TRIGGERnometry - Israel, Iran and the Middle East Proxy Wars Explained - Colonel Richard Kemp

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

Colonel Richard Kemp CBE is a retired British Army officer who served from 1977 to 2006. He joined us to discuss current events in the Middle East. SPONSOR: Save 30% off your first subscription order & receive a free six pack of Ketone-IQ with https://ketone.com/TRIGGERNOMETRY Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're the former head of British forces in Afghanistan. You chaired Cobra. So when you say the president of the United States should be court-martialed, what are you talking about? Why do you say that? His action in relation to Israel has been catastrophic. I would say treachery. Hamas know they can never really defeat Israel. They may want to, but they know they can't.

They're not that strong. And so the only way of getting rid of Israel is to delegitimize it. Most of the Arab countries in the region are right behind Israel. They want Israel to defeat Hamas. They want Israel to defeat Hispullah. They want Israel to defeat Iran. This is the first army in history that I know of that has deliberately wanted its enemy to kill its own civilian population. What's your evidence for that, Colonel?

Colonel, you said something absolutely shocking recently that caught my attention. And a lot of people now say a lot of shocking things on the Internet. But you're the former head of British forces in Afghanistan. You chaired Cobra. You were the head of the anti-terrorism team of the British Joint Intelligence Committee. You just spent almost the entire last 12 months in Israel and in Gaza. So when you say the President of the United States should be court-martialed for his attitude to Israel, that sort of caught my attention a little bit.

What are you talking about? Why do you say that? Well, originally, I felt that President Biden should have been court-martialed further with from Afghanistan, which was a catastrophe for not just for the U.S., not just for the Afghans, but for the whole of the world. And I believe led directly to the conflict in Ukraine that followed not long after. It basically showed Putin that Biden didn't have the strength to stand by his closest allies and be prepared to continue the fight that the U.S. has been fighting for a long time.

He just wanted to get out and leave Afghanistan to itself. And the consequence of that were to, I think, empower Putin, told Putin that he didn't have any great risks to take with Biden. And the same with Zee when it comes to places like Taiwan. So the message is all wrong. And in relation to Israel, Biden done some very good things for Israel. And just this week, he's sent some U.S. troops manning. anti-air systems to help defend Israel. So he's done some very good things, but I think overall his his action in relation to Israel has been catastrophic. Not only in his efforts to try and prevent Israel

from winning the war, he does not want Israel to defeat Hamas. He does not want Israel to defeat his Bala. Even though both of those two organizations are not against Israel, they're against the West, they're both Iranian allies. And his attitude towards Iran as well is, I think, not just problematic, it's disastrous. He has done everything he can to fund by releasing frozen assets to fund the Iranian regime and its aggression across the region. He's also done everything he can to try and appease the Iranian regime to allow them to continue with their oppression of their own people, which is horrific, but also with their aggression in the Middle East and against the West. Let's not forget Iran has attempted a few years ago, attempted

to bomb plot here in the UK. So I think that those measures and measures he's taken to try and prevent Israel from defeating Iran are basically amount to not just, I would say, treachery against Israel, one of America's closest allies and America's definitely closest ally in the Middle East, but also against the United States. And that's why it's unrealistic to say he should be court-martial because you can't court-martial as a civilian. But he is commander-in-chief. Yes. So I understood that that was the rhetoric that you were basically saying that he's letting the team down, if you like, and I understand what you mean. You mentioned something there that we talked to Melanie Phillips about very recently. And she said, you know, Israelis want this to be the last war. And you just talked about winning, winning against Hamas, winning against Hezbollah. And you're a military guy. You know all about war. And a lot of people, many people who are supportive of Israel now are looking at the situation and going, is that a credible objective for Israel? How can you win this war?

How can you win the war against Hamas without flattening all of Gaza? How can you win against Hezbollah? How can you win against Iran, a country very far away? How is Israel going to win? I'm very pleased you didn't say you can't defeat an idea because that's what you hear all the time when people are talking about Hamas. But we defeated Nazism in the Second World War. We defeated the Japanese imperial regime in the same time.

Those ideas, we didn't defeat their ideas. The ideas are still there, and it doesn't matter about the ideas. The important thing is to defeat the capability to actually implement those ideas. Both Hezbollah and Hamas and Iran, all three of those and other Iranian proxies in the Middle East, want the destruction of the state of Israel. They don't just want some kind of liberation of oppressed Palestinian people. They want the end of the Zionist state. And it's very clearly laid down in the Hamas Charter that they will, they want to destroy

Israel, they want to kill Israelis and they want to kill Jews everywhere. It's specified. Iran itself has said that it will annihilate the Jewish state. Many times the leader of Iran has made this very clear. There will be no Jewish state and his bailar, his proxy, intend to do the same thing. that doesn't really matter if they think that, as long as they don't have the capability to do it. And winning in this context,

let's say in the context of Gaza and Lebanon, winning means denying Hamas the capability of doing what it did on the 7th of October. And don't forget that Hamas's leaders have said repeatedly they will do it again and again and again if they can. So preventing that happening is victory. It doesn't mean that every single Hamas terrorist is, killed or captured, it means that they no longer are able to present a credible threat to Israel.

Same with Hezbollah. Hisbalah has had, doesn't any longer, had something like 150,000 missiles in Lebanon pointing at Israel provided by Iran with weaponry from countries like Russia and China as well, but provided by Iran. With the intention of two things. First of all, ultimately the annihilation of the Jewish state, but secondly, to provide a deterrent against Israel being able to attack Iran. That's what those rockets were there for. Israel has been phenomenally successful against both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The war's not over. There's a lot of fighting to be done. Why do you say that? Sorry to interrupt, but looking at the scenes from Gaza, and you've been there, so tell us, please correct me, I'm just putting the common layman on the street kind of view to you. I mean, Gaza looks like there's not a lot of it left at this point. When you say there's a lot of fighting left to be done, how many Hamas fighters are there still around? And what is their capability at this? Well, they started off with an estimated 30 to 40,000. And Israel believes their latest estimate is they've killed somewhere around 20,000 of them.

