Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/9/24 Dave DeCamp on the Invasion of Rafah and How Israel is Losing Young Americans

Episode Date: May 11, 2024

Dave Decamp returned to Antiwar Radio this week to review the news coming out of Gaza. He talks with Scott about Israel’s current operation in Rafah, Biden’s pause in providing Israel certain kinds of bombs in response, the unrest in the West Bank and the Washington establishment’s panic that young people aren’t fully on board with what Israel is doing. Discussed on the show: “Biden Says He Will Stop Sending Israel Heavy Bombs If It Attacks ‘Population Centers’ in Rafah” (Antiwar.com) “Mark Milley throws US military under the bus for Israel” (Responsible Statecraft) 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 9th, 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 the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the author of the book, Enough Already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, 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 introducing today's guest, it's anti-war.com's news director, Dave DeCamp. He's also the host of the great podcast, Anti-War News. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Dave? I'm good, Scott. Thanks for having me. Very happy to have you here. So there's a lot of bad news on the Gaza war here, but let's start with a little bit of a silver lining. It looks like Joe Biden has ordered some sort of pause on the sale or transfer of munitions to Israel.

So please give us the details if you could, sir. Yeah, so this came out earlier this week that the U.S. paused the shipment of 5,000 bombs about the 2,000-pound bombs and the 500-pound bombs that Israel has used for the past seven months, you know, to destroy. these cities and residential areas. So it wasn't really clear exactly what the reason was at first, but then on Wednesday, Biden did an interview with CNN, and he said that if Israel goes into Rafa, that he's going to stop giving them bombs, and he even said artillery shells as well. So it sounds good, but the problem is that Israel just launched in operation in Rafa. Biden says that they haven't entered the main population centers that it's been focused on the border. What happened really was Israel ordered the evacuation of the eastern part of the city.

They went and they captured the border and they've been bombing the city pretty good. But apparently that's all okay with Biden. He's saying if they like launch a full scale invasion of the city, he's going to cut them off. He's still pledging, you know, that for a long, you know, he's going to support Israel in the long term. But it does seem like he's drawn. some sort of red line here finally after seven months but again the the thing I'm worried about is what is the what does he consider really an invasion of Rafa because right now what happened with the cap them capturing that border crossing is that they closed it off to aid that was the only border crossing where fuel was coming in people are starving

according to the world food program according to Cindy McCain the wife of the widow of John McCain, there's already a full-blown famine in northern Gaza, and now they just cut off the two border crossings that were accepting the most, that, you know, aid deliveries through. And, you know, the famine people in the South now in right in Rafah are basically under siege again. And it's just a really horrific situation for the people on the ground. And now it seems like almost Biden maybe is going to let Israel just slowly, you know, because they've been, they're still bombing the city. I mean, you know, they're focusing on the eastern part and about 80,000 people have evacuated, but, you know, it's kind of, it's not like they've stopped, you know.

So I think he's just basically saying he doesn't want a huge escalation like we saw earlier when Israel first invaded and completely destroyed Gaza City and then later with Khan Yunus and all their cities. So it's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton talking with Dave DeCamp here. Now, so Rafa is where they told everyone to go for the last seven months. We're bombing everywhere else, so you better get out of here. Go to Rafa, and we won't bomb you there. Now they're bombing them there. And so where's everybody supposed to go?

I heard that they set up really nice accommodations at a place called Al-Masawi. Yeah, so that's where Israel is suggesting everybody go, and then you have the aid groups that are operating on the ground and say it just doesn't have the capacity to accept all these people. And they're also obviously worried about Israel bombing them anyway because they have bombed what they call, you know, safe zones. And I was being sarcastic anyway. It's just tense in the sand. There's no even porta-potties or anything for anybody. It's a total, just ridiculous hoax that this is supposed to be the next safe area after they bomb them out of the current safe area. But now, so the Israeli side would say, I think Netanyahu says specifically, there are three regiments of Hamas.

