Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/22/24 Kyle Anzalone on the Atrocities Being Committed in Gaza

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Kyle Anzalone was on Antiwar Radio this week to talk about the news coming out of the Middle East. They discuss the coming assault on Rafah in southern Gaza, developments at the ICJ, the conduct of IDF soldiers when raiding Palestinian homes, the broader regional violence and more. Discussed on the show: “Israel Intensifies Airstrikes in Rafah as Invasion Looms” (Antiwar.com) “US Tells UN Court Israel Must Be Allowed to Continue Occupation of Palestine” (Libertarian Institute) “Israeli forces fired on food convoy in Gaza” (CNN) “Israeli Airstrikes Kill a Woman and Child in Southern Lebanon” (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: 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

For Pacifica Radio, February the 22nd, 2024, 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, and author of the book, Enough Already, Time to End the War. on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive. More than 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org,

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FM in Los Angeles. How about that? And introducing today's guest, the great Kyle Anzalone, opinion editor at anti-war.com and news editor over at the Institute as well. Welcome back to the show. Kyle, how are you doing? Doing well, Scott. How are you doing today? I'm doing good. Really appreciate you joining us on the show and the subject matter for today again is the Biden and Netanyahu regime's war against the people, the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip. And can we start, please, with the UN Security Council in New York, the U.S. has vetoed.

Is it a third resolution now demanding a ceasefire? That's right, Scott. This week we had the U.S. for the third time vetoing a resolution at the U.N. Security Council that was calling for a ceasefire. This one was supported by 13 members, and then the U.S. vetoed it, which killed it, and the U.K. abstained. So even France was willing to vote for this one, and the U.S. isn't. the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., that's Linda Thomas Greenfield, says the U.S. and Washington are

drawing up their own resolution that's going to call for Israel not to attack Rafa, which Israel says they're going to do anyways, and they want to pass that saying this is what we're willing to do in response, but it really doesn't seem to be very meaningful in just a way to, you know, maybe sidestep some of the criticism they have been getting for refusing to make any calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. All right. So talk about what's going on in Rafah. That's the top headline on anti-war.com right now.

Israel intensifies air strikes on Rafah. So where is Rafah and what's the particulars here? Yes, Scott. So Rafah is the city in southern Gaza that sits along the border with Egypt. And now there are 1.5 million at least. That's the number that has been put out for the past two or three weeks now. And we know that Khan Yunus, a city pretty close to Rafa, has been receiving a lot of displaced people from, you know, mostly northern Gaza. They've been working their way south.

And so the number is probably larger than 1.5 now. Many of those people are just living on the streets, you know, blanket kind of lean-to type shelters. Other people are living in tents. There's not enough food at this point. When aid enters Gaza, it's getting mobbed in the city. So it's a really, really tough situation right now in Rafa. And the Israelis say they're about to launch their attack on the city. Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli War Cabinet, and one of the opposition members.

So he's not in the ruling coalition with Netanyahu. But he says that that attack will go ahead by Ramadan, which is March, which begins on March 10th. Okay. And so, but I mean, they're already doing it, but just airstrikes for now is the point. you're talking about the ground invasion is going to wait. Right. There's a few air strides every day. But, you know, we're talking at this point, Rafa is still, has infrastructure, has not been reduced to rubble, like just about every other area of Gaza so far.

So this is, you know, the reason they say that the real operations haven't started in Rafa yet is because there isn't ground operations and the infrastructure hasn't yet been devastated like other areas. And now we know that the American. according to the times and the rest have been, they say, what, complaining to the Israelis that, geez, we wish you wouldn't, but in the same breath, you can still have all the bombs you want? Absolutely. So what I think what Biden is actually doing here, and I don't know if it's intentional, but I think it's going to work out this way, is essentially giving Netanyahu cover. He's telling the Israelis that they have to come up with a plan for what to do with the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza before they launched the attack. And what has happened in other areas of Gaza

when the U.S. has demanded an evacuation plan for the civilians is the Israelis come up with something extremely convoluted. There's no good communications, a lot of times communication blackouts in Gaza. So the Palestinians have no idea how to follow this evacuation plan. And then when they don't evacuate, the Israelis use that as a pretext to claim, oh, these people were Hamas or were they're supporting Hamas or they would have left sooner. And so I think that's the kind of cover, this demand from Biden is really giving Netanyahu, especially because the U.S. isn't going to cut off aid for Israel, even if they go ahead with the attack while the civilians are still in the city, which is what the Israeli members of the Kness and are saying they're going to do right now.

