Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/16/23 Kyle Anzalone on the Situation in Gaza

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Kyle Anzalone joined Scott on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss the war between Israel and Hamas. They go through some of the biggest news stories of the week related to the war, explaining what we know and putting it all in context.  Discussed on the show: “Over 400 US Officials Sign Letter Criticizing Biden’s Israel Policy” (Antiwar.com) “Poll: Majority of Americans Support a Ceasefire in Gaza” (Antiwar.com) “Tel Aviv Refuses Western Requests to Allow Aid Into Gaza Through Israel” (Libertarian Institute) “The West Should Welcome Gaza Refugees” (Wall Street Journal) “Israel: What We Are Doing in Gaza, We Can Do in Beirut” (Libertarian Institute) “Austin warned Gallant about Israeli military actions in Lebanon” (Axios) “It’s All About Provoking Your Reaction” (Antiwar.com) “Netanyahu’s Support for Hamas Backfired” (Antiwar.com) “Diplomats Warn White House Support for Israel Is Destroying US Image in Middle East” (Antiwar.com) Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, November 16th, 2000, 23, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director of anti-war.com, an author of the book, Enough Already. Time to end the war on. terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, almost 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003, at Scott Horton.org, and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you can follow

me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton's show. All right, today's guest is the great Kyle Anselone, my good friend and colleague at the Institute and at anti-war.com. He is the news editor at the former and opinion editor at the latter there, and he hosts his own great show called Conflicts of Interest as well. Welcome back to the show. Kyle, how are you doing? Doing well, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Very happy to have you here. I need the bad news from you, but let's start with a little bit of silver lining here. Top headline on anti-war.com today. 400 U.S. officials criticized Biden's Israel policy. Do tell, please. Yeah. So there's been a series of memos, dissent channel cables, and a few other things that have come up now. But this is by far the

significant letter from the Biden administration employees criticizing the White House over their Israeli policy. So this time, 400 U.S. officials from over 40 agencies have sent a letter to Biden criticizing his unconditional support for Israel's war in Gaza. And the letter is pretty good. It says, we call on President Biden to urgently demand a ceasefire and to call for de-escalation and the current conflict by securing the immediate release. of the Israeli hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians. And so I thought, you know, that was a pretty strong demand not only to call for the release of the Israeli hostages, but the thousands of Palestinians that are, you know, in Israeli jails

and are essentially political prisoners or hostages. And then they also call for the return of water, fuel, electricity, and other basis services and to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. So pretty powerfully worded letter. and Daniel McAdams pointed out, and this is, I think, really important, that a lot of these senators are apparently political appointees. And so these aren't necessarily career State Department officials, but people who came into the State Department are other government agencies under the Biden administration. And a part of what the New York Times pointed out is that they're concerned that

this could actually hurt Biden's chance of re-election. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is going to be, it already is. for the next year, everybody, pull up a chair and pop your buttered popcorn for this massive grudge match that's going to be taking place over the next year between the Democratic Party's voters and the Democratic Party's donors. And they are not seeing eye to eye and especially not after this. And I don't know if you remember. I think it was in 2012. It could have been 08. I think it was in 12 when the convention was in L.A. And I forgot the exact resolution, but it was a pro-Israel resolution

and the Yays went yay and the Nays just bellowed and they were in some basketball stadium or some of a huge stadium and the place just shook with Nays and then the mayor of L.A. was chairing the thing and he goes I think somebody even walks up

and talks to him in his ear or something or he looks over his shoulder for instructions and he says the eyes have it you know or The A's have it. And the place just erupted like thunder. Like, you've got to be kidding me. And it was just such a lie.

And I don't know. They're going to get away with that this year. This is a major fight. But, you know, the Israel lobby spends a lot of money on the Democratic Party. They have no party without Zionist donors. So, and they got no seats to sit in without anti-Zionist voters. So we'll see how it goes. Yeah, well, Dave DeCamp in his article today at anti-war.com, Scott, points out that 80% of Democratic voters want to call for a ceasefire.

80. Wow. And 60% of voters overall. And so I think that probably shows a couple of things. One, what Israel is doing to Gaza is so cruel and so over the top that even quite a few Republicans are just wanting to call for a ceasefire at this point. But 80% agreement on anything, I mean, that's nearing a consensus of Democratic voters. on the Gaza issue. And so you would think that this may have to have some pressure on the Biden administration. And they've tried to do things like push Israel to have more humanitarian aid enter Gaza.

