Judging Freedom - Col. Karen Kwiatkowski: US War Crimes in Gaza

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Col. Karen Kwiatkowski: US War Crimes in GazaSee 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, March 12th, 2024. My dear friend, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now. Colonel Karen, thank you very much. Always a pleasure. I just want the audience to know that the Colonel and I were having a conversation before we came on air. She knows that I was in the Vatican last week, and she was prepared to give me credit for the Pope's comments that it's time for the Ukrainian government to ask for negotiation. But I can't take credit. His comments were in an interview that were taped before I had dinner with him. And even when I had this dinner, he didn't say a word. The dinner was bizarre, but another topic for another time.

Karen, it's always a pleasure, my dear friend. You have a great piece out at lewrockwell.com. It's also at judsnap.com. Random thoughts on American culpability in Gaza. I want to start with big picture before we narrow it down to the actual funding of genocide and war crimes and ethnic cleansing. I want you to talk to us about settler colonialism and the garrison state. War is yours, Colonel. Yeah, well, these are... Ooh. There we go. There we go, You're back. Yeah, there are categories and labels, I guess, that the Big Surge, I don't know Big Surge's real name, but he writes a lot of strategy stuff. He has a sub stack.

And he explained, you know, he categorized Israel's Zionist state, their Zionist government in this way. And the settler colonialism, that is a term we're hearing a lot about, and apparently you're not supposed to say that the United States does that or that Israel does that, but it's this basically idea of what they do to expand the territory beyond the borders that are legitimate, if there's any borders that are legitimate. And we have to ask that question. But certainly the expansion of the state of Israel through settler colonialism, or perhaps you could say settler diplomacy at the point of a gun. I'm not sure how you would describe it.

It's actually something I don't think modern Americans have any real sense of how that would be done. You know, I think if you had settler colonialism happening in our country, where people's property was being seized and individuals backed by the state were taking over, moving in and taking ownership, we would be shocked at that. There would be many lawsuits. You know, we wouldn't think that that's normal at all. It would be a violation of rights, a violation of law. In Israel, it's policy. So that's different. We don't, I don't think Americans really understand that or have a sense of it because it's so alien to our sense of our values. And yet we are backing, you know, Israel's actions in this regard as well. And the garrison state, I think, is easier to understand. We, you know, if you think about the Guantanamo Bay in the movie, A Few Good Men, and he talks about standing on the wall to protect, you know, constantly under

attack. This is kind of the garrison state concept. And I think for Americans, we don't really have that. In fact, I think we wish we did have a little bit of it down in the Texas area on the border. But, you know, we don of thing or the garrison state thing are remotely related to democratic values. They're not remotely related to the rule of law. that you constantly are able to fight and defeat and push outward your enemies that are in Israel's state close by in the region. So it's a never ending suck of tax dollars, ours, as well as whatever GDP Israel produces. You know, it's just a bad situation altogether. And so when we say, I think, when we ally ourselves with Israel and we say they're just like us, you know, they're almost exactly like us. Well, they're nothing like us, number one.

Their organization of their state is nothing like ours. So we have to look elsewhere to find out why we are participating and providing both the arms to conduct the genocide that they're doing, but also the top cover, the political top cover. And you have to ask yourself why. There are a number of reasons people have put forth as to why we do it, but we don't do it because they are like us. Now, if we keep behaving like we are in this country and being led as we have been led in this large empire that we have, we very much could go down a path very similar to what Israel faces. They are in a much worse state than we are. But, you know, there's that aspect.

Let's go back a little bit to the settler state. I mean, suppose the state of Vermont decided to put settlers in Canada and just tell them, well, steal their property, just go throw them out of their houses, occupy their houses, take over their farms, and we'll protect you. We decided we want Vermont to be expanded and the feds are going to go along with it yeah that would not be too different from well what happened in 1948 but let's talk about today what's happening in the west bank correct yeah no wouldn't wouldn't be much different oh we'd have to arm them more than the normal vermontese are currently armed they would have to be armed with military style weapons and they would have to shoot Canadians on site if that served their purpose. And they would have to know that they would be

lauded for shooting the Canadians on site. Not only would they not be prosecuted, they'd be praised for it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I got to tell you a funny story. I was giving a speech in Vermont. I was just there for five or six hours. And the guy in charge of the speech said to me, do you want a gun? I said, what are you talking about? This is the Socialist People's Republic of Vermont. It's got Bernie Sanders used to be the governor

and now he's in the Senate. He goes, well, we are socialists up here. I was speaking to a libertarian group, but we're excellent on the Second Amendment. You can rent and carry a gun in Vermont for $10 a day. Supreme Court opinion in Bruin, which said that the gun laws have to mirror the way they were when the second was adopted. But whenever I think of guns in Vermont, I got to tell that that story, you know, even a stop clock can be right twice a day. They have socialized medicine in Vermont, but they really believe that the second amendment means what it says. OK, we get our we get our point on on the settler colonialism. And then the garrison state would establish the central government to protect those new colonial areas.

