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Oct. 17, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
35:21
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Can Israel Survive Netanyahu?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, October 16th, 2024.
Colonel Douglas McGregor will be here with us in just a moment on Can Israel Survive the Premiership of Benjamin Netanyahu?
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Colonel McGregor, welcome here, my dear friend.
Always a pleasure to be able to pick your brain.
I want to spend some time with you on the menu of choices available to the Israelis and the United States in the Middle East.
But before we do, I just thought we'd catch up with Ukraine.
Is the Russian army continuing?
It's a march westward.
Is the Ukrainian military continuing to lose?
And what is going on as we understand it with that catastrophic incursion into Kursk?
Well, let's start from the bottom and work up.
The curse concursion is largely at an end.
Most of the people that went into Russia, and some of them unfortunately included There may have also been some Brits involved.
They're virtually all dead.
And there's not much left to it at this stage of the game.
The Russians are in the business of cleanup, not only in curse, but up and down the line of contact.
And again, as we've said so often in the past, President Putin has made it clear that he does not want To rule Ukrainians.
So we've now moved beyond the traditionally Russian areas where you have Russian speakers into areas that were historically Ukrainian.
He's not very excited about that.
He would rather not do that.
But he's going to press slowly but surely further and further towards the Dnieper River because he knows that in Europe the appetite for this whole thing is gone.
Regardless of what Schultz has said or has done recently, the Germans aren't sending any more material help to the Ukrainians.
They regard this as a lost war.
Macron certainly understands that.
I think that's widely understood in Europe.
The problem is that they're waiting for Washington to stand up and acknowledge reality.
Nobody in Washington right now is ready to do that.
And that's one of the reasons that I think President Trump's Strength is growing because people, not just here in the United States, but around the world, want an end to this thing.
They recognize how potentially dangerous it is.
And so as a result, you know, I think they're waiting for President Trump to arrive on the scene, assuming that he wins the election.
Colonel, I don't want to go too deeply down a rabbit hole, but you did mention something in the answer you just gave that I have to ask you about.
Americans in America.
How common is that?
How lawful is that?
Oh, well, look, if we're going to start worrying about the law, that's been broken, as you know, Judge, so many times.
We treat international law with complete contempt, and then we excoriate anybody who does something we don't like as violating the so-called rules-based order.
Which really means challenges our military and financial hegemony in the world.
We've had Americans on the ground in Ukraine doing all sorts of things in and out of uniform for a very long time.
We know that other NATO members had people involved with this Kursk operation.
At one point, it was described as the baby of the SAKUR, the Supreme Commander.
Europe.
And they said it's the Cavoli plan.
I don't know whether or not that was true, but that's what was kicked around at very high levels.
So we've all been involved in this thing.
And at some point when this tragedy ends, we're going to discover just how many people were actually killed who were from NATO countries and from the United States.
But right now, all we can do is speculate because those facts just aren't available to us.
The Guardian of London is reporting this morning, this seems bizarre, but I have to ask you about it, that there are North Korean troops on the ground with the Russians.
Is that credible?
I don't think so.
What I think you might see, certainly not combat troops under any circumstances, but you might see some North Koreans that have been involved in fortifications or defensive measures.
Along the line of contact, but not in combat.
I would just rule that out completely.
The Russians don't need the help.
Part of the reason people mention these things is to convey the utterly false perception that Russia is in trouble, that Russia doesn't have enough men or doesn't have enough troops.
It's all nonsense.
The Russians can't take all the volunteers that want to fight.
Just stop and consider that for a minute.
Transitioning over to Israel and the Middle East, Colonel, is there significance to the deaths last weekend of four IDF special forces, they were all 19 years old, and the injury of 70-plus IDF soldiers while they were having dinner in a protected military base deep inside of Israel?
Well, certainly.
Whenever Hezbollah has struck targets, it's tried to hit military targets.
And it is alarming to the Israelis that something could get through what they consider to be their air and missile defense system.
And the fact that they killed these young men strikes at home.
Everyone in Israel, whenever someone is killed, everyone in Israel feels the pain.
And the fact that so many were wounded is very frightening.
I don't know if you noticed it, but a few weeks ago, we watched Mr. Netanyahu deliver a speech in the aftermath of the Iranian counter-strike, where they fired 180 missiles and basically gave a demonstration of precision strike, their ability to hit targets.
