Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/30/24 Dave DeCamp on the Rafah Strike and the Humanitarian Crisis Facing Gaza

Episode Date: June 1, 2024

Dave DeCamp was back on Antiwar Radio this week to go over all the latest news coming out of the Middle East. He and Scott discuss Rafah, the US-constructed pier debacle, Mossad threatening an ICC prosecutor and more. Discussed on the show: “Israel Used US-Made Bombs in Rafah Tent Camp Massacre” (Antiwar.com) “Nikki Haley Visits Israel, Writes ‘Finish Them’ on Israeli Artillery Shell” (Antiwar.com) “Israeli Official Says Gaza Slaughter Will Continue for at Least Another 7 Months” (Antiwar.com) “US-Constructed Pier Off Gaza Breaks Apart” (Antiwar.com) “Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry” (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: 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, May 30th, 20204, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, I'll welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director of anti-war. war.com. And I'm the author of the book. Enough already. Time down the war on terrorism. 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's show. And our guest today is Dave DeCamp. He's news editor at anti-war.com. Keep a track of all the bad things happening on the planet every day. He also hosts the podcast.

anti-war news. Welcome back to the show. Dave, how you doing? I'm good, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Very happy to have you here. So tell us all about the Rafa massacre. Yeah, so this was this past Sunday night, Israel bombed a tent camp that was full of Palestinians, you know, displaced from Rafa.

I was in the western part of Rafa. And it was a massacre. I mean, if people saw any of the footage or pictures of the aftermath I mean, it's some of the most horrific stuff I saw. When I first saw it, I wanted to believe that it was like fake or something, but it killed about 45 people, including, I believe, 12 women and eight children was the count. And, you know, you saw charred bodies, you know, completely charred corpses being pulled out of this fire that was caused by the strike. And there was one video of like a headless child, a man holding. It was just, again, really, really horrific stuff.

And Israel, you know, initially denied it, and then they came out and said, oh, Netanyahu called it a tragic mistake. And they're claiming that the bombs, they used the smallest bombs that they could. And it must have been secondary, you know, other, like a weapons store that was there that started the fire. But there's really, we haven't seen any evidence of that. I know some people have said in these camps for, you know, displaced people, there's probably generators and it could just been fuel that sparked the fire. And it turns out Israel did this with U.S. made bombs, which of course isn't a surprise because they get the majority of their weapons and bombs from the U.S. There's investigations that found it was the GBU 39 small diameter

bomb. They used two of them. And they, Israel also is claiming that they didn't. indirectly target the camp that they hit something further away, but then the footage shows the debris, you know, in the camp. So the U.S. is, you know, it's like this whole idea of a red line has completely gone out the window. The White House and the State Department have made very clear that this did not cross Biden's red line, if there even is one. And they're claiming that Israel still hasn't launched a major operation or like a major ground assault into Rafa, even though Israeli tanks continue to push into the city, and about a million people, according to the U.N., have fled. And when it comes to this, I mean, you've got these press conferences with John

Kirby are just unbelievable. One reporter, I forget his name. I wish I remembered it. I think he was with CBS. You know, you could tell he got fed up and he said, how many charred bodies is it going to take for Biden to reconsider, you know, his support for Israel? And Kirby's response was that he was offended by the question. And he said, you know, we care, we don't want to see the loss of one single innocent life. But I mean, how are we supposed to believe that now? And then when it came out that it was an American provided bomb, he deferred to Israel. He said, oh, we don't know that. You know, you could ask the Israeli military. You know, as if there's no responsibility on the U.S., like they claim to care about these civilians being killed, but they're not even following up to

see if Israel used their bombs in this massacre. And this one has kind of overshadowed the Israeli operations in Rafa altogether. You know, they continue. There's been, you know, it seems like now we're up to like a few dozen deaths per day in Gaza, mainly in Rafa, but there's also a lot going on in the north. And, you know, in the past few weeks, things have really escalated, basically since Israel captured that Rafa border crossing on May 7th. It's anti-war radio.

I'm talking with Dave DeCamp, news editor at anti-war.com. And so, now, can you tell us about the latest casualty rates? Am I right that after the first, say, five months, the rate at which people are being slaughtered had decreased? I mean, as you say, people are still being killed every day. I don't want to downplay it, but we're not at 40 and 50,000 now. We're hovering around low 30s. Is that about right? Yeah, right now, the number from Gaza's health ministry is just over 36,000.

