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Sept. 26, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:55
SCOTT RITTER : Israel Suicidal for Invading Lebanon.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, September 26th, 2024.
Scott Ritter joins us again.
Scott, thank you for your time.
It's the second time I have the privilege and pleasure of working with you this week.
And there'll be a third time on Saturday, about which we'll talk at the end of this interview.
Is Israel preparing for a land invasion of Lebanon?
I think Israel is going through the motions to do this.
But, I mean, for instance, they mobilized two reserve brigades, bringing them up to join the forces that are already deployed there.
But, you know, there are Israeli officers, reserve officers coming out and saying what should be obvious to everybody that, you know, for Israel to go into southern Lebanon is to walk into a trap.
Hezbollah has been preparing for this eventuality since 2006.
18 years.
Hezbollah has built underground fortifications that Israel can't destroy through bombing.
And this is a trap.
And I think the Israelis know that.
So I think what this is, is Israel putting pressure on the West, on the United States, on Europe, to put pressure on Hezbollah and Iran to find a scenario where Hezbollah stops firing missiles into northern Israel so that Netanyahu can make good on his promise to the people, to the citizens of Israel, that he can return 60,000 settlers to their homes in northern Israel.
That's what this is all about.
This is about Netanyahu being under tremendous political pressure by these settlers and by others to bring it into this war.
um you know not only a ceasefire in the north but then uh if if see if netanyahu could get this ceasefire return to 60 000 then he has political capital that may allow him to ride out the consequences of getting a ceasefire in gaza which he knows he desperately needs because they can't win the war uh so it's him Threatening to escalate, but I think the objectives aren't to invade southern Lebanon, push Hezbollah back, because they don't have the military capacity to do that.
This is to threaten that, to get pressure to create the conditions where he can save political face.
This is all about Benjamin Netanyahu.
And it's all tied into the fact that he's got to have some war going.
He can't have peace because he can't run the risk of his government collapsing because we know what will happen to him legally if the government collapses.
What kind of damage, if any, have the Israeli bombs in the past week, since they started with the exploding pagers, done to degrade, if any, to degrade Hezbollah?
Or have they just killed civilians?
Keep in mind that Hezbollah, like Hamas, went underground.
And the territory and the geography in southern Lebanon between the border and the Latani River is very hilly, solid rock, and Hezbollah's gone deep underground.
And Hezbollah's planners are cognizant of what Israel's capabilities are.
They know very well the kind of bombs Israel has, the penetrating factors that those bombs have, and how you design a defense.
To protect yourselves from that.
So I think Hezbollah has built a network of underground defenses that are virtually immune to Israeli bombing.
Remember, the Israelis blew the hell out of Hamas positions in Gaza, tried to collapse the tunnels.
And even at this day and age, when they've gone in, occupied, looked for and blown things up, the estimates are they've only taken out 30% of the tunnels.
That there's still 70% of that tunnel network there.
And given the fact that that tunnel network was built with redundancy, that means that you haven't degraded any aspect of Hamas's ability to move underground.
And the geography of a geology of, you know, Gaza, the soil, etc., is much less defensible than what you have.
So I don't think Israel has done any damage.
They've done a lot of damage to civilians.
You know, they're hitting targets that they, a lot of it's based upon guesswork.
You know, they may take out an entrance here, an entrance there.
But again, when you have 16 years to plan something and you have the ability to dig deep underground, you know, you're not like, you know, you're like a...
You don't have just one exit and one entrance, because when the fox shows up, you have to get out another way.
And Hezbollah has built a system that's designed to survive.
So I don't think Israel has done any meaningful harm to Hezbollah.
What is the reason for Israel attacking civilians?
I mean, all that...
Yeah, I mean, it's called, and I'm going to butcher the word, and I apologize to the Arabs.
Is there a military purpose to this, or is there, and am I missing it?
Well, the Israelis believe there is.
They call it the Dahiwa Doctrine, and that's named after a suburb of West Beirut.
which in 2006 is part of their policy of collective punishment they leveled killing thousands of Lebanese civilians and then they turn around and they blow up Lebanese villages and the idea is to put so much pain and suffering on the Lebanese civilians that they turn Their backs on Hezbollah.
The Hezbollah loses support of the local population.
That's the goal.
They tried it in Gaza as well.
The collective punishment.
I mean, that's why we're calling it genocide.
You know, 40 to 189,000, depending on whose numbers you're talking about, dead civilians.
collective punishment.
