Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/25/25 Kyle Anzalone on the Never-Ending Horror in Gaza

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Kyle Anzalone joins the show to discuss the latest updates coming out of Gaza, such as the lack of progress on a ceasefire, the state of Hamas, the aid distribution massacres and more.  Discussed on the show: “US and Israel Quit Gaza Ceasefire Talks in Doha as Palestinians Starve to Death” (Antiwar.com) “Thousands of Unexploded Israeli Bombs in Gaza Provide Hamas With Weapons” (Libertarian Institute) Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com, co-host of Conflicts of Interest and host of The Kyle Anzalone Show. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; 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

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archive. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and X at Scott Horton show

all right you guys on the line I got Kyle Anzloane he's news editor at the institute and he's the opinion editor at antiwar dot com and he's the host of the Kyle Anzloon show and also conflicts of interest which are both on your YouTube's and on your twitters and on all your podcatchers

and stuff uh hey man how are you doing well Scott thanks for amy on yeah uh well thanks for coming on Good to see you and talk to you. God dang, well, let's just talk about the Gaza news. The top headline on anti-war.com today is U.S. Israel quit truce talks as Gaza stars. So was there anything to these talks in the first place or what?

Yeah. So Jeremy Scahill, who I guess is in contact with some Hamas officials, has been kind of relaying the Hamas position on this. And they did seem to take it seriously, and they did, I think, try to offer a proposal that they saw themselves giving concessions in some areas, including swapping the rest of their hostages for the rest of the Israeli captives for some Palestinians who are held by Israel. One, I guess there are two main demands that it seems that Israel was unwilling to budge on. They wanted a commitment from the United States that, you know, there was no reason to go back to the fighting once the 60-day ceasefire was over. And they wanted the UN to distribute

food in Gaza and not the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which everybody is omitting, including contractors, American contractors who have worked for the GHF, that those things are just death-trap nightmares. Well, I'll have you talk about that more in just one sec, but I wanted to get clarification there, were you saying that Hamas had backed down enough that they were saying they would give up the last of their Israeli hostages in favor, just for a temporary ceasefire, which is a huge climb down from a permanent end to the fighting. Is that right? Correct. And then they were going to, I think they were trying to walk a line on demanding a full withdrawal from Israeli troops in Gaza, saying that Israeli troops would be allowed to stay in.

buffer zones in certain security areas in Gaza, and so they weren't even demanding a full withdrawal anymore. In response to this, both the Americans and the Israelis said, well, they're being completely unreasonable. We can't deal with these people. We're going home, which I guess probably gives some credence to the fact that Hamas came back with a reasonable proposal, the fact that they, you know, gave up on negotiation so quickly, because I think it's pretty clear that Israel doesn't want to deal at this point. Yeah. What is Hamas said about the various proposals from Egypt and Saudi and, I guess, Qatar, about them forming some kind of international consortium to take over and rebuild the place and all that? Yeah, I mean, so this is another interesting dynamic I've seen Jeremy Scahill report on quite a bit that Hamas is trying to give up governance of the Gaza Strip.

And they've put in several of their proposals to Israel that that they would. would give up all their, I guess, political role as far as, you know, administering food and running like the Gaza Health Ministry and things like this. They no longer want that responsibility in Gaza. And the Israelis and the Americans keep taking that language out of any ceasefire deal. And so they seem receptive to these proposals of some other organization coalition. I'm not sure about, you know, exactly the Palestinian Authority, but some other Palestinian or other organization coming in and running the governance Gaza.

All right now. So there's another major headline. Well, yeah, let's stick with the politics for a second. We'll talk about the humanitarian thing more in a second, although obviously that's part of it. Part and parcel. But so Israeli minister Gaza will be wiped out. And I know that, you know, the Hasbara side of the story will be, yeah, but this. guy is not in charge of that or anything and so who cares what he says but this is a chorus of voices

there among uh the israeli leadership saying as plainly as they possibly could for almost two years now you're in three quarters or so that their goal is to kick every last Palestinian out of the Gaza strip and this is just another but can you tell us a little bit more about who this guy was and what it was exactly said oh i i i had to don't have his name in front of me, Scott. Oh, that's right. Apologies for that. But yeah, as you say, you know, this is an absolute course of all members of, you know, I guess maybe not the Israeli political spectrum. I think there are still

