214. Israel in court, attacks on American soldiers, and the problem with polling

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0:20Welcome to The Restless Politics with me, Astakamble and with me, Rory Stewart. And we're recording on Monday the news dominated by the death of three American soldiers killed in a drone attack. That's American base. Either in Jordan or in Syria, depending which reports you believe. But I think the Americans are saying Jordan. And then I think we should talk at some length on the pretty remarkable ruling by the International Court of Justice on South Africa's claim of the side against Israel. I'm very keen, Rory, to talk about what I call an anti -complacency polling presentation, very good, that is doing the rounds of the Labour Party at the moment where they're hammering it into candidates that there is no such thing as a four -gong conclusion in elections.

1:07And I think we should also touch, even though in the UK is no longer in the European Union, there is a very important European Union summit this week where the issue of funding for Ukraine and the possible veto by Mr Victor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary is coming up. So how does that sound for you? Sounds pretty good. And I think you also passed some very interesting thoughts on what's likely to happen in the European elections and the likely right -wood tilt, which we can maybe discuss or so when we're discussing Orban. Yeah, well, maybe that's part of the same thing or it's part of polling because this is a huge poll that's been done across the European Union, which suggests that there's going to be quite a shift to the right in the European Union elections later this year.

1:51So on the overnight stuff, so drone attack, the latest of many drone attacks upon American bases in the Middle East, but this one, the big difference, three American soldiers have been killed, dozens of American soldiers have been injured, and Joe Biden was straight out there saying there will have to be, or there will be some kind of response. So the question then becomes, is this a kind of proxy? Is this an associate of Iran? The Americans are pretty clear that the Iranians are behind it to some 8 degree. The Iranians say they're not. And in the last 48 hours, on the one hand, we've had Donald Trump project himself as the Republican leader who will ensure the world doesn't slip into World War Three, and yet another prominent Republican Lindsey Graham essentially saying that Biden's got to hit Iran hard.

2:45So a pretty dangerous moment, I would say. Yeah, I think very dangerous moment. I think one question maybe in people listening is who are these Shea militia groups? And the answer is that these are groups that really came to prominence during the USUK invasion of Iraq. They were groups very closely connected to the Shea political parties. So the Shea about 2 thirds the population of Iraq, concentrated particularly in the south of the country. They were the groups that was persecuted under Saddam Hussein, very close links into Iran, which of course is a majority Shea country. And these groups initially from 2003 onwards were fighting off and against the coalition.

3:26So when I was being attacked in my compound in southern Iraq, rocket propelled grenades and mortars, that was Shea militia groups doing it. They then came to prominence again because when the fighting started in Syria, the Shea militia groups got behind Bashar al -Assad that it takes for Syria to take on the breakaway groups up in the north and the east of the country. And their cousin is his bula, which is the Shea Iranian -funded group in Lebanon. They were critical in 2014 in the fight against ISIS in places like Mosul. And so when I was in Mosul again last year, you can see huge posters to these Shea militia groups all the way out, road from Baghdad to Mosul.

4:12They're absolutely central to the modern Iraqi government. El Sidani, who's the prime minister of Iraq, comes from an organization which is connected to these groups. And there are over 100 ,000 members of these groups in Iraq and they are almost part a sort of shadow army. They receive salaries from the government, uniforms from the government, trainings from the government, a lot of support from the Iranian government. Now this means that when they attack the American bases and that's been going on in Syria, it's been going on Iraq, it's now, as you say, happened in Jordan, these are groups which are very, very closely connected to the governments of Iraq and Syria, and which are very heavily supported, as you say, by Iran.

4:55So when the US responds, which it will have to do, because it can't allow its soldiers to be killed and not do anything, it risks being drawn into a much, much deeper conflict with not just with Iran, but potentially with the Iraqi government that will feel forced to defend these groups, which are very close to their political parties. Where do you stand on the relationship between in terms of on the one hand, they're always described as proxies, and that to me says that it's almost like they're operating under the command of Iran, but is it more that the Iranians support them financially, militarily provide them with resources and supplies, and they then go off and do their own thing?