The Israelis believe that there's military value to this, that to break the will, you know, of a guerrilla movement or, you know, a movement that's derived, derives of strength from the people.
Because remember, Mao Zedong, you know, the fish swims amongst the ocean.
That's what Hamas and Hezbollah do.
They're the fish that swim among the ocean of the people.
Israel believes that if you target the people, you can get to the fish.
The people will drive the fish away and that's Look at Hamas.
They've recruited, you know, Thousands of new fighters during this fighting.
So for every fighter that Israel's taken out, Hamas has recruited two or three new fighters.
So they're getting stronger, not weaker.
And Hezbollah has 80,000 to 100,000 fighters already trained.
And I can guarantee you that by bombing the civilian population, you've created a heck of a recruitment pool upon which Hezbollah can draw upon if this becomes a long, drawn-out conflict.
How big is the IDF?
How many soldiers?
Well, their active duty forces, you know, hovers in the area of, you know, roughly 200,000.
But then they have immediate reserves they can draw upon of, you know, 300,000, 400,000.
And then because every Israeli joins the military when they turn 18, you know, they have the potential for virtually limitless.
Mobilization, but they're within the population base.
Nine million, they probably can mobilize about a million and a half trained.
But then you have to equip them, and then you have the ability to sustain that.
Israel's already tapped out.
They've exceeded what they're capable of doing.
The reserves are exhausted.
Their economy, you can't withdraw that many people from the economy and have the economy survive.
So the Israelis are now in the process that they have to demobilize certain reserve units to get them back into the economy.
So they're in a rotation of reserve mobilization right now because they couldn't keep 300,000 people mobilized for a year.
They have to return some to society because employers need their employees.
Will whatever Israel is planning to do in Lebanon, in your view, be what Alistair Crook has called it, a war without limits, that Netanyahu, the last thing he wants is for one of these wars to end?
The last thing Netanyahu wants is to...
Lose control of his political future.
He knows at some point in time he's going to have to step down as prime minister.
When he does, he wants to step down as a hero revered by the Israeli population and immune to prosecution.
That's his goal.
That's his objective.
That's what drives this whole thing.
Right now, the only way he can stay in power, because he isn't a hero, he's worse, is to have perpetual war.
The problem with a war without limitations against Hezbollah is it's a conflict that Israel isn't in control of.
Therefore, Netanyahu has lost control of his political future.
I believe that Netanyahu is going to be seeking to manage the conflict in Lebanon, to draw this conflict out as long as possible, until which time, just like he did with Hamas and Gaza, draw it out.
Until which time he's able to pull a rabbit out of the hat.
And that is to find a solution to the problem that allows him to sell himself to the Israeli public as the savior of Israel and then achieve that retirement that he's looking for.
And so I don't think he's going to be trying to push for us because if you go into an all-out war with Hezbollah, first of all, you may not win that war.
That's just the reality of it.
If Iran gets involved, now you have a regional conflict where Israel's priorities get subordinated to global priorities of energy security.
Understand this.
As much as we say we support Israel, we will not support Israel when gas is 20 bucks a gallon.
We're not going to support Israel when we can't afford to heat our homes.
Suddenly, we don't care about Israel, and the world won't care about Israel, and yet that's what will happen if there's a global economic crisis driven by a conflict, which is Israel's fault.
So Netanyahu doesn't want that to happen.
What he wants, I believe, is to create the illusion of that being a potential of happening, to get the attention of the West, who will then intervene as he escalates to You know, and that's what we see right now.
The United States and Europe are, you know, putting pressure on Hezbollah and Iran to bring about an end to this fighting.
I think Hezbollah is going to tell them to pound sand unless there's a ceasefire in Gaza as well.
But, you know, this is what Netanyahu is trying to do, is to create the conditions for outside pressure to be brought on Hezbollah and Iran that can bring about politically accepted conflict termination conditions so that Netanyahu can Leave and not be put in jail.
That's all he cares about.
Can you foresee United States ground troops aiding a ground invasion into participating in a ground invasion in Lebanon?
No.
Not at all.
Why have we sent U.S. and why have the Brits sent their troops to Cyprus?
Because if there's a...
And the way we do that is through what's called non-combatant evacuation operations, neo-operations.
And usually we have the Marine Corps do that.
We have Marines that are there.
But the number of Americans that would have to be evacuated is quite large.
And so we are putting the military resources in place where we can intervene, get the Americans out and evacuate.
