War: Scott Ritter On What's Ahead In Palestine

I’ve done a transcript of the last seven minutes of a Youtube featuring Scott Ritter. The entire video is about 70 minutes long and is riveting in its entirety. However, a question toward the end led Ritter to make some very specific prognostications—which I find compelling. See what you think. He doesn’t hold back.

Ritter expresses what struck me about the obviously limited ground probe the other night, for one thing. Another thing that he discusses is his double conviction that

1. The Israeli military was defeated by Hamas—that is borne out by the heavy Israeli military and police casualties. Hamas attacked with strictly limited goals. It achieved those goals. To that extent Israel was defeated.

2. The majority of civilian casualties were inflicted by the IDF. Ritter believes, based on eyewitness testimony, that this occurred as a result of lack of discipline. There is also an argument that this may have happened with the intent of preventing Hamas taking even more hostages.

Finally, he expresses the dynamics of the situation that militate strongly against a large scale ground invasion—the necessity of being prepared against a Hezbollah attack. That points to a longer, drawn out, war that works against Israel.

Monumental Oversight: Unveiling a Colossal Miscalculation

[1:02]

Q: It seems that Israelis are serious to go to attack on the ground in the Gaza Strip. If they're going in, do you see any threat from the north that comes from Hezbollah?

Well, first of all we have to understand that Israel has mobilized 360,000 reservist. 300,000 of them are engaged on the Gaza front. They're not engaged in combat, but they're there. Israel knows that if Hezbollah comes in the majority of those troops will have to be diverted up north to deal with Hezbollah. So, right off the bat Israel is not going to do anything that decisively commits 300,000 troops to Gaza, because that's committing suicide. That [would mean], now they [wouldn't be able to] respond to a Hezbollah incursion. The last thing Israel wants at this point in time is a Hezbollah incursion. You have an American military delegation led by a Marine general, commander of Marine Special Operations forces, who is advising them about the difficulties of urban Warfare and cautioning them not to initiate conflict [if] they don't have a guaranteed outcome. They don't want Israel to repeat the mistake of the Germans in the Barrikady factory in Stalingrad, where they sent troops in only to have them defeated and didn't have a follow-on plan.

Israel doesn't have large numbers of specially trained troops to carry out urban Warfare. Israel doesn't have the the required troops that are capable of dealing with the Hamas tunnels. Remember, Israel was humiliated on October 7th. Do not believe that in a span of two weeks Israel has suddenly rediscovered The Art of War and they are now the most competent people on the face of the earth. The same people who failed Israel on October 7th are still in charge today. The same military that was defeated by Hamas is the military that exists today. There's no difference between them. Israel will not, I believe, get involved in large scale ground combat in Gaza--because they can't do it. They don't have the ability to do it, and if they did do that they would open up a northern front against Hezbollah that would lead to the strategic defeat of Israel.

So I think what Israel is going to be doing is carrying out a series of raids similar to the one they carried out last night. A battalion sized force going in on limited duration with limited objectives. And these raids are primarily done for domestic political consumption, meaning, to show the Israeli people that something is being done. But what happened last night? Nothing. Nothing happened last night. Israel went in, threw up some dust, threw around some stones, hit a couple spots, and then left. Hamas wasn't impacted by that--at all. Israel will repeat this, repeat this, repeat this--and as they repeat they'll be slowly probing in more and more until eventually they're going to get to where Hamas wants them, and then there's going to be a shutting the door, lots of casualties, Israel withdraws. And they will continue this process until which time international outrage over the continued bombardment of the innocent Palestinian civilians of Gaza leads to a rupture in international opinion about Israel and Israel will be compelled to cease its operations and seek a ceasefire. But this time the ceasefire will be because Israel lost. Israel was defeated.

Again I come back to my formula. Right now, where Israel is perceived as being in the driver's seat, perceived to being the strength, Israel can win this war today by calling the ceasefire, bringing the humanitarian gear and demanding face-to-face negotiations with Hamas. But if Israel initiates a ground incursion and fails to accomplish its mission, it will be in a much weaker position at that point than they currently are right now. Right now is as strong as Israel is ever going to be on this issue.

Q: Right now we're witnessing some sort of unity in Israel, in the political elite of Israel. They are all supporting the Netanyahu Administration, but in the aftermath of this conflict how do you see the future of Netanhayu?

First of all, there is no unity in Israel right now. It's artificial. It's fake. Israel's lying to itself and to the world, because Israel doesn't want the truth to come out about what happened on October 7th--the absolute failure, political failure, military failure. They all definitely don't want to talk about October 8th--that's the day that they really don't want to talk about, because that's the day that this undisciplined mob of Israeli Defense Force poured back into these settlements and slaughtered the settlers that were there. I guarantee you that if they release the autopsies of all the bodies they've picked up you will find that the majority of them, or even more than the majority, were killed by 5.56 millimeter rounds fired by Israel. There's enough eyewitness testimony that supports this and Israel doesn't want to talk about this.

Before October 7th Benjamin Netanyahu was in a very precarious situation. He's a corrupt man charged with corruption, and if he was ever taken before a court of relevant jurisdiction he would be found guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison. That's where he belongs. Many Israelis agree with this. But what Netanyahu has done is use this far right-wing Zionist coalition that he's built to rewrite Israeli Basic Law, so any notion of separate but equal branches of government has been eliminated, because the Israeli Judiciary is now controlled by the Israeli legislature that can remove a judge at any time through majority vote. So if a judge ever was to hear a case against Benjamin Netanyahu that judge would no longer be the judge. And the judges would know that if you want to be a judge you won't hear a case about Benjamin Netanyahu. That's the way it is. Hundreds of thousands, millions, of Israelis said, 'No, we refuse this.' They were in the streets, they were demonstrating. Israel was on the verge of civil war. That's not me exaggerating, it's not hyperbole, that was a statement of the Israeli president, Herzog, who said, 'We are on the verge of war,’ and it's not a theoretical civil war. We're talking about people fighting against each other where Likud and Labor come together in combat, in Israel, a civil war. That's where they were.

None of those problems have gone away. Those issues still exist, but what's happening now is that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is afraid of the consequences of its actions, so it's created a Unity government, bringing in Benny Gantz. But Benny Gantz is to blame. Nobody has clean hands here, they're all dirty! And they all know that if the Israeli public was ever fully informed about just how bad things were, that the government had fallen asleep on the job, that the military's not very good, heads would roll. And so that's what's happening, There is no future for Benjamin Netanyahu when this is done. He is done. That's just a statement of fact. He cannot stay on as the prime minister of Israel. He is a failure. He failed. All of his cabinet has to go. All the generals who were in charge have to go. I don't know how far down the chain of command you want to go, but there needs to be a complete purging of political and military leadership because of the failure that manifested itself on October 7th.

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