Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté : Biden Boxed In.

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Aaron Maté : Biden Boxed In.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024. Aaron Matei joins us today. Aaron, welcome here. I'm very happy that you're with us. For those of you that don't know Aaron, and I think all of you do, Aaron is an award-winning journalist and the co-host of The Gray Zone with our friend and regular contributor and wealth of information, Max Blumenthal. But Aaron, welcome here. I want to start with some big picture stuff due to your extraordinary study of the Israeli government. Is Israel today a democracy or a theocracy? Well, it depends who you're talking about. Internally, inside Israel, there's some measure of democracy. But the problem is the citizens of Israel aren't the only

inhabitants of that land and aren't the only people that Israel rules over. There are millions of Palestinians that Israel occupies who have no rights whatsoever. So if you look at Israel in terms of who's living in the territory that Israel controls, no, you cannot call it a democracy. It's a Jewish supremacist state. That's the term used by, excuse me, by B'Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights group. And that's a major cause of what we're seeing today in Gaza, where Israel has always prioritized supremacy over security for everybody. And that's why now it's carrying out this ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza. If I moved to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and bought a home there as an American and as a Roman Catholic, would I have the same rights as the Jewish people that

are my next door neighbors? No, you wouldn't. Myself as a Jewish person, I could invoke my so-called right to return to Israel. And assuming they didn't disqualify me for my political views and my criticism of Israel as a Jewish person in general, I'd be given all sorts of rights. If I wanted to, even I could live in subsidized housing in the occupied territories, living in a nice settlement on stolen Palestinian land while the Palestinians around me are stuck behind walls and have their olive trees raised to the ground and have their water stolen. That's because Israel identifies as the state of the Jewish people, not of its citizens. You say right of return. I think you weren't born

in Israel. You were born in Canada, but you have the right of return because you are a Jewish person. Correct. Yes. And that's why you have hundreds of thousands of these Jewish settlers coming from places like Brooklyn, where I am, and Canada, around the world, living in the West Bank in these subsidized settlements, settlements that are effectively subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer as well. So yes, whereas my Palestinian friends here who descend from those who were kicked out of their homes when Israel was founded in 1948, they can never return to their ancestral homeland. Can the Israeli government achieve both of its goals of degrading or eliminating Hamas and saving the hostages? Well, those are its stated goals, right? We're supposed to believe

that they're going after Hamas. They want to take out the leadership and they also want to rescue their hostages. They're totally incompatible. Everybody's known that from the start. But the goal, the actual goal is not to rescue the hostages or even, I think, to eliminate Hamas. It's simply just to make Gaza uninhabitable for the people that live there. Gaza has always been the center of Palestinian resistance. And when you're an occupying power, you cannot tolerate any opposition, any resistance to your domination. And so Israel wants to make Gaza uninhabitable because it wants to maybe bring back settlers there or just simply just doesn't want to allow the people there to live. Because the existence of a Palestinian is fundamentally antithetical to the self-conception of Israel as a Jewish state.

And Israel, you know, as the charter of the governing Likud party states, Israel asserts the right to control all of the land from the river to the sea. And Benjamin Netanyahu just recently reiterated that. If you were to march on the Columbia University campus with a Palestinian flag in your hand and chanted from the river to the sea, even if you were a student at Columbia, they would silence you or remove you. But yet the Israeli prime minister, you're quite correct, said that literally the other day. And the American mainstream media, of course, pushes it out all over the place.

Are there these efforts to silence those who speak for Palestinian rights? Oh, by the way, there's a member of Congress who was disciplined, disciplined by the House of Representatives for singing from the river to the sea. So there must be efforts by the Israeli government to use their colleagues in the United States, whether it's AIPAC or whoever, to silence speech in favor of the Palestinians and against the genocide. Yes, and it's even more egregious because the two uses of from the river to the sea are not equal. When Palestinians and their supporters use it, they're simply calling for freedom, equality for everybody from the river to the sea. When Israel and its supporters use it, like Benjamin Netanyahu, as Netanyahu explained, they mean Israeli control, domination, rule. And so to even say that these two uses of it are equal is misleading. And yes, of course, the enforcement of punishment were hit with a chemical spray and people suffered serious injuries, had to be

hospitalized. Columbia initially put out a really weak statement, basically blaming the protesters for getting injured, saying that their protest was not authorized. Finally, after a little bit of media scrutiny, they've taken a tougher stance. But the double standard here and the farce of we're supposed to coddle these elite university students who claim they feel unsafe because people are protesting a genocide. And meanwhile, as we just saw at Columbia, people get actually injured. And they were injured by, I believe, some former Israeli soldiers, the ones who sprayed them with this chemical. They don't matter. And we're supposed to treat that as normal. And I'm sure the NYPD did not arrest the former Israeli soldiers

who sprayed the Palestinian demonstrators with a noxious chemical. I haven't seen the latest. I imagine now because of a little bit of media attention, they'll be forced to do something. But the initial response certainly was completely lax. What is the goal of Hamas? Well, look, Hamas's goals have changed over the years. It's not popular to acknowledge this, but Hamas has had a far more accommodating posture when it comes to the existence of Israel than Israel has had when it comes to the existence of Palestine. Hamas in 2017 changed its charter, and they said this in public statements to even before 2017, that their goal is the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, which for

