Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté (The GrayZone) :

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Aaron Maté (The GrayZone) :See 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 Monday, March 4th, 2024. My good friend Aaron Matei joins us now. Aaron, it's a pleasure. Thank you for coming today. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. Recently, there were local elections in Israel, and the result seems to be decidedly on the right. Have Likud and the Jewish Supremacy Party, that's Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, are they now one? Oh, absolutely. Netanyahu formed his coalition government with characters like Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, who come from the most extreme end of Israel's tradition, which is saying a lot, because it's already a pretty extreme country, are firmly devoted to colonizing all of what they regard to be the land of Israel, which is pretty much

everywhere from the river to the sea, as it says in the Likud party charter, involved in the settler movement, including supporting attacks on Palestinians whose land is routinely stolen. These are the most fanatic of the fanatic. Did the war cabinet strip Ben-Gavir of some authority over the weekend because of his threat to use anything to deter this extremist movement that is regularly harassing Palestinians on their land, stealing their water. incident that happened where the settlers destroyed one of the few water aquifers that were being used by palestines in the west bank to turn it into a swimming pool for themselves these are people who have been on this land for generations and using water which is very scarce in the west bank to farm their land and these fanatics destroyed it and are trying to turn it into a swimming pool i mean that's an illustration of what's been happening in the west bank since 1967 when

israel took it over now you refer to them as fanatics and i i agree with you they are fanatics because they believe that somehow god ordained this land for them and nothing can stand in the way. And they also believe that the government of Israel, using its money and its force, will back up the kind of theft that you just described, turning an aquifer that human beings need to drink water and to bathe and to flush their toilets into a swimming pool. You know, Max Blumenthal, who wrote a great book on Israel called Goliath, refers to Israel as Jaisal, Israel and the Jewish state in Israel and the Levant. Because as he points out, their ideology is very similar to ISIL or ISIS, citing a self-perceived biblical right to commit terrorism and displace people and steal their land. The difference between Jaisal and ISIL is that Jaisal is far more powerful. They have nuclear weapons and they're backed with full impunity by the most powerful government in the world, the United States. And this is not just fanatics in the

West Bank. Didn't Prime Minister Netanyahu back close to October 7th use some reference to the Old Testament where supposedly God said, slaughter them all, even babies sucking on their mother's breasts? Yes, he did. And people in government before October 7th talked about the need to reestablish Israeli settlements inside Gaza, which they withdrew from in 2005 only to help the cause of stealing more land in the West Bank. So these are the people who are in charge. But as Norman Ficklestein talks about, the spectrum in Israel is now pretty narrow. It's basically the right, the far right, and the extreme right. So there's not really much of a difference when it comes to who's in charge. Is there no longer an Israeli left? I mean,

what party does Benny Gantz, I'll talk to you in a minute about what he's doing here in the US, what party does he head? Or is it just Likud by another name? Well, you stumped me. I believe Benny Gantz's labor or one of those so-called centrist coalitions, but I could be wrong on that. But regardless, they're all the same. I mean, Benny Gantz, whatever he is, he's serving inside Netanyahu's cabinet. When it comes to occupying, displacing, ethnic cleansing Palestinians, genociding Palestinians, all these people are on board. If you look at the years of the so-called peace process, the biggest settlement activity and the occupied West Bank, it didn't take place when Netanyahu was in charge in the 1990s. It took place when Ehud Barak was in charge and he's labor. He's

supposed to be liberal, secular. So really when it comes to the core issue of apartheid occupation, the Israeli spectrum is entirely in lockstep. In addition to the Israeli local elections, which went hard right over the weekend, there was an election. I didn't even know what was happening. You'll know why I'm laughing in a minute because this guy is such a character, such a hilarious character, but forceful and devoted to first principles. George Galloway getting elected to the parliament, combining human empathy and sympathy for the horrific plight of the Gazans, along with the typical values of blue collar folks in the community from which he is elected to parliament. At the same time that happened, 100,000 Democrats voted none of the above or non-committed, uncommitted in the Democratic presidential primary in Michigan.

