Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/15/24 Connor Freeman on America and Israel’s War On the Palestinians

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

Connor Freeman was on Antiwar Radio this week to talk about developments in Gaza. He and Scott discuss the slaughtering of civilians that continues unchecked, the threat this all poses to the safety of the American public, the reason a wider war breaking out is so concerning and more.  Discussed on the show: Full video from Palestine Deep Dive “Israel killed 1.8% of Gaza's population, official figures show” (Anadolu Agency) Connor Freeman is the Assistant Editor of the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com and Counterpunch, as well as the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96 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

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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 dot com and the author of the book enough already time to end the war on terrorism you can find my full interview archive more than six thousand of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton show and all your favorite podcatchers and video websites and things. And I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. So our guest today is Connor Freeman.

He's assistant editor at the Institute and Anti-War.com. Welcome back to the show. Connor. How you doing? I'm doing great, Scott. Thanks for having me on. All right. So we got to talk about the bad news from over there in sadist land, Israel, where they kill children on purpose all day. But I wanted to start with this video that was put out this morning by this great website and a Twitter account called Palestine Deep Dive. And it's this young woman, I believe she's 20 years old, her name is Miriam Al-Katib. And she's telling the story of how the Israelis murdered her grandmother.

Wake up. Just wake up. Israel told my grandmother, she was much older than the state of Israel. In Marsh, Israel, took Shifa Hospital, and they bombed it. And my grandmother house, mayor, that's Shifa Hospital. And the soldier coming to my uncle home, they arrest men and they told the women go to the south and this older women will stay with us. But my aunt said to them, I want to take this older woman because, She's need a care and she's have a medicine. The soldier told her that she's in a safe area and we want to take care about her. But my aunt told them no. And the soldier bought a gun with the head of my aunt and she told her,

leave or you want to die with her. My aunt's go to the south and leave my grandma. And my grandma was inside the home. The Israel burned the home. and they make a big fire inside the home. We thought that Israel take my grandma outside the home because the soldiers told us they wanted to take my grandma out. She has a blue eye and she has an assorture and she was small.

She was incredible, beautiful, and she was intelligent. And she spoke English very well and she'd speak French. And she saw what is meaning of neckbed She's so what is meaning of the history She's really kind and we love her too much But after two weeks When my older uncle go to our home that burned home She will be her bone inside the bed

Her full body that burned inside the bed I can't imagine how she's dying How she's feeling when she's see all the fire around her and she's inside the fire. I hear her screaming. I hear her voice when she's, please bring me to my father and my mother. I can't imagine the situation how she's burned.

The fire eat her leg first or eat her mind first. She can see the fire inside her body and she knows it's about just a minute to leave this life. I can't imagine what the Israel's holder need from my life. grandmother. I think the only thing that I had the answer because she's an older than them. It's the one who's

give her soul to Palestine. I hope she's resting peace, and I hope she's in paradise now. All right, so it goes on, and people can find this at Palestine Deep Dive, and it's also P Deep Dive is their handle on

Twitter as well. X, as they call it now. And so that's Miriam Al-Katib, and I hope that people could understand. There's captions on the video. I hope people could understand on the radio what she's saying there about her grandmother was left behind. They forced her aunts and other members of her family to leave, and they tried to take the grandmother, and they said, no, she has to stay. And then they burnt the house down with the old lady in it and killed her. This is right there adjacent to the Al-Shefa hospital when they were in the middle of a attack.

backing that hospital, as we all know under absolutely ridiculously false pretenses that there was a sophisticated Hamas bunker underneath it and all this absolute insane garbage that they pushed. And so I just want to play that clip because, you know, this could be far away. And I know people have gone from opposing the Biden and Harris administration for committing genocide to supporting Kamala Harris for president because that's what they've been told to do now. But meanwhile, Biden is still helping the Israelis mercilessly slaughter these people like their livestock. They're essentially helpless in a prison. As everybody knows, we already knew this. Everybody always talked about this for years. Gaza's an open-air prison, a concentration camp, an Indian reservation.