like some far left parties and the members of the Knesset who represent the arrows. But effectively, everybody else is saying throw all the Palestinians out of Gaza, you know, most vocal has been those like Betzel Smaltrich and Itmar Ben-Gavir, who are the finance Minister, National Security Minister, you know, they're always called the fringe viewpoints in Israel, and these are the far-righted stream at Scott. But they have an awful lot of power. And so they are not, you know, fringe elements. They represent and they control a lot of what the Israeli government does. But it's also clear, I think, that this is a part of the policy of, you know, the coalition led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I think at this,

point, it's very clear. They're following the plan that was put together by Ron Dermer, who is one of Netanyahu's closest allies. He's, so he was born in Miami. On my show, James Cardin called him a traitor to the United States because he's now a member of the Israeli Knesset, but he's constantly lurking around the White House. And his plan is to make conditions in Gaza so horrific that the Arab states will no longer see it as aiding a genocide, to take in the Palestinians, but rather an act of charity. And so that's, you know, very clear what the Israelis are doing. And it's not, again, any kind of fringe elements, as many members of them saying it publicly,

but it's also in their policy papers and positions that they have drawn up to actually deal with this situation. I mean, Netanyahu is calling for the formation of a concentration camp. The defense minister, Kant, has even said that they want to concentrate the population. population there. So, you know, they obviously understand the language that they're using and what that signifies. And Netanyahu's plan calls for first putting sits under thousand Palestinians in Rafa and then the rest of the population. And from there, they will only be allowed to Edzegaza. They will never be allowed to return to their homes. And one of the amazing parts about this, Scott, is that the IDF actually doesn't want to do this. The IDF, chief of staff, came up with a proposal that

he wanted to bring to the Israeli security cabinet that would limit the IDF operations to just going against Hamas. He says the IDF doesn't want to take care of the civilian population. I guess he understands that he doesn't want to turn all of his soldiers into, you know, Nazi concentration camp guards, which is effectively what all these members of the IDF, all these young Israelis are going to be, are guards at a concentration camp. but the Netanyahu proposal goes through. And Netanyahu wouldn't even let him bring the proposal to the security cabinet. He's shutting down all debate on this.

And so it's very clear that this is the Israeli policy. All right. Now, so first of all, I brought it up. So it's the heritage minister, Amichai, Eli, Elihu, from the Jewish Power Party, who was the one who was saying they must be wiped out. The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out, he said approvingly. Thank God we are wiping out this evil and you got to love this. We are pushing out this population that has been educated on mind comp.

What's he doing? He's talking about what we're going to do is we're going to take all the undesirables and we're going to transfer them somewhere far to the east like Indonesia. Yeah, anyway, somebody here is emulating the Nazis. Plitnik, who's an American, liberal Jewish critic and writer for the Mondo Wise. I'm sure you were the one who picked this article to run on anti-war.com the other day. He ran a thing, and it was about the head of Mossad, came to the United States to meet, at least with Whitkoff, I don't know if with Rubio or whoever else,

to work on the plan for getting rid of the final transfer of the Palestinians out of there. The Israelis, I guess, figure, like taking out Fordo, they need America to do. do it for them. And so that was why they were here to get Trump's guys to start agreeing to a real plan, right, to come up with a real plan. Or we're going to make these people go either to Libya, Ethiopia, or Indonesia. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah. So, you know, there have been taught between Washington and Tel Aviv about this, even in the early days of the conflict. I think by maybe November or December of 2023, the Biden administration was talking with Netanyahu. about possibly sending the Palestinians to Chad or Rwanda or a country like that.

And so these discussed, but they seem to be getting far more serious now. And yeah, what Tel Aviv needs Washington to do is use the leverage that our empire has to get countries to take in the Palestinians. And my guess, Scott, is that they're trying to divide them up over a very large number of countries. Right. It may be more problematic if Egypt has to take in a million Palestinians from Gaza, but they've approached, you know, a long list of countries. You know, you mentioned there, Indonesia. They've approached both governments, Olivia, both Haftar, who rules Benghazi and the Tripoli government. They've gone to the Sudanese government. All three governments are Somalia, the Mogadishu government, Puntland, Somaliland. They've taught to Jolani and Syria. And so what is one of the common threads about all these governments, Scott? They all could desperately use something from the United States of America.