And, of course, the other guy running there is the incumbent president of the United States. What's your takeaway? You know, I see both these votes as a rare sign of what's called Western civilization. Finally, people are going out and putting their votes towards humane values, which is just very rare in the West, in the Western world, where so many times, you know, all the Democrats in Congress, for example, voting in lockstep to fund the Ukraine proxy war. And look how that's turned out. But in Britain, the people of George Galloway's district elected a actual principled anti-war candidate, someone who's been standing up to warmongering his entire political career.

He famously challenged the Iraq war when Tony Blair was helping George W. Bush lie his way into that disaster. There's a famous clip of him testifying before Congress, actually, around that time, challenging all the warmongering that was going on in Washington. And he's been consistent throughout his life, also opposing Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, opposing Israel's wars on Lebanon, opposing the dirty war in Syria, opposing the proxy war in Ukraine. And if you look in the Western world, we don't have politicians like that. Let me compare George Galloway to what we have in the US. From a progressive point of view, which is where I sit on the spectrum, the best we have is Bernie Sanders, who said during the Ukraine proxy war, I just defer to Joe Biden on this. He didn't even have an opinion. It took weeks for Bernie Sanders to even call for a ceasefire in Gaza. And he still endorses Israel's goal of destroying Hamas, which means basically

destroying Gaza, because that's what Israel is actually doing in real life. So George Galloway's victory is a rare sign of hope in the Western world for me. And same with that vote in Michigan, more than 100,000 people saying we're not going to hand over our votes to somebody who's backing genocide. And that is understandably scaring the Democratic Party establishment, which is counting on people to be intimidated by Democrats talking about Donald Trump on January 6th. This is a sign that the voters, the people, are not going to be bullied by that kind of rhetoric anymore and that they're not going to just give over their votes to somebody complicit in mass murder, especially in Michigan where you have so many people with family in Gaza whose loved ones are being slaughtered by Joe Biden. Here's George Galloway celebrating his victory.

The last line is only about a half a minute long, or it's about a minute long. The last line is classic Galloway. Cut number seven, Sonia. Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza. You have paid, and you will pay a high price. I want to tell Mr. Starmer above all that the plates have shifted tonight. And as Jacob Rees-Mogg just said on television, in talking of me as a parliamentary orator of note, that Keir Starmer's problems just got 100 times more serious.

Labour is on notice that they have lost the confidence of millions of their voters who loyally and traditionally voted for them generation after generation. Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are two cheeks of the same backside. And they both got well and truly spanked tonight here in Rosville. There's no American politician that I know of that's as refreshingly candid to say nothing about being hilarious as he is. Yes, again, compare that to Bernie Sanders, the squad, the standard bearers of the progressive left. Would they ever criticize Joe Biden in such

harsh terms? No, because they're co-opted by one side of the establishment. George Galloway is the rare politician who calls out both factions of the establishment, both the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the conservatives and Labor, headed by Keir Starmer. And compare him to Jeremy Corbyn, who has headed the Labor Party previously. He was ousted basically in a malicious smear campaign by people like Keir Starmer, who weaponized fake allegations of anti-Semitism to sabotage Corbyn's agenda. And I'm a big admirer of Corbyn, but the one area where I criticize him on is that he caved too much. Rather than calling out that whole anti-Semitism campaign against him as a scam, which is what it was, he pandered to it. George Galloway is not that kind of politician.

If someone's lying to the public, he will call them out. If someone's trying to weaponize racism and anti-Semitism to undermine an actual candidate who's against anti-Semitism and racism and against warmongering, he will call that out. So it's very, very refreshing that he's now back in office. I read a piece in the intercept. I don't know if you and Max covered this, but just, which just broke my heart about a young Palestinian man being told by the IDF, come out of the hospital and lead others out with you. And he does so, and they're all slaughtered. I can't even read this thing to you. You're probably familiar with this piece. His name is Jamal Abu Al-Kia. This happened just the other day. It happened after the slaughter of the 100 Palestinians that were online to get food. I guess there's no restraint on the part of the IDF

and there's no remorse on the part of American lawmakers that continue to fund the slaughter. No, there's full impunity. I mean, look what we just saw. We've now seen at least two massacres now of starving Palestinians waiting for flour and other aid by Israel. And what has the Biden administration done in response?