In other words, already conquered territory full of captives. And that's who they're slaughtering here is people who are just trapped. And the headlines today, we're going to talk about the headlines on anti-war.com today about what is going on in Palestine, in the Gaza Strip particularly, but in the West Bank as well. It is as ugly as hell. It is the worst thing happening in the world right now is the worst thing about America, Israel. So, Connor, can we start first with the story about the newborn twins that were killed in an Israeli air strike on their home? Yes, absolutely. So there was an airstrike in central Gaza on Tuesday in Daryl Balad that killed two babies that had just been born only a few days prior. And the father had left to go get birth certificates for his children and then returned back to where his family was sheltering and found out that their house had been bombed. His wife had been killed as well as the two babies. And also, I believe,

His wife's mother had also been killed as well. And it's just like you're saying about the story that we just heard, this is routine. This has become the status quo. We find stories constantly of people being displaced 10, 12 times, and then they're murdered with their families, burned alive. You know, there was just over the weekend this bombing another UN school, another school rather, that was being used as a shelter in Gaza City, the Talib School. where 2,400 people were sheltering there.

And the Israelis bombed it with three missiles, three bombs at dawn during morning prayers, including one of the bombs, these are, has been verified to be a U.S. munition, of course, we've sent over 14,000, 2,000-bound bombs. And they used a 2,000-pound bomb on a school and killed about 100 people, including many women and children. And this is just, again, this is, this is, Par for the course. This is America's war on the Palestinians, which should be absolutely unfathomable, and yet that's exactly where we find ourselves, murdering just two-day-old babies.

You know, and then they always, when they bomb the school this past weekend, you know, the argument from the Israelis is, well, there was a Hamas command of control center in the school. They have never provide any evidence for such claims, just like you were saying about the Al-Shefa hospital. So they're bombing schools, hospitals, shelters, and lying, not just to the, I mean, they're lying to the world, but they're also lying to the American people who are by, you know, puts us in the crosshairs of any blowback coming down the line because we collectively have a byline on every single massacre that takes place. And these are occurring. These same kinds of slaughters are taking place on a just a daily basis. Yeah. Well, and we've seen the stories all along, sniping pregnant women. trying to get to the hospital as we talked about on the show just last week or two weeks ago the doctors talking about young toddlers shot twice in the chest or twice in the head by snipers some of those highly trained snipers in the world deliberately targeting babies and they do this

because they hate them and want to murder them and steal their land from them that's it It's pure barbarianism, pure aggression, and as you say, on our dime. And I'm going to keep beating this record because people got to get concerned about this. It was when Naftali Bennett, in 1996 on orders from Shimon Peres, he was a commander who had helped invade Lebanon in Operation Grapes of Rath. And he was the commander who called an airstrike on a U.N. shelter that killed 106. women and children. And that Operation Grapes of Rath was, I believe, the first major topic brought up in, or second, right there at the very beginning of Bin Laden's first declaration

of war against the United States in 1996. And the lead hijacker, Muhammad Atta, and his buddy, Ramsey bin Al-Shib, who's in Guantanamo Bay to this day, they decided to join Al-Qaeda as soon as Perez launched that Operation Grapes of Rath. And when they saw, bin Laden's declaration of war, where he goes on and on about the Kana massacre at the beginning, they decided they're for sure doing this and went off to Afghanistan to join up and got recruited into the planes operation. And it was, you know, bin Laden's primary motivation was American bases in Saudi Arabia being used to bomb Iraq and starve the people of Iraq. But right there on the list, tied for first or right in second place, was American support for Israel

and their merciless violence against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. And as Ron Paul said, if we think we can just go around the world, we meaning the national government of this country, they can just go around the world bombing people with impunity, then they do that at our own peril. They're putting the people of this country in danger. And we've already seen, I got my eye mostly on Russia's stuff, But I'm seeing them everywhere, stabbing of a guy stabbed a Jew and called it free Palestine on the streets of New York City the other day.

And there have been, you know, some terrorist attacks, especially in Europe and in Asia, in the name of revenge for what Israel is doing in Palestine. The blowback is already coming back. It's backdraft. It's right in your face. You can see exactly what's causing it. And it's not that poor little Israel has to do whatever they have to do to defend themselves. No, it's their absolute cruel, wanton, merciless, deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians that drives it. And they don't care about us.

I think Israel cares if more of our towers get knocked down. They just get another war out of it, just like they got Iraq out of September 11th. Yeah. I mean, think about this man, Muhammad Abu al-Kusman, who were just talking about. about with the two twin babies that were just killed. I mean, they were born on Saturday and Israel murdered them on Tuesday. I mean, this is a perfect, you know, encapsulation of what this war actually looks like. It's a war on the Palestinians, not a war against Hamas.

