Judging Freedom - AMB Chas Freeman: Will Trump Trust Netanyahu?

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

AMB Chas Freeman: Will Trump Trust Netanyahu?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 Thursday, November 7th, 2024. Ambassador Charles Freeman joins us now. Ambassador, welcome here. Always a pleasure to chat with you. The election was quite a surprise. Donald Trump won a convincing, convincing victory, which didn't seem to have been predicted anywhere. I know predictions is not, or at least election predictions is not your field. But with respect to American foreign policy, with respect, Ambassador, to longstanding American foreign policy, with respect to American foreign policy toward Israel, does it really matter who's president of the United States? Well, I think it does. Actually, I think Donald Trump rode a wave of dissatisfaction

with the present and the apparent future. This was a referendum on the Biden administration, and the Biden administration lost. Kamala Harris lost because she offered no vision of the future other than more of the same. That was certainly true on foreign policy, with the exception of Ukraine. And I note that one of the immediate international reactions to the Trump victory, which just doesn't really surprise me, I think, you know, if you asked ordinary people in this country whether they believed the Biden position that the economy was doing wonderfully, they would have referred to inflation and the difficulty they were having buying food, fuel, housing, other necessities. That is there. But anyway, immediate reaction internationally included the collapse of the German government coalition.

Why? Germany needed to hedge against both a Trump-initiated trade war and the possible abandonment of Germany and Ukraine by the Trump administration. And he could not get agreement within his coalition. And I think actually the international effects of this will be quite far-reaching. Did the government collapse? I knew he fired his finance minister and the finance minister was from another party and that party was part of the governing coalition.

Did that party leave the coalition and did he lose his majority? He's lost his majority. There will be an election in March, he's governing as a Rumpf Chancellor with his coalition having basically disintegrated. And your analysis is he brought this on himself. Well, it's a combination of many things which we've had something to do with. Blowing up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, deprived Germany of its cheap energy supplies, made it uncompetitive in many industrial areas, and advanced the deindustrialization of the German economy. Are there German politicians who are pointing at Scholz and Joe Biden, Joe Biden for

attacking a NATO ally and Scholz for looking the other way and denying that it happened? Not many. There's been a cleave to the United States attitude in Germany, which I think is in the process of shifting. More importantly, I suppose, is more important perhaps is the reaction of Zelensky and the Ukrainians. Trump has recently, as his victory statement, promised that he would almost instantly end the war in Ukraine without explaining how he was going to do it. It's possible, in fact, that he'll do the opposite.

This reminds me of him claiming that he would build a wall at the Texas-Mexico border and Mexico would pay for it. Right. I had a great comment about that from a Chinese colleague in Mexico City after I recited Robert Frost's thoughts on walls. He stood up and he said, well, we Chinese are pretty good at building walls and we know something about that. But I have to say, Trump is absolutely brilliant. It never occurred to us to ask the Huns to pay for the wall that we built. Take a look at take a look at this clip, Ambassador, and see if the Germans regret it. If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again,

then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it. How will you do that exactly since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control? I promise you we'll be able to do it. Now what the camera didn't show is who was standing next to him when he said that. Chancellor Scholz. collusive. There was nobody in the room during the meeting, no record of it, no press statement.

I don't think there's any real doubt about who did that, although there's been a lot of effort to give wise cover stories suggesting that we didn't. I don't think anybody really believes that. Ambassador, as we speak, Donald Trump and his former campaign staff, now soon to be White House staff, are going about the business of populating the government. Will a Trump State Department be filled with Zionists, much as the core State Department is, and much as the Biden leadership of the State Department is. Yes, that is what is going to happen, I think. And the names that are being mentioned are names we have not heard for quite a while, but they're in that neoconservative, don't negotiate, don't talk, don't use diplomacy, use maximum pressure camp. So what change can we expect in American foreign policy? I think you're going to have a one-word answer for this, but you'll speak as you see fit.

What change in American foreign policy toward Israel can we expect from a Trump administration? Well, I think Israel has Trump's number. He is essentially a prisoner of the Israel lobby. The last time he was in office, he sold the move of the capital to Jerusalem to a campaign donor. For the same reason, he recognized the Golan Heights being having been annexed by Israel. He had nothing at all for the peace process. that didn't occur during his time in office.

I think you can expect him to be even more Zionist than Joe Biden has been. I guess he learned his lesson about selling his soul to the devil. I mean, he has a hundred million dollar debt to a Miriam Adelson. Exactly. But I think the international consequences of this need to be considered. I mean, we have already seen ourselves isolated and reviled internationally for our support of genocide in Palestine, our collusion in the attack on Lebanon. And I know that there are now,

there are only two governments that have not turned their back on these adventures by the Israelis. That is the United States and the UK. And the UK is wobbling. We're completely isolated on this. The Trump administration, if it perpetuates the pro-Zionist policies of the past, will finish the job. What does finish the job mean? I mean, Israel has had no successes. Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted to eliminate Hamas.