Dave DeKamp has a story this week at anti-war.com that the Somali army that defends the Mogadishu government is melting away in front of an al-Shabaab offensive. Of course, Putland and Somaliland would love international recognition from the United States. either government of Libya, of course, could probably finish out the other with just a little bit of U.S. military assistance. Sudan is in the middle of a civil war, and I'm sure would take any assistance that they can. And, you know, I think this is even more nefarious than sending all the Palestinians to say one individual country where they would probably live in a concentrated area and hold on to a large part of their culture. But if they spread them out, and there's only, you know, 100,000 here, are there in their war-torn states with poor economies is probably going to force pretty

rapid assimilation. And I mean, you know, what Israel is talking about doing is the just outright destruction of a people in this policy. And the United States is not only going to bribe countries into it, but we're probably going to pick up a large portion of the tab for, you know, building the refugee cities in Somalia and Libya, wherever the Palestinians are going to end up being sent to i mean this is just the the worst thing that you could absolutely imagine and it's largely going to be paid for and bought with american uh influence i wonder if they can really do it i guess you know it would take u.s navy ships u.s troops to force these people on the ships and move them to Indonesia, move them to Libya, put them on, what, trains through Egypt down to Ethiopia?

How do you get them to Ethiopia? Just landlocked away from the ocean. You know, all this is just insane. And then, well, so, and this leads to another question, which I don't have a good handle on, man. I'm too far out of following the current events on this. what is the the pace of fighting on the ground as far as air strikes versus IDF troops on the ground, taking territory, the strength of the continued resistance? I know there's not rockets being fired into Israel, but, and I, you know, I've heard Ehud Olmert and also the generals have said that Hamas is still there. They still got tens of thousands of guys, you know, 20,000, as many as they started with.

the war has accomplished nothing as far as that goes they've taken out their you know more powerful leadership from the old days but that the fighters essentially remain then again the Israelis have killed a hell of a lot of people and presumably at least sometimes they're targeting hamas fighters and so uh when it comes down to it are they going to is hamas beaten enough that they'll be able to just transfer out everyone else There's no one left there to take pot shots at them as they try to corral everybody and push them into the sea here. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there, Scott. I think the estimates I've seen from the U.S. intelligence community, Blinken said this before the Biden administration ended.

I've heard it from the Trump administration too and from Israeli opposition officials and the Knesset that Hamas's strength is actually 40,000 fighters that they've been able to recruit and replace everybody that they've lost. Now, I've also read that Hamas can't necessarily sustain a 40,000 man army at this point. They don't have the weaponry, and they certainly don't have the food to do that. And so most members of Hamas are just living at, you know, they're like reservists. They could be called up in the future, maybe, but they're not actively fighting as members of Hamas. Now, Hamas does have some isolated cells, and they are carrying out some attacks. You know, every few days, maybe every week, you'll read a story of some number of Israeli soldiers killed in, you know, some sort of ambush attack or Hamas plants. You know, they use a dud Israeli bomb to mine a house.

So when an Israeli bulldozer runs over it, the operator gets killed or something like that. So, you know, Israel is certainly still taking casualties in this fight, but it doesn't seem that Hamas is in any question. coordinated way of putting up a defensive. Now, that may change in the coming weeks. Israel is moving into Diraabala, a city that they haven't attacked, and there's some speculation that that's because they believe the hostages are there. And so there certainly would be some Hamas fighters around those hostages. And I guess it's possible that, you know, there's more fighting than we've seen in some time in the coming weeks because of that. But it doesn't seem like there's ground battles going on across Gaza and the IDF is able to operate in a lot of areas. I mean,

they're just carrying out rampant destruction. Heretz had a report saying that they're paying contractors $15,000 for every house they bulldozed. So they're just destroying everything because it's all money, every single house that you run over. Of course, the IDF is all over Gaza with checkpoints and that's where they're mowing down the civilians trying to get to the, there's only four GHF aid distribution points in Gaza right now. So people have to travel long distances to get to where their food is and the IDF is operating in those areas. And, you know, there's a lot of Palestinians around the Israelis are just gunning them down. So obviously Hamas is enacted there. Now, one of the things and the problems I'm sure Israel recognizes Scott is that if they were to