Palestinians is a massive compromise because that's 22% of their historic homeland. Now, Hamas did not say we're going to ever recognize Israel, but if Hamas is recognizing the boundaries of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, that's a tacit recognition. It's a tacit recognition of the boundaries of Israel on the other side. By contrast, Israel, whether it's Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right extremist government, or it's the labor governments of Ahud Barak, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin, the father of the so-called peace process, they've never accepted the existence of a contiguous Palestinian state. What they said is, we'll allow the Palestinians to have something called a state, but we're

going to keep all the major West Bank settlement blocks that make such a state functionally impossible. So basically, Palestinians can have a bunch of little bantu stones where we get the Palestinian Authority to act as our collaborator to rule over the Palestinians and keepians and keep them in line they can call that a state if they want but everyone knows in real life that that's not a state that's just simply a bantustan solution that israel has been trying to impose here's uh a fellow but you probably know of him el Levy, a spokesperson for the Israeli government, attempting to elaborate on Prime Minister Netanyahu's thinking with respect to no state solution. This is no two-state solution.

This is number five, Chris. I mean, I can elaborate more on the prime minister's thinking in that regard, which is that anyone, even supporters of Palestinian statehood, when asked what that means, whether they support the Palestinians having an army or military capabilities, flatly reject that. The Prime Minister's position is that Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves and none of the powers to threaten Israel. Would statehood mean that Palestinians could have joint military exercises with Hezbollah

or a mutual defense treaty with Iran or import North Korean weapons? Obviously, these statements are absurd, but these are long-term questions that we are going to have to discuss. After all, the question of how we achieve a secure peace with our neighbors, a peace that will require a serious push towards de-radicalization. On the other side, and for now, we are focused and united on destroying Hamas and bringing the hostages home. Well, it can't be truthful.

He can't mean what he says unless he's totally delusional that the Palestinian people will have all the tools needed to govern themselves. They've never been able to govern themselves since 1948. They've never been given the chance because Israel has willfully denied them that opportunity. And he's even distorting some of the recent history. There have been so-called peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for the last three decades. The Palestinian Authority has been so desperate to make a deal. They were actually willing to accept some limits on the Palestinian military. They bent over backwards. They also were willing to give up

implementation of the right of return. So basically telling the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants that although we recognize the historical injustice that was done to you, we're not going to come back to our ancestral homes. Another big compromise was them accepting a state, as I mentioned before, in 22% of their homeland, the West Bank and Gaza, a massive compromise for Palestinians. All these compromises are never enough for Israel, which insists on dominating all the Palestinian land it wants, stealing valuable land and water reserves. And look, now we're going to talk about Palestinians de-radicalizing when you have this fanatic government committing a genocide. And why should Palestinians give up their right to security? They're the ones who've been attacked by Israel from its founding up until the present

moment. So this notion that Palestinians should somehow give up their right to security in order to appease their occupier. I mean, no one who treats human beings as equal should ever accept that. Aaron, what role did Prime Minister Netanyahu play, whether he was the prime minister at the time or not, in either the creation or enhancement or financing of Hamas? Since Hamas was founded in the late 1980s, successive Israeli governments have tolerated them and even sort of encouraged their existence. Initially, this was done because Israel wanted to undermine any prospect of a two-state solution. And so they saw that by encouraging Hamas's existence, Hamas's founding charter rejected

Israel's existence, they could achieve that goal. And recently, there have been reports about Netanyahu encouraging Qatar to pay Hamas with Qatar's largesse. So Netanyahu's played a role in that, but that's been Israeli policy from its founding. And the goal is simply to undermine Palestinian statehood. The Palestinian Liberation Organization for decades has accepted this massive Palestinian compromise of just a state and 22% of their territory. So Israel seek to undermine that turn to propping up Hamas. Sometimes people exaggerate the extent to which Israel was involved in Hamas's origins, but that tolerance was there for sure. Can Prime Minister Netanyahu stay in office much longer in light of the divisions in the Israeli cabinet, in light of these two ex-generals that have said, you've got to stop fighting, you've got to stop fighting, you'll never get the hostages back?