But that isn't really working out. Israel is forcing all the aid trots to stop at a checkpoint in Israel before driving through Egypt and then crossing the Rafa border crossing into Gaza. Apparently there's Western governments that are starting to get pretty frustrated with Tel Aviv. Herod says an article out. I wrote it up for the Institute. It's on our page today there. And I explained that these governments just want the aid to be entered straight to Gaza through Israel

because Israel could do its checkpoints, but they're refusing to do that. And then they're causing a backup at their border crossing into Egypt. And so this is really backing up the aid far more than it needs to be. It seems to be as pretty similar tactic as what Saudi Arabia used in Yemen, where they would force the aid ships to go to a port in Germany. before proceeding on to Haddadah in Yemen, and this really backed up and slowed the aid shipments down. Yeah, man, what a catastrophe. All right, it's anti-war radio.

Scott Horton here talking with Kyle Anzlone from anti-war.com. What do we have on the casualty numbers out of Gaza so far? So the numbers coming out, and they have slowly are stopped increasing so quickly in the past week or so. And it is 11,000 civilians total. 4,500 of those deaths are children. I believe the number is 40 journalists and over 100 U.N. employees. And so that's kind of a breakdown. I haven't seen a number on that.

I also haven't seen a number on the total number of Hamas killed on October 7th either. Yeah. Well, I sure would like to know if they've killed any Hamas guys in all of their bombing of the Gaza Strip. I'm sorry for laughing. It's just the absurdity of that thing. I'm sure somebody must have been engaged at point-blank range there in the fight in North Gaza. But, I mean, in the bombing campaign for all these weeks and weeks and weeks where we all know, we meaning all of humanity on this planet, know that Hamas is buried deep underground, mostly safe from Israeli strikes on the people above.

So, I mean, do you have any sense that, well, there's a cover up? Sometimes they do kill Hamas fighters, but they're just classified as civilians. No, really, nobody's seen any Hamas fighters around here. These are all civilians being, you know, having their corpses pulled out of the rubble here. Yeah, so a couple weeks ago, the Washington Post, I believe, reported that while Israel had carried on stents the bombing campaign to Gaza, they hadn't hurt the middle or upper ranks of Hamas. Now, as far as, you know, foot soldiers of Hamas are people in Gaza who are employed by Hamas to do various things because they are the, you know, as you say, the wardens of the prison. And so they do assign other jobs other than military ones. And then one of the things I guess on the fighter points guide, I think why we probably don't have a number, especially when we're talking about the Israeli forces coming in and engaging with Amos, is that the 11,000 number that's being counted are bodies that have gone to hospitals in Gaza, mordes in Gaza, or I guess turned up at other like official agencies like UN shelters or something like that.

And then we're buried. And so if, you know, somebody was killed engaging within Israeli forces, their body probably wouldn't have turned up in an area that is still populated with Palestinians. And so it's not going to be counted as a part of that 11,000 number. And in fact, the Israeli bombing of an attack on Palestinian hospitals in Gaza at this point have really slowed the release of these numbers. Communications have almost been completely cut. I believe the guy who is coordinating the numbers at the Al-Shefa hospital that's currently besieged by the Israeli forces. And as of today, I believe there is actually Israeli forces on the grounds and in the building of those hospitals and telling the doctors to stay away from the windows, are they're going to be shot? So I think it's unlikely we're going to get an update on the death toll in the nuts couple of days at least.

Yeah. All right. So talk to me about what's happening at the Al-Sheifa hospital there in Gaza. Did they find terror tunnels full of weapons? Not so far, not that I've seen all the evidence that I've seen put out by Israel. People have used the Google find image and have shown that a lot of these are from old, you know, pictures from 2012, 2014 in the past when Israel's carried out operations into Gaza. And so nothing to show anything current. It's so hard to get good information and any kind of confirmed information coming out, particularly at the Al-Shefa hospital because communications have been almost completely cut.

Doctors without borders will put out a statement every day or two when they get a hold of one of their doctors that's in the hospital or the UN or another agency will. But that's really all the communications we're getting. And a part of the reason is that people are not being allowed to leave. The doctors are reporting that anybody who's tried to leave, ambulances that have tried to leave and retrieve wounded civilians that are outside of the. The gates of the hospital have been fired on and killed. So there's no option. And in fact, yesterday, because about 180 bodies are decomposing in the hospital, they had opened up a mass grave on the grounds. And they apparently buried those people last night or today.

