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Sept. 30, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
35:15
Alastair Crooke : Netanyahu Gambles on Slaughter
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, September 30th, 2024.
Alistair Crook will be with us momentarily on Prime Minister Netanyahu's murderous gamble in Lebanon.
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Alistair, welcome here, my dear friend.
Much to talk about, of course, with the monumental events occurring in the Middle East in the past two or three days.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from an office in the United Nations ordered the murder of a religious and political leader in another country with which Israel is not lawfully at war.
How does this strike you?
Well, everything is focused, I mean, first of all, on Hassan Nasrallah himself and his death, and also the effect on Hezbollah, which I'll come to in just a second.
But I think it's really important to underline that Hassan Nasrallah is a symbol far beyond Lebanon.
It's not just confined to Egypt.
Massive marches, as well as in the more usual places like Jordan and elsewhere and in Iraq.
Why?
Because he was a symbol.
He was a symbol for national liberation, for an end to colonialism.
He was the symbol.
He was, if you like, I mean, in a certain way, transcended it to an extent that he was an icon for all the world in terms of justice, justice for the Palestinians, but an end to the process.
He was like a...
And, of course, now the region is boiling, and this assassination has crystallized and brought to a head really something much bigger than just what's been happening in Lebanon.
It's brought to a head this whole issue about the new order.
We're in the midst of a transition from one world order to another world order.
And at the moment, there's great celebrations going on in parts of America and Europe and in Israel that this is sort of defined the new era and this is what will happen.
But it's not going to be.
It was such really an assault on common humanity.
More than a thousand people There were six high-rise apartment buildings simply collapsed in that process of the assassination.
There are a million, if you like, Lebanese displaced now because Israel is continuing the assault on Lebanon, continuing the assault on Beirut.
People are moving.
Many of them are sleeping out on the esplanade.
At the front of Beirut.
And so he's something that has symbolized something more.
This is about humanity and about the idea of an end to colonialism and the end to hegemony imposed on a people.
So I think it's a very powerful, it's a very important moment beyond just Lebanon.
What is happening?
Very important for Hezbollah, too.
Is this going to unite the resistance against Israel?
You mentioned India and Pakistan, as well as the usual places.
And if it does unite the resistance, is it going to put pressure on governments like Jordan to do something?
Yes, it's certainly going to do this.
And there's a lot of celebratory noises coming out of various parts of the West at the moment that this is a new Western hegemony emerging.
But as I say, we're at a transition in the world order.
And we've seen a huge shift of support away from the West.
During this period and to bricks, I mean, we're seeing the tectonic plates of the world are shifting.
And I think it's very doubtful, very doubtful, that the Western ruling strata can re-establish, if you like, a new hegemony on the basis of genocide and bombing of civilian areas and assassinations.
Which is the basis of it.
It just is such an affront to all humanity that I can't see that they can lever up a new, if you like, hegemony on that basis.
But of course, at the moment, they are full of excitement of what's happening and planning, and in Israel, planning a big extension of this to take it, if you like, into what they call the new regional order, the new Middle East order, as Netanyahu calls it.
Tell us a little bit about Nasrallah.
Was he just the face of Hezbollah?
Was he just a spokesperson?
Or was he a substantial figure like Gandhi or Nelson Mandela?
He was the latter.
He was a substantialist.
This is why you have people, as I say, in Kashmir and Pakistan and everyone on marches, because he had that charisma.
He was, if you like, albeit in a militant way, he was a Gandhi.
He was someone that created this huge charisma.
You see signs of people crying and mourning him across the world.
So he was something very much more than just the leader of Hezbollah, but he was also a military leader and he was a teacher.
And so he brought, if you like, moral teaching to the people.
And he was a symbol of a lack of corruption and a commitment to justice.
How deep does Mossad reach?
I mean, does the fact that they knew...
This is an open question at the moment.
And this is something at the moment Hezbollah have shut down.
They've gone dark.
They've shut down communications.
And they're having a big, if you like, post-mortem that is taking place.
They have to have a post-mortem because, you know, they've suffered a big reversal, a huge reversal in this period.
So they have to, and they are doing this, to study the situation, reconnecting what was severed at the command and control level, and also to identify the penetration, where it came from.
Now there are lots of sort of theories about the penetration.
I personally, from my own experience, would say that it was a human penetration because it was at such a high level to know the meeting that Hassan Nasrallah was about to attend, to know that he was going to move to it, to give the signal to Israel, to pass it on to Netanyahu and the UN to give the order for, you know, 83 people
And, of course, it's a huge setback.
