollars of intelligence and security infrastructure wiped away along with dozens

of tanks. There he is. I don't know. they were all quiet but um hopefully they'll be quiet i don't know what's going on out in front of my yard right now the um but the the fact is they were losing the war against hezbollah and they were fought to a standstill by hamas let's remember that benjamin netanyahu said at the beginning of this we will never accept a ceasefire we will never trade trade prisoners. And yet here we are, day six of a ceasefire that he never was going to accept. And they're trading prisoners that he said they were never going to exchange. Why? Because Hamas fought them to a standstill. The day before

this ceasefire kicked in, they don't call it a ceasefire. Now they're calling it a pause because he said he would never accept a ceasefire. Israeli battalions were withdrawn from Gaza because they were beat because they wouldn't fight anymore because the men were scared because the officers wouldn't execute the orders. Why? Because Hamas wasn't beat. Hamas was fighting and fighting very well,

destroying hundreds of vehicles, killing scores of Israelis. The Israelis were fought to a standstill. And so Benjamin Netanyahu did what he had to do. He was under a lot of pressure to get these these hostages out. So he did what he said he wouldn't do. He accepted a truce, a ceasefire, and he started exchanging. Now we're in a situation where, you know, he has backed himself into a corner rhetorically. He keeps talking about defeating the strategic defeat of Hamas. He doesn't understand the following. The moment he initiates, reinitiates conflict in Gaza, A, they're going to be beat badly by Hamas.

B, Hezbollah is coming in like he's never seen Hezbollah come in before. The Israeli media just admitted what I've been saying all along, that Israel can't stop Hezbollah, that if Hezbollah wants to take the Galilee, Hezbollah will take the Galilee, and there's nothing that Israel could do to stop them. This is the situation that Netanyahu finds himself in. So he now has to weigh politically what's best to go back to war and get beat because they will get beat or to continue this truce and try to buy time politically by getting more prisoners out. The problem is they got rid of the easy ones, the women and the children. Now what's left are the soldiers and the men, which means that Hamas is going to extract

a higher price. Hamas wants all the prisoners released, all the hostages, you were right to point out. When you grab somebody off the street, put them in a prison without any charges, without due process, that's not a prisoner, that's a hostage. So Israel's holding thousands. Hamas wants them released. And so Netanyahu's in a very difficult place politically. I think the military will probably tell him, boss, let's continue to buy some time here because this isn't going to go the way you think it's going to go. And I'm going to guess you're not surprised that none of what you have just described appears anywhere in the Western media. People in the United States do not know

that Israel is taking a beating at the hands of Hezbollah. No, we ignore it. I mean, that's the whole thing. We talk, you know, we use fancy terms like, and I'm guilty of the same thing, except I know when I say the fancy term, I know what I really mean, but, you know, escalation management. What the hell does that mean? Well, it means that you don't want it to blow up out of control. You don't want a full scale war. So you're going to manage the fighting so that both sides are landing punches, but you're not going to allow it to go to the next step. Israel won't bomb Beirut and Hezbollah won't take out Haifa. That's escalation management. But what Israel doesn't understand is

if it goes back to conflict against Hamas with the goal objective of just destroying Hamas, that Hezbollah said, we won't let you do that. You're not going to be able to do that. And if you want, we will continue to escalate. We will continue to make you pay the high price. In the north, Israel had to move 70,000 people out of the settlements and relocate. That's very expensive. All the productivity that took place in the north in terms of economic actions, it's done. It's shut down. This is costing Israel billions of dollars a day that they don't have. They don't have it. Their economy is at a standstill, and the world is turned against them. This is not a sustainable conflict

for Israel. It's interesting when you said the reason Netanyahu changed his mind on no pause in the military action and no exchange, hostages for prisoners, I'm using his terminology, was because of pressure from Hezbollah. It was not because of pressure from Washington. Look, Washington has been working behind the scenes, but the fact is, this is where, I mean, I'm going to speak the truth, but it's dangerous to speak the truth. You'll always speak the truth. Look, our Congress has been paid for by Israel. They admit it. Go to the AIPAC website. You'll always speak the truth. Look, our Congress is bought and paid for by Israel.

