Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté: Whitewashing Mass Murder

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Aaron Maté: Whitewashing Mass MurderSee 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. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, July 10th, 2024. My dear friend, now one of my heroes, you'll see why in a minute, Aaron Maté is here. Before we start, here is the best of Aaron Maté on Piers Morgan earlier this week. The difference is that now finally an Israeli

newspaper Haaretz has acknowledged this and more Israeli military sources have come forward. The reporting from Haaretz says, according to one source, that the order was to turn the south of Israel, that frontier with Gaza, into a killing zone, which is exactly what happened. It underscores that Israel has no concern for civilian life, not just inside Gaza, but also its own people, because it did not want to have Hamas take captives that could be used for negotiations to free Palestinian hostages. And that's been lost here. There are thousands of Palestinian hostages in Israeli dungeons.

And a major goal of Hamas here was to take captives and use them as leverage to free Palestinians who have been in Israeli dungeons for years and years and years. Excuse me, I didn't interrupt you. I did not interrupt you. I did not interrupt you, despite your many falsehoods. No, but what you're saying is disgusting. Excuse me, excuse me.

You're whitewashing Hamas's murder. And you're whitewashing mass murder, which is the whole point of suppressing the truth about October 7th. That phrase, Aaron, whitewashing mass murder, of course, has gone viral because it's an excellent description of what happened. This Haaretz story, about which you and Max and Anya and Ritter reported back in October now is mainstream. And the guy that interrupted you, the former IDF spokesperson, didn't want to hear it. Of course he didn't because it undermines the

propaganda that he's been deployed to use ever since October 7th, him and every other Israeli government apologist, because it shatters this claim that Hamas committed this massacre of hundreds Israeli military sources that Hamas, that Israel deployed the Hannibal Directive, which is this order that basically says we'd rather kill our own people than let them be taken captive by Palestinians because Israel does not want to have to exchange Israeli captives for the many more Palestinian captives that, as I said, have been rotting in Israeli dungeons for years and years and years. But now the truth is impossible to suppress with even Israeli military sources confirming it. And if you read The Gray Zone, if you read Electronic Intifada, if you read Mando Weiss, if you watch this show, none of this would be news to you except for one component, Max Blumenthal, who again has done so much to expose this and deserves all the credit in the world. He pointed out that what's a new detail in this story is that Israel not only used Apache helicopters to kill its own people on October 7th, but also artillery fire at the border. And when you have artillery and Apache helicopters, some of the most advanced battlefield weapons being deployed, it raises the question, how many

Israelis did Israel kill on its own? And if you see the images of all those charred vehicles and many other details, it becomes quite plausible that, as you've heard some people say, Israel, in fact, killed the majority of its own people on October 7th. And I don't know what the answer is, but it's certainly increasingly plausible now that we have it newly confirmed at the highest levels of the Israeli military. Do we know who issued the Hannibal directive? And just as an aside, I hate this euphemism as if because they've named it after Hannibal, it's somehow a legitimate historical military technique. It's murder. It's slaughtering innocents. It's shooting people in the back as they're running, almost literally as they're

fleeing the conflagration. I just had to get that out. Do we know who issued this order? We know it came from the highest levels. It had to. That's the only- The prime minister? I would not be surprised if we learned that Prime Minister Netanyahu was well aware of this. But again, the Hannibal Directive has been enacted for decades because Israel's been humiliated in its own eyes when it has to, for example, exchange Gilad Shalit, one Israeli soldier, for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. It just can't tolerate that. When you're a military occupier, you can't tolerate any sort of exchange or any sort of action that grants parity to the

people you're occupying, that treats them as human beings, that calls attention to the fact that Israel is holding thousands and thousands of Palestinians captive. So therefore, they'd rather kill their own people. That's how little they value human life. Israel constantly claimed for the most moral army in the world. The self-described most moral army in the world is even willing to kill its own people to prevent them from being taken captive by the people that it's been occupying for decades and decades. And so we don't know exactly who gave the order, but it came from on high. One of the directives, according to Haaretz, was to turn the South of Gaza into a killing zone. This was deployed multiple times.

