Judging Freedom - Anya Parampil: Netanyahu’s Risky Gambles

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Anya Parampil: Netanyahu’s Risky GamblesSee 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 Monday, April 1st, 2024. Anya Parampol from the Gray Zone joins us now. Anya, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for your time and for your thoughts today. I want to, you also sent me, I got to tell everybody, a beautiful, you sent me a video of a beautiful mass said by a priest in the Holy Land, describing in his sermon exactly what's happening in Gaza. It was beautiful and moving, and I'm deeply grateful for it. I want to start with breaking news in Israel or affecting Israel, which is, of course, the destruction of a consulate building next to the Iranian embassy in Syria just a few minutes ago. It was destroyed by Israeli jets. There's no word from the IDF or from Prime Minister Netanyahu's office, but there doesn't seem to be any dispute about this. Significantly, it killed an Iranian general who was present in the building at the time.

What could possibly be the legal and moral justification for this, even from Netanyahu's perspective? Well, there's absolutely no legal justification. In fact, this attack flies in the face of international law, just as the war that we've witnessed over the last several months in Gaza does as well. And in fact, this is significant because a strike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus is not simply a strike on a building where an Iranian target was operating, which Israel may have usually claimed or would claim in this case, that is actually an attack on Iranian territory. Consulates and embassy buildings are the sovereign territory of the state which operates them. And so a strike, Israel's carried out strikes in Damascus throughout the Syrian proxy war, throughout the attempt to overthrow the Syrian government that the US, Israel and its allies have waged since 2011. So a strike in Damascus itself conducted

by the Israelis is nothing new. What's new is this is a strike on Iranian territory. And it's an absolute provocation that comes at a very specific and significant time, a holy week. Christians obviously just marked Easter, celebrated Easter yesterday, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But Muslims for the past month have been observing Ramadan or the period when their prophet Muhammad first experienced or had his revelations with God. And that comes to an end this Friday, which is a celebration, a major holiday for Muslim people all around the world, which traditionally now in recent years has also been marked and coincided with International Quds Day, which is something that the Iranian government established and encouraged since its Islamic revolution in 1979 to show a

demonstration of solidarity with Palestinian people. So for years, this date is a day when Muslims around the world go into the streets and protest and show solidarity for the Palestinian people. And the fact that Israel would attack Iran in this way, killing a commander of the Quds Force, not simply an Iranian general, but someone within the IRGC who is leading the Quds Force itself is actually focused on regional operations, non-state support. That's why they were in Syria to discuss resistance in Syria. Lebanon, so Hezbollah, the Houthis, all of these Iranian linked groups that we constantly hear about in US media coordinate or at least have some relationship with this branch. And so it's a major religious provocation that comes from the Israeli government at a time when they already knew because of this

war, Muslims around the world were going to stand with the Palestinian people on Friday. And it's pretty much baiting them into pushing their own governments into a war with Israel. The Iranian statements that I have seen so far, they all say Israel is trying to bait us into a war. And so if the leadership are not going to do that, the best thing Israel can do is encourage popular protests in Muslim communities throughout the world that will push this conflict further to the brink of a global war. Here's an eyewitness report by an Iranian official who was in the embassy next door. So we have the embassy, the consulate in Syria, both buildings, as you point out, owned by the Iranian government.

Sovereign territory of Iran, but in Syria. This happens all over the world. This gentleman will run now, and there's a running translation. It's a little choppy, observed everything happened. The Zionist regime committed and it targeted the building of the Iranian consulate, which was located next to the Iranian embassy and it was attached to the Iranian embassy with FC and five fighter jets it did this when Golan Ashkalin fighter jet

targeted this building with six missiles I was at my workplace in the embassy and I even witnessed from my room that the glass was very damaged and its windows and the embassy building are not the first time that the Zionist regime commits these crimes. The Zionist regime has committed many crimes against diplomats which is against all international norms and laws, and it targets embassies and it targets diplomatic centers. That's another point, Anya, that the people that were killed in there were diplomats. They were not combatants. They have protection and immunity from all sorts of police and military action.