And that's where they are. They got them cornered now. So now if only the civilians will get out of the way, they can just finish this thing once and for all. What about that? Yeah, I mean, the way that they talk about it, they say there's three Hamas battalions and it makes it sound like there's a barrack somewhere, you know, fall of a few thousand soldiers that if they just get in there and kill them, then it's over. But the reality is, is there probably is, they probably are there, the decent amount of Hamas fighters, I would guess. but we've seen them completely obliterate these cities, and then Hamas has their, you know, tunnels and all this underground infrastructure that Israel hasn't really been able to do much damage to, as far as I understand it. So they could just obliterate this city. I'm sure they would kill some of the Hamas guys, but a lot of them would probably be able to escape or, and we've even seen the head of the IDF said, you know, that terrorism in Gaza isn't going to be over once we're done in Rafah.

So you have kind of him contradicting Netanyahu who's saying, we have to, you know, we'll finish this thing. But the reality is it's not going to be finished. And this is something that the U.S. has acknowledged in the U.S. intelligence said in their threat assessment that they released earlier this year that they don't think Israel can beat Hamas. He says that they'll be fighting them, you know, for years to come, basically. So it's not a realistic goal that Netanyahu has to, you know, take out these. And then that's it. It's going to be done. You know, it's not going to be done. It's just going to be another destroyed city and a lot of dead, dead people. Yeah, a lot of new recruits. I mean, unless they just kill them all, then Stanley McChrystal's insurgent math applies, which is the more you kill innocent people, the more you kill anybody, but especially

innocent people, the more insurgents you get. Wipe out some guy's entire family. What's he got left to do except fight now? Yeah. Yeah, and this is something that's been acknowledged by, you know, the top U.S. military officials, you know, it's no secret what they think about this yet they're still supporting Israel on this. And I think an important point here is that it's good to see Biden say something like that. At least he feels like he needs to. There's a lot of pressure on him. Although I did see there was like kind of an analysis of it in Heretz that I thought was interesting was that basically it's not going to please anybody because the real critics of the thing, you know, know that after seven months, you know, what is this really going to. do. Oh, and another thing, according to U.S. official speaking to the Washington Post, Israel has what they need if they wanted to escalate in Rafa. They have enough munitions and bombs, if they wanted to really launch the full scale attack on the city. So that's an important point here.

You know, it's too late, really. In other words, the pause is just for political show in America to appease the left half of the Democrats. Yeah, even though, you know, real critics of this thing, you know, know that this is kind of a PR stunt. And then you have, you know, pro-Israel people just losing their minds. I mean, the Republicans and everything. So, and, you know, it's interesting. You watch that interview on Biden saying, yeah, you know, lots of civilians have been killed as a consequence of these bombs that we've been giving Israel.

And he admits, and he's admitted this before, that it was, you know, an indiscriminate bombing campaign, yet he continued to support it. So it's just really kind of a strange thing to do to say, yeah, you know they're killing all these civilians it's not right he said it's wrong what they're doing yet this is what you've been this is what they've been doing the whole time you know it's not like this hasn't been obvious for the past seven months yeah and you know i think for people who don't know that much about it they just you know maybe get the headlines or kind of the impression from the major media probably want to give israel a benefit of the doubt their friends of ours and

everything right but instead you know for people who have been watching this is completely crazy what's going on over there the number of civilians that have been killed is in the tens of thousands it's an absolute horror show i heard your podcast earlier this week we are talking about where they killed the mother but the doctors had saved the baby but then Israel bombed and killed the baby too and then you go no not that one not the one from last week a different one and this is an absolute horror show and so people can try to turn away from it if they want or or they can just be too busy and ignorant but that's what people are objecting to is where even the wall street journal as well as the post in the times as i repeat every week on the show because what are you going to do

i mean these are the newspapers of record in america these are the three most important newspapers in america and they have all compared this directly to dresden to america's air war against Germany and also they compare it to the firebombing of Tokyo and the other cities in Japan and World War II. And the Israelis have invoked Netanyahu himself

have invoked FDR's and Churchill's terror bombing of Germany as their license to do whatever they want to Gaza, even though Gaza is much more like the Warsaw Ghetto than the Third Reich in this analogy. And then I hope

you saw, I'm sure you already saw this morning, in responsible state craft. Kelly Vlahos has this article about Mark Millie, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He positively compares what Israel is doing to what FDR and Truman did in Germany. That we just

carpet bomb them and that that's license. And then as Kelly points out, but yeah, but we codified the Geneva Conventions after that so that that wouldn't be the standard anymore. That that horror would be illegal from now on. And he just ignores that and endorses that and

