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Sept. 23, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
32:14
Scott Ritter : Is Israel Prepared for a Three-Front War?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, September 23rd, 2024.
Scott Ritter will be with us in just a moment on Is Israel Prepared for a Three-Day War?
And what's happening in Kingston, New York on Saturday, September 28th.
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Scott, my dear friend, welcome back to the show.
Is the use by Israel or any country of explosives in handheld devices like walkie-talkies, mobile phones, or pagers a war crime?
It depends how you use it.
You know, Israel has had a long history of using personal electronics as a means of assassination.
I think one of the earliest examples was in 1996 when Israel used a cell phone to take out a Hamas bomb maker known as the engineer.
They were able to use a variety of techniques to get the cell phone in his hand and when it rang and he answered it, Israeli operatives were able to ascertain that he alone was on the phone and then they detonated the explosives that blew off his head.
But only he died.
And Israel has used similar You know, the legality of targeted assassinations up to, you know, states.
We know in the United States, the President of the United States apparently can kill anybody he wants to without due process, and the Israelis believe the same thing.
But that's one thing.
What occurred in Lebanon was something completely different.
This is where Israel infected society with Devices that society is conditioned to bring in as part of normal everyday operations, pagers, handheld radio, walkie-talkies, etc., and then detonated them at the same time in an indiscriminate fashion.
They had no idea who was on the receiving end.
They could make assumptions that because these were brought, procured by a Hezbollah procurement agent for the purpose of, It's not guaranteed.
What if the device was on the counter and the wife heard it and picked it up?
What if a child picked it up?
What if the husband had it on his hip next to the child?
This is indiscriminate act of terror.
That's what it is.
It's a war crime in the extreme.
No American CIA director would ever approve an operation like this.
No American president would sign off on this.
Nobody in the United States would touch this because it is, by definition, an act of terror, a war crime.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is in full agreement with you, Scott.
Cut number eight.
It is a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians.
I call again for an independent, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of these explosions.
Those who ordered and carried out these attacks must be held to account.
Did Netanyahu order these attacks?
Could this possibly have been done without his consent?
No, the way the Israeli national security hierarchy works...
Was it likely done by Mossad or the IDF?
And if by Mossad, is this intended to prod a reluctant IDF into entering Lebanon militarily?
Well, I believe that Mossad worked together with a unit in the IDF called 8200.
That's the Israeli NSA, National Security Agency.
They're cyber warfare people.
They're electronic warfare people.
They have specific capabilities.
But this isn't just about modifying a pager or a walkie-talkie.
This was an intelligence operation that was years in the making that probably cost millions, many millions of dollars.
It required the near totality of Mossad's operational capabilities to set up a front company.
Covertly in Europe to manufacture and then get into the supply chain, you know, commercial electronic products that are viable on the commercial market.
Remember, they had to convince a Hezbollah procurement officer that they had the product and it was safe to do.
So this took years, many years to plan.
And so it was a capability, I believe, that Israel was holding in reserve For a war with Hezbollah.
This is a one-time use deal.
You get to do this one time.
You don't get to replicate it.
They used it, and then they didn't follow through.
So I think that this was designed not to prod a reluctant IDF.
This was designed for political cover.
Benjamin Netanyahu panicked, knew that he couldn't go to full-scale war with Hezbollah.
And so Hezbollah, so Mossad did this.
So that Benjamin Netanyahu could say, hey, look, it was great headlines in Israel.
I mean, Netanyahu got all, you know, hey, way to take it to Hezbollah.
And now they provoke Hezbollah to carry out, the idea was for Hezbollah to carry out retaliation that would justify Israeli response.
But Hezbollah has been smart so far.
They actually lured Israel into a trap because, I mean, I'll deviate just for a second.
Once again, Benjamin Netanyahu let his mouth get in the way of reality.
The condition for victory here, as set by Netanyahu, isn't about punishing Hezbollah.
It's about returning the settlers to the north.
This is operation, let's get the settlers back to the north.
They will never return to the north now.
Hezbollah just said that.
We will make your life a living hell.
You will not get a good night's sleep.
Not only will the settlers never return north, we're going to force you to evacuate even more territory, and the people of Haifa are going to spend their next lives in a basement.
This is a strategic defeat for Israel.
So Alistair Crook agrees entirely with everything that you've said.
