Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté : Netanyahu Wants to Own Gaza

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

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Prime Minister's Office of Israel came out with some statement in the past 12 hours or so claiming this is his and their plan for a post-war Gaza and a post-war West Bank. I'm not so sure it's much different than the pre-war Gaza and the pre-war West Bank. But what does he gain by this? Who takes him seriously? And is the, sorry, I'm asking you three questions at once, but you're so smart. Is the American mantra of a two-state solution just a fig leaf? The mantra of a two-state solution is absolutely a fig leaf. The U.S. has claimed for years that it supports a two-state solution while funding and supporting the Israeli

policies that make such a two-state solution impossible, namely the strangulation and siege of the Gaza Strip and the continued Israeli settlements in the West Bank that make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible and that force Palestinians into separate Bantustans. You can't call that a state. And in all the major so-called peace talks, Israel has always insisted on retaining these major West Bank settlement blocks that would make a Palestinian state impossible. And the U.S. has backed them up at every turn, including this week at the ICJ when there was a hearing on the legality of Israel's occupation of the West Bank in East Jerusalem. And the U.S. came and argued Israel's case and said that Israel has very real security concerns in holding on to the settlements

in the West Bank and holding on to its military occupation there. So whatever the U.S. says publicly about supporting two states is undermined at every turn by its actual actions. In terms of Netanyahu's plan, that's for domestic consumption. He has to show the ultra extremists in his cabinet that he is not even going to bother to pretend that he cares about U.S. calls for an eventual Palestinian state. He's basically saying there will be no Palestinian state, that the plan for Gaza is, as you said, similar to the status quo in the West Bank, which basically is find collaborators, find some Palestinian collaborators who will handle basically all the tasks that Israel doesn't want to carry out in keeping the local population or what's left of it in line. Before we run a clip from the American

lawyer's statement at the ICJ, has the State Department, as far as you know, ever acknowledged internally that to them. But it's a farce because Blinken, Biden know exactly what Netanyahu is doing. And they also know what previous Israeli governments did, which is make a two-state solution impossible. How can you claim that you care about seeing a Palestinian state when you're building up these massive Israeli settlement blocks that carve the West Bank into a number of different pieces that literally cut it in two. There's a big settlement called Ma'al Abdu'mim that literally cuts the West Bank almost in half. These settlers steal Palestinian water. They harass Palestinians. They shoot at them. They kill them. You go to a town like Hebron, as I have in the West Bank, where you have Palestinians under curfews and not

allowed to go out at certain times because the Israelis are given the license to roam about then. It's just a complete farce. Israel has no claim to a single inch of the West Bank. And basically, the farce the last 30 years has been to have these negotiations under the so-called peace process, is that there's something to discuss. There's nothing to discuss.

If the U.S. cared about an actual Palestinian state, what they'd do is tell Israel, we're not going to support you until you withdraw all your soldiers and all your settlers from that land. And there's even a tale that came out about Barack Obama at the end of his term, where it came out in the New Yorker magazine. There's an article where apparently he was shown a map of how during his eight years in office, Israeli settlements had expanded massively. And the story we're supposed to believe is that Barack Obama was so shocked by this. He couldn't believe it. And he was upset. Barack Obama knows exactly what was going on. He just didn't have the courage to stand up to Israel. And him, like every other US politician that's overseen this farce, is responsible for the absolute catastrophe that

we're in today. My viewers have seen this and they've seen it a lot, but I want you to see it and comment on it. This is a series of maps shown to the ICJ by the Palestinian representative at the UN who made a very, very articulate argument. The maps, in my view, are irrefutable, but I'd like you to comment on them. Allow me now to show you five maps. The first one is historic Palestine. This is the territory over which the Palestinian people should have been able to exercise their right to self determination. Instead, the General Assembly recommended the partition of Palestine, ignoring the will of our people as shown in the second map. With نحن الناس كما يظهر في المحطة الثانية مع النقبة التي تتبعت أكثر من ثلاثة من نحونا الناس كانوا مستمرة ومجرد طاقة

تنقل من إسرائيل وثلاثة أربع من فلسطين أصبح إسرائيل كما يظهر في المحطة الثالثة هذا كان بداية النقبة. As shown in the third map, this was the start of the Nakba, the disposition, the displacement and replacement of our people, the denial of rights and discrimination that continues to this very day. ومن ثم اخذت المباكرة من فلسطين ومن يوم الأول من اخذتها بدأت في التقنية والتحضير من المنطقة بأهمية تجعل اخذتها مستقيمة لا تتحرك. تركنا مع مجموعة من المتواجدات المتواجدة. تمنع الانتقال من نظرنا للأنا كما يظهر في الماك 4. إسرائيل أرادت جيوغرافيا فلسطين ولكنها ليست ديموغرافيا.

