Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté : Biden Fuels Regional Carnage

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, April 17th, 2024. Aaron Mate joins us now. My friend, Aaron, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning a bitter and what they call irreconcilable differences in the Israeli war cabinet between Prime Minister Netanyahu and his publicly known adversary Benny Gantz and the Defense Minister Galant. Can you enlighten us at all on this and let us know if, in your view, it is deleterious to Israel or normal for Israeli politics? It is normal because these are all people who want power. And Netanyahu's rivals, who also serve in his government, recognize that he is in trouble. He faced corruption allegations before October 7th.

He faced massive protests in the streets over his attempts to control the Israeli judiciary. And so they're seeing now, more than six months into this genocide, Israel's allies in the U.S. are voicing increasing discomfort. You have articles in Haaretz and the Wall Street Journal pointing out that Israel strategically is not winning this war.

They failed to do much damage to Hamas, far less than many people, myself included, expected. And so they're taking advantage. And they're trying to, I think, maneuver to push out Netanyahu at a time when he's vulnerable. What did you expect of the Israeli military? I expected more damage, too, but I don't have, and I tweeted this on the day of October 7th, that Israel would continue its war on Palestinian civilians and punish them for what happened on October 7th, because that's what Israel's done throughout its history. You go back many years, 1967, the year when Israel took over so many Arab territories, the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, and Sinai.

Back then, Ariel Sharon was saying that, you know, we have to establish our main weapon, which is their fear of us. Yitzhak Rabin, the supposed father of the Israeli peace process, said when he was defense minister during the first intifada that Israeli soldiers cracking down on nonviolent fighters, breaking their bones, as he advised, that we were using our main weapon, which is instilling fear. So that's been a through line throughout Israeli history. And there was no doubt that once the unruly natives showed that they could resist and embarrass Israel on October 7th, the Palestinian civilians would pay the price. And I didn't foresee Israel being able to destroy so much of Gaza as they'd have done

because I'd have imagined that the world would have stepped in. But unfortunately, Israel's most reliable ally, the U.S., has facilitated this from the start. When it comes to Hamas' military resistance, I knew that there would be some resistance, but I did not expect that more than six months in, Hamas would still be intact. And that's a tribute to the resistance that they've put up, which continues, just as we're speaking, Israel saying that more of its soldiers have been wounded inside Gaza. Do any of the three of them, Netanyahu, Gantz, or Gallant, truly want a ceasefire? Or are the negotiations in Cairo just a facade

intended to please the United States? I think it's pretty clear that it's a facade for these people. They know that if they do not completely destroy Hamas, then this will be seen inside Israel as a strategic defeat. And they also want to buy time to not only kill more Palestinian civilians, but make Gaza unlivable, which is another main goal of this war. That's why they've been targeting hospitals, schools, flattening all of Gaza's universities, hitting mosques, hitting churches, anything they can to make the civilians of Gaza not want to live there anymore after this genocide ends. Do you think that the United States, through intelligence, I guess CIA, was involved in the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus?

Well, the Biden administration claims that they had no prior knowledge, and I just find that very hard to believe. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago pointing out that pretty much every single Israeli strike inside Syria after so many strikes, hundreds of them were carried out jointly between the U.S. and Israel, which is why I always refer to these strikes as U.S.-Israeli strikes inside Syria, not just Israeli mean, the problem here is Israel is so reckless and Netanyahu is so contemptuous of Biden, despite Biden's efforts to bend over backwards to give Israel anything it wants, that it's plausible to me that Israel could have acted alone here. But given the history of joint U.S. coordination, I would bet personally that the U.S. did have prior knowledge and maybe even have been involved.

Is there any moral justification for the Israeli attack? Or is it merely Netanyahu wanting to pick a fight with Iran in the hopes that the U.S. will join him and the war will go on and on and on and his premiership will go on and on and on? I think the goal is exactly that. Provoke Iran into retaliating to the point where the U.S. feels compelled to get involved on Israel's side more than it already is. And that's because Netanyahu understands that if he wants to fight Hezbollah, he wants to fight Iran, he needs the U.S.'s help because Iran and Hezbollah, unlike the people of Gaza, can actually really fight back and do damage to Israel. So I think that was the goal of that strike, to provoke Iran so that the U.S. gets involved on Israel's side.

