Proof There’s No Israeli Crime The USA Won’t Defend

A US State Department spokesperson has proven there is nothing Israel can do that will lead to condemnation from the United States. Matthew Miller was asked about shocking footage that shows Israel blowing up Gaza's al-Isra University. Now, according to the university's Facebook page, Israeli troops had been using the building as a military base for the past month. Now, blowing up universities which you already control doesn't look much like self-defense, but let's look at the answer from the State Department spokesperson. I don't know if you've seen the video. It's pretty widely available. I mean, it looks like a controlled demolition. It looks like what we do here in this country when we're taking down an old hotel or a stadium. And you have nothing to say? You have nothing to say about this? I mean, to do that kind of an explosion, you need to be in there. You have to put the explosives down, and it takes a lot of planning and preparation to do. And if there was a threat from this particular facility, they wouldn't have been able to do it. So, I have seen the video. I can tell you that it is something we are raising with the governor of Israel, as we do often do, when we see... Raising is what? When we see to ask questions and find out what the underlying situation is, as we often do when we see reports of this nature. But I'm not able to characterize the actual facts on the ground before hearing that. But you saw the video. I did see the video. I don't know. I don't know. It looks like a bridge being imploded. I don't know what was under that building. I don't know what was inside that building. It doesn't matter what was under the building, because they obviously got in there to put the explosives down to do it in a way that they did. Again, I'm glad you have factual certainty about it. I just don't. All I have is what I saw in the video. I just don't. I think you guys saw it too. We did see it, and I can say that we have raised it with the governor of Israel. And it's not troubling to you? We are always troubled by any degradation of civilian infrastructure in Gaza, but without knowing the actual underlying circumstances, I'm a little hesitant, I think for reasons that should be understandable, to pass definitive judgment on it from this podium. Now, this is one of those situations where definitive judgment really can be given from a podium. You don't need an investigation into this, right? As the reporter said, this was clearly a controlled demolition, which means Israel controlled the building. And so, there's no possibility that they could have been subject to a military threat. They blow up a university, clearly sort of a site of cultural value, a civilian piece of infrastructure. There's no military threat, and a controlled demolition, right? There's no ambiguity there. And it's also a bit rich for the US government to now say they won't comment on anything without having absolute certainty. Now, back in November, the world was appalled that Israel was putting Gaza's largest hospital under siege. Here's what Joe Biden had to say about that at the time. You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military, hidden under a hospital. And that's a fact. That's what's happened. That's a fact. That's what happened, said Joe Biden. You remember that after the Israelis took control of al-Shifa, they did, in fact, find no command center under the hospital. They did find a few tunnels, but pretty much every outlet around said, that is not sufficient evidence for a headquarters. There's a few tunnels, a few rusty Kalashnikovs. This is not the Hamas command center that the Israelis were talking about, and which Biden said he knew as a fact was there. Aaron, you know, how much trust has the American government lost by acting like this? By essentially, you know, it's taking the piss of everyone who is listening to their statements in those press conferences. For sure. And they're taking the piss out of the American electorate, the American public. There is nothing that Israel can do, seemingly, which will draw condemnation from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. President. Nothing. You know, we're so close to absurdity here, Michael. It's almost like, well, we don't know. Maybe there was asbestos down there, guys. Okay. Maybe it was a public health hazard. We don't know. Maybe there was a rat infestation or some cockroaches. We don't know. Who knows? Just basic common sense is being demonstrated by the gentleman asking the question. Well, they could get in there to put the explosives. You don't need to. Doesn't make any sense. Doesn't make any sense. Common sense is so rare at top level politics, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs. It just does not exist. You can go down the dog and duck and talk to half a dozen people and they will make more sense than the U.S. State Department. The people running the world's most powerful military. It doesn't make any sense. We have to have a longer conversation. We can talk about this to various people on downstreams and, you know, in podcast series and whatnot. But the United States relationship to