So that means there may be around 10,000 plus left. And they may have recruited some more in the meantime. So there could be a reasonably significant number. But what Israel's done so far is they've taken apart Hamas's fighting organization. They weren't some kind of insurgent guerrilla organization. They were organized terrorist army with battalions, brigades, companies, all of this. Israel's taken that apart. They've killed many of the leaders of these organizations.

There are still a lot of individual terrorists left or small groups, and they're still causing big problems for Israel. They can still fire a very limited number of rockets, most of which can. be intercepted now. They can still carry out attacks. They've killed Israeli soldiers in Gaza in the recent days. So they're not gone. They're still there. But in order to get to this point, and they've got to be progressively either killed or captured or forced to leave in some way. One of those things has got to happen or they've just got to be got to get to a state of morale where they don't want to fight anymore, at least for the time being. And that that is all possibility. In my view, that is

possible. Often Western people kind of tell you it's not possible, but that's because they are defeatist. They've been defeated effectively in Afghanistan and Iraq, not necessarily militarily, but politically certainly. But in order to get to that point, you mentioned the destruction, the widespread destruction of Gaza, and you're absolutely right. I've been into Gaza many times, and it's devastating what's happened there, terrible. Very few buildings left standing. streets been ripped up by Israeli bulldozers deliberately and all of this. And the reason they've done it is because most of Gaza was turned into an armed fortress. We all know about the hundreds of miles of tunnels underground, much bigger, and some would say

better managed than the London underground. But... A low bar, admittedly. Right. But we know all about that. What many people don't know about is that many, many of the buildings, we're not. whether they're schools, mosques, houses, hospitals, were deliberately, over a long period of time,

booby-trap by Hamas. Many of them have tunnel entrances coming into them. I've been into buildings, civilian buildings, houses, where you look under a bed, there's a box of grenades, you look at a child's bed, even I saw. You look in a cupboard, there's rifles. The whole place has been turned into a fortress. And in order to get rid of that,

they have to be blown up. Why do they have to be blown up? Because if Israeli soldiers enter them, then there are booby traps there, built into the walls in some cases. There are cameras, hidden cameras in some cases, which monitor movement inside the building. And then you can remotely detonate a bomb. So in some cases, the Israelis have been in and they've left buildings intact. But in many, many cases, they can't do that. They've got it in order to avoid too many Israeli soldiers getting killed.

and in order to get rid of this armory of Hamas, you've got to destroy or at least blow up the buildings and the tunnel entrances beneath them. Colonel, there's a lot of people who would say that Israel's actions are just going to create more radicalisation further down the line, particularly with the, if you look at the amount of children that are dying there, obviously the numbers are different, but it's still a huge amount.

Is that a fair point to make? I think it is a fair point. And if you look at the radicalization of the population of Gaza before this conflict began, then it was at a very, very high level. Children, adults were all, with virtually no exceptions, indoctrinated in the schools that we paid for. Unra schools using Western-funded textbooks and teachers were indoctrinating Gaza's children to hate Israelis, to want to kill Israelis. And you probably have seen videos showing children in Gaza

saying, my greatest dream is to kill an Israeli. You probably have seen the parents, the mother, saying my dream is for my son to become a Shaheed, in other words, a martyr, someone who blows himself up to kill Israelis. So that was the level of hatred that was forced into their heads over decades. So the latest attempt, which, let's not forget, whenever we talk about this, none of this would have happened,

none of the killings, none of the devastation, none of the houses, hospitals, schools blown up, would have been blown up if Hamas hadn't attacked Israel on the 7th of October. But yes, the level of radicalisation, the level of hatred for Israel may well have increased, but I'm not sure how much by it, because we're already at a very, very high level. And also, what is the alternative? What is the alternative? I've heard many people say Israel should not have done what it's done, but nobody will ever tell me what Israel should have done, apart from we want world peace. And you've used the term UNRWA. Can you explain a little bit about that organization?

Because there's a term that's used that I don't think the average bloke on the street knows who they are and what they purport to be. UNRWA is an organization that was set up after the, after the 1948, after the establishment of the state of Israel, to look after the Arab refugees who were living in Israel and who left Israel. Some of them, most of them, I think, left Israel under instructions of the Arabs to get out so we can attack this new state and then you can return home. That was the basic idea. Some were forced out, but I don't think that appellation. applied to very many. But anyway, they left. And this organization was set up to look after them. It was an entirely separate entity from the UN's other organization. It looks after all other refugees around the world everywhere. This was something specific. And it's become, basically, it's become

the administration in Gaza. It's become the administration of Gaza. It works with Hamas, who run Gaza, who are the government of Gaza. And it pretty much runs everything else. It supplies food. It supplies education. It helps with medical care and all the other stuff. And it's employees. These are not kind of mostly these are not people brought in by the UN to help

Garzans. They're Garzans themselves. So it's part of the whole the Garzan structure. And it's interesting that we're talking about Amra and that we have mentioned about Iran because there's part of me, Colonel, that it's listening to you and you go, to get rid of Hezbollah and I go, fine. We need to get rid of Hamas. Fine. But if we're going to use medical terminology, you're not dealing with the source of the infection, which is Iran. So isn't it inevitable that you can clear away all these terrorist organizations, but unless you deal with

Iran, you're never going to deal with the source of the problem. You're absolutely right. And Iran has been likened to the head of the octopus. And the octopus consists at the moment, there's more to it than that, but in relation to Israel, it has seven arms, seven different fronts that Israel is fighting against, and all these fronts are controlled by the head of the octopus in Tehran. And as you rightly suggest, that lopping off the arm that's Hamas or Hezbollah does not deal with the octopus as a whole. So yes, Iran has to be dealt with, and I believe Iran must be dealt with. And I can easily say dealt with, but what do I mean by that? I mean, Iran is a state that was formed in its current iteration.

It was formed as a result of a revolution in 1979. And that revolution is dedicated to a number of things. One is the supremacy of Shia Islam. It's a minority in the Middle East. And it's at war with Sunni Islam, which makes up the majority, most of the Arab countries, all of the Arab countries pretty much are predominantly Sunni. So it's at war with them and it wants to establish supremacy over the Middle East, over all of Islam. Secondly, it wants to destroy the United States of America.

