Judging Freedom - Capt. Matt Hoh : Israel and War Crimes

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Capt. Matt Hoh : Israel and War CrimesSee 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, June 11th, 2024. Matt Ho will be here in just a moment on what more war crimes is Israel committing. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. If you have $100 in the bank, it still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less. Inflation has reduced

all of your savings, all of your buying power and mine by 24%. And gold is largely immune from that. If you want to learn how gold will soon hit $3,200 an ounce, call Lear Capital, 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Get your free gold report. Same experts who predicted the 23% rise that I've enjoyed have predicted this $3,200 an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620. Learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Matt, my friend, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure. If the government of Israel killed 280 civilians in order to rescue four, and if most of the 280 civilians that it killed

were women and children and men who were noncombatants, I would think that's a war crime, wouldn't you? In Israel, it's being celebrated. Yeah, Judge, it is absolutely a war crime. And thanks for having me back on. It is one more war crime on top of the long, long, horrid lists of war crimes we've seen from Israel in the last eight months, which itself is on top of the great mass list of war crimes Israel has been conducting for eight decades. We saw this past weekend with this rescue operation was the deliberate destruction of civilians in their homes, in their marketplace, in order to cause a distraction to allow these Israeli commandos to exit. That is a war crime. The way the Israeli commandos entered into their rescue

operation was itself a war crime under international law. You know, under the Geneva Conventions, which Israel is a signatory to, you cannot disguise your forces as non-combatants. You just cannot do it. People are familiar with the idea that if you're a spy, you get caught behind enemy lines, not in uniform, you're shot. This is the same concept. It is enshrined internationally. You cannot disguise your forces as non-combatants. It's clear. You cannot then turn around and slaughter civilians as a tactical effort, which is essentially what it was. Israelis, for many accounts, were hearing this. The Palestinians are saying they've never seen Israel drop so many bombs, fire so many shells.

Supposedly, there were many, many drones in the air firing weapons at any civilian they could find. That was all done to create a distraction, essentially, to allow or to try and get this commando team out. I mean, so on both sides of the operation, you see clear and deliberate war crimes being conducted, but it's being celebrated. And I think what's very curious, it's not curious, it shows exactly what we're dealing with here in American corporate media, is that Israel rescued four of their people. But according to all reports, and these are reports that have been accurate and true before,

they killed three of their own people in the rescue operation. And you see this reality that Israel killed three of its people while rescuing four, completely absent from the American media. So it just goes to show you, and I should say America, the American corporate media, it just goes to show how committed to the Israeli narrative American corporate media and American political leadership continues to be. Were American special forces on the ground and involved in this rescue operation? American troops? I doubt it. I mean, certainly there are American troops there at the pier. There's American military equipment on the beach right there at the pier, some anti-drone and anti-missile

weapon systems. I doubt the Americans were involved in this, Judge. The Israelis simply don't need us. They don't want us. I've never heard anything about the Israelis inviting Americans into any operation of theirs. They'll certainly take our money. They'll take our weapons. They'll take our bombs. They'll take our intelligence. They'll take our political support. They'll take our diplomatic cover. They'll take our economic assistance. But they don't ever really seem to want to actually have our trigger pullers involved. Israelis are more than capable of doing this type of operation on their own in terms of the immediate forces utilized. But as we understand, because this is the way it's been

throughout the last eight months of this genocide, the United States has been providing ample intelligence support. You know, our drones are overhead of Gaza all the time. And that information goes then to the Israelis via our own special operations and CIA personnel. So, I mean, what's the distinction then, right? I mean, we're basically splitting hairs as we're trying to decide who's pulling triggers because those triggers couldn't be pulled without the very real and concrete involvement of the Americans at all levels in this genocide. All right. Well, the American government certainly paid for all this or provided the military equipment, same thing. And then Jake Sullivan boasted that U.S. intelligence

was involved. I wasn't sure if that means boots on the ground or signals intelligence, you know, the type of intelligence that's done remotely. Right. Yeah, it would be, I would say certainly it was signals intelligence, whether it's overhead with the drones, whether it's via the internet, whether it's via satellite, those types of intersecting of Palestinian communications. Again, whether it's phone calls, radio messages, emails. I mean, the Israelis are quite good at that themselves. Their unit 8200 is their equivalent of our NSA. But we do have some capabilities. We have greater resources. We have a lot more money than the Israelis have. So we're able to throw these things to reinforce the Israeli intelligence operations. And from what we understand, we have some capabilities the Israelis don't have. And so targeting even, which makes you then have to take a pause here, right, Judge? And what kind of information are we giving them?

