Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/8/24 Dave DeCamp on Developments in the War on Gaza

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Scott was joined by Dave DeCamp on Antiwar News this week to go over what’s happening related to Gaza. They discuss the Israel component of the Congressional military spending package, the death toll in Gaza so far, the coming invasion of Rafah and more. Discussed on the show: “Israel’s Ben Gvir Says Israeli Military Should Shoot Palestinian Women and Children” (Antiwar.com) 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

For Pacifica Radio, February the 15th, 2004, 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 and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show.

And no point follow me on Twitter anymore. I quit again to focus on my book at Scott Horton Show. No, provoked is what it's going to be called. All right, introducing first up on the show today, our news director at antiwar.com, Dave DeKamp. welcome back to the show dave how you doing i'm good scott thanks for having me very happy to have you here and uh everybody dave also hosts anti-war news the great podcast you can find on all your favorite pod catching machines out there and well you know on your phone and man there's so much to cover just on israel palestine today dave i guess we start in congress a hundred billion

dollars for Ukraine in Israel? Is that right? Yeah, so it's not it's a 95 billion dollar bill which includes about 60 billion for Ukraine. You know, they argue and say no, actually a lot of this money goes to the Pentagon is going to be spent in the U.S. because they're going to resupply the stockpiles and everything that they sent to Ukraine. So that's, you know, how they argue for it. So 60 billion there, 14 billion in military aid for Israel, and then there's about 4.8 billion for Taiwan, more military aid for Taiwan and other spending near China. And then there's about 3 billion for also China-related spending. I'm not sure exactly what the spending goes towards, but it's related to that August defense pact that the U.S., Australia and the UK signed in 2021, which is basically about getting Australia nuclear-powered submarines. So it's all in there. You got Ukraine. Gaza and China. So it's kind of like a you know just the ultimate foreign military aid package. Yeah. And the situation with it now is that it passed the Senate. It was initially a $118 billion bill with about $20 billion in spending for the border. Senate Republicans and Democrats negotiated this deal for months. And then the the GOP kind of rejected it once it came out. The House says they weren't involved. So they stripped out the border stuff and they passed the 95 billion. And the question is, is it if it's going to be brought to a vote in the House. The speaker, Mike Johnson, he's very pro-Israel.

He says he'll send money to Ukraine, but he's still saying now that he wants this border deal. So not really clear what's going to happen. But I think, you know, they're ultimately going to get this through eventually. But they, you know, they have been trying to get this Ukraine aid through for a while now. You know, I believe the White House requested it back in October. And they say that they're out of money to send weapons to Ukraine. and they're not giving them economic aid anymore. But they're still determined to keep that war going for, you know,

the idea of the 60 billion is to fund the war for a whole year so they don't have to worry about passing anymore before the election. Well, it's just a staggering amount of money. I guess speaking of the ethnic cleansing campaign, genocidal slaughter in the Gaza Strip, Dave, can you give us the latest update on the rough casualty count there? Yeah, so the latest that I saw was over 28,000 killed. I believe it's something like 28,500 now. And that includes over 12,300 children and about 8,000 women. And this is, again, the Gaza Health Ministry, the numbers that they're putting out that they say is based on who the hospitals get. You know, they write it down and everything. There's also still about 7,000 people estimated to be missing. Might even be a little more than that now. I know there's a this group called the EuroMed Monitor, like a human rights group, and they put out a death toll

that includes the people that have been missing for more than two weeks. So that puts a death toll over 35,000. I usually tend to go with the more conservative estimates. And so that's, yeah, it's 28,000 about still. And that is a number that was doubted at the beginning by Biden. He kind of accused the Palestinians of lying about the death toll, but it's come out since then that both the U.S. and Israel, you know, use these numbers because they're the only ones available and they have a history of being reliable. Yeah. Well, and the Israeli government thinks that the numbers are essentially right. They insist, though, that one-third of those are combatants, by which I guess they just mean males. But even then, even if you accepted that, they're conceding that two-thirds of

the people that are killing are innocent civilians. And then when you talk about the 7,000 missing, that does mean buried in the rubble. And then a lot of times that's just bold. those people aren't ever even going to get a burial or ever there'll just be m ia kia you know out there which is just unbelievable in such a small area that you would have people just disappeared as they would say if it was a right wing junta in latin america doing it you know their bodies are never found and then is anybody counting the wounded because it's got to be tens of thousands if we're talking almost 30,000 killed then we're talking how many tens of thousand's wounded. Yeah, the last I saw was over 66,000. That was a few days ago. I haven't seen

that number up, but so it's around there, over 66,000, which is a lot. And these stories of babies and toddlers and children and anybody else, too, being operated on without anesthesia, having limbs amputated and stuff. And this is out of the absolute worst horror movies, worse than anything Hollywood had come up with. Yeah, there's some footage I've seen of just the situation in a Gaza hospital, It's really horrific. Imagine someone cutting off what's left of your baby's leg without anesthesia because the Israelis dropped an American bomb on her. Yeah, can't imagine.

