Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté: US Invading Russia

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, November 20th, 2024. Aaron Maté joins us now. Aaron, a pleasure as always. My dear friend, thank you for accommodating my schedule. I want to speak at some length with you about the United States invading Russia, but before we get there, I have a few head scratchers about Israel. It appears that Benjamin Netanyahu has turned down a ceasefire proposal recommended by Amos Hochstein, according to Hochstein, tentatively agreed to by the Israeli negotiators and accepted by Haaretz, accepted by Hezbollah. Is Netanyahu pulling the same stunt on negotiating with Hezbollah as he has on negotiating with Hamas? Absolutely. And unlike in Gaza, he's doing this knowingly endangering his own forces because unlike in Gaza, inside Lebanon, the Israeli military is

taking very heavy casualties because Hezbollah can actually fight back. So Netanyahu, along with being willing to commit unspeakable crimes against the civilians of Lebanon, along with civilians in Gaza, also now willing to sacrifice his own soldiers just to continue his endless campaign for regional supremacy and to prolong his political career. Because as we've now been talking about since the start, continuing this war, continuing this extermination campaign in Gaza and Lebanon also keeps Netanyahu out of or at least reduces the trouble he's in when it comes to his has the protection of the Biden administration, who just today vetoed yet another U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. And of course, as Hezbollah has very made clear, a ceasefire in Gaza could also end the fighting in Lebanon, because that is why Hezbollah intervened to begin with, is to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, which Netanyahu has refused. I mean, Netanyahu apparently also doesn't care who he

embarrasses. I mean, Hochstein is arguably an Israeli agent. He was born in Israel. He's an Israeli citizen as well as an American citizen. He theoretically works for the State Department. He fought for the IDF. You would think he would have said, don't come back to me with something that you know I'm going to reject, or you know me, I'm going to reject whatever you come back to me with. This is obviously Hochstein's last and best shot at this. I would think it's 60 days, fewer than 60 days to the end of the Biden administration. And still Netanyahu publicly says no. Is he seen as cynical by the Israeli public? Well, yes, he is seen as cynical by the Israeli public, but yet he's been able to survive. I mean, think about how long he's been a player since the mid-1990s, when he helped incite the murder of the sitting prime minister, Itak Rabin,

because in his view, Rabin was giving too much to the Palestinians and the so-called Oslo peace process. When in fact, Rabin was cementing Israeli control over the occupied West Bank and shutting it off from Gaza. But in the eyes of Israeli extremists like Netanyahu and the people that he catered to, that was even too much. And so Netanyahu essentially helped incite his murder because Rabin was killed by a far-right Israeli extremist. And ever since then, he's been prime minister multiple times, and he maintains his hold on power because as cynical as he is and as aware as the Israeli public is of that, he ultimately believes in Israeli supremacy and is willing to pull out any stops to pursue it.

And again, he's able to do this because he has the blind support of the U.S., no matter who's in charge. And the Biden administration's willingness to humiliate itself, to be contradicted publicly by Netanyahu, to claim that Netanyahu supports a ceasefire or supports a two-state solution, only for Netanyahu to come out and say,

no, I don't, and to continue undermining both goals. That's been the mystery surrounding the Biden administration. Why have all these people from Biden on down, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Amos Hoxbend, been willing to be humiliated in public by this guy? That's a mystery that I still haven't quite figured out. In the case of Biden, there's an ideological commitment to Zionism. He's had his whole career.

Everybody else, why have they been willing to make this their legacy, that even now going out of office, this could be the time when they have nothing politically to lose anymore by allowing a ceasefire in Gaza. They're still vetoing measures that the UN Security Council are calling for a ceasefire. It's impossible. I'm going to ask you in a few minutes. We're not ready to get there, but I'm going to ask you in a few minutes about the people that Trump has indicated he plans to nominate to replace them. Meanwhile, Netanyahu's chief spokesperson remains in jail, indicted over the BB Gates scandal, the theft of national security documents and defended by Prime Minister Netanyahu's lawyer. How does that look? Well, it looks like a cover-up. I mean, think of the multiple scandals that should be getting

international attention, but are not. They are causing a stir in Israel, but here inside the U.S., barely a blip. Netanyahu has two major scandals on this front. One is blackmailing people inside his own government to doctor the minutes of his phone calls with top military officials prior to October 7th, in which he was given warnings. And it looks like, according to all accounts, his own aides bullied people into doctoring the transcripts of those conversations to make it look as if Netanyahu was not aware and was not warned of a looming attack by Hamas. And then also passing on fake documents to make it look falsely as if the Hamas, the late Hamas leader Sinwar was hellbent on smuggling all the captives out of Gaza and fleeing with them. And so therefore there was no point in making a hostage deal with Hamas. That was the point of these fake leaked documents.