لذا استمرت تحركنا من أجل المنزل من أجل المنزل. هناك الماك 5. كانت تصويراً من أسرائيل للسيارة الأساموية الأساسية في سبتمبر. It was displayed by Israel's Prime Minister to the General Assembly last September. He called this the new Middle East. There is no Palestine at all on this map. Only Israel, comprised of all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. This shows you what the prolonged, continuous Israeli occupation of Palestine is intended to accomplish. The complete disappearance of Palestine and the destruction of the Palestinian people. Is there the slightest question intellectually and historically about the accuracy of these maps? Absolutely not.

And for anybody who doubts it, they can go consult all the Israeli historians who have documented extensively, based on the internal Israeli records, the ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1948, actually even before 1948, of Palestinian land. And this was the plan by Zionist leaders from the start. Jabotinsky, who was an early Zionist leader, he famously said that Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. David Ben-Gurion, the founding prime minister of Israel, said similar things because they knew that they wanted to create a state in a land that was already populated. And so to create the state, they had to forcibly expel

the people who lived there. And that's been the Zionist project from the start. And it's just, you know, to look at that map, you have to think about how many people who now are displaced in Gaza are people, you know, who if they were born back then were displaced as refugees in Gaza, are people who, if they were born back then, were displaced as refugees in 1947, 1948. And certainly, how many people in Gaza are the descendants of those refugees? Because Gaza is mostly refugees. So we've seen multiple Nakbas, multiple catastrophes, not just in 1948, but now we're seeing a new one. And it's striking. The history is not contested. It's documented fact. But yet, because we're not allowed to discuss it honestly in the West, it allows Israel to sustain the narratives that it uses to justify continued ethnic cleansing, as we're seeing right now

before our eyes. Here's the South African ambassador to the Netherlands, number 14, Chris, making a very compelling argument to the same court shortly after the clip that we just saw on Israeli genocide. six days, the world has watched in horror daily the relentless attacks on Gaza, the ferocity and violence of Israel's latest military campaign against Gaza, and its flouting of international law, including an order of this court, which was handed down on 26 January 2024, is the clearest indication that Israel considers itself understrained in its actions against Palestinians. Its actions recur with even more depravity and bloodshed, being of such a serious nature as to lead this court to find them plausibly genocidal. Agreed, plausibly genocidal. But this is not an argument over genocide. This is an argument over occupation. I mean, could you imagine the court finding that the Israeli

occupation was unlawful? Well, there is a precedent. The ICJ did rule in 2004, I believe, when they were ruling on the legality of Israel's apartheid wall that it was building through the West Bank to basically carve up, to divide the West Bank and to basically cut off more Palestinian land, cut off Palestinians from each other and protect Israeli settlements. The ICJ ruled back then that Israel does not have legal authority to the West Bank. So it's possible we could see that again. Certainly, we saw the ICJ rule that what Israel is doing in Gaza is plausibly genocidal. It ordered Israel to stop carrying out genocidal acts and to allow humanitarian aid.

And what has Israel done in response? Well, as the South African minister pointed out, Israel's acted with more brutality. There's still even a debate about allowing flour into Gaza sent by Turkey because a far right Israeli minister blocked the flour because it was intended for UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency, which Israel is trying to destroy. And by the way, on that front, I'm sure you saw this week, even U.S. intelligence undermined the claims of Tony Blinken. Back when Tony Blinken immediately embraced Israel's allegations against UNRWA, that a handful of staffers were involved in October 7th, he called it highly, highly

credible. Well, this week it came out in the Wall Street Journal that U.S. intelligence has found no evidence to support the Israeli claims and gave that assertion about a handful of people taking part in October 7th low confidence, which means there's no evidence for it whatsoever. Is UNRWA still there or have the Israelis with the American consent blocked UNRWA, the UN Refugee Assistance Organization, from bringing any food, water, and medicine in? UNRWA is there, but unless they get more money to account for the funding that the U.S. led the way in shutting off, they'll be forced to suspend their operations. It's also more difficult for them now to operate because of the Israeli allegations.

An Israeli bank that deals with UNRWA blocked their account, so they can't process the transactions that they need toRWA block their account. So they can't process the transactions that they need to be able to ship cargo. There's a huge shipment from Turkey in an Israeli port that's been sitting there, flour, chickpeas, cooking oil, because Israel blocked it and because an Israeli bank has blocked UNRWA's account. And meanwhile, you have other UN trucks trying to deliver aid to people in Gaza. But because Israel's previously shot at the Hamas police forces escorting these trucks, Hamas stopped escorting them. And so, therefore, these aid deliveries have shut down. And, of course, Israel didn't even just shoot at the police.