Israeli intelligence and U.S. intelligence and even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Charles Q. Brown, have said that there's no way Israel can eliminate Hamas. And, you know, there's been this fight between the Israeli military and Netanyahu over this. is they say, you're saying that you can eradicate Hamas, you're just throwing sand in the eyes of the Israeli public. Hamas is an idea, it lives in the hearts of the people. We cannot eliminate them through military means. And, you know, to your point about 9-11, this is, you know, I want to say this to every Republican congressman and Donald Trump and everybody else that's behind all this. You may as well just do what the Israelis do in Gaza and take bulldozers and go and dig up the

family, you know, the people who are the victims of 9-11, because that's, you may as well, well, just do it. You're just desecrating their memory by doubling down on these policies that are arguably far worse than what provoked the attack in the first place. And it's just a slap in the face to everybody, including the survivors of the victims on that horrible day in 2001. And, you know, there is absolutely no significant opposition to this to be found. I mean, the state department just approved another $20 billion in arms sales to Israel. And this is after last week, they released $3.5 billion in foreign military financing from that mammoth foreign aid military bill, the supplemental aid bill that amounted to $95 billion, and $14 billion of which was for Israel,

on top of the mandatory $3.8 billion handover from American taxpayers to the world's most notorious apartheid state that Obama had negotiated in 2016. So, you know, we've given them nearly $20 billion this year already, and now we've just approved $20 billion more. in arms sales. It's not clear yet how much of that is going to be paid for with U.S. tax dollars. But we're talking about tens of thousands more, of tank cartridges and mortar shells, 50 F-15s. I mean, these are rewards for their ethnic cleansing campaign. This is not any, there's no slap on the wrist. And in fact, the one Israeli military unit that they were discussing possibly sanctioning under the Leahy laws because of the fact that they had killed an American

citizen. This is the Netza-Jahuda battalion. They killed an American citizen, a 78-year-old Palestinian, the American name Omar Assad back in January of 22. It was just announced by the State Department last week that they're not, no, we're not on Friday, that we're going to continue to provide aid to this battalion. And nobody was charged for killing an American. They grabbed this guy at a temporary checkpoint in the West Bank and Israeli checkpoint, handcuffed him, gagged him, blindfolded him and left him outside on the ground where he died of a heart attack, a stress-induced heart attack. And the message, the exact quote from Vendette Patel, the State Department spokesman, is this unit could continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America.

So who does our government work for right now? Because it certainly isn't the American people. I mean, Israel has already killed other American citizens throughout this war so far in the West Bank. we have family members of Justin Amash, a former American congressman, sheltering in a church in Gaza that the Israelis have bombed. And no one, I mean, it's just unbelievable. The American right is completely asleep at the wheel here as Israel is bombing churches. It's just shocking. I mean, you would expect it. But at the same time, once these kinds of stories are completely out in the open the way that they are, you'd think it would have an effect. And the good news is the only bit the good news we have, is recently the Chicago Council for Global Affairs put out a poll that says

that 56% of Americans oppose the idea of sending U.S. troops to defend Israel, including against neighboring countries like Iran. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you.

Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level, and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woodses' Liberty Classroom, Real history, real economics, real education.

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Click through from the link in the right-hand margin at Scotthorton.org to save 10% on your order. It's the Scott Horton Show blend from Moondos Artisan Coffee. Hey, you guys, coming up this October 7th through the 11th, join Miguel Thorup, host of the expat money podcast, the heroic Ron Paul, the great Tom Woods, Doug Casey, Mark Faber, Tom Luongo, myself, and many other great speakers for the online expat money summit, 2024. My presentation will be on the subject of my new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine, which is not quite out yet. and learn how you can reclaim your freedom by moving abroad,

legally reduce your tax bill, and protect your assets. More than 8,000 people attended last year, and it's free. My guy's Kyle Anzlone and Dave DeCamp from the Institute and Anti-War.com will be joining a panel discussion as well. Just go to 2024.xpatmoneysummit.com for all the info. That's 224.xpatmoney summit.com. And that poll was conducted starting in June and then ending on July 1st. So this predates Israel's assassinations of Isam al-Hinia in Tehran and Faud Shakur in

Beirut about two weeks ago, which have drastically escalated tensions. And depending on the extent of Iran and the rest of the axis of resistance retaliation against Israel, which is supposed to be coming any time, we could see the U.S. dragged into a much wider war, including with Iran. I mean, Austin just got off the phone with Lloyd Austin. the Pentagon Chief, just got off the phone with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Galant, who on October 9th said we're imposing a complete siege on Gaza because we're at war with human animals. We're cutting off the food, fuel, water, and electricity.