Death to America, commonly heard cry among the Iranian regime and its supporters. And Harvard students. Indeed. Yeah, who are unwitting supporters of the Ayatollahs. And thirdly, really, it wants to destroy the state of Israel. So that's what the revolution. Those three things are really what the revolution was built on. So to deal with it, the current government of Iran has to be replaced.

And I'm not suggesting that we in the West need to do another attempt at regime change, which probably would be catastrophic. But the revolution, I think, needs to come from within against the Iranian government. And there's a great deal of opposition, people who, who are terribly oppressed by their regime, who see them spending the little money they have on weaponry and on violence and imperial domination around the region rather than on their own needs. So there's a lot of opposition internally. I think that we're currently in a situation where we've got a kind of almost tit for tat Israel versus Iran. We've seen on the 14th of April

Iran fire 300 and something rockets, drones and ballistic missiles. into Israel, Israel made a small response. Now we've seen another, a couple of weeks ago, we saw another volley of missiles fired at Israel. Israel's got to respond to that. And I believe Israel should now, having learned perhaps that its light response after the 14th of April, didn't have the effect it maybe wanted to have. Israel needs to hit Iran very, very, very hard. Military targets are probably going to be the most likely, I would say, in Iran, the Islamic the Revolutionary Guard Corps, rocket launches, there are other facilities, possibly energy targets, oil, gas, possibly the nuclear project, which is the real problem. Iran is on the cusp of getting

nuclear weapons, thanks to President Biden's appeasement of Iran. And that does need to be tackled at some point. If there is a significant attack against Iran, either now or subsequently, that could potentially trigger the downfall of the regime in Iran, I think. Could it also trigger a global war because Iran has very close ties to people we might describe as our enemies, you know, Russia, etc? I think there's a possibility of that. I don't think very high. Iran, as you know, has been one of Russia's main arms suppliers providing drones, killer drones to Russia, which have been used to attack Ukrainian forces and Ukrainian civilians. Russia has supplied air defense systems to Iran. So there is a very close relationship there. But I don't think, and I may be wrong, and I may be being over-optimistic,

but I don't think a serious strike against Iran is going to lead to Russia intervening in the Middle East, particularly at the, maybe in some low-level way. But at the moment, Russia's got its hands full with Ukraine. And, Colonel, the last thing, if they do build this nuclear facility, and they complete it. How is that going to change the picture of the Middle East? Well, I think it changes the world, not just the Middle East. And we've seen, for example, we don't want to talk in great depth about Ukraine now,

but Ukraine is in very difficult situation. It's Russia's gaining territory. There's no real prospect, as far as I can see, at the moment of Ukraine, retaking that territory. And that's partly, partly to a very large extent, because of the West reluctance to provide Ukraine what it needed in terms of, you know, aircraft, tanks, missile systems and the ability to use them as they need to use them. And that's been a real constraint on Ukraine. Possibly Ukraine could have been a much different position now,

had that not been applied. The reason those restrictions were applied, predominantly by the US, but with other countries following suit, is because they're afraid of a nuclear armed Russia. So in nuclear-armed Iran, the deterrent effect on anyone who wants to intervene in Iran, no matter how aggressive Iran might get, the deterrent effect will be felt. And that will be probably the most dangerous situation that could occur in relation to Iran. And that's why that nuclear program should not be allowed to get to fruition. It's not very far off now. And there's only two countries that can stop that. One is the United States and the other is Israel.

Israel alone may not be able to do that, but it can certainly do severe damage to Iran's nuclear program. Colonel, can I ask you a series of fairly stupid questions, but they are sort of in the ether. And I think they're actually in some ways stupid but simultaneously really important to address because there are a lot of things that people say, but when we think about them, we don't necessarily have the answer. So you mentioned that Israel is one of Americas and Britain's chief allies around the world and the main one in the Middle East. what is the value of that alliance, a lot of people are now asking.

A lot of people in America are saying, if we weren't supporting Israel, we wouldn't have all these jihadi groups hating us. We would be living peacefully in America and the Middle East would be taken care of itself. Why do we need to be an alliance with Israel? Well, the Middle East is an important region. Whatever one's perspective from the West, all the things we're doing now, pretty much every activity outside of this room is, to some extent dependent on the Middle East, on oil in particular.

And therefore that some kind of stability, and it's a loose wording connection with the Middle East, is important and Israel provides an element of that stability. But people would, sorry, to interrupt, but people would say quite the opposite. People would say, if we didn't support Israel, it would be a lot easier for us to get Iranian oil and oil from, we'd just trade with these people who wouldn't hate us anymore.

except that, as I mentioned before, one of Iran's and probably Iran's primary objective, when I say Iran talking about the revolutionary government, their primary objective is the dominance of Shia over Sunni Islam. They're at war with the rest of Islam, basically. And this is why something that isn't talked about very much, I think, is that most of the Arab countries in the region are right behind Israel. They want Israel to defeat Hamas. They want Israel to defeat Hisbalah. They want Israel to defeat Iran. That includes Saudi Arabia. It includes the UA. It includes Jordan. It includes Egypt. It includes pretty much every country in the Middle East, who see themselves under threat from Iran. Israel is the kind of the strong horse, if you like,

in the Middle East. And without that, there's every prospect of far greater instability in the region than with Israel being there and being a strong rock against Iran. What about, can you explain to us? Because a lot of people don't know the answer to this question either. What is this conflict really about between Israel and Iran? A lot of people think it's about the occupation. A lot of people think it's about land. But when I look at it and I go, if it were about land,

it would have got sorted out a long time ago. Because when it comes to land, people ultimately will negotiate instead of continuing killing each other for 70 years. So what is it really about? It's a religious war. And Islamic doctrine makes it very clear that if any territory was ever controlled by Islam, it can never be controlled by people who are not Muslims.

