Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke : Trump and Violent Zionism

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Alastair Crooke : Trump and Violent ZionismSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025. Feels like a Monday here in the U.S. after our holiday yesterday, but it is Tuesday. Alster Crook will be with us in just a moment on Donald Trump and violent Zionism.

but first this we all know how devastating war is lives lost communities destroyed but war can also threaten your financial freedom that's where America's heading our growing involvement in global conflicts it means more

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central banks and smart investors are buying gold hand over fist. They know what's coming and they're hedging against it. Currency collapse, inflation, and market volatility. Gold has been a trusted store of value for thousands of years and today we need that protection more than ever. Call near capital now at 800511-4620 or visit learjudsonap dot com no one is going to protect your wealth for you you need to do it yourself and now is the time alster crook welcome here my dear friend thank you for accommodating my schedule before we get to president trump and his support for violent Zionism one or two questions about Ukraine. Do you think that Ukrainian elites, generals, diplomats, senior politicians, recognize that the end of the war is near because Russia is so close to achieving its military

objectives and the Ukrainian military is so dilapidated? Yes, I think broadly, because it's obvious. I mean, it's unmistakable. And I think they do see that. But I think there is also the fact that they're not allowed to see that. The grip of, if you like, the extreme nationalists over the structures. And the grip of the Western services, not to let that go, not to let the grip over the, if you like, the police, the military, the political class in Ukraine, let that slip at all.

means that it just can't go on. And of course, it is then, I mean, very obviously being urged on by the Europeans who will make no concessions whatsoever. They just tell Zelensky, make no concessions, not an inch, we will be with you. And even today, in Tuesday, there is going to be a meeting in Paris. And you can be sure Zelensky will be there, I don't know for certain that he's been invited, but be a surprise if he wasn't. He will be hugged. He will be kissed. He will be embraced by all the European leaders, told what a brave fellow he is, continuing, as they

stick absolutely to no concessions, ceasefire and rearmament of it, and Western troops, NATO troops for the peacekeeping force. And that's, you know, the sides. are just miles apart. But I think that the, I think that the, yes, and it's going to dawn even more because of what's happening on the battlefield at the contact line around Pocrofts and the forefront line, if you like, cities.

They are all on the verge of crumbling. Why doesn't it happen quicker? Because Russia has a tactic. They want them to stay there, the forces, the Ukrainian forces, because they eliminate them more quickly. This is what happened also in Kursk. I mean, they could have gone in and counterattack and lost a lot of troops. No, they just waited while Ukraine reinforced its positions,

its untenable positions in Kursk, and then kill them. And that's what's going to be happening. And then after these frontline cities' forces, then anything's going to open up. You mentioned that the Ukrainian elites are not stupid, and they can see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears what's happening, but they're not permitted to articulate it for fear of reprisal.

Do the EU elites about whom you just spoke, do they recognize that this is a fruitless cause, and it's just about over? And are they afraid to say it? Or have they deluded themselves and they think that somehow, by some means, Ukraine can still prevail? You know, I mean, those are very difficult questions. But the first one is, you know, money is the actually, you know, the glue that holds the thing together. Vast amounts of money going to the Ukrainian elites from the West.

I mean huge sums, we're talking billions, not millions, are, if you like, liquefying the whole process of opposition. And for the European elites, it's more of a sense of an existential fear, which they, I think, have absorbed their own fear. I think I said to you just last week about Macron was saying about how, you know, they see Putin is the predator, the ogre at the doorstep seeking to eat Europe. I mean, it's just ridiculous. It's fantasy. There's no way that could happen. But do they, have they convinced themselves? Well, I suspect a lot of them are convinced because they know that if they move away from that narrative, there's a great bit of hole underneath.

They are at the edge of the abyss. And if they move away one jot from the narrative of the war with Russia, it's all Russia's fault. von der Leyen was also saying that Putin is this predator, this, if you like, this ogre at the door, this beast at the door. also when she was on her travels this weekend. Possibly they do believe that they can somehow push Trump, can push the United States into escalation.

