Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté: Israel Collapsing; Ukraine Invading

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Aaron Maté: Israel Collapsing; Ukraine InvadingSee 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 Thursday, August 29th, 2024. Aaron Maté joins us now. Aaron, late in the week, late in the the day But appreciate your accommodating our crazy schedule We're off for the four day Long weekend and thank you very much For joining us and I know you've been traveling But I also know from following

Your travels That you're very much up on the things That are happening In the past week Last Sunday to be exact In Haaretz There was an an editorial written by General Yitzhak Barak, you may know him or know of him, retired IDF Major General, who said Israel will collapse in a year. Netanyahu has decided to die with the Philistines. Netanyahu has lost his humanity, morality, norms, values, sense of responsibility. On the same day, Ronan Barr, the head of Shin Bet, pardon me,

was quoting as saying the Netanyahu government, Ben-Gavir in particular, was engaged in Jewish terrorism. Okay, this is one side, and obviously I picked the most incendiary, one side of the debate, and I picked the most incendiary things they've said. Is Israel on the verge of collapsing because of the foreign policy of Benjamin Netanyahu? I'll be honest, I wish I could say it was, because I think Israel is such a threat now, not only to everybody around it, but to the world. This hegemonic power that refuses all peaceful accommodation for decades. It's had the option of accepting the international consensus of a two-state solution, a Palestinian state and the West Bank and Gaza, which for Palestinians is a major compromise to 22% of their historic homeland.

The PLO signed on to this. Hamas later signed on to this. Iran later signed on to this. All the Arab states offered Israel this for decades. Now, Israel has always refused, and it's chosen instead constant aggression, hegemony, supremacy, occupation, and now genocide in Gaza. So Israel's a threat, and for the sake of its own citizens alone, this country should not exist. But I think these critics of Netanyahu are being hyperbolic. I don't think Israel is at risk of collapsing. It does still have nuclear weapons, and it does still most crucially enjoy the bipartisan support of the U.S. government. Both parties, as we just saw on display at the DNC,

going out of their way to protect their loyalty to Israel. So I don't think it's facing an existential risk. But what these officials are pointing out is just that the nature of the state has gone off the deep end with these extremist people in power and someone like Netanyahu, whose main concern is his own political

future and is therefore leading his country off the deep end. Certainly there are a lot of problems. There's a lot of internal divisions. That's what happens when you create a state not for its citizens, but around a certain ethnic identity and a certain conception of what that ethnic identity is. You're going to face problems like this. Colonel McGregor, I don't remember if he said he knows or knows of General Baric, is pretty confident that the general is speaking aloud the whispers he's hearing from current active duty generals in IDF. He's effectively become their mouthpiece. If he's correct, and if you combine this with the general perception of exhaustion on the part of this largely civilian citizen reservist army, does it make sense for

them to be invading the West Bank and picking fights with Hezbollah? Well, it makes sense in the context of Israel being a Jewish supremacist state. That's what they are. That's what the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, which Israel has long been occupying and stealing land from. And the West Bank especially is where there are so many important water reserves that Israel steals disproportionately, gives Palestinians a small mountain and steals the most for itself. It makes sense in that context and that you're driven by messianic supremacy. And the goal there, as in Gaza, is to displace as many Palestinians as possible and make life intolerable for the people who choose to remain. That's the basis of Israel's occupation system. Back in 1967, Moshe Dayan, after Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza, Moshe Dayan, who's considered to be sort of a liberal inside the security establishment of

Israel, he said, and this is according to a Hebrew translation, that for Palestinians, the message that we're going to send is you will live like dogs and whoever doesn't like it can leave. And that's essentially the policy today. Wow. does it matter that there are these open divisions in Israeli society or has Netanyahu, is Netanyahu still riding the crest of a wave of public opinion support? Well, you know, he has lost some public support, but crucially for him, what he still has is the backing of the Biden administration. And as long as the Biden administration is willing to do his bidding, willing to debase itself, humiliate itself by saying publicly that Netanyahu has accepted ceasefire offers that Netanyahu himself says he won't accept, then Netanyahu can do whatever he wants. Because as the Israeli defense ministry

just said a few days ago in a statement after Biden delivered his 500th aircraft shipment of weapons to Israel since October 7th, that these weapons are crucial for Israel's operations. So as long as Netanyahu is Biden behind him, I think he can emerge from all this unscathed. Does it matter that Israel has clearly lost the propaganda war amongst international opinion. There isn't a country in the world that supports it besides the leadership of the U.S. Well, but crucially, you still have leaders of many states willing to do Israel's bidding. For example, just this week, there was a claim, it was widely circulated that a purported witness of Hamas committing rape on October 7th had committed suicide

because they were so distraught at what they witnessed. So they took their own life. Now, some of us called this out for immediately as another Israeli scam, as all these claims are. And just recently, an Israeli media outlet, Channel 13, confirmed that this person does not exist. It was another made up story. But yet a top German minister circulated that claim when it was first made.