The moral justification that Israel and the U.S. put out is interesting. They're arguing that because this consulate in Iran, they say, was being used for military purposes, as evidenced by the fact that you had a senior Iranian general there, that that makes it a valid military target. Well, by that definition, then pretty much every U.S. embassy around the world would be a target because how many U.S. embassies act as cover for CIA agents to plot whatever they're plotting inside a given country? How many CIA agents, for example, were inside Ukraine when the U.S. backed a coup there, working inside the U.S. embassy under diplomatic cover. This is standard

procedure for many countries, not just the U.S. So if the U.S. and Israel really want to go there and say that because there is an intelligence operative or a military operative working under cover inside a consulate, that makes it fair game, that's going to open up a very dangerous precedent in which the U.S. could be extremely damaged. And nobody wants that. That's why we have something called international law, which Israel, with U.S. support, either directly or tacitly, just flagrantly violated by bombing that consulate in Damascus. Many of the folks that come on this show who have a military background have argued that the Iranian military response was brilliant and moral. Brilliant because it forced the Israelis to waste a billion dollars shooting down virtually

harmless drones. Moral because the only missiles that got through attacked genuine military and intelligence targets. missiles that got through, attack genuine military and intelligence targets, moral because the Iranians told the Saudis, who must have informed the Israelis, exactly what was coming and when it was coming. Do you accept that? Yeah, I think it's a very fair argument. As you point out, nobody was killed in Iran's response. Compare that to Israel, which killed seven people at that Iranian consulate. Unlike Israel, Iran gave plenty of advance warning. Already days before the Iranian strikes, the Financial Times was reporting that Iran had sent signals via intermediaries to the U.S.

that its response was going to be calibrated so as not to encourage an escalation by Israel. So Iran deliberately chose its targets to be military sites, deliberately gave Israel and the U.S. plenty of advance notice, not only days before, but even on the night of, as the drones and missiles were launched, it was announced. Everyone knew they were coming, which gave Israel and the U.S. plenty of time to prepare to shoot them down. The only missiles that could not be shot down were those that hit military bases inside Israel, which hit their targets and showed Israel that if this continues, Iran has the capability to pierce their missile systems. But again, those strikes didn't kill anybody because Iran gave plenty of advance notice.

And those strikes happened to target bases that were used in the operation to carry out the bombing of Syria, which triggered this whole round of escalation to begin with. And because the drones had some sort of computer equipment on them, they know exactly where the Israeli defenses are because they know where the missiles were coming from to attack the drones. It's almost as if the drones were pawns in a chess game that you intentionally use to lure your enemy out. Absolutely. I heard a funny argument from Marco Rubio, Senator Marco Rubio, who said that because there was lights on these drones, that those lights, just the sight of these lit up drones, that that was enough to terrorize the Israeli people. And he was so indignant that these drones that Iran launched had lights on them. Well, if you have lights on them, it also means you can see them, which makes it easier to shoot them down. Marco Rubio, so determined to defend Israeli aggression and painted as a victim,

was trying to argue that by having lights on these drones, that Iran, even though these drones could easily be shot down, was terrorizing the Israeli people. He's running for a slot on the ticket with Trump, I think, and not doing a very good job. I want to play a clip. This is really absurd, but it gets more absurd. This is David Cameron, Lord David Cameron, the British foreign minister, harshly critical of the massive degree of difference between the Israeli attack in Damascus and the Iranian attack. He's not concerned about human life. He's not concerned about the sanctity of a consulate, a diplomatic consulate. He's only concerned about, well, you'll hear him, the number of drones in the air, number four. What about Iran's frustration at part of its

sovereign territory being flattened? Well, I would argue there is a massive degree of difference between what Israel did in Damascus. And as I said, 301 weapons being launched by the state of Iran at the state of Israel for the first time, a state-on-state attack. 101 ballistic missiles, 36 cruise missiles, 185 drones. That is a degree of difference and I think a reckless and dangerous thing for Iran to have done and I think the whole world can see all these countries that have somehow wondered, well, you know, what is the true nature of Iran? It's there in black and white. Does he know what he's talking about? He knows full well that Israel triggered this round of escalation by bombing Iran's consulate

first, and unlike Iran, actually killing people. He also knows that these drones, by virtue of them being launched from Iranian territory, maybe somewhere else was sent from Iraq, that Israel had plenty of time to knock them down and that Iran was just trying to show something because it had to respond to Israel bombing its consulate and killing seven people. He knows all this, but he needs to come up with an excuse to somehow pretend as if Iran is at fault here. He says there a line about this being unprecedented for the first time,

state-on-state violence. First of all, Israel's attack on the Iranian consulate itself, that was state-on-state violence because the consulate is considered sovereign Iranian territory. But well before that, Israel has carried out assassinations of Iranian scientists. It's invaded Lebanon multiple times, killing tens of thousands of people. So this idea that what Iran did in responding to Israel's attack on Iran is somewhat unprecedented. It's just a farce. But this is the depth that Cameron has to go to to justify the aggression that he supports. Watch him now with her follow-up question, and you'll see him mumbling and fumbling as he attempts to answer at number 10.