And that includes Israel. The land there was once part of the... There's been various situations over the years, but most recently it was part of the Ottoman Empire, which was essentially was an Islamic caliphate. And therefore it cannot be controlled by anybody else. The Jews have to, they don't have to go. They either have to be killed or they live as second-class citizens

under an Islamic government. That is fundamentally what the conflict's about. And when you talk about the occupation, I think you kind of touched on a really misunderstood area, which provides the fundamental basis for many, many people around the world, including in the UK and the US, etc., belief that Israel is an illegitimate country. Israel is not an occupier. Israel is not an apartheid state. Israel has not stolen Arab land. All of these things which are, you know, illegal settlements, all of these things are lies. They're generated, and I don't want to bore you with too much history, but they were generated originally by the Soviet Union in the

mid-60s, which wanted to create a war of national liberation between the Arab world and Israel in order to use that as a weapon against British and American influence in the Middle East. That was where it all began. And they created a Palestinian national identity, which didn't exist before that. There were plenty of Arabs living there, but they didn't consider themselves Palestinian. That identity had to be created. Can I just stop you there? Just a second.

What did they consider themselves? Arabs. They were Arabs. They just thought they were Arabs. There was no, the people who identified as Palestinians were the Jews who were living there. The name became, the land became known as Palestine, and it became the British mandate for Palestine

after the Second World War. The Jews living there called themselves Palestinians. The Arab, generally speaking, didn't. But that identity was created. And part of the propaganda campaign, which began, as I say, orchestrated by the Soviet Union, said that Israel stole the land from the Arabs, and Israel is illegally occupying the land, and therefore it must be liberated.

The reality is that from 1948, Israel, and again, I don't want to go into massive details of international law, but from 1948, Israel was the legitimate sovereign throughout the whole of that land, from including the West Bank, Judean Samaras, it's sometimes known, and Gaza, all of it, was... sovereign Israeli territory under international law and remains so, despite the accusations and the suggestions of the United Nations and other people that it is not. That is the international law case that exists today. And all this stuff, you know, the accusations of illegal occupation, theft of land, all the stuff, that translates into a narrative that says anything that happens to

Israel, including the 7th of October, it had it coming. Anything Israel does in response to these attacks is wrong. And you can understand that. If you say, yes, this is an imperial, illegal, occupying power, then you can understand why that narrative exists. But the basis of the narrative is entirely false. So coming back to my stupid questions, one of the things I wanted to really get into with you, because you're unique as a guest on our show, and you've spent time in Gaza over the course of the last year, your former military commander, you understand these things in the way that we don't. One of the big talking points is collateral damage

from Israel's campaign in Gaza. And I don't know if this is because we have social media now in a way that we haven't had in previous conflict, but it's very difficult to avoid the flood of horrific visuals and imagery, people being killed, with people burning to death, children with limbs blown off. And if you're a father, like the two of us, you look at that and it's very difficult not to feel very strong emotions about it, I think, for any person. At the same time, if you understand combat or history or things like that, you understand the wars always have collateral damage.

And so the discussion around that is somewhat confusing, I think, for a lay person again. what do you say to the charge that Israel is either targeting civilians or is attacking in a way that causes unnecessary damage, etc.? Yeah, and I've heard that many times, and I think it's a commonly held belief, even by people who support Israel generally. The first thing we need to understand, I think, is what Hamas's strategy is here. Hamas, really since their inception, since they began to be aggressive against Israel, as soon as, as they took control of the Gaza Strip, everything they've been doing has been to try to get Israeli retaliation. So they fire rockets, they want Israel to retaliate. They dig tunnels underneath the border to attack Israeli communities. They want Israel to retaliate. Everything they do

is about retaliation. They want Israel to retaliate. And they want Israel, not just to retaliate, they want Israel to kill their own people, Ghazan people. This is the first army in history that I know of, that has deliberately wanted its enemy to kill its own civilian population. What's your evidence for that, Colonel? Sorry? What's your evidence for that claim that Hamas want their own civilians to be killed? Every one of their actions, the words of their leaders. I mean, you can look at it on the internet.

There are plenty of examples of Hamas leaders saying, we want our people to be sacrificed in the cause of Islam, et cetera. It's their policy. It's written down. There are many, I can't quote you chapter and verse now, but there are many, you know, there are many examples where they, where they make it clear this is what their policy is. And there's a reason for it. It's not an irrational policy either. That sounds irrational to us, but the reason for it is because Hamas know they can never really defeat Israel. They may want to, but they know they can't. They're not that strong. No one is that strong, actually, apart from probably the United States if they chose to, but no one in the region. And so the only way of, getting rid of Israel is to delegitimize it, is to undermine it, is to bring international a program down in Israel to isolate Israel, to vilify Israel, and you do that by by showing videos and having pressed pictures of your children being killed and women being killed and

mosques being bombed and schools being blown up. That's how you do it. And it's worked. It's worked very, very well over many years. And the United Nations Human Rights Council, for example, is repeatedly condemned Israel for killing civilians inside Gaza. And the pressure piles on, and we've seen it building up much more after the 7th of October. So that's what they want. And everything they do is designed to achieve that. That's why they fight from within civilian populations. That's why they use schools and hospitals and other protected facilities as their command posts,

as their weapon storage sites, as their rocket launch sites and all of that. They wouldn't do that. There's plenty of open place in Gaza. It's described as the most densely populated place in the world, which it isn't, but it is quite densely populated. But there's still plenty of opportunities outside the civilian population. So that's, that, you know, whether you accept it or don't accept it, that is Hamas's main strategy against Israel, to force Israel to kill their own civilians.