And today, actually, for the first time, I've never seen this before. Apologize. I'm sorry for circulating a fake claim. That's the first time I can recall seeing a Western, a top Western official apologize for spreading debunked Israeli propaganda. So that's a positive sign. But yet you still it's it's the exception to the rule because so many of these Western leaders are still willing to parrot propaganda that, unfortunately, I think populations do not believe. But especially when you have Western media, especially here in the U.S., willing to act as stenographers for Israel, Israel can still get away with what it's doing because it's not being challenged by the institutions of power in the West that ultimately decide policy. It's not the people that decide policy. It's the people in power. Transitioning to Ukraine, you have a fascinating piece out on your Substack column. Zelensky begs, or excuse me, Zelensky bets on new U.S. payoff, long-range strikes into Russia. You report that he has actually asked Joe Biden, I don't know if this is face-to-face or through intermediaries, for American permission

to use American long-range weapons offensively into Russia. Is this true? It's true. And he's dispatched two top officials, including Andrei Yermak, who is widely known as the actual acting president of Ukraine, to Washington to press the case. And what they're doing is they're coming with a wish list, a wish list of targets inside Russia that they've picked themselves, that they want the U.S. to improve, which underscores just how involved the U.S. is in this proxy war, at the point where top Ukraine officials have to come to Washington begging for permission to hit specific strikes inside of Russia. And this explains, as Ray McGovern just explained on your show in the Intelligence Roundtable, that this is Zelensky's Hail Mary. People have been speculating, why did Ukraine launch this Kursk offensive? Well, it's pretty

clear now. Zelensky, based on an established pattern of Joe Biden rewarding him for being belligerent and rejecting diplomacy, Zelensky is gambling that by invading Russia, by seizing some territory, that will convince his patron in Washington, Joe Biden, to reward him with permission to launch strikes deep into Russia with U.S. weapons. And that really means in practice to get the U.S. to help him hit deep into Russia because Ukraine needs U.S. assistance, targeting, intelligence, operational to use these weapon systems that he wants to use. So that's the gamble he's making. It's a Hail Mary. Russia's already warned essentially of World War III if Biden says yes. But from Zelensky's point of view, I understand why he's doing it. He has been rewarded multiple times. Every time he shuns diplomacy and engages in confrontation, Biden rewards him. When Biden took office, one of the first things Zelensky did, this is back a year before Russia invaded Ukraine. Zelensky banned Putin's top ally in Ukraine, which happened to be Zelensky's top political rival.

Some polls were showing that this party that Zelensky banned and targeted was polling ahead of Zelensky's party. So what did Zelensky do? He banned their television networks and charged the head of the party, Medvedchuk, who was a close ally of Putin. Biden administration applauded that. Zelensky was rewarded. Soon after that, there were more defense agreements integrating Ukraine into NATO. Fast forward to right before Russia invades, Russia says, you know, you need to implement the Minsk Accords. Zelensky ignores that, refuses to even speak to the leaders of the Eastern Ukrainian rebels that he was supposed to make peace with as part of the Minsk Accords. After Russia invades, immediately you have peace talks,

but Zelensky walks away from those very fruitful negotiations in Istanbul, again, under U.S. pressure. What does Biden do the next month? Gives Zelensky tens of billions of dollars in US weapons. Does it again later on that year when Zelensky shuns more Putin ceasefire overtures and peace overtures. So Zelensky's saying that based on this established record of me being rewarded with US weaponry and laxer restrictions on that weaponry, I'm going to gamble that by showing Biden that I can take Russian territory, he's going to gift me now one more,

like the biggest gift of all, which is letting Ukraine use U.S. weapons to strike deep into Russia. So it's understandable that's why he's doing it. He's going to Washington right now to press his case. The Biden administration says publicly that they're not considering it, but Politico reports that one Democratic lawmaker

says in fact that they are. And it's worth considering the implications of this. Biden is really considering letting Ukraine use U.S. weapons to strike deep into Russia. It's absolute insanity. But in a proxy war in which the U.S. goal has only been to bleed Russia and use Ukraineraine for it it's the logical conclusion of this policy of shunning diplomacy and embracing escalation every step of the way it might also be i don't want to get into the politics because that's not what you and i uh discussed but it might also be an october surprise if they're willing to gamble that doing something like this would gin up support for Vice President Harris. Or Zelensky is looking at the calendar and saying, my time is running out.