I mean, it's, and you think about, there's also stories about the families with small babies. I saw, I read one recently having to give a two-month-old baby solid food because mother, you know, can't make milk because they're so dehydrated and there's no access to formula. They're just grinding up food and hoping that. that'll work. I mean, these are the situation that's been created by all these taxpayer dollars that are getting sent over there. It's unbelievable the level of cruelty being inflicted by the Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu regime there right now. And the U.S. government absolutely owns this

war. No different than sponsor in Saudi and UAE and al-Qaeda's war in Yemen for the past 10 years there, which now they've picked back up again. Yeah. And so one thing to say about Biden and Netanyahu So we've seen a lot of these stories now in the press that, oh, Biden's so frustrated with Netanyahu that he's privately cursing about him behind his back. But these are all just, you know, Biden trying to, the Biden team trying to distance him from this horrific slaughter as election season is approaching. And there's all these disruptions at its campaign events. And, you know, the truth is they're not considering changing the policy of this unconditional military aid. I keep thinking something's got to give. But there's also Rafa now. So Rafa, the city on the southern Gaza Strip that borders Egypt, there's estimated to be 1.5 million Palestinians packed in there. That's more than half of Gaza's whole population, almost two-thirds. And they are living in tents on the streets.

And Netanyahu is saying he's going to go in there. He's going to go in. So you see Biden and other U.S. officials say, you can't go in there unless you have a plan for the civilians. But then the truth is, you know, John Kirby basically said this. Will you, you know, cut off military aid? Are you threatening to cut off military aid if they invade Rafa and kill all these civilians?

And the answer is no. There is a political report that said they're not going to impose any consequences if they go into Rafa without taking into account for the civilians. And what can they actually do, you know, to take into account for the civilians? Where are they going to go? I know there was one Israeli proposal apparently to build huge tent cities along the coast in Gaza. that would be funded by the U.S.

and they want Egypt to come in and set it up. So it's kind of just an unrealistic proposal. It's just Israel, I think, trying to act like they're planning something when they really want those people to go into Egypt. So it's not clear, you know, when this is going to start, but there's already been some heavy bombing on Rafa. And, but, you know, if they really go in there like they have in these other cities, it's already been a slaughter, but, I mean, it's going to be at another level.

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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 Woods'Liberty Classroom. Real history, real economics, real education. Hey, y'all, I got a new coffee sponsor. moon dose artisan coffee at moondose artisan coffee.com when I wake up in the morning I feel like my brain is all dried out

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support the show and support your brain at Moondoseartisan coffee.com just click the link at the right margin at scott horton dot org now talk about ben gavir and who is he again and what is he saying why does it matter what he says well ben gavir i mean so he's the israeli minister of national security which basically means he's in charge of the police um and he's you know considered an extremist in israeli politics openly supportive of you know terrorist attacks that have happened in in the history of israel um you know zionist terror attacks

obviously. And he recently said he got into an argument with the head of the IDF and about the IDF's open fire policy, which already it's pretty clear that they, you know, can pretty much fire on whoever they want. But in this argument, Ben Gavir said they should be able to shoot women and children that come near the border. We're talking about Palestinians and Gaza that come near the Israeli border. They should get a bullet in the head. That's what he was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post. The story comes out and he doubled down. because his comments were leaked to the press, and he said, basically, I didn't stutter. Anyone that comes near the border should be shot.

So basically openly saying, kill Palestinian women and children. And he's in charge of the Israeli police and the border police. And also speaking of the border there, I mean, this seems part and parcel of having these massive civilian, you know, occupation, so-called protests that are shutting down the borders and blocking the aid from getting in. How widespread is that? How many different border crossings are there to block? And how effective are they doing this, Dave? So as far as I know, the Karim Shalom border crossing is the only one that Israel has opened up for aid into Gaza. And that's actually what the argument was about because Ben Gavir basically told the police to stand down and not break up these protests.

