Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Why Israel is losing its war.

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Scott Ritter: Why Israel is losing its war.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, November 7th, 2023. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Over the weekend, General Zeluzhny, the commander of the Ukrainian military forces, told The Economist magazine

that he believes that at the present time, so this is just a few days ago, the military conflict is at a stalemate, and President Zelensky and his team erupted and publicly condemned the general for that. What's your take on this? Well, I mean, first of all, to have the commander of the Ukrainian armed forces speaking out independently on this issue, you know, in a manner that contradicts the stance taken by the commander in chief, by the president, is in and of itself a significant event. It means that things have reached an impasse. And I think the signal that Zelensky is sending is that Ukraine needs to stop throwing manpower away in fruitless attacks against a Russian defensive line that is prepared to receive them. You know, The Ukrainians have basically slaughtered

their manpower. Their available reserves are down to zero. And so this was his way of putting pressure on Zelensky to stop the counteroffensive. He's paid a heavy price. It appears that the Secretary of Defense, the Minister of Defense for Ukraine, has submitted a demand calling for Zelensky to resign. And this is a significant event. He's a very popular general. He could choose to refuse this. This could lead to a military on civilian, you know, fight for the leadership. This could be beginning of a, you know, of a military coup.

Who knows? But the situation is very unstable right now in Ukraine in regards to civil military relations. Add to this reporting by NBC News over the weekend that the significant contingent in the American State Department and in the EU foreign ministries have begun to discuss the desirability of negotiation. Now, I don't know if they're discussing that with President Zelensky. He, of course, can never acknowledge that publicly. He could have had a fabulous deal if he told Joe Biden and the British prime minister to go take a hike two years ago, but he didn't. And we are where we are today. Has the West recognized that Ukraine has lost and it's about time they started talking instead of supplying ammunition? Well, absolutely. I mean, there's no serious military official or

political official now that talks about the prospects of a Ukrainian victory. Oh, how the story has changed. Remember just months ago, everybody's, oh, Ukraine's going to win. No, they're not. They've lost. The strategic victory that Russia was looking for has been achieved. Russia has defeated, strategically defeated the Ukrainian military. That doesn't mean the war is over. It means Ukraine will never regain strategic initiative. They will always be on the defensive. There will always be a losing end of a military equation that has Russia coming out on top. It's inevitable. And now it's just a question of time. The smart move right now is for the Ukrainians to, you know, cut the line, take the loss, get the best deal they can. But understand, it's not going to be a deal negotiated by the West.

I always laugh when I hear people say, now the State Department wants to negotiate. Really, I would just ask, who in the State Department, who are you going to pick up the phone and call? Who's your Russian counterpart? You haven't had meaningful connection with the Russians for a long time. They've given up on you. They're not waiting for your call. They don't want your call.

See, Russia's not going to negotiate with the West for conflict termination in Ukraine. Russia has won the war, which means Russia will dictate the terms. At the time, Russia's ready to dictate the terms. And it's going to require Ukraine to make that decision, not the West. Ukraine's going to have to decide to bring a termination of this conflict, which again brings us back to the civil-military divide. If Zelensky continues to push for continued suicidal military operations, I think the military may rise up and remove him from power because the military is ready to bring an end to this conflict. Is there a contention on his right, whether they're Nazis or whatever they are, that will seriously threaten his life or his stability in office if he begins to do what you've advised him to do. In other words, it's their

contingent that is crazy enough to think that they can't be rational and they have to keep fighting until the last man is no longer standing. Well, even the Azov Battalion or however they've renamed themselves, these right-wing Banderas Nazis, have said, we've lost the war. Our offensive is over. We need weapons. We don't have weapons. We can't win. And so I believe they're in survival mode too, which means that they want to bring an end to this conflict in a way that allows them to retain a modicum of political relevance in any post-conflict Ukraine. Russia, of course, won't want that. Russia wants to denazify. But that's

something, for instance, if you take a look at the negotiated settlement that Russia agreed to back in March that would have brought an end to this war, there was no denazification. And maybe, maybe if the Ukrainian government stopped now and sought to terminate this conflict on terms favorable to Russia in terms of recognition of the Russian territorial acquisition, that Russia may agree to some sort of post-conflict environment that gives Ukraine a say in how they structure their government, as long as they don't say we want to be members of NATO and allow Ukraine to solve that problem. But the longer this conflict goes on, the more likely is that Russia is going to impose a solution as opposed to accept a solution put forward by the Ukrainians. What is your take of the murder by booby trap of General Zelushny's chief of staff? I mean, is that the way the Russians operate or is this somebody inside the military sending a message to the general or is it some personal feud? Well, we don't know.