Right. I need to have something before the election. So, yes, certainly I do think the U.S. election is a factor in this. You know, just a month ago, the rumors were circulating here in the U.S. that the State Department wanted him out and his bags were packed and he was ready to go to one of his mansions. Do they have somebody to replace him? Might it be the fellow that's in Washington negotiating with Jake Sullivan when he comes back from China? You know, if finally Zelensky wears out his welcome, I would not be surprised if Andrei Yermak takes his place. Ukraine is no more a democracy than Israel is.

Yeah, and there are similarities in the two countries in that in both cases, it's the US and its client, whether it's Ukraine or Israel, that has shunned the international consensus that could have peace. In the case of Israel, I mentioned before, the two-state solution, which is now basically it's a pipe dream, forget it, it's over now.

But back when it was possible, it was the U.S. and Israel every single year that stood in the way. Every year at the U.N., there were votes in the U.N. General Assembly, which everybody supported except for two people, the U.S. and Israel, calling for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, which, again, is a massive Palestinian concession, just 22% of their historic homeland. Same thing in Ukraine. The U.S. and its proxy stood alone in the world

in rejecting the Minsk Accords, which was the 2015 agreement between Ukraine and Russian-backed Eastern Ukrainians to have peace. All it would require is for Ukraine to recognize the rights of people in Eastern Ukraine who want to speak Russian and want to have ties with Russia.

But that was a non-starter for Ukraine's ultra-nationalists who, just like Israel, see themselves as supreme. They are formed around an ethno-nationalist identity that says, you know, we are true Ukrainians. These Russian-speaking, ethnic Russian Ukrainians are not, and therefore we're superior and we don't want to live with them in the same way that Israel looks at Palestinians, the indigenous people of that land. So there actually are a lot of parallels between Ukraine and Israel. And that's presumably why after October 7th, Zelensky wanted to go to Israel to kiss the ring of Netanyahu and show his support. And there's even been Israelis actually arming some of the ironically arming the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, so the Jewish state arming neo-Nazis.

It makes sense only because they're both U.S. clients. Unbelievable. Ray McGovern has told us many times where MI6 and CIA go, Mossad will soon follow or sometimes even take the lead. Where are you on the sort of disagreement between McGovern and Johnson? Larry Johnson thinks it's realistic that Putin will strike NATO countries and maybe even the U.S. McGovern says, no way. We have a very strong statement, which I think you've seen or read from Foreign Minister Lavrov, who basically says the United States politicians are like children playing with matches, and they don't even realize it. You know, so much of this comes down to the mental state of Biden and his top aides. Are they really crazy enough to give Ukraine permission to use U.S. weapons to launch deep into Russia, which also

would require essentially U.S. assistance? Is Biden that crazy? Well, you would hope he's not, but then you look at his record and the problem is it's not an easy question. You have to wonder, is he crazy enough to do that? So he actually might be. He might be that fanatically committed to U.S. hegemony that all he can see is that if this is yet another step that helps him on his goal of weakening Russia, then let's do it, no matter the consequences. Personally, just maybe I'm being naive. I'm going to bet that he's not going to let Ukraine do this because it's just so catastrophic. But if he does, then yes, we do have to entertain the possibility, as Lavrov has warned, that there will be a Russian retaliation. And the targets could be not just NATO allies, but the US itself.

It's insane to fathom, but that's the position we put ourselves in by undermining diplomacy with Russia at every single turn. There's been so many opportunities to prevent this war before Russia invaded, just to simply end the war that began with, which we started in 2014 with the U.S.-backed Maidan. Didn't, to follow up on what your last thought, didn't Zelensky himself at one point publicly say he embraced the Minsk Accords? He was elected on a pledge of making peace with the Eastern Ukrainians. That's why so many people came out and voted for him.