So there should be a massive international scandal in Netanyahu. hostage deal with Hamas. That was the point of these fake leaked documents. So there should be a massive international scandal in Netanyahu. There should be the U.S., you know, not as if it needed a reason to halt weapons transfers and halt support. This should have compelled them to do that. But yet all this gets not even a passing mention inside the U.S. where support for Israeli genocide is so critical. And it continues. Meanwhile, there's this movie coming out called the BB files, uh, in which there are pilfered,

uh, copies of interrogations by the police of Netanyahu. And apparently one of them involves a conversation about this, uh, uh, billionaire hollywood producer that's friends with netanyahu named aaron milchen you may know about this fellow who apparently received a request for a 42 000 diamond bracelet from mrs netanyahu and when they opened it up they looked at it and said, it looks like trash. Send it back.

This is on tape. Now, this movie cannot be shown in Israel. I thought in Israel there was the freedom of speech. No. Yeah. No. Israel has a very heavily censored media environment. Our colleague, Jeremy Lefredo, recently experienced that when he was imprisoned Israel has a very heavily censored media environment.

Our colleague Jeremy Lefredo recently experienced that when he was imprisoned for publishing what was widely publicly available information about the targets of Iran strikes on Israel. But apparently, I guess, publishing embarrassing information about a prime minister falls into the category of state censorship. And that's not surprising given the tight control that Netanyahu has over Israeli society and his efforts to bring the judiciary, the court system even more under his control. There isn't even freedom of speech in the Knesset. Watch what happened to a Knesset member by the name of Ayman Odeh, leader of Hadash Ta'al. If you haven't seen this, get ready for some fireworks. Cut number 13.

There are 17,385 babies in Gaza, which your system has killed. Of those, 825 are under the age of a year. There are 35,055 orphaned babies in Gaza. The blood of all of them will haunt you. And still in your impudence, you wonder how you are accused in the International Criminal Court. Benjamin Netanyahu! what is your vision? What is your vision? For over 30 years you have been a serial killer of peace.

Get off the platform immediately. Get off the platform immediately. Get off the platform immediately. A serial killer of peace. What is your vision? A serial killer of peace. What is your vision? A serial killer of peace. Get off the platform immediately. Could you imagine Bernie Sanders being dragged out of the Senate because he attacked Genocide Joe, verbally attacked him? Well, no. And, you know,

in fairness, I can't imagine bernie sanders ever seriously attacking genocide joe he's been downplaying biden support for the genocide but you get you get my point absolutely i'm saying is i i wish bernie like what i'm just trying to say is i wish bernie sanders had more of a spine even though he i mean you know he deserves credit for uh such initiatives as he's undertaking right now he's trying to pass a measure halting arms transfers to Israel. But he could have been far more forceful in criticizing Joe Biden from the start on this. But of course, why did they yank this guy out? Well, because he's speaking the truth.

He's a Palestinian citizen of Israel. He's a lawmaker and he's speaking the truth. And, you know, Israel loves to pride itself. It calls itself a democracy, even though it's a state of the Jewish people, not of its own citizens by law. But it loves to point out that you have Palestinian citizens of Israel and even people who get elected to parliament and they their freedom of speech in parliament, they get dragged off. And I wonder how long we'll even be able to see scenes like this, you know, given the direction Israel is going just further and further to the, you know, forgive my ignorance,

forgive my ignorance. Was he speaking in Arabic or Hebrew? That sounded like Hebrew to me. Yeah. Yeah. He was speaking in Hebrew. And, you know,

there are Palestinian lawmakers inside the parliament, but they're a minority. And Palestinian citizens of Israel face all sorts of discrimination. And what people forget when they hold up the Palestinian citizens of Israel as an example of how Israel is a democracy is that there are millions more Palestinians who live under one of the longest running military occupations in the world, in the West Bank and Gaza, not to mention the refugees everywhere else, who have no rights at all, who can't vote for their leader, who can't travel to see one another because they're in Gaza, they're under a genocidal siege in the West Bank. They're all cut off by checkpoints. But you see there an example of what happens even inside Israel.

The Palestinian members of parliament, when they try to speak the truth, that's an example of the censorship that they face. And I wonder, you know, just again, Israel's drifting so far to the extremist right. I wonder if there'll be a day when they're not even allowed to speak in parliament, if being allowed in parliament at all. Transitioning over to Ukraine, how reckless was it of Joe Biden or whoever made the decision for the American government to permit the use by American personnel of offensive weaponry that can reach into 190 miles into Russia after a year and a half ago, or as recently as two months ago, saying in the presence of an embarrassed and unwarned British Prime Minister Sturmer, we're not going to do it. It's yet one more reckless step up the escalation ladder.