He is of the view that Hezbollah actually became aware of these devices minutes before.
They were exploded, and the Israelis became aware that Hezbollah became aware that they didn't intend to explode them when they did.
It was going to be part of a planned operation, but they figured, as you just said, you have one shot with this, we might as well do it now.
They didn't care if these people were in hospital emergency rooms or universities or mosques or where they might be.
With their children in schools, they didn't care where they were when these devices went off.
Israel's never cared.
Remember, the Dahewah principle, the doctrine, is named after a suburb of Beirut that the Israelis leveled in 2006 because they wanted the civilians to be held accountable for the actions of it.
That's a war crime, a literal war crime.
They said, we're targeting civilians just to punish them, collective punishment.
Israel is a war criminal.
it's a nation of war criminals governed by war criminals who operate on doctrine, which is openly in violation of international humanitarian law, the laws of war.
And so there's, there's no surprise that Israel implemented tactics like operation explosive pager, which are an, The Israelis don't care.
This is a nation that's committing ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people that has been recognized by both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Do you think they're going to pause and go, well, gosh, we better not do this because some Lebanese civilians might get hurt?
They don't care.
Remember, they view all civilians as combatants, and they view all non-Israelis as animals.
Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday.
Much of this will aggravate you.
Much of it is utterly disproven lies, but here he is on a roll.
Cut number five.
On October 7th, the Hamas terrorist monsters burst into Israel, murdered our people, raped and beheaded our women, burnt babies alive, and took 255 innocent people hostage, including many Amrakas.
A day later, on October 8th, Another Iranian terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, attacked Israel completely unprovoked.
They fired missiles and rockets into our cities.
They made 60,000 Israelis leave their homes along the Lebanon border, becoming refugees in their own land.
In the subsequent months, they haven't stopped for a single day attacking us.
No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities.
We can't accept it either.
We will take whatever action is necessary to restore security and to bring our people safe back to their homes.
It is purported justification for the use, without stating it, of the exploding paging devices.
Yeah, and again, he's set forth conditions for victory that will not be attained.
All Hezbollah has to do now is survive and continue firing rockets into the north.
They don't have to win.
They don't have to conquer Israel.
To win this fight, the way Netanyahu has defined it, they just have to keep 60,000 Israelis from returning home, which is the easiest thing in the world to do.
You just keep firing rockets.
And Israel doesn't have the solution.
They proved that in 2006.
You can't stop the rockets.
So it's a stupid move by Ben Yenry.
I don't want to spend too much time on it, but on October 7th, as if it began there, you know, Israel's been running an open-air concentration camp in Gaza since 1948, the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were purged from their homes.
Thousands were murdered by the Israelis who stole their land, stole their villages, and they've been stealing land and villages ever since then.
So to pretend that October 7th was in a vacuum, plus he ignores the fact that A, There's no evidence of beheaded babies, burned babies.
He's making all that up.
The Israeli press says that, not Scott Ritter, the Israeli press.
And he also ignores the fact that the vast majority of people who died that day were killed by the IDF.
It's again, the Israeli press acknowledge it.
So he's a liar.
He's a fabricator.
He's a murderer.
He's a genocidal maniac.
And again, all he did is sell Israel down the river right there because he set terms of victory.
Just like he said, to be victorious against Hamas, we will destroy them militarily and politically.
You can't kill an ideology.
Now he says that we will return 60,000 people to their homes.
He never will because Hezbollah will never stop shelling it until there's a ceasefire in Gaza.
You know, he has apparently canceled his trip to the UN for Friday.
And there are rumors that the International Criminal Court will issue indictments before Friday.
He must know from his legal advisors that he can be served.
And arrested at the UN, because that is technically not the United States of America.
I don't know how the arresting authorities would get him out of there, but he could be arrested there.
Do you have any insight in any of this?
United Nations would never facilitate the arrest of a leader of a state.
They have no authority to do that.
The security people that exist there aren't an extension of the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice.
Plus, the United States would never let it happen.
The quickest way to shut down the United Nations were for them to pull a stunt like that.
So it's wishful thinking on the part of people that think that that's what the danger is.
What happens if on the way home his aircraft suffers a technical issue and they have to divert to an airfield?
Of a nation that does, in fact, plan on adhering to the Treaty of Rome.
And now he can be arrested.
And he's too far away from Israel for Israel to protect.
It's too much of a risk.