He got over 70% of the vote. People in the east of Ukraine were excited about him because he was a break from the institution. The Russian-speaking areas. Yeah, yeah. But unfortunately, now he did make some steps to try to, you know, he did go further in implementing Minsk than his predecessor, Poroshenko, but he's been constrained by two main factors. One is the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who literally threatened his life. One of them threatened to hang Zelensky from a tree if he made peace with Eastern Ukrainians, if he implemented the Minsk Accords. And then the neocons in Washington,

who, you know, united around undermining Zelensky and failing to give him the support he needed to stand up to the ultra-nationalists because after 2014, U.S. became Ukraine's only really important ally, the main sponsor of everything. But the U.S. refused to back up Zelensky. And in fact, when Donald Trump paused some weapons to Ukraine and talked about Ukraine making peace with Russia, while at the same time encouraging Ukraine to help U.S. investigate Russiagate and also the Bidens, Trump got impeached. And that's when Adam Schiff got up on the House floor and said that the U.S. fights Russia over there

so we don't have to fight Russia over here. So the message from that impeachment was we are using Ukraine to fight Russia. We have no interest in implementing the Minsk Accords and we're willing to sacrifice Ukraine for it. And that's why Russia invaded ultimately to end the fight. And that's why we're in the mess we're in. Do you think the Ukrainians now understand that the Orange Revolution was a mistake. I mean, with all of our fixation on Kursk and with all of our fixation on what you and I

and Larry and Ray and I have been talking about, we can't lose sight of the progress of the Russian military moving west, which is inexorable, and the losses the Ukraine military is suffering as the Russians move west, which is inexorable, and the losses the Ukraine military is suffering as the Russians move west, which is catastrophic. Might Putin be close to his goal? I think Putin is close to his goal, especially because to invade Kursk, Ukraine had to divert forces from the east, which has increased the chances of Russia taking over

the territory it really wants a lot sooner. So Ukraine's invasion of Kursk has actually strengthened Russia in that regard. In terms of Ukrainians regretting the Orange Revolution and the Maidan Revolution or the Maidan coup, well, listen, already at the time of Maidan, Ukrainians were not monolithic. The country was evenly divided. If you look at the polls, back when we were told that in 2014, that Ukrainians were overwhelmingly in support of Austin Yanukovych and bringing in a US-friendly or US-backed government, the polls told the opposite story. In fact, some polls showed a majority of Ukrainians opposed

the Maidan movement because that was a reflection of the fact that by the end of the Maidan, it became totally dominated by ultra-nationalists and even included some neo-Nazis. So even at the time, Ukrainians were never united. It's always been a divided country, which was why the Minsk Accords made sense, because rather than try to move Ukraine into one camp, the West, or move it into Russia's camp, respect the fact that it's a multifaceted country. It's very divided. So don't pull it into either camp. Don't make it join NATO. Don't make it join a Russian-led military bloc. That was not a radical

demand. That, in fact, was enshrined in Ukraine's founding constitution, the goal of neutrality. The problem was Ukrainian internationalists teamed up with their allies in Washington to pull off the Maidan coup. And it's been a mess ever since. And until we're willing to reckon with how horrible that decision was, this disaster will continue. Do you think Putin will attack NATO facilities where American and Western arms are stored and configured for use in Ukraine? If Biden signs off on Zelensky's request for help with long range strikes with US weapons into Russia, I think that's a very real possibility. Yes. Russia has fought in Ukraine so far, and that's where the fight has been.

And there's been this unspoken bargain between the U.S. and Russia that as long as the fight is contained to Ukraine, then there won't be attacks on each other. But if now the U.S. is directly involved in long-range strikes deep into Russia, like St. Petersburg or Moscow or around there, then I do think all bets are off. And it's insane we even have to contemplate this possibility. It all could have been avoided had we simply willing to let Ukraine be neutral and respect its divisions. Aaron Mate, thank you, my dear friend. Have a great holiday weekend. Thank you for accommodating our schedule. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Oh, by the way, Max missed you in Chicago. Well, Max did fine on his own, interrogating all those Democratic politicians. Oh, God, misery loves company, as you know, being his buddy. But welcome back.

We'll see you next week. All the best, my friend. Thank you, Judge. To you as well. Of course. Have a great long holiday weekend. We'll see you on Tuesday. All of our regulars,

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, next week. And remember to go to judgenap.com. Please subscribe to Judging Freedom. We're up to 432,000. We want to be up to a half a million subscriptions by Christmastime. And if our ability to reach you is ever impaired by one of the sites that currently offers us, judgenap.com will always tell you how, where, and when you can find us. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!