Israel Spokesman: Defeating Hamas 'Unachievable.' Bibi: 'Send More Bombs!'
As the Israeli operation in Gaza continues to miss achieving its goals of eliminating Hamas, in-fighting inside the government is heating up. Recently an IDF spokesman said it was "unachievable" to defeat Hamas, as the IDF rushed to "clarify" his statement. Meanwhile Netanyahu BLASTED the US in a new video complaining that weapons were being withheld. Also today: US envoy assures Lebanon that US will back Israel in any war on its territory.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
All set and ready to go.
Let's do it.
We're going to talk a little bit about the Middle East.
They have a problem over there.
They've been fighting among themselves, and we're engaged.
Boy, we go off a long way to have a little war now and then.
And I can't remember.
We ought to someday put a list down for our viewers, the places where we aren't.
Yeah, yeah, where we aren't.
We have no troops, no influence, no CIA agents, and maybe they might want a vacation there or something.
But anyway, the war has been going on.
It was against our advice.
But there was a headline that caught our attention on anti-war that I thought was interesting.
And it says, Netanyahu's goal of eliminating Hamas is unachievable.
Does that mean they're coming home?
We're coming home.
We don't need to send these weapons because it doesn't seem like the leadership with Israel and other places or Ukraine, they seem to demand what they want, and they're unhappy, and they let you know.
And it seems to be so much arrogance in the system.
But anyway, that was announced today.
But I don't know, I don't think they have a hard time convincing us that it's unachievable.
Mainly because have they spelled out exactly what we're supposed to achieve?
What is the goal?
When is it going to be over?
When can we declare victory?
These kind of things just seem to, the purpose seems to serve the interest of perpetual war.
And then, you know, there's a lot of cost.
It does run up the budget.
The budget and people express, oh, even the military ought to be cut back.
You know, it's a major problem for us now.
But that never happened.
But it seems like the perpetual attitude of keeping these things going, it shouldn't surprise us because all the way back, you know, really to the 60s, even with Korea, it used to be that if we were at war, war meant victory, you know.
And so ever since World War II, World War II was a victory.
There's no doubt about that.
But after that, the whole attitude changed because our goals have changed.
And I think that's because we shifted to whatever we can do.
We have the printing presses.
We control the reserve currency.
We will maintain that and maintain our empire.
And it has nothing to do, really.
I don't believe it has anything to do with national security.
That's the excuse.
And that's how the people go along with it.
And that's how they raise this money and through the taxpayers.
And the taxpayers have not yet connected this wild foreign policy that we have with the biggest gripe they have right now is they can't afford their groceries.
And someday they have to realize there's a connection.
Yeah, well, the original article we saw was on anti-war.com, and they linked to an AP story about it.
And I think it's fairly big news because the IDF spokes, you can go ahead and put on that first clip.
Now, this is via U.S. News and World Report.
Rifts seem to appear between Israel's political and military leadership over the conduct of the Gaza War.
So there are splits and rifts constantly going right now in Israel.
And this first one that was a big one yesterday, if we put that next one on, this is Anti-War wrote it up, but I'm taking this from the AP piece.
The Israeli Army's chief spokesman on Wednesday appeared to question the stated goal of destroying the Hamas military group in Gaza.
in a rare public rift.
I wouldn't say it's that rare.
But Prime Minister Netanyahu has insisted Israel will pursue the fight against Hamas until its military and governing capabilities in the Palestinian territory are eliminated.
But with the war now in its ninth month, frustration has been mounting with no clear end or post-war plan in sight.
Now let's have a look at what he actually said.
Go to the next clip here, because this is the spokesman of your own military saying this.
Now the prime minister says, we will eliminate Hamas.
The military spokesman says, this is Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the military spokesman, said the business of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear, is simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public.
Hamas is an idea.
Hamas is a party.
It's rooted in the hearts of the people.
Whoever thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.
And there is the spokesman of the military literally saying that his own prime minister is wrong, is lying.
It's pretty interesting, but what he said about it being an idea kind of reminds us of the war on terror.
Right.
And they blame it generally, and then they can blame anything and everything according to what their needs are, you know, to stir up the problem.
And also, Hamas is closer to falling into the category of they're defending the homeland.
You know, they're defending the innocent people whose houses have been torn and burned down.
And of course, the big thing that has changed the sentiment has been the recent treatment, you know, in order, like the most recent one was freeing four prisoners and killing over 200 people.
