Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté : More State Dept. Lies

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Aaron Maté : More State Dept. LiesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. so so hi everyone judge andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, March 20th, 2024. Aaron Matei joins us now. Aaron, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. What do you think will happen when the IDF invades rafa we have a city that had about a population of about a quarter of a million it now has a million and a quarter there the original population plus refugees that the israelis have forced south uh under the pretext that they're going to a safe haven

and now prime minister netanyahu's government is planning an invasion. How is this going to end? It's hard to fathom that this mass murder campaign by Israel could get even worse. But that's what Israel is threatening right now unless it's stopped. What would happen? People would die in even bigger numbers and try to break the gates of Gaza to flee to Egypt. And it's unclear if they would be able to succeed. They're pretty effectively caged in the Gaza death camp. So it's really hard to imagine. And what is the U.S. doing to stop this? Well, they claim they oppose

Israel's planned invasion of Rafah, but they're not slowing any of the military support that allows Israel to carry out such attacks. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, whom you know, has referred to the Israeli government as a criminal regime, unlike anything we've seen since World War II. I'm going to guess that you agree with that characterization for the conclusion of which evidence is ample. I do. I mean, there's been plenty of atrocities since the Second World War on a larger scale. I mean, just the U.S. and Vietnam alone that killed many more people than Israel's currently killing in Gaza. There's also, of course, Pol Pot in Cambodia and many other horrible regimes that have carried out mass murder. But the brutality and the brazenness of this Israeli government and the

outright supremacy, the outright expressions of supremacy that underpin their actions in Gaza, that to me is not unseen since the Nazis espouse similar views about their supremacy and the complete dehumanization of their victims. So it's hard not to draw those comparisons. And when you want to slaughter innocents, you characterize them as something other than human, non-persons, subhuman, animals, whatever. These are not my words, these are words of rabbis of some prominence or media status in Israel today. And then when you can get the public accepting the fact that these people are not human, it's easier to get away with your slaughter of them. Does that view still prevail in Israel or have the Israelis had enough of Netanyahu's war crimes? No, absolutely.

If you look at polls, a majority of Israelis think that Israel is not using enough force in Gaza, which is just impossible to fathom. And that's why you also see these large crowds of Israelis going out of their way to block aid just to make sure that their government's blockade of aid going into Gaza is secured. So it's a sick society. It's the inevitable result of being founded on ethnic cleansing and ethno-supremacy. To justify stealing a country from the Palestinians, you have to convince yourself that they're not human beings. And that's what Israel's slowly done over the course of its existence. And right now we're just seeing the most crude expression of that, but it's something that has been warned about for a very long time, including inside Israel,

by voices inside Israel. Here in the U.S., plenty of critics have warned about this for a long time. You know, Noam Chomsky, who once really believed in the idea of a Jewish homeland and even lived in Israel for a little bit on a kibbutz, warned about this a very, very long time ago. And many other prophetic voices have come along since. But this is the inevitable result of Zionism. Did Chuck Schumer's speech change anything? I don't think so. I think it just showed that the Biden administration, first of all, is alarmed by all the tens of thousands who are showing up to vote uncommitted

in protest of the support of the genocide and felt the need to do something about it. And their answer was to make Benjamin Netanyahu the personification of the problem here, that if we just get rid of Netanyahu, then everything could go back to normal. If you listen to what Chuck Schumer said, he endorsed Israel's current mass murder campaign in Gaza,

and he said there should be new elections only after it's complete. So what he's effectively doing is saying, yes, there should be a new leader of Israel. Netanyahu is a problem, but he's still endorsing Netanyahu's policies. And he's not, contrary to some interpretations, he's not calling for a reduction of U.S. support to Netanyahu. So ultimately, I think he's actually enabling Netanyahu. Max Blumenthal has pointed this out. If you're going to say that Netanyahu has to go, but then you're not going to be willing to do anything yourself to change his behavior, then you're strengthening him because now Netanyahu can still enjoy the same U.S. support in terms of military and diplomatic cover. While also he can go to his public and say, look,

the Americans are trying to undermine me. You know, they don't support Israel like I do. I think this will actually boost his standing among the population. And as Jeff Sachs said to you on your show, why are we so concerned with what Israel does? Why don't we focus on what we're doing and what are we doing to counter Netanyahu and his genocide machine? Nothing. We're not only not doing anything we're funding it as max has said in that famous clip that we've run many many times um biden could stop the slaughter during this show if he made a phone call to netanyahu and said and said the right things but it's not going to happen you and anya and uh max and others have pointed out how wedded Biden is to Zionism at the hip.