They've no condemnations, meek calls for an investigation, and basically giving the continued green light to continue using starvation as a weapon against the people of Gaza. I mean, they openly say it. Kamala Harris the other day said that there should be a six-week ceasefire. But what she meant by that was is that Hamas should accept all of Israel's terms. In exchange, they get a six-week pause to the genocide. And one of the things she said that Gaza would get if Hamas accepted this is that they'd get more humanitarian aid. Well, if you're acknowledging that Hamas accepting Israeli demands will result in more humanitarian aid,

then you're acknowledging that Israel is using humanitarian aid as a weapon, as a form of coercion. It's an outright admission of a war crime committed with full bipartisan support. How can any government provide the weapons and ammunition without which the slaughter would not occur? And at the same time, oh, by the way, if you survive the slaughter that we just paid for, we're sending over 38,000 meals ready to eat if you can get your hands on one. This is basically what Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are doing. All right, let's switch gears. It's really gotten to my heart what's happening in Gaza. Over the weekend, Russian

intelligence released a conversation, a taped conversation between several German generals who acknowledged a couple of things. They acknowledged that Germany is planning to send Taurus missiles, contrary to what Chancellor Scholz has said, so either he knows about this and is lying or he doesn't know about it, in which case it's a serious issue of civilian command of military. These generals talked about Taurus missiles going to Ukraine and German technicians, unclear if they're a military intelligence or civilians, to man them. In the same conversation, they talk matter-of-factly about all the British special forces that are there in Ukraine. Did any of this surprise you? You know, actually, I was surprised because I just can't believe, first of all, the Germans

would be this careless and, you know, their contempt for democracy, you know, going around the chancellor, that's indeed what they're doing. I didn't think of the possibility that as you raise that Schultz just might be lying through his teeth when he says that we're not going to send these missiles. That's, I guess that's possible, but I think that'll be hard for him to lie about, but who, you know, who knows what these people, and then also the recklessness. I mean, you're talking here now about, you know, facilitating acts of war against Russia and being so deluded that you think you can get away with it. Because as you said, one of the things they're talking about is how they can do this while avoiding being detected. Well, they couldn't even protect their own phone conversation. If you don't think that Russia is going to pick up on Germany helping Ukraine fire Germany's most advanced long-range missile system. It's just

unbelievable. And amazingly, on the call, they also say, by the way, even if we give them all the Taurus missiles we have, which is about 100, they even say it's not going to make a difference because Ukraine doesn't have the forces and the weapons to actually make any gains on the battlefield. So let's say we help them blow up the Kerch Bridge, connecting Russia to Crimea, which was among the options discussed. They say, oh yeah, by the way, it's not going to make a difference. So what's the point in doing all this? It's just simply because they refuse to admit defeat.

They refuse to throw in the towel and say, this war is a disaster, it's time for negotiations. And it's especially sad for Germany, which not only has a history, a horrible history of fighting Russia with an invading Nazi army, but also it was a key player in brokering the Minsk Accords, which was the pact reached in February, 2015, the Minsk II Accords, which could have avoided all of this had it just been implemented. That would have put an end to the war in the Donbass that began after the US backed a coup the previous year in 2014.

And German officials, I think, actually tried in good faith, even though they later said they weren't acting in good faith. I actually don't believe them. I think they were. But they were sabotaged because people like Victoria Nuland and her neoconservative allies in Washington wanted to keep using Ukraine to fight Russia. And now we're led to a situation like this

where these German military officers are so desperate. They're talking about how to avoid detection. And they also disclose, they admit, which has been denied by all these governments, that British, American, and French troops are on the ground inside Ukraine, helping Ukraine operate their advanced weapon systems. They even talk about how if the Germans can't go in to help fire the Tauruses, there are people running around with American accents in civilian clothing. So they're hoping for American help there to escalate this war. So these people with American accents in civilian clothing, the British special forces, the French special forces, whoever or whatever the Germans have sent there,

are engaged in acts of war against Russia. 100%. And at least they've admitted it. About a year ago, January 2023, the foreign minister of Germany said, we are at war with Russia. And she tried to walk that back, but it was true. It was an admission. And here's the latest example of that. So the New York Times published the piece you and I have talked about. There was a puff piece about the CIA, about 10,000 words, during the course of which it revealed that there are 12 CIA bases in Ukraine.

