Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/28/24 Dave DeCamp: Most Americans Disapprove of What Israel is Doing to Gaza

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Dave DeCampe was back on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss the war in Gaza. He and Scott talk about the latest developments and examine how Americans are reacting. Discussed on the show: “Majority of Americans Disapprove of Israel’s Military Actions in Gaza” (Antiwar.com) “Collateral Murder 2.0” (Libertarian Institute) “Trump Says Israel Has To ‘Finish the War’ Because It’s ‘Losing a Lot of Support’” (Antiwar.com) “IDF Officer: ‘We Are Demolishing Everything Before Entering’” (Libertarian Institute) 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: 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, March 28, 2024, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all it is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I am editorial director at anti-war.com, and I'm the author of 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 all your favorite podcatchers and things.

Y'all know I do a bunch of these interviews. You just get to hear one or two of them a week as all on the radio in L.A. But anyway, that's at scotthornton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton show as well. And introducing our first guest today, it's Dave DeCamp, our news editor at antiwar.com news dot antiwar dot com welcome back to the show how you doing dave i'm good scott good to be here let's start with a little bit of good news poll numbers say that people approve of israel killing people less and less all the time huh yes so the this poll that came out from gallop this week found that the majority of americans are opposed to israel's military actions in gaza

the poll found 55% of the respondents said that they were opposed to it. And that's an increase from 45% when they released a poll with the same question back in November. And, you know, that's not a surprise. That's usually the way things go like this. And as more and more people are seeing the carnage and destruction in Gaza, and it doesn't seem like there's any end to it. And we've also seen throughout this whole thing, you know, since the beginning, polling has shown us consistently that Americans want the U.S. to call for a ceasefire, to push for a ceasefire. So seeing these, you know, both of these results together, you know, hopefully this, there certainly is all this pressure growing on Biden and the Democrats. You know, if you look at these polls,

I mean, the Democrats overwhelmingly are against this and overwhelmingly want the U.S. to call for a permanent ceasefire. And, you know, Democrats, the president. So you would think, let's hope, again, that this pressure builds and that something gives here because this is certainly going to hurt Biden and other Democrats. So, you know, the fact that I think it's a pretty reasonable thing. If people are asked in these polls, you know, do you want to ceasefire in Gaza? I think, you know, if you're asked that question, most normal people say, yeah, of course, we want to ceasefire. Peace is good, but not to, you know, the Biden administration. They just want to keep this thing going. and they've been clear that any sort of ceasefire that's tied to a hostage deal would only be temporary.

I don't know if you saw Kamala Harris gave a speech recently where she said, that's why we need an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. And the whole crowd started to cheer. And then she said, for six weeks, like, as they're all clapping. So it's a complete joke, you know, their position on this. But I keep saying this. I feel like probably every time I've been on here recently, I hope that something gives here. But we still haven't seen that.

Yeah, it really is something, you know, I've been saying probably for years at the left half of the left. But no, it's 77% of Democrats, which means 100% of leftists, you know, but 77% of Democrats and 67% of Americans, a super majority. 67% and 56% is a solid majority. A lot of Republicans. And that's really a generational shift, I guess, then. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. If you look at usually the breakdowns will show you that younger Americans, whether Democrats, Republican, left, the right, are more skeptical of Israel and critical of Israel. And don't buy into this whole idea that there are greatest allies that we need to support.

So it really is a generational change. And even if things don't change immediately, like when it comes to U.S. policy, you know, Israel's in trouble down the line. when it comes to the support that they've gotten from the U.S. over the years, I think that's definitely going to change. Yeah. So now tell us, like, what is the latest on what's going on over there, the tempo of the slaughter in this canned hunt? Yeah, it's tough.

I mean, they've been kind of waiting, it seems like, for this big invasion of Rafa, which is the city in the south that's packed with, I think it was 1.5 million Palestinians. And that's the next kind of big assault similar. That's what they want to do. That's what we saw them do, you know, in Gaza City, Central Gaza, and then in Con Unis. So right now, there's still a lot of, you know, the El Shifa Hospital was just under siege for a few weeks. And they looked like there was heavy fighting, like, outside of the hospital. They were also shelling the hospital.