They also shot at people trying to collect desperate aid that they need because they're starving. So yes, UNRWA's operations have been severely curtailed and they'll be forced to suspend completely unless the U.S. and its allies drop their effective embargo against it. I guess there is no one in Gaza that the Israelis will refrain from shooting at. Hasn't Itamar Ben-Gavir, not sure of his title, head of Israeli domestic security, I guess the rough equivalent of the head of the American FBI. Hasn't he made a statement to the effect that any Gazan, male, female, child, whatever, who comes too close to the Gaza-Israeli border should get a bullet in their head? And hasn't he purported to direct the police that he controls to do that? Ben-Gavir is a minister, and I do know that he has basically allied militias, essentially, in the West Bank of settlers. I don't know if, you know, and pardon my ignorance,

I don't know if he has authority over forces near Gaza, but certainly he's very influential. And it was him who ordered the blockade on that flour from getting in to Gaza. And the Biden administration, so meek, so feckless, said, oh, we can't tell you for sure. We can't guarantee for you that the flour is going to get in because they couldn't even stand up to a government blocking flour deliveries to a suffering, starving people.

And yes, but look, there's been an abundance of Israeli ministers, including Ben-Gavir, espousing openly genocidal rhetoric, taking joy in the destruction of Palestinian civilian infrastructure and calling basically everybody in Gaza a terrorist, including young children. Here's the U.S. representative, number 15, Chris. Here's the U.S. representative at the ICJ two days ago. Listen to what he says at the end about a two-state solution. Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken traveled to the region for the fifth time since October 7

and discussed the sets of commitments that all parties would need to make. As he explained, there will be difficult choices necessary to realize the vision of a long-elusive prospect of true peace and true security. He also reinforced that the diplomatic path to a just and lasting peace and to true security for all in the region continues to be a path to an Israel that is fully integrated into the region with normal relations with the countries of the region and with firm guarantees for its security. He underscored that this must include a concrete path to a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel. Can anybody take that seriously, that that's what the United States government expects? They're wasting their breath if they say that in the presence of Netanyahu and his colleagues.

Well, one window into the seriousness of that statement is just to look at how basically the same thing's been said for the last 30 plus years, ever since the so-called Oslo peace process began. Every administration has always said, they're always looking into the distance for a Palestinian state. It's always somewhere on the horizon. George W. Bush had a vision of a Palestinian state. Obama said the same thing. We have to get on the path to a Palestinian state. The path to a Palestinian state is very simple. Nobody in the world recognizes the legal authority of Israel in an inch of the occupied West Bank in Gaza. The international consensus is of a Palestinian state in the West Bank in Gaza, which for Palestinians is a massive compromise in itself.

It's just 22% of historic Palestine. Palestinian leaders, including Hamas at one point, accepted that. It's only two parties that have refused it, Israel and the U.S., and that's true of whether Netanyahu is in charge or the founder of the so-called peace process, Yitzhak Rabin. In fact, under Rabin's party, the Labor Party, settlement expansion doubled under Ehud Barak, who came after Rabin. And so just talking about this path towards a Palestinian state, it's just a ruse to avoid

the fact that the U.S. is sabotaging the actual prospects for a Palestinian state. And look, the best evidence of this is that in 2002, so more than 20 years ago, all the Arab states led by Saudi Arabia put out what's called the Arab Peace Initiative. It offered Israel full normalization in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state and all the West Bank and Gaza,

with its capital in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu said, we'll never accept that. No US administration has ever said we'll accept that. No U.S. administration has ever said we'll accept that. And they basically adopted the Israeli position, which is that Israel has the right to keep the major West Bank settlements that it wants. And as long as that's the position by the U.S., then this awful crisis will continue as is, no matter what they say, no matter how they try to dress it up in appearances like that. I'm not trying to irritate you. We are friends and colleagues by showing you these clips, but I have to show you one more. This crazy congressman from Tennessee, Congressman

Andy Ogles, I never heard of him before, was approached in the halls of Congress by our friends from Code Pink. And you know what he says. Kill them all. Here it is. Let's be clear. Hamas raped her babies. That's fake news.

No evidence of that. Because I've seen the footage and you haven't. I've seen the footage. You've seen footage of... Shredded children's bodies. That's my taxpayer dollars. I'm going to bomb those kids. So I think we should kill them all, if that makes you feel better, all right?

Everybody, come on. Come on, the Palestinians have been attacking Israel for 20 years, and it's time to- Israel's been attacking Palestine. Israel is an occupier. Palestine was there before Israel. You're not even, he doesn't make it true. Why, what? There's a genocide happening right now.