Obviously, the Israelis couldn't care less and just slaughtered them, murdered them, murdered them. Let's call it what it was, murder. Yes, I believe that gentleman is the Iranian ambassador in Damascus who survived this attack, but very easily may have perished just if it had been conducted at a slightly different time. And civilians, average civilians that were in the area were also killed in this attack. So you have civilians, diplomats, and a commander, not only one commander within the IRGC, but several of his advisors. I think the last I saw was three Iranian advisors or regional advisors that were killed in this strike. And I think what you

have here is a very calculated attack from the Israeli government that understands that the Muslim, well, we know Israel wants this great war with Iran. So it reminds me of this meeting, I think it was in 2017, that Netanyahu met with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and went on the spiel about how, once again, the kingdom of Persia is trying to destroy Israel, and we have to fight back. This time, we have an army, and Putin said something along the lines of that all happened in the fifth century BC. So let's get onto the current agenda. But this is how the Israelis are thinking. And so when they know now that the Muslim states in the region are either too controlled or tied in with the West and the international financial network to the point that they will not stand up to Israel. We're talking about the Saudis and the Gulf states

here. Or Iran is not willing to stand to directly have a confrontation with Israel over between their two militaries because Israel is not or Iran is not willing to risk a nuclear strike on one of their civilian populations or an entire city, which is likely what Israel would do in the event of that war. So the best thing that Israel or the best strategy Israel can employ in order to push the Muslim world into a confrontation with itself in order to bring about its biblical prophecy is to push the Muslim population to the point that leaders and states really have no say. And the Muslim population, I do believe, as a result of this strike and a result of this war all around the world, will be in the streets on Friday. And Israeli embassies in particular, I think, around the world will absolutely need to be on high alert. And unfortunately, U.S. embassies as

well, which is why we have to start asking ourselves, does it really benefit to continue to describe Israel as our greatest ally in the Middle East and act as if it is? Because we are now going to be the primary targets, I believe, of a response from Iran or his allies. Here's my former colleague at Fox News, Trey Yinkst, who's Fox's Middle East correspondent, describing just how big a deal this is. Zahidi, one of the commanders very close to Ismail Khani, the general in charge of all Iranian activity across the Middle East. Now, if this is confirmed by the Iranians, we should be very clear what took place here. According to reports, an Israeli airstrike took out one of the top Iranian generals in the Middle

East, targeting a facility linked to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. This is one of the most significant developments of the conflict so far, and it will have repercussions across the Middle East. And as you say, it may have repercussions across the world. Do you think that Netanyahu would have told the Biden administration what he's doing and the fight he's about to pick? As he's recovering from a hernia surgery, I'm not sure. I'm not sure whether, when you're looking at this situation, for me personally now, I'm not sure who's calling the shots. Netanyahu, a base within his government that is more extremist, religious than him, that is pushing him to go further. But he himself, did he tell the United States or did the Israeli government notify the United States? I don't personally think so because this is also designed

to not only draw in the Muslim community in Arab states or Iran into a confrontation with Israel, but a strike like this is also designed to provoke direct U.S. military involvement or further U.S. military support for Israel's war and to draw this again into or to make a regional conflict inevitable or just it's an orchestrated strategy at this point by the Israelis, when they make a strike like this, they know exactly that the U.S., I think U.S. troops are the likely target of a retaliation in the region because Iran and its allies will never directly attack Israel, as I already explained, because they don't want to risk nuclear war, a direct strike on their own state. So the U.S. troops in the region, I think, are sitting ducks at this point. And the fact that we're building this bridge now to help, or this dock in the Sinai to help bring aid into Palestine in response to this war means that more U.S. troops, more U.S. servicemen, American citizens are going to be sitting there in a region that Israel is lighting a fire under everyone to strike these targets.

And so as an American, I think we need to really be having a conversation about what to do with those troops. I want to go back to something you said a few minutes ago, right before we ran the clip from the Iranian ambassador to Syria. I cringe every time I hear somebody in the Congress. It doesn't matter if they're a Republican or a Democrat, because 90% of them say the same thing. Israel is our ally. Is Israel really our ally? Is Israel really an asset to American national security or a deficit to American national security? An example of which would be what happened a few hours ago. Israel is the greatest detriment to U.S. national security. You can take Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu's own words as an example. When after 9-11, he said 9-11 was great for Israel. What does that tell you and me, judge, or any American citizen sitting at home? Why was 9-11 great for Israel? Because it began a process of taking out, as we discussed last time, or I mentioned last time, the Iraqi state, the Libyan state, eventually weakening the Syrian state to a point that none of these states and resistance leaders that had typically opposed Israel in the region could step in at a time like this when Israel is obviously carrying out a predetermined plan to consolidate its control over the West Bank, de facto annexing the territory, as we saw

last week, the Israeli government moving to formalize its policy of slowly taking over the West Bank to the point that it could bring it into its own territory and now pushing the people of Gaza out. Because again, this is their plan all along was greater Israel. And that was something that I think Americans didn't take seriously. They're like, oh, those are religious extremists, not the Israeli government. No, this strike, as well as Israel's actions and the speech, the actual words of the Israeli government over the last several months have demonstrated that this is not your other than a geopolitical or imperial basis. But in reality, it is religious because the people now in the Israeli government actually believe that they are fulfilling a biblical prophecy