How great is this intelligence information we're giving them? They've not taken out any of the Hamas leadership, any of the Hamas leadership of the names that we know. The Israelis haven't scratched any of them as far as we know, right? We know Hamas capabilities are still there. Every time Israel tries to go back into a populated area, they run into a heartthrob of resistance from Hamas and from Islamic Jihad. So what exactly is our intelligence doing?

How is our intelligence helping the Israelis as they just drop apartment buildings and flatten marketplaces? What is our intelligence actually being provided? I think that's a really good question. Like, what is it even accomplishing other than us being involved? And are we just adding more platforms in because the Israelis need our help with the platforms because they can't fly drones 24-7, say, right? Or they don't have enough intelligence analysts or because of the nature of how our stuff works, you have to have an American set this and you say, OK, Jake Sullivan, you're boasting and bragging about this slaughter of 274 people, wounding many of them for life, close to 700 people or so. You're bragging about this. Well, what did the American involvement actually mean? We just told them which which what we do tell them which apartment buildings have more people in them so they can work on the bombs they drop you know i mean so you do have to wonder what exactly is being accomplished here with this american intelligence that everybody in washington dc and in the media networks in new york etc

are all excited about well american intelligence is involved in war crimes i mean this just keeps getting worse and worse it doesn't get better or or or less uh less and less. And this so-called peace agreement that supposedly came from the Israelis that the Israelis rejected, and now Tony Blinken says they're expecting, and Admiral Kirby says three times in two minutes, it's the Israeli proposal, it's the Israeli proposal. Here's Secretary Blinken yesterday in Tel Aviv. He just left Prime Minister Netanyahu. Cut number nine. Here's what he said. I met with Prime Minister Netanyahu last night, and he reaffirmed his commitment to the proposal. I also had an opportunity to speak to Defense Minister Gallant and other senior Israelis this morning. And I think there is a strong consensus, again, behind moving forward

with the proposal. But it really is down to one person at this point. We'll see what comes from them and from him. Okay, I have to correct myself. That was not yesterday. That was today. The last night was last night, not two nights ago. Does this make any sense to you? Netanyahu cannot accept this proposal without the right-wingers pulling the trigger, so to speak, and undoing the coalition in his government. Correct. Throughout the day, I've been getting the field judge that this is all one big political stunt, more than I would normally feel, which, of course, as you can imagine, is like a tumor. I was thinking with watching Blinken, if you were to go around the world and talk to all these diplomats who deal with Blinken and ask them,

what word would you describe? What then you did one of those, what word would you use to describe Blinken? You did one of those word clouds, right? Or event diagram. What do you think the word that would be singled out the most would be? I would suspect it would be liar, right? So no one's believing him. And so this idea that why I feel like it's a political stunt that's being performed in front of us, this theater, is the fact that the way that this was presented by Joe Biden on television a couple of weeks ago, the way it made its way for the U.N., the grandstanding that's occurred, the adamant nature of the American rhetoric these past two days, both from our politicians and our media figures, that it's all up to Hamas now. And so what got put forward was this pretty, what was on the face of it, a three-phase plan that I think people look at and says, this seems like common sense. It's the same deal that could have been struck at any time over the last month. It's the same deal that could have occurred on October, the afternoon of October 7th. Hamas would have accepted that. The Americans, of course,

now waiting until Israel has almost completely destroyed all of Gaza to now bring about this ceasefire deal, as well as the fact that we're less than two months to the Democratic Party's convention in Chicago. So we've got to get this thing wrapped up for the elections. But why I say it's a stunt is because when you look at what actually was put forward in the ceasefire resolution, it's not very detailed. And we also know that the Israelis have over and over again said the second and third phases of this deal, which would be a release of all the hostages and a full end to military activity or permanent ceasefire, and then reconstruction of of Gaza are never going to occur. Like it's just not going to happen that way for the Israelis.

They have sworn to ending Hamas militarily and politically. That's all they keep saying over and over again, that they won't accept any permanent ceasefire, that even if they get all hostages back, they're going to go right back to bombing Palestinians in Gaza. So the idea being is that the Americans have so forcefully said to their constituencies, right, because they're not talking to the Norwegians, they're not talking to the Albanians, they're not talking to the Vietnamese, they're talking to Americans, as well as Israelis, basically, that it's up to Hamas for the ceasefire deal to secede. And of course, what happens today, as we all know, Hamas for the ceasefire deal to secede. And of course, what happens today, as we all know, Hamas said, we accept the deal, we'll go along with it.