Okay. Yeah, in the first few months, I mean, it was like a, it was much the rate at which people were being killed. You know, that was when they were dropping those 2,000 pound bombs on residential towers and stuff. So it definitely has declined. On the other hand, you know, it's tough to know if they're counting every death and if people that are starving or, you know, dying of disease are being counted.

So there's a, you know, it's an estimate that's 36,000. And there was, so that, that's the number. It's like, I think today, like 36,400, but it's starting to kind of go up more frequently now that we have this big operation in Rafa. And then there was a big thing recently. The UN put out, you know, the number, which at the time was around 35,000. And then they put out another number that said it was around 25,000 people who were fully identified. And that caused all these stories saying that they lowered the death count. And the ratio of women and children being killed was lower than kind of the estimate that's been given.

But that was clarified that there's 10,000 bodies apparently that have not been identified. And then there's still, it's not also not really clear if that includes people under the rubble. So I would say the 36,000 is probably the safe bet. Can you imagine going out on a limb to say, aha, it's a few less deaths. then we thought and then you're not even right yeah like desperate to claim the number is lower and then no they're just talking about the people whose names they know not the total number of torsos yeah yeah i mean it's like saying aha we only killed you know eight thousand children instead of 14 000 children and then yeah to be wrong about that you know if that's the argument

you're making it's not very good i mean i know it's a completely different conflict but the russia Ukraine war, according to the U.N. estimates around 500 children have been killed in that, which of course is horrible. But the casualties in that is way, way higher than Gaza. Yeah, on both sides, they have somewhere to evacuate to, unlike here where it's a canned hunt for these poor people. Yeah, and the Rafa crossing is closed. I mean, again, I know I feel like I mentioned this the last time we talked, but all this talk from the U.S. about aid and about not going into Rafa the Rafa border crossing is still closed and again what's going to happen to these million people

I know some accounts I've read of Palestinians who just fled Raffets like their fifth time being displaced within Gaza and imagine doing that with like young kids it's just you know this is the people that are suffering from this I saw this headline on Friday that Donald Trump says he's going to name Nikki Haley, his former U.N. ambassador to an important position in the new administration if he's re-elected. And then on Saturday he told me to my face, you wanted my vote.

And then, on Sunday, I saw a picture of Nikki Haley and Israel signing Finish Them. Of all the things, I mean, she could have just said hi from South Carolina or some kind of, like, also

horrible thing. But it has to be the quote from The guy from, I'll be way better if I still remembered his name, the bad guy from Mortal Kombat. Yeah. Yeah. What is it, Kung, no, Kung, Shao Kung. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I forget, but, yeah, I mean, that's, you know, Trump said, yeah, she's definitely

going to have a place on our team after she came out and said she would vote for Trump. And yeah, I mean, she goes over to Israel, and this is in northern Israel, too. So is she saying finish Lebanon? Which, by the way, I did not meet Trump, just to clarify. I was just sitting in the audience where I could actually see the guy, not just on a TV screen. That's all I meant by that. But I mean, that's the question, you know, what is Haley going to be? I know there was rumors that she might be the VP.

I think Trump denied those rumors, but said that she's going to have a spot. Oh, she'll probably be national security visor, secretary of state or something horrible like that. Yeah, where she'll do a lot more damage than if she was VP. And Pompeo, you know, I saw a radio interview that he did recently, and he was asked about Mike Pompeo. I think even Tom Cotton was thrown in there. And he said, oh, yeah, all those people are going to have a place, you know. So, and this is definitely all in, you know, Nikki Haley just met with Netanyahu.

I mean, she's over there getting the red carpet rolled out for her. One thing that's interesting that I pointed out in my article about her signing that artillery shell is the Israeli member of the Knesset that she was with, this guy named Danny Dannen. He's a Lukud party guy. And he was the one a few months back, him and I forget the other guy's name, but someone from the Yeshatee party, kind of the main opposition, they penned this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying that the U.S. and Western countries have to take in Palestinian refugees. I thought that was good to point out because, you know, that's kind of red meat for like

the right-wingers. It's like, you see what these people want, you know, they want to send all these refugees over to the U.S. But she really got the full treatment there. I mean, meeting with Netanyahu and all these other high-level officials. So they know that she's going to be, you know, maybe she said some things on Trump's behalf over there. We don't know exactly. But and that's definitely in the calculation for Netanyahu is, you know, you have Biden still giving Israel all this support. But Trump, you know, the way he's been talking and just by.