5:35So when the Iranians are denying their direct involvement, is it plausible, and is it possible that's actually true? Well, there's no doubt the connections are very deep, so I remember talking to the leader of political party in southern Iraq, and he said to me, I have 1 ,250 party members, and I said, how do you know so precisely, and he said, because I've issued each one of them with a Kalashnikov, and he had been in Iran, trained by the Iranian Revolution regarding, he and his managers crossed the Iranian border after the invasion. So many of them do have really deep links into Iranian agents and paramount tree groups, and we'll be armed by them.

6:18But maybe an analogy is the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban. So the Pakistan intelligence agency is always providing funding for the Taliban, a lot of material support for the Taliban, but when push came to shove, it was never very clear whether they could really tell them what to do. So it's possible, of course, that some of these militia groups are choosing to fire rockets, putting Iran in a position where they're having to decide whether to continue to support them, whether they can really turn them off or not. There's no doubt they have huge influence over them, but whether they can actually micromanage them in a day -to -day basis, I think is probably perhaps more questionable.

6:56And I suppose the response to the Americans will vary between seeking to identify which groups specifically were involved in this particular attack and trying to degrade them. But if Biden does come under more and more pressure, what are the chances now that because Iran seems like it doesn't want to get involved in a kind of big match up with America right now in terms of, you know, military. Yeah, because as you say, I mean, what was striking is that in the early days, what was surprising after October the 7th was that Iran wasn't dragged in more quickly. And of course, the other Arab states didn't go dragged in.

7:35It's not like Yom Kapoor 50 years ago where there was literally invasions from Syria and Egypt to Jordan. But over the last few weeks, the stories seem to get more complicated because the Houthi who we've talked about who are Iranian -backed in Yemen have been firing obviously rockets at these ships. Now we have more and more attacks by Iranian -linked militia groups against US bases. Now does this mean that the Iranian government has fractured that there are factions within the revolutionary guard that are trying to stir up trouble and get a confrontation? And what happens when America responds is you say Biden will have to respond for domestic political reasons.

8:17He doesn't want to see me week. He'll also have to respond because the US can't allow people to just attack them with impunity. Otherwise, it's going to get much more dangerous from. But if he over -response and ends up really creating a huge provocative incident, then it's quite possible the Iraqi government and others will feel forced to then respond again. So will they ask, for example, the obvious thing as the Iraqis might then ask the US to withdraw all their remaining troops from Iraq and what happens to the US then refuses to do that? So I think what happened in the last 24 hours is probably the most dangerous thing that we've seen in the last two months.

8:54Yeah. Of course, the other thing that it's done is it has allowed those who want to blame America for everything to say that both the attack by the the Houthis in the Red Sea and now this are linked to, if not necessarily a direct consequence of, because you're talking about people who've been anti -American for a very long time, America's absolutely steadfast support of Israel in relation to what's going on in Gaza. So maybe that's a good time to to switch to the international court of justice ruling. I mean, I don't know what you thought of it. I thought it was about as strong a judgment as it could be without the ICJ risking the prospect of being denounced by the Americans and by the Israelis in particular as straying into, if you like, into politics.

9:48I thought it was a pretty damning judgment stronger than I was expecting. Yeah. And I think encourage people maybe to skim it, particularly the last half of the New York Times put it on its website and full. You read the last quarter of it. And there's been, as you can imagine, a huge Twitter war with some people saying, oh no, this completely exonerates Israel and other people saying this totally condemns Israel of genocide. I think it's devastating for Israel because firstly, they don't throw the case out. They don't do what Israel was requesting, which is to say this is nonsense. And the word plausible is a sort of, it's a very legalistic, but slightly understated way of saying that there may be a case to answer.

10:27Yes. And in particular, they cite evidence to explain why they think they may be a case to answer. So they cite the defense minister saying that he's going to cut off electricity and water, and that I'm going to release all restraints that we're fighting animals. We will eliminate everything. So that's an example of one of the things they're saying, which is that there's genocidal language being used by senior Israeli figures. They then quote Martin Griffithselot, who we've talked about in Fuyung on the evening, who I think we should get on if we can, but just a lot of it is just him describing conditions on the ground.