Here are our amendments, because this thing has no details. So here are the details we want to see put in place, which of course should be the basis of any negotiations, right? Proposal, counterproposal, so forth. But this wasn't a negotiation. This was something, according to Cy Hirsch, that the White House political people concocted. Right. And so this is where it gets in this idea of a stunt, right, Judge, is the fact then that, okay, Hamas comes back, and now what will the narrative be? The narrative very possibly could be these amendments are unreasonable to us. These are unacceptable. We had a deal, Hamas ruined it by, you know, putting forth demands that were, you know, unreasonable. And at the same time, Israel has said essentially nothing about this. The only people saying anything about what Israel will do

has been the Americans, has been Tony Blinken, right? Again, we can't trust anything he's saying. So the Israelis are then put in the place of being the ones in terms of the American narrative who were willing to have a ceasefire. But then Hamas ruined it. Hamas rejected it. Hamas's amendments were unreasonable. And meanwhile, we're all standing here saying, wait, the Israelis were never going to accept this to begin with. And somehow now Israel is getting credit for putting forward a ceasefire deal that they never put forward, like you just said, that Hamas is getting torn apart and disparaged for rejecting a deal that they actually did accept. And this allows the Americans then to roll forward these next couple of months saying, look, we tried to stop this war. Hamas just wouldn't accept the ceasefire deal. And it provides, I think, some way for Netanyahu then to balance out his issues, right? Because now he's not signing a deal, which is going to ruin his relationship

with the far right and it caused them to pull out of the government. But also saying to those like Gantz and Lapid, that, look, I tried to negotiate and you can't negotiate with these people. You have to. You know, the only way is complete military victory. So I think that's the political stunt we're seeing play out. I hope I'm wrong. I really do hope I'm wrong. But we'll see. Here's your favorite secretary of state again cut number 10 i don't think the world could be more clear about what country after country in this region and beyond are looking for and that is saying yes to the proposal we await the answer from hamas and that will speak volumes about uh what they want

what they're looking for who who they're looking after. Are they looking after one guy who may be, for now, safe, buried, I don't know, 10 stories underground somewhere in Gaza, while the people that he purports to represent continue to suffer in a crossfire of his own making? Or will he do what's necessary to actually move this to a better place, to help end the suffering of people, to help bring real security to Israelis and Palestinians alike? We'll see.

It's a fraud. You're 100% correct, my friend. I don't know where it goes. I want to talk about your friend, Bassem Tamimi, who recently was released from an Israeli jail. We're going to show you pictures of after he got out and before he went in, but who is he and what is his background? So Bassem Tamimi is one of the leaders of the nonviolent resistance in the West Bank. And he and his family have been at the head of nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation, particularly in their town of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank. Nabi Saleh was first settled, I believe, in the 70s by Israeli settlers. And it's just been an encroaching presence there, that occupation and that settlement. And Bassem and his family and others all throughout Nabi Saleh have resisted it,

again, nonviolently. There has been in the last couple of years, particularly with the younger generation, I think, a turn towards violence because they've seen nonviolence not achieve what they're hoping for. But certainly this idea of when people say about the West Bank, about the Palestinians, where is the Gandhi? Where is the Martin Luther King Jr.? You have men and women like Bassem Tamimi, like my other friend Munta Amir, who was also in detention like isa amro uh there is a long list of palestinians who have engaged in the the very real non-violent actions why was he why was he uh incarcerated was he charged with a crime was he convicted of a crime no he was charged with nothing which is about what three thousand other palestinians and israel in Israeli jails are being held in this form of administrative detention where there are no charges.

And so why does he look the way he does in that picture on the right? That was the picture taken right after he was released. Are they starving them in the jails? Look at how healthy and athletic he was before he was incarcerated. Right. He embossedoston is 57 years old too so give people an idea of you know a 57 year old looking like that uh he was uh starved he was tortured the amount of stress uh placed upon him and his family uh his daughter i had tamimi many

people are familiar with i had uh because she has been publicly, visibly standing against the occupation her entire young life. And she gained some notoriety a few years ago in the West. But she was arrested along with him. And the reports are what they do is they use those family relationship against the prisoners. So you think about the stress that they put on the prisoners in terms of what we're going to do to your daughter. And we know the Israelis have been engaging in mass sexual assault against prisoners. That predates October 7th. New York Times has had an article last week detailing a leaked United Nations report that talks about this, including one Palestinian prisoner who was killed because they impaled him on a spiked chair,

