Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/14/23 Dave DeCamp on Gaza and the Risk of a Wider War

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

Dave DeCamp was back on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss all the bad news coming out of the Middle East. He gives Scott an update on where things stand in Gaza before zooming out to analyze the danger that this war spreads throughout the region.  Discussed on the show: “IDF Fires on Ambulance in Gaza and Arrests Medical Staff” (Libertarian Institute) “Gaza Health Care System ‘On Its Knees’ as Experts Warn Disease Will Spread” (Libertarian Institute) “Hamas could recognize Israel to end war in Gaza, senior official says” (The Jerusalem Post) “Israel's War Cabinet Blocks Mossad From Restarting Hostage Talks” (Haaretz) “Yemen peace plan at risk over Houthi attacks in shipping channels, says US” (The Guardian) Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com and the host of Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp. Follow him on Twitter @decampdave This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; 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

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All right, y'all. Welcome the show. It is anti-war radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the 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 scotthorton.org, at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show and all the various podcatchers and so forth. You can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton's show. All right, introducing Dave DeKate.

Camp. He is our news editor at anti-war.com, and he is the host of our great podcast, Anti-War News, which you can also subscribe to. Welcome to show. Dave, how are you doing? I'm good, Scott. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. Tell me, Dave, I know that there are no good official estimates, but I know that there are some ballpark estimates. Can you tell us somewhere around the number of Palestinians who have been killed and even possibly if you could narrow down how many of those might actually be combatants versus civilians. Yeah, it's tough to say that second part, but the latest numbers that I've seen from Gaza's health ministry is about 18,600 killed. And with the communications

broken down, you know, it's not clear how if they're able to really update it with the number of people that are really dying. I believe that the real number is probably much higher at this point. Of course, there's all the people, you know, bodies stuck under the rubble. But that number includes over 7,500 children. They say it's 70% women and children, the 18,600 number. And when it comes to Hamas, it's tough to know. The Israelis are now claiming that they've killed 5,000 to 7,000. I've seen Hamas fighters in Gaza during the bombing campaign in Gaza. And I've seen Hamas rebut that and one source spoke to Middle East eye and wouldn't give really a number of how many of their fighters they lost, but they said it was less than 10%. And that's 10% of 30,000

estimated Hamas fighters. So that's, they're saying less than 3,000. I really don't know. You know, I can't say which number is right. And even if, you know, how many Hamas guys are included in that death toll of 18,600, because you would think many of them are being killed, you you know, with these bunker-busting bombs in the tunnels, and they're not getting dug out. And then there's also the fighting on the ground. It's not clear how many Hamas fighters or other militants. You know, there's also Palestinian Islamic jihad and other groups. And I'm sure now just people that aren't part of any groups that have just picked up a rifle because of what Israel's been doing. So, you know, I don't know the number of people that have died in the ground campaign.

Israel says about 120 of their troops have been killed on the ground, including 10 in an ambush the other day. So there is that heavy fighting going on on the ground. So that's really my, you know, I can't really tell you what I think the real number is just, just those estimates. I think it's safe to say over 20,000 people have been killed, but the percentage I'm not sure of. But it is clear, even based on Israeli, you know, analysis in Israeli media, you know, 60 to 70% of the people that are being killed are civilians. And I think still that that might be conservative. Yeah, well, you can't look at Twitter.com without seeing people barely. buried alive.

Without seeing a guy's hand sticking out, like waving around, but you know he's not getting out of there. There's no machine equipment available to lift the concrete slabs off of this guy. He's going to die in there, and he's alive and awake, and it might take him days to die in there, but he's going to. Anybody can see that with their own eyes, not by watching TV, but anyone who goes to Twitter.com can see it with their own eyes, people being buried alive. And Instagram, there's a lot of Palestinian journalists on Instagram that put up videos.