He's a war criminal.
He's a genocidal maniac.
He's a murderer.
There will be warrants out for his arrest.
And he can't control the outcome of a technical diversion in an in-flight emergency.
And so it's from the Israeli perspective, it's not worth the risk to have him fly from Israel to the United States, knowing that at some point in time, there could be an in-flight emergency that requires him to divert to a country that would, in fact, arrest him.
But if he ever made it to New York, he's as safe as the day is long, because he's the national leader of a United Nations, he's a United Nations
simultaneously exploding across marketplaces, on street corners, and in homes as daily life unfolds.
Authorities have reportedly dismantled unexploded devices in universities, banks and hospitals.
This has unleashed widespread fear, panic and horror among people in Lebanon, already suffering in an increasingly volatile situation since October 2023 and crumbling under a severe and long-standing economic crisis.
This cannot be the new normal.
So consistent with what you said, they dismantled unexploded devices found in universities, banks, and hospitals.
Well, I'm sure they also have devices that were in homes, in schools, you know, in places of public worship.
This is a wanton act of terrorism.
Again, as an American, I don't know why we're not condemning this vociferously.
What if a Pager had been on board an aircraft and brought down a commercial airline?
What if it was an American-flagged aircraft?
This is crazy.
What if the Russians or the Chinese or the North Koreans or the Iranian government did this?
Would Joe Biden and Tony Blinken remain as silent about it as they have over this?
No, we'd be calling it an act of war, not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.
And we'd be seeking international sanctions.
We'd be seeking international condemnation.
You know, there's no way any nation in the world other than Israel or the United States, but even as bad as we are, we wouldn't do this.
Because it's a flagrant violation of international law.
It's a war crime.
It's an act of terror.
We know this.
We would never do this.
And yet, Israel did it, and America's going to let them get away.
We'll run cover for them on this one.
Have both sets of negotiations intended to lead to a ceasefire?
The ones headed by Amos Hochstein, we all know his background, in Lebanon, and the one headed by Bill Barnes, the head of the CIA for Gaza.
Have they both been frauds?
Is it now recognized?
That the Israeli government, Prime Minister Netanyahu, never intended for there to be a ceasefire at either ends of these conflagrations, Gaza or Lebanon.
Well, yes.
It's actually almost stated Israeli policy.
You know, the fraud is more being perpetrated by the United States where we pretend that we're serious about a ceasefire, but we don't put the pressure on Israel that would be required to get Israel to agree to a ceasefire.
We know what Netanyahu has said.
At no time has Netanyahu ever said, I'm willing to do this.
He's been, at least, this is one area we can say he's been honest and said, no, I'm not doing this.
No, those are unacceptable.
You know, and so it's not that, you know, he's being fraudulent.
The fraud is upon the United States where we know what the outcome is going to be because we know he won't do it and we know he'll do everything to sabotage ceasefire, which he's been doing ongoing.
Do you think the pager thing was designed to facilitate a ceasefire or sabotage a ceasefire?
Do you think anything Israel's done has been designed to facilitate a ceasefire?
No.
It's been to further this conflict because only with the continued existence of this conflict can Netanyahu justify to the Israeli people his continued Governance is the Prime Minister.
Otherwise, if there was a ceasefire, he'd be out.
He'd probably be in jail.
But we know this, and yet we're the ones that continue to pretend.
There's the fraud.
The fraud is in the Biden administration, which has never been serious about getting a ceasefire.
Because if they were serious, you just pick up the phone and you literally make it happen.
And you can do that by cutting off funding, by cutting off weapons, munitions.
You can do that by Just tell the United Nations, hey, on Israel, we're going silent.
You can do anything you want to do.
And watch the General Assembly pass resolutions condemning, watch the Security Council make a move on Israel, because Israel can't do anything without the back of the United States.
And we can make Israel pay the heaviest of prices, but we don't.
Can Israel fight a three-front war in Gaza, in Lebanon, and against the Houthis?
They can as long as the war is not a full-scale war.
Israel can fight a three-front war of managed escalation, of managed attrition, which is what they're doing right now.
They're losing, but they can fight that.
have the resources to to do this but if this war was to explode into an all-out conflict They just fired a couple dozen drones against targets inside Israel, including Haifa.
Israel cannot emerge victorious in that in a conventional sense.