They admit it. Go to the AIPAC website. You'll see how much money they spend. They talk about the number of races that they've bought. They talk about the number of people they've driven out of Congress. A foreign entity is bragging about having people lose elections in America because they put money on the line. Now, they claim to be American, but they're working on behalf of Israel. If the Russians came in and put $100 million into our election the way that the Israelis have done through AIPAC and bragged about it, I don't think too many people would be

happy about that, or if the Chinese did that, or if anybody did that. But Israel is doing that, which means they own Congress. The first thing that Johnson did, the new speaker did, you know, when he became the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the number three person in the line of succession, that, you know, we have a nation full of problems. There's a lot of issues out there. The first thing he did is said, my number one priority is more money for Israel. What are you talking about? You're an American. How about your first priority be America, not Israel? But that's the problem. So the Biden administration is trying because they know, trust me, they know this judge. They know everything I just said. The military is telling them the Israelis are getting whipped

up north. They're getting whipped by Hamas. They can't defeat them. But the United States government can't go against Israel because Israel owns every single one of them. Are we in danger of American troops on the ground? No. First of all, the Israelis won't allow it. I've been to Israel. I've worked with their military at the highest level. And you can be critical of them. I'm very critical of them. But their whole concept of Israeli security is never to allow their security to be subordinated to another nation. So they don't want an alliance.

They don't want to be dependent upon American troops. It's sort of ironic though, they're dependent upon American weapons and continued American supply and American money, but they don't want American troops on the ground. They want to do it, they want to rely upon themselves. And this is something that goes back to the Holocaust and the memories of that event, that Israel will never again allow the security of Jewish people to be subordinated to non-Jewish entities. Is American intel on the ground? Yes, there's no doubt. And we have some special forces on the ground that are providing advice at a minimum about hostage rescue. And because Americans are being held

hostage, although this is another term I get in trouble with, if you're a dual, if you're a dual citizen and you carry an Israeli passport, you ain't an American. You're an Israeli and you've been taken hostage as an Israeli, not as an American. If you were killed on October 7th in the United States, we have certain people saying Americans were killed that day. No, they're not Americans. They're Israelis. They carry dual passports. They're in Israel. They're Israelis. Own up to it. If you're in the Israeli military and you have a U.S. passport, you're wrong because you should only be in the American military. But that's a totally separate issue. But the point is, because we classify these dual citizens as Americans, we have special forces, tier one hostage rescue teams, and the intelligence units that are associated with this on the ground in Israel advising, and I believe, actively

working with the Israelis on collecting intelligence that will pinpoint where the Americans are so that if the time comes to rescue them, you know, we can help the Israelis do it, you know, in the, in the most efficient way possible. But it's, it's a, it's a, it's, again, I speak of that as if this is all good. It's not going to work. Hamas has been preparing for this for years. They know everything. They whipped the Israeli intelligence and they know what we do. They've been studying what we do. So nothing we're going to do, nothing Israel's

going to do is going to take Hamas by surprise. That's just the fact. So we're not as good as we think we are. I want to get back to the influence of this dual citizenship. We know that Amos Hochstein, but I'd never heard of him before a few weeks ago, who is the chief American negotiator in Israel, representing the United States of America in whatever negotiations are going on in Qatar, Israel, Hamas, and the United States, has dual citizenship and was born in Israel and fought for the IDF. Here's a question for you. Are there American military who have dual citizenship, U.S., Israel?

I'm sure there are. They won't have security clearances. That's for certain. They won't be in the intelligence business. That's for certain. But it is possible that somebody, when they turned 18, went and served their two and a half year stint in the IDF, came back and have joined the United States military as an American citizen. Just like if somebody had served in the British military or served in the German military and they come here, you can enlist, but you will be under a certain security watch because of the question of dual loyalties. That's a problem. But here's another point I want to bring out about this. They keep saying, when I was in college,

I had a roommate who had served in the IDF and I had just come out of the military and I was in the Marine Corps commissioning program. And I said, you're not an American. He said, I am. I said, no, you're not. You served in the Israeli army. You're an Israeli. He said, I'm an American citizen, just like you are. I said, no, you're not. It was 1982. An American Marine who was in Beirut to create a buffer between the PLO who were evacuating and Israel who invaded southern Lebanon surrounded, stopped three Israeli tanks, jumped up on the tank, pulled out a pistol and told the Israeli commander he'd blow his brains off if the tanks didn't stop. Here's my question that I asked this guy. I said, you're the tank guy and an American Marine jumps on your tank and threatens to blow your brains off. You kill the American.

Are you an Israeli or are you an American? Because you don't kill me. You can't do the doing. If you kill the American, you're a murderer and I will hunt you down to the day you die and I will be the one who kills you because you're not an American. And that's the point. If you wear the Israeli uniform, you're an Israeli, your loyalties are to Israel. They're not to America and America better start enforcing this. We let a congressman sit in the people's house wearing the Israeli uniform. He should have been kicked out of Congress the moment that happened. Who? I can't remember his name, but he posted it on his Instagram and on his Twitter.