Do you think I care about- They're starving women and children. How is that going after Hamas? They've killed over 300 healthcare workers. Shame on you. You have no heart. How is turning off water and power on pregnant women going after Hamas. AIPAC zombie.

That's too much. What an arrogant jerk, but I'll let you say something a little more intellectually acceptable. I'm sick of this guy. Well, but it's important to play that clip because he really is actually expressing what U.S. policy is. He says, kill them all. We're talking about Palestinian children. That is basically U.S. policy. I mean, Joe Biden won't admit it, but he's providing the weapons and the diplomatic cover for Israel to do

exactly that. He just vetoed yet another resolution calling for a ceasefire at the U.N. Security Council this week. So this racist Republican Congress member is expressing bipartisan policy. And compare his statement calling for the death of the mass murder of Palestinian children to what Congress did with Rashida Tlaib when she said, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. The House, and I'm sure this guy voted for it, censured her. Will he be censured for calling for mass murder of Palestinian kids? Of course, not because this racist contempt for Palestinians is bipartisan, as exemplified by the fact that everybody's in lockstep with continuing to arm and cover for this genocidal Israeli army. Switch over to Ukraine.

I want you to take a look at this brief report from our friend and colleague, Patrick Lancaster. He was in his apartment in, he's an American, freelance journalist, was in his apartment in Donbass when he heard these two enormous explosions. He ran out, and then you'll see what he saw. Number two, Chris. And these are pieces of what is purportedly part of the HIMARS rocket. Now we bring you this information from this intense attack here on the center of Donetsk because you deserve to see things from both sides of the line. Watch as much sources as you can to make your own educated decisions because it's important not to be led by like sheep by the Western mainstream media and the

people that want to tell you what to believe. Find out the information for yourself. Watch as much information as you can. All right, just to give you a little bit of an understanding on what the situation here is and how big this rocket is itself. This is one of the two craters of these United States supplied HIMARS hitting this library

in the very center of Donetsk. The, right at the outer perimeter of that was a pizza parlor also blown away, and two dead bodies of Ukrainians, Russians, Donbass,onyetsk, on the street in the crosswalk where the other one of those rockets hit. This is American equipment, American know-how, American ammunition being used by the Ukrainians to bomb what they consider to be their own people because they're in a region that is Russian culturally and Russian speaking and voted overwhelmingly to be a part of Russia, which under Russian law is part of Russia. Yeah. And that's a very, it's a very important aspect of the war that we just don't get in the U.S. The media covers

atrocities by Russia committed on the Ukrainian government side, but we never hear about the atrocities committed by Ukraine against the areas of Ukraine that are aligned with Russia. And the key point about Donbass is this has not just been a reality for Ukrainians there for the last two years since Russia invaded. This has been their reality for 10 years. Ever since, 10 years ago this month, the U.S. backed a coup in Ukraine. The post-coup government, because it was dominated by ultra-nationalists, their first move was to effectively ban the Russian language. There were massacres in places like Odessa of people who were opposed to the coup.

And all this helped fuel a revolt by Eastern Ukrainians against the coup government that the U.S. supported. And so atrocities like this have been happening ever since then, ever since there was a, you know, basically Ukraine launched a full scale operation. But have we been paying for it until Joe Biden became president? Absolutely. We have, you know, the person who said this most concisely, I think is Adam Schiff. Back when he was leading the impeachment of Donald Trump, the first one, after Trump paused some weapons for Ukraine, allegedly to compel its cooperation with investigations into the Bidens, although I never thought that case was proven, which I wrote about at the time. Adam Schiff said, this is January 2020. This is not January 2024, 2023.

This is January 2020, two years before Russia invaded. He said, the United States aid Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don't have to fight Russia here. Now, nobody seriously thinks that if we weren't fighting Russia over there in Ukraine, that we'd be fighting Russia here in the US. So what is Schiff really saying?

He was saying well before Russia invaded that we were using Ukraine to fight Russia. So what did Russia do two years later after the U.S. kept blocking all reasonable diplomatic alternatives? Russia invaded to end the fight. And now we're seeing the consequences of the bipartisan policy because now Russia is winning as people like Barack Obama and Antony Blinken once predicted when their policy was a little bit different, because Russia just has the advantage. It's a disaster now, and Russia seems poised to take even more territory than it's already taken. Aaron Mate, thank you very much, my dear friend. Thanks for your time,

for your gifted analysis. Have a great weekend. I hope we can see you again next week. Sounds good. Thank you, Judge. Of course. A brilliant young man whose words and time we value greatly. Type the question in. We'll download what we think are the 10 or 15 or 20 most compelling or challenging questions, and I will answer them for you. Three o'clock Eastern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out.