And these people are being buried under the rubble with American bombs. According to the Washington Post, in just the first six weeks, the first month and a half, Israel dropped over 22,000 American provided bombs, munitions on Gaza. I mean, that's just a huge number. It's unbelievable. And they're comparing it to Hamburg and Dresden from the Second World War. under British and American terror bombing is what they call it, indiscriminate bombing. Wait a minute. That phrase indiscriminate bombing. That sounds like maybe some terrible anti-Israeli or even anti-Semitic

propaganda. Dave, dare I go so far as to use that word? Well, the president used it the other night in this speech that he gave to donors. And, you know, it was really something because basically what he said was Israel has the support of the U.S., but they also have support of other people in the world, but they're starting to lose that support because of this indiscriminate bombing that they're doing. In the same speech, he goes on to vow to keep supporting it. So basically labeling it indiscriminate and saying that they're going to keep enabling it. And it was something to see the next day, John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, was just kept getting drilled with questions about this. Some reporters asking good questions saying, okay, if the president's saying this is

indiscriminate, doesn't that mean you should, you know, condition military aid or restrict military aid? And Kirby just, he said a lot of words, but he didn't, he was, he's very good at not answering the question directly. He would not say that it was the U.S. government's position that it is indiscriminate bombing. He just kept saying, oh, the president was expressing concerns, concerns. But it, you know, you have Kirby and Blinking and Sullivan and all these U.S. government officials saying, no, Israel is doing all they can to mitigate civilian casualties. They're listening to us. There's still lots of civilian casualties, but they're listening to us, and then you see Biden go out and say, call it indiscriminate. And he actually said that Netanyahu

pointed to Dresden, pointed to the U.S. and Allied bombing of Germany during World War II, and also the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I mean, that's what Netanyahu has invoked to Biden. Biden, and Biden is the one supporting this. So, you know, this idea, they're just lying, obviously. It's very clear to us that these U.S. officials are just lying when they say Israel's not trying to kill civilians, when we can see clear as day that they are. And they're comparing it to terror bombings against civilians on the largest scale that we've ever seen in history. And the EU, Joseph Burrell, he's the EU's top diplomat. He has said that it could be worse than the cities in Germany during World War II, what's happening in Gaza. You know, this isn't some Palestinian guys saying this. This is the head of the EU, EU's foreign policy, so. Well, and I don't know about that, but it's pretty bad that it's even comparable in any way whatsoever.

It clearly outmatches anything that James Mattis did in Fallujah in 2004 or anything that I'm sorry, I don't know the, that was W. Bush, that is. I don't know the commanders off the top of my head anymore, but whoever was implementing that, well, I guess this would have been Mattis, too, under Obama, implementing the ISIS war and stayed under Trump, implementing Iraq War III, basically, against the Islamic State Caliphate in Western Iraq and Eastern Syria and Mosul and Ramadi, pardon me, well, Ramadi got it pretty bad, but Mosul and Raqa really got it the worst in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria. And it wasn't this bad. And there, at least, people had somewhere to flee to and that kind of. deal and it was the the cities were full like honestly where the areas being targeted were full mostly of fighters at those times even though the destruction was absolutely widespread all those houses weren't full of people at the time in this way and so this is yeah it's i mean imagine that that this war is beyond the worst of what bush and obama and trump did in their terror wars and

that alone just that's the benchmark of evil already for the century guys and we're you know on a per capita basis here we're way beyond what they did and it and you see this all the time power targets deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure and including homes bombing these are our headlines on antiwar dot com today you guys idf fires on ambulance in gaza arrests medical staff Gaza health care system on its knees. Again, you can't look at Twitter without seeing a little girl screaming because they're operating on her, or at least, you know, treating her, setting her broken bones and all these things with no kind of anesthesia whatsoever. Children, you know, completely and horribly maimed. And the doctors are like, well, we can give them some water.