withdraw from Gaza, then whatever built in group, whether it's Hamas or something else, Gaza is absolutely littered with unexploded bombs that Israel has dropped. I mean, thousands and thousands of them, by the IDF's own estimate. I think maybe six months ago or so for the Institute, I wrote an article about their, they estimate there is between six and eight thousand unexploded Israeli bombs. And this is where Hamas is getting their arms from, right? Right. Right. And so I would guess that if there was a meaningful ceasefire, where Israel withdrew and Hamas was able to start to carry out activities again,

that they would be able to rearm relatively quickly. But at this point, they do seem somewhat beaten, at least are unable to field much of a fighting force against the IDF. Yeah. Hey, y'all, if you run a business or a side hustle and want to keep more of your money out of the IRS's hands, Matthew Serseley, the Agarist Tax Advisor, is your guy. He'll help you set up your business the right.

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Moondoseartisan coffees.com Get it, Starbucks supports the war party. Moondos is with us. And it's really good. Get the Scott Horton's show blend. Just click the link in the right-hand margin at Scott Horton.org. All right, so tell me everything about the hunger and the famine

and who's causing it. I saw an Israeli on the news say, but it's Hamas, it's just stealing all the food. That's why everybody else is going hungry. So tell me what you know. Yeah, I mean, this is just the most horrific thing, Scott. As I said before, there's only four GHF aid distribution sites in Gaza.

I've, you know, read story after story from Palestinians in Gaza who are explaining what the situation's like. They don't advertise when the sites are going to open. So people just leave at like 8 p.m. the night before and start watching. in the direction in the dart that they think it is because I guess they feel safer from the general Israeli forces under the cover of darkness. Those going to the aid distribution sites, and this has been reported by Palestinians and Western doctors in Gaza, are being killed not only by Israeli soldiers who say they feel their lives are threatened by the Palestinians, but also

being killed by Israeli taints, artillery, and drones. And so this is, you know, one that I want paint the image that every day, tens of thousands of Palestinians wake up starving and they go hungry and high and they try to get food. And along the way, they're being shelled. They're being fired on by taints. They're being, you know, gas is fired at them. And they're being hit with snipers and quadcopter drones. So guns with, or drones with guns mounted on them, right? Like this is an unbelievable horror show. Numerous 8.5. agencies have referred to it as like killing fields. Others have, you know, described the situation as the GHF is a part of the genocide, that they are meant to be death traps, was the phrase

that Amnesty International used to describe them. And so once the Palestinians get there, there's no organization. They lay the food out in the sand. They open the gates. And hungry Palestinians rush in to get food. The Palestinians are describing it like the hunger games, where, you know, the Palestinians turn on each other in a sense. You know, they say knives come out, fish fights break out. The food, of course, gets torn apart and dropped in the sand. And so people are picking up, you know, pots that has, like, sand and lentils and rice and flour midst in with the food. It's just the absolute sickest thing.

And then this is from a security contractor who worked with the IDF, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Army. So this isn't somebody who could be dismissed as like weak or just not understanding what it takes to get the job done. But once the period that they're allowed to get the food is over, they start firing warning shots or they start just directly firing on the Palestinians. He described it as shooting at their legs. They go in with gas and they start spraying gas in people's face and force them to leave the aid distribution site, like fleeing for their lives with the little food that they have, where they're funneled back into. to where the IDF positions are and they get killed on their way back to where the rest of their families are again to bring a meager amount of food. I mean, this is like the situation every day

for the Palestinians. And again, this is backed up not only by the Palestinian testimony, but also Western doctors and the GHF security contractors. One more thing I want to mention here is Dr. Nick Menard. He's a British surgeon who's right now in Gaza. I believe he's in the Nasser hospital in Connus. And he says that babies are starving to death, that people with treatable injuries are starving to death in their hospital beds because there's simply no food. The Palestinian doctors and nurses are all malnourished as well. And in a particular attesatism, him. He said that in the past, American doctors who are volunteering in Gaza, you know, you're allowed to bring in a little bit of luggage. And rather than bringing in food or any comfort

items, the doctors just bring in like protein bars and then formula for babies. And this time, the IDF actually confiscated the baby formula from the American doctors as they are bringing it in. Yeah. So now on. I want to emphasize what you're saying there about the reports. I mean, your name and names here. These reports from the Israeli media where you have, you know, these big specials, these in-depth reports based on direct testimony by Israeli enlisted men and officers talking about them doing this, essentially luring people in with aid and then masquering them,

not just machine gunning them, but hitting them with artillery, as he said, with artillery. and tanks and the rest. It sounds like the kind of thing where, okay, so like that movie, Red Dawn, the original, not the remake, in the 1980s, they line up all the Patriots and machine gun them to death and everything.