By my count, it was enacted at eight different locations on October 7th. Kiba team is really military outposts, the Nova festival rave. So you have at all these different sites, Israel killing its own people. Did Israel kill some of the teenagers and young adults? Um, so you have at all these different sites, Israel killing its own people. Did Israel kill some of the, um, teenagers and young adults that were partying at the Nova gathering?

Uh, at the grayzone.com, there's been reporting on this based on Israeli testimony. According to that testimony. Yes, they did. Exactly how many, we don't know. How has, um, this ratification of what you and max and anya and the others have been saying by ha arets been greeted by the israeli public because i haven't heard a peep out of netanyahu since this report came out i don't think it got that much attention i i haven't followed it too closely the israeli reaction so i could be missing something. But think about Israel, what it is. It's a society that's normalized nine months of mass murder and

decades of military occupation. So given how normalized the destruction of Palestinian civilian life is inside Israel, I wouldn't be surprised if the same goes for even killing its own citizens. Because again, this is an occupying power that's been subjecting Palestinians to the longest running military occupation in the world. So I wouldn't be surprised if people have just been sufficiently propagandized to see this as somehow normal, that we're willing to kill our own people to prevent them from being taken captive by the untermenschen, the subhumans, the Palestinians who Israel's been occupying for decades.

I haven't heard anything from President Biden, Secretary Blinken, or National Security Advisor Sullivan. However, here's what the official, hang on to your seat if you haven't seen this, here's what the official State Department spokesperson, Matt Miller, had to say about it. I wanted to ask you first, if you read or heard about the Haaretz report on Israel employing the Hannibal directive on October 7th. So I did see that report that moved over the weekend, and that's the limit of my knowledge of seeing that report from Haaretz. Does that make you change your position or your perspective on what really happened that day that the Israelis may be responsible for killing a majority of the people that died

on that day? Boy, it certainly does not, Said. I don't think there's any question. I don't think there's any question that it was Hamas. Just let me finish. I don't think it's any question it's Hamas that is responsible for the overwhelming number of deaths on October 7th. This is what passes for the official commentary by the State Department of the United States in this era on a mass slaughter by a government military of its own people. Yeah.

And again, anyone looking at this logically, let's assess his claim. He's saying it's no question that the majority of deaths were committed by Hamas and other Palestinian militants. Well, again, look at the site, look at the images of all those charred vehicles. If you listen to Palestinians who follow the Palestinian resistance factions closely, they said from the start that the images that came out on October 7th, just based on the military capability of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance fighters who are living under siege, under occupation, it's not as if they can freely get all the weapons they want from their allies and certainly can't

build them up inside Gaza. It didn't look like Hamas had the capacity to inflict that kind of damage. What could inflict that kind of damage? Well, it's Apache helicopters. And now we learn from Haaretz it's also artillery, which was deployed also under the Hannibal Directive. So logically, it makes sense that, in fact, it could have been. I don't know for sure, but it's quite plausible to me that based on what we know, given the multitude of locations, at least eight different locations where Israel deployed the Hannibal directive, given the firepower that Israel has, and given its willing, its open willingness to kill its own people, it's quite plausible that the majority of killings were carried out by Israel.

One Israeli colonel, and again, you can read about this in the Gray Zone. You can't read about this in the washington post the new york times describe the order as a mass hannibal what does that mean a mass killing and so based on that it's every reason to believe that it's plausible that the majority of killings were carried out by israel does any other country do this as far as you know kill its own people i wouldn't be surprised if there's one or two, but certainly none that I've ever heard of and none that certainly holds it up to the world as this beacon of moral leadership as Israel does. And you don't believe that this has had any effect on the Israeli public? I don't. And again, because again, look, they've seen nine months of unending mass murder, tens of thousands of Palestinians.