Wow. So you're not surprised that Joe Biden chooses an Israeli citizen and veteran of the IDF to represent the United States in these negotiations. What kind of divided loyalty does this fellow have? 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. Look, this isn't new, Judge. This has been happening over, we've had U.S. ambassadors serving in Israel who are dual citizens. Okay, this has been going on forever.

This is the problem. What is America about? I'm not saying that Israel isn't worth supporting. I question that, but I'm just saying, I'm not being anti-Semitic here, but America is about America, our interests. Our interests are not defined by Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or Haifa or any part of that world. Our interests are defined by us here at home. We determine what's important, no one else. And yet we're allowing Israel to dictate our national security, our foreign policy prerogatives, and this is 100%. And that's the son of a you-know-what that should be kicked out of the United States Congress and run out of this country. Put him on an airplane, send him back to Israel, and let him fight and die in Gaza if he's so proud of that damn uniform. You're not an American if you're

wearing that uniform. End of story. End of story. Great job, Chris and Sonia, for finding that. Thank you. I think his name is Brian Mast, M-A-S-T. I think he has some disability. I think he's missing a leg and often walks around with shorts on so as to show the artificial leg. But I did not know that he went for it in the IDF. I have met him. I you've been just as critical as others who have done that, like a fellow that appears on the show, Maverick's getting excited. There it is. Thank you again. There he is showing the leg, if you look carefully. Matt Van Dyke, who wears a Ukrainian uniform. What is with Americans who wear the military uniform of a foreign country? Look, I don't know. The law is the law. And right now the law allows people to serve. And you can't become a non-commissioned officer or a commissioned officer, but you can serve in the army of another nation without penalty. I wish that wasn't the

case. Look, I love being an American, and I will fight and die for my country, and I respect anybody who says, look, if you come to me and you say, I'm an Israeli, I will serve in my military and I'll fight and die for my country. I'm like, dude, I respect that. I may be against you. I may fight against you. I may kill you, but I respect what you're doing because you are proud of your country, just like I'm proud of my country. But you can't be proud to be an American and wear the uniform of another country. Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s son wore a Ukrainian uniform. And Bobby Kennedy was like, okay, so be it. No, no, Bobby, it's not okay. Your son, instead of joining the American military, felt that he had to do his military service in Ukraine, fighting

alongside Nazis. No, it's not okay to wear the uniform. If you were raised in another country and you did your conscription service in another country, and then you came to America and you became an American and you say, now I want to serve America. Great. That's okay. But you can't say, I am an American. I take an oath to help hold and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and then go serve another country that falls outside the bailiwick of our Constitution. You're not serving America at that point. It's really black and white. But somehow Congress has lost the message because of Israel. Because of Israel. That's why. Is Benjamin Netanyahu a dead man walking, politically speaking? I believe so.

I think it's over for him. I mean, somebody said that his popularity rating was in single digits right now. The last poll that I saw, which was Haaretz, you know this publication, 4%, 4% approval. This makes Joe Biden's numbers look good. Joe's looking pretty good in comparison. And this is 4% after his country was attacked. Normally, look at George W. Bush after 9-11. His support went way up. You know, but here everybody blames Benjamin Netanyahu for what happened. Rightfully so.

He's Mr. Security. He's the one who fell asleep at the wheel. You know, he was on the bridge when the Titanic struck the iceberg. Since you and I spoke last, before the Thanksgiving holiday, two interesting pieces have come out, one in the BBC and one in the Financial Times. Enlisted, not commissioned In the IDF Saw suspicious activity including a lot of drone Activity in Gaza Reported to their mail commanders Who pooh-poohed them The BBC also in the Telegram

Reports Practice Going on in Gaza going back to December of 22 That's 10 months before October 7th, of taking hostages and invading buildings. How asleep was the Netanyahu government? How incompetent was Israeli intelligence, more so than we thought when October 7th first happened? Well, intelligence is a system. You collect, you assess, you analyze, and then you report,

and then you get feedback and you start all over again. What you were talking about, it's called Unit 414. It's a battalion that's in the Israeli Intelligence Collection Corps. It's primarily women. This is where the young females who joined the Israeli Defense Force who have a high IQ, they get assigned to these units. And their job is they sit in these command posts and they monitor the screens of all the cameras and the sensors that they have out there. They also are able to remote control heavy weaponry that's on towers. And so if you see suspicious action, you can take your joystick, and if they come across, you can open fire.