And who knows they feel? You know, more escalation, more sanctions. They'll press for more sanctions. They hope that somehow all of this will sort of come right in the end that Putin will will feel. fall. You know, it's a fantasy, but it is a gripping. It's gripping because it is so divorced from reality and is in the sort of stage of fantasies that people accept and embrace. And more than embrace, they revel in it. Look at the way he'll be, Zelensky will be embraced.

I mean, as if he's some sort of superhero come in from the cosmos. to save the Europeans, hugging him and bowing to him and everything. It is really something quite remote from, quite detached from reality. Does Donald Trump appear to understand the goals of the Netanyahu regime of annihilating the Palestinian people or so defanging them as to make them malleable, to every last Israeli wish? He understands absolutely. It was quite instructive.

Aloof Ben, you probably read him quite often in Haaret's English this time. But he says, Aloof Ben made the comment that, and you know he swims in this water of Israeli politics every day. And he said, if you look at the cabinet, And if you look at the right wing, Ben-Givir Smotrich, and then if you look at the center where you have Netanyahu in the center, and then, likely, not much of the center, you have Gideon Saar, an area deheri, the head of Shas.

If you look at that cabinet as a whole, Trump, if you position Trump into that cabinet, He would be on the far right with Smotrich and Ben-Gavir. That was Aloof Ben's opinion about his situation. So, yes, he, you know, and he said the other day, I mean, on his way to Scotland, you know, it's up to the Israelis. You know, Hamas is hopeless. They need to finish them all.

They need to finish the job. We know what that means. The IDF leadership and the Mossad and Shinbet leadership keep telling Netanyahu it's a grave mistake to send the IDF in to obliterate Gaza City that it will be a disaster. Do you agree? And if so, why? I agree entirely. And in fact, 600 former Israeli defense, security and diplomatic officials have now sent a letter to Trump and saying, for God's sake, save us from this. This is going to be an absolute disaster for Israel. We need you to say to Netanyahu, no, you need to do a deal, a deal that's already been accepted. by Hamas in this occasion. You need to do a deal with Hamas. You need to end the war. And Netanyahu refuses to even put it on the agenda of the cabinet meeting that was held over the weekend. He refused a cabinet meeting that went on for six hours, put on the agenda by the chief of the army staff.

He said, we need to talk about doing a deal of getting the hostages back. And there were huge demonstrations in Tel Aviv and across the land in favor of doing a deal to release the hostages because the chief of defense staff says, you know, by saying you want to invade Gaza, you're signing the death warrant of however many are alive. You're just killing them. And this is just not acceptable practice. So the divisions on this are really profound. And as I say, Netanyahu says, cruxfully or not, but he says, I have the support of Trump on this. I have the support of Trump of finishing of Gaza.

But what we're also hearing and we're seeing is that, you know, people have written off the resistance long ago and said, oh, well, it's been broken, great success by Israel. Let's see, let's see in Iran, let's see in Lebanon with Hezbollah, And you will see that even the Israelis are saying, you know, that what happened? We thought we cleared Gaza,

and we find they still have a force of 20,000 armed men, and they are digging new tunnels, and that they are reinstalling them. They have tunnel-making equipment in the tunnels, and they are building new tunnels. And, you know, things are moving like that. I mean, people have written off Hezbollah, I think prematurely,

They are intact with their heavy weapons. They can strike at Tel Aviv anytime. And the Yemenis, I mean, after this, you know, the bombing that actually annihilated the entire civil, civil cabinet of Yemen, the Hussi cabinet. It was the prime minister and 11 ministers. None of them have military functions. a sort of Minister of Transport, Minister of Tourism, Minister of this and that, all killed. For what? And so the Yemenis are going to be tougher now.

There's no doubt about that. Al-Houthi was not affected by that. The military leaders were not affected. This was an entirely sort of public, you know, civil affairs cabinet. What is the effect on the average Arab in the middle? least to the ferocious violence of the Zionist regime, an example of which you just articulated, the murder of civilian cabinet members that have nothing whatsoever to do with the military in a country where the government is not at war with Israel, but some militias resident in the

country are. What is the reaction in the Middle East to this? Why is there no enough is enough? Well, I mean, that's a long and complicated story, but essentially the Sunni world prefers to, if you like, define the conflict as not being attacked by Israel, but by being a war fermented by Iran. And so what you see is the support by Saudi Arabia in Lebanon, absolute support, I mean siege-like support by Saudi Arabia in Lebanon, trying to force what will probably end as a civil war, the attempt to disarm Hezbollah. Hezbollah are not going to disarm. You see the same thing with Qatar supporting totally what's happening in Syria. And all of these Sunni leaders basically are still suggesting

that this is not a war with Israel, but so much it's a conflict with Iran. And they press this argument. And ISIS is being restarted in the Sunni world and in Iraq, the same pressures. So you see the basic division of a, you know, states, monarchical states that don't have really much confidence in their legitimacy. They were, after all, imposed by the British at the end of the, with the breakup of the Ottoman