It doesn't even come close to being proportional.
And that is why there's not only splits there.
I think this is a healthy split, you know, in some way, that at least the military is not just giving, bowing to Netanyahu.
But I still see comments, which I think is a challenge, and that is that Netanyahu leads this war to stay in office.
And I don't know, it seems like the reverse could be true.
Eventually, the war might be something that's going to get them out of office because maybe everybody over there is going to be sick and tired of the fighting, but they have to come around.
What they can't do, and you can understand it, how many people in this country would want to throw in the towel, even though we've had to do that too.
Say, we can't win.
We can't beat the Vietnamese.
They're too powerful.
We've got to get out of here.
People even today are unhappy with those who, the Hawks, they'd still be there if we allowed them.
Well, it reminds me of what he said of, remember what you were saying during the war on terror.
You can't declare war on an idea.
And this is basically what he's saying.
It makes sense.
Hamas is an idea.
You can't defeat an idea.
You've got to look at, I mean, he didn't say this, but he's certainly implying you've got to look at some of the antecedents.
You've got to look at some of the claims behind it.
You know, it's like when you said, well, they came over here because we were over there.
You know, we need some self-reflection.
And that's, again, it seems like that's what he's saying.
Yeah, that is a search for truth.
And sometimes the truth hurts.
And of course, if it's handled superficially, then the truth becomes something they accuse you of being anti-patriot, you're unpatriotic to the country.
And yet, that is a challenge that we all have, that if the government is out of step, the two patriots will stand up and say, look, this is too much.
We saw that transition in COVID, you know, in a sense that people did wake up there and had the challenge, and they had to do it with suffering.
And there's still some people, and not only did they still suffer, but there's a tremendous amount of casualties in that war.
You know, the war against COVID.
So it's something, and they're always playing games with the appearance of it, and that's why they need a media to pump up the people, because they're the ones who have to send the soldiers to die, and they're the ones who have to pay the bills.
And I would say they need it one step further.
They say, yeah, we don't pay that much income tax.
But once people wake up on all these wonderful things that people are getting that aren't so wonderful anymore, and it all translate into a difficulty in paying for your groceries, that's when there's going to be a greater awakening.
Yeah, making the connection is the challenge.
Well, excuse me, the Israeli government is increasingly in disarray.
And I'm just going to show one more clip, if you don't mind.
This is from the anti-war piece, Dr. Paul.
Sure.
If you put that next one up, there are big problems in Israel, and it's because they've been at war for months and months now without any success.
Go back one, please.
This is from anti-war.
This is not the only time Netanyahu's clashed with members of his military in recent days.
On Sunday, the IDF announced a limited pause to operations in a select area of Rafah during daylight hours to allow more aid to reach the Palestinians.
Netanyahu quickly denounced the move as unacceptable.
So he literally had to denounce his own military's move.
It seems like it's getting out of his hands.
Other divisions have emerged within the Israeli government.
Last week, former IDF General Benny Gantz withdrew from the war cabinet over Netanyahu's refusal to work out a hostage release agreement.
Gans's exit led Netanyahu to dissolve the war cabinet entirely.
So war cabinet dissolve.
To that, I would add little progress in nine months against military targets.
Some say that the Hamas militants are still at 80 to 90 percent capacity.
They haven't been killed.
Now, they've done a heck of a job killing all those civilians.
That's kind of easy.
You just drop a bunch of bombs on their houses.
But in terms of military targets, they haven't done that well.
And the other thing that's not spoken of very much, Dr. Paul, but it's very, very much alive in Israel, is that the IDF is taking massive casualties.
Dead and wounded are in the thousands.
And that's causing a lot of concern in Israel.
And not only, obviously, because of the deaths, but as we know, Dr. Paul, many of these soldiers being sent there are conscripts.
They're kids, 18 years old, being forced to do their service in the IDF.
And so if you're a parent and you've got a kid who's about ready to go off to college, well, I've got to do my duty to the IDF, and he gets blown off in a landmine or something, you're going to have a lot of very angry parents on your hand.
We didn't sign up for this.
So that's causing a lot of tensions in Israel itself.
And then you have world opinion, which is looking at 37,000 dead civilians in Gaza and saying this is terrible.
This is a genocide, and we don't want any part of it.
So they're increasingly isolated internationally.
So they've got big problems on their hands.
