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March 17, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
29:42
Alastair Crooke : Israel at War With Itself.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, March 17th, 2025, in the Western world, St. Patrick's Day.
Alistair Crook will be here with us in a moment on Israel at war with itself.
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Alistair, welcome here, my dear friend.
Always a pleasure.
Before we get to your recent essay, and before we talk about the fissures, the deep divides in Israeli public policy and polity today,
I just want to ask you your thoughts on the latest back and forth between Marco Rubio and President Putin.
Actually, Marco Rubio, the American Secretary of State, claiming that he's crafted a ceasefire agreement, which none of us has seen, which would call for a 30-day secession in military hostilities.
And he claims that President Zelensky has agreed to that.
President Putin has said, sure, I'm in favor of stopping military hostilities as long as the following conditions are met, conditions to which the Ukrainians would never voluntarily consent.
Where do you think this is going, Alistair?
I'm not sure that it's going anywhere at this stage, I'm afraid to say.
Not because either of the two main parties don't have intent, but I must say I was very surprised at the ceasefire agreement announcement that was made.
I've been responsible for doing ceasefires myself in the Israeli-Palestinian context, about five ceasefires.
And a ceasefire is something...
Much more complex.
You don't just say, well, we're going to have a ceasefire and it's going to start on such a date and it's going to last 30 days.
The rule of thumb, the absolute certainty that I always used to base it on was that a ceasefire will last at most two to three weeks before it breaks down.
Someone will break it down.
Someone will put a bomb somewhere.
Someone will be killed.
And so I was always having to sort of try, and the ceasefire agreement had to contain details about how this would be handled.
Who would handle it?
Who would do the investigation?
Who would provide the report?
What would happen if someone, if you like, took military action?
What would be the appropriate response and what would be agreed?
All these details are supposed to be in a ceasefire.
And the agreement that we saw that came out of the first meeting had none of these things in it at all.
It was completely bereft of that.
It just said we'll have a ceasefire.
Now, I think Putin has said very clearly that these things are lacking in the agreement.
Now, what I don't understand is why.
Why did the team go in and produce a ceasefire?
And then what is more, sign it.
The American side signed it.
It could have been signed by the Ukrainian side, but the Americans signed it so that they are, if you like, committed to this open-ended ceasefire with none of the political structure.
That supports it going on.
I mean, the main thing is about elections, about the government, the constitutionality of Ukraine.
All of this, you know, should be sort of prepared.
And normally you have the political side of it worked out first, and then the ceasefire can follow once you have the framework.
But there's no framework that I can see present.
Why is that?
Is it because they're inexperienced?
And haven't done a ceasefire agreement before, the American team.
Is it because somehow they just didn't, they thought that there would be pressure enough on Putin to agree it without doing any of the framework that supports a ceasefire?
I don't really know.
Or was there more to it?
I think one of the things we see, I don't know how serious it is.
But it seems that in Kursk, there's quite a large number, at least there are claims that there are quite a large number of NATO forces that have been cut off and are surrounded by Russian troops in Kursk.
And that one of the reasons for the sort of speed trying to get the sort of ceasefire in place very quickly is to extricate some of these NATO forces from the Kursk area.
I can't say that that's the case.
We don't know how many, but it may be some extraneous reason that have pushed the American side into signing a ceasefire agreement, which is pretty much empty of content, which does have no structure, no outside structure,
and no detail about how you actually manage the ceasefire.
When I had the privilege of interviewing Foreign Minister Lavrov last week, after the interview was over, he came over to me and we made some small talk.
And I said, do you think you and President Putin will agree to a ceasefire?
And he looked at me and said, why would we?
And then he went like this with his fingers, as if to suggest we are this close to our end.
Our goal, achieving our goals.
I thought it was very savvy, typically savvy of him, and I see you smiling.
Well, you know, I mean, usually the party that makes the ceasefire, that determines the rules of the ceasefire, is the one that has the cards.
You know, it's unusual for the losing side.
To be the one that was sitting down with the Americans to establish the sort of terms of the ceasefire.