I think we also are bringing troops in that have the potential of securing certain strategic locations in Israel, freeing up Israeli troops.
But you're not going to see American, at least conventional forces, the 101st Airborne, which is deployed right now, or the Marines off the coast, they're not going into Lebanon.
It's a death trap.
It's a literal death trap.
We're not ready for that fight.
I don't care how good you think you are in the U.S. military.
You're not ready for that fight.
We haven't prepared for that fight.
And we'll lose far too many people.
We'll just get sucked in.
And the military planners know that.
I believe these forces are there as stability, presence, and to support any emergency evacuation of noncombatants.
Who and where are the people to be evacuated?
Americans living in Israel?
Yeah.
Americans living in Israel.
Americans living in Lebanon.
We may go in, as we did in the 1980s, and occupy Beirut, occupy the port, and create secure corridors to get people out.
But then we're getting the hell out of Dodge, too.
We're not going to stay there.
We're not moving into the Latani.
We're not going to be fighting.
That fight.
But I do believe that, you know, if push comes to shove, we will have to go in and occupy Beirut and get Americans out of there.
Because if this goes into a general war, Beirut's going to be flattened.
It's the end of Beirut.
I want to run a clip of King Abdullah of Jordan before the United Nations and then ask you some questions about him.
He gets a little angry and a little emotional in here, and I'd like you...
In the absence of global accountability, repeated horrors are normalized, threatening to create a future where anything is permitted anywhere in the world.
Those who continue to propagate the idea of Jordan as an alternative homeland.
So let me be very, very clear.
That will never happen.
We will never accept the forced displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime.
For years, the Arab world has extended a hand to Israel through the Arab Peace Initiative, offering full recognition and normalization in exchange for peace.
But consecutive Israeli governments Emboldened by years of impunity.
Have rejected peace and chosen confrontation instead.
Emboldened by years of immunity.
How do you read what he said?
He's scared to death.
You know, he is a Hashemite.
Have you seen the movie Lawrence of Arabia?
Great movie.
Years ago.
A hundred years ago.
Yeah, a hundred years ago.
It's still a great movie, but it's relevant because the Hashemites are Saudis from Saudi Arabia.
And at the end of the movie, when the Arab forces take over Damascus and you see them get together and the tribes start fighting one another, the Arabs lost control.
The British mandate came in.
The French mandate came in.
Under the British mandate, the Hashemites, because the Al Saud family was given Saudi Arabia, The Hashemites were given Iraq and Jordan.
I'm sure at one point in time, the Hashemite king of Iraq thought that this will never change.
I will always be the king in perpetuity.
But the people of Iraq overthrew him, killed him, his family, dragged their bodies through the street.
That's the fate of the king of Jordan today.
He's a Hashemite.
He's not a Jordanian.
He's a Hashemite.
And the people of Jordan reigns.
They know this.
He has betrayed the Palestinian people.
Betrayed the Palestinian people.
And he right now is scared because he has sold them out to Israel.
Sold them out to the United States.
He's talking tough on that stage because he has the posture.
Because he knows what's brewing right now in the streets.
And that's him being killed and dragged through the streets.
His family being terminated.
The Hashemite lineage coming to an end.
That's the future of this pathetic king of Jordan.
Because he stands for nothing.
He's a man who stood side by side with Israel to shoot down Iranian missiles.
They came in to punish Israel for the crime of assassinating Iranian diplomats in Damascus.
This is a man who talks as if he's an Arab who supports the Arab cause, who supports the Palestinian people.
You know, Black September.
Remember what Black September is.
1970, the Jordanian army going into the Palestinian camps and slaughtering the Palestinian Liberation Organization, driving them into Lebanon, where they stayed for years as refugees.
He is not a friend of the Palestinian people.
He is an enemy of the Palestinian people.
And there are many Palestinians.
The Palestinians comprise a significant proportion, maybe a majority, of the Jordanian population.
And at some point in time, they will rise up.
And he will either run away or die because he is nothing but a tool of the nations that he's criticizing right now.
Israel, the United States, Great Britain.
I'm happy to say Colonel McGregor agrees with you 100% on this analysis, which is eye-opening because of his impression on the stage being so misleading.
Switching gears a little bit, do we know any more about the pager bombs that were used to turn private individuals in Lebanon into explosive devices?
Is it likely that MI6 and CIA knew this was going to happen before it happened?
I think it's 100%.
Likely.