And in this war, they know, because they've had a response that they're much more powerful than they expected. They expected the response to be limited and for the US to put a stop to it much, much earlier than now. So they now know the only way they can save themselves is by the war stopping. Hamas is being, as I mentioned before, is being progressively defeated. They cannot survive unless the war is stopped. So the more civilians, die, the more pressure on Israel, the better it is for Hamas. In turning to Israel, when they're confronting a terrorist organization in this situation, they've done everything in their power, and I've witnessed it firsthand, not just in this conflict, but in previous conflicts. The idea

have done everything in their power to minimize the deaths of innocent civilians. If you want to kill a terrorist commander or a terrorist rocket system, destroy that, then it's hard it's very hard to do so without killing civilians if these people are in civilian areas which they almost invariably are so the choice is you either don't destroy the terrorists or you you either don't destroy the terrorists and save the civilians all of the civilians or you destroy the terrorists and unfortunately have to kill civilians as well and I find it as troubling as you do but the laws of war allow that. The laws of war say essentially you're not allowed to deliberately target civilians, you're not allowed to deliberately attack civilians, but if civilians die during the process of combat

operations because there are civilians in the area that you need to attack, then that is not illegitimate, it's not illegal and it happened in wars really since time began. What do the IDF do to try and minimize civilian deaths? First of all, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, They have very comprehensive intelligence about where the enemy are, where the civilian population is, et cetera. When they're going to attack, let's say, a tower block in Gaza, they will make phone calls, sometimes drop leaflets, send voice messages, text messages, sometimes deliver messages through loudspeakers to tell people to get out. And when they've got out, they then maintain surveillance over the area. and when they think all the civilians or most of the civilians are gone, only then will they attack the target. And something like, you know, I can't remember the figures, millions of leaflets have been dropped on Gaza,

millions of phone calls have been made in Arabic to Gazans, millions of voice messages, text messages, have been delivered in an effort to try and get the civilians away from an area that's being targeted. No other army's done anything like that ever in history. There's been something approaching it, but nothing like that. So those are just some. There are other precautions they take as well. Something like 50% of Israeli airstrikes that were planned against terrorist targets in Gaza were aborted because of a civilian presence.

So those people who suggest that Israel takes no care and that is only interested in, is interested in killing terrorists, doesn't matter how many civilians are killed, unfortunately are wrong or fortunately are wrong. And if you look, I mean, it's terrible to reduce human life to statistics. But if we do for a moment, if we take the death toll in Gaza, which has been specified most recently, I think, by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. They say something like 42,000 civilians have been killed. I don't know whether that number's right, whether it's less, more, I've no idea. But let's take that number, though it's from Hamas.

the IDF estimate they have killed 20,000 terrorists. So you take 20,000 from that 42,000 figure. Of course, Hamas don't divide into civilians and military. They just say everyone's a doctor or a nurse or a child or a woman. But you take that roughly half, a bit less than half. And then you take away from the remaining numbers, those who have been killed by Hamas. a massive deliberately murdered large numbers of their own people for disciplinary purposes inside

Gaza. They have fired, I think something like 13% of the rockets they fired have fallen short and landed inside Gaza, some of whom will have killed probably many people. So you take that number away as well from the 42,000. And then you take those who have died from natural causes, which, based on population statistics inside Gaza before the conflict, is going to be in a year. year around 6,000 plus, maybe 8,000 who have died from natural causes among that number. So that brings it down. It brings it, I think, significantly less than one civilian killed for every combatant. Sounds terrible, is terrible.

But if you compare it to other conflicts, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ratio was in Iraq, five civilians killed to every combatant killed in Iraq, three civilians killed to every competent killed by NATO forces. that shows you, I think, a much more terrible, but much more favourable ratio of civilian to competent deaths in this kind of conflict. Colonel, I mean, the Israelis in many ways haven't helped themselves as well. They've been, in the paper today, David Cameron came out and condemned some of the rhetoric that the Israeli, I think it was an Israeli finance minister said, said that, you know,

if two million people, you know, have to withhold water. through to two million people in order to get the hostages back, he was quite happy with that. That is obviously deeply unhelpful, to put it mildly. Also, as well, if we look at the attack on the UN base in northern Lebanon, even Georgia Maloney who you would think would be pro-Israeli came out and said that those actions were unacceptable. Could you just explain to the viewers and listeners about that incident and your own perspective on it?

About the UN. Yeah, about the UN in Lebanon. I mean, the first thing to say about that is that as far as I know, I don't know of any conflict, and I've been involved myself in UN missions. I don't know of any conflict in which a UN peacekeeping force has remained in place. If one of the parties to the conflict doesn't think they should be there, says they shouldn't be there, normally they withdraw straight away. Sorry, I apologize for interrupting.

certainly to your answer, but as a person who knows nothing about it, isn't the point of peacekeepers to stay in place so that fighting doesn't happen? No, that's not what they do. They don't, they're not, they don't take part in the fighting. They don't resist one side or another. They're not human shields, not supposed to be human shields. They're there to maintain peace between one, two or more parties who have agreed for them to be there because they want peace. And so in, in, in pretty much every case they withdraw when one or the other party doesn't agree for them to be there no longer. That organization, Unifil in Lebanon, was put in place there to maintain the demilitarization or to enforce and maintain the demilitarization of southern Lebanon after the 2006 war.

It hasn't done that. It is allowed, under its nose, it allowed Hezbollah to totally militarize southern Lebanon. We saw, we've seen footage of Hisbalah tunnel-sist entrances right beside UN bases, not reported by the UN to anybody. So, you know, they failed in their mission. The IDF or Israel has been happy for them to be there because they haven't been a negative factor. They've just been there. But now, when the IDF, now in a position where after a year of rockets being fired by

Hezbollah into Israel, now Israel wants to put a... stop to that and is in a position to put a stop to it, they don't want the UN in the way because they don't want to kill UN peacekeepers and they will do their utmost to avoid anything like that. And the Israeli Prime Minister has appealed to the Secretary General of the UN to withdraw UNIFIL. He won't do it. He said absolutely clearly they will not leave. You've got to ask the question why, because what that effectively does, it makes them human shields for Hezbollah. I can't. I can't. really rationalize the Secretary General's decision in any other way. So that's where we are with that.