First of all, it wasn't the Russians. We know that. We know that the package was delivered by somebody in Zelensky's military advisory, in a military advisory to Zelensky. We know who sent the package. The question is, why did it contain live grenades? And why was the general allowing his son to play with the grenade? And why did the general take the grenade and pull the pin on it? I think he might've thought it was a toy. I don't know. It's an insane thing, but the notion is something's not right. Again, we are looking at a system in collapse. We are looking at a system that doesn't know which way they want to go because there is no direction. They've lost. There's literally

nothing that can be done to salvage this situation. There's still some fight left in the Ukrainian army. Don't get me wrong. But they're not going to change the outcome. The Russians have the strategic initiative and Russia will continue to push. And as they push, you're going to see collapse. I, you know, I don't know what happened in the final days of Nazi Germany as the walls are coming down in Berlin, but I would imagine there were situations where German generals were drunk and doing stupid things with hand grenades and blowing themselves up because they've just given up on, you know, normalcy of life.

These military guys are under tremendous pressure. They've lost a war. They've lost a war. And for a military leader who has put their entire reputation on winning a war, remember Zelensky this time last year gave an interview to The Economist magazine, I mean, Zeluzny, where he said, I can beat these guys. I can beat these guys if you just give me, and he put out a shopping list. He got everything on that shopping list and more. He didn't beat them. He barely made a dent in their defenses. He's been defeated.

And now he's admitting that defeat. This is a heavy, heavy burden. This may be a political or even a psychological question. What becomes of people like Victoria Nuland and Lindsey Graham, when the inevitable is thrust upon them. There is no off-ramp in which they can claim that they were right all along. Well, they'll claim political failure on the part of Biden and others that, you know, they will never blame themselves. Look, what happened to Graham? Graham, you know, was the guy screaming for the ouster of Bashar al-Assad. That didn't go too well.

Graham was saying we have to stay in Afghanistan. That didn't go too well. And Graham right now has been pushing for this conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It's going to fail. He's going to lose. And he's also probably going to lose in the position he's taken vis-a-vis Israel. But Graham is one of these slimy political lizards who always finds a way to land on his feet and scurry out of harm's way and blame other people. But no, nothing's going to happen to them. They're

political. They are swamp animals of the swamp. They thrive in the swamp. There's no accountability in the swamp. They'll just be wrong again. How did Hamas come about, and what role, if any, did Netanyahu personally play? Well, Hamas is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a Sunni fundamentalist organization, Egyptian-based, that found root in Gaza, given the connectivity between Egypt and Gaza. And they became a terrorist organization, a resistance organization. Israel decided to help turn them into a political organization capable of governing, the goal of which was to create a counter to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO and Fatah, their military wing, to split the Palestinian voice. Around 2005, 2006, when there was talk about statehood, about getting the settlements out,

they needed to split and weaken the Palestinians. The Israelis helped fund Hamas back in the 80s. They helped create Hamas back in the 80s. They helped create Hamas politically in 2000. Netanyahu was involved, especially in the second part. He's the one that said, we need to fund Hamas. He's on record saying that. They have his voice. He's given an interview where he says, we need to create Hamas. We need to fund it, we need to breathe life into it. Hamas is a legitimate expression of a fundamentalist, you know, resistance from within Gaza, but its creation was facilitated by Israel and in many ways guided indirectly by Israel. In order to divide the Palestinians, in order to resist Yasser Arafat and Fatah.