11:07And they quote so many UN sources and other independent sources, just validating just how many people have been killed, how many people have been displaced, what's happening to the healthcare system. And then their conclusions of these four recommendations, so recommendations are that the Israeli government should do everything it can to protect the Palestinian population that it should tell the army to, that it should be allowing humanitarian access and it should be taking action against people who use genocidal language in Israel. And the judges found in favor of all of this by an overwhelming majority, two judges voted against, including the Israeli judge.

11:47Particularly on the last two, yeah, he he supported the idea that they should be calling out people who call for genocide and support of the humanitarian access. It was the Ugandan judge who voted against or all four, somewhat lethal surprise. So I think it's I think it's very significant and I think it's important not to get into a world in which the US and the UK simply dismisses out of hand the conclusions, the international court because we are trying to create a rules based international order. We do need the UN and these courts to function. So I was a bit troubled that the Brits, the Americans, the Germans jumped so quickly to attack the attack the case.

12:29Well also, if you have a situation, so it's only what just over a year ago now that the international court heard the claim against Russia in relation to Ukraine. I think it's four years now since the claim the Gambia made against Myanmar of genocide in relation to the treatment of the Rahingya, where the response in those cases of Britain, United States, several of the other European countries was to say, to stand up for the court and to stand up for their for their judgments. And there's been a lot of debate in sort of international law circles, particularly in the States, where they're essentially saying to the American government in particular, this is an opportunity for the Americans to continue to be supportive in terms of Israel's right to defend itself.

13:25But to embrace the international law, to embrace the court's judgment, and to use it in a sense as a further lever to try to get Israel into what I think politically would be a better position as well, which is because their response was just, you know, we've seen so much of this. The minute the thing came out, these very effective, very powerful voices go out on behalf of the Israeli government. And as you say, essentially, was saying, well, they haven't called for a ceasefire and they haven't said that it's genocide, therefore, you know, we carry on as normal. And I think the other thing that's important in this is that, you know, the Americans, there's so much pressure on them to sort of provide, if you like, the global leadership on this.

14:10But if they don't side with a body like the ICJ, then there is a real danger that in those parts of the world where they've been losing influence and losing support, that that process is accelerated. Yeah, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is trying to understand a little bit more about public opinion in Israel. And what Israel and Israelis think they're doing in Gaza, because obviously from our point of view, from a distance, it seems very difficult to understand. We're very, very conscious of just how many people are being killed, how horrifying this is being, how few of the Hamas leadership are being killed.

14:46So I mean, it feels like, you know, tens of thousands of people have been killed, and there's not much military benefit to Israel. And it's just having a catastrophic impact on Israel's reputation and the region and that of the US UK for supporting them. So I've been listening to these podcasts put out by the Times of Israel. They're called What Matters Now and their interviews with quite interesting journalists and intellectuals. And one of them, which maybe if people want to hear the Israeli perspective, is called very brutally, what Israel makes of the suffering of Gaza. And that and its following podcast point out that opinion polls suggest that the overwhelming majority of Israelis are still strongly supportive of the bombing campaign, do not want any form ceasefire.

15:36And that when asked in opinion poll, the end of December, whether the Israeli government should be taking the suffering of Palestinians into account in these operations, something like 80 % of Israeli Jews thought that it either shouldn't be taken into account or not taken into account very much. And of course, as you can imagine, the Palestinian view and the Arab view is entirely reversed, you know, 80 % think of the rest. So I thought they were very interesting because what's happening there is you can hear over, you know, 45 minutes for an hour, very thoughtful people trying to explain why they support what's happening and why they feel very distanced from the West.

16:18But one thing I thought you'd be interested in is what they were saying about the media landscape, they said that, you know, if you watch out for zero, you see a lot of images of suffering in Gaza. If you watch CNN, you see a bit less, but still a lot. If you watch the Hebrew language news in Israel, you see, they say almost no images at all of what's happening in Gaza, but a lot of reporting if an Israeli soldier gets killed. Yeah, I mean, the thing about, so we talked a couple of weeks ago about this. So when last week, more than 20 Israeli soldiers were killed, which I think was their biggest single loss of military life since this started, their faces were all over the front pages.