You know, they got nothing. And this is care system there, Dave. I know that you've been keeping a very good track of this, of what's been happening there. Maybe start with the recent, again, more strikes on ambulances in the Gaza Strip there, the arrest of medical staff, and then overall the situation with the widespread maimings and woundings of civilians there in the Gaza Strip now. Yeah, so according to these aid groups, there's only one basically functioning high. hospital in northern Gaza left. You know, and functioning, it's not functioning like a hospital

you or I could go to right now. I mean, they're basically pretty much out of everything. And the World Health Organization is saying that they had a convoy, an aid convoy that the IDF stopped and detained people. And then they also had an ambulance that was headed south to try to get to Rafa that came under IDF fire, and a director of the hospital, I'm blanking on the name, basically the last one in the north, said that the IDF came in and arrested 70 members of the medical staff. And, you know, there's, I haven't been able to keep track of all the hospitals that are under Israeli siege. That's how many hospitals they've been attacking. The big one was the Al-Shifah hospital, which was the largest hospital in Gaza, and there was kind of, at least

there was more attention on that. And Israel had this big propaganda campaign, claiming there is a command center under there, never really showed any evidence of that. And then now it's just normal that they are attacking these hospitals. And it's good that you mention the children that have been wounded and maimed, because we talk about the 18,000 killed 7,000 children. it's about 50,000 is the number of wounded so far, and I'm not sure the breakdown when it comes to women and children, but there are a lot of children, so many children, probably thousands that are crippled for life because of this. And like you mentioned, there's no anesthesia that, you know, they have to treat them while they're awake. It's just such a nightmare. I mean,

some of these anecdotes you read from people's experiences in these hospitals, children crying for their parents who are dead. It's just, you know, horrors that I can't imagine. It's the most horrific things that you can imagine, especially if you have kids. And there's women that are pregnant giving birth without any sort of, not just giving birth, but having C-sections without, you know, being given any sort of drugs or anything. I mean, I can't imagine. That's just, you know, the people that are going through this.

And, you know, they say that they're trying to eliminate Hamas, but they're obviously, they're clearly creating, you know, more people that are going to, you know, want to fight against Israel for their whole lives because of what's been happening for these past two months. All right. So let's talk about that because clearly there's a bait and switch going on there. It's more than hunting Hamas. They've been bombing the entire north and forcing everyone south and then bombing, I guess there's a smaller town in the middle there of the strip. They've been bombing that one, too, and forcing everyone further south. But they're decimated schools, as you said, hospitals and all types of infrastructure. And we've had all these trial balloons, I don't know, at least a solid dozen, maybe a solid two dozen major statements and interviews and trial balloons and essays written by Israeli officials coming out and saying, yeah, no, we want rid of these people. We want to push them into the Sinai Peninsula, push them into Egypt, and figure out any way.

that we can you take them they wrote that in the wall street journal you take them you love them so much you help us cleanse them off of you know out of their refugee camp where they live after we kicked them out of their other land where they live before that and so it's pretty clear that that's what they're going for and and and with the tra balloons and who knows what demented old Biden is thinking now if he's even serious about this but he's saying oh yeah we're going to definitely need a real Palestinian state now and Netanyahu and his government are just saying absolutely not wall street journal net yahu no and then he had you know his former uh minister or maybe as the current minister also saying just absolutely forget about it's never happening so

i guess i want to ask you you know with that being my summary of what i know about it can you elaborate on that in the politics of who's saying what about the near term and medium term future of the gaza strip and this population what's left of them now dave yeah well i think it is pretty clear that they're trying to make, you know, right now they're focusing on making the north uninhabitable. I mean, the reconstruction that's going to have to take place there for people to live there again is going to be huge. And we, you know, over the past decade or longer than that, Israel has not been allowing, you know, building materials and to get into Gaza. They, you know, many people couldn't rebuild their homes after Israeli airstrikes well before

this war. So I think it's clear that the strategy is to, they want to push the Palestinian out of Gaza, the big impediment is the fact that Egypt does not want that to happen. So that's why we're seeing these appeals from across the political spectrum and the Israeli Knesset saying, you know, if you guys, like he said, if you love the Palestinian so much, why don't you take them? Europe and other Western countries have taken refugees from other wars. You know, this would just solve all of our problems to please get rid of them. And then you have Biden and Blinken saying two-state solution, you know, the Palestinian Authority, you know, We should build them up again, and they should take over in Gaza after this war.