endorses this, that's where we're at here. And they talk about the liberal rules-based order of law and all of that. Boy, they don't mean it. Yeah. And, you know, what Millie said, you know, he's basically, the way he put it was like, oh, what are they complaining about? We do, you know, we, we did the same thing. And he actually pointed to Raqa as well when the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS when they destroyed that city. You know, this is pretty recently. Oh, too-shay. But then that's license. Hey, whatever Obama and Trump did in Mosul and Raqa, that means that you can now do whatever you want to. Who made that up? Yeah, I know. And the attitude is, you know, we've actually seen John Kirby, the White House National Security Council spokesman. He said, you know, show me a more moral army than Israel. You know, they choreograph what they're going to do. They tell civilians to evacuate. We don't even do that. Like saying Israel's better. I mean, imagine if you're in the U.S. military. I know some guys that are and that were not happy with that. You know, to have them,

these guys come out, you know, John Kirby's an admiral and justify the slaughter of civilians and say that the Israeli military is like better than the U.S. military. And it's just crazy. It's completely insane. And meanwhile, their rules of engagement are far looser than America's rules of engagement. And I mean, everyone can agree America should have never invaded Iraq. But, you know, Even the worst battles, like in Fallujah in 2004, I think innocent people had more of a chance to get out of the way. And then the level of destruction that they brought to the city, when that's like the worst example from Iraq War II probably would be Fallujah in the spring and fall right after the election in 2004 in November. And I don't know exactly what the percentages are, but they destroyed much less of that city that, you know, compared to what is. Israel is doing in Gaza, where they're just absolutely flattening everything and, you know,

destroying it and bulldozing the rest with the bodies inside the rubble still and everything, you know? And the starvation. I mean, what just happened with them capturing the border crossing and cutting it off? You know, we've seen the U.S. claiming that they're, they're claiming Israel hasn't been blocking aid, but they're also been, oh, you know, Israel needs to do more to allow more aid in. And they just cut off the two most vital aid. crossings and nobody's really saying anything about it like it i feel like it's barely been noticed maybe because of what biden you know everybody's focused on what biden said about the bombs now but you know what it is too man is people are very wary of hyperbole genocide here and famine there

when you say famine people think of you know hands across america well you're too young for this Ethiopia in the 1980s right where people are just starving to death by the tens or hundreds of thousands or whatever it is just i guess tens but so when you say famine here when cindy mccain says famine here even to me it just raises the question what exactly do you mean by that people are starving to death right now and in what kind of numbers yeah no i mean it definitely does raise that question but the fact that you've even had a u.s official is samantha power say that that there's famine already happening in pockets of northern gaza And then they're just letting Israel basically Biden gave Netanyahu the green light to capture that border crossing.

They talked about it right before he launched the operation. Wait, what's her position? She's in the State Department right now still, right? Samantha Power. Yeah. She's the head of USA. Yeah. Oh, she's the head of USA.

That's right. Yeah. And so this is the top American aid official. And this was about a month ago, or I think it was in March, said that she thought there were parts of northern Gaza where famine is happening. And there was a point where we heard a few dozen people were starving to death. But you're right that I haven't seen the reports of like a mass number of people starving to death, which is what I would think when it comes to famine. But I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if you told me a million people were going hungry, but surviving. You know, I don't know where you draw the line on that.

I mean, the whole thing is a horror show from beginning to end. Yeah, I mean, I just think, you know, it's important because also there's this, this. the U.S. foreign assistance laws, if a country is blocking aid deliveries, then the U.S. is supposed to cut them off. And, you know, it's just completely ridiculous that the State Department has claimed that Israel's not doing that so they could keep giving them weapons. They were actually supposed to submit a report to Congress on Wednesday, basically showing that Israel's not violating international law and that they're not violating U.S. foreign assistance laws by blocking aid or anything like that, but they delayed the report. So I've wondered how long they're going to

kick that can down the road because how can you show that? I mean, it's just clear that with these bombings and that it's clear that they're blocking aid as well. So listen, with all this attention on Gaza, which is obviously the worst, can we get an update on what's happening in the West Bank, Dave? Yeah, I mean, in the West Bank, we've seen just a lot of settler, a lot more settler violence and demolitions and everything and, you know, it's just the Israeli military backing the settlers as they're taking over more homes in the West Bank. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Who knew? Artificial bank credit expansion leads to price inflation and terribly distorted markets.