And then, so what about this wall that the Egyptians have built? Where exactly is that? And does that represent them giving in to the Israelis now, allowing them to move the Palestinians further south and east out of Gaza into Sinai or into other parts of Egypt? So, yeah, I'm not quite sure, Scott, because the area from my understanding is only able to house about 40 to 50,000 Palestinians. And that's, I mean, a small fraction of the number of people in Rafah. So this can't be a real plan to house the Palestinians. Maybe Egypt is worried what they're going to do with Palestinians as, you know, injured people get medically evacuated from the strip where they're going to go. Maybe they're going to start

put them in this camp because there's tens of thousands of wounded Palestinians already. And many of them are children. And when children, you know, undergo amputations, it requires a dozen or more surgeries as that child gets older. And those medical services just aren't available in Gaza right now. So I'm not quite sure what this Egyptian area they're building is for. It doesn't seem to be enough to house a significant number of Palestinians, given how many Israel says they're planning to ethnically cleanse. But it is concerning that Egypt prepares to be ready to house at least some Palestinians in the Sinai there. Oh, man.

Okay. Now, so back to the politics of it for a minute here. The International Court for Justice, which had previously, ruled that there was a plausible case for genocide in progress and had ordered Israel to then abide by certain restrictions in order to protect life there. They've now issued a new statement. And so what's going on there? Yeah, there's a few things going on at the ICJ involving Israel, Scott. And the first is the South African case that was brought in December of 2023. The ICJ heard those arguments.

in January, and then they issued a ruling saying that it didn't call on Israel to conduct a ceasefire, but they said they can't conduct any more military operations that could harm civilians. And if you look at not how densely populated Palestine or Gaza was before this, but, you know, especially now after where everybody is patented to Rafa, obviously you can't attack that city and respect civilian life. And then there are other parts of that order to that included holding members of the Israeli government responsible who made genocidal comments and soldiers who commit war crimes responsible, things like that. And Israel hasn't done any of that.

In fact, just this morning, Scott, I woke up today and I saw several members of the Israeli Knesset have made statements about how they were happy about the destruction of Gaza and the death of Palestinians as they were voting to unilaterally reject a Palestinian state. So they won't take any international pressure of ever establishing a Palestinian state is what the Knesset established there. So, but back to the ICJ. So South Africa asked the ICJ to issue a second explicit order to Israel about Rafa and the ICJ declined to do so, essentially saying that the initial order they had given is enough.

But this caused some criticism from the Palestinian side towards the ICJ. And then there's a second case against Israel at the ICJ. And those arguments are being heard this week and into nets. week. Israel, the U.S. recently spoke on behalf of Israel there. And that isn't just about Gaza, Scott. That's about the occupation overall. And this hearing is a result of a 22 general assembly vote at the U.N. that established this ICJ hearing. Yeah, it's really something to see the Americans going to bat at the ICJ and saying, intervening on behalf of the Israelis and saying, stop ordering Israel to stop killing people and turn around going to the U.N. Security Council

vetoing a resolution, declaring a ceasefire. Yeah, the American delegation to the ICJ said that Israel must be allowed to continue the military occupation on Palestine for the security of Israel with no concern whatsoever for the Palestinians. And so, you know, this is just the White House's thinking on the matter. Right. It's almost like we were talking earlier, with a guy about the Assange case and the barristers there representing America and they had nothing. They've got no argument. They're just as blatant as can be, you know, even though everyone can see. It's American Israel. The whole world's against them because the whole world's evil or because American Israel are doing the wrong thing here. Come on. Right. It's the same thing when the Biden administration

is bombing Yemen almost every single day for a month and then saying it isn't a war. Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah, we're bombing them. And yeah, it's not a war. And I don't care if you already call this out. We're just going to keep going with that. Well, even more frustrating, Scott, not to get too off topic here. But Russia again is really rearing his ugly head again. Several Democrats are coming out and accusing Trump of being colluding with Putin again. And this is becoming pretty common. I'm quite disturbed. Oh, man, you got to send me all of those. So I know one of the examples was this so-called FBI informant, this leak. They're now prosecuting him and saying that he got it from the Russians.