But that's just not a realistic, you know, solution for what the Israelis are doing and what the Israelis are thinking. I mean, it's a joke. It's laughable that they're even saying that because then you see what Netanyahu is saying. He's selling himself to keep support after this war as the guy who can, you know, the only one who can prevent a Palestinian state. and, you know, they're saying no Palestinian authority. And then if you look over at the West Bank, there was just a poll that came out that said 90% of the Palestinians think Mahoud Abbas should resign. The Palestinian Authority has no legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinians. And the support for Hamas is growing because the West Bank has been a war zone for the past year.

And they see the PA as useless and not helping them. And then they see that Hamas is fighting Israel right now on the ground. And, you know, the more Palestinians are looking at armed struggle as a solution to this. You know, if you look at polling before, it was many more, you know, the majority wanted a peaceful negotiated solution. But now just we've crossed this threshold of violence that, you know, what Palestinians, you know, we just can't even imagine a Palestinian authority taking over the Gaza Strip, rebuilding. I mean, who's going to fund all that? You know, the Israelis just aren't going to go for that, whether it's Netanyahu or not. Yeah.

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interviewing my buddy, Dave DeCamp, our great news editor at anti-war.com. That's news.com. And I don't know if you saw this one, or if this will be a surprise for you, Dave. But Jerusalem Post this morning, Hamas could recognize Israel. to end the war in Gaza, senior official says. And it's Musa Abu Marzouk said so in an interview with Almonitor. He said, quote, you should follow the official stance, you meaning me, right? You know, people do with the second person there. You should follow the official stance.

The official stance is that the PLO has recognized the state of Israel. And he added that Israelis deserve rights, but not at the expense of others. Hanea, who's the political chief, he's saying we are open to any discussing, we are open to discussing any ideas or initiatives that could end the Israeli aggression and open the door for putting the Palestinian house in order, both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he said. That's interesting. I hadn't seen that today.

There's actually a story on anti-war dot com today from Heretz that says the Mossad chief wanted to go back to Qatar and restart the hostage negotiations. negotiations, but Netanyahu's war cabinet told them not to. They said, no, we don't want to open any negotiations. And their reasoning was their excuse was that they don't think that Hamas political leadership in Qatar is in contact with Hamas in Gaza. And the reason why is because of the Israeli siege. So they're using that disruption of communications as an excuse not to open up any negotiations. Right. And they could solve that problem in half an hour if they wanted to set up a hotline of whatever nature they wanted. Yeah. Well, and you know, so can you give us a little bit of

an update on the Israeli families? Because there are all these hostages there and all their family members who have been petitioning and protesting that like, please put hostage negotiations before continuing the prosecution of this war. And they're being told by their government no. Yeah. That is definitely, there's been some strong protests against what, you know, Netanyahu strategy from the families of the hostages. There's still about 140 Israeli hostages, they believe, still in Gaza. And I know, I'm not sure exactly, you know, the percentage of families who want the negotiations or if there are some who support the war. But it seems to me, for the most part, you know, the negotiations were successful releasing a lot of Israeli

hostages. And if your family's still in there, you know, and we're hearing that some have been found dead. Some hostages have been found dead. Their families were just recently notified. You know, if you're hearing that and you have family there, then you would think that, you know, that they want negotiations instead of these Israeli airstrikes. There was two women that were released that gave an interview to Heretz, and they were saying the thing that scared them the most while they were being held in Gaza was the Israeli airstrikes, the constant, you know, bombardment. And I'm sure some Israeli airstrikes, you know, they're probably down in the tunnels, the hostages, I would assume but you know some are dying i'm sure some of it is a result of the airstrikes and the

israeli invasion and everything yeah you know right now i got a blocker guy who i know is a good guy but he's just spamming my mentions with pictures of dead kids and shocked and screaming kids you know shaking and maimed and dying men women and short like look man i get the point but uh i can only take so much of this myself and and and look isn't that the whole point I can't even take it. And all I got to do is look at it. There's this one picture of a baby, a five-month-old baby that was killed in an airstrike. And Al Jazeera had a report on it, and they blurred out his face.