And by his own statements has been for his 50 years. Maybe it's even longer. How old is he? 80, 81? His 50 years of public life. He's not about the change now, no matter what the voters in Michigan say. There'll be a little pabulum like Tony Blinken's hand-wringing and Chuck Schumer's speech and a dock in the Mediterranean that won't even be built until another 30,000 or 40,000 people are slaughtered, but that'll be it.

Oh, exactly. And it's getting ridiculous to the point where the Biden administration can't even keep their talking points straight. So a week ago, Tony Blinken was bragging about how Israel's letting in food and we're doing everything we can to get the aid in. Things are going well. Israel's not only letting in food, but making sure it goes to the right places. This week, he had to stand up and admit, oh yeah, 100% of the population is facing acute malnutrition. So, so much for Israel's successful efforts to let the aid in. It's a complete, it's comical. The Biden administration is a series of Baghdad bobs. Remember, Baghdad Bob was the Iraqi spokesperson who kept insisting that things are going great as

the US was slowly taking over his country during the US invasion of Iraq. That's the Biden administration during this genocide is just making comical statements, being completely incoherent. And now, again, Schumer going out there and saying we oppose Netanyahu, but doing nothing to actually undermine him to stop U.S. support for Netanyahu's genocide. So it's the Biden administration, again, feeling compelled by electoral politics to say something, but ultimately showing just how weak and feckless it is in doing anything. Here's Jake Sullivan. This is cut number two, Chris. Jake Sullivan being questioned about the conversation that Biden and Netanyahu apparently had just three or four days ago. And the question essentially, you'll hear the question, but it essentially is, did Biden threaten to cut off military aid?

You know what the answer is going to be. But here's the question and here's the answer. During the call, did the president threaten at any point to withhold military aid to Israel if Israel moves into Raqqa or a famine does ensue in Gaza? The president didn't make threats. What the president said today was, I want you to understand, Mr. Prime Minister, exactly where I am on this. I am for the defeat of Hamas. I believe that they are an evil terrorist group with not just Israeli but American blood on their hands. At the same time, I believe that to get to that, you need a strategy that works. And that strategy should not involve a major military operation that puts thousands and thousands of lives, civilian, innocent lives at risk. And Rafa, there is a better way.

Send your team to Washington. Let's talk about it. We'll lay out for you what we believe is a better way. And I will leave it at that. Do they expect us to believe that the American State Department will talk the IDF and Prime Minister Netanyahu out of invading Rafah after all of this? Yeah, especially given that this is the exact same thing that the U.S. said at the start of this mass murder campaign, that we consulted with Israel, we're trying to convince them to do the

right thing. How did that go? There was even a U.S. military advisor sent over to speak to the Israelis. What good did that do? We've seen at least 30,000, 31,000 Palestinians slaughtered by Israel, including over 13,000 children. And again, the official tolls are always an undercount because many more bodies are buried under the rubble, amongst other problems with counting the actual debt. So Jake Sullivan's claim that we want to consult with Israel and moderate its behavior is undermined by the established record so far. And again, if you're not willing to cut off the military support that makes this operation possible, why would Israel listen to you? The fact that Sullivan says that we want them to come and talk to us, it does underscore just how joined at the hip the U.S. and Israel are. The problem for the Biden administration is that it wants it both ways. It claims that it can influence Israeli behavior when it feels it needs to say that. But then when Israel doesn't change its behavior, it claims it's powerless.

Tell me how the Israeli public, if you can get a handle on how the public in general feels about Joe Biden, is he the savior or is he a willing dupe? I think it's both. After Joe Biden came to visit Israel, he was widely celebrated inside Israeli society. But now look, Israel is so extreme that even when the Biden administration just puts forward some face-saving PR, then I'm sure that's engendered a harsh reaction. Some Israelis have criticized him. Some prominent Israelis have. But that's just what Israel has always done. I mean, they hated Barack Obama. They insulted Barack Obama, even though Barack Obama bent over backwards to give Israel whatever it wanted. After Netanyahu came to Congress and tried to undermine the Iran nuclear deal, Obama turned around and gave Israel a 10-year, $38 billion military assistance package.

And this criticism that Netanyahu is getting now from the Biden administration, it's pretty clear what it's about. Netanyahu is an annoyance. He says the truth sometimes out loud when he should be, he should be, if, if the U.S. could decide what an Israeli leader would say, they would pretend to support a two state solution. They would pretend to care about delivering aid to Gaza. Netanyahu can't do that. He's too much of a fanatic. So they need someone who can pretend to support peace while ultimately pursuing the same policies of war and apartheid. We were talking earlier about Schumer. Right before you came on, Phil Giraldi reported, I haven't seen it in the news or the wires yet, that Netanyahu asked to address the United States Senate, and Chuck Schumer said no.