But Hezbollah have now filled all the appointments.
There is a new Secretary-General, Hashem Safiyeddin, who will be, I think, will take over and move into the role.
That the Sayed had.
He also is a Sayed.
He's got a black turban, which means he has a sort of religious spirituality.
And he has two other important qualifications.
He's a cousin of Said Hassan and therefore has been groomed over these years and prepared for this role.
And also...
Safiyuddin's son is married to the daughter of Qasem Soleimani, the famous Iranian general that was assassinated by Trump some years ago.
And so he is very much thought to be much more, more, if you like, radical.
I mean, Hassan Nasrallah arrived in the same way.
Abbas Musawi was the Secretary General.
He was assassinated by the Israelis.
And then Hassan Nasrallah took over from him and has been the head of Hezbollah for 30 years nearly.
Have the recent assassinations and bombings in southern Lebanon degraded the military effectiveness of the And I'm pretty sure it hasn't.
Because, you know, none of those, the people in that room were all, you know, the senior card.
There was clearly a mistake, some bad mistake.
Take made by Hezbollah there.
I mean, first of all, such a big grouping of their senior persons was unwise.
And I suspect one of the things that the post-mortem will throw up is something that has happened so often.
People become sloppy with their communication security.
I mean, anyone who's tried to persuade a minister.
To use an encipher telephone will know what I'm talking about.
They can't be bothered.
They just go on clear and they use the phone wrongly.
It's a chronic problem all the time to maintain that security.
They're gonna have to investigate The main optic communications into southern Lebanon, the military communications are not affected by that.
They are, if you, one of the reasons for this is that with optic communications, And this is a dedicated.
It's controlled entirely by Hezbollah.
And furthermore, it's quite extensive.
I just want to make clear that there are two sets of tunnels.
In Lebanon, in the hills, I'm talking about South Lebanon, right down the south, not in Beirut.
In the south, there are two levels.
One is the very, very deep level of, if you like, the missile cities, as they call it, Imad cities, where the missiles are stored, where they're fired from in many cases, and fired remotely from there.
Then the whole of the hillside, This craggy, very diverse hillside of South Lebanon is like a Swiss cheese punctuated by holes and tunnels so that Hezbollah can simply pop up underneath, behind, wherever Israel is not expecting it.
During 2006, they had one of these tunnels within 50 meters of an Israeli observation post and 60 meters of the UN observation post, and no one knew it was there until after the war.
So these tunnels are there.
The weapons are there.
There's been no real degradation.
There's been almost no degradation of the main missile system.
So the military capability is intact.
And as I say, they are very clear.
There is a new secretary general who's taken command already and is operating.
And every post that was lost in that attack on Friday has been replaced.
Because as I mentioned before, Hezbollah will have a practice of grooming and preparing a substitute for every senior person in the organization.
So the military part of it is intact.
Of course, they are going through a process of, first of all, looking at how the senior command was so penetrated that they were all killed in this explosion on Friday.
But they're also regrouping and thinking, what are our tactics?
And of course, whereas there's been considerable criticism for the mistakes, in war you always have ups and downs.
And what you have to do in war is when you have a big setback like this, you have to look at the reasons, you have to examine your tactics, your aims, your objectives, what help you can get from others to prepare for it.
We've seen the same thing happening with Russia in Ukraine.
Sometimes things have not gone so well for Russia and Ukraine.
And they've actually come back and there's been a change in the military leadership in Russia, quite a substantial change to bring sort of younger, fresher people more committed to Russia into the leadership.
That's what's happening at the moment in Hezbollah.
They're going through that process now.
But I just want to add, because there's another element to it, which is really important and completely missed, I think, mostly in reporting.
There's a lot of criticism of Hezbollah and the mistakes made.
Yes, but there is criticism and eruption elsewhere.
There is criticism of Iran.
There is a criticism of a certain group in Iran.
Gathered around, mostly around Zarif and Khatami, the reformist, if you like, group that won the election with Pesash Kian.
And Pesash Kian has had to make a great apology.
And he said very plainly, and he said, I was given, and they were obviously with Zarif and the group, were back-channeling to the West.
Ignoring the demand, the order of the supreme leader.
They were going behind his back to the West and they got what they thought were assurances of substantial alleviation of sanctions on Iran and there would be a guaranteed ceasefire in Gaza on terms of Hamas.
And Pesachian laid this out and he said, they lied.
It was totally untrue.
None of it came true.
Is the they and they lied, the Americans, the West, or the Israelis?
Europe and America.