Yes, but the irony is that Hamas was always meant to be the junior partner. When they first had elections in 2006, Hamas won the most votes. They won the parliament, and the PLO couldn't handle that, so they dissolved the parliament. The Israelis were freaking out, going, no, no, no, we didn't want them to win. We just want them to be there. Today, if there were elections, Hamas would win everything. They would win the parliament. They would win the presidency. They are more popular than anybody in the Palestinian Authority right now because they have done more to defend Palestine and to create the conditions that could lead to the creation of a Palestinian state than the Palestinian authority has ever done. What is Netanyahu's goal in Gaza today? Well, he doesn't know even what his goal is. I mean, he's put forward, he's articulated very,

you know, decisive goals, the destruction of Hamas, the destruction of the Hamas military. But how do you destroy a military that's underground when you're operating above ground? They don't even have a battle plan how they're going to make that transition. And there's heavy fighting going on. We're not getting the full extent. The Israelis are very, very controlling of who they let in and the conditions under which images are released. CNN put a crew in recently, and they said, everything we are showing you was approved in advance by the Israelis, and they only got to go to a limited area. Hamas is releasing videos that show, you know, they are closing with and destroying the enemy through firepower maneuver.

They are, you know, bringing in rocket-propelled grenades, hitting Israeli tanks. Last night, they claimed to have killed 10. They have video evidence to show that 10 were hit. Whether or not they were killed is another question, but this war is not going well for Israel. It's one thing to move tanks in and occupy a particular piece of ground. But when the enemy is like ants underneath you and swarm out and bite you, it's going to be a death by a thousand cuts. Netanyahu doesn't have a master plan. Remember, they didn't prepare for this. There was no contingency. Israel never imagined Hamas doing what they did on October 7th. Never imagined it. All of their military contingency was for terrorist-like operations or civil unrest. They never thought this would be the kind of operation

that required 300,000 troops to be diverted. They always planned on Hezbollah causing problems up north, but never Hamas causing this kind of problem down south. Netanyahu just told ABC News that Israel would provide security within Gaza once the war is over, meaning prison guards for this open-air concentration camp. But isn't that suicidal? Wouldn't that lead to perpetual guerrilla warfare? I think we have to understand that Netanyahu is a failed politician and his time is limited. He presided over the greatest security failure of Israel in its history. His generals have acknowledged this. They've all said that once the fighting's done, they're resigning. Netanyahu is going to be pushed out. Israel, before October 7th, was already in a

near civil war. That's not me. That's the president of Israel saying that there's going to be a civil war because of Netanyahu. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were protesting the streets against Netanyahu. And now he's being blamed by many Israelis, rightfully so, for this crisis, for the deaths of so many people on October 7th. So Benjamin Netanyahu is out there, you know, spinning plans and making statements. He's not going to be here much longer. He's a failed politician with no credibility. He will be replaced. So I would not pay too much attention to what Netanyahu is saying. I'd wait to see what comes after Netanyahu. Is there any Western country that accepts the Israeli concept of collective punishment? I mean,

isn't that by definition, by definition, a war crime? Yes, it is by definition a war crime. Is there any country that accepts it? The United States, most of Europe, most of NATO. You don't hear them condemning this. They all speak out in support of Israel. The United States of America supports this ongoing war crime. But it's not as though we just discovered it on October 7th. The basic principle of collective punishment came out of a 2006 doctrine, the Dahiyat doctrine. Dahiyat is a suburb of West Beirut that was leveled by the Israelis as part of their collective punishment of the Lebanese people because Hezbollah was embarrassing the Israeli army during that

short 33-day war in August of 2006. So they collectively punished the Lebanese people. Since 2008, Israel's been doing this. 2008, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2020, 2021, collectively punishing the people of Gaza. In 2023, the only reason why it's getting notice is because Israel, Hamas started this off by embarrassing Israel. Everybody's attention now was on Israel, the embarrassment, and Israel's overreacted. The level of destruction is beyond that which is imaginable and tolerable, except in the United States. We still have John Kirby and others spinning the data, spinning the news in a way that absolves Israel of responsibility.

But as the Russians pointed out in the United Nations, you know, people keep saying Israel has an inherent right to self-defense. The occupier never has a right of self-defense against the occupied. And Israel is an occupying power over the Palestinian people. So they're committing war crimes in everything they do when it comes to the Palestinian people. Most of the weaponry that Israel is using was derived from the United States, either by cash crimes by the Israeli Defense Force using American military equipment? If we had a world where the United States could be held accountable for its actions, we don't live in such a world. But if we did, the United States is complicit in every single crime carried out by the Israelis. We've provided them with the aircraft and we have not done anything to intervene to tell them to stop using those aircraft. We gave them the 2,000 pound JDAM bombs that they used to drop the Gazan infrastructure.