One of them, General Eisenkot, the former commander-in-chief of the IDF, the other, a younger general, a name now escaping me, gave a very, very rational statement. We can play it for you if you want. So I guess this is a long-winded question. I apologize. One, what is this with the phenomenon of ex-generals trying to restrain the prime minister, ex-IDF generals? And two, once the war is over, what becomes of Netanyahu? Well, you know, it's a familiar dynamic in the U.S. as well, where you have retired military officials, intelligence officials, you know, some of whom you interview on the show regularly, speaking sense because they've been on the inside.

They know the consequences of their policies in real material terms. And so you have this phenomenon in Israel where you have had former top officials making more sense, especially after they've left. When you're on the inside, it's a lot harder to do anything concrete and to actually take a brave position.

But the problem with Israel, it's such an extremist society that even sober-minded former officials who are, again, not because they care about Palestinians, but are looking out for what they perceive as their country's best interest, I don't think it makes much of a difference to Israeli society. There's such a desire for blood right now. Netanyahu is unpopular as he is.

The war is popular. People support it. In fact, the majority of Israelis, I believe, believe that Israel has not been brutal enough, which is just, it's such a reflection of the extremism that has engulfed that society. You know, I was going to ask you if Israel is really society is extreme or just the government that Netanyahu has put together. But I think you've already answered that. If I had asked you this on October 6th, you'd probably have a different answer than you do today. October 7th, 9-11 changed everything. Hate that phrase, but I guess October 7th changed everything with respect to the

extremism and fanaticism of society. As I see it, the extremism and fanaticism of the government, because Netanyahu got in bed with these right-wing lunatics, is there. But the extremism and fanaticism of society didn't come about until after October 7. Is that a fair analysis? I have to disagree, Judge. There used to be a peace movement inside Israel. Now it's pretty much dead. And it was dead long before October 6th. That country has gone so far over into the extremes. And I think that's the inevitable result when you base a state around supremacy of one ethnic group over its indigenous inhabitants, and you are founded on ethnic cleansing and your survival, your identity as a state relies on perpetuating that ethnic cleansing. It's inevitable. It's going to just go over to the extreme rather than see any sense. That's certainly what's happened with Israel. Does Netanyahu lose his job and perhaps his freedom once the war is over? He certainly has every incentive to prolong this war for as long as he can, because, yes, he faces multiple corruption issues.

He faces possibly prison. And so for his own political survival, he has every incentive to keep this going for as long as he can. And luckily for him, Joe Biden, who really is the key actor in this whole thing, is giving him that green light to continue slaughtering Palestinians en masse. What do the Israeli people think of Tony Blinken and Joe Biden? Do they realize how the two of them are attempting to speak out of both sides of their mouths here in the U.S.? Well, when you look at Israeli officials, what's so crazy is Netanyahu can't even accept the help he's getting from Joe Biden and Tony Blinken without humiliating them. So Joe Biden and Tony Blinken like to pay lip service to this idea of a Palestinian state. It's always something off in the distance. They have a vision of it. George W. Bush had a similar sort of approach. It's always this thing lurking in

the distance that we're going to pay lip service to, but never do actually anything concrete to achieve. But Netanyahu is such an extremist that he can't help but humiliate them and say, no, there won't be a Palestinian state. I'm never going to allow that because he's so fundamentally committed to occupation control and Jewish supremacy. Does Netanyahu want a wider war with American support, either American Air Force or American troops on the ground? I think that's a good question. Israel doesn't like to fight people who can fight back. And that's why I do think they're trying to avoid a war with Hezbollah. They wouldn't mind fighting Syria because Syria can't really fight back against

Israel. But I basically, I think they want to fight anyone who they know can't fight back. And that would be Hezbollah, because Hezbollah can, as we've seen, do serious damage to Israel. And yeah, but listen, if it came to it, would Netanyahu hesitate to pull the U.S. into a war if he could? I don't think he would. I don't think he would hesitate. I think he would go right ahead and do it. Is he trying to paint Joe Biden into a corner? As Max has said so directly, Joe Biden could stop all of this in a phone call. He could stop this while this show is streaming, saying, BB, stop it. No more parts, no more ammunition, no more weapons. Just put the guns down and go home.

