Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté: US Enables Israel

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Aaron Maté: US Enables IsraelSee 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 Wednesday, August 7th, 2024. Aaron Maté joins us now. Aaron, always a pleasure, my dear friend. There's so much to talk about with respect to Israel. You have a very interesting piece out about a telephone conversation between Joe Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu that I want to ask you about in a minute. But background, does the United States ever second guess Israel, whether publicly or privately, the United States government? Very few examples of that. Recall in the late 80s when the first Bush administration tried to do something about the settlements. James Baker talked about freezing loans to Israel or aid to Israel if it kept expanding settlements. And there was a big fight about that. Ultimately, in the end, according to history, ultimately,

Israel prevailed and USAID continued unfettered. That was one rare case of a fight. There was also the case of the Obama administration shunningrael when it made the iran nuclear deal but ultimately who prevailed in that one as well netanyahu came to congress embarrassed obama and ultimately under the trump administration the u.s backed out certainly pleasing people like netanyahu so sometimes you will have some riffs in public but generally it's the u.s backing down sometimes israel is back down. There was talk one time of Israel doing some sort of weapons deal involving China. This is a while ago. And the U.S. told Israel not to do it, and Israel did back down. But that's very rare.

And right now, in the current moment, what are we having? We're having this farce going on 10 months now of the Biden administration claiming it's angry with Israel, Biden's frustrated with Netanyahu, while doing absolutely nothing to restrain him and providing him continued military support to carry out his mass murder campaign in Gaza. And Netanyahu has become so bellicose that we've seen the Biden administration now pretending once again that Biden is mad at him and frustrated. But when it comes to tangible action, what has the Biden administration done? Nothing. So, according to Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, David Barnea, who's the head of Mossad and the chief negotiator for the ceasefire, have said there's a deal on the table, let's take

it. Bill Burns, the head of CIA, the chief American negotiator, says there's a deal on the table, let's take it. Hamas has agreed to the deal on the table. Is it fair to conclude that Netanyahu doesn't want any deal, he doesn't want any ceasefire because he's worried about Smotrich and Ben-Gavir and the others leaving his government, and then he can be exposed to prosecution once he's out of office? I think there's no other conclusion to draw, and that's also the conclusion, according to Israeli media, that Israel's top security officials have drawn as well, that no matter what is negotiated when it comes to freeing the captives, that Netanyahu just will not take it because he's committed to his own political survival, as you mentioned, and to destroying Gaza as much as

possible and making it uninhabitable for anyone who happens to remain there after this finally ends. And it's been obvious for a long time. President Biden even blurted it out in an interview with Time magazine over a month ago. He was asked, is it fair to assume that Netanyahu is prolonging this war for his own political survival? And Biden, in his typical gaffe-prone way, said, I'm not going to comment on that. But then he immediately, in the next sentence, commented and said, yes, that is a fair conclusion to drop about Netanyahu. So everybody knows it. And it's so obvious that now the Biden administration has been forced to drop its pretend claim that Hamas is the sole obstacle to a ceasefire deal. That's what Antony

Blinken has been saying for months and months, that this is up to Hamas and Hamas only if they just take the deal. Netanyahu has become so belligerent and out of control, going so far as to assassinate Hamas's top negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, that even the Biden administration has now been forced to privately admit that they don't think that Netanyahu wants a deal. That's what a U.S. official recently told Haaretz as well. So it's just so out in the open, it's impossible to conceal anymore, despite the Biden administration's best efforts. Tell us about the conversation that Biden and Netanyahu had in which Biden accused Netanyahu of lying. What did he accuse him of lying about? Well, this is, again, according to leaks doled out to friendly journalists like at Axios,

that Biden's really fed up with Netanyahu. He reportedly raised his voice and said, stop BSing me. And what Biden is supposedly claiming Netanyahu has lied to him about is Netanyahu's sincerity in reaching a ceasefire deal. But the problem is Biden has known that Netanyahu is not sincere about reaching a ceasefire deal. He just can't hide anymore that he knows that because it's so out in the open that Netanyahu is not sincere about reaching a ceasefire deal. He just can't hide anymore that he knows that because it's so out in the open with Netanyahu going and assassinating Ismail Haniyeh and doing everything he can to block an agreement. So these leaks come out of the White House. They're just a PR gesture because everyone's known all along that Netanyahu

is not serious. And Biden is just doing what he can to stay faced because tethering himself to Netanyahu has become so politically toxic in the US, especially as we're heading into an election campaign where the Biden administration, wanting to elect Kamala Harris now, needs to pretend as if it's been pressuring Israel and if it's been pushing for a ceasefire and needs to create the illusion