What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates? Well we would take the very strong action. And Iran would say that that's what they did? Well what they did as I said was a massive attack. So they were right to respond but they overacted, is that what you're saying? What I'm saying is that the attack they carried out was on a very large scale, much bigger than people accepted. But did they have a right to respond?

Well, countries have a right to respond. I don't think he liked those questions. He didn't because they're premised on the assumption, which he doesn't accept, that all states have equal rights. But he doesn't see Iran as having equal rights to the UK, the US, and Israel. In his conception of the world, we have the right to carry out mass murder, to bomb consulates, to carry out airstrikes on Syria, as the UK has done over the years, and also take part in a dirty war that flooded the country with weapons, going to sectarian insurgents in a bid to overthrow the government. We have the right to do all that. They don't have the right to respond. That is his

conception of how the world works. And it's exposed when you try to just apply the basic standard of, do we apply the same principles to ourselves that we apply to others? And David Cameron's answer is a resounding no uh and you can see it right there on display here's um another member of the british government and the legislative branch a person you and i admire won't even tell you who it is but you'll know in a heartbeat who it is cut number five the speaker i knew your father well for a very long time. He was a fine man and I am sincerely sorry for your loss. There was not one single word in the Prime Minister's statement of condemnation of the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which is the proximate reason for the event everyone is here in concert condemning. He was not even asked to do so by the front bench

opposite. Kay Burley is the only person so far to demand that of a government minister. We have no treaty with Israel, at least not one that Parliament has been shown, and the Iranians are not likely to listen to him when Britain occupied Iran, looted its wealth and overthrew its one democratic socialist government in my own lifetime. a'i ddod o hyd i'r un Llywodraeth Socioleg, yn fy mhrofiad fy hun. Mr Speaker, beth bynnag a ddigwyddodd ychydig wythnosau yn ôl, It is absolutely no justification for launching more than 300 drones and missiles from one sovereign state towards Israel. It's as simple as that. And in the honourable gentleman's question, not once did he condemn that action or indeed the actions of Hamas in the region. There is no equivalence between these things whatsoever.

And to suggest otherwise is simply wrong. You hear the great George Galloway howling in the background, but they cut his microphone off. And you can also see that Rishi Sunak and his prime minister got their talking points down together with the same numbers. Absolutely. They love to make a big spectacle of the amount of drones that Iran launched. But again, what they admit is that this was launched with plenty of warning to give Israel the time to respond, unlike what Israel did in bombing the consulate, which is no warning and killing seven people, unlike Iran, which didn't kill anybody. But that's the hypocrisy on display. And you can see why right after George Galloway

recently won his election to be put in parliament, immediately the prime minister, Sunak, gave a speech talking about what an alarming thing this was, that George Galloway could win an election. You can see why, because he doesn't want to face someone who actually has moral consistency asking him questions, which, as we can see, Sunak cannot answer credibly. Right. And as George Galloway pointed out, without getting too into the weeds of the British parliamentary system, none of the shadow cabinet, none of the Labour Party, none of the Liberal Party challenged Prime Minister Sunak.

It only took George, who's as far back in the backbench as you can go. I'm surprised even a microphone's back there. It took him to raise this issue yeah yeah and imagine you know every time i hear george galloway speak i just think imagine if we had someone of that equivalent uh moral fiber inside our own government inside our own congress inside the u.s even those people inside the u.s congress who are critics of the prevailing genocide policy they still always have to qualify their statements. They have to go out of their way to cater to Israeli talking points, to U.S. talking points. George Gallo is a rare person of actual moral consistency,

and that's why he's hated so much by the establishment. What is the value of the U.N. Security Council these days with the United States, Great Britain, and France vetoing every legitimate, lucid effort that they come up with? Well, you know, a good illustration is what just happened with Iran, because Iran said, and we'll never know if it's true because of how things have unfolded, but they said that had the UN Security Council acted and actually condemned Israel, which would be the obvious thing to do for a country bombing a diplomatic consulate, that Iran might not have had to respond militarily. It's a counterfactual now, but it's worth considering that Iran said that.