But like, if you had a scene in that movie where the Russians occupying America are so evil that they're starving everyone and then they lure everyone to get food and then they machine gun them like that, I just think how badly the Democrats would have

denounce that as just such over the top cartoonish propaganda right like waylin smithers says cartoonish super villainy beyond just regular villainy this is it sounds absurd and then maybe like it couldn't be true then because just how absurd could that be if it's really like that then how come we're supporting them then right now but then this is the top headline at harrets and they have it in the officers own words that yeah we hit them at the food sites all right and they know that these people are unarmed that as you described they're just killing men women and children shooting fish in a barrel right right i mean it is it the the level of evil that israel's engaged in here one of the things that Dr. Menard said was that it appears that the Israeli snipers are playing some sort of

game. And on different days, they're shooting young Palestinians as young as 11, 12, 13, 14 years old in different body parts. And so one day you'll have injuries of people shot in the heart, the net stay the leg, the net's the neck, even the genitals. I mean, it's hard to even describe how sadistic and how, you know, twisted the morality of the individual IDF soldiers, which, you know, is apparently a lot of them. This is, you know, one of the things I had interviewed, Dr. Farod, Sidwa, he's a, you know, big advocate of antiwar.com and a doctor who has been in Gaza several times talked about that. Initially, he thought it was maybe one sadistic Israeli sniper that was just killing Israeli children in a localized area of Gaza. But as he taught to his colleagues who had also spent time in Gaza, they realized that no, Israeli snipers are just picking off children day after day after day.

And it's obviously not incidental. They're being shot right through the heart every single time. This is evidence he actually brought to the New York Times. And the New York Times ran a story on this. And you're right. Like the level of evil that Israel is engaged in here when you talk about it, I think that's why maybe like the APEC argument that, oh, this is anti-Santis. Semitic rings true with people because they think no group of people could be this evil.

And yet it just continues to go on and on and on. Although I will say, you know, I keep seeing people like Miss Rachel posting about this and just, you know, showing the poor malnourished, emaciated Palestinian children. And nobody buys that that woman is anti-Semitic or that she's lying to you. And so I do think that the whole anti-Semitism argument is. really losing its weight as this genocide goes on and as that happens I guess more people will hopefully believe all the stories that the Palestinians are telling about the cruelty that the Israelis are are subjecting upon them yeah and look for anyone listen to this who you have felt

intimidated in the past that you're don't want to talk about this because you're afraid what might happen somebody's going to call you a bad name or whatever don't be afraid that's silly and especially at this point it just ain't going to stick somebody calls you anti-Semitic just tell your boss nah i just said something about israel and he probably agrees with you at this point anyway it's time to go ahead and be courageous enough of this well tell me this though call i mean in the other side of the story that like the israelis and the christians there the israeli jews and the christians they're basing a war by these jihadists like didn't some hamas

suicide bombers attack a Catholic church there the other day and kill three people? Yeah, in IDF uniforms and after they hijacked an IDF tank, apparently. No, of course it was the Israeli forces that shelled the only Catholic hospital in Gaza, leaving three people dead, just an absolutely horrific crime. Oh, wasn't just a church? It was a hospital, too? Oh, no, I'm sorry. It was a church. It was like only Catholic church, excuse me, only Catholic church in Gaza. Thanks for catching me there, Scott. And, yeah, I mean, again, it's so awful that even something like that invokes a little bit of statements from like Mike Cuckabee.

There was a article in Atseos where one White House official said, what the F does Netanyahu thinks he's doing? Another White House official called Netanyahu a madman saying that he just bombs everything all the time. That's all he does. not that it's had any impact on U.S. policy towards Israel, but you know, you have this weird thing where there are apparently some people within the administration, even there, just wondering about the, how absurd and how far Israel has gone at this point. Yeah. If he's a madman, then how come we're backing him then? If that's the consensus from everywhere between anti-war.com and the Republican White House that actually supports them, then I think we've achieved consensus here. Thank you for coming on the show.

Great to talk to you again. Yep. Thanks for listening to Scott Horton Show, which can be heard on APS Radio News at Scott Horton.org, Scott Horton Show.com, and the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org.