of some sort of distance between themselves and Netanyahu, when willfully all along they've been with Netanyahu all the way. Back in October, Biden said that he endorses Netanyahu's stated goal of eliminating Hamas entirely, which meant eliminating Gaza. That's what that means in real life, because that's what it grows bombing, is the Gaza Strip destroying its civilian infrastructure, which Biden has supported all of the way. And what's interesting is, so yes, we get these leaks saying that Biden's fed up, but what do we get publicly? Publicly, we get a readout from the White House of the call between Biden and Netanyahu. It doesn't even

mention a call for a ceasefire. What it says is we support diplomacy, which is very benign. It also says we're going to fully support Israel in response to threats from Iran, which means in real life we're going to continue enforcing Israeli aggression as it carries out not only mass murder in Gaza but also expands the conflict to Lebanon and Iran. And accordingly, Biden sent new military deployments to the Middle East. So that's what we're getting in real life. Military deployments to back up Israel and support its aggression. And we're getting simultaneously these face-saving leaks to friendly media outlets who will print them to create the illusion

that Biden's getting tough on Netanyahu. When you and Max and the others were part of the 50 to 100,000 people not covered by mainstream media who were demonstrating against Netanyahu's address to the Congress, did you know that he was going to accuse you of being bought and paid for, I can't say this with a straight face, by the Iran government? Is there a scintilla of evidence that the Iran government paid for

demonstrations against him? No, there's no evidence, but look, I wasn't surprised when he said it. This is the standard playbook of anybody trying to demonize dissent. They just accused people protesting US policy of being in the pocket of a foreign country. We saw that with Russiagate. This is a very, very old playbook, and it just gets deployed by both sides, by both Democrats and Republicans every single time. And Netanyahu obviously is repurposing it for his own purposes. What I found striking, as Max Blumenthal has pointed out, is the amount of time that Netanyahu spent demonizing protesters in his speech. This wasn't just one line calling people

useful idiots. He went off for a very, very long time, which speaks to the nervousness he feels about his position and how afraid he is of US public opinion turning against him because he knows that he can't carry out his aggression without US support. So therefore he needed to take the time to demonize the people in the public who stand in the way of his goals. Amazingly, of course, he got a rapturous applause from lawmakers who were supposed to be representing the American public. Here is Netanyahu calling everybody who disagrees with him

a useful idiot in the pocket of Iran. The Biden administration backed backed up in that. They only differed by saying, we don't think everybody was paid by Iran, but we certainly think some people were. So that's the moderate Biden administration, McCarthy, Neil McCarthy approach.

Show me the evidence, but because it doesn't exist, you know, the 58 standing ovations, the longest one was in response to that useful idiot. The longest demonstration was by members of Congress who took the same oath I did when I became a judge to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment. The longest demonstration was a condemnation of the exercise of free speech by a foreign leader

about Americans exercising their free speech. It's one of the most reprehensible things I have seen was that particular wild, maniacal, rapturous, as you and Professor Sachs have called it, response. It was shameful. And look, we just got a new iteration of this subordination to a foreign country in a Missouri primary race where Cori Bush, a progressive Democrat who was the first person to sponsor a ceasefire resolution for Gaza, she's just been defeated. And people in her district have their criticisms of her. And this race wasn't just about Israel-Palestine. But AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby group, spent $8 million to defeat her.

$8 million. A Democratic primary in the Midwest. Yeah, yeah. And this is after they spent millions of dollars to defeat Jamal Bowman. So now this is two black progressive lawmakers being defeated. And what is the main source of their opposition it's a foreign lobby group spending millions of dollars to oust them simply because they wanted to stop israel's mass murder campaign in gaza and does anybody question this foreign interference after you know years and

years of hyperventilation about mythical russian bots and russian hackers interfering our sacred elections does anybody from either party in the mainstream question this consistent uh interference on behalf of a foreign state nobody does because it's been totally normalized and netanyahu's useful idiots comment and now corey bush's defeat are just the latest examples of that uh talk to please, if you will, about the current situation in Israel with respect to culture. Now, here's what I mean. I read a piece in Haaretz this morning arguing that there's a surprising, and from the point of view of the author, shocking unification between the Zionists and the liberal Jews in Israel who taste some sort of a victory coming. Is that a realistic appraisal of the state of Israel today, the state of Israeli politics and culture today? Yeah, in terms of people who are united behind supremacy, chauvinism, warmongering, yeah, I do. I mean, many people who call themselves

liberal Zionists are full-on supporters of Israeli mass murder in Gaza and have forgotten about things they used to talk about, like the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. That's what Israel has become. What's called the peace movement in Israel is pretty much dead. There's a small number of people who are on principle opposed to occupation and mass murder, but their ranks have really declined in Israel. You speak to or you listen to interviews with even critics of the Israeli government, and they'll still say that people around the world who criticize Israel, a lot of it is driven by anti-Semitism. They really do believe that.

