Judging Freedom - AMB. Chas Freeman: Netanyahu on the Ropes.

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

AMB. Chas Freeman: Netanyahu on the Ropes.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, January 28th, 2025. Ambassador Charles Freeman will be with us in just a moment on Prime Minister Netanyahu on the ropes. But first this. Markets are at an all time high. Euphoria has set in. The economy seems unstoppable. But the last administration has buried us so deep in debt and deficits. It's going to take a lot of digging to get us out of this hole. Are you prepared? Lear Capital specializes in helping people like me and you grow and protect our wealth with gold.

Did you know that during Trump's last presidency, gold rose 54% to a record high? If that happens again, that puts gold at $4,200 an ounce in his next term. Don't wait. Do what I did. Call Lear at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com for your free gold ownership kit and special report, $4,200 gold ahead. When you call, ask how you can also get up to $15,000 in bonus gold with a qualifying purchase. Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them the judge sent you. Ambassador, good day to you, my friend, and welcome back to the show. As always, it's a pleasure to be able to chat with you. I do want to spend some time on Prime Minister Netanyahu's woes, all of which

apparently are self-inflicted, but first to Russia. What does President Trump gain by insulting insulting President Putin and grossly exaggerating, grossly exaggerating Russian military losses in Ukraine? Well, I think he conforms to the domestic media miasma that has gripped us for the past three years. We really don't have an accurate view at all of what is going on. What is going on is that the Russians are steadily advancing, accelerating their advance across the whole thousand kilometer front. The Russians are mopping up the Ukrainians in Kursk. the head of Ukrainian intelligence has reportedly warned the parliament, the Rada, that if nothing substantial changes, Ukraine may be gone in a matter of three or four months. So I don't know. This is playing, I suppose, to a domestic crowd.

I hope that's it. I hope it's not a case of him actually believing what he reads, what he hears on some of the very biased news media that we have. I wonder if the intelligence community is lying to him, misleading him to further their own narrative, or if he's shooting from the hip. I mean, for him to claim that the Russians have lost a million men when, according to all of our sources and their sources, it's fewer than 100,000, one wonders where he would get that from. I mean, are the new people in the CIA installed already? Who's giving you these numbers?

Yes, the new director, Ratner, is there. He has a reputation for having highly political views. It's a clear indication of that, that after years of saying that there was no evidence of a lab leak for COVID, the CIA has now come out with, quote, low confidence on the basis of no new evidence, declaring that it is more likely that it was a lab leak than it was a natural phenomenon. This is political. So the odd thing is that the critics of the deep state, so-called, for being untruthful, are themselves warping judgments to suit their political views. So I don't think he's listening to the intelligence community. I think I seem to recall you worked for Fox News for a while. I think that's where he gets his intel, not from a morning briefing.

Yeah, there's Vice President Vance swearing in Director Ratner. Wow. Well, I mean, it's a head scratcher when he says, you know, Russia is suffering and we know that its economy is doing well and Russia has lost a million troops and we know it's fewer than 100,000. You have a handle on President Putin. I would imagine this stuff rolls off his back. He doesn't take these insults personally. No, I think this is really ridiculed in Russia. And, you know, as was the threat that President Trump issued

to put more sanctions on Russia. There can't be many more sanctions than there already are. U.S.-Russian trade is minimal. And so I don't know. Here's the president on late last week on Thursday threatening tariffs and more sanctions on Russia. This is cut number six. If they don't settle this war soon, like almost immediately, I'm going to put massive tariffs on Russia and massive taxes and also big sanctions. And I don't want to do that.

I love the Russian people. They're great people. I don't want to do that. You know, I love the Russian people. They're great people. I don't want to do that. But we've got to get this war ended. And if they don't make a settlement like fast and Zelensky, I will say this. He wants to settle now. He's had enough. He shouldn't have allowed this to happen either. You know, if he's no angel, he shouldn't have allowed this war to happen. I most respectfully don't think he knows what he's talking about. The only item that the Russians still sell the United States is uranium for use. Looks like we lost you, Ambassador. Are you still there? I'm here. I don't know what happened to the camera.