And the number of protesters in Israel, although it's growing a little bit, is still very small. And their opposition is mainly out of the fact that Netanyahu is leaving the hostages to die rather than freeing them under the deal that's on the table, which Hamas has accepted. And again, it's worth keeping in mind, look, even if not a single Israeli was killed by Israel on October 7th, and all of them were in fact killed by Palestinians on October 7th, which we now know is not true. But even if that were true, the conversation would still be just as ridiculous because for nine months now, we've talked constantly about October 7th, what happened that day, what didn't, while right before our eyes has been a endless unspeakable mass murder campaign where we don't even know the death toll. We know the death toll of Israelis on October 7th.

There's so many Palestinians killed in Gaza with this, with us support that we can, we've lost count of how many there was one estimate the other day in the Lancet that said it's far more than the current official toll of around 40,000, which makes sense because the official toll of around 40,000, which makes sense because the official toll was always an undercount. But we don't even know how many tens of thousands of Palestinians have been slaughtered by Israel.

And so all this discussion of October 7th and the U.S. and Israel constantly invoking it and falsely, given so many of the claims that Israel made about October 7th was false, all that has been used to manufacture support for the actual mass killing unfolding every day before our eyes with our support. Hmm. Do you think Netanyahu is serious that he can afford and fight a seven front war? I don't know what's in his mind.

I certainly think that the Israeli mentality it's based on supremacy and hegemony and defending that at all costs. So when you're committed foremost to occupation, then you're willing to sacrifice everything else. supremacy, as we've seen from the Hannibal directive, it shows that these are not rational people who are not thinking even about their own best interests. They're simply guided by the imperative of enforcing their supremacy, where Ariel Sharon, the famed former Israeli prime minister, military commander, he said way back in 1967 that our main weapon is their fear of us. And that's what Israel has been trying to impose ever since. And so in a drive to instill fear in the people around them, the indigenous people of the land, the Arabs who they see as us. And that's what Israel's been trying to impose ever since. And so in a drive to instill fear in the people around them, the indigenous people of the land, the Arabs who they see as subhuman, wouldn't Netanyahu be crazy enough to open up a new front with Hezbollah? Yeah, he might be. Although the one restraining factor here is Israel doesn't like to fight people who can fight back.

That's why they're bombing Gaza, which can't fight back. They're just bombing it to bits. And the few moments, and Norman Fickleston has pointed this out, in the rare instances where there is actually fighting on the ground between Israel and Hamas militants, and Israel just isn't bombing people from afar, Israelis lose their lives. Israeli soldiers get killed. So given that Hezbollah can fight back, maybe that will be enough of a deterrent to Netanyahu, especially given that it's not clear if he has the Biden administration's endorsement for such a war yet. Is it generally understood amongst the Israeli public that the IDF is correct when it says Hamas has never been stronger? Is it generally understood that Hezbollah has humiliated the IDF in the north, that the IDF is exhausted and doesn't want to fight anymore,

and the West Bank is smoldering? Does the Israeli public recognize all of that? Israel is such a propagandized, militaristic, supremacist society that I'm not sure if that has sunk in. There have been growing protests against Netanyahu because it's so blatant to everyone that he's willing to risk the remaining captives inside Gaza for his own political career and for his goal of destroying Gaza. In terms of how widespread that sentiment is, it's not

something I can speak to. Understood. Understood. Switching gears over to Ukraine, because as we speak, the president is entertaining NATO leaders in Washington, D.C. I want to run a couple of clips for you for your comments on them. Here is President Biden boasting, and this number startled me, that there are 100,000 American troops in Europe. I wonder if they're a tripwire. Cut number six. Even before Russia bombs were falling in Ukraine, the alliance acted. I ordered the U.S. reinforcements at NATO's eastern flank. More troops, more aircraft, more capabilities. And now the United States has more than 100,000 troops on the continent of Europe. Are they various sitting ducks?