It's a very sorry state of affairs inside Israel, a country where right now there's people on TV talking about how we need to be committing sexual abuse against Palestinian prisoners and angry that there's some sort of legal constraints on that and how that's become such a widespread opinion that was even recently a riot over it where people stormed a military base where some soldiers were being held for sexually abusing Palestinian prisoners. And there was a bunch of, there's a crowd of hooligans, including apparently some Israeli lawmakers who came to support the sexual assaulters. Incidentally, another outcome of the manufactured claim that there was sexual assault by Hamas on October 7th has been to actually help whitewash and ignore the actual sexual assault committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian prisoners. So this is a very

troubled society, to put it mildly. The sexual assault, I don't want to get too graphic, committed by the Israeli soldiers on the Palestinian prisoner was truly sickening and required significant surgery in order to remove what had been forced into his private parts. And it was the physicians who reported this to Israeli authorities, which resulted in the arrest of these nine people. And then Ben-Gavir's people let them out. They're now home and free and probably not going to be prosecuted. In the same week that Ben-Gavir, who's the rough equivalent of the head of the FBI if Israel had an FBI, correct me if I'm wrong on that, in the same week that Ben-Gavir gave his blessing to this,

Smotrich said, we really should starve to death the two million residents of Gaza and the only reason we don't is what we'll make too many enemies in the world not that we can't not that there's a moral objection to it but there'll be a political blowback that is what he said and in saying that he sort of answered the question put out by Israeli apologists who when Israel was is accused of genocide, they say, well, if Israel is really guilty of genocide, then why haven't they just killed everybody inside Gaza? Well, that Israeli minister gave the answers because there are some constraints on Israel, but it's not as if they don't want to. They do see the Palestinians as subhuman. They are bent on mass murder. And yes, you don't have to kill every single person living in a concentration

camp to be guilty of genocide. The intent is a big part of it. And Israeli officials like him have absolutely declared their intent. Is force the only way to end an occupation? Well, and of course I'm talking about, you know what I'm talking about, Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights. Well, Israel has certainly imparted the lesson that, yes, we're only going to end our occupation by force because that's what we live by. A former Israeli national security advisor recently said that this region only understands military force. He was, in fact, projecting because throughout its history, Israel has only understood military force. He was in fact projecting because throughout its history, Israel has only understood military force. The one time it gave up territory there, it stole when it gave up the Sinai, which it stole from Egypt, was after the 1973 war when Egypt and Syria almost reclaimed their territory from Israel by force. And that scared Israel. And Israel

realized that it had a problem defending too much stolen territory. And also that if it made a deal with Egypt, then that could actually free up more space for it to colonize more Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, especially, which was its top priority. So that's the one time Israel gave up stolen territory, is when it was made to be alarmed by a show of force. It's had so many diplomatic opportunities to resolve all the conflict that it faces, to have the real peace in the region. The Arab states, all of them for decades now, have endorsed a peace plan in which they've said to Israel, we'll recognize you if you withdraw from the occupied territories,

from the West Bank and Gaza, and allow for a Palestinian state there with shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, and also have a just resolution to the refugee issue, addressing the rights of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their descendants, now in the millions, who were displaced by Israel in 1948. That's been the offer on the table. Everybody supports it. Arab states, Iran has even voiced support for it. Even members of Hamas have voiced support for it, including Ismail Haynia,

the political leader of Hamas. He said many times that Hamas would accept that. He said it after October 7th. In October, he said, we're ready for negotiations. We're ready for a two-state solution. Israel, rather than engaging with any of these diplomatic overtures, has chosen at every single juncture force. And they've been able to do so because they're backed up by the other major rejectionist state, which is the U.S., which also, despite paying lip service to the two-state solution, to a Palestinian state,

has supported every single Israeli effort to undermine that outcome. And that's why we're in the situation that we're in today. So the lesson that Israel has imparted to everybody in the region is that the only way we're ever going to stop being aggressive, stop colonizing, is through military force. Every single threat that we have right now derives from Israel's fundamental rejection of Palestinian self-determination and the fact that they have the U.S. to support them in doing so. I'm going to play a short clip of Netanyahu defying David Barnea, the head of Mossad, who says Hamas has accepted the ceasefire agreement.