I mean, this is why they can bomb these places is because there are no civilians really, or even if they are civilians, there's always a Hamas terrorist hiding behind them or below them. And of course, it goes without saying then that all those human shields lives are forfeit and Israel can kill as many civilians as they want to. Meanwhile, where's Hamas? Yeah, my concern is that they're going to end up finding because there's thousands of people sheltering on the grounds of the hospital because they, I guess, wrongfully assume that Israel wouldn't attack a hospital and that would be a safe place to go. And there's about 700 patients inside the hospital, including dozens of babies. that are in urgent need of care or the doctors in the hospital say those babies will die very soon. And so, I mean, is it possible that there's some, like, foot soldier, a Hamas, as weighing to hear news about his mom or his brother or somebody in the hospital

or has kind of given up the fight and is just taking shelter and aid at the hospital because nobody has food or water or toilets or anything in Gaza anymore. Apparently, it's raining hard and the sewage has now backed up in different areas of the strip. And so the situation there is just so chaotic and so desolate. I wouldn't be surprised that there is a Hamas fighter or two on the grounds of the hospital, but they certainly haven't turned up anything even suggesting that there's a command center. And all the doctors in the hospital have been insistent that there's no Hamas fighters there whatsoever. And, you know, again, just look at the disparity, the number of civilians that are dying.

We don't have a number of fighters, but it doesn't seem to be very many. And so it's not even taking one human shield. It's not like each Hamas fighter is holding up a child. Israel would be killing dozens of children for every fighter in Hamas. And, of course, the U.S. isn't going to condition any of the aid they give Israel no matter how many children that the Israelis kill. Yeah. And, you know, they're always just begging the question and arguing pass the sale or whatever. Hey, you know, sometimes civilians get killed, but obviously Israel isn't targeting them. they're just happening to get killed when Israel is only targeting bad guys.

But who says so? Right. And obviously, you know, apply this to any human condition where, say, a bank robber runs into somebody's house, the police don't get to line up a tank and just blow your house away because, oh, a dangerous robber was in there, Scott. So, you know, we had made sure he didn't get out and kill more people. So we killed all of you. It's anti-war radio.

I'm talking with Kyle Anzalone. He's the opinion editor at anti-war.com. and he hosts this great show called Conflicts of Interest, which I know you'll really like. And let me ask you, Kyle, what is this thing in the Wall Street Journal where they're saying, hey, America, you should take the Gazans so that we can have Gaza. It's unbelievable, man. So two members of the Israeli Knesset wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, arguing Western countries should take in refugees from Gaza as Israeli officials to continue to call for Palestinian.

to be pushed out of the enclave. We've actually had in the past couple of days, I believe, the agricultural minister in Israel call for or say that this campaign was going to be Nakhba, 23, which is kind of fascinating because I don't think Israel officially recognizes the Nakhba, and you're not supposed to mention it. And, of course, that is referring to the 1948 ethnic cleansing of what was then Palestine and moving all the Palestinians to the West Bank or Gaza Strip. So what they're talking about is finishing that for Gaza and kicking all the Palestinians

out there. The problem that Israel has come into is that all the governments in the region refuse to take in the Palestinians. And American right-wingers kind of like to make the point, well, there must be something wrong with the Palestinians that the Egyptians won't take them in. But the real reason is, of course, the Palestinians want to live in Palestine. And so if the Egyptians allow them into the Sinai in a temporary refugee camp that they're just going to rot in for dozens of years until I guess they all leave or all die off, you know, the Palestinians don't want that. So it's actually not a beneficial policy to the Palestinians to accept them as refugees in this case.

It's a way for Israel to be able to displace the population without incurring so much condemnation. Yeah. Sorry. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for Tennessee Hot Sauce Company. Man, this stuff is so good. They get all different flavors. Garlic habanero, honey habanero, pineapple habanero,

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talking with Kyle Anzalone here on KPFK, Israel. What we are doing in Gaza, we can do in Beirut. Tell me, how is the Northern Front going? Yeah, so this was a statement from the Israeli defense minister threatening, I guess, as Bala in Lebanon in general, saying we could do what we're doing in Gaza to Lebanon, which is a concerning statement because of everything we talked about so far, how cruel Israel has been in Lebanon. But there has been several exchanges of fire, I think well over 50 at this point, between Israel and groups in southern Lebanon, not just Hezbollah.