And then all these pro-Israeli people, and I saw Ben Shapiro retweeted. It claimed it showed the picture unblered and claimed it was a doll and claimed it was fake. And I spent so much time, like, looking at what I thought was a dead baby's face, just saying, like, that's not a doll. and then it turned out Jerusalem Post had a story on it, also claiming it was a doll, and they retracted it because it turned out it was a dead five-month-old baby. Of course it was. I mean, I spent way too much of my day zooming in on this dead baby's face, and you're right. That's just I was looking at it online.

You know, the guy who was holding it was his grandfather, you know. So, yeah, that's what we're supporting. That's what, you know, our taxes are funding is that sort of horrors. Yeah. And look, you know, it's, I don't think it's giving in to terrorism to say this is going to generate terrorist attacks against our country and we shouldn't be doing it. And we shouldn't be doing it anyway. So it's not like you're giving in a blackmail or negotiating with terrorists. Just stop doing the wrong thing that is sure to cause your country horrible consequences.

And why should any American have to sacrifice for Israel at all? much less stand-up watches our towers fall down full of thousands of civilians and risk something like that happening again for any foreign country. It's crazy. If I ever get into the White House press pool or state-in-former press briefing, like there's part of me that just wants to ask like a broad question to see what they would say. Like, why are we supporting this? What benefit is there kind of just list all the negatives and see what they say?

And, you know, you know what they're going to say, but I think you could make them look, you know, pretty stupid sitting up there and explaining how Israel's our greatest ally because, you know, why? Why are they our greatest ally? You know, we're friends with the Arab countries. You know, we don't, you know, it's just this idea that they're like our only ally in the Middle East is how they kind of portray it. Yeah. And of course, yeah, they can never quantify that with any, you know, examples. and hey, they beat up on Nassar for us back when America wanted to beat up on Nassar in Egypt in the Cold War other than that, they provoke terrorist attacks against us and then when Americans get mad they blame the attacks on countries that didn't do it for us

and I could say that's in America's interests if you're a Lockheed stockholder. Otherwise, if you're any of the other 350 million of us know it's at all of our expense as well as the poor people of the Middle East and anyone can see that now and should have a long time ago all right Dave and now this is one big three or four parter at the end here if you could tackle for us the danger of this war spreading I know there's been tit for tat as they call it strikes back and forth with Hezbollah and southern Lebanon as well as there have been strikes on

on American forces in Syria and Iraq. Although I don't know the numbers, I have heard pretty high double digit numbers of at least attempted strikes on American forces deployed there. And then of course there's also the Houthis, at least allegedly firing on civilian and military ships in the Red Sea as well as they seized that one civilian ship.

I know that for sure, because I saw him dancing on the deck and making fun. So what is the real risk at this point, Does it look like this is inevitable or this is still we or what level of risk are we running that this thing is going to turn into essentially a regional war against the Shiites here? I think the big risk right now is Lebanon and Hezbollah. We've been seeing, you know, kind of threats from Israeli officials. Well, actually, they're kind of talking more in the long term saying that Hezbollah needs to move

back from the border. And if they don't agree to do it, then, you know, we're going to go in. And that's basically what they're saying, is that they're threatening to invade Lebanon. And they've been trading fire across the border. Over 100 people have been killed, mostly on the Lebanon side. But this is, you know, it's kind of stayed at that steady, you know, firing back and forth. During the truce, the about week-long truce in Gaza when they were releasing hostages and Palestinian prisoners, things calm down pretty good there, but it's kind of ramp back up again. So that's, again, kind of more in the long term. It seems like Israel wants war with Hezbollah, with Lebanon. They're threatening to turn Beirut into Gaza. Netanyahu has said that. His defense minister has said that. And there is an important point here is that there is a report in Axios last month that said the U.S. White House officials were worried that Israel was trying to provoke Hezbollah as a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon. So it seems like the Israelis actually want this war.