Maybe not the specifics of the attack, but there's no way in God's green earth that Israel was able to go in and create a series of front companies,
move the money around necessary to achieve the licensing agreements to enter into the global electronics market, the regional electronics market, as a viable, you know, Provider of critical communications devices.
There's no way they did that without the CIA and MI6 knowing.
That's a statement of fact.
And so they knew that this potential was there.
And I also believe that Israel offered up this capability to the United States, meaning that Israel is saying, hey, we can replicate this model and make it work in Iran.
We can make it work anywhere you want to.
We've shown the ability to infiltrate.
We can do this.
And I think the CIA ran it through their in-house lawyers, and they came back and said, hell no, that's an act of terrorism.
That's indiscriminate violence.
I think the British are less inclined, but I think the British may not have been willing to operate on that scope and scale, too, out of fear of potential.
Trust me, the British are bloodthirsty.
More bloodthirsty than the United States is.
But even this was beyond their ability to say, yes, sign us up.
But they were cognizant of it.
There's no way that Israel operated on European soil on that scope and scale for that duration, because this is a 10 to 15 year operation.
There's no way they infiltrated this electronics market.
Without the CIA and MI6 knowing, and others as well.
I believe there's European intelligence agencies that were cognizant of this as well.
But because, you know, this is Israel, because it's the war on terrorism, because again, go back 15 years.
I mean, we're talking about, you know, in the midst of the global war on terror.
When this began, the world was at war with terrorism.
That's when this initiative began.
It's now reached a fruition.
So this is not something that Israel invented yesterday.
This is a 15-year operation, and it began, you know, that's back when we were running black sites in Europe to torture people, kidnapping people.
That's when the CIA would go into Italy without permission of the Italian government and kidnap people and take them to black sites to be tortured and then going to Gitmo and putting them in an illegal prison.
That's the mindset that the world was in when this operation was first conceived.
And only one person has spoken about this from the United States government, a woman by the name of Deborah Lipstadt, who is the State Department envoy to combat anti-Semitism.
And she was speaking at the something called the Israeli American Council, a pro-Netanyahu lobbying group funded by...
After October 7th, there was a feeling around the world that Israel is weaker.
You want a beeper?
I can give you a few.
That's the answer from the State Department to mock mass slaughter.
And a war crime.
She should be fired, right?
That's instant termination, literal instant termination.
I can guarantee you that the State Department didn't give her permission to make that statement.
I can guarantee it because the State Department knows that what happened in Israel, what Israel did was an act of terrorism.
So the State Department has sought to avoid this.
You've seen smirking Mr. Miller and his lackeys up there.
They just won't even address the issue.
They pretend it didn't happen.
We're going to investigate it.
We're going to do this.
But they're never going to commit to it because they can't commit to it.
She just committed the unpardonable sin.
Of legitimizing what the Israelis did with a stupid, stupid comment.
That's instant termination, but she can't be terminated because the Israeli lobby will never let her be terminated.
But that is disqualifying as a diplomat.
it's disqualifying in terms of just a being a moral human being she should be licking She has disqualified herself as a human being.
I'm not talking about doing violence to her.
I would never do that.
But she should never be allowed to represent the United States of America ever again.
Right.
What are you doing Saturday?
I'm sorry.
I'm going down to Kingston, New York to stir up a pot of trouble, hopefully, for all those warmongers out there, for the lip stats of the world who want to promote war over peace, to want to promote the potential of nuclear conflict over de-escalation.
And I'm going to be joined by a bunch of really cool people, including yourself.
So I hope people can physically be present, but we're also working on, we call it the family of podcasts, and we're working on getting this streamed out live.
On a variety of forums, including Judging Freedom.
I think Judging Freedom is going to be part of the family of podcasts where this is going to be going out.
Max Blumenthal's Grey Zone, the Ask the Inspector, US Tour of Duty from my standpoint, and others.
We're going to try and make it so that if you live in California, you live in Europe, you live everywhere, you can tune in.
It's going to be four hours of empowerment.
The empowerment of a people, the American people or global audience about the issues that matter.
And I can't wait.
Scotty, I'll see you bright and early Saturday morning, and thank you very much for your time today.
Much appreciated.
Thanks for having me.
Of course.
Coming up later today, we're not even halfway through the day.
At 1 o 'clock, Aaron Maté.
At 2 o 'clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson.
At 3 o 'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer.
At 4 o 'clock, Max Blumenthal.
And sometime around 5. Maybe a little before, maybe a little after.
From downtown Moscow at midnight, Pepe Escobar.
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