And Israel wants them away so it can deal with Isbalah. The UN wants them to stay there to shield Hisbalah, presumably. The incident in question, I don't know the full details, but my understanding is that there was some kind of firefight went on in the vicinity of this UN base. Israeli tanks were sent to come and retrieve or rescue Israeli casualties nearby. And what One of them, one of these tanks reversed into the gateway of the UN base. I don't think it was a deliberate or intentional attack on the UN base. Okay. So broadening out and looking at Lebanon,

because people talk about Lebanon a lot. I have family actually in Lebanon. It's not what people think. It's not really a functioning state. Could you talk a little bit about it, the challenges that Israel faces with Hezbollah? Because Hezbollah aren't really in control of all of Lebanon, are there? as well? No, Hizballah, stress again, an Iranian proxy created by Iran. Hizbullah has huge influence

over Lebanon. It forms part of the government of Lebanon. It basically is the major military force in Lebanon. The Lebanese have their own armed forces, but they wouldn't sound much of a chance against Hizbilar and dare to do anything to Hizbala. So effectively, you've got a kind of cantorous growth inside Lebanon, which is His Balah, which has done immense damage to the whole country, but it's very hard for anybody to resist. Many of the remain, particularly the non-shear population inside Lebanon, resent and hate His Balar, but can't do anything about it. And many of them now, including some Lebanese politicians, have been, in one way or another, have been supporting what Israel's trying to do against His Balah. So that's what you've got. And Israel doesn't, and Israel doesn't

I think Israel specified very clearly that it has no, it's not at war with Lebanon, it does not want to attack the Lebanese people, it doesn't want to attack the Lebanese government or armed forces, but it has to deal with Hisbalah. And actually, you know, when you look at it, it's a situation that's not totally dissimilar from Gaza in as much as, yes, in Gaza, Hamas were the government of Gaza, whereas Hisbalar is only part of the government of Lebanon. But you've got a, um, a, um, a situation where Israel certainly does not want, doesn't consider itself at war with the people of Gaza, nor with the people of Lebanon, just these terrorist entities that threaten Israel from within them. And how do you see this progressing? Because to me, as a complete layman, I'm looking at it and thinking,

this is only ever going to get worse. I think you could be forgiven for thinking that as well when you look at the history of the Middle East. But I think we may be at a point where it will be, better if Israel is able to complete the destruction of Hamas. And then if something is put in place that's not Hamas in Gaza, to run Gaza, and that's one of the greatest challenges, there are options on the table for Gaza. And that includes maybe involvement of the UAE or other Arab countries, the governance of Gaza may be on a kind of a...

a regional basis within the Gaza Strip by local strongmen who are not Hamas affiliated but control Gaza. Some kind of situation like that with the IDF, which must remain there in my view, to maintain overall security and prevent the re-establishment of Hamas or something similar to Hamas again. That has to be part of it. But if that's the case, then you could have a form of stability in Gaza, probably not dissimilar to the extent of stability in the West Bank, which isn't great, but nevertheless,

you don't have anything like the kind of threat that came from Gaza towards Israel from the West Bank. There are threats, but they are under control because Israel has a presence there, a military presence there. And in Lebanon, we've seen extraordinary damage done to his Bala. It's been decapitated. The leader, Nassan Hazrallah, has been killed. thousands of his other leaders have been killed by an extraordinary pager and walkie-talkie attack

plus airstrikes and other military efforts. So Hamas is reeling. Sorry, His Bala is really reeling in Lebanon. It's not finished. It's been badly written down. If Israel's allowed to, not, I wouldn't describe it as finishing off, but at least take control of the southern area of Lebanon, which presents the greatest threat to Israel.

It's the area that was dominated above all by Hisbalah. And Israel is afraid of, and has been afraid, of a kind of 7th of October coming from Lebanon into northern Israel. And once that, once Hezbollah's been, got rid of from that area, which was the original UN intention after the 2006 war, then I think we could see further stability. We could not see the end of the conflict there, but we could certainly see, I think, a suppression of the conflict there.

Then it's up to somebody to try and deal with, to basically to restore Lebanon and to try and get rid of the Hezbollah elements out of the rest of Lebanon, if possible, or remove their power. So I think both those countries, we could see greater stability than we've seen for a number of years, but there's still this underlying conflict between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel, which shows no sign of a better.

The underlying conflict based simply on the logic of what you said, is there still Iran? Correct. And this is why I don't forgive me just again, as an outside observer, don't really buy the argument you're making, because it looks to me more like, and correct me if I'm wrong, of course, that Israel has not attacked Iran because it had the threat of Hezbollah, the sword of Hezbollah hanging over it. So Israel is dealt with Gaza, as much as it can, with Hamas. It's now dealing with Hezbollah, and a lot of people think that's because what they're really doing is setting up the strike on Iran that you were just talking about being necessary. So this isn't going to get better. Well, it depends what time frame you're talking about. Iran, as I said before, you're right, it has to be dealt with.

But the problem isn't just with Iran either. Let's say there's a severe attack on Iran, the nuclear missile, the nuclear systems are destroyed, let's say, and I don't know if that's going to happen, and Iran ceases to have the power to manipulate all these proxies around the region, partly because two of their main ones have been destroyed, then that doesn't remove Israel's overriding or underlying problem, which is not just Iran, but Palestinian Arabs as well,

which is a conflict which, to me, there is no sign of that abating. I think those people who suggest that we can solve everything with a two-state solution. I'm sure in many ways that would be an ideal result. It's been what many people have been hoping for and working for many years. But the reality is that the Palestinians do not want. I'm talking about the Palestinian leadership here now in Judeaer and Samaria, the West Bank and in Gaza. They don't want a two-state solution.

They have never had any intention of a two-state solution. and they want a one-state solution dominated by them, with them in charge and Israel gone. That's their intention. And how do you reconcile that situation when you, maybe people would be in agreement that a two-state solution would be ideal, but it can't happen because the Arabs, the Palestinian Arabs, don't want it to happen.

They want to get rid of Israel. And I don't see that changing. I don't see how it can change. Let's say you create a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Why would that be any different from the Palestinian state effectively that existed in Gaza beforehand? It would still threaten Israel. It would still, no doubt, attack Israel. So therefore, Israel has to have military forces there as it has now.

Therefore, it's not a state. You can't really have a state that doesn't have its own armed forces and is occupied by someone else's armed forces. A lot of people are saying, and given what you've said, I don't think they're right to say it, but they are saying, why doesn't Israel, you know, Israel occupied Gaza, Israel Israeli settlers are building up the West Bank and whatever, taking over Palestinian land. What if they just gave that land, not having their own presence, they're not controlling what comes in and out of the ports, not sealing off the border and whatever? What if they just gave them the land, let them run their own affairs? wouldn't that pacify the Palestinians? That's what they did in Gaza.