I mean, the only thing that came out of that ceasefire agreement, as far as I was concerned, was that, you know, there was a sort of a smackdown of the Europeans.
None of the things the Europeans wanted.
Security guarantees or European peacekeeping force or any of those things were all no.
From the American side and were removed from it.
So the Russians would have been quite pleased about that.
But I've heard nothing.
And this is what makes me quite cautious about this.
I have heard nothing at all about the formation of a government or preparations for elections and the formation of government.
And I'm sure Lavrov made it absolutely It's essential when he spoke to you that there was to be elections.
They do not see Zelensky as being a legitimate leader.
And going back to the Constitution, which precludes any joining with NATO.
But I don't see, from the American side, any sort of preparations for that.
That is the first component that will bring a ceasefire into being.
I mean, the ceasefire is there essentially to have elections, in my view, more than anything else.
A ceasefire with no purpose will break down, as I say, within days, within weeks.
Because there is all people within a ceasefire who oppose it and want to destroy it.
So the only reason for the ceasefire must be to hold elections.
But I see no preparation for that, really.
President Putin himself said, what would happen during the ceasefire?
They would regroup, they would rearm, and they would be ready to attack.
Switching gears, your piece that came out this weekend.
Israel at war with itself is fascinating.
How broad, how deep, and along what lines are the divisions today in Israeli society?
Well, they're very bitter, and they're about half and half, which makes it very serious.
And the roots of it...
They talk about it, and they say openly, and Netanyahu says, his aim at the moment is, if you like, to dismantle the deep state in Israel.
Well, to outsiders, people think, what is he talking about?
So what really is at issue here is the sense that we have two opposing sides, if you like, who are struggling.
For control of the state.
On one side, if you like, is Netanyahu and his cabinet.
And that reflects two things very powerfully.
One was a demographic change that took place at the last election.
A cultural, ethnic change.
This was that for the first time the Mizrahi, that is the Jews of North Africa, And the Middle East and their allies in the national religious front took part.
And they took part.
And why I call it an ethnic cultural is that they have a very different view of what Judaism is.
They don't regard the liberal, if you like, European Jews in Israel as being sufficiently Jewish.
I mean, that's their perception.
They regard them as compromisers, compromisers with the West, compromisers with the Palestinians.
The Mizrahi have always been quite hardliners.
They were in the Irgun, which was the sort of military movement founded by Begin in 1949, which was involved in tearing Palestinians from the ground.
And then they became part of Likud.
And then on the other hand, you have, if you like, the European elites, the European Jews that came to Israel and who've been the majority and who've controlled the main institutions of the state for 20 years or more.
And this big change that took place at the last election has sort of precipitated this.
Internal war.
And it's also an ideological war, because the old Labour Party, which was in power for years until the death of Rabin, essentially, had a security concept, which was simply that Israel could not permanently control the region,
stop all efforts against it.
Deterrence, simple deterrence.
But also, the dilemma for them was they couldn't actually, Israel didn't have the economic forces, didn't have the ability to mount a big army, if you like, a large enough army to control everything.
So they would have to rely on good intelligence and reservists.
And of course, all that broke down on the 7th of October.
The intelligence and the fact that they didn't have a big enough army, essentially.
And so the other side of this ideological divide, as opposed to the ethnic-cultural one, is that the right and Ben-Gavir and Smotrich are saying very clearly, this doesn't work.
The aim of having deterrence, it failed.
And the answer is because look what Hamas did on the 7th of October.
It's failed.
The only solution, therefore, is the expulsion, voluntary or compulsory, of all the Palestinians from greater Israel.
And this has to be done.
And one of the reasons this is so explosive at the moment is at Smotrich, I remember...
Listening to him, giving a talk, I think, to the Likud at that time.
And he said, look, this is the plan, how we are going to remove the Palestinians and extend and create greater Israel.
But we need an emergency.
We need a big war to bring this about.
That's the only way we can really get this to take place.
And so when we hear the talk, Netanyahu said, I'm not going to allow the deep state to take over.
What we're talking about has been a slow coup d'etat.