He failed. Return the hostages safely home. He failed. Degrade Iran's defenses. He failed. Return the settlers to southern Lebanon and northern Israel. He failed. If you ask him, he'll say that he's been victorious, but he's not worthy of belief,

is he? No, but there is a sense of triumphalism in Israel based purely on adulation of the Israeli defense forces and the belief that the use of force is the only way to deal with Israel's neighbors. No, I was referring actually to us. Finish the job on us, meaning the end of all of our credibility internationally and the establishment of a firm reputation for the United States is not only amoral, but evil. I want to ask you a question about degrading the Iranian defenses.

Did the Israeli assault 10 days ago degrade the Iranian defenses? There's no real evidence that it did, although they are claiming that it did. I note that Iran claimed it did significant damage to Israeli military and intelligence facilities in its October 1st reprisal for Israeli provocations. Israel has mirrored that with claims of significant damage to Iran. I don't think you can believe either side takes them at face value. And I don't think we know. We will see now, since Iran has promised a very painful, robust response to the latest Israeli attack on it. We will find out, I suppose, who's right,

Ron, who's wrong about this. Here's the most extreme response that I've heard from General Jack Keane on Fox News late last week. Chris, cut number three. Military effects of that strike is beyond what's being reported because they have literally taken down most of the Russian air defense system, the so-called S-300 missile defense systems that the Russians gave them years ago. And that's what's really protecting their nuclear enterprise, their oil and gas industry, and other key strategic assets like the missile production factories that the Israelis did destroy at multiple sites. Those are ballistic missile factories, by the way. So yes, this air defense system destruction is really powerful because Iran is sitting there essentially naked.

Is that believable? Iran is sitting there essentially naked? If that were the case, wouldn't the Israelis be boasting about it? Well, they have been essentially. And that's what General Keen just voiced, was basically the Israeli line. I don't think those claims can be taken as anything but a huge boulder of salt. Switching gears to Ukraine. Are Northern Korean troops either in the Kursk area of Russia or in the eastern part of Ukraine, Ukrainian Russia, the parts that the Russian military has conquered? I don't have any direct knowledge of that, but we are told that they are in Kursk, and I imagine that is the case.

The Russians basically have surrounded the Ukrainian invaders there. They could finish them off, but I think they have yielded that privilege to the North Koreans who are in Kursk, in Russia, to gain combat experience and who will now gain it against some of Ukraine's remaining very best troops who are in a perilous situation. So we think you just have to watch that. And will the presence of North Korean troops, you know, every action has an equal and opposite reaction from high school physics. Will the presence of North Korean troops induce the presence of South Korean troops on the other side? The South Korean government, which is a right-wing government,

which has profited mightily from this war with arms sales to Poland and other countries to offset transfers of weapons to Ukraine, is seriously considering a deeper level of engagement. There is some reason to believe that Korean pilots may be made available to fly missions over Ukraine, perhaps F-16s from the South Korean arsenal. And so this is exactly a real question, but I don't think it has happened yet. Would the Americans, maybe you can't answer this since the Biden administration is now clearly lame duck, but would the Americans welcome the presence of North Korean troops, South Korean troops fighting there? needlessly expand a war that even the neocon Senator Marco Rubio called a stalemate,

and which we believe even the Victoria Nuland crowd acknowledges privately has been lost? I would hope we wouldn't, for the very reasons you mentioned, widening this war is taking it in the opposite direction from the one we should be pursuing. We should be trying to wind this down to the benefit of Ukrainians who continue to perish in large numbers. The Russians are advancing widely across the front at a more rapid pace than ever before. The Ukrainian soldiers who entered Kursk are on the verge of being annihilated either by North Koreans or Russians. And Ukraine needs to consider how to return to the Istanbul agreements it hammered out with Russia at the very beginning of this war and end the war as soon as possible or it will lose still more people and still more territory. Reverting back to Israel, what is your take on the firing by Prime Minister Netanyahu of Defense Minister Gallant? Is this a big deal or is Bibi on the ropes and he's trying to degrade a potential

adversary? I think Gallant and Netanyahu have had open differences for quite a while. That is to say, Gallant chided, criticized Netanyahu and the fascist extremist cabinet that surrounds him for not having any viable strategy for dealing either with Gaza or the Palestinian issue more broadly, or Lebanon. And his criticism obviously rankled because it included particularly sensitive accusations

about the hostages. Israeli hostage families have been very much focused on getting their loved ones back. And it's pretty clear that Netanyahu has not expended any effort to do that. But other than military, which has been unsuccessful, the only hostages, a significant number of hostages who have been recovered alive,