He could do that. Yes, he could. And Netanyahu knows, though, that Joe Biden will not be doing that. Joe Biden's had multiple opportunities to put a stop to this. Even Netanyahu humiliating him by saying there won't be a Palestinian state is a golden opportunity for Joe Biden to stand up and say, all right, enough of this. Biden's even blurted out that he knows that Israel is carrying out indiscriminate bombing. But Biden is such a fanatic, really unprecedented, I think, in modern history when it comes to support for Israel. And this is his whole career. Edward Said was writing about this a long time ago, about how Biden is just an unhinged Zionist. There's an anecdote, a famous anecdote, where Menachem Begin,

Prime Minister of Israel in the early 80s when Israel was invading Lebanon to destroy the Palestinian liberation movement, where Begin was taken aback at how extreme Biden was in talking about how Israel should kill more women and children. So the Israeli Prime Minister was offended at what a fanatic Israel supporter Joe Biden was, the point of supporting murdering innocent people.

I guess it's a silly question to say, is Netanyahu interested in Middle East peace? Well, in fairness to Netanyahu, no Israeli leader ever has been. There was a brief moment in 2000, 2001, when after the Camp David summit failed in July 2000 and the Antifatah broke out and Bill Clinton blamed Yasser Arafat for turning down Israel's so-called generous proposal, which was a joke. Even the Israeli foreign minister at the time, Shlomo Ben-Ami, said, if I were a Palestinian, I never would have taken that deal that they were offered at Camp David in

July 2000. But after that, there were more talks at Taba in Egypt for a short period of time. And there for a moment, Israel dropped some of its major demands to keep all the major West Bank settlement blocks and to even discuss swapping land with Palestinians of equal size and value. But Israel walked away from those talks. So there was one brief moment in time when some Israeli officials showed some opening to peace, but that was very short lived. And the rest is history. places to bring this to an international forum. Why aren't other countries in Western Europe condemning Netanyahu's savagery in Gaza? Israel is a client state of the U.S. and has served client state, has carried out client state functions since 1967 when it became a client state. It's, for example, when it was inconvenient to arm death squads in Central America for the U.S., Israel did that for the U.S. When the U.S. wanted to help apartheid South Africa but couldn't do that because it wasn't

a good look, Israel did that. And so Israel serves U.S. power, and that's what runs everything. That's what controls Congress, and Congress has the added enforcement to fall in line from the Israel lobby, which is very influential in congressional races. And if you step out of line, you will face all sorts of smear campaigns and you'll get your opponents heavily funded to undermine you. So, you know, Israel's service to U.S. power, coupled with the power of the lobby, helps keep everybody in line. Whose fault was October 7th? Let me restate that. Who does the Israeli public think was at fault on October 7th? Netanyahu?

The intelligence community? The six girls, the tank commanders that warned everybody that nobody listened to? Well, what's interesting is there's more debate about this and more frank discussion about this question inside Israel than there is inside the US. How many consumers of American media know that Israeli forces implemented the Hannibal directive, basically, and killed some of their own people? We don't know how many people they killed because there hasn't been a serious investigation yet, but there has been testimony to that effect. And my colleague, Max Blumenthal, has done a lot of work on this. So in terms of who's, who Israelis fault for this, there is discussion of this inside Israel.

Netanyahu certainly has taken a lot of criticism. It obviously was a massive intelligence failure. There's all these reports now of Israel receiving warnings and ignoring them. And Netanyahu specifically is so consumed with enforcing the occupation of the West Bank and stealing Palestinian land there that he diverted forces from the area around Gaza to the West Bank to perpetuate that occupation. Have you ever heard of a 17-year-old American boy being shot in the head by a foreign military in a place where he was legally present and the U.S. State Department silent. We know this happened over the weekend. The young man was born in Louisiana. Yep. Yep. And 20 years ago, a young American woman named Rachel Corey was trying to stop

a Israeli demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza. And she was run over by this Israeli. And basically, their family tried to get some justice for her, but Congress paid some lip service, but pretty much ignored her. So this is par for the course. Recently, there were those three young Palestinian kids in Vermont who were shot. Biden paid lip service to them. And certainly, this young man who was just killed in the West Bank. It's a similar trend. Similar to a story you've covered a lot, Gonzalo Lira, an American in Ukraine, because he died under a client state of the U.S., we can all safely ignore it.

And the U.S. government can rely on the U.S. media to ignore these deaths as well. Aaron Matei, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. You are a wealth of information and analytic skills and personal courage, and I hope you'll come back here again. We love having you. Absolutely. Thank you, Judge. Great to be here.

All the best. Wow. A brilliant young man. I'm deeply grateful, and I know you are because I can see your comments and the numbers of you that are watching. His colleague, Max Blumenthal, tomorrow. Professor Jeffrey Sachs coming up. Thank you so much for watching. Judge Napolitano, not coming up now, coming up later on in the week. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.