There's also Palestinian groups that operate there that have carried out some of the shelling of Israeli territory. Israeli soldiers have been killed, not as many as Hezbollah or Palestinian fighters. Scores of people in total have been killed. I believe one Israeli civilian has been killed. multiple Lebanese civilians have been killed. In fact, human rights watch just documented and released a report about a grandmother and I believe three young girls she was traveling within a car were hit within an Israeli airstrike and all killed.

And additionally, a Lebanese journalist who was working with Reuters was killed on the border. So tensions are getting pretty high about a week ago or maybe two weeks ago now. Nars Rala gave a speech where a lot of people were expecting that he was going to to declare war on Israel and kind of just said that we're going to keep doing the status quo. He believes that Hezbollah's presence on the border with Israel prevents Tel Aviv from committing as many forces as they would like to Gaza and have had to had a more restrained hand in Gaza because of that. I have no idea if it's true, but that he's saying this to his people suggest that in Beirut, they still don't want a wider war here and they would still like to play a day.

down. However, the White House is worried that Israel is willing to start a wider war. And in fact, they had Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, tell his Israeli counterpart that, you know, they want to see some de-escalation. There's anxiety in the White House over Israeli military actions in Lebanon starting a wider war. Yeah, which is, you know, really incredible. And everybody, you can look at that in Axios.com by Barack Ravid, who's very well connected. I don't know how right he always is, But he has a very good sourcing at the top of both governments, for sure. And the headline is Austin warned Gallant about Israeli military actions in Lebanon. And it says in here, White House sources, of course, anonymously, I think, or no, including one spokesman for the NSC.

The White House National Security Council spokesman said, officially speaking for the White House, that they are worried that this could escalate into a regional war. And so on that note, why don't you fill us in Kyle Anzalone from antiwar.com? about what's been going on in Syria because I know that we got troops still in Syria for Israel. Yeah. So in Iraq and Syria, there have been a series of attacks by Shia militia groups

on American forces stationed in those countries. Fortunately, so far, Scott, no American soldiers have been killed. There have been quite a few wounded. The latest Pentagon update that I've seen says 50 sits, although there's been at least eight attacks since that number was updated, and including 25 soldiers who have sustained some form of traumatic brain injury, which is concussion or something more serious. Apparently,

it's taken a few of these soldiers away from their duties, but there's really not a whole lot of details out about it now. Washington has responded with airstriots on the groups it says are responsible. But even this was reported in Voice of America, so American Funded Media. they say that they spoke with Pentagon officials who say that the airstriots are not deterring the Shia militia attacks and that the groups are saying that they will continue these attacks until Israel stops its campaign in Gaza. And so eventually it seems that the Israeli war in Gaza is going to get American soldier killed if you don't want to count the five U.S. soldiers who died in a training accident off the coast of Cyprus that were conducting operations for hostage rescue, and they were doing training for hostage rescue

operations potentially in Gaza or elsewhere in the Middle East. And, of course, they're only deployed there because of the Israeli hostilities in Gaza. Yeah. And that's if you believe they died in a training accident. Yes. I guess that is just the official story, Scott. Yeah. I mean, it's important.

You're right. Five. I don't know. Right. Soldiers who certainly wouldn't have been what they were doing if it wasn't for what was going on in Israel. Yeah. And really does raise questions about whether they were special operations forces killed on the ground in Gaza or whether Biden's got the Hutzpah to try something like that. I mean, he was photographed shaking hands with Delta Force, although I don't know that we

know exactly what they were doing there. Okay, so it's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton, finishing up here with Kyle Anzalone. And I guess I'll recommend you guys, go look at my last couple of articles at anti-war.com slash Scott. The first one is it's all about provoking your reaction, which is what Hamas is doing, trying to jerk your chain and get you to make their case for them. Get Israel to make their case for them, which is what's happening now.