Okay. All right. The only item that is no longer subject or not subject to Joe Biden's sanctions is uranium used by American power plants because we don't have any other source for it. I don't even know if the president knows that when he says he wants to extend sanctions even further. And it's nothing for him to impose tariffs on because the sanctions have blocked everything except for the uranium. U.S.-Russian trade is, I think, around $350 million a year. Well, that's peanuts. No, that's peanuts. We do more with China in half a day than that, probably in a few hours. So sanctions, tariffs, they're absolutely worthless. But the more interesting point is, why do you always start off a negotiation by threatening, you know, grave consequences if the other side doesn't shape up. Every time you negotiate, as you know very well, every time you negotiate a

particular issue with someone, another country or person or business, you are also negotiating a relationship. So we just saw over the weekend, the Colombian president refused to accept migrants from the United States back on the grounds that they were treated inhumanely. Then Trump threatens 25% sanctions, tariff on Colombia and other sanctions. The Colombian president then retreats. But how do you think he feels, having been humiliated? I would guess that we've just lost our major ally in South America.

Wow. I don't know if the president, and I say this as somebody who wants him to succeed, of course, I don't know if the president thinks of these things or even talks to his advisors. I mean, one would think that Secretary of State Rubio or National Security Advisor Waltz would have advised him of the natural and probable consequences of these wild threats he made in the interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. When he and Putin negotiate, what will they negotiate? I mean, Putin will refuse to negotiate with Zelensky.

Zelensky is not the lawful head of the government in Ukraine, what will Trump and Putin talk about? Or will the United States have to persuade or push President Putin from office? Excuse me, President Zelensky from office. Zelensky is the one who refused to negotiate, not Putin. Zelensky is, of course, no longer the constitutional president of Ukraine. His term has expired. He canceled the elections. Mr. Putin, however, has said that he might talk with Zelensky under certain circumstances, including

if Zelensky removed the fiat that he issued, that no one should negotiate with Russia. Mr. Trump, to his credit, has suggested that Zelensky, as the first order of business, should scrap that order. That would make sense. But I think the basic point here is when you enter a negotiation, as Mr. Trump knows very well, you have to consider who's got the cards, who's got the leverage. We don't have any leverage. The Russians are winning this war on an accelerated basis. Mr. Putin knows that. His economy has not been gutted. It has some problems, inflation in particular, but it has

grown. It is now larger than the economies of Germany and Japan, which it never was um it is uh people are prosperous russian and russians have replaced imports with um sorry about that uh have replaced imports with uh their own uh products and uh russia is is not isolated internationally we are on this issue um So I don't know why Mr. Trump thinks it's important to begin a negotiation by exaggerating our leverage. That doesn't cut any water in Moscow, I'm sure. Transitioning over to Israel, does Donald Trump have any reason to trust Benjamin Netanyahu? I don't think so. We have a long history of relationships with Israel under Mr. Netanyahu, the one thing that is absolutely clear is that he will agree to short-term expedient things with a view in the longer term to not doing what he's promised or implied he would do after the agreement. And so we see this now with Lebanon, where he's said he will not leave.

He charged the Hizballah and the Lebanese with violating the agreement. But there have been many hundreds of Israeli violations. And in Gaza, he's made it very clear that he's going to find a pretext to resume the genocide. So I don't know why. What we're seeing, Ambassador, is Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday in a place he very much did not want to be. And that's a criminal court in which he is the defendant in the prosecution for a variety of bribery and national security allegations. You actually saw him put his thumbprint on a device on the other side of that chair,

which identifies him and lets him proceed farther into the courtroom. He obviously doesn't want to be there. Of course, he's been trying for years to avoid going to the court. And the prolongation of the war of annihilation he's been conducting against the Palestinians is in part explained by his effort to remain in office and therefore to retain some degree of immunity from prosecution. But in the end, the prosecution is proceeding. We have an interesting clip, and I would appreciate very much your thoughts on it, from Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator

who comes to the conclusion that the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel is a profound defeat for Israel and victory for Hamas. You may even know Mr. Levy. I don't know. I do. He's a very fine man. He was a negotiator for Israel at Oslo. He heads the Middle East project that Henry Siegmund used to head in New York. He's an Israeli with a British background, very smart, a man of integrity. Here he is, cut number one. One cannot underestimate the impact on the israeli public psyche of the release the initial three who were released and of course everyone therefore saw those images they've been told al-qassam defeated they've been told the public has turned against them they've been told so many things and then they saw those images an occupying army

armed and aided by the most powerful military in the world the u.s a nuclear armed state. Israel. In a struggle between that and a resistance movement, we saw a very powerful display. And Israelis saw that. We're being told by Israeli analysts, talking heads, political leaders, and their backers in the West, that the next phase has to be to move forward. We have to have the demilitarization of. The reality is the most significant force in Gaza by a long stretch is Hamas.

Al-Qassam emerges from this with a very strong narrative. Israel's narrative doesn't look so good at all. What are your thoughts? Well, I think that's accurate. I would add that those who actually were able to see the release of the Palestinian hostages as well as the Israelis will have noticed that the Israeli prisoners, who were actually prisoners of war because they were soldiers, were in excellent condition. And the Palestinians show all the marks of having been tortured,

starved, beaten, and the like. So that's another contrast that the world has seen. But Daniel Levy is absolutely correct. The fiction, which the Israeli Defense Forces, to their credit at their senior level, never endorsed, that Hamas had been basically sidelined in Gaza, is gone. It's there. And it is the only authority that is running Gaza. And so there we see the Israeli hostages. They're in very good condition.

And Hamas is very much in charge in Gaza. Now, the argument about the final civilian prisoner that Netanyahu used as a pretext for keeping Palestinians from returning to the north of Gaza makes another point. And that is that prisoner, that hostage, was taken and held by a different group, Islamic Jihad, not as anywhere near as significant as Hamas, but a separate organization. So when Netanyahu equates Hamas with the entire Palestinian resistance to ethnic cleansing, genocide, murder, sabotage, and the destruction of physical infrastructure, he is making a mistake. This is the language of propaganda, not of serious

statesman-like analysis. How precarious is Netanyahu's premiership and how precarious is his personal freedom? He has been reduced to two votes in the Knesset. That is Ben-Glir, the racist, fascist member of his cabinet left when he agreed to the Gaza truce, a brief pause in the genocide. Bezalel Smotrich, the other well-known ultra-nationalist, right-wing racist in the cabinet, a religious Zionist like Mr. Ben-Gurion, finally agreed to stay in the cabinet after he was assured that Netanyahu would very soon restart the annihilation of the Palestinians. And there's a lot of talk now from Mr. Trump about American cooperation in ethnic cleansing.

This is in fact how Mr. Blinken and Biden reacted immediately after October 7th. Let's push these people into the Sinai. Let's push them into Egypt and Jordan. Now we have Mr. Witkoff, the Trump envoy, talking about resettling the Palestinians in Indonesia. Nobody seems to have asked the Indonesians about that. But this is American collusion in ethnic cleansing at a minimum.

And, of course, we have been entirely complicit in the genocide. Did the Netanyahu government know about October 7th beforehand? I have no idea. They should have. Did the Netanyahu government know about October 7th beforehand? I have no idea. They should have. It's very clear that many Israelis who were charged with surveilling conditions in Gaza were aware of the drills that were being made, the practice, thought that something was going to happen, and reported upward about the upper echelons of the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus discounted their warnings. This is not unusual.

Intelligence failures almost always are failures by upper echelons to accept the intellectual content, the advice, the evidence that lower levels present. In other words, intelligence failures usually are failures of intellect, not of information. Ambassador Charles Freeman, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Deeply appreciated. Glad to have done it.

And we'll hope to see you again uh next week hope so uh later today at 12 noon max blumenthal at two o'clock matt ho at three o'clock karen kwarkowski just napolitano for judging freedom I'm out.