The first time one of those bombs hit a civilian structure should have been the last time because if this was the way the U.S. should be operating, somebody should have picked up the phone and told the Israelis, the next bomb you drop is the last penny you get from us. We want all our weapons returned. We refuse to allow you to go forward in this way. But instead, we let them drop. We send them more bombs. We are flooding Israeli airspace with C-17 transport aircraft, providing the weapons they need to slaughter the Palestinians. We are the war criminals. Is there any justification for this other than domestic American politics? None whatsoever, because even if you want to cite regional security, even if we want to say that it's in our national security interests, I'm here

to tell you right now, the best ending you get for the United States and Israel is the immediate termination of this conflict. The longer this conflict goes on, the more isolated Israel becomes and the more of a geopolitical impediment Israel becomes to the United States. Israel is harming the United States right now. As we speak, the global south, which we need to engage with to compete with China on the global stage economically, the global south is abandoning Israel and abandoning us. We are becoming more isolated. This is a significant problem for the United States, especially when we talk about this transition from a rules-based international order into some sort of multipolarity that China and Russia will have a significant say in. If we continue to support Israel, we will be totally

isolated and we will have basically divorced ourselves from a process we must be engaged in if we plan to succeed. Here is an interview with the number two person in Hezbollah. It's very brief. There's a translation as well as subtitles, and it's right to the point. Right now, Hezbollah is simply trying to distract the Israelis from their military action in Gaza. That's your main goal? Of course, Hezbollah participates for the sake of lowering the pressure on Gaza and for the sake of preventing Israel from achieving its objectives.

In addition, as a clear message that if you expand it, there will be serious consequences. These messages have been delivered and are still being delivered. How powerful militarily is Hezbollah? Hezbollah is the only Arab force that's beaten the Israelis in a stand-up fight up until October 7th when Hamas beat the Israelis in a stand-up fight up until October 7th when Hamas beat the Israelis in a stand-up fight. Hezbollah is extraordinarily powerful, 50,000 to 80,000 active duty forces, combat hardened after years of experience in Syria. They can mobilize another 100,000. These are well-trained, well-equipped troops.

The bottom line is if they began to fight Israel in the northern front, they could probably defeat the Israeli army and take over a significant part of northern Israel. That's how strong they are. And everything he said there, understand this, Hassan Nasrallah, who's number one in Hezbollah, gave a speech last Friday where he talked about this, how you take the pressure off of Gaza. What he said is because of what we're doing here, which is managed escalation, they're not seeking rapid escalation. They're just creating enough pressure on Israel that Israel has to respond. 70,000 Israeli troops are now on the border that otherwise could be at Gaza. Half of the Israeli Navy is focused on Hezbollah, not on Hamas. A quarter of the Israeli air force is focused on Hezbollah,

not Hamas. 30,000 Israeli civilians have been evacuated from the settlements and now have to be resettled interior of Israel at significant economic costs. 300,000 Israeli reservists have been pulled from their jobs and are in the military. Now those jobs aren't filled. The Israeli economy is facing a crisis mode. All of this is because of Hezbollah. This is the pressure that Hezbollah is putting on, the diversion of resources away to relieve the pressure on Gaza. And what Hezbollah has said is, we'll do this. And if Israel manages to turn the tide and threaten Hamas with destruction, then we will come in hard. And Israel doesn't have a response to that. They

cannot beat Hezbollah in a stand-up fight as things currently stand. Doesn't Prime Minister Netanyahu have the ability to reason and understand the danger he's bringing Israel into by this unbridled, almost carpet bombing-like invasion of Gaza? Benjamin Netanyahu is a survivor. Understand this, that if he steps aside in unfavorable conditions, he will be arrested and he will be prosecuted for corruption. He'll spend the rest of his life in jail. So this is the man who's willing to use the suffering of the Palestinian people and the suffering of Israel to further his political ambition. He should be pushed out of power today, but he's holding on, and I believe he's holding on for a deal, a deal that says that