And there's also still airstrikes kind of across Gaza. I know yesterday on Wednesday, they pounded Rafa pretty good and killed a few dozen people. So I've seen like the death toll, the daily death toll that's being reported, you know, kind of just counting the media reports is like around 100 right now. And it's not really being reflected in the death toll. So it's kind of tough to really know, you know, it's been around 32,000 now for a while. It's tough to know if they're getting a proper count. And of course, you know, you sent me that story from the New York Times the other day that said a few months ago, 7,000 people were missing under the rubble and that that that number has risen by a few thousand. then they don't even really know. There was just a video that came out that I saw of the IDF killing two Palestinians on the beach who were both waving white flags, shooting them, and then their bulldozers buried them. So, you know, there's probably a lot of cases like that. Or just the Palestinians, if they just bury their dead, I don't think they get counted, you know, instead of bringing them to the hospital or the morgue. So, you know, the death toll could be much higher than 32,000. But the daily thing, it's, it's, you know, some fighting on the ground, usually death toll. That I've seen lately is like $8,200 maybe per day. Yeah. It's anti-war radio.

I'm Scott Horton talking with Dave DeCamp about the situation over there in sadist land, Israel. I was talking with Ramsey Brewd earlier today, and he was pointing out that the Palestinians aren't giving up, and they're not moving to Egypt, and they're not moving to the Negev, and they're not getting on a ship. I mean, they, I guess, could eventually get just carpet bombed all to death, but they're not going to give up. So the Israelis, unless they're willing to quite literally finish the job and slaughter them all, they've lost already after six months of this. And, of course, it's the Palestinians paying the price. But the Israelis are not getting what they want here.

And then I know that you've reported on this that the Secretary of State here in America. I don't know about Biden, but his most powerful cabinet member and in charge of this war to a great degree, Anthony Blinken. And I believe you've reported that people in the war cabinet, or at least generals in the media over in Israel, have all said that there is no military solution to this. In other words, Hamas is a Palestinian man as long as fighting age males live over there. There will be an insurgency, and they can't defeat it this way anymore. than Bush and Obama could defeat it in Afghanistan. And they've said this from the beginning, actually. The one quote I always go to is Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

he came in recently and replaced Millie. He said, I think in November he was asked about this. And he said, you know, if you keep killing all these civilians, it's just going to be a recruiting tool from Hamas. They're not going to be able to defeat Hamas was essentially what he said. And this is the head of the U.S. military, the military that's backing. this thing, you know, from the beginning. And there was recently another report from the Washington Post that said President Biden knew back in October that both Israel was killing civilians, was hitting targets not really, even if they didn't have good intelligence that they were military

targets was how the report put it. Anyone who's paying attention, you know, knows that they're intentionally targeting civilians. But that that also said that at the time, there was no clear game plan. There was no clear goals that Israel laid out to the U.S. they backed this thing anyway. So they knew this from the very beginning. You know, I just read this thing about the Palestinian Christians in Gaza. There's only 800 left, and both of them are living basically under siege at the sheltering at their churches. And one of the authors spoke with an older Palestinian Christian man, and not sure if he was alive during the Nakbah or if his parents were. But he said, you know, they're in northern Gaza, Catholic parish, the only one in

Gaza. And they said, why don't you leave? You know, the Israelis told you to leave. And he said, They told us to leave in 1948, we can never go back, so we're not doing it again. And I think that's the attitude of a lot of people, even though it's so, the situation is so horrific there, you know, they're not going to give up on their home. So the Israelis have, I guess, the option of trying to just wipe them all out, or I think they're hoping that if they launched this assault into Rafa, that Egypt will say, okay, we'll finally, you know, crack and open up the border. but the U.S. is saying that they don't want them to go ahead with this attack on Rafa,

but they're not really threatening to impose any consequences. So we'll see what they end up doing. But either way, an attack on that city, even when they do these limited airstrikes, lots of civilians get killed. And they just, so there was this new like national security memorandum that Biden issued recently under some pressure from the Democrats that he, that the U.S. needs to get assurances from countries that it gives weapons to that they're not going to use them to violate international law or American foreign assistance laws.

