Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté : Is Israel a Criminal State?

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

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Today is Tuesday, August 12, 2025. Aaron Matte is here with us in just a minute on. Is Israel a criminal state? But first this. We all know how devastating war is. Lives lost, communities destroyed, but war can also threaten your financial freedom. That's where America's heading, our growing involvement in global conflicts. It means more spending, more debt, and a weaker dollar.

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was a member of Hamas. complete lie. There's no evidence for it whatsoever. And there's a long list of Israeli lies, obviously, that preceded. And they took credit for it. They took credit for a war crime for killing five Al-Dazira staff, including Anas al-Shalerif, in the tent where they were sheltering near Al-Shippa hospital. So they haven't even hid the fact that they did it. And they're proud of it. They both that they killed these journalists. Haven't unarmed journalists been offgrounds in war for a hundred years? Well, yes, that's international law,

as you're not allowed to target journalists, not a lot of target civilians, but Israel has thrown all that out the window. More than 200 journalists in Gaza have been killed by Israel since October 7th, and of course, there's a long history of Israel killing journalists before that. Most famously for American audiences, is when Israel killed Shirin Abuakle,

a correspondent for Al Jazeera, in the West Bank as she was covering Israeli military rates there. So this is now standard procedure for Israel, and they brag about it, and they come out with this excuse afterwards, oh, everyone's Hamas. You know, that's just their truth for everything. Do they kill Israeli journalists or work for publications critical of the Netanyahu regime? The number of Israeli journalists killed by Israel, I don't recall any examples of that. mostly been Palestinians.

They also kill American peace activists who stand up to Israel. So, for example, people like Rachel Corey, a young woman who was ran over by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza more than 20 years ago. And they also kill with impunity Palestinian-American, two recently killed by Israel and Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Has anything been done about this? Is there any judicial action? taking against the people that do it?

Well, no, because Israel claims that these were members of Hamas, so there's no investigation needed. And they got an endorsement from Mike Huckabee, who said that he tends, he'll take Israel's word over Hamas. That's what he told Pierce Morgan. And what matters here is what the U.S. says, and the U.S. is basically given its endorsement of Israel continuing to murder, brave journalists.

Really, the bravery of these people just has to be, underscored. Israel, in the case of Anasal Sharif, openly threatened him and told him to stop reporting. He refused to obey. He insisted on bearing witness to the extermination of his people. And so at great risk to himself, he went out

every single day, put on his press vest, and reported on the carnage that he was seeing. He was only 28 years old. He leaves behind two young children and a wife. He barely saw them because he was always out there reporting on the Gaza genocide. And as Israel was now

getting into the phase of its genocide where it's going to essentially obliterate Gaza City. It's obvious that they wanted to take out journalists, especially the most prominent one, who was going to be there to cover it. So one of the first things they did as they launched this attack on Gaza City is

murder, Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues. Here's a clip that bemoans his death and shows him. Chris, cut number one. He was one of the most recognizable voices reporting from Gaza since the war began in October 2023. Among the few international journalists who remained in northern Gaza throughout the

conflict, broadcasting even as Israeli forces ordered more than a million Palestinians to evacuate the area. Born in Jabalya refugee camp, Al-Sharif graduated from Al-Axa University's media faculty. He became one of the key voices from Gaza's front lines. Throughout At the war, the 28-year-old reporter paid a high personal price for his commitment to truth. In December 23, his father was killed when Israeli forces struck the family home in Jabilia. This came weeks after death threats. Israeli officers told him to stop reporting, but he refused. And in recent weeks, the pressure intensified.

The Israeli army targeted him and his colleagues online, falsely accusing Al-Sharif of being a Hamas member. A pre-prepared message was posted on his ex-account after his death, saying, If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times. Yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without. distortion or falsification so that God may bear witness against those who stayed silent and accepted our killing he ends do not forget Gaza and do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance I've watched this a half-decent times

it still puts goosebumps on my arms how does the Israeli public react to this I don't think They care. It just doesn't matter to them. This has been normalized. Most Israelis support the genocide in Gaza. They support ethnic cleansing. And so if their government tells them that they killed another member of Hamas, even though it's just another blatant lie, people shrug. Life goes on. You know, Israelis are living a comfortable life. You know, they like to show the footage of people on the beach in Tel Aviv while there's a genocide going on, not that far away. So this murder of a brave. believe Palestinian journalists is just considered normal, and it's considered totally acceptable in the eyes of Israel. Is there no sense of virtue or intellectual honesty? Is there no recognition of Judeo teaching that everybody has the right to live? No, that's long been suppressed in Israel. Again, this is a country founded on ethnic cleansing, expelling forcibly, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, stealing