No, it's not because they still retained some level of control over what comes in from the sea and stuff. Only after they started getting attacked from Gaza. Right. The only reason that the IDF control the sea territory of Gaza and control the land border is because Hamas was using Gaza to attack Israel. I mean, when the Israelis left Gaza, they left all of the infrastructure in place, including quite a thriving agricultural economy. If the Gazans had said, fine, we will have what we've got here, we accept you've got

a Jewish state across the border there, we will just live our lives. That place could have been a paradise now. I'm sure Israel would have pumped billions and billions of dollars into keeping them happy in Gaza and the rest of the world as well, but that's not the way it worked out. And Israel had to defend itself against an armed fortress inside Gaza. There's no other reason why there would have been such strict control of the borders of Gaza if Israel hadn't faced a threat of infiltration and attack from Gaza. And when people talk about an Israeli, what do they call it?

Occupation? Occupation. Concentration camp. Yeah, basically surrounding Guards and not letting anyone in or out. Outdoor prison. There is a word for it. Yeah. They forget that the Garzor also has a border with Egypt.

Egypt also sealed that border, allegedly. I mean, it allowed weapons in through tunnel systems, etc. But, you know, there's not just an Israeli border with Gaza. There's also an Egyptian border with Gaza. But no one ever really talks about that aspect. Your central argument, I guess, is even if you give them the land, because it's a religiously driven conflict about freeing that part of the world of anyone who's not a Muslim, they will continue to attack Israel. That's your argument? That's correct.

And polling in the West Bank, for example, including recent polling shows that the majority of the people in the West Bank don't want a two-state solution. They want rid of Israel. This is what polling shows. One interesting, I suppose, maybe an encouraging note on this is that the Israeli Arabs, in other words, those Palestinians who live within Israel, not in the West Bank, not in Gaza, there's been a kind of a mixed relationship between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs over the years. but most recent polling shows a much, much stronger support for the state of Israel and for Israel's war in Gaza among the Arab population inside Israel than ever existed before it went up like that after the 7th of October. And that's actually quite an encouraging thing.

I'm not suggesting that that attitude can be transferred to the Arabs inside the West Bank because again, they have been indoctrinated, like their counterparts in Gaza, they've been indoctrinated with anti-Israel hatred, not quite to the same extent, but to a large extent, for many decades now. And, Colonel, before we move on to our final question, I think what's very interesting now is we're going to have an election in the US, literally in a matter of weeks. How is that going to affect the affairs and the events in the Middle East?

Well, I think if it depends who wins the United States, election. I think if Kamala Harris wins, we're going to have a continuation of the Biden doctrine in relation to the Middle East, which was a continuation of the Obama doctrine, which is essentially to try and strengthen and empower Iran and to appease Iran. And the purpose behind all of that, it doesn't really make much sense to most people, but it certainly did to Obama and to Biden and probably to Harris as well, is because of the growing threat from China in the Pacific, the US wanted to basically not wash its hands of, but remove itself as far as it could from the Middle East and pivot towards China. And the idea was that a more equal

balance of power in the Middle East, with Iran more dominant and, you know, because there was this big kind of balance between Saudi Arabia and Iran, really, give Iran more dominance. It removes some of the potential problems in the Middle East. It doesn't make sense to me, but that was the theory. Isn't historically two countries who hate each other being at parity militarily the source of conflict pretty much every time? Yeah, and that's what I don't think President Obama really understood, but that was his theory. But am I wrong about that? No, you're not wrong, no, Absolutely right. And that is a future problem that we will have unless Iran is contained in some way. But so I think we'd see a continuation of that failed doctrine which can only lead to greater conflict, I think, if Harris wins the election.

And, you know, a desire, only this week we saw Biden, Biden Harris threatening Israel with an arms embargo if it didn't do something to approve the humanitarian aid situation in Gaza. We will see, I think, a continuation of that approach towards Israel. If Trump becomes president, then I think we'll see a different situation. I think we would probably see far stronger support for Israel. And we would see, I think, probably more reluctance by Iran to be aggressive because they don't know. I think this is Trump's greatest strength, probably one of his greatest strengths.

is to be unpredictable. They don't know what his reaction is going to be to some of this. Some people say that if Trump had been president on the 7th of October, Iran would not have ordered Hamas to attack Israel because who knows how the US will respond. So I think as far as Israel and the Sunni countries are concerned in the Middle East, the Trump victory would be the preferred outcome. As far as Iran's concerned, I think they'd probably prefer to see Harris. Before we go to our last question, I had one more thing I wanted to ask you.

You mentioned earlier about the West having been defeated in Afghanistan in Iraq and you were of course part of the Afghanistan operations with the UK forces, not militarily defeated but politically and in other ways. Do you think some of the reaction from people who are not informed and neutral about the conflict in Israel who are just looking at it is kind of because in the West we've lost the will to win. Do you think that, I don't know if that makes any sense, but it just feels to me like when we talk about conflicts now,

the fact that winning means doing some pretty unpleasant things, that's always the side effect of victory, as you talked about Germany, Japan, etc. Do you think we've just forgotten about that somewhat as a culture? I think there's no question that we have. And thankfully, we've had, decades of relative peace in Europe, obviously there have been exceptions, but in Western Europe, certainly. And I think Western Europeans, including people in the UK, just believe that everything

can be solved by negotiation, by appeasement, by reasonable agreement between the parties. When it can't, and when you're dealing with enemies like Iran, Russia, China, then they're they're working to different rules. And you have to, I think, be prepared to do some pretty unpleasant things in order to protect yourself. And I think this is Israel's main problem, because people are seeing such horrific scenes from Gaza and from Lebanon as well, to an extent. They're seeing that and they're thinking, this isn't necessary. We haven't had to solve our problems in this way. Israel shouldn't be solving its problems in this way. And I think that's a fundamental challenge for the West.