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too. That's libertasbella.com. I mean, I know that violence certainly had increased, and before October the 7th, there was the first half of last year was the largest amount of settler expansion in that same time frame in many years. And so now they're taking advantage of, of the crisis in Gaza in order to go ahead and really push things further in the West Bank,

which is what they really want. Yeah. But yeah, the West Bank is the ultimate prize. Yeah. And we've seen the settlers there. They've been blocking the aid convoys

that are coming from Jordan. They've been like attacking the trucks and dumping all the food out. You know, Gaza is really an important test case for the West Bank. If they can succeed in making the people of Gaza so miserable that they'll accept being forced.

I don't know, to go drown in the sea or go bake in the Negev desert or whatever it is, if they can force somehow twist the arms of the Egyptians to allow them to all be forced into Egypt or something like that. Well, that's 2 million people. And if they can cleanse 2 million people in Gaza, then they can cleanse 3 million people in the West Bank. Mm-hmm. You know, all aboard. I can hear the railroad whistle right now as, they've put everybody on box cars and ship them off to Jordan, you know, for the Levin's

round. Yeah. I mean, and that's definitely, especially when you look at the Netanyahu government, that's definitely what they're thinking, you know, this is the long-term goal for them. And, yeah, if they could get away with this in Gaza, if they could get away with what they're doing in Gaza right now, I mean, you know, what's going to stop them in the West Bank? Yeah. Now, the thing of it is, I'm told that the only reason that any reason that any of the, you know,

disagrees with what Israel's doing here is because the Chinese communist controlled the TikTok and the TikTok is brainwashing all the people and being for the terrorists over there, Dave. What about that? Yeah, so, you know, this new TikTok ban was pushed forward recently and this is something that they tried under Trump a few years ago. And that's the narrative is that it's a Chinese spy tool because bite dance, the company that owns it is based in China. They've never really, you know, had any evidence to show that claim that it's some sort of spy device and not just a social media app that makes a lot of money and has this crazy algorithm.

But anyway, you know, all of a sudden there was this renewed push and a lot of people suspected for a good reason that it was due to the war in Gaza, the coverage of, you know, this has really kind of been unprecedented. that, you know, social media and the internet's been around for a while, of course. But just this fact that you've had these Palestinian journalists being able to go around and show people what it looks like after the aftermath of an airstrike and show kids being pulled out of the rubble on social media. I mean, that's really kind of a new thing. We've seen that in other places, but just not at this scale. I mean, it just, you know, it's like imagine if the Japanese civilians in Tokyo had smartphones

and Instagram or whatever. So there's that. And then, of course, there's also just the content. You know, TikTok is generally a younger people that use it, and they're more likely to be pro-Palestinian. So I think it was pretty clear for a lot of people that this was really the reason why they're cracking down on it, and not so much because of just using the claims about China. And then Mitt Romney and Anthony Blinken just had this conversation last week at the McCain Institute. And Romney asked Blinken, you know,

Why do you think Israel's lost the PR war? What's going on here? And Blinken said, basically, it's because of social media. And he said, people, oh, you know, it's emotion. People get all this information and their emotions, you know, take over. And, you know, essentially saying people see all these dead children and things. And they're just, oh, they're just emotional. And they don't understand the context and everything.

And then Romney said, well, yeah, you know, people wonder why there was so much support in Congress for banning TikTok. And what he actually said was pretty amazing. He said the word Palestinian is mentioned more on TikTok than any other social media platform. You know, he didn't even say like they're putting out this bad information or anything. He just said, oh, they talk about Palestinians too much. Yeah, like their existence at all, that they're subject of the discussion from their point of view whatsoever. You know, amazing, yeah. the guilty conscience of these people

it's not really a guilty conscience right it's an absolutely guilt-free conscience of Mitt Romney when he speaks like yeah this free speech thing is really getting in the way of all of the sins we're committing and so we're going to have to stop that and of course he's exactly right that you know when I was younger I guess you know when you were younger too but certainly like through at least the first part of the Bush years

it was rather Jennings and Brokaw on the nightly news and the New York Times and they essentially set the agenda for the entire media there was you know it was really Facebook and then Twitter and now of course Instagram and TikTok and the others that really created you know what's they call it social media but what it is is it's peer to peer media

where everybody's a host you want a podcast make one you want to report the news report it and you can talk right back to the big shots and there's a level of accountability there that they're just not used to and I'm witness to the fact that it was in 2014 the slaughter in Gaza in 2014 which was retweeted and hashtagged in the first time in a real effective way with you know the 3G phones then and that's what made the difference and that was the first time that the American people sided overall with the Palestinians in the conflict, which is just amazing, which is the first time ever because we only ever heard the Israeli side of the story here.