If Israel wanted to initiate the Samson option, I guess they could try and nuke their way out of it.
That's like the pagers.
You get to do it once and then it's over and you're dead.
Israel won't survive a nuclear conflict.
Last week when you were on with us, you terrified a lot of people with your intellectual honesty that the U.S. was closer to nuclear war on Saturday, September 14, than at any time in our history, maybe since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Do you still believe that from the perspective of 10 days later?
100%.
I'm convinced at some point in time the history of what happened last week will be written, and it should scare the living you-know-what out of every American.
And I've learned even more since then.
I've had a very interesting and frightening conversation with Theodore Postal.
He's the MIT scientist.
A specialist in, you know, ballistic missiles and stuff.
I've been familiar with him and working with him since the Gulf War when he was the first non-military person to acknowledge what all military people knew, that our Patriot missiles weren't shooting down any scuds.
And he's been exposing the lies of the U.S. defense centers since then.
He educated me about some technological advancements in our nuclear weapons, fusing, etc., that had an impact on our employment, which causes us to be very forward-leaning in terms of preemptive nuclear conflict.
And when you factor that into what was happening, it's even worse than what I was saying.
Again, the American people need to wake the hell up, excuse my language.
We almost all died last week.
I mean, there's just no ifs, ands, or buts on this.
Had we gone forward and signed the document that Keir Starmer, not an American, by the way, a British prime minister, acting on the advice of British people, not Americans, who were acting on pressure given to them by Ukrainians, not Americans.
There's no American interest here.
Had he signed that, it would have set in motion events that...
not Russia dropping nukes on NATO, a preemptive nuclear strike by the United States because we can't win or manage conventional escalation using strategic assets.
Russia has the advantage there.
So the moment we start firing Nuclear preemption escalate to de-escalate.
And then it's all over.
72 minutes, as I said before.
It's worse than what I thought it was last week.
Because our nuclear employment plan, which no American knows about.
I just want to remind people, in the history of this, when John F. Kennedy was briefed on the first nuclear employment plan after he became president in 1961, he walked out of the Pentagon and said, and we call ourselves the human race.
This is disgusting.
You're asking me to murder hundreds of millions of people.
I can't do that.
You have to give me other options.
But the war machine doesn't have any other options.
Lyndon Johnston almost got physically ill when he was briefed on it.
So, too, Richard Nixon, who said, this is insanity.
What are you talking about?
You can't ask me to make a decision that causes hundreds of millions of people to die.
Every president's been briefed on this war plan up until George W. Bush said, this is crazy.
Even Ronald Reagan.
Who was fighting the evil empire?
Couldn't do it.
He said, I can't do it.
That's why we need strategic defense initiative.
That's why he went with nuclear disarmament.
Only George W. Bush, when the Cold War ended and we suddenly weren't facing mutually sure destruction, said, hey, nuclear preemption could be in our benefit.
And then Barack Obama, who said that's bad, he went along with it.
Donald Trump doubled down by bringing in a new category of nuclear weapons, and Joe Biden has doubled down by changing our employment doctrine.
American people wake up.
We're the bad people in the world here.
We're the ones that have a policy of nuclear preemption and an employment plan designed to do that.
So as we edge towards a crisis with Russia, stop thinking about the Russians nuking us.
We start by nuking them.
That's the way it works.
Here's Foreign Minister Lavrov on Saturday.
Cut number 10. No one wants nuclear war.
We said this time and again.
Let me assure you that we have weapons which, if used, will cause grave consequences for the masters of the Ukrainian regime.
These weapons are available and on full alert status.
What does that mean, Scott, on full alert status?
It means they're ready to fire right now.
And they're not nuclear.
That's the point I'm trying to make here.
The weapons that Russia would use against Ukraine in a situation where they have made the decision to take the government of Ukraine out, to take Kiev, the government sector out, are non-nuclear in nature.
They're strategic weapons.
It's called the avant-garde.
It's a hypersonic warhead that's loaded on to strategic missiles, old SS-19s, the Sarmat, the new heavy missile.
The Yars mobile missile, they all have regiments that are equipped with conventionally armed avant-garde.
These will hit at 26 to impact on the ground at 26 times the speed of sound.
That's the equivalent of 26 ton bomb.
All right, we've seen what happens when a 1.5 ton or a 3 ton bomb goes off.
This will be a 26 ton bomb coming in hypersonic speed.
