of hi everyone, judge andrew napolitano here for judging freedom. today is friday, november 3rd, 2023. professor john mirshemer of the university of chicago. joins us now, professor, always a pleasure, thank you very much for making time for us today, um, given the well-known and understood closeness of the united states to israel, what leverage, if any does the us have? example, as we speak, literally as we speak, the secretary of state of the united states is in israel.

trying to ask the israelis to engage in a pause, i guess eupumism for a temporary ceasefire while humanitarian aid comes in and apparently is not having any success, what leverage does he have? he has remarkably little leverage, the fact is that the united states and israel are joined at the hip, there are no two countries in recorded history that have a closer relationship than the united states and israel, and when this crisis broke out on october 7th, the biden administration made it very clear from the get go that we would give uh israel whatever aid it needed and that meant both weapons and money and that we would support israel to the help and we have done that and once you take into account that that tight relationship and just how committed we already. are uh to this

war, it's very difficult for us to back off and then to begin to put pressure on israel to do x or y or z. excuse me, i mean, there's no question that blincan can go to the middle east and he can try to put pressure on israel, but the israelis can tell him no, and then what is he going to do, and if he decides that he's going to get tough, which he isn't going to do, american domestic politics, power the israel lobby here would kick in and make it very difficult for the biden administration to put any meaningful pressure on israel to the arab world and to much of the world, the israeli military response to the horrific attack on october 7th is entirely out of proportion uh and it has caused uh the deaths of thousands and thousands of civilians, given the closeness

of israel and the united states, as you've just articulated at professor, does this cause some blame to be placed on the us in the minds of those condem the excesses of the idf? absolutely, and in fact you can find evidence of people around the world saying that the americans are more responsible for what's going on than the israelis, more responsible, well some people. can understand why the israels, given what happened to them on october 7th, have in a sense uh escalated this war in truly significant ways, but the americans were not attacked, and you would expect the americans, especially given that they claim the moral high ground, and they claim that they believe in the the laws of war more uh to try to uh moderate what the

israelis are doing, that's what you would expect, but instead the americans have jumped into this conflict with the israelis and we're supporting the israelis down the line, so i think there are people who think that we're more of fault than the israelis, again you can sort of understand why the israelis uh have spun out of control here, it's similar what happened to us after 9:11, we were hit on 9:11 and almost everybody now agrees that we over-reacted, one could argue that the israelis are over-reacting, for sure, and i'm not justifying what they're doing in terms of killing all these civilians for one second, but in a sense you can understand it, but the americans, they have of no excuse, do do you uh think that hamas intended to provoke this overreaction uh, in order to generate animosity towards israel and... in one state solution where hamas

controls all of what is now israel, but putting that aside, i'm not sure exactly what they expected. my sense is that this operation, hamas's operation, turned out to be more successful than they anticipated. i think that they put lot of effort into planning this operation and they understood that it would be much larger operation in terms of the scope. than passed attacks on israel, but i think they were surprised by just how successful they were, it overwhelming the israelis, capturing hostages and so forth and so on, and i think that they recognized they would provoke a response, but i don't think they expected it to reach this

point. how dangerous do you think it would become uh, if uh, the israelis asked for american troops on the ground to fight alongside the idea. in gaza? i don't think the israelis would ask for that. it may be the case that we'll put in special forces and there's some evidence now that we have special forces there who were advising the israelis, but actually putting american ground forces and large scale american ground forces, i i think is out of the question. i think that biden wouldn't do that. is is it dangerous, by which i mean of the israelis going to... lose more than they can politically tolerate for the idf to engage in urban warfare, remembering that two-thirds to three quarters of the idf are reservis, certainly not experienced, perhaps not even trained in urban warfare, well mean the

israelis face two problems, one is pressure on the home front to scale down these operations, and lot of that... has to do with the hostages, the families of the hostages are not happy about what's happening in gaza, because they live in fear that their loved ones will be killed, which is completely understandable. there's also the basic fact that as the israelis take casualties in gaza, there will be pressure from inside the society to pull out or to pull back so as to minimize those casualties, that's the domestic dimension, then there's the inner. national dimension, just seems to me watching world opinion on this one and all the pressure that's being brought to bear not simply on the israelis but on the americans uh to uh move towards some sort of ceasfire and then descalate uh given that it's just hard to see how this goes on uh you know for