So the one law that the Democrats, you know, it's not the majority of Democrats, but it's a good number of Democrats in Congress that are telling Biden, you know, you got to cut the Israelis off because they're violating this law that says countries that receive U.S. military aid cannot block U.S. humanitarian aid shipments. And Israel is restricting aid. That's very clear. That's why the U.S. is dropping aid on Gaza, and that's supposedly why they're going to build this port, but so they issued this memorandum, oh, we got to get these assurances. So Israel sent them a letter and said, hey, we're not violating the law, international law or U.S. foreign assistance laws. And the State Department said, okay, they just recently, this was a couple

days ago, said that, yeah, they told reporters straight face, Matt Miller in the State Department that, yeah, we've assessed it. We don't see them violating law or blocking aid to the point where it violates our law. I mean, it's just unbelievable that that just happened. And amid all this pressure that we see growing, it's just like nothing is going to stop this, it seems like. Yeah. And there's this quote from the Israeli general Yitzhak Brick saying that we're completely dependent on America for all our planes, all our bombs, everything we're doing here. And everybody knows that. So that means just like when it was the American Saudi War in Yemen, this is the American-Israeli war in Gaza. There's just no way to deny it. Yeah. And there was another IDF general or

retired general who I just saw quoted in Israeli media saying basically, you know, Netanyahu, what he's saying, you know, he's just full of it when it comes to his talk about Rafa. They're saying, we're going to invade Rafa, even if we lose the Americans, this general saying, if America says don't do it, you can't do it. So that goes to show. that if Biden wanted to, he could yank their chain and stop this. But he continues to not do that. Yep. There's a famous anecdote of Ronald Reagan picking up the phone and calling Monarchum Began over the bombing of West Beirut. And he tells him enough. This is a Holocaust. The image of this war is going to be a seven-month-old girl with her arms blown off. And then the other, and people can

find that at the Reagan library online it's you know in his diary there he wrote all about it and it's confirmed from the other side of the story too begon told the press about it in Israel and and talked all about the same conversation and what happened was the bombing stopped in 15 minutes and Reagan said to I don't know shultz wow I didn't realize I could do that yeah well you can that's because unlike in Likud's protestations, they are a banana republic and a client sock puppet state of the United States.

There's nothing without the United States. Who's going to help him kill all those people? China. Of course it's up to Joe Biden to decide, not them. And if Biden

had given Schumer's speech, Netanyahu would have had to resign, but he didn't have the courage. You see this kind of narrative in the media, And this is, you know, purposeful, these leaks that Biden's just so mad with Netanyahu is just so frustrated. He's calling him an a-hole behind his back and all this stuff. But, you know, it's clear that that's just for PR purposes.

They could put it on Netanyahu for now. But behind the scenes, you know, you just had Yoav Galant, the defense minister, come to Washington and basically give them a wish list of the weapons he wants. And, you know, it's still all going on. Yeah, I mean, this whole. stunt where after what seven vetoes or something they allow a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire to pass and then how many minutes or hours passed before they explicitly told the Israelis this UN Security Council resolution is non-binding go ahead yeah I mean could you imagine them saying that in another situation if they passed a security council resolution about I know they

I think they recently passed one condemning, you know, the Houth, saying that the Houthis should stop their attacks on the Red Sea. If the U.S., like, would they ever say, oh, that's non-binding? Even though it's not really forcible, you know, it just goes to show the hypocrisy and how they pick and choose all, you know, when to use international law in the U.N. and things like that. Yeah. Hey, guys.

I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II.

Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org, or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Well, that's what they call the liberal rules-based world order. It means the liberals make up the rules.

everybody else is supposed to do what they say it doesn't seem to be working out very well but um i wanted to ask you about this video that came out that uh kim robinson wrote about for the institute he called it collateral murder 2.0 or something in reference to the famous wiki leaks video i know that there's a million of these and you talked about these guys getting shot on the beach. I mean, who can keep up with the atrocities here? But this one, it's, they said, I guess it was an Israeli drone was shot down and they got the footage out of it and posted it. I'm not sure how old it was, but it's just four or five unarmed fighting age males. You can call them Hamas if you just want to, I guess, presumed guilty. It's just four

or five guys walking. And then they're just completely laser guided bomb them to death, I guess and one of them gets away a little bit and then they bomb a second bomb on him and kill him and there's just no plausible justification for this other than there between the ages of what 16 and 30 maybe something like that a signature strike as Barack Obama would call it but it's just the most brutal thing and you know I guess it it's it leads up to a question about Donald Trump's statement that you wrote up there. Yeah, that was really interesting what he said. But that video, just to go back to that quick, I mean, so it was four guys walking clearly

unarmed. They get drone-striked. Two of them actually survived, and they took them both out after. So there's two more strikes after. And the last one, the fourth guy that they finished off, you see him limping, and then he falls to the ground, and he's trying to crawl away, and then they blow him up. I mean, it's just so brutal. And I've seen people that, you know, I haven't seen really speak against what Israel's doing

very much, kind of sharing that and, like, you know, maybe that is kind of the turning point for them. You know, this is one thing I appreciate about Trump is he'll say certain things that, you know, they're not really supposed to say. Because if you look at that interview, he's saying this from a very pro-Israel perspective, but he's saying, like, you've lost the PR campaign, like putting these videos and And the fact is, it's not just Israel has put out a lot of videos. And one of the things that you see IDF soldiers put out is them standing around where they blow up, you know, like controlled demolition, destroying buildings in Gaza.