And they only killed one or two people.
And that was by design.
They weren't interested in killing large numbers of people.
They were trying to signal that we had the capability to penetrate your air defenses.
Now, the reason I'm bringing that up is that his hands were literally shaking as he read his remarks.
I think there is real fear and concern at the top of the Israeli leadership right now because Hezbollah has control of not only information but access to their airspace.
They've been flying unmanned aircraft, we call them drones, for a long time.
They know where virtually everything is.
The Iranians certainly do.
There are no secrets left, which means that no base inside Israel is really safe any longer.
That's what's most frightening.
And if you can attack an Israeli military concentration like that, what does that mean for the thousands and thousands of Israelis who want to go back to their homes in northern Israel?
They're not going back anytime soon.
That's pretty damn clear.
What do we know of Israel's plans to attack Iran?
Well, you know, this is the $90 million question.
Is this guesswork at this point, Colonel?
No, it's not really guesswork.
First of all, there are lists of all the things.
Power plants.
You know, water purification sites, as well as oil production facilities, is Iranian bases, particularly for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Remember, just as I pointed out, that Hezbollah and Iran know pretty much where everything is in Israel.
Israel knows where everything is in Iran.
So this is the age of persistent surveillance.
There is not much that you can do without being detected, especially if you have any sort of electronic or thermal signature.
We have been preeminently concerned about the impact, obviously, on global markets of an attack on oil facilities, especially Carg Island.
At the same time, we're also very concerned about any attempt to penetrate.
The mountain where the Iranian nuclear facilities are located because they're hundreds of feet beneath the surface.
And most experts have concluded that the potential to penetrate hundreds of feet below the surface is not very good.
You can go a certain distance, perhaps 100 feet, 200 feet, but...
So there's a hope that that will not happen.
And then finally, hovering in the background, you have this fear of an Iranian nuclear capability, that they could rapidly transform their existing stocks of enriched uranium or plutonium into warheads, which I think is probably real at this point.
If you didn't want Iran to, quote-unquote, get the bomb, then you shouldn't.
You've done what you've been doing for years, which is threatening and bullying and pushing Iran.
So I think that's also in the background.
But the bottom line is this, and this is what people in the United States really need to understand.
In the South, Hamas is alive.
Has it been damaged?
Of course.
Is it being annihilated?
No.
In the North, you have Hezbollah.
Has it been damaged?
Of course.
Is it annihilated?
Absolutely not.
So effectively, the Israeli Defense Force has failed in those two areas.
They haven't been able to bring those areas under control.
Right now, if you turn on Israeli television, officers are talking about, we may go a kilometer or two or maybe three or four kilometers into southern Lebanon, but we're not going to drive to the Latani River as we have in the past.
We can't do it.
So you've got something of a stalemate, which from the standpoint of Hezbollah and Hamas is a victory.
For the Israelis, it's tantamount to defeat.
And in the midst of this, you have the prime minister who has now stated publicly he will attack whatever he thinks should be attacked in Iran, regardless of what we want or do not want.
And you'll remember that over the weekend there was a piece, I think it was in the Washington Post, I could be wrong, it might have been the New York Times, where the journalist asserted that Mr. Netanyahu might conceivably be looking for an off-ramp.
In other words, a willingness to step back from the maximalist objectives, and therefore the next Israeli strike on Iran would not be everything that Israel has to offer.
In fact, it would be scaled back.
Well, since then, Prime Minister Netanyahu said, I don't know where this information came from.
But that's absolutely false.
And then, of course, we've had these leaks in the press where we've leaked deliberately, I guess, the discussions that we've had with the Iranians about asking them to exercise restraint.
These things are completely damaging.
So right now, I would say that both sides, Iran and Israel, have no interest in exercising much restraint.
They may hold back behind the nuclear threshold.
But everything else is fair game.
And I think the Israelis will throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at Iran when the time comes.
That's where we stand.
And this is a last-ditch effort, Judge.
Mr. Netanyahu doesn't have very many good cards to play.
He's got thousands of American servicemen and women sitting on ships in the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean.
We can't keep them there in perpetuity.
The Navy is literally cannibalizing itself to continue to operate with some measure of effectiveness as it is.
Our armed forces are not in particularly good shape.
Our missile inventories are low.
And remember, you've got to go back into port in most cases to rearm.