more than few weeks if even that i could be wrong but it does look like the israelis are going to be forced uh to at least uh uh ameliorate their efforts if not uh move to a uh ceasfire. doesn't prime minister netanyahu have a personal vested interest in extending the war, knowing as he must that as soon as it's over the cries for him to leave office will be overwhelming and universal uh within israel, and he may even lose his liberty as well as his job because his corruption trial will resume. yeah, i think there's no question about that. "the best case scenario for him is to continue the war and actually win to defeat hamas and get some sort of political arrangement in gaza uh that uh is suitable from israel's point of view. i think the likelihood of that happening is uh, is

zero, but uh, he does have abested interest in pursuing that, and if all of sudden there is a ceasefire, that in effect means that hamas is won.". because the israelis have not beaten hamas and that would be uh extremely damaging to netanyahu who has already damaged goods as you pointed out. well, but but hamas is an idea, can the israelis really kill an idea? no, i mean, the fact is that as long as you have an occupation uh, and you are in effect suffocating the palestinians, whether it's in the west. bank or it's in gaza, they're going to rebell, i mean a lot of people think that what happened on october 7th is an anomaly, you know, this is the first time you had major uprising by the palestinians, but this is not the case, you had the first interfada in 1987, you had the

second intada in 2001, and uh, no matter what happens to hamas, you're going to have organizations that come along uh, and the... going to rebel against the israelis because they hate the occupation and they want, they want to resist it, and they want some form of political autonomy. some members of prime minister uh netanyahu's cabinet have said horrific things, racist uh is is almost a charitable description of it about the palestinians, does prime minister netanjahu, if you know, does the lakuud party, if you can derive it from their public words, believe that all men are created equal, uh, look, the fact is, inside greater israel, and greater israel uh includes the gaza strip and

the west bank, you have about 7.3 million palestinians and 7.3 million jews and in a country with that kind of demographic distribution, there is simply no way you can have equal rights for the palestinians and the israeli jews, because you would... eventually end up with a palestinian state and there would be no more jewish state, so there's no room for equal rights, and that means that you end up with a brutal occupation, and when you have a brutal occupation, what you end up doing is dehumanizing the victims, and there's a very powerful tendency inside of israel, and this is certainly not true among all israelis, but among israelis on the right, especially to dehumanize the palestinians and dehumanizing the palestinians is necessary for lots of

people, because it provides rational for the occupation, for keeping the palestinians down. so i think given the present situation in israel, talking about equal rights or treating people equally, whether they're jewish or whether they're palestinian, has no place in the discourse, want to take. you back to uh 1948 at the founding of the state of israel uh with the uh support and encouragement of the president of the united states at the time, here he is, we had several other people in the country, even among the jews, the z particularly who were against anything that is to be done if they couldn't have the whole of palestine and everything handed to them a silver plate so they wouldn't have to do anything, it couldn't be done, we had to take it in small... loses, you can't move uh five or six million people out of a country and fill it

up with five or six million more and expect both set something to be pleased. 49, but don't think that decision to recognize israel is easy one. i had to make a compromise with the arabs and divide palestine. the jews wanted to chase all the arabs into the tigris and euprates river and the arabs want to chase all the jews into the red sea, and i was trying what i was trying. to do is to find a homeland for the jews and still be just with the arabs. i guess he couldn't have imagined that 75 years later literally this would still be going on and and would reach the the depths of bloodshed and horror that it has. well, i think if you think about the uh hamas israel conflict today, what truman says uh rings. true, it's quite clear that lots of israelis would like ethnically cleanse uh the palestinians in gaza and in

the west bank, so that the demographic balance inside of greater israel favored uh the jews over the palestinians, so i think basically truman understood at the time, what the problem was, and talk to me about nato and uh western. europe, what do they expect the united states to do in order to bring about some resolution uh of this? i don't think they have any expectations, i think all these people understand that there is no resolution to this problem. i believe that tony blincon and joe biden understand that as well, we're in a situation where there just is no solution. is is there? um an angle here for uh vladimir putin or president g to uh