And it follows a pattern where, you know, over a year ago, Biden was saying we're not going to be transferring weapons to Ukraine that can strike deep into Russia. And then, of course, he did. And then he said, we're not going to let Ukraine strike deep into Russia. And then, of course, he did. And then he said, we're not going to let Ukraine strike deep into Russia. And then now, of course, he does. And when they rolled this out this past weekend, announcing that Ukraine has permission to use the ATAKOMs for deep strikes into Russia, they said it's only going to hit the Kursk region,

where Ukraine has launched an incursion and is battling Russian troops. Well, actually, the first strike with the TACMs under Biden's new relaxed rules was not even in Kursk. So even when the escalation ladder is mounted and even when a new step is taken that overrides a previous one that was ruled out, even the way in which it's conducted is more escalatory than how it's sold to us. So this is a reckless administration. Clearly does not want to accept that it has ruined Ukraine.

It's a disaster. And, you know, Russia has lowered its threshold for using nuclear weapons. You know, right after this happened, Russia lowered its threshold or made formal its lowering of its threshold. I'm not personally concerned about Russia using nuclear weapons. I just don't think that's going to happen. But who will pay the price of this decision? It's Ukraine, because Russia has escalatory dominance.

And Russia, there's a long pattern where every time Ukraine escalates, Russia hits back even harder. So Biden is knowingly taking a step that he knows will make no difference to the outcome of this war. That was disclosed to The New York Times. When Biden officials leaked to The New York Times that they were now giving Ukraine permission to use attackams, they said to The New York Times twice in the same article, this will not change the course of the war. So Biden is letting Ukraine do something that he knows will not change the course of the war. So Biden is letting Ukraine do something that he knows will not change the course of the war. He only knows that Russia will be forced to retaliate and they'll mete out even more punishment on the people of Ukraine. And that's just consistent with Biden's pattern

of continued escalation for the goal of bleeding Russia and letting Ukrainians pay the price. And what's happening now, he's on his way out of office. Trump won with a mandate to end the war. I mean, that's what Trump was promising he would do. I'm not sure Trump will do that, but that's what he was saying he would do. So why would Biden do this? I think it's just pure spite and pure desperation to prolong his pet proxy war for as long as possible. I mean, further to all of that, Scott Ritter reports that his sources say the Russians are getting ready for a major assault and destruction on parts of Kiev and the United States Embassy has ordered an evacuation. So perhaps American intel has reported to the ambassador what Ritter reported to us. Add to this, Biden has authorized the use of weapons that are criminal in every country except Russia, Ukraine, United States, China, and Iran, which are anti-personnel landmines. Yes.

And he also said, as recently as a year ago, he would never authorize that. And now he has. Do you think he's trying to delay the fall of Ukraine until after January 20th, as he believes Trump delayed the fall of Afghanistan until after Biden was in office. Yeah, I think that's fair speculation. He does not want to see Kiev fall under his watch. That's fair. But I also just think this is a spiteful person. He's had a terrible reputation in Washington his whole career. He's arrogant. He's cocky.

He really sees himself as running the world. He has a personal hatred of Putin. You know, there's a famous episode where when he was vice president, he went to Russia, met with a number of opposition activists and told them that he thinks Putin should not run for president again. I mean, talk about interference in a foreign society, a foreign election. That's what Biden did, telling the Russians who should be running for president and who should not be. And early on in the Russian invasion, he blurted out in a speech in Europe, he said that, for God's sake, this man cannot remain in power. So this is a desperate person. He's pushed Ukraine into this. He blocked a peace deal that was reached early on

between Ukraine and Russia. And by the way, it's worth thinking about the consequences of that. Is Russia going to agree to the terms that it agreed to back in Istanbul in the spring of 2022, which included letting Ukraine join the European Union? That was a buried clause in this agreement that Russia had agreed to, which is that Ukraine was free to join the that now, now that the U.S. and the U.K. and France are taking part directly in setting their own missiles deep into Russian territory? I somehow doubt that. So what Biden has done in sabotaging peace in this slow drip feed of escalation is caused damage that will extend far beyond his term in office. Forget the short-term risks. There's a lot of long-term damage that Joe extend far beyond his term in office. Forget the short-term risks. There's a lot of long-term damage that Joe Biden has done here. Jake Sullivan announced that there's $7 billion, with a B, remaining in the congressional authorization

for a shipment at the president's discretion to Ukraine, and Joe Biden plans to spend it all. I guess only the Pentagon could spend $3.5 billion a month. I don't know if this is going to be cash or if this is going to be military equipment that goes there, and then they spend the money on the American defense manufacturers who will be paid to produce more copies or more versions of what was sent out. But this would be consistent with the two items we're talking about, the landmines and the long range missiles, getting $7 billion in equipment to a dying regime.