Yeah, they are, given that the Biden administration has been increasingly willing to risk direct confrontation with Russia and its bid to weaken Russia in the proxy war in Ukraine. But there's another aspect of this, which is just performative. Biden loves to brag about how he'll always defend NATO territory from Russia, as if Russia ever wants to go to war with NATO, which U.S. officials know Russia doesn't. In fact, there was a recent admission in the New York Times, which contradicted everything else the New York Times prints constantly. It was in an article about U.S. military bases in Europe right now and how they're on higher alert levels because of the increased dangers of the Ukraine proxy war. And it mentioned in passing that throughout the war,

U.S. officials have assessed that Putin is loathe to expand the war beyond Ukraine's borders. Well, that's exactly, it's true. That's true. But that's exactly the opposite of what people like Joe Biden have said repeatedly, including in his debate with Trump. He said that if we don't stop Russia and Ukraine, they're going to go to war against Poland and other NATO states next, which is such a joke as the New York Times quietly admitted. And so Biden likes to brag about how he's defending NATO, he's putting forces there. But all that is just, there's a performative aspect to it. Yes, it's done to provoke Russia and they've been successful at that, as we can see from the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine, among other provocations. But it's also there to pretend as if he's showing Russia who's boss and as if he's really

standing up to Russia when really the whole goal, the ultimate goal here is to keep the fighting in Ukraine, keep Ukrainians being the ones to make the sacrifice on the U.S. behalf. And even if they die by the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, that's fine. And Biden's not going to go defend them because he's willing to use them for his ultimate goal of weakening Russia as his top officials, Jake Sullivan and Lloyd Austin have made clear. Here's what President Putin had to say about all this. It's a full screen, so I will read it.

This is President Putin. Quote, you should not make Russia out to be the enemy. You're only hurting yourself with this. They thought that Russia wanted to attack NATO. Have you gone completely crazy? This must be aimed at the US, Aaron. Who came up with this? It is just complete nonsense, you know? Total rubbish. Very, very candid comments by the president of Russia about the nonsense that comes out of the mouth of the president of the United States. And before you respond to that, cut number seven, Chris. In Europe, Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine continues.

And Putin wants nothing less, nothing less than Ukraine's total subjugation, to end Ukraine's democracy, to destroy Ukraine's culture, and to wipe Ukraine off the map. And we know Putin won't stop at Ukraine, but make no mistake, Ukraine can and will stop Putin. Now, are you of the view that American military, this is absurd, that American military and American intelligence leaders profoundly disagree with what their boss just said? Yes. And I'm sure one day when the documents are declassified, you know, 50 years from now, we'll get confirmation, even more, you know, confirmation of that. But again,

the New York Times recently, as I said, quietly admitted that throughout the war, U.S. officials have assessed that Putin does not want to expand the war beyond NATO's borders. And there's no doubt that people in Biden's circle are aware of this, but that's not the convenient talking point because forever, the whole talking point has always been with some enemy, whether it's Saddam Hussein or threat the war on terror, that if we don't fight them over there, we have to fight them over here. Adam Schiff said that about Russia back when he was impeaching Trump for pausing some weapons to Ukraine

while pressuring it to conduct some investigations. He said that the U.S. aids Ukraine so that we can fight Russia over there. We don't have to fight Russia here. So I wish I could just blame Joe Biden's cognitive decline here for that crazy talking point. But unfortunately, it's bipartisan. It's been around for a very long time. But look, he also says that he also says in that clip that Russia wants to end Ukraine's democracy and wipe it off the map. Ironically,

right now, one of the reasons, one of the excuses that Biden's giving to Ukraine for not giving it NATO membership is that Ukraine is not sufficiently democratic. So Biden's actually contradicting his own talking point there about democracy. But more importantly, this notion that Putin wants to wipe Ukraine off the map. Luckily now, we have a really good source material that we can use to check the veracity of Biden's claim. And that's the draft of the peace treaties that Russia and Ukraine worked out more than two years ago in Turkey, which the New York Times very helpfully recently published in full. They published three different copies, two draft treaties and a full communique, which was premised on, which actually drafted by the Ukrainian team and which was accepted as a basis for talks by Russia. And it

didn't wipe Ukraine off the map. In fact, Ukraine would have kept all of its territory except for Crimea and possibly not pro-Russian elements of the Donbass, but everywhere else in exchange for simply declaring neutrality, which is Russia's main goal. And that's why Ukraine's top negotiator in those talks said Russia's top priority was just getting Ukraine to declare neutrality, which is not a radical demand. That's not a demand to wipe Ukraine off the map. That's simply a demand for Ukraine to return to the principles of its founding declaration of state sovereignty, which said that we will be a neutral, non-aligned state. That was Russia's central demand.