However, far north into Canada, in this crazy hypothetical of mine, Vermont decided to grow. Okay, back to Israel. What conceivable military, political, cultural benefit is there to the United States for paying for the genocide, supporting the settler culture, reinforcing the garrison in Israel? Well, I don't see any advantage to it. The long-term effects, I don't think we can even measure. The lack of, I mean, we've shown, the United States government has shown its true face to the world. We talk about democracy. We talk about human rights. We talk about industry and innovation and eliminating poverty, all these things we talk

about. And yet we are the handmaiden to Israel's slaughter and land grab. I mean, it is a land grab. I don't think they said, let's go slaughter Palestinians in Gaza. They said, let's go take Gaza. And in order to do that, they have to slaughter Palestinians. But we're going along with it. So we're going to be labeled with everything that Israel is being labeled with, both now and what's coming. You know, Israel has ruined its relationships with, that it had taken many years to develop with Turkey, trade relationship, a diplomatic relationship that's gone with Saudi Arabia, which was much more fresh, much more recent. That's also extremely damaged. You know, those are the kind of the big players. Egypt, they treat like, you know,

everybody treats Egypt pretty badly. And so Egypt is not, this idea of Carter's peace between Egypt and Israel, no, that's not happening. In fact, Egypt has said if they come into the other side of Gaza, which is the Egyptian side, that this would be, this would vacate any treaties that they had had. So for Israel, they are destroying their relationships with all of their neighbors, and that's coming to us, and we're doing it to some extent by backing them. You know, the sense of, can you trust the Americans? Do they stand for what they say they stand for? And the whole world looks at this and says, well, of course they don't. Now, some critics of the United States would have said, well, we knew this. We knew that the American government was very hypocritical. They say one

thing and do another. Those people were always there. But now you have masses of people who simply have an emotional reaction, a kind of systemic reaction to the United States government, unfortunately, by extension to anything made in America, anything that America wants, and it's going to be a bad feeling, a bad sense of that. And that's not going to be easily fixed. You know, you can have all the academics and critics talking about, you know, history and how America acts and how maybe we are, you know, our government is hypocritical. It's poorly led, makes bad decisions. It wants war. It enriches itself at war. You know, you can say those things, but the average person isn't

thinking that way. But the average person on the planet now has a bad feeling about the United States. They recognize all the stuff, all the criticisms that people had been making kind of in the academic or military side. And so you're not going to turn that around. That is a feeling has been changed. An emotion of the world has been changed and it's been changed negatively towards the United States. So, you know, how do you fix that? You can't just get rid of Joe Biden and fix that. That doesn't, that's not going to do it. So we've got a big problem. And so if we think we're going to grow and we're going to lead the world, no, who's going to follow us? Nobody. And this is in part due to our blind support, our deadly and evil support of the Zionist government in Israel and particularly

what they're doing. We've always supported their expansion. We pay lip service. Oh, we don't want them to expand. Oh, please don't shoot Palestinians and take their olive groves. Don't do that. Don't do that. We'd really like you not to do that. But what we're doing in Gaza, we are funding, we are fueling, we are arming, we are providing diplomatic top cover. We're doing all those things in Gaza for the Zionist government. So we've pretty much labeled ourselves just as the world has labeled Israel. Those same labels will apply to us. So for Americans and American businesses, this is now a factor. This is now a factor that we have to deal with. So the White House wants us to think that there's a rupture between Biden and Netanyahu. And in order to exacerbate

that so-called rupture, they invited his bitter political opponent, Benny Gantz, former General Gantz, leader of the opposition party to the White House. How could they not have known in advance what General Gantz was going to say? He said the same thing Netanyahu would say. Basically, if he became prime minister, there might be a slightly different tone because Netanyahu was so bellicose, apparently, even in private. Gantz's tone would be different, but everything else would be the same. Well, the White House thought they'd humiliate Netanyahu and they ended up being humiliated themselves. Sure.

Is there a fracture or a rupture between Netanyahu and Biden? Karen. And even if there is, is that going to result in a change of us policy, which as you said, I think I'm quoting you supporting endorsing funding. I'll say that word policy, which, as you said, I think I'm quoting you, supporting, endorsing, funding. I'll say that word again. Funding genocide. Yeah. No, there's no difference. There's no daylight between Netanyahu and Biden. The only reason that they would even be talking about

daylight between Biden and Netanyahu or the Democratic administration and Netanyahu or many of the Republicans in Congress and Netanyahu is because for Biden, he has an election and some of his core supporting groups of the Democrats, you know, are angry about the genocide that we're supporting and funding. So he needs to kind of say, oh, I'm not really doing that. You know, I'm trying not to. I'm trying not to sell, you know, to sell all these arms or to ship all these arms. I'm trying not to give them all this money. I'm trying not to do UN security vetoes. I'm really trying hard, but I just, you know, so it's all fake. That part's fake. And of course, with Benny Gantz on the issue of Gaza, Benny and Netanyahu agree, it's a stylistic difference. It's a domestic policy thing. But