And it shows also to a very large extent in Ukraine, where there's been a very big reluctance by Western countries to become involved at all. Let's not forget at the very beginning, for example, Germany refused to do any more than give them a few helmets and first A-PACs. Now that's changed, thankfully. But it's all about an unwillingness to use

I think to be ready to use military force. And of course, using military force is a terrible thing, and it shouldn't have to happen unless it's absolutely vital. But one of the big problems we have, I think, is that military force, strong military force, and the political will to use that force does act as a deterrent against aggression. And if you show, by, as we have done in Britain

and other European countries the same, if you really write down your armed forces, to the extent where they have very little capability, and that's the case now, compared to what they really need in a very dangerous world. If you write that down, you're showing your potential enemies weakness, and if you have political leadership, which shows so much reluctance to use military force,

then again, you're showing weakness. And I think that is exploited, and it's been exploited by Russia, it's been exploited by Iran, it will probably be exploited by China, It will probably be exploited by China in the near future. And, you know, it is ultimately is going to be a terrible thing for all of us. And I think the key, you know, the key point I make there really is the deterrent factor. You know, if you have strong deterrence, that helps you, I think, avoid having to be dragged into war. Do you think we're paying the price for the mistakes of Iraq in particular,

where a lot of people felt that was the wrong thing to do? do. It was done under false pretense, as many people would say. A lot of people were killed. And people are now very, very reluctant to see the use of military force is a good thing. Because they look at that conflict and they say, that was all for nothing. And then, with all respect, they look at Afghanistan and they say, okay, we took out al-Qaeda. But then we have had to leave and we've left the Taliban in place. And girls are no longer, you know, I saw a video the other day of a, I can't remember who it was saying. female cats have more rights in Afghanistan now than women. And it's true. A cat has the right to go

outside the house without having its face covered and not be supervised by its male relative. So when people look at that and someone says to them, well, we need to use military force here, we need to support Israel, they have become very skeptical about that for those reasons. Do you think that's true? Yes. And you look at Afghanistan now. It's not just the Taliban there. Al-Qaeda is back. Islamic State is back. So yeah, that we got rid of them, but they're now back. So I think Afghanistan and Iraq, both of those two conflicts, really did have a traumatic effect on the minds of certainly of our politicians,

of political leaders. They will do anything, I think, I believe they will do anything to avoid being dragged into any other conflict if they possibly can directly because of Africa. what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, I don't think that what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq was unavoidable. I think there could have been different outcomes in both those countries. But again, it was partly due to an ongoing Western reluctance to really use the necessary military force in both of those conflicts.

And it's further contaminated political thinking. And I think, you know, one thing that I find, I don't find it amusing. particularly, but it's kind of weird in a way is how many American generals you get telling Israelis, you should do it the way we did in Afghanistan. That's how you should be operating, not the way you're operating in Gaza. You should do it in Afghanistan, really, after what happened in Afghanistan? I don't think so. And the Israelis know only too well. They will listen to that. They'll smile, then nod politely, but then they'll do things the way they know they have to be done. And I think Israel, in very many ways, is showing the West, is teaching lessons to the West

about how you actually fight a war, terrible, though it is, but how you fight a war and win. And I'm convinced that in both Lebanon and Gaza, and we can talk separately about Iran, but in Lebanon and Gaza, I think Israel is going to win, albeit it's the terrible price on all sides for that. When you say the lesson, are you talking about the unapologetic use of overwhelming force? Is that what you mean? Not so much that, but that's part of it. You know, the necessity to you, you go back to the question I rhetorically asked earlier on.

You can destroy Hamas and unfortunately a lot of civilians are going to die as well. Or you can leave Hamas intact to attack you again and again and the civilians won't die. And that's the choice really and I think it's a choice that Israel, and I've been in Israel for most of the last year. The Israelis don't relish this at all. Ordinary Israeli people will look at pictures of dead babies in Gaza and think exactly the same as you or I do about that. They don't like it. They don't want it.

But their leadership, the prime minister and the military leadership, know this is the only way that they as a country can survive. And it's in this region, it's largely mainly about defeating these terrorist groups. but it's also about showing a level of strength, as I said before, to deter your enemies from attacking you. And they know that. They know they're not living in Surbiton or something like that. They're living in some of the most dangerous and volatile parts of the world. Colonel, it's been a fantastic interview.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? I think the thing we're lacking today, which is not. so often discussed, perhaps it is leadership. And I think, and I'm not talking about, you know, leadership in industry and commerce and things, I'm talking about really above all political leadership. And I think it's, it kind of does go back to the last thing we discussed, which is whether the West has a will to win or not. I think there's, you know, there's, there's, there's,

there's too much of what I would describe as followership among our political leaders than leadership. They want to see, of course, it's important that they stay. in office and all the rest of it and they understand the opinions of the people but they want to see what the opinion polls are saying they want to see what is being discussed on tic-tok or danced about on tuk-tok or whatever does happen on tic-tok i can't say i'm an avid follower of tic-tok other social media um and and and it kind of you know they they just want to more of more of the same and i think we you know we haven't got and it's very easy for a very old man like me to at a heartback and so what about you know churchillian type leadership etc and we just don't have that

thatcher and you know many of your viewers may recoil at the word thatcher but that you know we had thatcher and churchill and other leaders as well who have got a um i would say a um you know some kind of political ideals and a theme and a agenda to promote not just staying in office and i think our particularly our young people. And I'm not a subscriber to the view that the young people are weak and wouldn't, you know, for example, fight for their country of necessary and all the rest of it. I think I've been in the army for 30 years.

I commanded many soldiers, fought with many soldiers who were from these same generations. What they need is leadership. They don't just need to be indulged as I think our politicians are too fond of indulging them now. I think that if we want as a country to survive, we do need our young people to be supporting us, and they need to be led to do that. Unfortunately, too often, the leadership, the strongest leadership is coming from the people who oppose our way of life, oppose our history, oppose the legacy that exists in Britain today, and they want to tear it down.

And that's because that's where the strongest leadership is coming from. Colonel, thanks for coming back. Head on over to locals to watch the rest of this conversation where we put your questions to Colonel Richard Kemp. In the arenas of warfare in which you've been involved or advised on, which individual has struck you with the most fear and concern and why?