But Americans like an underdog, and when they realize who's occupying who and who's beaten up on who over there, then it becomes pretty easy. And then their argument is manifest destiny. Like, what a laugh. We don't believe in that. We're kind of embarrassed that America's, you know, earlier says. settlers two centuries ago did invoke that hollow excuse for killing people and stealing their property. And we're certainly not going to pay for that now in somebody else's country.

Yeah. I mean, it is, you know, again, for people, and what's really interesting is Trump kind of said this, too. He was asked in that interview, like, about, you know, rising anti-Semitism. And he said, well, you know, it's because of what you guys are doing and putting out there. You know, he was talking more about the videos the Israeli military was posting. them like demolishing buildings and stuff but right it's really it was just really interesting i know we talk i think we talked about this recently when i was on the show but just to see you know it's not just uh us recognizing that it's also trump and obviously blinkin as well what blinkin said was really something too because he's talking about just social media

as a whole you know this is mr rules-based order for you know freedom of the uh of the press in other countries you know not this country saying that uh basically Americans have too much information at their fingertips. They don't know how to handle it. They get emotional. It's essentially what he said. Yeah, that's funny. As opposed to all the real rational arguments for why it's okay to kill tens of thousands of innocent people in a penned-in reservation, right?

Again, for people new to the subject, Palestine ain't the nation state next door. In fact, that's the whole controversy, is these people aren't allowed. to have independence. They literally are living on an Indian reservation. That's what the Israelis are bombing. It was that one Palestinian comedian was talking about, it's such a funny story here. It's the unique circumstance where the oppressed are able to carpet bomb their oppressors with impunity. And, you know, it's because they're usually are trying to obscure who's really persecuting who you know not that that absolves the sins of the Palestinian resistance when they do the wrong thing but it is what it is yeah and and when we're talking about rafa now

again you know these are there's over a million people you know the latest estimates is like 1.3 million people in the city of rafa and they fled from all over gaza the the pre-war population was 275 000 most of the people are just living in tents on the street in the in the sand and you have 600,000 children are there. I mean, that is just such a huge number. And, you know, there was one story that we had. It was from BBC, actually, of a woman, a mother, she had like six kids and was living in a tent.

And she was saying how every night they hear the dogs come out, like all these stray dogs come out, and they dig up the dead bodies that are like buried around them and eat them. I mean, this is the horror that these people are experiencing. And that their children, like, can't sleep at night because they just hear these dogs all night long. Like, you know, it's things like that when you hear those types of anecdotes that make you kind of try to, you know, maybe imagine it more when you just hear, oh, 600,000 people, a million people. But these are actually families, you know, young with young children who are going through this. And it's just unimaginable.

Yeah. And so that's why the kids are out protesting. That's what the controversy is all about is that what's going on here is. wrong it's not just who's on whose side or whatever this is the least fair fight since the last one it's just as ugly as can be and and for the anti-war protesters out there listening i say get off the campus and target democratic party officials that's your leverage as the left is pressure on the liberals that if they want to stay in office they're going to have to appease you and not the Israel lobby not anymore and so let that be the near term future of the anti-war movement here

on the the protest movement on the campuses and especially going into this long hot summer of this election year it's the most important thing you know it's a crisis of our time offices and everything i think that could be really effective absolutely right and so okay and yeah and by the way don't block the roads just block the driveway of your representative in Congress, right? Be narrowed and focused in your protest. All right, that's it. We're out of time, but thank you so much for your time again on the show and for all your effort keeping track of the bad news for us, Dave. You do a great job. Thanks, Scott. Thanks for having me.

All right you guys, that's Dave DeCamp. He's news editor at anti-war.com and he's got his own great podcast called Anti-War News. We just gives you the rundown on the top stories every day and really great stuff. And that's news.com. And that's it for me. For today, I'm your host, Scott Wharton here on anti-war radio. Find my archives at Scotthorton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.