Empire at the end of the war. They're the same families, the same structures that were just re-imposed into that region. And so they have this sort of healing of inferiority vis-a-vis Iran. This is not Iran's fault, but this is just the reality. Iran during this period has become a stronger power, and they have become weaker, becoming just simply, if you like, proxies of the United States. Notwithstanding the devastating retaliation that Iran visited on Israel during the 12-day war back in June, a devastation that resulted, we believe, in Prime Minister Netanyahu secretly begging President Trump to bring an end to it. Notwithstanding all of that, is Israel getting ready to attack Iran again?

Absolutely. That's very clear. Because, first of all, I mean, a pink tank in Israel, IMSS came out and said, you know, that actually the 13th of June, the Israeli sneak attack on Iran, completely failed. And what we see, and it laments it, that, you know, Iran is nowhere near breakdown in terms of civil order. In fact, the opposite people are gathering around Iran. And yet, nonetheless, it argues for regime change. And it says it must come. And it's become inevitable because of this change. This change, I mean, you know, not only has Israel changed, and you describe that at the outset, it's changed. You know, the old Zionism has gone, the Zionism of the Ashkenazi, the liberal

European, Zionism is replaced. You ask most Israelis what is Zionism today. They can't answer, and if they did answer, honestly, they'd say it's the Zionism of Ben-Govia and Smotrich, of Messian. if you like complete disdain for Palestinians or for anyone. This is what you have called revisionist Zionism. Am I right? Well, the Israelis themselves, Yossi Klein, in the Hebrew version of Harris, calls it the third stage, moving to the third stage of Zionism, which is barbarism. And that's what he's referring to in Gaza and saying, you know, this can't go on.

this violence, and indeed it was Barak, the envoy of Trump on a television interview just a few days ago who was saying, you know, Sykes Pico is gone, boundaries have gone. Israel will go where it wants, do what it wants, when it wants, on its terms alone. And we are in, if you like, a new form. My main point was Israel has moved towards, as the Israelis all can see, to a very different form of much more violent, if you like, messianic Zionism. The old Zionism faded away. I mean, a few elements of it still protest about it, but largely they are defeated. But we see Washington, we see the United States and Europe, it's bleeding across into how we think about conflicts, this Israeli way of thinking about conflicts. We see this in the sense that it's now

normalized to advocate for decapitation, for assassinations, for targeted assassinations. We see this Westerners sort of thing. What did you hear a single process? protest from anyone or even an Arab state at the extermination of the entire cabinet in the last few days in Yemen? Nothing. Not a word has come out because it's now normalized. And the effect of that is the supreme leader recognized that and an address to the people said, you know, forget about negotiating with the United States. That is superficial. Do you not understand that the United States wants to make us totally compliant, dependent, that they want to crush us and make us obedient? And we will never do that.

Iran is different. It will never accept that. So they understand war is inevitable in Iran and probably escalation is inevitable in the Russia context. too. I think one of the most important things that came out, by the way, from this meeting in China, the SCO, the Shanghai Coordination Organization meeting in Dijin was, first of all, a sign statement by the three powers, the foreign secretaries of Russia, China and Iran, saying that snapback sanctions is illegal, inappropriate, and outside of the, if you like, the context of the JCPOA, the Euro3 are acting both illegally and against procedures of the EU.