17:00Now rightly, I would say. And then likewise, once the three soldiers who'd been killed and the American soldiers who'd been killed in the last 24 hours, once they identified their faces will be broadcast and being around the world, I suspect. I think that one of the things that makes the Palestinians feel that they are judged by certain different standards. So we're now talking about more than 25 ,000 who've been killed. It's very hard for me to remember the actual face of an individual that I've seen their face after the event of their death being put out there as if you like as a symbol of the loss.

17:38We've seen lots of pictures of the aftermaths of the bombing. We've seen lots of pictures of people fleeing. We see lots of interviews and so forth. Now, I'm not criticizing the media on this because I know it's very, very difficult to report from there. And in fact, there was my favorite German podcast, Achthmeli Arden, this week, it's all about the difficulties of reporting inside, inside Gaza at the moment. But I do think there's a, it's almost like that they are, they're not treated with the same humanity in the way that we're covering them. And the other thing that it was was a big development this weekend, which again I felt very uneasy about was in relation to UNRUN.

18:16I'm sure you know UNRUNRR far better than I do. But this is the United Nations, essentially the relief farm of the United Nations. Which is specifically for Palestinian refugees. Correct. So it's a UN agency that exists specifically for Palestinian refugees set up in the forties. Yeah. And it emerges, and this is information which the Israelis provided to the Palestinians, which seems to have been taken as face value, that there were people who worked for UNRUNR who were involved in the attacks of October the 7th, which clearly is unacceptable. And clearly there has to be some sort of action taken in relation to that.

18:50But I thought the fact that several governments, including our own, including the Americans, I think including Germany, immediately pulled the plug on our support for UNRUNRR. I thought that was the very least unfortunate. It's almost like saying that, you know, if in relation to an organization here, where you get some people within it, so that you get terrible things done by a small number of soldiers or a small number of police officers that you then shut the whole place down. Yeah. And in this case, particularly important, because it's not like a sort of, I mean, it's completely central now in Gaza to running almost everything.

19:31I mean, UNRUNRR is basically the only thing providing services, providing tents, keeping people alive. I mean, it's the center for all the relief operations in Gaza. So the removing support has catastrophic impact on people there. I mean, I've also been interested, again, listening to Israeli point of view, that you made the point quite rightly that there's a sort of sense of hypocrisy in the way the reporting sound. Of course, Israel feels hypocrisy in a different way. So I was hearing this central journalist being confused saying how disgusted he was that the international court was going after Israel, because nobody paid any attention really, and they hadn't really gone after Russia in the same way.

20:10And nobody cared what happened in Syria and Yemen, and it's only when Israel does stuff that anything anybody cares. And it was interesting to hear that, but at the same time, listening to it, I thought it was a strange statement, because of course, it's not quite true that nobody cared what was happening in Syria and Yemen. People cared deeply what was happening in Syria and Yemen. Firstly, and secondly, you wouldn't want a state like Israel, which has a strong tradition as a democracy with very, very liberal educated traditions to start saying, well, how come Bashar and Assad can get away with it in Syria and we're not allowed to get away with it?

20:43Of course, in relation to Russia, Vladimir Putin is limited in the countries that he can travel to precisely because a lot of the world does take serious to the ruling that was made by the court. But I think again, I'm struggling maybe with this, because it's such a difficult situation. But from the point of view of it seemed from these end -fusers, though it's sort of nearly 80 % of Israelis, they just feel everything that's happening in Gaza is Hamas's fault. And that they have to take out Hamas and Hamas are using civilians as a shield, and they've just got to cut through the civilians to get to Hamas, which brings, I suppose, to the bigger question, which is, what is this idea they have of toppling Hamas?

21:23How does it work? Why do they think that doing this is going to make Israel safer? You can completely understand the drama. This is not Russia, Ukraine, Israel was attacked, it's unimaginable to live next to Hamas when you've just seen them commit these unbelievable atrocities and make it very clear they're happy to go with the children. But how can it make sense? And that's where I think we've got to get to the the nub of it, which is that the Israeli military keep using this analogy with ISIS. They keep saying, well, you know, we went after ISIS and we wiped out ISIS and therefore this is the way to go after Hamas.