Some of them have been there going back to 2004, some to 2014. Over the weekend, it appears, Alistair Crook reports that one of those bases was destroyed and American CIA officials were killed. Will the government ever acknowledge that? Well, that's news to me. I haven't heard that one. It did strike me as very odd that the New York Times via its CIA sources were disclosing, you know, details that could help Russia identify where the CIA bases were if they didn't know about them already. So, you know, I can't comment on that report from Alistair Cook because I haven't seen

it, but it just underscores to me how, you know, this notion that Russia's war on Ukraine, whatever you think of it, and again, I don't support the invasion. I would have hoped Russia could have found some other way to address its grievances. But whatever you think of it, this claim that it was unprovoked is just such a farce. Now you have the CIA admitting they have 12 secret bases along the Russian border, which they've operated since 2014. Do you think maybe in that situation that Russia has something to be provoked about? If Russia had even one base in Mexico or Canada, how would we react? This is the CIA bragging about how they have 12.

So it does confirm that Russia did face a very serious security threat from Ukraine because it was being used by its chief sponsor in Washington. And rather than address Russia's security concerns and address the security concerns of people inside Ukraine, those people in the Donbass who rebelled against the coup government that we helped install, the Biden administration wants to double down with another $61 billion to fund this war long into the future, because they say this is about Ukraine's current battlefield needs. Half that money is earmarked for long-term war. So this is a way to keep this going for a very, very long time. Well, I think the Congress fears that Trump will be elected president, won't want to spend any money, and they think they can force his hand. There is a Supreme Court opinion, it goes back to the Nixon years, that prohibits the president from impounding funds, and if he's ordered to spend it, he's got to spend it. Another argument for another time. How do you get your hands around the mentality of Western elites? What do they really

think they are achieving in Ukraine? Don't they realize that this was a catastrophe and that they've lost? Do they really want to risk a war with Russia? I'm talking about whoever's ahead of Poland, Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Joe Biden, and whoever runs NATO. Well, I distinguish the U.S. from its vassals. So, you know, I think in the case of Olaf Scholz, he's just weak. He's been intimidated by the U.S., maybe bought off for all I know. I don't know. I don't know what course of measures the U.S. uses to get people to fall in line, but it's true. It's a great question. Under what circumstances would someone like Scholz destroy his country's economy and become a complete vassal of the U.S.? Look at the Nord Stream pipeline. It was powering Germany's economy, providing it with cheap Russian

gas. Olaf Scholz stood by and by all appearances, let the US blow it up. We just had recently more investigations into that shutdown without any verdict. Somehow no one can figure out who did it. It's pretty obvious who did, the US. So I don't know what goes through their mind. And in terms of the US, it's just been a staple of US planning documents since the end of the Second World War that we have to dominate the world. One of the terms used in the last 30 years was full spectrum dominance. And anybody who is a deterrent to our hegemony has to be taken out. And that's what drives everything.

That's why we want to regime change Russia and break it up. That's why we wanted to regime change Syria, because Syria was a close ally of Iran and Hezbollah. And those and Iran and Hezbollah are deterrents to Israeli U.S. hegemony. So anybody who is a deterrent to U.S. hegemony just has to go. Aaron Matei, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my my schedule by coming on today late in the day much appreciated we'll look forward to seeing your user at your usual time and day next week all the best thank you judge and safe travels thank you all right my friends as you know uh i'm off to rome

i don't know why they invited me but they did and i'm looking forward to giving this lecture on natural rights along with professor jeff sachs, whom you know, and some other academics. You may see me pop up from there. My iPhone and my iPad will be with me. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.