judging by his previous administration, you know, he's not going to say, oh, you got to get more aid, and he's just going to kind of drop that facade, I think. And that's certainly factored into what Netanyahu is thinking. Yeah. It's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton talking with Dave DeCamp, news editor of anti-war.com and host of anti-war news. And what's the story about how they're promising seven more months of this? I can't believe it. Yeah, so that's Henegbi, who is Netanyahu's national security advisor. And he said, you know, we're going to at least be in Gaza. This is going to continue for at least another seven months. And that brings us into 2025 and that brings us past the election. And, you know, we see what they're doing with taking over some of the territory,

creating this so-called buffer zone. You know, they have no intention of leaving. I think that's very clear. You had Benny Gantz make this big public dramatic show against Netanyahu, basically threatening to quit the war cabinet. And he, you know, that's not going to force elections because Netanyahu will still have a majority with his coalition. But Gantz is kind of portrayed as this moderate opposition. But he wanted Netanyahu to make all these commitments. And some of them are going to be impossible for Netanyahu to make, including one big controversy within the government is the law that they want to make all the orthodox have to serve in the military as well. And there's people in his coalition that will not go for that.

But so that was, Gantz, I think, kind of did this, knowing that Netanyahu wouldn't be able to agree to all his demands. But one of them was Israeli occupation, essentially annexation of Gaza and saying that there should be like a U.S., European Arab civilian administration alongside an Israeli security control of Gaza, which is occupation. So that's, you know, that's the opposition to Netanyahu. It's not like he's saying, you know, interestingly, you had Galant recently, the defense minister say that Netanyahu has to agree to not want a long-term military occupation.

And I think that's because Galant is the guy overseeing the war and they, you know, have to keep going back into these areas where they supposedly clear Hamas. And I think he's thinking that that's just not feasible long term. So, but anyway, again, like the very long-term. term thinking. I think that the chances of a hostage dealer ceasefire, unfortunately, are very low, too, at this point. Where do those negotiations stand? Right now, I mean, yeah, they recently had a meeting, and there was some talk about restarting the negotiations, but as far as I know that they haven't, I don't think Hamas or Israel, because they were doing them in Egypt. I don't

think they've sent negotiators. I think recently Hamas said that they were going to sit out the negotiations again until Israel withdraws from Rafa. I think they're kind of jumping, you know, you just had the ICJ order Israel to withdraw from Rafa. So I think Hamas is kind of hoping that, you know, that pressure might do something. But Israel, I mean, this IDF general, who is basically the military official in charge of the negotiations, was just saying recently that there's not going to be any deal under the Netanyahu government. And he was saying that as if it was a bad thing, saying that they were desperate to make a deal. So yeah, I think the chances are really low. And Netanyahu doesn't want to pause this. If he has to pause this thing, he doesn't care

about the hostages. They're dying. That's another thing I think a lot of people aren't aware of is that Israeli media reported like last month that probably only 60, around 60 to 70 of the hostages are alive out of like the 113 they think are there. So yeah, I don't think Netanyahu has any interest in stopping because it'll be hard for him to restart. And now, so what's going on with the peer and the aid? The peer, I mean, it's almost, it's just such a joke, this thing. So this peer that Biden ordered to be built, which apparently was Netanyahu's idea, he was the first one to float this idea. You know, you see pictures of it. It essentially looks like a floating dock and it costs $320 million to build somehow. And it's had all these problems because it can't handle

rough. Which, by the way, you know what, I'm sorry. We talk about billions here and billions there, but still 300 and something million for a floating dock is quite a bit. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's astronomical. And you're right, because we throw out these figures. You know, who sent Ukraine another 60 billion or whatever but yeah 320 million you know you should be able to build like a huge port for that hey all let me tell you about roberts and roberts brokerage ink nobody trusts the u.s dollar anymore foreign governments are stocking up on gold instead of hundred dollar bills one they know they need to and two that means you need to too interest rates are up but for some reason not much for savings accounts park your money there

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That's libretasbella.com. Yeah, I mean, and it was just. be set by all these problems. It can't handle rough weather. It can't handle winds more than 15 miles per hour, apparently. Um, so they, they got it going finally after some rough weather delayed it. And then some U.S. troops working on it or working on the boat supporting it got, got hurt. And they didn't say what the injuries were exactly caused by, but I would guess probably what rough weather. And then you had some of the vessels supporting it kind of broke off their moorings and they ended up on the beach in Israel.

And then this just happened. Basically, the thing just broke apart. And some of it ended up on the beach and they towed it to the Israeli port. And they're saying, oh, we're going to repair it in a week and get it back out there. But it's like, I mean, the whole thing has been a disaster. I think they've gotten 41 aid trucks in with the pier. And there was no, like, distribution mechanism at first. So a lot of them just got kind of looted, basically.