You know, the evidence there of both sides, the Israelis and the Palestinians, are losing troops, and that's a big issue.
Biden's Dilemma00:12:43
But I was thinking back when we were talking a minute ago about the distraction or dissent between the military and the executive.
And that reminded me of a very, very impressive or dramatic incident when I was in high school.
And that is when MacArthur decided not to do exactly what Truman wanted.
And boy, that was resolved quickly.
And of course, I remember that so clearly because we were led out of our classes and an assembly to just listen to the MacArthur speech on the House floor when he came back.
But that was a little bit different than what's going on now.
And not that that is a solution, but the solution is for both of them to quit fighting.
Give it up.
Well, the next topic is related.
They're all somewhat related today.
And that's that there was a big brouhaha.
And we'll watch it in a second.
But Netanyahu released a little under a one-minute video on Twitter X where he blasted the Biden administration.
If you go to that next clip, and in response, the Biden administration canceled a high-level meeting.
No, no, going to that White House scraps U.S.-Israel meeting.
So the high-ranking officials were in mid-air.
And the White House said, turn around, man, we don't want to meet you.
So White House scraps U.S.-Israel meeting after Netanyahu slams Washington.
The White House, this is Kyle Anzalone in anti-war.
The White House canceled a high-level meeting with Israeli officers after Prime Minister Netanyahu slammed the Biden administration for delaying arms transfers to Tel Aviv.
The Israeli leader said he needed the arms to finish the job in Gaza.
That's what he wanted to do.
And now we heard from his own military guy that you can't finish the job, but he wants those weapons to finish the job.
Why don't we get our earpieces handy?
This is about 40-some seconds.
First, put it up if you can, because I want to read.
Trita Parsi, who we've known, has spoken to your Thursday group.
If you can, put it up here.
So Trita put this up and said, breaking, as expected, Netanyahu inevitably knives Biden in the back.
Republicans will cite this video extensively to hurt Biden.
Biden set himself up for this.
He gave blind support to Netanyahu, despite knowing BB would betray him.
Biden only has himself to blame.
So that's Trita Parsi, it's responsible statecraft.
Let's listen to Netanyahu's own words in this recent video.
When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation.
I said I deeply appreciated the support the U.S. has given Israel from the beginning of the war.
But I also said something else.
I said it's inconceivable that in the past few months the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.
Israel, America's closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies.
Secretary Blinken assured me that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks.
I certainly hope that's the case.
It should be the case.
During World War II, Churchill told the United States, give us the tools, we'll do the job.
And I say, give us the tools and we'll finish the job a lot faster.
You know, as he was describing the enemy, he made the point you were making earlier that, you know, the attack on terrorism.
And he was talking about everybody has to join in because they're so bad.
But Netanyahu Yahoo, as I said, claimed the U.S. actions were inconceivable.
My thoughts were his reactions and his thoughts are inconceivable.
I mean, he's so arrogant.
You know, you give him that, you send all these weapons, which means sending the weapons is a mistake.
Yeah, and the money.
But they still do that.
But they also have to always get the spin on there to make it sound like we are the humanitarians working for peace and prosperity.
And they said democracy too, but I think the majority vote is mob ruled by all the special interests and they promote this kind of stuff.
But anyway, it's something that I think is very precise and very dangerous.
And this is a good point on where it's ending, where it's going.
How long have they been fighting that war now?
And finally, there's a little bit of dispute over this.
Well, they ought to have a cabinet meeting here in this country and say, well, why are we dealing with these people?
So no, I think the reaction was we had the promise that we will stand by if they have another war some other place.
Yeah, yeah, we'll get into that.
But I don't know if you noticed there was something very sneaky that Netanyahu, this classic Netanyahu, something very sneaky he inserted into that.
He said, we're your greatest ally.
We're fighting against Iran.
Well, what does that mean?
He's drawing us into this war.
We don't want to be fighting Iran.
We've said the administration's official policy.
We don't want war with Iran.
So he's saying, hey, we're fighting Iran.
We're fighting our mutual enemies.
Give us more.
But here's the funny part.
So after he did this, and someone called, a few people called it, basically this is an ad for Trump because Trump is seen as being more loyal to Israel.
But this is from anti-war.
This is after they posted it.
The U.S. reaction is priceless.
If you can put that next clip up, after the video was posted to X, go to the next one, actually.