So when we get involved in anything, we have a fairly short burst of capability.
Go back and reload and then return to the launch site at sea.
These are things that Mr. Netanyahu knows.
That's one of the reasons that the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense System was deployed to Israel.
And people talk about the missiles, but the truth is that what is really important about the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense System is the radar.
The radar is brilliant.
It's probably unmatched anywhere in the world.
It's one of the best things that we have ever produced.
Now, what does that mean?
It means that if you set that radar up in Washington, D.C. somewhere and you point it towards the south, you can track a basketball at 500 feet above the ground in New Orleans.
Think about that.
That's the kind of resolution this radar provides.
The reason I'm emphasizing that is, We may exhaust the missiles that we've sent very quickly because you fire two or three missiles at every incoming target.
But the radar is key because the radar can cue large numbers of systems all over Israel to focus on where the enemy is coming.
And that's very, very important.
So this radar is the crown jewel of what we have to offer right now in air and missile defense, and he's got it on the ground.
The problem, of course, is...
You mentioned Netanyahu unloading everything but the kitchen sink.
If it were to come the other way, if the Iranians were to unload everything but the kitchen sink, would Israel survive?
Israel is going to have a tough time.
Let's be frank.
I'm sure your other guests have told you similar things.
The Iranians are capable of leveling large parts of Israel.
There is no question about it.
That's why it makes no sense from Mr. Netanyahu's standpoint to withhold anything from his attack on Iran because he'll try to destroy as much as possible of Iran's capability to threaten and destroy him.
It's only natural.
I don't think he's going to be very successful, but we'll see.
He has the advantage of our intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, space-based and otherwise, and I think that will help enormously.
But will it be enough to prevent the arrival of large numbers of hypersonic missiles and ballistic missiles on target in Israel?
That I can't answer, but I think it's going to be very difficult for Israel, regardless of what they do.
You were speaking not too long ago about the U.S. leaking information.
I can imagine leaking the accurate contents of communications with the Iranians is going to terminate their communications with us.
But among the leaks using their favorite place at which or to which to leak, the Washington Post, was this letter that supposedly was sent to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
That if he doesn't allow humanitarian aid into Gaza in 30 days, I don't know why 30 days, but 30 days, the United States will consider halting military supplies.
30 days and consider.
It doesn't seem a very precise or threatening threat to me, but do you think it's realistic?
Would the Biden administration ever say no to Netanyahu?
Would they say, let food, water, medicine, and fuel in, or we'll stop sending you bullets, weapons, ammo, and spare parts?
In fact, a good friend with a lot of years of experience inside the Intelligence Committee said it very well to me.
He said when the time comes and Mr. Netanyahu wants something from the United States in the event of the next attack with Iran, he's not going to ask for anything.
He will simply make demands.
And we will meet those demands.
I think we have to understand that this is very much a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Here you have a nation of, at least when this began, of a little over 7 million Jewish Israelis plus another million Arabs that are living inside Israel's borders.
I mean, the current borders, not including Gaza and the West Bank.
And we are a nation of what?
330, 340 million.
And we are now hostage to whatever Mr. Netanyahu decides to do.
Those are the facts.
He's in control.
He's been in control from the very beginning.
And while he has control, I think he's going to use it.
Because there is no guarantee after the November election that he'll be able to do then what he's doing now.
I know that a lot of people are saying, well, you know, President Trump will give him whatever he wants.
But if I were Mr. Netanyahu, I'm not sure that I would buy that argument.
I think I would probably act now.
And that's his best bet of dragging us into something.
And again, if you look at this terminal high-altitude air defense system and its radar, the roughly 100 American soldiers that are part of this, a lot of people are treating this as some sort of tripwire.
Well, the truth is we've already got tripwires.
We have those things in Iraq and Syria, and when President Trump was in office, he wanted to get our soldiers out of those places precisely because we could not defend them in the event of a high-end conventional conflict, which is what we're looking at with Iran and Israel.
The terminal high-altitude air defense is not necessarily a tripwire, but it does signal that we will probably lose soldiers.
On the ground, in Israel, on Israeli soil, if this fight continues.
His hope that that will be enough to trigger all-out war between the United States and Iran.
But I'm not sure that that would necessarily happen.
You told us a few minutes ago about the deaths of American soldiers in Ukraine.