So the whole thing's been a mess. And this is something Biden did and ordered instead of pressuring Israel to open more land crossings. And there have been barely any aid trucks getting in since Israel captured Rafa. And they're blaming, they're saying that Egypt isn't allowing the aid in, but it's also like just the situation. Again, they could send the trucks in. And this has happened in the Karim Shalom crossing, which is a crossing from Israel, but it's very close to Rafa. They say, oh, we sent, you know, 100 trucks in, but there's no one there. to like take it and distribute it um so yeah all the just the aid situation has gotten really bad in the past few weeks yeah i mean the whole thing sounds like some crazy movie or something where they

built a stupid pier and a storm destroys it they drop these pallets of aid and killed children on the ground with them and all of this stuff as you say on the other hand they just pick up the phone and say hey you need to reopen some border crossings send some trucks in there and the roads are bombed and be difficult to distribute the aid, but they could at least try to let it in there and see what happens. But how many different border crossings were there and how many of them were closed right now, Dave? I think there's a total of seven from Israel into Gaza.

And there's a Karim Shalom that was open. And then there was two in the north that I believe are still open, but very few trucks like the Rafa, you know, hundreds of trucks are. going through Rafa a day. And then the ones in the north, not so many. And they open those ones in the north after Israel killed the world central kitchen workers. Biden basically said, all right, you got to do something here. So it goes to show that if Biden leans on them, even just a little bit, you know, they'll do it. So I believe those two northern ones are still open. But in the UN is saying only like a few dozen like around 40 something or 50 something

trucks have been coming through into Gaza per day. That's like been the daily average over the past few weeks, which, again, is nothing compared to what they could get through Maratha and everything. And there is also, I mean, you have the settlers, because another thing that Israel agreed to after they killed the World Central Kitchen Workers was to let Jordan ship aid by land through Israel, through the West Bank. And you've had the settlers intercept those. And you see these videos of them dumping flour out and beating up the drivers. I mean, there was one picture of like an Israeli settler with a bloody Palestinian guy on the street and a truck. And it turned out it wasn't even an aid truck.

I mean, and then there's reports that say that they're getting tips from the Israeli military, from the Israeli police about where these trucks are going to be. And that's totally believable when you have a guy like Itamar, Ben-Gavir, who's the Minister of National Security, who's in charge of the Israeli police and border police and everything. So that is another thing that disrupts the aid. And then with what kind of consequences for the Palestinian people there, do you know as far as hunger and starvation? I really don't know at this point, like what the scale is. I know like a few months ago there was a few dozen people who died of malnutrition and it was mostly children with health issues.

And I saw recently that there's a few dozen children and other like young people that have other health issues and, you know, without getting proper nutritional food that, you know, they're basically. skin and bones and some of them were going to be evacuated, you know, into Egypt for medical treatment. But since Rafa has been closed, that hasn't happened. So they're stuck. But yeah, I haven't seen, you know, I really don't know what the scale is if people are actually dying of starvation at this point or not. But it's definitely going to have consequences. And there's tons of diseases and everything too. So it might not become clear for a while how many people died you know due to the medical situation malnutrition and all that yeah all right so the iCC recently well what exactly did they do and then tell us this story about massad on the front

page of anti-war dot com related to that today yeah so the international criminal court they request the chief prosecutor requested warrants from their uh court for now Netanyahu and Galant, and also for three Hamas leaders. So this is something that the U.S. and Israel, obviously, were working against. And that story that's on the front page of anti-war.com today, that's from 972 magazine. They did kind of a joint investigation with The Guardian. And it basically found, so before this, before what's happening in Gaza was going on, starting years ago, I believe it was for like a whole decade that Israel was kind of.

spying on the ICC. And that was over their plans to investigate, you know, alleged war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza committed by both sides. You know, they're investigating Hamas and Israel as well. And this is something that the U.S. has tried to work against. But yeah, these reports revealed that they essentially threatened, I forget her name, but the last prosecutor for the ICC. Yassi Cohen, when he was the massage chief, basically threatened her and her family and said, like, you know, you got to don't do anything that'll compromise the security of you and your family was like the warning that he gave her. So, yeah, they've been really working against this court for a while, but the warrants have been, I don't know if they've technically been issued yet. I know the prosecutor has requested them. I'm not sure exactly how the process works, but they're going after them despite all this pressure. sounds like she should issue a warrant for him yeah right i believe she was also sanctioned by the u.s at one point the trump administration sanctioned the iCC because it was opening investigations into afghanistan and then the biden administration lifted those sanctions but the pressure worked because

then the iCC said oh we're just going to investigate the taliban and isis k not the u.s so well i'm against the i cc but i also appreciate the double standard of the double standard here This is supposed to be the liberal rules-based world order and all this, where we inflict, it's America as a crooked cop, simple as that. The law applies to you, by us, but it never applies to us, you know? Yeah, and they just backed the ICC against Putin, you know? Right. Just last year. And on some trumped-up nonsense, too, where anyone who, as we talked about, people on both sides evacuated out of the war zone.