And a lot of people see that and say, well, why'd you blow that building up? If you were able to plant the explosives in there, then what was, you know, there was no threat from there. But a lot of it is just Palestinian journalists or just people on the ground in Gaza posting stuff to social media. That's what a lot of it is that people have seen. But yeah, I think the fact that Trump said that is pretty significant and again goes to show that Israel's in trouble when it comes to their image and support from the U.S. Because Trump also said in that interview, he was saying, you know, 15 years ago, if you were in Congress and you criticized Israel, that was it. Your political career was over. And he was saying that as if it was a good thing.

So, like, again, it's just funny the way to hear him say this stuff. But, you know, he was asked about rising anti-Semitism. And he said, well, that's because of what you're doing. That's kind of pretty much what he said, which is really something. So, again, I think it just goes to show that they're in trouble. That is what they hate about him, is that he's saying what they're all thinking, that you're not supposed to say that. It's got to be what it is because he's exactly like them.

He believes exactly like them. But he just is so blatant about it. It's crazy. You got to think, too. I mean, I don't know if you saw what Jared Kushner said recently. Yeah, about it. deal on the beach front property there. We'll build some condos. We'll put them in the Negev desert. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. I mean, you got to figure, like, how could he think saying that publicly is going to look good?

But he says he's not going to be in any part of any next Trump administration. But I find that hard to believe that he's not going to be involved in the Israel policy at all. Oh, sure. So, I mean, it goes to show, you know, if Trump comes in, who knows exactly what he would do. But it's going to be full support for Israel as well. Yeah, well, and David M. Friedman, his former ambassador, and that's not Milton Friedman's son, the anarchist. This is a totally different David Friedman. Yeah, very different. David M. Freeman, he's saying, well, obviously, what you're going to do is just remove them all and annex the thing. I mean, what else he's going to do? What are you crazy?

Like, you know, it just goes without saying, of course. It's the final solution. And if you look at Trump's attitude when he came into office, which a lot of people were on a aware of was, you know, he was left, Obama left them all these wars and he didn't end him right away. And in some cases, I'm sure he was, you know, they put the squeeze on him, like in, that conversation he had with Mattis about Somalia. But if you, you know, when he was on the campaign trail, he was saying good things about the war in Iraq, but what he was talking about ISIS, he's like, he just got to bomb him and he ramped up all the airstrikes.

That was kind of his attitude is just, let's just bomb the problem away. And so maybe that could be the attitude with gaza is just let them let them loose let them do whatever they want and we'll back them and we'll deal with the backlash that was what he was telling him hurry up dragging it out makes it look bad that was his only message was like you've got to get this show on the road pal you know kind of thing yeah what a world all right so now way i want to get serious here again because you know i see people react to this kind of thing and they just go up jew haters or up you hate Israel or some kind of thing and we do get to talking like everybody knows as much as us about this and what's going on and why we would be reacting this way a lot of it goes out

same between the two of us for sure but this is all fact-based outrage here and I would point to this article that I know you're familiar with our colleague Kyle Anzalone wrote it for the institute and we ran it at antiwar.com I think it's on the page at antiwar.com today IDF officer, we are demolishing everything before entering. Can you talk about this a little bit? Yes, so this was an IDF officer quoted by Heretz, the Israeli paper. And basically what he said was we could have done this. Well, he actually, this is actually what he said, is that we could have done what, you know, the damage we've done to Hamas by causing 10% of the damage we've causing Gaza. I might have worded that confusingly, basically saying he, he,

They could have killed as many Hamas guys as they have or done whatever, just damage to Hamas that they have with doing far less damage to the Gaza Strip to, without destroying all those buildings. 10% of what they did is what he said. And that's essentially what he said was we just go in there and destroy everything without even knowing if it's worth destroying was essentially his point. and I mean that's that's clear to again anyone who's seriously paying attention to this you know there's no way that they know what's in all those buildings that they're taking down and you know this is the stuff like this if you just read Israeli media you know there it's not as much of a secret in Israeli media as it might seem like it is here it's very clear what has been happening in Gaza and you see the attitude from the Israeli government and not just from Netanyahu but from many of the ministers in his government

that they just wanted to conquer the Gaza Strip. That's clearly the goal here. They're actually doing it. I mean, there's this buffer zone plan. I think we've talked about this before, but there was an analysis. So this is the thing they're making, they're clearing out like a one kilometer wide strip

around the Israel-Gaza border, around the whole thing. There was an analysis from Hebrew University that said when they're done, that accounts for 16% of Gaza's territory. and they're doing that right now. So you have the U.S. say that they're against anything that shrinks Gaza's territory. Well, they're doing that right now.