you know, through his anus and they killed him that way. This type of sexual violence is common against the Palestinians within Israeli prisons. So can you imagine what they would do to a man knowing that they have his daughter, this type of stress they could put on a man by who, knowing that he, knowing that they have his daughter, this type of stress they could put on a man that way, let alone all the other forms of torture, the starvation, the deprivation, the beatings, the abuse that he endured. And so this is, again, a man who has been living this resistance for decades. The same with his daughter Ahed. When she was released, she wasn't as gaunt or afflicted as Bassem was. But you saw in her, I've known her for seven years now, you saw in her a look I had never seen before, a despondency, a defeatism. So you think, my God, what are they doing to these people? What are they doing to my friends? What is the justification for incarceration? No violence, no crime, no charge. I never saw what they alleged Bassem had done, which they didn't need to do. They just arrest

them. They just arrest them and detain them. Again, about 3000 Palestinians are being held that way. In Ahed's case, they detained her based upon a Facebook post, which she more than likely had nothing to do with. There are dozens and dozens of Ahed Tamimi appreciation pages on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook fan pages, as well as the pages that are made by those who hate her, those who are afraid of her, you know, and then they post false things. And that was the reason why they took Basim's daughter Ahed and same type of thing to my God, what they put must have put her through. So but this is how the occupation runs. And this is way if this is not new, this is the way it has been for decades. Judge, I think we talked about this one time when you talk about my experiences

in the West Bank. When you're in the West Bank, you go from town to village, you're in the cities. And the one constant across the board is the terror that people live with, that the IDF or the border police are going to come in their home in the middle of the night and take their children away because they do it. The Israelis do that several hundred times a year. They go into people's homes and they take their children for administrative detention as well. The children are never charged with anything, but they are as young as 12 years old, taken from their beds at gunpoint and removed for days, put in this detention. Families, of course, have no idea what's happening to them. And all they have to do that, all you have to do, Judge, is do that once a year in each village, in each town, in order to scare the population, in order to terrorize

the population. That is the reality of the Israeli occupation. And this is one example we can talk about. But that's how the Israeli occupation works. That's how it's been working for decades. And that's how it's going to continue to work. And it has the full support and embrace of the American government, just as a genocide in Gaza has that support of the American government. This occupation in the West Bank, which is cruel, inhumane, and it comes back to when you talk to the Palestinians, the thing that they express the most is the humiliation. So along with the terror of your children being taken, it's the constant humiliation. It's the constant being shook down, the constant having a rifle put in your face, the constant like being searched by a foreign

occupying army, that sense of just the basement that occurs on a daily basis in the lives of all Palestinians. You know, when I was there, we were taking a bus. My friend and I were taking a bus from Bethlehem as a Palestinian bus. We were taking a bus from Bethlehem back into Jerusalem. We get to a checkpoint and soldiers come on, Israeli soldiers come on. All the Palestinians have to get off. Myself and my friend, two Americans carrying American passports. We weren't born there.

I was born in New Jersey. You know, we don't have to get off. We're fine. friend, two Americans carrying American passports. We weren't born there. I was born in New Jersey. We don't have to get off. We're fine. We can stay on the bus. But all the Palestinians, the people who live there, they have to get off the bus and go through research. It's that constant humiliation every day that the basement that they live with. And so the fact that you have people like Bassem Tamimi who have been committed to nonviolent resistance. So we asked me, what do they take him for? Well, Bassem's a leader. He's well known. He was scooped up in the days early after October 7th. So the Israelis just went through and rounded up thousands of people.

You know, since October 7th, the Israelis have detained, I believe it's 8000 people in West Bank, and they've killed more than 550 people. Prior to October 7th, the Israelis had killed 205 Palestinians in the West Bank, including about 45 children in the months for the year 2023 up to early October. So you can see the level of violence that existed in the West Bank prior to October 7th. And of course, we are now at the, excuse me, we just passed the anniversary of the Naxa, which is the day the Palestinians commemorate or memorialize or mourn when Israel took the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967 in the Golan Heights. Wow. Well, I'm glad your friend is free.

These stories are horrific. Why don't we see them in the mainstream press here? All right, Matt. Thank you very much for your time, my dear friend. Thanks for accommodating my schedule. It's not your usual time, but you do have your usual fans. All the best. We'll see you next week.

Thanks, Judge. And thank you for letting me speak about Boston and his family. Of course. Of course. Coming up tomorrow at 2.15 in the afternoon, Kyle Anzalone. At three o'clock, Phil Giraldi. And at four o'clock, our friend Aaron Matei. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.