were recovered as a result of a negotiation with Hamas early in the war. So this is something that has riled the hostage families, led to more unrest in Israel, and it has also resulted in Netanyahu bringing into his cabinet yet another extremist, racist. The foreign minister is now the defense minister. The foreign minister, the new foreign minister, is from the same sort of background. So this is a government that is imploding, that is becoming more and more extreme. And Mr. Galant is on the outside offering criticism that I think many Israelis share or should. Here's what now former Foreign Minister Galant had to say within a few hours of having

been sacked. Cut number six. This dismissal comes as a result of a dispute on three issues. The first, my firm stance that everyone who is eligible to be drafted to the military must be drafted to the military. They must serve in the IDF and protect the state of Israel. Second topic, our moral obligation to return our sons and daughters, the hostages. The third topic, the need to implement learning from the mistakes of the war. I support a deep investigation into looking into who is responsible, and I call for a national commission of inquiry.

Start with the third. That's probably the last thing that Netanyahu wants, is a national commission of inquiry as to what happened leading up to and what caused October 7th. The first element is very interesting because, of course, the Netanyahu government has essentially capitulated to religious Zionists. And Gallant is arguing that Zionism should be the ideology of all of the people, including the Haradim, the ultra-Orthodox, who declined to risk their lives for the country.

And in fact, in many cases, don't believe the country should even exist. So this is a very controversial matter in Israel. And Netanyahu, of course, has followed up with an order to draft the ultra-Orthodox. So they too were on the warpath. The Israeli Supreme Court voted six to one that there's no exemption in the draft for the ultra-Orthodox. So it was an exemption by policy, not by law up to this point. Correct. Does the IDF even want the ultra-Orthodox in the military? Well, they have a problem because they have a manpower problem.

You know, this war has been extremely labor intensive. The operations tempo has been very high. We are told that as many as 20 or more percent of those reservists now called up declined to report for duty. Whether they do that out of issues of conscience or simple fatigue or PTSD or whatever, we don't know. But it's very clear that the military in Israel have been under very great strain. They've just been badly battered in southern Lebanon and withdrawn from there, having apparently dynamited a huge number of villages, leveled buildings, without actually gaining control of the area. Back to Yoav Galant's statement, I would imagine that mentioning the hostages is a raw nerve.

It should be, because it has been the major source of domestic dispute with the Netanyahu government from the very beginning. And it's very clear that that government and Mr. Netanyahu have effectively applied the so-called Hannibal Directive to the hostages. The Hannibal Directive says that rather than allowing hostage taking and the subsequent bargaining process over the release of hostages, Israeli forces should kill Israelis who are taken hostage

so there can be no bargaining. And he's effectively avoided any negotiation, thrown the monkey wrench into it over the hostage release. So I think people in Israel correctly blame him for having written their loved ones off. On the commission of investigation, an Israeli judge who apparently authorized search warrants and signed a gag order has lifted a portion of the gag order. What is this all about? This is about an investigation by Shin Bet, the Israeli rough equivalent of our FBI and Jerusalem police. These are not traffic cops. These are sophisticated detectives

investigating the origins of October 7th. Now, this brings us back to where we were a few minutes ago. This is not going to shed good light on Gallant,. Yeah, and October 7th, as Hamas intended, has deeply shaken Israelis. It is a scar on their psychological well-being that has

not healed. And Galant, of course, has called for a National Commission of Inquiry, and this is something not quite that grand, but more or less along the same lines. So it's a political threat to Netanyahu and his henchmen in the cabinet. Will Donald Trump trust Netanyahu? I don't't say should.

I said will. No, he shouldn't. But then Netanyahu shouldn't trust Donald Trump either. So we are into transactional government again. Tit for tat. Hick for hawk. You know, we are going to see some sort of bargaining process, notwithstanding Donald Trump having sold his soul to the Zionist lobby.

Ambassador Charles Freeman, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your thoughts and thank you for your time. I hope you can come back and visit with us again next week. Thank you for your thoughts and thank you for your time. I hope you can come back and visit with us again next week. Thank you. Of course. You as well, Ambassador. A full day coming up for you.

Max Blumenthal at 11 this morning. Command Sergeant Major Dennis Fritz at noon. Professor Gilbert Doctorow at one. Aaron Mate at 2.30, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at five o'clock. Please remember to like and subscribe. I didn't even mention this because the number passed me by. My apologies. We reached 475,000 subscriptions earlier this week. Our goal, of course, you've heard me say this till you're blue in the face. Our goal, of course, is a half a million by Christmas. With your help, we'll reach it. Like and subscribe. It helps us to extend our reach.

We'll see you later. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Altyazı M.K.