21:57And I think there's a huge difference in the differences that most of the fighting against ISIS and Iraq and Syria was led by the Iraqi and Syrian governments. And a lot of it led by these Shia militia and by Iran. In this case, you don't have a situation where the local Palestinian government is leading the fight against Hamas. You don't have the Shia militia fighting against Hamas. Instead, you have a situation where most of those groups are on the other side and it's very difficult to believe that there's any stable world even if you destroyed all the tunnels, even if you killed more of the leadership and they've currently been killed that Israel's going to end up safer.

22:32I hadn't exchanged this with Jonathan Powell who listeners of leading may remember we talked to a while back and Jonathan was Tony Blair's chief of staff but also his main negotiator on Northern Ireland, particularly after the Good Friday agreement when you know the real kind of hard yards in many ways were done. And one of his sort of golden rules of particularly a dealing with terrorist organizations is that eventually, if you're going to resolve a dispute with terrorism, you are going to have to talk to your enemy sooner or later and he specifically says you should not let the desire for revenge after an outrage blind you to that reality.

23:09Now, I can see what's very, very difficult in this context to do that. And likewise, I heard Mark Sedwell who was the former Cabinet Secretary, former National Security Advisor, saying that in relation to the current situation that's evolved in the last 24 hours with the Americans, that there will as we said earlier, there will have to be some sort of military response but it cannot just be a military response alone. There has to be diplomacy, there has to be politics. I think with the politics on this, I think that I think has been so dispiriting and so disappointing is the way that political positions seem to get more entrenched whatever.

23:49I mean, maybe we're expecting too much for us, but I just thought when I first read the summary of the ICJ report, the judgment, I thought, well, is it too much to expect that Israel could come out and say, okay, we take this away, we digest it, we take it on board, we hear what's being said about the loss of civilian life and we review our practice, something that suggested adapting to the political realities, whereas what we've had is, as you said earlier, I don't think a real sense. I've not seen much of an explanation as to the progress that is being made in taking out the Hamas leadership.

24:30I just see the continuing relentless bombing campaign. Again, I maybe don't want to put too much emphasis on just these couple of times to destroy our podcasts, but it was a really worthwhile sense how people are thinking and the man being interviewed in the previous one was saying that he'd been in Britain and people in Britain were saying, why don't doesn't Israel lean into providing more humanitarian support in Gaza? And he said, well, you know, Netanyahu doesn't want to seem too soft on the Palestinians because that's not going to play well with his right wing political allies. And then he said, well, but on the other hand, I suppose it might make it easier for the UK and the US to support his Israel was providing more humanitarian support.

25:16But a lot of this goes back to the point I think that you've all know, Harari was making when we interviewed him, which is this terrible sense of two communities living alongside each other who've really lost a sense of empathy that the only arguments being really made are sort of practical. He wasn't making first principle documents for providing humanitarian relief. I mean, I am really worried that, and I'm not, saying this in any way to exonerate Hamas, who I'm absolutely certain would be if they had a half a chance for be killing tens of thousands of Israelis with rockets and missiles. But boy, oh, boy, is it difficult to understand what this is?

25:54And I think the only way that you can understand it as it continues, we can week out is that they must somehow think that this has a sort of deterrent effect that by doing this, they will deter Hamas from doing it again or his while I'm from doing it again. And I just can't quite see that working. I think it's much more likely that it actually just increases the anger and increases the number of your enemies. I mean, maybe briefly before we go to a break, is it worth just talking a little bit about how there was a sort of flurry last week based upon an interview or an article by the outgoing, not left yet, without going ahead of the army in the UK, talking about this sense that actually we were in a very, very dangerous situation and then you know, grandchaps talking about we're in a pre -war phase.

26:44And it's sort of unleashed this kind of, I don't know whether this was deliberate, but it unleashed this sort of debate about conscription. And we had the ludicrous Boris Johnson, I don't know if you saw, saying he was going to sign up as a corporal, wasn't he? I mean, for God's sake, and he was sort of, he looked a little bit like, do you remember Benny Hill used to do that sort of salutes on his fingers on his forehead? He looked a little bit like that. And by the way, this is a guy who says he's going to sign up who, who, when faced with the combined might of Susanna Reed and Pears Morgan on Good Morning Britain, hidden a fridge.