Yeah. And taking a broader view here, how did Joe Biden frame this war? He framed it as an existential battle for the future of democracy, where Ukraine was somehow on the front lines of democracy. You know, forget that Ukraine, the reason we're in Ukraine is because we overthrew the democratically elected government back in 2014, or supported that overthrow back in 2014. But broadly, just thinking of US democracy, did Joe Biden run for president on a platform of having a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and spending more than $182 billion so far? Was any American involved in that decision? No. It's all been done just with the stroke of a pen and getting Congress, including every single congressional progressive, to vote for this by pretending as if we don't fight Russia and Ukraine, we'll have to

fight them over here and they're going to take over Europe, but with no democratic mandate. And even when the Biden proxy war gets rejected at the ballot box, which it was with this election, because again, Trump, whatever his actual motives are, he did criticize the war and he vowed to immediately end it, actually within 24 hours. The Biden administration continues to show its contempt

for American democracy by promising to push out all the money it can before it leaves office. While so many people here in the U.S. lack the basics they need to survive, you know, healthcare, infrastructure in this country, anybody can tell you it's not in great shape. But that's how committed our leaders are to warfare and hegemony abroad. They're willing to spend every last dollar on it while neglecting their own people at home. Sky News and Al Jazeera just report that Ukraine has fired British-made storm shadow missiles into Russia. When I asked Ambassador Freeman about this this morning, I didn't ask him about the British because they hadn't, or the British equipment because it hadn't been used yet or it hadn't been reported. He said that this is of no military significance whatsoever, at least the American

firings. They fired six, five were shot down, one hit an ammunition depot. There were a lot of secondary and tertiary explosions. Nobody was hurt or killed, but it's really not even a blip on the radar screen militarily. Are the Ukrainians aware that this is their last gasp, or do they somehow think this is going to help stave off the inevitable? That's a great question. There's just a poll by Gallup showing that now most Ukrainians want negotiations to end the war. So at least amongst the Ukrainian public, there seems to be a recognition that all this escalation is fruitless. But in power, you have people who have sacrificed their country to the U.S., who have refused to implement their obligations under the Minsk Accords,

which could have prevented a Russian invasion, refused to go ahead with their own peace deal, which they negotiated, because the extremist movement inside Ukraine, the Azov battalions, the Voda, these far-right neo-Nazi groups, they're the ones who unfortunately have outsized influence. And the idea for them of making peace with Russia, of recognizing the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine who want to speak Russian and want to have ties to Russia,

they just can't countenance that. So therefore, for them, any option that can avoid that is worth pursuing, even if it means the destruction of their country. It's totally suicidal. And the fact that the UK, immediately after Biden makes a decision to approve a T suicidal. And the fact that the UK, immediately after Biden makes a decision to approve a TACMS, the fact that the UK immediately follows suit, it shows you who's in charge here. It shows who's running the show. It's the US. The fact that the UK will not act unless the US does first, it speaks to the fact that this is a US-led proxy war. And not just Ukrainians and Russians, but Europeans are paying the price too. Because even if UK can avoid a direct retaliation from Russia, which I hope they do, it's people across Europe that are

paying the price with their energy bills, with their economies crumbling because they've cut themselves off from cheap Russian energy and they poured all their money into a fruitless proxy where rather than diverting state resources for the benefit of the people that pay taxes. So the whole thing is a disaster. And for some reason that I can't understand, the UK seems insistent under Keir Starmer of doubling down. At the gray zone, there was recently some leaked documents reported on by my colleague, Kit Clarenberg, about how UK military operatives have been plotting to prolong the war for as long as possible. Because I suppose because they're on obsession with Russia

and their inability to foresee a future in which they can actually live peacefully and actually have a Europe where Russian security concerns are addressed. Aaron Mate, thank you very much, my dear friend. All the best. We'll see you again. Well, next week's a short week. I hope we can see you. I hope we'll find time that works for you my dear friend. All the best. We'll see you again. Well, next week's a short week. I hope we can see you.

I hope we'll find time that works for you and for us. All the best. You as well, Judge. Thank you. Thank you. I'm out. We'll see you next time.