And they're also building this road in the middle. It's not really in the middle. It'll separate northern Gaza from the rest and clearing and demolishing all buildings that are there. And that's going to be another chunk of territory that they take. I mean, so this is what's slowly happening. And, you know, Netanyahu would probably like to do it quicker. But it's clear what their goal is. All right, now, all hyperbole aside,

What's the reality of people going hungry, starving to death in Gaza right now, Dave? It's hard to know the number. For a few weeks there, there was reports of children starving to death. It was up to like 24 the last time I saw it. And then I haven't seen this was in one, most of it was in one specific hospital in northern Gaza. But, you know, the famine rating or these organizations that track famine and hunger around the world, they've basically said that the whole population of the government. Gaza Strip is facing crisis levels of food insecurity and the U.S. has accepted that. Blinken even has said that. And so at least dozens of people have starved to death already. I would guess that

the number's probably higher. And it's just to the point where, you know, there's limited aid coming in. I think it's tough to really know, like, when a famine might start, when it will be officially considered a famine, you know, that some of this aid might help them hold out for. for a little longer. But it's a really horrific situation. And, you know, you see that most of the kids, you know, the specific stories that I read about were kids with other health issues, that they needed more nutritious food than what they were getting. And of course, that's what always happens. The most vulnerable people die first. There's stories of elderly people starving to death. So I think it's just a matter of time as long as this thing goes on, unless there's a

serious humanitarian relief effort, a lot of people, the famine probably will start. If there's no ceasefire and there's no big influx of aid, then it probably will turn into famine. Yeah. Now, you know, people say, why do you single out Israel? And I think maybe they don't understand that even if you had two nation states and they're very mismatched in terms of power and one is really beating up bad on the other one. This is not even that. This is an Indian reservation. These people are already conquered

and surrounded under siege this whole time. This is a canned hunt, and they have rifles and not even RPGs, but like shotgun-propelled grenades, this costume-gun thing that they've invented there, and homemade rockets, and they fight like hell. but this is not even the least fair fight between countries this is just a slaughter it's unreal what's

happening there and if you're not on social media with video get some it's the ugliest damn thing in the world happening right now that's why everybody's so upset about it not because of other reasons not because of anti-semitism it's just what they're doing is wrong and they're doing it on our dime in our name and to our consequences we've seen from anti-American terrorism over the years this is a major cause of it it's why colin powell told george bush we got to do a Palestinian state right now 20 years ago and then they didn't yeah i mean that's the point when whenever people accuse me of certain things because i focus on israel right now is the point that this is being done with our tax dollars And it's not like the U.S. just gives Israel a little bit of support, a few hundred million dollars in military aid or something. They give them all the support. It's in Israel's military is entirely reliant on the U.S. on our government. So again, yes, we are, if you don't think there's going to be some kind of consequences for supporting something like this. I mean, the estimate of children that have been killed is over 13,000. You know, we can't expect no consequences for supporting something like that.

That's why I'm so against it. And I mean, for other reasons as well, but when it, specifically when it comes to just the fact that we, you know, I live in America. I'm an American who pays taxes. That should make you extra mad about it. And there's always the risk of this thing exploding. I mean, things have calmed down in Iraq and Syria when it comes to the attacks on U.S. troops. This bombing campaign in Yemen continues. But now that they're sending these American troops to build a pier off Gaza, I mean, that's completely.

insane. If they hit, if they kill a few Americans, let's say Hamas kills a few dozen Americans or something. I mean, then what's going to happen? I mean, there's so many ways that this could completely spiral out of control. Yeah. All right, well, we're all out of time, but thank you so much for your time again on the show. Really appreciate you, Dave. Yeah, Scott. Thanks for having me. All right, you guys, that's Dave DeCamp. He's our news editor at anti-war.com. He's the host of the podcast, Anti-War News, five days a week as well. and you can find them at news dot anti-war.com.

And that's it for the show today. I'm Scott Horton. I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.