And they said, oh yeah, all the children who went to the Russian side of the line were all subject for some mass kidnapping campaign or whatever, which is a total absolute hoax. And they indicted them based on that. And then we got nothing but lectures about how seriously we were supposed to take it then. And now they indict Israel. And, you know, it also shows absolutely what gangsters are in charge of the Israeli state. Were they ahead of Mossad? not like some guy you'll never see again but the head of Mossad will tell

an ICC prosecutor that like hey you wouldn't want anything bad to happen to your family I mean presumably that means children you know they are it's amazing that the people who have been killing children by the tens of thousands

would threaten to kill some more Dave but I guess I believe it yeah and I mean if there was a letter too, that a group of Republican senators, I know it was like Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, I think Marco Rubio, that they sent to the ICC before the warrants came out. And that bred like a threat from mobsters basically. They're like, you know, I forget exactly the wording, but if you read the letter, it's really something. And they also invoke what's known as the Hague Invasion Act that became law under George W. Bush. That allows the U.S. to basically if a U.S. or allied military personnel or government official is arrested and is being held by the ICC,

then the U.S. can use any means necessary to free them. And they invoke that in their letter. Well, look, I don't think any Americans should be prosecuted without benefit of our Bill of Rights. On the other hand, I've noticed that America never prosecutes its highest government officials for war crimes and things like this. So if we would hold them accountable, then it wouldn't be an issue of whether they were subject to arrest by some international institution. But all our war criminals get away with it, which is what raises the issue. So passing a law like that is just their guilty conscience talking. They know that they could be in the dock. After all, Rumsfeld died unable to travel to Europe because there were warrants out for his arrest for war crimes in Iraq, for example.

And now real quick, we're almost out of time. But tell us what's going on in Lebanon and with the Ansar al-Houthis in Yemen. And if you need to get into Iraq and Iran, do that too. Yeah. So, I mean, the situation in Lebanon, we've had Jason Ditts covering it pretty much every day. I mean, it's like daily strikes across the border still. The death toll on the Lebanon side, it's around over 400 people have been killed, around 80 civilians included in that. So, and on the northern Israeli side, a few dozen people have been killed.

So that continues. I mean, I don't really know what else to say about it besides that. We see Gallant recently made another threat about a big escalation there and said that the Lebanese people would pay the price if there was an escalation. So that just continues. There's always the risk of it turning into something bigger, but it still hasn't so far. The Houthis, I mean, they just claim the other day. day that they downed another US MQ9 Reaper drone, and there was footage of it that they released

and you can see pictures of it in the desert. And the U.S. hasn't confirmed all of the times that the Houthis claimed to down one of these drones. But if this is true, this is the sixth time that they downed an MQ9 since this past November. So that's a lot. I mean, they're about 30 million apiece. So that heads up after a while. And they're still hitting ships. You know, it's tough to really figure out what exactly is going on. It seems like they fire missiles and drones at ships, and then they come out and announce that they, you know, landed these direct strikes. But usually it turns out that they didn't. But like just the other day, they said that they targeted six different ships all over the place in the Mediterranean, the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea.

And then only one of those ships reported that it was hit. So that continues. It looks like the U.S. has pulled back on the bombing campaign a bit, because I guess because it wasn't. really working. We haven't seen as many U.S. air strikes in Yemen. They're still intercepting Houthi drones and missiles and stuff. So that's the situation there. They still don't show any sign of backing down the Houthis. All right, we're out of time. Thanks very much for your time again on the show, Dave. Really appreciate it. Yes, Scott. Thanks for having me. All right, you guys, that is the great Dave DeKamp. He's our news editor at antiwar.com. That's

news.com for everything, every day, all the time. And also listen to his great podcast every morning. It's called Anti-War News. And that's it for Anti-War Radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director at Anti-War.com, and you can find my full interview archive. More than 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003,

all there for you at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show. And I'm here every Thursday from 230 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.