But principally America, because they're the ones that can talk about and have talked about ceasefire.
And this is very, very important in the sense, in the debate.
That's going on, not only in Hezbollah, but going on in Iran, too.
Because there's a great paradox, you know, that faces powers like Russia, like Iran and China, that often, you know, you're concerned, if you like, not to escalate, not to, if you like, be too proactive in case it leads to war.
Right.
But then the converse of this dilemma is if you're not at all proactive, then you get war anyway.
You get escalation and then you end up in a war.
And this is what is being said.
And so there have been very tough demonstrations held in against outside of the National Security Council in Tehran against Pisashqian and against this element.
We were asked by the West not to react after the 1st of April.
That is the killing of a general in Syria.
We didn't react to that except we did it in a very controlled way.
And what happened?
That was then presented in the West as a great failure by Iran because Israel claims it just shot down 99% of all the missiles and drones that were fired.
So it appears to have been an Iranian failure.
Then it goes back, really, to the time of the killing of Qasem Soleimani.
Iran has pulled its punches and pulled its punches.
Protesters and the people in Iran are saying to the government there, saying, you've really messed us up, because what you have done is you've not made us more secure and not being clever in sort of trying to manage it.
You've got nothing.
You were lied to by the Americans.
And what has happened is now we have Israel actually threatening assassinations in Iran.
That's what you brought around.
And so we have to have a very deep thinking about where we go now.
And I think that deep thinking is likely to lead to some forms of reaction.
That's what the Supreme Leader ordered.
That's what he wanted.
And that was undermined.
By this group around Zarif, who were always in New York and elsewhere, saying, well, we're staying out a bit, aren't we clever?
We're trying to be sort of careful.
Well, they thought they had all these, and Pezash Kian went on television and he just said, look, I've been lied to.
nothing happened at all.
And we've lost the chance to restore our honor by retaliating for the death of Israel.
Here's what I'm hearing from you, that the pressure on the resistance to respond and respond dramatically is very strong and it may be overwhelming.
And Netanyahu may have overplayed his hand.
Yes, because I think, you know, and it's also, by the way, It's also, by the way, happening in Russia.
I mean, the television programs in Russia are arguing the same case.
You know that, yes, being careful and being cautious and risk-averse to avoid a war, that's fine.
But you weren't dealing with an adult.
You were dealing with a genocidal maniac who has been killing people.
All across Lebanon and the West Bank and Gaza.
You haven't been dealing with someone that respected what you say or whom you could deal with it.
Instead of which, they're now trying to, if you like, mount a new order for the Middle East, a new order that would be, if you like, a Hebraic hegemony across the entire region with the defeat of Iran as its principal aim.
So everything is coming.
Back to this.
And they're saying, you know, sometimes you may try not to get involved in a wider war, but the war comes to you.
It will come anyway, even if you try and avoid it.
Is it your view that if Iran directly attacks Israel, that the United States will attack Iran?
Look, I don't know that...
I don't think...
As I say, there are demonstrations outside the security forces calling for Pesach Kian and his team to go, and in very coarse language, telling them to get out and go.
But there are other things.
For example, the Iranians were thinking about putting volunteers into Lebanon and along the border.
But there's no reason why they couldn't, for example, and I don't know that this is even under real consideration, but I'm just offering it as an example that there are alternatives.
They could put Lebanese forces, with the permission of the government of Lebanon, to support the border in the south with Israel.
And that would certainly make a change.
This would be a game changer for And his plans keep expanding because, you know, as the party goes on in Lebanon and parts of Europe about this is a new era, a new world, we're going to move and a new hegemony taking shape.
The demands are growing.
Now they want to put a new government into Lebanon that is a proxy for Israel.
They're talking about And they're talking about changing the whole region in this way.
And, of course, it's ongoing in Gaza and it's ongoing in the West Bank.
And West Bank and Gaza are, you know, as you can imagine.
This has really set alight, if you like, this whole struggle, this clash between colonial hegemon, as it's seen in much of the non-West taking place, and one without limits, where killing, civilians, genocide, anything goes.
On behalf of, if you like, this Western, the Hebraic project of establishing, of destroying Iran, establishing a passive Iraq and Syria, and making peace with Saudi Arabia.
You know, of course it is a fantasy, and they'll have to come down from it when they find that as they go into Lebanon, things don't work out quite as they expected.
But it is at a crossroads that we are at, I think, in a wider sense.
Are we really going to leverage our sort of new world order, that's the Western, American-led world order, on the basis of such killings and of such genocide and of such, frankly, inhuman conduct?