That's not in the news anywhere.
Their deaths have been totally hidden or covered up by the government.
I would imagine the same thing would happen, even though if they died in Israel, even though the administration ostentatiously said, we have 100 on the ground now with the THAAD already in Israel.
We announced it after it happened.
We have fought for almost 30 years now, very weak, incapable opponents.
Those days are over.
We now face not only Iran, but potentially Russia.
There are thousands of Russian technical military personnel inside Iran.
There are Russian pilots capable of flying aircraft in defense of Iran.
People may have forgotten, but back during the Vietnam War and certainly during the Korean War, there were Russian pilots, in those days Soviet pilots, that flew aircraft, particularly in Korea, and were very effective.
What I'm trying to say is that people in Washington, particularly in the administration in the White House, are afraid of being dragged into an all-out war.
They don't want that.
The problem is that right now they're hostage to Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is going to do whatever he wants to do, and he wants to get us into the war.
So if we were to lose these soldiers, there would be an attempt by the administration to strike back.
But there would also be an attempt to rein in that strike.
In other words, we don't want an all-out war with Iran that could bring us into confrontation with Russia.
We've already lost the war in Ukraine, even though nobody talks about it.
It's a blatant disaster.
Over the weekend, I had several people who were over on the ground in Ukraine telling me that the numbers of deaths of Ukrainian soldiers far exceed 600,000.
They've talked about 1.5 billion casualties.
Now, I don't know, but it's a disaster.
Ukraine is in ruins.
We've lost.
Our equipment has failed.
Everything we've done has failed.
Do we want to relive this experience in the Middle East?
I don't think anybody in the White House wants to.
So I just think we want to avoid something that is now looking more and more inevitable, Judge.
Right.
Let me take you back to Israel and ask for your thoughts, Colonel, on the alleged attack by IDF on UNIFIL.
And before you respond, take a look at cut number one.
At present, the conflict between Lebanon and Israel is intermittently escalating.
Due to the ongoing combat, several camps of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon have suffered damage.
Additionally, a portion of our peacekeeping comrades have been injured.
We continue to make every effort to maintain peace and stability in the region.
Commander of Chinese troops fighting with UNIFIL attacked by the Israelis.
My God, can this get any more complex or dangerous?
Well, I don't think they're fighting with UNIFIL.
UNIFIL is not there to fight anybody, as we know.
Well, it can shoot back when it's shot at.
Of course.
And by the way, the incidents that we've seen thus far involving Irish troops that happen to be part of that organization, the Irish soldiers behaved with commendable restraint.
And that's the point I was trying to get to before.
I guess that's because Ray McGovern was not their commander.
Yeah, probably.
No, listen, you don't want hotheads running the show in CENTCOM, and we certainly don't want a war with Russia and Iran.
That's the point.
That's why let us assume that some American soldiers are killed.
Do we instantly commit the entire United States, all 340 million people, our scientific industrial base and the armed forces, to all-out war?
I don't think so.
And I think that...
Professional soldiers, especially their officers, are expected to exercise restraint and control over their emotions.
And however angry they may be, they understand the consequences of their actions.
And no one wants this war, Mr. Netanyahu does, but we certainly do not.
Here's the president of France responding to what he believes were deliberate targeting by Israeli armed forces on French troops working with UNIFIL.
Cut number two.
It is totally unacceptable for UNIFIL troops to be deliberately targeted by Israeli armed forces.
We condemn it.
We do not and will not tolerate it happening again.
Before you respond, here's what he said this morning in a full screen.
We don't have the tape of it.
Mr. Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the United Nations.
Therefore, this is not the time to disregard the decisions of the UN.
What do you think, Colonel?
Is Europe going to get involved in this?
No, I don't think so.
The Europeans are not really capable of very much, and I certainly understand the sentiments expressed by Mr. Macron.
But he's very unlikely to become involved in a direct confrontation with the Israelis.
If anything, he's probably had back channels from us telling him to butt out, which I suspect he will probably do.
The Israelis are riding high in the saddle.
And by that I mean the arrogance and the self-confidence that arrogance sometimes breeds is out of control.
If you watch Israeli television, When the people are discussing in panel settings what's happening, there is no sense of the casualties that have been taken already in Gaza or in South Lebanon.
There is no sense that Israel could lose.
None whatsoever.
Their news is as carefully predigested and disseminated as our own.