the North and they're assuming that the U.S. will back them. And there's been, since after Biden made those comments saying the bombing was indiscriminate, there is a report U.S. officials saying, don't worry, we're not going to restrict military aid to Israel, no conditions. And they said that applies to what's going on with Lebanon, even if Israel goes to war in Lebanon, they're going to keep providing the military aid is essentially what they said. Now, in Iraq and Syria, there's been over 80 attacks, rocket and drone attacks, mostly. There's been some missile, like ballistic missiles, I think at least in one incident against U.S. bases. There was an attack on the U.S. embassy. There's been no American troops have been killed. Over 50 have sustained minor injuries.

Those are still going on. The U.S. has launched about five rounds of airstrikes in eastern Syria and Iraq against these Shia militias that are taking credit for it. So that's still happening. That could always explode. The Iraqi government right now is trying to find the people that did the attack on the embassy for the U.S. They're really urging restraint from the U.S., you know, the Baghdad government. And then down in Yemen in the Red Sea, the Houthis have been attacking commercial vessels. They've been firing missiles and drones at Israel, and they've been taking credit for most of, you know, not every incident, but they're saying, you know, we're going to attack, target any ship that's going to or from Israel.

And I know at least in one case, they fired a missile out of ship and hit it, and the ship owner said that it wasn't, you know, and the ship tracking data did not indicate it was going to and from Israel. So it seems like they're just attacking a lot of ships. And they're saying they're going to keep doing it until there's a Gaza ceasefire. Now, the big thing with this is that Israel is saying if the U.S. and its allies don't take action against the Houthis will take action. The Pentagon has drawn up plans to bomb the Houthis. Apparently, though, they're not really

seriously considering it yet. So that risks, of course, escalating the war in Yemen, although it puts the Saudis in an awkward position because it puts them on the side of Israel, basically, if they do ramp things up. Now, the big thing, there was a story in the Guardian the other day that said the U.S. is threatening to kill a peace deal that the Saudis and the Houthis have reached. And we knew that they were negotiating the Saudis and the Houthis, and it was really a good sight to see. that, them shaking hands. But I wasn't aware that they actually reached a peace deal, but according to this Guardian report, they have. And they submitted it to the UN, and they're going to implement it. And the first phase involves depositing money in bank accounts to pay civil workers,

you know, government workers in Houthi-controlled areas. And I believe they use, that's revenue from oil and gas sales that they used to pay that, so they're mad that that's going somewhere else. So that was a big Houthi demand. The other demand is a full lifting of the blockade. The blockade on the Sana'a airport, the port of Haudeda, and other Red Sea ports has been eased by the Saudis, but it hasn't been fully lifted. So what the U.S. is threatening to do is redesignate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, which would make those steps impossible without parties involved being subject to U.S. sanctions.

So that's what the U.S. is threatening. So, you know, that's a big risk to, if they kill the M&P. deal can you imagine restarting that war after all this now yeah all for israel yeah well supporting israel is against america's national interests i think that much is clear um all right i'm sorry we're way over time we got to run thank you so much for your time on the show as always dave thanks god all right you guys that is the great dave de camp he's news editor at antiwar dot com he's the host of the podcast antiwar news and you can find him at news dot antiwar dot com and i'm scott horton host of anti-war radio full interview archive is at scothorton.org and at youtube.com slash

scott horton's show and i'm here every thursday from two 30 to three on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a see you next week