I don't know if that's true or not. But is there more to it than that that they're claiming? Nancy Pelosi was on with Jen Saki this week. And she said that Putin likely have financial leverage over Trump. And that's why Trump was beholden to him. That was her word that Trump is beholden to Putin. And they are together in their vileness. was the word she used. And Hakeem Jeffries had another one. Several members of Congress

have come out. The Democrats accusing Trump, including with Russia again. Now, so talk to me about the aid and the protests, if you call them that, the encampment set up to block the aid trucks coming into Rafa and the border crossing there. How's that going? Is any food getting in? I see here on anti-war.com, Israeli forces fired on food convoy in Gaza. So I I guess they got that far before the Israelis blew them up, huh? Yeah, so there's a lot hampering the aid shipments into Gaza, Scott. And so I'll try to tackle it from all the kind of different angles. The first, of course, is it's being blocked in the ports.

And this is by the finance minister Smaltrich, who's one of the extremists in the Israeli government. It's actually a U.S. funded food shipment that's supposed to be for Gaza flour and all these kind of staple ingredients. And he's actually preventing that from being offloaded. He claims it's because the UN aid agency for Palestine UNRWA would be the one who delivers that aid into Gaza, which at this point is really the only organization capable of delivering aid into Gaza, in part because everything has been destroyed. And a lot of people are at UNRR shelters or already dependent on UNRAA aid, but also just for coordination and logistical reasons, UNRWA is the best organization to bring that aid into Gaza. In fact, Scott, the Israeli defense forces have omitted that if UNRWA was unable to bring aid into Gaza at all, they think that the famine conditions would get so bad, the starvation, the disease spread, and everything like that, they may actually have to stop their military operation. So they want UNRWA to deliver some aid into Gaza. Now, once, you know, it gets off the ship, it's meeting protesters among the Israelis as it's trying to go through the inspections process between Israel, and Egypt, so all the aid has to be inspected. The aid that can get in, they're taking away the newer antibiotics, so the fourth and fifth generation antibiotics, no anesthetics, no painkiller.

So a lot of life-saving medication is on the restricted list. They claim these items are dual purpose, meaning that a Hamas fighter could take the antibiotics as well. And doctors in Gaza have explained that these antibiotics are extremely important right now because you have have so many burn, shrapnel, and amputation type injuries that people are extremely susceptible to infection. There's almost no clean water in Gaza. There's almost no sanitation facilities left, no water treatment facilities left. So these antibiotics are extremely important and they're being deprived to the Palestinian people. Now, if it gets past the protesters, and by the way, the IDF largely allows the protesters to delay the aid and then is actually able to enter Gaza, there's a couple

issues. One, there was a police force within Gaza that was protecting the aid shipment. So starving people will try to mob an aid truck. You know, if your daughter is going to, our son are going to starve to death, you will do whatever it tastes to get them food. So a lot of aid trucks were getting mobbed and this police force was keeping order. But Israel targeted the police force and so they stopped defending the aid shipments. Now Israel has also targeted and blown up aid shipments. There is one that was documented by CNN, where UNRWA explicitly coordinated with the IDF to deliver aid to northern Gaza, and then Israel blew up that shipment. That was the last shipment that was scheduled to make it to northern Gaza, where there haven't

been any aid deliveries now in three weeks. So the situation is just absolutely horrific, Scott. Yeah. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom

instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level, and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woodses' Liberty Classroom, Real History, Real Economics, Real Education. Hey, y'all, I got a new coffee sponsor, Moondose Artisan Coffee at Moondoseartisan Coffee.com. When I wake up in the morning, I feel like my brain is all dried out. I need to pour a hot mug of rich, tasty coffee all over it to get it back working again, like 10w30 for the noggin.

Though not necessary, it helps if the coffee tastes good. Well, Moondos Artisan Coffee does taste good. They get the best beans from all around the world, and they don't burn them. Support the show and support your brain at moondoseartisan coffee.com. Just click the link at the right margin at Scott Horton.org. You know, I think Americans, possibly, if they're not looking at the videos on Twitter like the rest of us, they just maybe project some sort of Western values onto Israel and think that there must be some kind of restraint there. But apparently there's really not. The level of

cruelty here is just completely off the charts. And the Israeli forces obviously take much pleasure in murdering these innocent people. And, you know, it's just reading an article today about finally because of all of the bad public relations the Israeli officers have finally begun to tell the enlisted men to tone it down on the looting and at least the posting TikTok videos of all your looting of you know essentially the corpses of these people and they're empty homes after they've been bombed empty of life anyway certainly dead corpses in some of them and they're just stealing whatever they want and laughing about it, oh, look, I found some jewelry to give to my girlfriend. And they have no shame about it whatsoever. They only are realizing now that the world, the rest of the world, has shame for that. And it's can't believe what they're seeing. And they're going, so now for public relations purposes, they're going, hey, stop posting so much of the looting on the internet for everyone to see.