This is what the Israelis themselves talk about inside Israel, that the Supreme Court took to itself some years ago the powers.
If you like, there's no constitution.
Unlike America, there's no constitution.
There are a series of basic laws and the Supreme Court chooses to interpret those, but not according to a constitution.
And then it has assumed to itself later judicial review of all government legislation.
So it can say whether it's acceptable in terms of basic laws or not.
In a sense, they were taking...
Complete control of the executive away from Parliament.
So all parliamentary legislation by the majority could be annulled by the Supreme Court on any number of reasons.
And this was what was said to be, if you like, from the point of view of the opposition, this was a deep state.
At that time, of the Supreme Court judges, 14 were Ashkenazi, one was Mizrahi.
So it was seen as, if you like, the European liberal secular state taking control and stopping the legislation coming from the people who had just won the election.
To implement their agenda.
And the other aspect was that the Supreme Court controlled the prosecutorial system and therefore could accuse people of crimes and send them to prison or leak the details to the press.
And this was again called the Israeli Deep State.
Now it's coming to a head.
And I don't know if it'll explode, Israel, but the Prime Minister Netanyahu has announced that on Wednesday he is going to dismiss the head of Shin Bet.
Shin Bet is like the FBI, the security service.
And Ronan Barr is the head of it, and he intends to sack Ronan Barr this Wednesday.
He has been told by the Attorney General, you can't do that without actually showing the legal basis that you intend to sack the head of Shin Bet and suggesting there's a conflict of interest because Shin Bet is investigating,
if you like, Netanyahu's government for what is called the Gatagate.
This is a criminal affair whereby Ghatta is alleged to have paid money through intermediary companies to three members of Netanyahu's private, if you like,
his political team.
Three members are alleged to have been paid off by Ghatta, the state of Ghatta.
This is being investigated by the Shin Bet, but Netanyahu says he's now going to sack The attorney general says, you can't do that.
And she and the minister, the justice minister says, no, no, to the attorney general.
Actually, the law says quite clearly the head of Shimbeth is at the disposition of the government that can be sacked at any time by the government.
You don't know the law.
And now it's being proposed that the attorney general be sacked.
And this has brought Israel to the crux.
What happens if Netanyahu goes ahead and sacks the head of the security service?
The Attorney General complains and disagrees with it, and it ends up at the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court says to the Prime Minister, no, you can't do this.
It's not allowed.
We won't accept this.
And he just goes ahead.
And does it.
And this is the crux of it.
The other aspect of it.
But it's the sense of which side is going to conquer and control.
Sounds like they're on the precipice of some sort of an irreconcilable clash.
I mean, how do you reconcile?
The old world, religious Old Testament, Israel is only for the Jewish people with a modern, secular, equal rights believing democracy.
You can't really reconcile those two inside the borders of the same state.
No. And really, that's the only way, and that's the only way they see it.
That's why Smotrich says, you know, to actually complete our project and take control of the institutional structure of Israel, we need either an emergency or a big war.
And, you know, this is my point in writing the piece, was to say, I don't know how much this is understood in Washington.
You'd be a better judge than me on that.
These intricacies and the sort of the, also the eschatological part of it, to a very transactional administration in Washington who believes in sort of utilitarian pressures.
I don't know if the president understands the Middle Eastern mind or if the Middle Eastern mind understands the president.
I mean, when Donald Trump says, do as I say or there will be hell to pay, to me, that is almost an incentive in the Middle Eastern mind to do whatever they want, to do the opposite of what he is commanding them not to do.
Am I right?
Exactly. Because, you know, the people on the right, I mean, Ben Givier and Smotrich are plain about it.
When they talk about the big war, they're talking about Armageddon.
And so when Netanyahu says, you know, I'll let hell loose on you, I mean, their answer is bring it on.
Bring it on.
That's exactly what we want and we can complete the project.
So we do have a sort of...
Nascent civil war taking place.
And I call it the Kingdom of Judea, which is the settlers and all the element of the right, which is powerful and has its own military, has its own police, if you like.