We know what happened. Boris Johnson came over on behalf of the U.S. and told Ukraine not to sign that deal, that the U.S. wouldn't support it. So Biden knows that what he's saying there is complete fiction, but he's allowed to say it because the U.S. media will never correct them because they are more than happy to parrot his lies. Biden also said in the clip we just ran, Putin wants to, you mentioned this, Putin wants to destroy Ukraine's democracy. Biden and his buddies in 2014 were profoundly instrumental in destroying Ukraine's democracy when they spent $5 billion to foment a revolution, a phony revolution, and chase the popularly elected president out of the country.

Putin, if he wanted to, could overthrow Zelensky, certainly if Russia sent in more forces. Putin talked about recently what his goals were invading Ukraine. He said his goal was to compel Ukraine to enter into the negotiations that it was refusing to enter in the years before, namely implementing the Minsk Accords, which it had signed but refused to implement, which would have ended the Donbass War

and most likely avoided a Russia invasion. And so Putin hasn't overthrown the Ukrainian government, but Biden and his buddies have, as you point out. In 2014, they backed the overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected president, Yanukovych. And why? What was the main reason? Because Yanukovych was trying to enshrine neutrality into Ukraine's constitution, which had been a goal of his declaration of state sovereignty. That was no good for Washington, so they backed an ultra-nationalist-led coup. avoided the coup, but actually reduced Yanukovych's powers and called for early elections and brought in members of the Maidan movement, which the Biden administration was supporting. Even when that agreement was reached, and Putin really complained about this, the US immediately ignored it while claiming to support it and applauded as Ukrainian fascists

pushed through a new government. So you're exactly right. The only people who have tried to overthrow Ukraine's democracy and done it successfully in recent memory are the ultra fascists in Ukraine and their allies in Washington, especially Joe Biden and everybody else he brought over from the Obama administration. Not to raise your blood pressure, this is just about two hours old. Secretary of Defense Austin saying Putin is the cause of NATO enlargement. Cut number 17. In the wake of Putin's imperial invasion of Ukraine, we've bolstered NATO's forward defense posture with more troops at high readiness, larger exercises, sharper vigilance and multin multinational battle groups in eight countries. NATO is now larger than ever. And our new allies in Finland and Sweden have brought the alliance's membership to 32.

And make no mistake, Putin's war is not the result of NATO enlargement. Putin's war is the cause of NATO enlargement. rational when he picked up the phone and called his opposite number in Russia after the deaths caused by American military equipment and know-how on the Sevastopol beach, but apparently he's back to his old self. He wants to keep his job. Austin should consult with NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg, who said not too long ago that Putin went to war in Ukraine to prevent more NATO on his borders. So they're really not coordinating their talking points here. Because even Stoltenberg happened to blurt out the truth.

And look, Biden and his top principals love to brag about Finland and Sweden joining NATO, that this is one of their biggest accomplishments. I don't think Russia really cares that Finland and Sweden joined NATO. Back when William Burns, who's now the director of Biden's CIA, was the U.S. ambassador to Russia, he wrote a memo about Russia's concerns when it comes to NATO enlargement. It didn't mention Finland and Sweden. It mentioned Ukraine. And Burns laid out the explanation that Ukraine has a huge ethnic Russian population. And if a civil war were to broke out in Ukraine, especially over the issue of NATO expansion, that was one of the possible flashpoints, then Russia would feel