And some of them did this. These women were reporting back for some time now that not all was good. Not everything was going well in Gaza. They said Hamas is doing rehearsals for this attack. They identified the points where Hamas was coming across. They identified the units, the special forces unit of Hamas. They identified that they were doing training in a mock-up of an Israeli kibbutz. They identified that they were doing paraglide training. And they all came back and said, they're preparing for an attack. And they wrote these

reports and they went up the chain of command. Many of these girls who survived, they took heavy casualties, Judge, heavy casualties. They didn't have weapons. They weren't issued weapons. And when Hamas came across and stormed their command centers, these girls didn't have any defense. Over 20 of them were sleeping at the time. They ended up in a bunker. And they were, the majority of them majority were killed some of them were captured

but um i mean this is the what you're talking about here is an exception this is a different unit altogether this is the this is the a special all-female unit that they're hyping up right now but they weren't on the front line they were closer they they weren't attacked they were able to respond cohesively and and. Back to what Bibi and his commanders knew or ought to have known. They knew everything. Here's the problem. They had all that information, but the men above got the reports from the women. And Israel is a very sexist society. And the men went, they're overreacting. They're not. And they didn't check on it. Or if they did it, they wrote it up and sent up to the top. What we do know is this, on October 6th,

the night of October 6th, the head of Israeli intelligence, the head of their military, people from the prime minister's office were all meeting about these reports because the reports are saying Hamas is getting ready to come across tonight. And they met and they met and they met and they said, Hamas would never do that. It doesn't make any sense. These people have to be wrong because we believe Hamas is committed to, you know, taking these 20,000 work permits and getting the money and da, da, da, da. We'll, we won't make a decision tonight. And what they were being asked to do, Judge, is have everybody go on alert, to call the military and say, get everybody out of the barracks, get everybody online, stand to, stand to, get ready, bring people back, you know, just in case. They didn't

do that. They let everybody sleep. Everybody stay on holiday. They didn't put a warning out at all. They said, we'll reconvene in the morning. But when they reconvened in the morning, it was already too late. And this is criminal. And this is Netanyahu. This is, you know, that steely-eyed commander, you know, secretary, minister of defense that's out there. I think Gallant is his name. Steely-eyed man right now talking so brave. Dude, you didn't do the right thing. You were asleep at the wheel. All these generals that are talking tough today, where were they on October 6th, October 7th? They failed. These are losers. These are guys who sacrificed all these women who were doing their job. The Golani Brigade was on duty, thinly manned. They were overwhelmed. They fought. They lost 41 guys there on the front line. They

got beat to a standstill. I mean, beat bad. They had to retreat, withdraw. The Golani Brigade got beat because they were thinly manned. Everybody was on vacation. They knew Hamas was coming across the border. They were calling for air support, bringing the helicopters. No, we're not going to mobilize the pilots because Hamas would never do this. The guys on the front line were screaming, it's happening, it's happening now. They're coming across.

Nobody did anything. Nobody did anything. And when the Israeli military arrived, they began to kill Israelis. Well, first of all, we have to understand that when the Israelis came, arrived, they were in panic. Because what Hamas did is achieve an absolute tactical dominance of the battlefield. They came across, they penetrated the initial lines. They knew exactly where they're going. They took out the communication. The Israelis couldn't communicate because all of the communication rooms were seized by Hamas, blown up by Hamas. They blew up the communication tower.

So now they're calling on phones, cell phones. They're trying to coordinate guys who are driving on their own initiative because they can't mobilize. And people are running in and they're panicked. They're absolutely panicked. And they get there and they just start shooting. You see movement, you shoot. A lot of the Israelis that were killed early on were shot by Israeli soldiers who misidentified them as Hamas. And as you came into the kibbutzes themselves or the military bases where Hamas has now hard-pointed themselves in homes, the Israelis tried to do assaults and got whipped. Look at the casualties of the Israeli elite forces there's sorry at the month call who are equivalent of built the force

lost I think 14 dead that day 14 dead of the most elite commandos out there why because they rushed forward in uncoordinated fashion they were getting whipped so the tanks came in and they did you know they sat there and they just fired on the houses, killing everybody. The Israelis were in communication with the Israeli hostages inside. The Israeli hostages inside said Hamas wants to negotiate a surrender. They want to get us released and all that. And the Israelis went, nope, blow them up, kill them. All those people that were killed in the rave that took place,

turns out a lot of them were killed by Israeli helicopters that came on scene and couldn't distinguish between Hamas and that, and so they shot everybody. They killed everybody. Now, Israel panicked. The notion that the IDF is back to the type of demolition and ethnic cleansing that it had commenced before the truce? Well, if they start this war, they will continue to do in that route. They will try to win this conflict by doing that. But the same thing will happen. Hamas will beat them. The world will turn against

them even harsher this time, because now everybody's seeing what the potential is, that there's the potential for negotiation. There's a potential for discussion. If Israel says, we don't want to do this anymore, we choose war, the world will turn against them. And in America, it's going to be difficult to maintain this. But the biggest thing is that Hezbollah isn't going to sit there and do nothing. When Hezbollah comes back into this fight, if Israel goes into Gaza, the Israelis are just going to get their butts kicked. Do Netanyahu and his commanders understand that? Does the Israeli public understand that?