The level of contempt that they have here is like an owner for his slaves. That is completely off the charts, the level of hatred and contempt that the Israelis have for this prisoner population that they murder with complete impunity. And speaking of which, what are the latest casualty numbers, Kyle, from anti-war.com? Well, it's about 30,000, the official, the Gaza Health Ministry count is near 30,000, 13,000 children, I think close to 10,000 women now. So the numbers are absolutely horrific. Of course, the actual number is much higher.

There's a lot of people who are under the rubble somewhere. Of course, it seems Israel is just completely flattening these areas. It isn't doing any kind of excavation to look for bodies. So who knows how many people will actually get counted. Additionally, there's a lot of people who are missing, and it seems that they have been kidnapped by the Israelis, including a number of women. And the UN just put out this report saying they have credible

reports and accusations that Israeli forces have carried out executions of women and girls in Gaza. And certainly we've seen some of that with the sniper fire, just women walking down the street with white, you know, scarves in one hand and a child in the other gets taken out by an Israeli sniper or something like that. But also... Even CNN featured that one. Absolutely. And then also sexual abuse of the women and children. And including in seemingly almost systematic here, Scott, photographing of naked Palestinian women. And of course, this I think is a part of also why the Israeli soldiers are like going through people's houses and like making Titt Totsons taking pictures is, you know, I think a part of the ethnic cleansing genocide campaign here is the systematic humiliation of the Palestinian people. And not only from the Israeli perspective of we're superior and we're going to treat them like our dogs,

but to show the Palestinians that this is your position, you know, some of this stuff like going through the underwear drawers of some of these Palestinian women in their homes. And we know from Heretz as well that, you know, Israeli media reporting that after they go through and they loot these homes and they take all these funny pictures and videos, they set fire to them. And so they're making sure nobody can return to the land after they've, you know, humiliated it. Yeah. Well, they've been at this for 100 years and the Palestinian people haven't given up yet. I don't know what they think is going to happen. They're all just going to lay down on their belly and go, okay, you won. We'll stop trying to be alive on property that we own.

You know, it's never going to happen. I think some of the real extremists in the Israeli government may be believe they can, you know, whip and beat the Palestinians into giving up politics. But if you look at the IDF, there was a report in Israel Channel 12 news where they got their hands on an IDF document and spoke with some IDF officers who said, we're not going to be able to eliminate Hamas. It's going to continue to exist as what they called a terrorist or guerrilla organization after this is all over. So the IDF knows that you can't beat Hamas this way. But I'm not sure Netanyahu does or doesn't care. well i mean that's the whole point right is that's simply the excuse they're taking the opportunity

to cleanse the Gaza strip as of as many people as they can anyway if they can't you know just completely kick everyone out of there and recolonize it um then they'll do as much as they can as much as america let them get away with is what they're doing already and so no of course they're not going to hunt down and kill every last member of Hamas, which is, you know, never been the point. And now, so, and speaking of the cruelty of the war here, I think this one is really important because it's emblematic of what they're doing, bombing apartment complexes and all of this stuff, as you said, deliberately sniping women. I mean, all of it's on video, not all of it, but a lot of it is on video of innocent people being killed here. But can you tell the story of this family, the little girl that called 911, or whatever they call it there and the whole family was killed and yeah you know the details as

i understand them scott and of course this is all coming out of a war zone so there there's certain things that you know for sure certain things that i think maybe people are assuming but this young girl seemed to be traveling with a couple older family members when they opened fire on the car killing at least the two people who were in the car with her i think it was only two there may have been more uh another report i read said four but i'm not sure if that was just including all the dead from this whole incident or not. But anyways, after they're killed, she made a call to the emergency services asking for help. It's, you know, absolutely horrific, you know, just imagining a young girl saying these words in English,

I'm sure it would bring, you know, most parents to tears and things like that is really, really hard to listen to. And so EMTs show up and they are motioned over by the. the IDF to go over to the car, and then the IDF opens fire and kills everyone, including the first responders there. So this is, and it's just, you know, another one of these many horror stories, Scott. It's not like this is a unique situation that's happened in Gaza. We've seen this just time and time again. And it's only been four and a half, yeah, four and a half months now.