when he steps aside, there will be a non-prosecution agreement. There'll be some sort of agreement that will absolve him of this responsibility. He's fighting for his own personal future and the future of his wife, Sarah. Is Joe Biden involved in any of this? I mean, Tony Blinken's weekend jaunts around the Middle East was a dismal and publicly embarrassing failure. Well, I mean, Joe Biden's involved in that. He's the commander in chief. He's the president of the United States. But in this, he has delegated authority to Blinken. Blinken is running the show right now. Blinken is calling the show right now. Blinken is calling the shots. He coordinates with Jake Sullivan to ensure that there's some sort of connectivity

with the Department of Defense, Lloyd Austin. The CIA Director William Burns just went to Israel, by the way, to talk. No one's talking about what he was telling him. I'm sure he's giving them the bad news and such. But Biden right now is in a very difficult situation because he, from a national security standpoint, of course, we are totally married to Israel and we will continue to provide Israel with the support necessary for Israel to at least try to dominate the battlefield. But we're coming into an election season, and 2024 is looking very problematic for Joe Biden right now. And one of the things that makes it problematic is that there are a lot of swing states, we'll bring up Michigan to be precise, where there's a large Arab population. And Biden

can't afford to lose Michigan. If he loses Michigan, he can't get reelected or whoever the Democratic National Committee appoints as his proxy can't get reelected. So to appease Michigan, he's going to have to do things that the Israelis don't agree with. There's a political battle. So they're trying to blend the traditional national security support of Israel with the devolving global situation. We are becoming increasingly isolated. That's problematic with a very problematic internal domestic situation. And this is an awful lot to ask a man of Biden's age and diminished mental capacity, but his handlers are busy trying to massage the situation. They're not succeeding on any front. It's a failure all around.

How long will it take before the IDF realizes that they have a serious battle on their hands and it might not be worth the bloodshed that it will cause. I mean, it's really bloodshed. It's really military bloodshed. Well, they already know that they've, you know, there's an old saying, you know, you grab the tail of the tiger. They've grabbed the tail of the tiger and they're in for a ride right now and they know this. You know, Hamas isn't going to come up and defeat them in a stand, you know, face-to-face battle. What's going to happen in Gaza, if this continues, is going to be a death by a thousand cuts. Every night, more casualties. Israel not being able to control what happens below ground, not being in control above ground because of the ability of Hamas to jump up from tunnels.

And this is going to be a very, very difficult fight. Israel so far has advanced on cleared lines of communication, roads that aren't blocked by debris. As they close in on Gaza City, the main urban area in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, they're going to come into those areas where they've dropped the buildings, the rubbles in the street. There's going to be a separation of armor from infantry, and it's going to become a much more difficult fight for Israel, probably see some significant casualties inflicted on Israel. How do you think this ends? Every war ends politically, and I think Israel's in a very difficult political situation, not only internally, because remember, there's all this chaos taking place behind the scenes

about Netanyahu's future. It's very, you know, we in the United States turn on the TV and we see the minister of defense, Galant, speaking. And we're like, that's the minister of defense. He's strong. We see the chief of staff speaking. In Israel, they see failures. They see a man who presided over the greatest embarrassment military defeat in Israel. They look at him and he has no respect. Nobody's encouraged by him.

Nobody's motivated by him. They openly despise him. Here in the United States, we're like, oh, he's speaking. There must be authority. That entire government has been disgraced and they are on their way out. So there's that battle being fought in Israel. Here in the United States, we have a political fight alone. A 2024 presidential election will dictate. I think what we're pointing to is that there's going to be pressure put on Israel to bring an end to this fight. There's going to be a humanitarian cease fire. There's going to be humanitarian goods brought in. And once they stop the bombing, it's going to be very difficult for Israel to resume bombing. That doesn't mean that they won't because they've shown a proclivity for disregarding international opinion. But I think there will be

a pause. At that point in time, I think there's going to be a concerted effort to get Netanyahu pushed out of the way, get a new Israeli government in, and try and push for some sort of diplomatic resolution to this problem that includes the initiation of serious talks about the creation of a Palestinian state. Wow. Scott Ritter, thank you very much, my dear friend. A dynamo of information and clarity, deeply and profoundly appreciated. We'll see you again soon. Thanks for having me. Of course. And thank you for continuing to subscribe, my dear friends.

We're up to 229,000 subscriptions. You remember our goal, 230,000 by Christmas time. We're well, well on our way to get there. From my heart and from my team, we are deeply appreciative. More to come tomorrow, Thursday, Friday. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.