And again, you have more than a million children, more than half of the population there, at least half of the Gaza Strip, are children. And so he gets off the phone with him and tells us we're going to do everything we're taking every possible step to defend Israel. And we've had this reaffirmed by multiple top American officials that we are going to defend Israel against Iran, whatever it takes. They're accelerating deployments of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier, and its strike group, sending a guided missile submarine, the USS Georgia, sending in a number of more destroyers and bolstering land-based missile defenses. we're preparing for an expansion of the war, either against Hezbollah or against the Shiite militias who are already starting to attack U.S. bases again in the last couple of weeks.

And this is, you know, a massive powder keg. And there's just no, we have no representation in our government. It's, you know, it's just as bad as humiliating, frankly, as the Netanyahu speech to Congress, where we watch them all jump up like train seals and applaud. him for every, you know, sentence. And so we're just continuing to tell them that you can continue to kill Palestinian Christians and Muslims in mass, women, children. There's just this new report out from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics that nearly 2% of the entire population of the besieged enclave has been slaughtered. You're talking about 24% of those who have been

killed are used. We have almost 40,000 killed at this point and about 92,000 wounded. 34 people that we know of have already been starved to death, and there's 3,500 children at the risk of death from malnutrition and shortages of food. And, of course, 70% of the wounded as well are reportedly women and children. And this is on top of we've sent them 27,000 bombs, as I said earlier, including 14,000, excuse me, 14,000, 2,000 pound bombs and tens of thousands more artillery shells. We don't even pretend that we're going to condition aid. In fact, Kamala Harris's team has come out and confirmed again and again in the last few days that we are not even considering an arms embargo on Israel, even though there are progressive groups that are trying to have meetings with Harris, which she apparently expressed an interest in, at least talking to the uncommitted group, you know, the uncommitted voters who made a, in the primaries earlier in Michigan and Wisconsin, hundreds of thousands of them voted uncommitted to show their opposition to the

genocide in Gaza. And she said she would meet with them, but then, you know, obviously shouted down protesters in Detroit who were saying, Kamala, Kamala, you can't hide, you're funding genocide. And she told them, I am speaking and accused them of trying to get Trump elected. So, you know, the, and. Yeah. Well, look, so a few things there, man, but first of all, on the threat of regional war spreading here, we get back to the Democrats in a moment. The Wall Street journal on Wednesday said in Israel support grows for offensive against Hezbollah and then the subhead reads as the U.S. works to avoid a regional war, meaning sending diplomats to Amman to try to talk the Ayatollah out of doing anything crazy, I guess. It says inside security

circles, some wonder whether now is the time to risk one. But then when you read the article by inside security circles, he means the Israelis. And the Israelis are saying now is a time to risk a full-scale war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. And the idea has to be because we know the history of the war in 2006 where Hezbollah kicked Israel's ass and forced them back out again and that they're much more heavily armed now than they were then. They would need America to bail them out. And, you know, hopefully not with ground forces, you know, but it very well could take American heavy bombers to come in and back them up or they could just get forward. right back out again, like in 06.

Bush didn't send in the bombers in 06. He told them, like, tough, then go ahead and withdraw. But as we've discussed a million times, that same W. Bush gave Iran's best friends Baghdad, and they've got this huge militia force allied with their standard military, which is much of it under the control of the Iranian-Kud's force, apparently. Then you have Bashar al-Assad. I don't know what he's going to do about it.

Maybe nothing. And you got the Houthis who are kicking America's ass in the Red Sea all the time and certainly are able to hit ships and withstand American assaults like it's nothing and even up their attacks, even going so far as to hit Tel Aviv, apparently a random target of civilians in Tel Aviv a week or two ago there. So as we've been talking about, we could be facing a real regional war. And the saving grace here is that Biden and the Ayatollah both don't really want to fight. They keep trying to avoid getting into a real war. The Pentagon doesn't really want to take on Iran. And the Ayatollah does not want to take on the USA. It would be such a horrible war for all sides.

But as we've seen in Ukraine and Russia, horrible wars for all sides can happen too. If people calculate wrong and make stupid decisions, and especially start making prideful decisions about what to do. So we could end up in a real regional war against Iran and their Shiite alliance here. And all for good for nothing, Israel. That doesn't do anything for America whatsoever. That doesn't benefit America's national interests whatsoever. Yeah, Israel appears to be the only element in the region that wants this war.