And then he asked to address the Republican caucus, and Mitch McConnell said, yes, have you heard this? I have heard of that. Yeah. And there's a precedent for that. I mean, they did the same thing when when Republicans and Netanyahu were trying to undermine the Iran nuclear deal. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if that happens again. And it just it speaks to how feckless the Biden administration looks, bending over backwards to arm Israel, finding creative ways to send it weapons. So for example, breaking up weapons packages into smaller little chunks so it doesn't have

to provide notification to Congress that it's sending the weapons. And when it does send a huge weapons package, then bypassing congressional oversight by issuing these waivers on national security grounds. And even that isn't enough for Netanyahu, who now feels empowered to come and humiliate Biden in his own town. That's the dynamic that's being established. The waivers are extremely troublesome to me because they are documents signed under oath

by Antony Blinken in which he says two things. This is a matter of American national security, and it's an emergency. We don't have time to go to Congress. Now, we all know it's not a matter of either. It's not a matter of American national security, and it's not an emergency. They have plenty of time to go to Congress, and he keeps getting away with this. Some prosecutor in the Trump administration or whoever succeeds at Biden may decide to prosecute him for lying under oath. Well, if that decision was ever made, there'd be plenty of opportunities for the Biden administration,

including also in their policy in Ukraine, where they've also fought this proxy war in the name of national security while endangering the security of everybody, foremost Ukrainians and Russians, but the whole world too. And the same thing when it comes to the policy in Israel. There was recently a threat assessment put out by the intelligence community, and they noted that Israel's war on Gaza will likely lead to an increase in terrorism, which of course it will. If you carry out mass murder against a defenseless population, of course people are going to feel harsh animosity and bitter hatred and want revenge. I mean, this is the standard playbook that's been going on forever. So Israel's existence undermines everyone's security,

Palestinians foremost, but also Israelis, this ethno-supremacist state that gets unlimited support from the U.S. It's a threat to everybody. And the actual, quote unquote, national security interest has nothing to do with security, has to do with hegemony. Israel acts as a reliable client state to keep Arab nationalism in line, to funnel weapons to death squads in Central America or to apartheid South Africa in the 1980s when the U.S. couldn't do that. So it plays some client roles. And also, I think there's just an identification with a fellow European settler state, which Israel is and the U.S. is too. And I think all these factors are what drive U.S. support for Israel, along with the power of the

Israel lobby. But none of that has anything to do with national security. If anything, it endangers it. Do you have a feeling from your resources in the Middle East that there's any resistance gathering? Our friend and colleague Alistair Crook believes there is and that at some point somebody, some state actor with the military, the president of Turkey, the mullahs in Iran, the king of Jordan, somebody is going to say enough is enough. I wouldn't count on Turkey or Jordan playing that role. Turkey is a member of NATO. Jordan is a US client state. Iran and Hezbollah do have the capacity to fight Israel, but the problem for them is that would invite massive damage to their countries, to Hezbollah in Lebanon especially. And I don't think they want that fight.

Hezbollah has said that they will not let Hamas suffer a complete defeat. So perhaps that means that they still will intervene in ways they haven't yet. But Israel, I don't think, wants to fight Hezbollah because, as we've talked about before, Israel doesn't like attacking people who can fight back. They bomb Syria all the time because Syria has been destroyed by a decade-long dirty war that we were at the center of. And so Syria can't fight back, so that's fine. Attacking Hezbollah, I'm not sure about that because Hezbollah can actually fight back and do real damage to Israel. Right. I'm going to show you a clip of the world's greatest commercial developer of commercial real estate in a minute.

But before that, there's a brouhaha going on here in northern New Jersey, maybe an hour from where I live, where a synagogue, a very substantial synagogue in an upscale area, invited two Israeli real estate agents to make presentations about the sale of property. And of course, the property can only be bought by people who are Jewish, which is a violation of New Jersey law. And these people offered property in Gaza as well. So there's a big brouhaha. They were literally chased out of the state. They went to Canada and made similar presentations. One of their presentations they canceled in Canada because of an uproar, but there are efforts to prosecute going on here in New Jersey.

Does any of this surprise you? It doesn't. There's something called the Jewish National Fund, which has existed for decades now, that is predicated on buying up land and reserving it just for Jewish use. Israel is an ethno-state. It's a Jewish supremacist state. It defines itself not as a state of its citizens, but the state of the Jewish people. And Jews around the world, including myself, are given far more rights by Israel than the indigenous Palestinians whose land was stolen. So it's similar to apartheid South Africa. It's a similar entitled attitude that we own the whole land because of what our Bible says from 3,000 years ago.