I think he's lying because he says Hamas has not agreed to the most basic terms, but I'll let you, of course, reply to it. Cut number two, Chris. These briefings harm the negotiations. And unfortunately, they also throw sand in the eyes of the dear families of the hostages. They create a false representation that Hamas agreed to the deal. And it is the Israeli government that opposes it. The exact opposite is true.

The simple truth is that until this moment, Hamas has not agreed to the most basic terms of the outline. True or not? As his own ministers told him, it's not true. They have agreed to it. That's why his officials are urging him to take the deal. And his response is to pretend as if Hamas has not accepted the deal and to berate his ministers for even holding the meeting. You know, note his first comment there that these sort of briefings undermine our goals. Yeah, they do undermine our goals because his goal is destroying Gaza and showing the

world that there is a diplomatic opportunity to end the war and the mass murder campaign in Gaza interferes with his efforts. So this is Netanyahu. He's always indignant. Anybody who dares to question him, to dare undermine his political ambitions, his agenda of completely dominating Palestinians, not granting them any seat at the table, not recognizing them as anywhere being close to equal.

And that's what he's taking umbrage with here. It's simply being defied. Senator Lindsey Graham, we could stop right here, but Senator Lindsey Graham has introduced an authorization to use military force against Iran. I don't believe it will be successful. On the other hand, given the penchant of this administration, this government, if they want to attack Iran, they're going to attack Iran under the guise of defending Israel. Is there any conceivable threat that Iran poses to the security of the United States of America? Iran only threatens U.S. and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

And that's why there is this obsession in Washington from both parties with confronting Iran. Iran has made many overtures to the U.S. over the years, which have been rebuffed. The Bush administration most significantly rejected a really serious diplomatic opportunity that they had with Iran. Obama slightly eased that stance by engaging with the Iran nuclear deal. But even then, the bellicosity in Washington towards Iran is so strong that Obama never even fully fulfilled his obligations under the Iran deal. And then Trump comes in and then immediately, or not immediately, but pretty quickly kills the Iran nuclear deal. Iran supports people in the

region who fight back. They support Hezbollah, which was created as a response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which killed tens of thousands of people. They are an ally of Syria, which is part of the resistance axis against Israel and the US. Iran supplies some support to the Houthis in Yemen, but not as much as has been claimed by the U.S. And if you're a hegemon, you hate people who resist you, who defy your hegemony. So that explains this obsession with Iran and Washington. And Lindsey Graham has been a long time advocate of trying to confront Iran for that reason, because he believes fully in U.S. Israeli supremacy and wants to enforce it. it so therefore anybody who stands in the way should be taken out so his inter his recent resolution to you know authorized bombing of iran's oil facilities he's been doing

that for a very very long time is it true that the idf is currently exhausted and the collective will of the actual grunts on the ground is let us go home and they're begging their commanders to beg the civilian leadership to let us go home. And if that is true, wouldn't Netanyahu be most unwise to pick a fight with Hezbollah at this time? It wouldn't surprise me if that were true. It's hard to generalize what is the predominant mood in a very, very large army at this stage, especially given that in Gaza, the fighting in terms of combat is pretty limited. A lot of what the military action in Gaza is

is simply just bombing buildings, civilian buildings from afar because Israel doesn't want to do much fighting. And when they do, they don't do very well. But I wouldn't be surprised if after 10 months of mass murder, there is some general fatigue. the military. I mean, my impression is often that these are people who are broken, who are very troubled by what, and fair enough, because they're serving in an occupying army that is there to enforce a brutal, the longest running military occupation in the world. So that wouldn't surprise me at all. But you have Netanyahu and his cabinet who are obsessed with taking on anybody who fights back. That's why they want to take out Hezbollah. That's why they assassinated Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. They could have gotten them elsewhere, but they wanted to send a message to Iran,

I think, trying to provoke them into doing something that could then bring the U.S. in to the fight. And I think that's what Netanyahu's counting on. And so far, if the Biden administration's public moves are any indication, Biden administration is backing up Netanyahu and would go to war with him if that does break out, which of course, you know, we all hope to avoid. But Netanyahu and his cabinet and the broader Israeli society, this commitment to aggression and occupation,

it's leaving its opponents with few other choices, but to fight back because they just will not stop with their aggression. Aaron, thank you very much, my dear friend. Lots going on today, but thank you very much for your time and your analysis. We'll see you again next week. Sounds good. Thank you, Judge. Okay. All the best. We do have a very busy day scheduled for you tomorrow. Just bear with me a minute while I pull it all out. Amir Scheimer at four in the afternoon, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. And at five in the afternoon tomorrow, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!