But then apparently the military came in and got the police to arrest some of these people who were trying to block the aid. I don't know how successful they were. I think in some cases, they block some shipments. But so that's what Ben Gavir was so mad about. And then there's also Smotrich, Bezalel Smotris. He's the finance minister. He's also basically in charge of the West Bank. And he is blocking, apparently there was this U.S. funded shipment of flour that Netanyahu

promised Biden he would let into Gaza, but Smotritch is blocking it. And they act like these two, Smotrich and Ben Gavir are kind of fringe and don't represent the Israeli government, but they have very powerful positions in the government. And you know, these are the people who were sending all these bombs to for this war. So, but they kind of, the U.S. has singled them out before and made statements against Van Gavir and Smotrich's rhetoric about resettling Gaza, about expelling Palestinians, but that's a pretty widespread view among the Israeli ministers in the government. And now, tell me, did I read you right here that the entire national security establishment has supported these talks and a ceasefire plan, Shimbab, Mossad, and the IDF, but Netanyahu has vetoed and thrown the whole thing out?

That's what it looks like. So there's these reports from Israeli media that, so there was talks in Cairo on Tuesday between Burns, the CIA director, Qatari, Egyptian, and Israeli officials. and the head of the Mossad, the head of Shinbet, and the Israeli IDF officer, I forget his name, who's in charge of basically trying to find out where the hostages are in Gaza, drew up an outline for a hostage deal that they wanted to propose to Hamas, and Netanyahu rejected it and said, no, go to the talks just to listen. We're not going to put anything new forward. And now he's vetoed the talks. He's ended them without consulting his war cabinet. Now, his security cabinet, which includes Smotritch, Ben-Gavir, they're very against the hostage deal. The war cabinet that was formed, that includes Benny Gantz, who's sort of an opposition figure.

He was in a previous government with Netanyahu, but, and so they're, you know, the war cabinet's very unhappy about it. And of course, the families of the Israeli hostages are. So this is Netanyahu unilaterally ending these talks because it's in his personal interest to keep this slaughter going. If they reached a deal and there was a long, ceasefire, say for six weeks, which was apparently on the table, everything would calm down in the region, probably, and restarting it would be, Netanyahu would be under a lot of pressure not to restart it. So he wants to just keep this thing going. I think that's very clear. Yeah. Well, and speaking to which here, give us a minute, minute, a half, if you could please, on the

latest from Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, where this thing is already really spread to a low-scale regional war of American Israel against the Shiites. So in Yemen, you know, basically these U.S. and British airstrikes continue. It's mostly the U.S. doing it on its own, but once in a while, the British join in when their heavier air strikes. And there's been about 30 rounds of air strikes. The Houthis are saying there's been 400 individual strikes on Yemen since January 12th. And it hasn't done anything to stop the Houthis, as we've talked about before, as you talked

about with Nasser Arbiyan here, you know, it's not going to degrade their capability. They're not going to back down. So that's still happening. Lebanon, Israel border continues to escalate. Yesterday, Israel launched what they said was their heaviest round of airstrikes and killed nine civilians. It was after Hezbollah fired a bunch of rockets and killed one IDF soldier in northern Israel. So that's just still brewing. Who knows what that could, you know, it seems pretty clear that Hezbollah doesn't want a major war. Israel really, realistically, doesn't have the capability to open a northern front, I don't think. And that's something U.S. intelligence reports have said, basically without the U.S. directly intervening.

Iraq and Syria, it seems like the Iraqi government is working earnestly to get the U.S. out. And I think that has calmed down the Shia militias, even though there was these heavy U.S. air strikes in the U.S. killed about 40 people in Iraq and Syria, including a few civilians. And then the U.S. did a drone strike in Baghdad and killed a Ketheb Hezbollah commander. and some people tried to storm the U.S. embassy, but it looks like right now, and I'm talking just the past few days, that things have calmed down a bit. And just about every day now we see the Iraqi government saying they're working to get the U.S. out. So hopefully that ends with the U.S. leaving Iraq and Syria, but I have my doubts about that.

All right, you guys, that's Dave DeCamp, news editor at news.com and sign up for his show, anti-war news as well. Thanks very much, Dave. Thanks, Scott. And that's it for anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm at Scott Horton.org. And I quit Twitter again so I can write my book. You can find 6,000-something interviews 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.