Had the U.S., the U.K., and France not blocked action at the U.N. Security Council to condemn Israel for what it did in bombing Syria, then maybe Iran's military response would not have been necessary. That's what Iran said, at least. And that's what happens when you have this commitment to aggression, where not even the bombing of a diplomatic consulate can trigger the U.S. and its allies to condemn Israel. Because they're so committed to protecting Israel and everything it does. And by the way, it's highly symbolic that it would be the US, Britain, and France protecting Israeli aggression against Syria because these are the countries that have repeatedly bombed Syria together over allegations of chemical weapons attacks

by the Syrian government. And as I've reported extensively at the Gray Zone, based on leaked documents from the OPCW, the world's top chemical weapons watchdog, when the OPCW got on the ground in one case, in the case of Douma, April 2018, one of these chemical weapons allegations, they found no evidence of a chemical attack, plenty of evidence that this incident was staged by insurgents on the ground. But that investigation was covered up by the OPCW under pressure of the US. And along with

France and Britain, which bombed Syria, all these allegations, they've done everything they can to bury this scandal at the OPCW. So it's very fitting that now with Israel once again bombing Damascus, that they'd be working very hard to protect Israel at all costs. So you're not surprised that France joined with Great Britain and the U.S. to squelch a very rational, utterly moral, and totally lawful condemnation of the Israeli attack in Damascus? Not at all. These are lackeys of the U.S. and I've witnessed this personally. I've testified in front of members of the UN Security Council several times now about my reporting on the OPCW cover-up scandal and the disingenuousness of all these diplomats from especially the U.S., Britain, and France,

it's so vivid. For example, in my most recent presentation about a year ago, after I spoke, the British representative said, I cannot be trusted. Don't listen to Mr. Maté, whatever he says. And before I had the chance to respond, he got up and left the room. It wasn't David Cameron, was it? It was not David Cameron, no. It was another gentleman but uh that's how these people operate does joe biden and i'm not asking you to get into his head aaron as smart as you are i don't think anybody could do that have any red lines beyond which the israelis can't go before he actually does something i know he's between genocide on one side of him

and the need to win Michigan on the other side of him, but does he have any red lines, moral, legal, political, military? If we go by his own words, no, because he recently said that for him, a red line would be an Israeli invasion of Rafah, but then immediately said that he would never cut off weapons to Israel. And now we get reports in the media and actually the administration openly talking about the fact that they're coordinating with Israel and its plans to assault Rafah.

So Biden's already violated his own so-called red line. And he's in keeping with what John Kirby, his spokesperson said very early on in the Israeli mass murder campaign in Gaza. He said, he was asked if there are any red lines when it comes to Israel's conduct. John Kirby, his spokesperson, said very early on in the Israeli mass murder campaign in Gaza. He was asked if there are any red lines when it comes to Israel's conduct. John Kirby said no. What will happen in the West and in the U.S. if Netanyahu invades Rafah and slaughters another 30,000 civilians or more? Well, you know, what's funny is in that interview where Biden initially said he had no red lines, but then walked it back, he also said that Israel cannot kill another 30,000 Palestinians. So if his number is 30,000, does that mean he'd be okay with 29,999?

I think he would be based on his behavior so far. So if Israel goes in and commits more mass murder in Rafah, I expect we'll see more of the same. Rearming Israel, pretending to be upset about what Israel is doing with selective leaks to media stenographers, all while continuing the policy of supporting Israel and allowing the carnage to continue. Can Netanyahu be trusted with nuclear weapons? Absolutely not. This is someone who talked about 9-11 being good for Israel, who bragged about being able to manipulate U.S. politicians, who spent his something because this is a government that's bellicose. There's a country that's bellicose for its entire existence. It was founded on ethnic cleansing. In 1967, it expanded by taking over even more territory from stealing land from Syria, from Egypt, the West Bank and Gaza as well. And now it's laying claim to annexing parts of the West Bank, talking about wiping out the people of Gaza.

So under no circumstance should this government have anything to do with nuclear weapons. But yet our policy is to pretend as if it's not a problem and support Israel in its nuclear program. Aaron, thank you very much, my dear friend. Again, your knowledge of all this is encyclopedic and I'm deeply grateful for your sharing it with us. All the best. Thank you, Judge. Of course. Deeply grateful for that interview with that bright young man.

Coming up tomorrow at 8.45 in the morning, Senator Rand Paul on his latest battles with Dr. Fauci over COVID, on Pfizer actually allowing more spying now, although the Senate hasn't ratified what the House has sent over, and on what a waste $61 billion will be in Ukraine. That's at 8.45 tomorrow morning. At three in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer, and at four in the afternoon, the one, the only, the inimitable Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.