show some leadership? oh, absolutely. this is ma from heaven for the two of those guys. first of all, they have been making hey out the argument that the united states, which was or has been principly responsible for trying to settle this conflict between the palestinians and the israelis has failed. we failed, and they've been pointing that. out and they argue that if they had been more involved in the process or the international community had been more involved, we would have been successful at solving this, and then further more, they're arguing that now that this massive conflict has broken out, the united states is mismanaging it, because instead of trying to settle the conflict, to calm the israelis down and try and work out some sort of modus for vendi, we're just fueling the flames and making a bad situation worse, and that's an argument that resonates with people all over the planet, it resonates with people in the united states as well, and

by the way, that includes lot of american jews, right who are very... interested in settling this conflict once and for all, because this is nightmare scenario for them as well. you have argued, as you always do, compellingly and articulately, that 30 years ago there was one great power in the world, the united states and now there are three, there are a variety of reasons just to how that happened, you understand them better uh than anybody uh i know, the other two of course are uh russia and china. um, is the world going to look to russia and china to provide the leadership where the us has failed? well, to talk about the world is difficult, it's just too broad a concept, there's no question that the west europeans and east europeans will continue to look for the united look to the united states for leadership, because they love nato, because

nato is security blanket for them, so we'll be fine there, but once you get out of western. europe or the west, more generally, what you discover is that there's a great deal of animosity towards the united states, they think that we're hypocritical in the extreme, and uh, there's much more sympathy for the russian position and for the chinese position, and that's why the russians and the chinese are making hey in what we call the global south at ar expence, this used to be called the iron wall. this is a concept associated with the famous zionist zivia batinski, and the idea was you could use the iron wall or the male fist to beat the palestinians into submission, and mowing the lawn is very similar to that, but the fact is it hasn't worked as we found out on october 7th, and as we were talking about few minutes

ago, the idea that you're going to defeat hamas once and for all, and then the israelis are going to live happily ever. after, that's not going to happen, there has, so is this, is this going to end diplomatically or is it going to end with a wider regional war? well, i don't believe, i hope i'm wrong, it's going to end diplomatically, i believe it's just going to go on and on, and what that means is that the potential for a wider war is always there, right? can i say one way or the other that you are going to get a wider war? no, i don't know, we just don't know. where this train is headed, but the potential for horizontal escalation is significant. does joe biden truly want two-state solution, does he understand the significance of the president of the united states calling for it? oh, i believe that he wants the two-state solution. i i think he he understands that that is uh, one way uh out of this mess, but

to get a two-state solution, joe biden would have to put significant pressure on israel, and he's incapable of doing that. joe biden has passionate attachment to israel. he has made that clear in on countless occasions. uh, he is deeply devoted to israel, and the idea that he's going to step back and begin to put serious, coersive pressure on the israelis, i think is unthinkable. professor are always a... pleasure, my dear friend, thank you, so much for your time and for your insight, i hope you can join us again towards the end of next week as well, my pleasure, judge, thank you, have a great weekend, you too, okay,

the us pushed one-sided mock of seasefire announced in northern gaza comes as a direct result of the failure of the israeli occupation army to achieve any significant battlefield accomplishments that could be used in negotiations. this suggests that the israeli regime may soon be forced to reconsider its objectives to align with the outcome of the battles on the ground. where they seem to send in their soldiers and they never return. nevertheless, netanyahu and his cabinet are still unwilling to agree to a ceasefire before achieving success that would alleviate the accountability. they expect to face at the end of the war in the aftermath the heroic al-aqsa flot operation and the failure of the grand operation in gaza, displacement or death this week on the medias

stream.

the headlines this hour israely forces storm ship for hospital the largest medical complex in gaza as the death tholl from the 40-day onslot reaches nearly 11,500 you need to quit. israel prime minister benjamin netanyahu is facing increasing calls to step down over his handling of the war against palestinians in gaza. and us president joe biden is coming under intense fire from his own administration floys over his unconditional support for israel's genocide in gaza.