compelled, likely to intervene. And so Russia didn't want to be in that situation. And that's why Burns said that for Russia, NATO expansion in Ukraine is the brightest of all red lines. So that is what the Biden administration deliberately ignored. And by the way, for what? So they refused to take Ukraine's membership invitation off the table. But now, as they're gathering right now with Ukraine, what is the takeaway for Ukraine? What is Ukraine being told? Sorry, you're not getting in. Biden recently said that I don't support giving NATO membership to Ukraine because they're too corrupt and they need to be more democratic. So Biden's throwing Ukraine under the bus, which exposes that this whole idea of this

open door to Ukraine, this open door policy, no, we can't go back in the open door. We've already given them the invite. It was just put out there as a guise to have a back door to fight Russia. So by granting Ukraine the supposed open door to NATO, then NATO can then integrate Ukraine into its military infrastructure without giving Ukraine the guarantee that it will defend it if Russia attacks it. So basically, we're going to admit you to Ukraine one day. We're going to do a bridge to NATO. And under that guise, we're going to integrate you into our military infrastructure, which gives us the capacity to use you further to fight Russia. But ultimately, when push comes to

shove, we're not going to let you in. So this open door is just a backdoor to fight Russia. And the people that have borne the primary cost are, of course, Ukrainians, who Lloyd Austin and Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, Anthony Blinken, Jens Stoltenberg could not care less about. Before we leave, I neglected to ask you a question earlier about Israel. Has the Netanyahu government or has Prime Minister Netanyahu himself challenged or denied the Haaretz report, which is now four days, five days old. Not that I've seen. And my personal engagement with the topic of your question was in that Piers Morgan debate, I was on with a panel that included a former spokesperson for the IDF, who, by

the way, took part in one of the worst hoaxes of this mass murder campaign so far, which I didn't have time to check out who he was before, so I missed it. This is the guy that interrupted you. Multiple times. What campaign did he take part in? He took part in the hoax about al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest, most important hospital, being a Hamas command center. And he was caught staging fake videos, planting weapons, basically, to make it look as if

Hamas was planting all of its weapons and was storing all of its weapons in al-Shifa. And he had these ridiculous, he had a calendar that he said was like a Hamas schedule calendar when really it was just like a shift for the hospital. And he was just a complete scam artist. And he was so bad that even CNN and others had to call him out for it because it was just such a transparent fraud. So had I known who he was, I would have treated him with even more contempt. And the irony is when I tried to speak about the Hannibal directive and what we've learned from, or what we've newly confirmed from Haaretz in terms of there being orders for a killing zone, he repeatedly interrupted me because he did not want the truth to be acknowledged because it undermines the basis for this Israeli propaganda campaign that's been running ever since October 7th.

And he repeatedly interrupted me and, of course, couldn't challenge a single thing that i actually said and he when asked about this by piers morgan like when asked about the higher ed support by piers morgan he gave a very long-winded answer to um try to deflect away from the central question was was a hannibal directive enacted a very long-winded question finally at the end he did begrudgingly acknowledge that yes this likely was enacted and likely did. It likely did mean the killing of Israelis. But he did everything he could to stop me from making it a lot more concise and a lot more clear, because his job, like every other Israeli government apologist, is to manufacture consent for mass murder and suppress the truth about October 7th. I said at the outset of this show, you're not only my friend and colleague, you're my hero because you're not only brilliant,

you're patient to put up with these people. The name calling and the interruption and the duplicity was obvious to anybody that watched the program. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you very much. We'll be going through this with Max again tomorrow, but you have been stellar on it

and I am very appreciative of it, as is the audience now. All the best to you, my friend. I'll be gone for two weeks. I'm going to follow where you were in Europe, not quite in every place, but I'll be in some of the haunts that you went to. But we'll be back

in late July. Thank you, my dear friend. Have a great and very well-deserved vacation, Judge. Thank you. All the best. Thank you, Aaron. Wonderful, wonderful, brilliant, and gifted human being. Tomorrow, Thursday, 8 o'clock in the morning Eastern, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow. Three in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. Four in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer. Five in the afternoon, absolute worth waiting for on these same topics that we just discussed with Aaron Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. We'll see you next time.