It's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton talking with Kyle Anzalone from anti-war.com. about the war in Palestine. It's not even a war. The slaughter. Now, a couple more issues here. First of all, the regional war. There's been all kinds of violence on the northern front. I don't know the totals or if you do, but if you could give us a sketch of the level of war going on between Israel and Hezbollah there in southern Lebanon, as well as give us an update on Iraq and Yemen because the thing already is a regional war essentially against the Shiites, not that the Palestinians are Shiites, but the Shiites who are coming to their aid in a sense, although the degree of that is still pretty low compared to what it could be. So I'm very interested to know what are the recent developments there. So at anti-war.com, Jason Ditz has largely been doing the coverage on Lebanon for us, and he has

another great one today. There's been one almost every day documenting the Israeli airstriots in Lebanon over the past week. Israel seems to be carrying out larger airstriots in Gaza or in Lebanon and then further away from the Israeli border, so deeper into Lebanese territory. And so more provocative air strides. These particular strides killed women and a child in southern Lebanon. And also, Scott, Israel has been bombing Syria almost daily as well. And I guess that probably has more of an impact on what's going on in Iraq. But certainly, you know, Israel bombing all these countries is going to, you know, instill more hatred and resentment towards Israel and more people wanting to carry out of tats against Israel. Tel Aviv seems to be relocating at least some of its military

forces to northern its northern border. And several Israeli defense officials have now said that there will be a war with Lebanon. They will push Hezbollah back. And it just seems to be a matter of timing. I'm not sure if that's just bluster and rhetoric or if they're really serious about it. I guess more will be seen once Israel concludes whatever extensive operations they're going to conduct in Gaza. You know, if they push everybody out of Rafa over the next couple a month and into the Sinai, then, you know, maybe we see them start to tick up and start to conduct more attacks against Lebanon and Syria. Now, in Iraq and Syria, the Shia militias have really scaled down attacks since the three Americans were killed at the Jordanian base.

I think the Shia militias did not necessarily intend to kill that many Americans with that strike if it was the Shia militias at all, but they have scaled things down. I worry, Scott, though, that the frequent Israeli strikes in Syria are going to cause those groups to start attacking the American bases again. And then Yemen is where things are certainly the most... Well, wait, real quick there. You're saying the Americans, even though the militias themselves have dialed back their strikes, and I think there was a report that the Ayatollah in Iran made himself clear that he wanted

them to knock it off. But you're saying the Americans are still hitting them, which risks re-escalating the conflict. The Israelis are still hitting Syria. More towards the capital of Damascus, not necessarily the Shia militias, but still a provocation. And the Americans are a far easier target to hit for the Shia militias. But you're saying Biden quit bombing Khatib Hezbollah in Iraq? After they did a major round of air strides, but nonsense.

Okay, great. Okay. And I'm sorry. Go ahead there. You were going to talk about Yemen. Right. And then Yemen is where the most intensity from the American perspective, certainly. the U.S. has been bombing Yemen almost every day.

The Houthis have carried out a couple new attacks that have been successful on ships. Nothing that has sunk a ship, you know, causing minor damage still. But U.S. and U.K. ships are being hit, including with submergeable drones. And so it seems like this is the first time the Houthis have used those at least successfully against and been able to bypass the defenses that the Americans are trying to put up. And the Americans are just carrying out more and more strides. But as Nasser Arby said on your show, Scott, it doesn't seem to be eroding the Houthi capabilities at all. All right.

And then I'm sorry to waste everybody's time with this. But Kyle, what is this nonsense about Biden pretending to say that we're going to do a two-state solution now? Well, this is what the American government keeps saying. And the almost comical part about it, Scott, is the Israeli government from the top down from Netanyahu on through the Knesset, keep saying that, no, we are not going to do this. In fact, as Biden said, we, you know, we're going to have a two-state solution. And Blinken said that we're going to have a two-state solution. And Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield said that we needed a two-state solution.

That's why she had a veto the ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council. Netanyahu is bragging about over the past decades preventing the creation of a Palestinian state. and, of course, the Israeli connesset, unilaterally taking up this motion that rejects the Palestinian state. Yeah, well, from the river to the sea, it'll be a one-party dictatorship, I guess. All right, well, that's it for anti-war radio. We're all out of time. Thank you very much for your time. It's Kyle Anzalone, opinion editor at anti-war.com and news editor over at the Institute.

Appreciate you. Thank you, Scott. All right, y'all. And that's it for me today. Scott Horton here, Anti-War Radio. Check out the full interview archive at Scott Horton.org. And I am here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.