So the real question, which is what you began this with, was, You and I and others who are looking at this and hopefully looking at it objectively are sensing that it might not.
But that thought is completely absent from the Israeli public and from the minds of its senior leaders.
Now, it may be that in private, Mr. Netanyahu and Gallant and others who are in the cabinet know differently and feel differently.
But the thing is, if that's true, What do you do?
If you step back, if you back down, who is going to negotiate with you?
Hezbollah?
Hamas?
Any of the Arab states?
Remember, you began this campaign by saying everyone was Amalek, an animal, subhuman, who deserved to be destroyed.
People say, well, we meant the people in Gaza.
No, you said that about Arabs.
And everyone in the region translates that into not just Arabs, but also Muslims and Christians or whatever else might be there.
So who are you going to negotiate with if you back down?
There's no one to negotiate with.
Are we going to have any leverage with any of these countries at this point?
No!
Our position in the region has been destroyed.
Very, very telling observations, Colonel.
One last topic.
The IDF.
He jailed a young man who was a friend of the show, Jeremy Lafredo, Italian last name, Jewish mother, American.
Jeremy appeared before two different Israeli federal judges, both of whom ordered him released.
He was finally released, but he was charged with aiding the enemy by reporting on damage done by Iran to Israeli The significance to my question to you is, he's an American and the State Department was silent on this.
This is not Evan Gershkovich where the State Department went berserk when he was arrested on the basis of real evidence in Russia.
This is the State Department looking the other way when this American journalist was arrested, roughed up, and released only after two judges ordered it.
Yes.
There are a couple of things that you should read into it.
This man, I think, worked for Max Blumenthal, if I'm correct.
Correct.
And, you know, he's very courageous to do what he did.
You know that I hold Max in very high esteem, and I think he's a very courageous person.
They're simply interested in getting at the truth.
The truth is not very popular here with American media or certainly in Israel or, for that matter, in Ukraine as regards the truth.
But you've got to understand he's also considered to be Jewish, this man.
Yes.
And from the vantage point of the Israelis, for a Jew to want to report truthfully on what's happening inside Israel, that's a form of treason.
And so they're completely unsympathetic.
Now, when you move it up to the State Department level, the question that you're answering is another question that you've asked before.
Who's in charge?
We know who's in charge.
Mr. Netanyahu is in charge.
And we have to look at our government and understand that his agents, his supporters, are in positions of authority.
And they are going to do what he says.
It's that simple.
I want to play for you one last piece, Colonel.
This is a journalist, a Palestinian journalist.
Max Blumenthal tells me, very well respected.
She's fluent in English, as you'll see, who witnessed the firebombing of the Al-Aqsa martyr's hospital tent, the tents outside the hospital.
There's no showing of the injured here.
It's just this woman describing it, but it's quite moving.
Cut number nine.
They burned people alive.
I don't know.
They picked this muscle to cause this fire at this time of the night to kill people while they are sleeping.
And then these people are waking up, watching their bodies burning.
Turning into black and having their last brief on front of the camera.
That what happened.
They did this.
They did this.
I know that you will not be able to watch the videos, to watch the pictures, to hear them screaming while they are burning and no one can do anything for them.
But The Israeli army did this.
This is what the people in the Middle East see in their own native languages accompanied by the videos that, of course, we're not going to show.
Remember the word Amalek.
Animals.
If you characterize your opponent as something less than human, it makes it much easier to kill the opponent.
And I'm afraid that...
And they feel strongly that they have every right to dispose of them and they will use whatever means are necessary, including us.
And we are seen as their obedient servants.
It's that simple.
I don't know that you need a more sophisticated assessment than that.
And it's tragic because I think Israel has historically been a beacon for moral rectitude and turpitude.
And I think it's gone.
That's no longer true.
Can Israel survive Netanyahu?
It seems it's unlikely at this point.
We have more than a million people have left Israel as it is.
How many will want to live there when this war ends, however it ends, in a neighborhood where you are surrounded by people that you have treated as animals?
It's not encouraging.
Conor McGregor, thank you very much.
No matter how gloomy the topic is, it's a privilege and a professional joy to be able to chat with you about it.
Much appreciated by the vast audience watching us now.
Thank you very much for your time.
I hope we can do it again next week, Colonel.
Thank you, Judge.
Of course.
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