Israel in terms of foreign policy choices is unique. And it's uniquely bad for the U.S. in many ways. We could talk about, okay, well, it's an outpost for U.S. empire in a difficult neighborhood, et cetera, et cetera, which is true, particularly after the fall of the shah in 1979. Israel was very much its last, you know, Saudi is a client state or was a client state, but Israel has a different kind of relationship to the U.S. That's fair. But as you've highlighted repeatedly on the show, Michael, the U.S. wants to go to other parts of the world and it keeps being drawn back in because Israel wants this chaos in the region because it suits their national interests. Fine. In a way you understand that. I don't sympathize with that. I don't agree with it, but I can totally get my head into the mind of, I can totally put myself in the shoes or put myself in the mind of, you know, an Israeli ultranationalist conservative. Um, once basically Palestinians out of the West Bank, once Palestinians out of Gaza, I can understand, I can understand it's horrific, but I can understand it. I don't understand what the U.S. gets from this bizarre relationship to Israel, where at a rate of knots, it is losing any political capital with the majority of the global population and a majority of the world's countries, the global South. Right. Um, okay. So some countries in Europe don't know to sit and they cheer it on. By the way, that's not the case. Basically just Britain and like the Netherlands and Germany at this point. Um, if we were paying attention with regards to the Red Sea, Michael, of course, um, the French, the Spanish, the Italians weren't on board with that. The Saudis weren't on board with that. And that's before you talk about, you know, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, et cetera. So in a 21st century, multipolar world, you know, this is a very strange calculation by the U.S. They look ridiculous. They're losing any credibility they ever had. And of course, for decades, people have said this rhetoric about human rights, rule of law, you know, global based international rules system. Uh, obviously people didn't really believe it entirely. It wasn't evenly distributed at the very least. Uh, but now it's just, it's a joke. It is a joke. And one of the few assets the U.S. has over somewhere like China or Russia is they can say, okay, we're not perfect, but as a global policeman trying to uphold certain rules, we're better than the alternative. I mean, are you, I don't know. If I'm somebody in West Asia, in the Middle East, I look at China. I think, I don't see how they could be worse than you guys. I don't see how they could be more unfair. It's quite clear to see why the existence of Israel in the Middle East is helpful for the United States. It's helpful to have a country, which is, you know, it's constitutionally will always be an ally of the United States because it's totally dependent and reliant on the, on the United States. So it's, it's not like, you know, Saudi Arabia is an ally of the United States, but you can sort of imagine a scenario where it sort of switches allegiance. You can't imagine that with Israel. So I can see why it's helpful for them to have that state there, but why let it get away with plans for a greater Israel that, that to me doesn't seem to serve any purpose for the U.S. So, so why not have this sort of client state, but actually use your influence to make it behave a bit more, you know, what's not right. I mean, they're behaving rationally of what you want is a greater Israel, but to why enable them to act in a way, which is constantly creating new conflicts in the Middle East when, as you say, and they want to pivot to different parts of the world. So yes, you know, when it comes to all these questions of the Israel lobby, I don't think it's because of the Israel lobby that the United States supports Israel, but I do wonder if it's the Israel lobby that means that the United States supports Israel, whatever they do. And it doesn't actually apply any real pressure on Israel to change its ways, which I think would serve the American national interest a bit better. Moving on, the U.S. might be content to enable Israel to get away with murder. Many countries in the global South are less keen though. As you'll know, the International Court of Justice is currently assessing the initial part of South Africa's case that Israel is guilty of genocide. So they'll be discussing at the moment whether to put out sort of a preliminary ruling that Israel has to change its behavior. Now Mexico and Chile have referred both Israel and Hamas to the International Criminal Court over potential war crimes. Now unlike the International Court of Justice, Israel is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize its jurisdiction. So they do argue the ICC has nothing to do with what's going on here because we haven't signed up to it. However, Palestine has been a member of the court since 2015 and the ICC prosecutor says the court does have jurisdiction over crimes committed in Israel and occupied Palestine. We'll be coming back to this story as we will be coming back to the case at the International Court of Justice.