And think that that's going to work.
I don't think it's going to work at all.
For the moment, you know, the killings continue.
The missiles are with the West.
The West has the money.
It has the military forces.
It has the upper hand.
But it's already in decline.
And that is why we're having this tectonic shift and people are moving away.
And supporting increasingly Russia and China.
But we're in the, we're twix the two at the moment.
Between these two orders, neither has come into being yet.
But it looks as if we could well end up with an escalation in the region.
This could get out of control if, you know, Israel is, I mean, well, Israel is out of control at the moment.
It's just planning, you know, all to sort of take down Lebanon to start with, and then it might do Iraq or Iran, which is their objective.
Well, when we go down that route, we will be in a very, in a situation situation.
In the meantime, what is going on in Gaza?
There have been no meaningful ceasefire negotiations since July.
It's now the end of September.
A, does anyone believe that Netanyahu's government ever wanted ceasefire?
B, what is the status of the Palestinian people in Gaza as we speak?
It's still, it's no change.
The Israelis have just announced, I mean, nothing has changed, but they've announced it's over.
And actually, they don't talk about it anymore.
It stopped being discussed.
I think really what, I mean, Sinwar hasn't been heard from for some time.
And I don't know the reason for that.
But, you know, having done hostage cases in the past, always, you know, they are so sensitive about, you know, if you don't have to communicate, don't communicate.
When I used to do hostage cases, the hostage takers would never allow more than a few minutes of communication because they were always frightened of interception or geolocation of their group and that they would be attacked.
So if there's no negotiations on, and Israel is not interested in negotiations, I don't know if this is the reason, but I would make very good sense for Sinwar and the Hamas leaders there to say, okay, let's just stop communicating, because there's no point.
The more we communicate, the more vulnerable we become.
And has Netanyahu's political standing been uplifted domestically in Israel because of the events of the past three days?
Yes, I mean, there's enormous, I mean, there really are, you know, celebrations taking place in most of Israel, dancing in the bars and pubs and cheering the death of Hassan Nasrallah.
And his standing has gone up and now...
without portfolio, but is part of the War Cabinet.
He's given him a job in the War Cabinet.
So this means, actually, he's pretty well secure until 26. The government can't fall before 26. Will there be attempts to assassinate Netanyahu?
The Houthis are boasting this morning that they fired, obviously, unsuccessfully at his plane as it was returning from New York.
I don't know, but I think, you know, all of the rules, all of the limits have gone.
We are in anything goes territory.
So whether that will happen or not, I don't know.
But Hezbollah and the resistance in Iran at the moment are having a really tough and hard discussion amongst themselves about it and about how the communications of Nasrallah were breached.
Personally, I think it was probably a...
I don't believe all the stuff about the technological miracle that achieved it, because it all came out of the blue at the last minute.
They first sort of mooted it on Friday, and then suddenly they got an opportunistic, the opportunity arose.
Obviously, someone had told them he's on his way and it's to this very big meeting.
A human source is necessary.
Alistair, could this have happened?
The assassination of Nasrallah using a tremendous amount of force, several 2,000-pound bombs, without the knowledge of...
86. 2,000 pounds.
Lord, could this have happened without the knowledge of, You know, you're asking the question that I think they've been deeply involved in the intelligence operation.
After a few minutes, they then put their transponders back on and flew off.
You know, I can't tell you what.
We know that they're giving them intelligence support, just as in Ukraine.
They give to the Ukrainians intelligence support.
That's obvious.
I'm sure this is closely coordinated between Israel and its allies.
I don't know that that particular operation, because it seemed to have come so quickly.
I mean, literally, obviously, they got intelligence at short notice.
They called.
He called up Netanyahu and he did it from the UN office on the spot and said, okay, go for it.
They had been practicing the bombing tactics of layer upon layer upon layer of, if you like, bunker bombs.
And of course, these are American bombs dropped from American aircraft.
But, I mean, all of it will be, you know, that Israeli now water under the bridge.
Alistair Crook, my dear friend, quite a lecture, quite an explanation of what's going on and what's not going on in the Middle East.
Thank you, my dear friend.
Thank you for all of your knowledge and thank you for your time.
As always, we'll look forward to starting the week next Monday with you as well.
All my best.
Well, thank you very much for having me.
Thank you.
A full day for you coming up at 10 o 'clock.
Eastern this morning.
Ray McGovern at 11. Larry Johnson at noon.
Anya Parampel at 3. Scott Ritter at 4 o 'clock this afternoon.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
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