and establishing this state of greater Israel from the river to the sea, they are the ones intent on cleansing their opponents. And we have seen very, we have to remember that Hamas actually said they launched this operation on October 7th in order to tell the world that the Israeli provocations when it comes to the city of Jerusalem, al-Quds again, that's the Muslim word or the word for Jerusalem that now we hear this Quds commander is assassinated in Damascus. It's all tied to this, that they conducted that attack because Israel is making preparations to sacrifice red heifers, these five red heifers that they believe if they can

kill these perfectly bred cows and destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, they will bring in the Jewish Messiah. And they're actually making preparations to do this right now. And that would, again, that would be the biggest provocation you can make against the Muslim community. And Israel is openly telling us that that's what they're doing, showing every every they've built the platforms to do it. They've brought the cows. There were reports on CBS News saying, hey, look, Israel is about to sacrifice these cows and implement this biblical prophecy in their view. And how are Muslims and Christians around the world supposed to react to that?

I mean, I think we really need to see that we're in a specific period of time that the people in charge view as biblical and they're going to act. And what we can't forget, my dear friend, is that the American taxpayer is paying for all this. Joe Biden, for whatever he says about Netanyahu, whatever Chuck Schumer says, whatever Jim Clyburn says, whatever Democrat is worried about Muslim votes in Michigan and Wisconsin, is still sending plane load after plane load, and some days three, of 2,000-pound bombs. They dropped one of these bombs on a refugee encampment of 300 people. They killed one person. They killed all 300. The United States is as culpable

as the Israelis are. I don't know if they told the American government that they were going to kill this general and kill a bunch of others by destroying this building next door to the embassy or not. And I don't know what equipment they used to do it, but the chances are, since this equipment is all fungible, it came from the United States or was replaced by something that came from the United States. There would be no Israeli military without the United States. There would be no Israeli nuclear bomb without cooperation or stolen technology from the United States either. So, I mean, Americans, yes, we really need to step back and we're responsible for this, yes, because of the weapons that we produce. But our troops are going to be the

ultimate target of a retaliation. And then the point is to get us involved in a wider regional war. So I just can't stress enough the necessity for Americans of all faiths to say that we have to put an end to this and to really learn what Israel is. Like you say, that it's not our ally, that it is actually driving us into this conflict. And you say, did Israel tell us if they were going to conduct a strike against these Iranian targets in Damascus? Does it matter? Because you had Secretary Blinken there last week, and they, you know, Blinken and his spokespeople in the State Department always say that they're putting pressure on the Israeli regime for civilian lives, as if we don't have any leverage.

We have leverage, what you say, the fact that this war, these bombs wouldn't be in Israel's war chest if it weren't for our tax dollars. And so when you have U.S. officials speaking in that way where their actions don't line up, we should really, I think, went to Israel at the beginning of this war and said he was visiting as a Jew, not the Secretary of State or the top diplomat representing the U.S. people. That used to be something that if someone who was critical of Israel said, they'd be regarded as anti-Semitic. But when you have your own leaders speaking in that way, we should take them at their word. Here's Netanyahu just the other day, I think this was right before the surgery. This will raise your blood pressure a little bit, his flippancy will get under your skin, but I'm anxious to hear your thoughts on it. Number four, Chris. Victory is within reach. It's a few weeks away. Now we are told, this is it, last point. Now we are told, you can't do this.

If you go into Rafah, you're going to have a humanitarian catastrophe. You're going to have, I don't know, 30,000 dead, 30,000, civilian dead. Okay. That's not true. All of the Gaza Strip north of Rafah, you know, people down, they can move back up. They don't have to go into north of Wadi Gaza, but there's still 65% of the Gaza Strip left open and people just move. They move with their tents.

They have no place to go. Yes, they have a place to go. Second, you know, we provide them food. The problem was not the entry of trucks. The problem was the stealing of trucks, both by looting by Hamas and looting by others and so on. How they can make light of a humanitarian disaster like this, how they can suggest that people should go back to an area totally desolate and destroyed 100% by them, how he can confuse the number of civilians

dead and almost say, who cares if it goes up to 40,000, is simply repulsive, repellent, and unacceptable by any standard except, I guess, his own. By any human standard, absolutely. But as we've seen, as we've learned very clearly from the language of Israeli officials throughout these last several months, they do not view the rest of humanity as humans. They believe that they are God's chosen people. And look at what Netanyahu said there. And he's regarded often as non-religious. But as I say, he speaks about himself even in meetings with the Russian president as if he's confronting ancient Persia

pre-Christ. So he's definitely inflated by this narrative that there's a destiny in Israel. But he said on March 27th, in that clip, you say that victory is coming in a few weeks. And that's why I stress the importance of the timing of this attack and what foundation Israel has already laid in Jerusalem, the holiest city in all three of what are often described as the Abrahamic faiths to fulfill a biblical prophecy in which these extremists that have worked for decades to establish what they're saying is a Jewish state is finally coming to fruition. And it's all paid for by the U.S. tax dollar. U.S. soldiers are going to be dying in the front line if this does become a wider global war. And so the Israeli government spokespeople and our own government representatives, their words, they're telling us