You know, if you take a look at the fact that all the military assets we have scattered throughout the Middle East, not to, I mean, specifically the Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, the Al-Aid Air Base in Qatar, there are so many targets that Iranian missiles can hit. You've got 2,500 U.S. troops still stationed in Iraq who are enemies of the people there. They've been demanding a full withdrawal since the Assas, the parliament unanimously voted for a withdrawal of the occupation forces back after they assassinate, after Donald Trump assassinated Qasem Soleimani in January of 2020. And there's, you know, since they've been bombing the popular mobilization forces, which are part, the Shiite militias that are part of Iran's official security forces, Al-Sudani, the prime minister or the president of Iraq has been demanding a withdrawal, a U.S. withdrawal. They've engaged in talks, but it doesn't appear that anything is moving. And thus, we see more strikes on American bases like on al-Assad in Ambar province last week. And we've seen more strikes in northeast Syria as well. And the U.S.

is, you know, reportedly shooting at Arab tribesmen attacking the SDF because they've getting into some skirmishes since last week, clashes, I should say, and in the worst we've seen since probably the end of the summer, early fall last year. So there's so many different moving parts. But Israel is the only entity in the region that wants this war. I mean, we remember after Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed a general, his deputy, and then several civilians. And there's a bomb dropped on Iranian soil under international law. Iran responded with 300 drones and missiles that were shot down by the U.S. UK and Jordan. But some of them hit the military targets they were aiming at in Israel. But where the U.S. bases left, you know,

where U.S. planes were leaving from bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, those governments made clear to the Americans that you are not to launch retaliation against Iran from our territory. Is that understood? Which, by the way, it's an important parenthesis there. The Ayatollah gave America 72 hours warning before launching that missile barrage, knowing that America would be able to shoot them down, which is what they did with almost all of them. Absolutely. As ongoing, as talks, indirect talks via Oman were taking place to make sure the tensions didn't spill out of control. So, again, you can see, as you're saying, the Americans don't want this war.

I think they'll be, they will not sell Netanyahu no. But even Yoav Galant is saying this is a, you know, his whole thing is we need a hostage deal and a temporary ceasefire in Gaza so that we can give our troops rest so that they can go to war with Hezbollah and earnest. And what he's saying now is the war is going to be so much worse now. We're 10 months into this. I was saying, you know, he's patting himself on the back. I was saying we should take the war to Hezbollah in October, you know, at the beginning of

the war. And they haven't done that. there's been tip-for-tat strikes in northern Israel and southern Lebanon going on since the war began. Hezbollah has made clear that if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, they, just like the Houthis have said, we will stop attacking Israel. And in the case of the Houthis, implementing this makeshift blockade in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, attacking Israeli-linked shipping and now U.S. and British vessels since they launched their bombing campaign against Yemen, their new war. against the Houthis back in January. But, of course, the U.S. is not doing anything to pressure Netanyahu. And we already have seen reports from officials from Egypt and Qatar who are mediating the talks between Hamas and Israel along. The United States is also acting as a mediator.

But these Arab officials are telling the press that the only way this can stop is if the U.S. puts its pressure on Netanyahu. They have to publicly blame him, like many Israeli officials have. the many Israeli media outlets have like the families of the hostages have that net and yon is asleep right now so that's not going to happen listen yeah no kidding i'm sorry we're out of time but let me just say real quick here uh connor that the good news is that school is back in a good couple of months before the election and so you know the summertime has been a huge break in the student anti-war movement But there's a lot of pressure remaining on the left. And I hope leftists will target their hire at Democratic Party officials, liberal Democrats.

They need you. You should threaten to withhold your support for them. Do not be easy. Be hard to get and force these Democrats to turn on the Israel lobby. It's the only way. And so that make the Democrats choose. Either get leftists or you get the Israel lobby support, not both. And there's still time for them to make their voices heard.

And I sure hope that they will. But so anyway, I'm sorry, we got to go, Connor. But thank you so much for coming back on the show. Thank you, Scott. All right, you guys, that is Connor Freeman. He is assistant editor at anti-war.com. And that's it for anti-war radio for today. Again, please help support.

go to kpfk.org to pledge and donate to keep this great radio station on the air in southern California. And that's it for me. I'm here, Scott Horton for anti-war radio, here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.