Well, the Israeli media is starting to say things about this. What I'm reporting here is what's coming from the Israeli media. They put out a thing tonight saying, if we start this war, there's nothing we can do to stop Hezbollah from taking Galilee. We don't have the military force to do that. That's a big deal because that's northern Israel. Now they'll be captured by Hezbollah. And with all the Israeli forces down in Gaza getting beat, it's a bad deal. Netanyahu's fighting for his political life right now. He's fighting for his political life. He knows that his support ratings. And he also knows that right now, if he leaves office, eventually he's going to be arrested and put in jail for the

rest of his life for corruption charges. And he will probably be held criminally liable for what happened on October 7th. The Israeli people will never forgive him for what he's done. And so he's a desperate man, which is the main reason why he needs to get out of this job, because everything he says, everything he does isn't for the state of Israel. It's for Benjamin Netanyahu. And people need to recognize that, that he cannot be allowed not only to put Israel at risk, but put the world at risk because he wants to preserve some sort of political viability that no longer exists. Last subject, Scott, the feelings of government actors in the region, President Erdogan of Turkey, President al-Sisi of Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan. Look, the Palestinians never had a lot of support from people. There's a lot of lip

service played to Palestinian state, but until Hamas launched their attack on October 7th, nobody's doing anything for Palestinians today. Today, this has changed. And a lot of it's changed because people honestly feel revolted by what Israel did, but a lot of it's happening because Arab leaders who previously were intimidated into buying into the notion of Israeli domination of the Palestinians in exchange for economic prosperity through adherence to the Abrams Accord are saying, the political winds have changed. Israel's not as sturdy as it was. We're going to maybe take a harsher stance. Look at the debates taking place in the Egyptian parliament right now. They are hardcore anti-Israel. The King of Jordan is

starting to say things. The world is coagulating into this anti-Israeli stance that America can't stand up against. The vote in the United Nations was very telling what happened in support of the ceasefire, et cetera. The world is against Israel right now. This is very, very dangerous for Israel. This is why Netanyahu has to go, because right now Israel needs to be worrying about its future. It's not going to beat Hamas. You can't beat Hamas. Hamas is an idea whose time has arrived. I know there's people out there, Scott, you're supporting terrorism. I don't know, is supporting Sam Adams and Paul Revere supporting terrorism? Because you know, the British viewed're supporting terrorism. I don't know. Is supporting Sam Adams and Paul Revere supporting terrorism?

Because you know, the British viewed them as terrorists. The men that stood up in Concord and Lexington, were they terrorists? When he blew up the King David Hotel in 1948, the British considered him to be a terrorist. And he said one of the founders of the state of Israel. But Hamas right now is doing things for the Palestinian people that nobody has done for them in their history. Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, has been an Israeli shill for some time now. Fatah has given up. The only people fighting for Palestine are Hamas. And you can't, if there was an election today in the Palestinian territories, Hamas would win not only the legislator, but the presidency, because the people of Palestine are behind them now, like they've never been before. And you can't erase

that. I don't know what Netanyahu thinks he's going to do. A, the Israeli defense force has so far proven incapable of defeating Hamas. And B, even if you kill the soldiers, didn't we learn anything from counterinsurgency warfare? If you kill civilians, you create more. We learned that in Iraq. For every bad guy we thought we killed, we created 20 new bad guys. We learned that against Al-Qaeda. We learned that against the Taliban. This is basic military math. Israel is creating a stronger Hamas that will survive beyond this conflict. Israel's already lost this war. They just don't know it. When we reconvene next week, we'll talk about the effect of all of this on one

Joseph R. Biden. But Scott, you're a dynamo. Thank you very much for your passion, your knowledge, and for your analysis. Deeply and profoundly appreciated. Thank you. Of course. Tomorrow, 1 o'clock Eastern, Ask the Judge. 2 o'clock Eastern, Intelligence Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. And 3 o'clock Eastern, Back by Popular Demand. Ritter's going to watch this one. Jack Devine. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.