And then the second one is called Netanyahu support for Hamas backfired. And it's about the Netanyahu doctrine of the Abraham Accords, but also key to that, was supporting and bolstering his words, Hamas in Gaza. to prevent them from having to negotiate in good faith over a two-state solution with the Palestinian authority. And that is, again, at anti-war.com slash scott. And if you go and look at libertarian institute.org, Kyle does a news roundup every single day. And of course, he's the boss of all our

viewpoint choices at anti-war.com as well. So there is no better wealth of information for you to go to and through every day than the great Kyle Anselone at the Institute and at anti-war.com as well. And so in the last minute here, I guess I wanted to ask you about this article that you wrote for the Institute about the diplomats warning the White House of generational damage to America's reputation in the Middle East and what that means. Yeah, so everybody can see, you know, everybody in the Middle East now can see, Scott, the videos and the damage, destruction, the killing that Israel is doing in Gaza. And this is, as the U.S., one of the U.S. diplomats in Oman said in a cable to Anthony Blinken, that this is going to create a generational change. We're losing the Middle East for a generation.

We've lost the messaging battle. It's all gone. And, you know, this is really important if you consider the fact that Israel is really pushing the U.S. towards a wider war in the Middle East. If we have completely lost the civilian population in all these countries, it's going to be extremely dangerous for American soldiers. And we have tens of thousands of them in the region now. Yeah. Hey, Kyle, let me squeeze this in at the end.

What do we have in terms of pressure from the White House toward the talks or the having of talks or any background negotiations going on? I read a little Seymour Hirsch about that, some hostage exchanges that were proposed, did they take place? Any chance for a ceasefire soon here, sir? It doesn't seem to be that way. Israel doesn't seem to be that interest, although I did see the Washington Post yesterday. I think David Inatius reported that the deal on a ceasefire was close. I think they're looking at about 70 people released from Hamasca activity in Gaza,

and then the release of about 200 Palestinians, all women and children on both sides, and then a five-day ceasefire. Hamas has complained that Israel is, I guess, trying to negotiate, you know, up to the last detail and constantly asking for more and more and more. And, you know, you have to wonder if that's like a tatted by Tel Aviv to essentially kill the negotiations, but then to pretend it's Samasa's fault when eventually they propose something that Hamas won't agree to and call, you know, negotiations off. Yeah. Well, you know,

Hirsch had mentioned something about a split inside Hamas between the political wing and the military guys and at least Israeli sources telling him that, nah, there's still some on the political side we could talk to that weren't involved in this and that kind of thing. So I don't know if cooler heads like that are prevailing in any way inside the councils of the Israeli side right now. but at least they're talking to Hirsch about it.

So we know they feel that way, some of them. Well, it will be important at some point, Scott, for Israel, I guess, to have somebody in Gaza to talk to if this isn't going to be just an ethnic cleansing campaign and continuing the military operation until every Palestinian is gone. And so it's good that that exists. It just doesn't seem there's any interest, particularly from Netanyahu at this point, in having those negotiations. Israel is pretty firm that they don't want to have really even a pause in the fighting. They just want this to continue for as long as possible at this point. And it's strange too, right, because it's not clear exactly that they're going to push them all out. There's obviously room for the possibility that they could let them back.

But they already had a trial balloon like that, and they sure are forcing them all south, and they sure are oppression the Egyptians to let them in. So it sure is easy to see them taking back their problems. promise to let him come home and as you say that you know the guy talking about the knock but all of this stuff but then it puts you know opponents of the policy in a weird position too where you know the worst thing that we can oppose that that's happening in effect in front of our eyes also is a little bit speculative with a little bit of deniability to it no we're just going after Hamas what are you talking about at the same time that all this is going on and so

puts us in the position of arguing against something that is in practice true, but not 100% proven to be the true motive of the actions. So it's a little bit of wait and see about that. But I think that also means it's a fluid situation, and it depends on world opinion and maybe especially American opinion of whether anybody's going to stand for that. They're really going to drive those people out of there. Because I guess if the idea was, yeah, we can get away with it, then they'd do it.

Well, Scott, yesterday at the pro-Israel march in Washington, D.C., I think it was at the National Mall. One of the speakers mentioned that, you know, he wanted an end to the fighting. Pro-Israel, our pro, yeah, pro-Israel, just, you know, we want the fine to come to an end. And the crowd started chanting at him, no ceasefire, no ceasefire. Amazing. Well, that's as good as any place to leave it, Kyle. Thanks very much for coming back on the show. Everybody, that's a great, Kyle Anzalone.

He's the host of conflicts of interest, the great podcast. He's the news editor at the Institute and Opinion Editor at Anti-War.com. Really appreciate your time. Thank you, Scott. And that's it for Anti-War Radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. Check out the archives at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And I am here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

See you next week. You're going to be able to be a good