So after the video was posted to X, U.S. officials said they were unaware of what arms shipments he was referring to.
They had no idea what he's talking about.
And here's a quote from Blinken.
We, as you know, are continuing to review one shipment that President Biden talked about with regard to 2,000-pound bombs because of our concerns about their use in densely populated area like Rafah.
But everything else is moving normally as it normally would move.
And again, with the perspective of making sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against this multiplicity of challenges.
So basically, Netanyahu makes this video saying, why are you refusing to send us weapons?
And Blinken says, what are you talking about?
We've given you everything you want.
This isn't very nice of you.
Their goal is confusion.
They're creating the confusion.
But they hide the truth and they give the Borca and they hide the confusion.
But that's just their way of trying to maintain public support.
But here we are, they're running out of troops, and here we are.
We're not even directly sending troops into these wars.
But our young people in America say, maybe enough is enough, and maybe we're not going to roll over like we did in Vietnam and so many other places, even the Middle East wars going on.
Maybe the American people are waking up because they're resisting, especially when they're talking about a draft.
And, you know, in a way, it was an indirect benefit by the Democrats saying, well, you've got to draft women.
We believe in democracy and equality.
But that caught attention.
And anything that will catch attention on the wickedness of some of the things we do in our foreign policy, I think, is beneficial.
Yeah, absolutely.
It does wake people up.
Well, as we do with the U.S. foreign policy, when trouble comes, escalate.
That's what we're doing in Ukraine.
That's what we do in Ukraine and elsewhere.
So this is basically what's happening now.
Let's put it in our next story.
U.S. tells Lebanon it will support Israeli attacks on Hezbollah.
So they sent this guy, Amos Hochstein.
He's a deputy assistant to the president, high-ranking official in the administration.
And he goes over to Lebanon and says, hey, I'm going to let you guys know, if this thing escalates and Hezbollah goes to war with Israel, we are going to be on the side of Israel.
Now, I don't know if he had talked to Congress about that, but essentially what Hochstein has done is to put us on the hook to go to war with Lebanon.
And they have a few allies that might be involved in the war, too, that we better be ready for.
And I think the distribution and even our border protections, I think there's something to these concerns people are expressing, you know, open borders and just who does come in.
We do know that there are some very bad people coming in, but what if there are some very bad people here in dealing with foreign policy?
We sent people in other countries.
We sent CIA agents and everything around the world.
And sometimes there's assassination, but of course we wouldn't participate in one of those or a coup.
We wouldn't do that.
And I hope people realize I'm a bit facetious on that.
And so the same thing could happen, happen here as well.
Yeah.
Well, this Hoxteen is interesting because he goes over to Lebanon.
And you got to wonder, like, who's he speaking for here?
Let's go to the next clip.
This is still from anti-war.
As reported by the Middle East Eye, the message was conveyed during a meeting with the Lebanese prime minister.
So Hoxteen bluntly warned that the U.S. planned to support an Israeli attack should the two sides fail to de-escalate tension.
So without Congress, he's saying that there is going to be a war.
And go to the next one.
This is interesting.
It's even more interesting.
Hawkstein also stated that the Israeli Defense Forces would shift full focus to Israel's northern border during the Gaza pause.
So here's what he told Lebanon.
So is he speaking for the U.S. government?
Is he speaking for the Israeli government?
It's a real question mark here, Dr. Paul.
And in fact, Jim Cardin, who's written a lot, he's written for Responsible Statecraft, because I remembered him writing about this guy, Hoxteen.
I wanted to go back and look.
He wrote something in November of 23 in anti-war.com.
If you can put that on, the article is called Tel Aviv's Man in Washington.
And Cardin says, in the city of Washington, foreign interests, dual citizens, and intersecting and at times conflicting loyalties, sometimes the most egregious examples are hiding in plain sight.
Now go to the next one.
He's talking about Hoxteen's curious background.
So they made him senior advisor for consultations with Israeli officials.
And he said it's a very curious choice because if you go to the next one, it makes you wonder about the decision to choose him.
The choice of Hoxteen for such a delicate diplomatic task ought to have raised eyebrows in Washington, not least because of his unusual background.
Born and raised in Jerusalem, Hoxteen is an Israeli U.S. national who served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the early 1990s.
After service in the IDF, he was employed briefly at a Tel Aviv PR agency before moving to Washington and commencing his ascent to the highest reaches of the U.S. government, beginning with staff positions for Congressman Sam Gadenson and then staff director of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Very unusual to me, and I'm not an expert.