And on the other side, the conventional forces of the European secular liberal elites who have the forces of the Law and Order Security Council.
They have...
The old IDF, the old military establishment, and they have usually most of the press on their side.
So these are the two forces I think are coming and going to likely clash.
And it means that Trump's tools of threat and trying to create the conditions for a negotiation I mean, with eschatological of people who are looking forward to redemption and to Armageddon taking place as a means to bring their project,
to bring, you know, because it's a completely different epistemological basis of thinking from Trump's.
It is, you know, this is revelation.
And we are obliged in the case of revelation to obey and to...
Abide by God's commandments.
That's it.
There's no negotiation about this.
This is revelation.
It's not a matter for discussion.
Are you of the view that Donald Trump is sick and tired of Bibi Netanyahu, and that's why he has dispatched Mr. Witkoff and others to negotiate directly with Hamas?
And if you are of that view, how does that play out in Israel?
Well, Israel went mad when it discovered that.
And there's an article that's been written.
It's hidden behind a...
You'll have to be a subscriber to read it properly.
But essentially, it seems it was discovered by their intercept, the equivalent of NASA, the intercept committee, 8200.
Our organization picked up somehow that this was happening, that the Americans were talking with Hamas directly.
And they were furious with that.
And they were furious that it was to bring back the American hostages.
So they deliberately leaked it.
And as the article describes it, immediately...
I mean, Washington was astonished that, you know, they were being attacked on all fronts about the envoy who had met with Hamas.
And they've managed to dismiss him.
So it was deliberately sabotaged by Netanyahu and his group.
And Netanyahu seems also, at the moment, determined to sabotage Whitcuffs.
Attempts at returning to the war in Gaza, to Witkoff's attempts to have the stage two of the ceasefire take place.
Because Netanyahu is determined to keep his government intact.
And to do that, and to keep Gevira and Smotrich and the right involved in it, he needs to say, we are going back to war against Gaza.
Even though it's a war that hasn't been successful, it has not achieved its ends, its objectives.
Hamas is still in power.
But nonetheless, that seems to be necessary to keep its intact and also necessary, when I go back to what I was saying about the objects of the emergency or Armageddon or a big war,
The whole of greater Israel to remove the Arab presence or expel those that will not leave voluntarily from that area.
You quote an Israeli schoolchild as saying, how can we condemn Hamas for killing innocent men, women, and children on October 7th when we have been doing the same?
Is that?
Attitude beginning to become pervasive amongst Israeli society?
I think it's discomforting.
It is more than discomforting.
It is creating, amongst some, amongst others, absolutely not.
But many people, it is raising the question, I mean, how do we go on in this way?
Is it really possible to continue on the basis that we assume that anyone that is not a Jew wants to kill Jews and therefore they are Amalek and we must destroy them?
Is this the future to replace the Ben-Gurion model of deterrence that we now have to become really a sort of a project, a killing machine project in order to preserve Israel?
How do we keep our values?
How to keep what Israel stands for in this context?
Is that really the basis on which the society can come?
Well, this is the issue that's tearing Israel apart, and why I'm saying it's coming to a point where the thing may explode, because there's no clear answer to those.
These are deep questions, and there's no easy answer to those questions about what the future of Israel is.
But this is coming to a head.
Going back to the old Ben-Gurion one, does that work?
No, most Israelis don't believe it worked.
That's why 70% of them believe that the Palestinians must be removed from Gaza, because they don't believe that Hamas can be deterred in Gaza.
So there's no real solution.
And this is why we are close to, if you like, internal conflict in Israel.
And at a time when the region is really, you know, dry tinder.
And can explode in many different places at this point.
I mean, we'll see what happens after the recent assaults in Yemen that took place over the weekend.
Auster Crook, thank you, my dear friend.
Thank you for allowing the conversation to go across the board from Ukraine to Gaza to internal Israeli politics.
All the best.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And coming up later today, a happy Monday for us.
At 10 o'clock, Ray McGovern at 1130, Larry Johnson.
At 2 o'clock on all of this, Scott Ritter.
And at 3 o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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