their homes and then just being in denial about it, coming up with all these fictions to just erase the Palestinian history inside of Palestine. And so a country predicated on that kind of denial was bound to go this direction where essentially the very existence of a Palestinian is considered to be a demographic threat to a Jewish supremacist state. And we're seeing this now with the continuing genocide. You know, in that clip you played from Al Jazeera of Anasal-Sharif, there's a few seconds of footage of the moment when he was reporting on the ceasefire. I believe the last ceasefire

that was negotiated by Steve Wickhoff. And there was a famous moment where as he's reporting, he takes off his press fest because it's the first time he can not worry about being murdered for doing his job. But of course, his press fest had to go back on because the genocide continued. And of course,

Israel inevitably was going to murder him because he was, before he was killed, he was the foremost journalist left in Gaza, after so many before him, have been assassinated by Israel. And there's no repercussion for this amongst Israeli society. Is there, we've talked about this before, Aaron. Is there an anti-war movement of any significance? There are small protests that happen, and you have a small sliver of people who show concern for the people of Gaza. And there was a symbolic flotilla that was launched recently, actually, by families of captains.

against Netanyahu, trying to basically reach Gaza in protest of Netanyahu abandoning their loved ones because he'd rather continue the genocide. So there's a little, you know, and the captive families are vocal. They know that Netanyahu has abandoned them. But if you look at polls, there's no serious opposition to Netanyahu's genocide and at the cleansing agenda. Chris, play the clip of the young man that I'm not. Aaron knows.

One thing that you need to keep in mind is Israel has been lying insistently since the beginning of the genocide. It's been the cornerstone of Israel's genocidal campaign to lie every single day about everything possible and to come up with the most lunatic lies possible, imaginable. Israel lied about massacring the ambulance workers in Rafah. They lied about the GHF massacres. They lied about the Shifa hospital. Flower Massacre, the beheaded babies, Hamad Hospital, Himd Rejab, the terror list at the

Rantisi Hospital that turned out to be a calendar, the World Central Kitchen Workers, babies and ovens, white phosphorus, deliberately starving gauzens, Sinwar surrounding himself with 20 hostages in a tunnel, gazing hostages, the Ahele Hospital, killing women and children with white flags, mass raping Palestinians, non-existent tunnels under graveyards, Nasir Hospital, Hussam Abu Safia, mass graves, snipers targeting kids in the head. providing protection to criminal gangs that are looting aid systematically. Israel also lied about wiping out Gaza incrementally gradually. They lied about refusing and collapsing the ceasefire,

blowing up Gaza's, gasans fleeing south, blowing up and destroying Kamal Udwan hospital, claiming that dead Gaza and children are fake plastic dolls. Is this true? All of those claims, names that he listed are documented Israeli lies and it goes on and on and

it's striking just how many he was able to list off in such a short amount of time I mean it's an extra that Chris turned it into a part of me into a full screen so you can see it on the screen there's too much for me to read and it basically repeats what he said but it's just an

extraordinary catalog of lies perpetrated by the Israeli government yeah and it speaks to the Israeli desperation to sustain the genocide. It knows it can only do that if it has the tacit support of its allies and the full support of the U.S. And so to do that has to constantly put up propaganda to just bombard Western audiences with so that people are intimidated into pushing back and just standing up. So that's where all this propaganda comes from.

There's been so many of them. It's basically Norman Ficklestin says that everything Israel says should be presumed to be false until proven true. It's true at this point. They're just pathological liars because they're pathologically committed to genocide. Is there no, well, here he is again, Israel murdering Gaza's most prominent journalist tonight is about creating a full blackout ahead of what's coming. The total annihilation of Gaza City and completion. of genocide. So that's what they expect. Can Hamas resist that? I can't predict what Hamas can do. Hamas has surprised me in terms of their

staying power so far. But look, the people of Gaza are totally defenseless. And they're going after Gaza City because Gaza City hasn't been completely demolished. There are a lot of people still sheltering there. And Israel wants to destroy the parts of Gaza that are still somewhat habitable and push people to the south so that it can prepare them for ethnic cleansing or just pin them in permanent concentration camps within the larger Gaza concentration camp. You mentioned Israeli allies. What allies does Israel have besides the U.S.?