And therefore, we have the right land because of what our Bible says from 3,000 years ago, and therefore we have the right to settle all of it. So no, I'm not surprised at all to see that there are projects like this to expand. Could I as a Roman Catholic American buy real estate in Jerusalem? I'm sure you could, but I think your prospects of getting land would be a lot higher if you converted to Judaism, especially if you wanted to get yourself a piece of land in a West Bank settlement surrounded by Palestinian villages that have been eroded and displaced. Here's the former president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, talking to a professor of Hebrew studies at Harvard University about what valuable oceanfront real estate he'd like to develop.

Once Gazans leave Gaza, Netanyahu is never going to let them back in. Maybe, but I'm not sure there's much left of Gaza at this point. And so my sense is, is I would say, how do we deal with the terror threat that is there so that it cannot be a threat to Israel or to Egypt, right? I think that both sides are spending a fortune on military. I think neither side really wants to have, you know, a terrorist organization enclaved right between them and Gaza's waterfront property. It could be very valuable to if people would focus on kind of building up. I thought it was nauseating that he's talking about developing and selling Gaza's, well, the Mediterranean coastline in Gaza.

Oh, it's so nauseating. And it's so nauseating that he was supposedly in charge of Middle East peace efforts for Trump during Trump's administration. And he's expressing the attitude that he brought into that job. Basically, the Palestinians are barely worth mentioning. Who cares if they have no more homes to return to? Their rights are non-existent. Gaza is only worth discussing in the context of what more land we can steal and develop there on the coast and build up some valuable real estate. We only are concerned with Israel's security and Egypt's security. Nothing there about Palestine's security, because in his mind, they're just not people. And that's unfortunately the attitude that he brought to Trump's administration. And it's

pretty much bipartisan. The whole project, which Biden continued, Biden continued Kushner's project of trying to reach these so-called normalization deals between Israel and Gulf regimes while offering nothing to Palestinians. And Kushner is just making it plain right there. Do you think the Gulf states that signed on to the Abraham Accords now regret it? That's a good question. I haven't looked into that, but if they have, I haven't seen anybody drop out or retract. Maybe I've missed something, but they're not really going to fully regret it unless their populations rise up. And that's hard when you live under autocrats. It's difficult to rise up. Certainly, Saudi Arabia, I think, has thought twice about its plans to normalize with Israel. I do think that that was happening before October 7th. And they've understood that if they do do that for their own populations, it would be intolerable.

So I think they backed off there. When do you think the invasion of Rafah will take place? I can't predict that. All I can say is that the U S could still stop it. If it actually put its money where its mouth is, if it stopped supporting Israel with the military and diplomatic cover, uh, that to me is the only way to avoid an invasion of Rafa by Israel. And that can only happen if the Biden administration faces even more pressure than it's currently facing.

Uh, when, um, um, only happen if the Biden administration faces even more pressure than it's currently facing. When Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken make their hand-wringing statements, does that resonate with the Jewish people in Israel? Oh, I don't think the people in Israel take anything these guys say seriously. I mean, why should they? There's been no consequence at all for this mass murder campaign, for slaughtering thousands of children, women and men, blowing up people in their homes, mosques, schools. There's been no consequence whatsoever. The Biden administration's only response has been to find creative ways to fuel the carnage. So whenever Blinken or Jake Sullivan or Biden managed to blurt out

some criticism, there's no reason why anybody in Israel should be alarmed. Aaron, thank you very much, my dear friend. Thank you for your time. It's such an uncomfortable subject. I hope we're not becoming hardened to the slaughter. I hope we don't begin talking about slaughter just as if it's statistics, because these are real human beings. The other day, I don't know if I told you this, I was on air, wasn't with you, when I got a text from a former student of mine I taught at Brooklyn Law School for a number of years. He's an Egyptian-American and now a lawyer in New Jersey who told me that his cousin, a 35-year-old head of pediatrics at the hospital in Gaza City,

was slaughtered with a machine gun while treating two babies. Not treating Hamas killers, but two infants in cribs. And the three of them, the two babies and him, cut down. I mean, this is just reprehensible. We can't lose sight of it by simply calling these people statistics. Absolutely. Thank you, my friend. All the best. Have a great week, a nice weekend, and we'll see you next week. Thank you, Jeff.

Okay. Coming up, very moving, very moving stuff and very trying times thank you for continuing to watch all this tomorrow you want to get angry you want to see some anger eight in the morning on all of this scott ritter judge napolitano for judging freedom for Judging Freedom. Thank you.