It will take out entire blocks.
And all Russia has to do is sprinkle Kiev with a half dozen of them, and the city ceases to exist.
Remind you, they can also do that to Brussels, to NATO headquarters.
They can do that to the British.
They can do that to anybody.
These aren't nuclear weapons.
And when they do this, the impact will be so devastating, it'll have a nuclear-like impact on the psychology of the West.
There's the danger.
And this is where I would, if I were advising LabRob, say, I understand your capabilities and I understand what you can do, but you need to understand what that would trigger.
And I do think he knows what it would trigger, which is why he keeps saying, we don't want to do this.
We don't want this escalation.
Can those Russian hypersonics reach the east coast of the United States?
They can reach anywhere in the United States.
They can reach the east coast, the west coast.
They can hit anywhere.
And what they hit goes away.
And there's no defense against them.
None.
Again, American people, we've spent over a trillion dollars building a ballistic missile defense system that doesn't work.
It never will work.
That's why we signed the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty, because back then we realized this was stupid.
If you build a missile defense, they will build a missile to defeat your missile defense.
And as you keep going, you will always be behind the power curve.
The missile will always beat the missile defense.
So why not just sign a treaty that says, let's not have missile defenses.
Therefore, since we're defenseless, Let's not go to war.
Mutually assured destruction.
And since that's insanity, let's embark on arms control that reduces nuclear weapons, not increases them, and maybe we don't have to worry about any of this stuff.
No, we're not doing that anymore.
We have no more arms control.
We're building missile defenses, and the Russians have built missiles that can defeat our missile defenses.
And if we go to war, it's going to be very ugly very quick.
Scott, what are you doing Saturday, September 28th?
I'm going to participate in a rally that you're going to be participating in, too.
A rally designed to, again, reinforce, from my perspective, what I consider to be the most existential threat to America today, and that's the threat of nuclear war.
Again, we almost died last weekend.
We're very close to death now because Biden still thinks he can sign that piece of paper and get away with it because people are whispering in his ear, they're bluffing, they're bluffing.
Did you see bluff in Lavrov's eyes when he showed you that clip, when the judge showed you that clip?
There's no bluff in those eyes.
The Russians know damn well what's going on.
And so I'm going to be participating in a rally for peace, the peace and freedom rally.
And we're going to be talking about a number of things.
I'll be focused on how to prevent a nuclear war.
Judge Andrew Napolitano, the judge, is going to be there talking about the assault on free speech.
Again, the U.S. government is trying to shut me down.
The FBI came to my home to try and intimidate me, silly FBI, to try and keep me from speaking up.
It didn't work, but it does work.
There's a chilling effect on Americans who now are afraid to speak out because we've weaponized the courts in a frontal assault on free speech.
And the judge is going to be talking about that.
Gerald Cilante, a wonderful man, he's going to be talking about the peace movement and democracy.
Max Blumenthal and Anya Perampil, who I believe all of you know because they're frequent guests, they'll be talking about the Middle East, about Gaza, about that issue.
And we'll have a special guest appearance by Roger Waters, who will be talking about peace, preventing nuclear war, and providing some original music because we don't want to depress the crowd too much.
There will be some entertainment interspersed so that everybody doesn't go home suicidal.
But the goal here is to have a physical rally, get as many people as possible into Kingston, but we're also going to be streaming it live.
It's going to be streamed on multiple platforms.
I believe we're working with the Judging Freedom podcast so that it's streamed to the Judging Freedom audience.
I know that my podcast is going to be doing the same thing.
We're going to get the gray zone to do it.
Plus, Gerald's going to be doing it on his.
If you want to see it, You're going to see it.
This week, I think, I have my final coordinating meeting with Gerald today, and we're going to be going on an advertising blitz that's going to be putting out poster after poster, flyer after flyer, to tell you where to go if you want to physically be there, or where to go if you want to be there, you know, if you're too far away, but watch it online.
Four hours of your life, ladies and gentlemen.
Four hours of your life to get empowered knowledge and information to make your vote count in November.
Scott, thank you very much, my dear friend.
I will see you before the sun comes up on Saturday morning in Kingston, New York, filled with energy and enthusiasm and ready to go.
All the best, my friend.
Thank you.
Of course.
Coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8 a.m., Ambassador Craig Murray.
At noon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
At two in the afternoon, Matt Ho.
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