Well, the U.S. is the most important one, and as long as they have the U.S., they continue doing this. And other allies have started to be a little bit more critical, even Germany, which has been totally subservient to Israel, recently said it would pause some weapons. in sales to Israel. That's a reflection of just absolute revulsion that the public has for what Israel is doing and the government's inability to pretend anymore that Israel is following international law and is just defending itself. So it is losing some support internationally from its allies, but yeah, the most important one is the U.S. And on that front, there's nothing but a green light

from Trump so far. Has Israel always been this degraded, this immoral, this reprehensible, or is it worse under Benjamin Netanyahu? I think the basis has always been there. A country founded on ethnic cleansing, guided by Jewish supremacy. Max Blumenthal, your frequent guest, wrote a book more than a decade ago called Goliath. And the picture it paints is that this is just a fundamentally fanatic society, is irredeemably fanatic. It's just the level of Jewish supremacy, chauvinism, was just off the deep end.

And so something like this was foreseen. by max over a decade ago because that's what happens when you're when you're just when you build an ethno state on stolen land you colonize the west bank you pin Palestinians inside a death camp inside of Gaza to do all that you have to develop a level of fanaticism extremism that it's just off the charts and so it's not a total shock to me that that it's devolved into into genocide is israel a criminal state there's no argument it's the most criminal state in the world i can't recall an example where a state has gone to this uh gone to these lengths to murder and uh just make suffer a besieged civilian population at least not in recent memory this is the the criminality is off the

charts in all levels. You know, first of all, the, the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is illegal to begin with. It's going on since 1967. That was preceded by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Most of the people of Gaza are refugees or the descendants of refugees, meaning that their family homes are inside what is now called Israel that was stolen from them in 1948. And then after October 7th, you have mass murder, targeting hospitals, targeting schools, targeting shelters, targeting mosques and churches, blocking aid, destroying the UN aid delivery system that was working as well as it could, replacing it with a fake aid organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is essentially designed to lure Palestinians and to death

tramps into death traps where they're killed more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed so far lining up for food that's more Israelis than were killed on October 7th so yeah I mean this is not only a criminal state this most criminal state in the world well and I guess nothing can be done about it other than trying to change Trump's mind but they seem to have a and a a lock on him whether it's the Epstein files or whether it's his interaction with Mrs. Adelson and all the money she gave him. He doesn't have any philosophy of government. He doesn't have any philosophy of life,

but yet he is devoted to what the Israelis want, unless you're of the view that Netanyahu actually controls him. I don't think Netanyahu controls Trump. I think that Biden and Trump have made the choice to back Israel out of a sort of solidarity with a fellow white colonial state. a proxy of the U.S. that serves U.S. hegemony, and also because of the power of the Israel lobby, people like Mary Madelson, who you mentioned, gave Trump more than $100 million in APEC, which can essentially buy off politicians and spend enough money to oust politicians who they don't like.

That's why they're going after people like Marjorie Taylor Green now, because Marjorie Taylor Green has been increasingly critical of all this money and support going to Israel as it commits. Oh, I didn't know they were going. didn't know they were going after her and I never thought I'd see myself rooting for her. Yeah, she's, you know, for her own reasons, she's been very critical of APEC. And so, yeah, now she's in their crosshair. So is Tucker Carlson, who continues to be critical of Israel. And they reflect, I think, an aspect of Maga that actually believes in America first, that didn't sign up for this agenda of putting Israel first and, you know, not just sending

all this money abroad to help Israel slaughter civilians, but then cracking them on civil. liberties at home, the ongoing suppression of free speech in the name of Israel. Some recent examples came when the Department of Homeland Security said that disaster aid will be conditioned on whether or not a state boycotts. If a state boycotts Israel, then they could face the loss of disaster aid. Day after day, we get new examples of our Trump is putting Israel first. And that's what Biden did too. And so that's why I'm not convinced this as anything to do with Epstein. What that's to do with just bipartisan policy and to control the Israel lobby over Washington.

and with no end in sight with no end in sight Aaron thank you very much it's very depressing discussing this it's not depressing being with you you're so smart courageous and articulate but it's depressing listening to all this stuff

but it's got to be articulated you know we've been doing this for coming on four years in October I don't know what kind of progress we've made we have an enormous audience that loves you and Max and Mier shimer and sacks and the others but it doesn't seem to have any palpable effect on the policies

of the american government i agree with you uh but uh you know change can happen very quickly you never know and look on the other conflict we often talk about there is some serious news this week with trump and putin sitting down in alaska i'm not very hopeful about that but at least the fact that they're meeting that's a positive sign so yes people are looking for some glimmer of positivity in the world. I think the fact that the leaders of the top two nuclear powers who are currently on the other side of a proxy war in Ukraine are speaking, and that to me is a good thing. Agreed. Aaron, thank you very much, my dear friend. We'll look forward to seeing you again soon. All the best. To you as well, Judge. Thank you. Thank you. Coming up at 3 o'clock today, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Koukowski, Judge

Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.