And they sent this letter to the Secretary General, not that he'll do much about it, but they've sent this letter saying they are completely opposed to this United States action of encouraging the E3 to create snapback election. So, I mean, all of this, it makes it inevitable that we are going to go to conflict. And equally came out of this meeting in China. I hear this. I can't vouch for this, but I hear it on Russian channels more. It's been agreed that Putin will have a conversation with Trump in

on the third or the fourth of this month. And he's expected to tell Trump that despite what happened in Anchorage, Russia and his sanctions and threats of more missiles, Russia is going to continue with its special operation, unchanged. It's going to continue with that. And if the United States cannot control either Brussels, the Europeans, or Zelensky, then Russia will just continue on with this special operation until it achieves success irrespective of whatever is being threatened by Trump. A very strong language, as I understand, some elements of it, I think, has already been.

passed to the White House. I don't know where Trump is at the moment. They've been passed to the White House saying, giving an indication of what they're saying. But I mean, basically, I mean, Putin is giving Trump an ultimatum. Either accepts that we are going to force on the Europeans and Zelensky an outcome by military means or else you can escrow. and we will retaliate. Well, what do you expect? I mean, Trump just authorized the sale of 3,500 medium-range missiles. They can travel 280 miles from the point at which they are dispatched to be sold to Iran.

These things can only be used or obviously be used to attack inside Moscow. You can't, what expect President Putin to do? Just roll over? Of course not. Of course not. It's right. This is no way for the United States to negotiate and try and bring about peace. But this is the Donald Trump way.

This is the Donald Trump way. And this is what everyone has now understood in the BRICS and the SEO, that this is a sort of calibrated attempt to make everyone dependent. And then once they're dependent to weaponize the dependency against those states, India understands that. It is about weaponized dependency that they were trying to make India dependent. It's failed. But that was the aim of it to weaponize it against India, to force it to be obedient to the United States.

And that's what they want with Russia. They want to get put Putin in a position where he becomes dependent in one way or another on the United States, in economic terms, or in lifting of sanctions, and then to use that dependency, weaponize it against him, and try and provoke his exit from power. They see that, and this is the answer. And obviously, this is something that's been under intense discussions between presidency and Putin over the last few days in China. And so this is what we get.

We're continuing the special operation until all the tasks and goals are fully achieved. And since Washington cannot control Ukrainians or the Europeans, then there's no choice. We are going to do that. And if you escalate, then we will respond. I mean, I think it's pretty simple. And I think also predictable and inevitable. I mean, you know, the Europeans have not moved one jot to help Trump get or Putin to arrive at a peaceful solution. Putin keeps saying, and he still says it, if there is a change in Brussels, if there is a change by the Europeans in Zelensky, he's open to then going down the political track.

But there's absolutely no sign of it. So they're continuing and they will escalate and they will, we've seen this. The signal was very clear. First of all, there was a destruction of an American-owned electronics factory in Ukraine to the western Ukraine. Then there was the destruction of the Turkish drone factory, Bactia factory, completely destroyed by Kinshal missiles. And then there was just before the talks in Anchorage, the destruction of the German attempt to assemble missiles in Ukraine on the Taurus platform. And all of these have been destroyed, and no doubt Russia will do the same when they come in with this new thing they call a flamingo, which turns out to be a British-led missile that is assembled.

in the UAE, by the way. And this is what the Flamingo is, people have discovered. This is what it is. I can't remember his correct name. But it's made up of, you know, little components, engines or old engines. I mean, I don't think it's going to be very effective. I don't think it's going to frighten Putin one jot. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in that conversation later this week

between President Trump and President Putin. Alastair, thank you very much. Thank you for the news you brought us. We hadn't heard here in the U.S. about that conversation. But if our friend Sergei Lavrov says it's going to happen, no doubt it is scheduled. Thank you, my dear friend. I mean, it wasn't.

I just want to make clear. I wasn't quoting Labrov. And I said, you know, this I can't vouch absolutely because it's not the Russian practice to put, you know, to tell, it's undipromatic to say in advance too much of what they say. So I pick this up on channels, if you like. Got it, got it, got it. And thank you for that.

Thank you, Alstair, as always. And thank you for accommodating my schedule. Today on Tuesday, we look forward to seeing you next week, Met Your Friend. Thank you very much, much. Of course. Thank you. All the best to you. We have a busy day for you, combining Monday and Tuesday.

Today at 10 o'clock, Ray McGovern, at 1130. Larry Johnson at 1.30, Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 3 o'clock, Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.