what's happening. So I don't know why there's a disconnect. I mean, I'm very fortunate and grateful for people like you and others in media that are waking up and you and other guests have been able to do on this platform, because it's very frightening for the American public, or it should be. Here's, this will also aggravate you, Anya, here's President Biden's spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, trying to answer a reporter's question about international law. Number seven, Chris. Regardless, even if these people were Hamas, do you believe that under international law, Israel has the right to execute people, even if Hamas, which you consider a terrorist organization, regardless, you can't hold them to the same standard as a professional army,

that often the White House prays as a professional army, they know what they're doing. And even sometimes you said, I wish the U.S. Army behaved like the Israelis. I hear your question. And I have said it is deeply concerning if it's true. We are reaching out to Israel government to get more information. And that is also

important to do. We have to make sure that what we're hearing is verified, right? That the footage is also verified. But we've been very clear. Like this is, we also have to call out Hamas here. They are operating out of hospitals, out of hospitals. That's what they're doing. They're embedding themselves in civilian population.

This is what they're doing. And so we have to be also very clear about that. And we have said, we've urged Israel to take every step to avoid civilian casualties. So we're going to reach out to the Israeli government, get more information on that. And if that is Israelis are and that half the Congress mouths. I think I told you that a former student of mine and a friend, a young lawyer in New Jersey, his cousin was the head of pediatrics at Al-Shifa Hospital, and he was slaughtered by a machine gun while he was tending to two babies. Oh, they left Al-Shifa Hospital. Did you see the pictures of what they left?

It's utterly unusable. It's destroyed. There are piles of bodies that we can't even show on air, bound and gagged and murdered. What a terrible state of affairs this is. Let me ask you about the crowds in the streets yesterday on Easter Sunday, close to a million people, one-ninth the population of Israel. Is that going to have any effect on the Knesset collapsing and forcing a new election? And even if it did, would not Netanyahu's replacement be just as aggressive and horrific and indifferent to international moral standards as Netanyahu's replacement be just as aggressive and horrific and indifferent to international moral standards as Netanyahu himself? Absolutely. That's, as we discussed last time,

Netanyahu could be replaced, likely to be replaced by someone more radical, more extremely religious, actually, than he. And these Israeli protests, I went, I was in Israel in 2018 in those squares when people were previously trying to overthrow or protest his government for corruption. And he was thrown out and then brought back because, as I will always argue, Netanyahu is the linchpin holding the Israeli state together and holding the special U.S.-Israel relationship together from the Israeli side. And so then you have government spokespeople like Karine Jean-Pierre come out, and she's almost not worth breath because she's just simply a clown who sold her soul. She has nothing to say. She has no background in international law. But the question there is important. The discussion of international law or asking

U.S. politicians to honor it is key because we've seen now, you mentioned these pictures of Gaza and al-Shifa hospital. They look just like the images that I saw in my textbooks or have been told about regarding the Holocaust during the Second World War. And yet this international system of law and the United Nations, a forum for diplomats and world leaders to come together to make sure that happened never again was supposedly, allegedly established. And yet, here we are in 2024, watching it play out on social media before our very eyes. Unlike the Germans, by the way, at that time, they had no idea of what was going on to the level that we do and to see what we're supporting with our own eyes. So we should ask ourselves, what was that system of law

even designed to protect? Why doesn't it matter when it comes to Israel? It's very strange that Israel can just get away with this constant abuse of international law and morals, norms, norms of humanity in front of all of us. And everybody basically just knows they have to sit back and say, oh, we're not really allowed to criticize Israel because of what happened to the Jewish people of Europe during World War II. Apparently that now gives this state the right to do it again. And it's strange, especially when you consider the fact that in addition to establishing this so-called framework for international law after the Second World War, one of the United Nations first acts was to establish the state of Israel in Palestine and legally mandate through international law the expulsion of average people like you and me from their homes in Palestine in order to make way for this predetermined, destined biblical state that we now see, believe that it is entitled to not only slaughter civilians constantly in front of our eyes, but abuse the U.S. taxpayer and put American

citizens on the front line of this conflict. I mean, as I said, Netanyahu himself said 9-11 was good for Israel. Anya, thank you very much, my dear friend. A great, great analysis from a moral perspective, from an international legal perspective, and from a historical perspective. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you

again for that tape of the mass, and we'll see you again soon. Thank you, Judge. Of course. All of our regulars coming up throughout the balance of this week, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Professor John Mearsheimer, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Scott Ritter, and of course, Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!