That almost looks like kind of a spy portfolio.
Oh, I'll tell you.
And you asked the question, who are they speaking for?
You know, us, them, or what?
And I think there's confusion, too, on purpose of the principle of sovereignty.
And, you know, more Americans are waking up to this.
You know, maybe if we don't have borders, we don't have sovereignty.
Well, in foreign policy, this can happen, too, because we're in international organization and they are the rule of the land.
So if NATO says something, all of a sudden, even though we have basically control over the money on that, but we have to pretend.
And so they can get together and they have a totally different approach.
That is why, Daniel, I think it's so exciting why we have the Ron Paul Institute, because I think with your talents, we can put this message out here.
Natural Law and Truth Seeking00:04:52
And it's so important because people don't know this, and they've been able to do it.
If you take up our people, I don't like it when people say, oh, you don't care about your country, you're unpatriotic, and they go on and on.
You don't like the military.
At the same time, it's really necessary for people to be more objective to it.
And I think the answer is the theme that I have on what our goals should be.
Nobody is an absolutist in knowing what the truth is, but there's a good position to have that all of our personal goals in international and personal relationship ought to be just to seek the truth and do our very best to find out what it is.
But now, I don't think there's that much effort.
This is always messing the truth up.
Well, we'll have an investigation.
We'll have a commission.
And that always is the biggest joke in the world.
That's how they hide the truth.
Well, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, if you think we're ready by, again, reminding everyone.
Well, two things.
First of all, I see you have a nice live audience, but we don't have a lot of likes.
It's not that hard to just hit like.
We appreciate it so much.
It doesn't cost you a penny and it helps our show.
So please hit like.
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And the other is if you put, if you skip that next one and go to Liberty platform, don't forget to get your tickets.
Well, you can still get early bird tickets to the Liberty platform.
And I'm going to, Dr. Paul, announce our first speaker.
And I'm very happy we finalized this yesterday, I think it was.
But, you know, we have spent a lot of time talking about lawfare on this show, the Trump trial, the intent to jail the opposition, how it's used in the U.S., how the Bill of Rights is being destroyed.
Well, I'm very, very happy to announce that our good friend and RPI board member, Judge Andrew Napolitano, will give a speech at our conference on August 31st.
He's going to be there in person to talk about the Bill of Rights, to talk about natural law, to talk about what's happening to our justice system.
I can hardly think of anyone better Who could join us for that to explain this to us?
So, if you want to see the judge in person and take advantage of his great insights, get your tickets now while they're at a discount.
I'll put a link after the show.
And along with that, students put on the next clip: students apply to the Ron Paul Scholars Seminar because, and here's the big news: not only will the judge give a talk at our conference, Judge Napolitano is going to give the keynote luncheon address to the 2024 Ron Paul Scholars Seminar.
Imagine sitting in a small seminar with a small handful of your fellow students, fellow intellectuals, and having a masterclass delivered by Judge Napolitano.
I couldn't imagine a more interesting way to spend my afternoon, and I look forward to hearing it as well.
I will put in a link if you're an upper division undergrad or grad student to apply for this terrific program.
You won't regret it.
There are scholarships, you probably will not be out of pocket at all, and you'll have a great time and learn a lot.
So, very good, Dr. Paul.
No, this should be exciting.
And one reason why I admire Napolitano is that he speaks for and probably has influenced me into my effort to continue to understand, and that is natural law.
And natural law, you have to know that you're seeking the truth, and you have to know and understand how this can be an alternative to the shortcomings of government.
You know, governments are going to be around for a long time, and some are worse than others.
But maintaining an understanding of natural law and seeking the truth and taking the good parts about our history and our Constitution, I think is very beneficial.
And Judge Napolitano has done that, so I'm really glad he's going to come to our conference.
And I'm also happy to know that there'll be a few listeners out there right now that may end up at our conference, and that will be good too.
So, we're looking forward to seeing many of our friends there because I'm a very selfish person because I go because I learn things from the people who come, and that to me is very beneficial.
And I think sharing efforts to seek the natural law and the truth is very important because the other alternative is deciding, well, there is no truth, so we make it up.
The party will decide what to do.
That system is not very good, and that is un-American.
So, I hope we see a lot of you at our conference.
And I want to thank our entire audience today for tuning in.