when it comes to national security, and again, we've seen this a lot. I mean, it's predictable. When a country faces an attack, like 9-11, you want to use that as a recent example, or any type of attack like that, it unifies the political body at home. And it's very easy. And this is why historically, when we've gone to war, we've had events that have precipitated it that have been used politically to silence opposition to war, silence common sense, and promote a war fever in the country. And certainly in Israel, that's understandably happening and understandably being developed and utilized by the government there. And Benny Gantz certainly is part of that. So there's no there's no difference. Now, if they want to bring an anti-Zionist Jewish political party, which they have, and there are also those people here in this country,

if those folks could be chatted with, if those folks could be listened to, then you could say, oh, well, maybe Joe Biden is interested in stopping this. But he isn't. And that's pretty clear. eight, Sonia, where he's actually asked about Michigan and about the question posed to him by Michigan voters and articulated very nicely by a liberal columnist in The New York Times. Well, you'll see this Q&A. Be anxious to hear your thoughts. Number eight. Some have said they will never vote for you. One told Charles Blow of the New York Times, and I'm quoting, as bad as Mr. Trump's rhetoric was and him putting a travel ban on five Muslim countries, he wasn't overseeing and actively arming a genocide. Those are tough words. What's your response to that widely shared sentiment? It's not widely shared. You's not widely shared you guys make judgments you know

you're not capable of making that's not what all those people said what they said was they're very upset and i don't blame them for being upset their families there they're people who are dying they want something done about it and they're saying joe do something do something but the idea that they all think is genocide is just not, that's a different situation. Well, he's, he's, well, I'll let you comment. I mean, I couldn't disagree more. Yeah, he doesn't, I'm not sure what his cognitive capability is, but the whole world and the international courts and domestic courts and anybody that studies the definition of genocide. And that includes people in the United States because, you know, we have

a history of, you know, when we fought Nazis, they were genocide. We wanted to avoid that. When we were concerned in 94 about the Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi conflict, we were concerned about genocide. We have, we use that word, many people in this country know what it means. And of course, now we have a vivid, even though they've pretty much destroyed all the reporting that comes out from the Gaza side, we have vivid evidence. The world has vivid evidence and so does the United States of what's happening. And it meets the definition. It meets and exceeds the definition of genocide. So for him to deny that that's happening, again, I'm not sure his cognitive ability, he is very defensive in protecting his position as a candidate. I don't think he's running the country, but certainly for him to

say that is, I hate to use the word ignorant, but it sounds very ignorant for him to deny that, that most people don't think that. Because most people in the United States recognize it as such, even those who support Israel recognize what is being done. And they also, I think the world of course recognizes it, but we see it also in conjunction with a land grab that I think that most everybody realizes that's what this is. A land grab. We need the people gone, but we're going to keep the land and we're going to take, we're going to use that land. And we're expanding the state of Israel. And the world sees that. Biden's advisors see that. The intelligence community sees that. It's a shame that he's the spokesperson for people. Here's another clip, Karen. The phrase

red lines has been used. I don't know if Biden originated the phrase, but the idea was, BB, don't go into RAFA. Well, there's a million and a half people there. They're pushed against a wall. You talked about it earlier. That wall is the border between Israel and Egypt. There is no place for them to go. They have no food. They have no water. They have no medicine. They have no hospital. And Netanyahu is threatening to to slaughter them. So is there a point beyond which Netanyahu can't go? And if he does, Joe Biden will do something. Well, don't hold your breath. Cut from the same interview. Cut number six.

What is your red line with Prime Minister Netanyahu? Do you have a red line? For instance, would invasion of Rafah, which you have urged him not to do, would that be a red line? It is a red line, but I'm never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there's no red line I'm going to cut off all weapons so they don't have the Iron Dome to protect them. They don't have. But there's red lines that if it crosses and they cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead. Yeah. How many Palestinians dead or too many Palestinians dead, Joe?

You know, Professor Mearsheimer, who wrote the book on the Jewish lobby in the United States, and all of it, he's ex-military. All of our colleagues, including you, are of the view that the federal government is under the control of the Israel lobby, and that it almost doesn't matter who's in the Congress and who's in the White House. They're going to get what they want. I mean, he could slaughter another 30,000 people, and what is Biden going to do about it? We know he could stop it with a phone call, but Karen, is he ever going to make that phone call? No, no, he's not. And I actually I wrote another piece. Is it at Judge Knapp just this morning? And it was really about the Biden state of the union. But in that state of the union, you know, he talked about he's going to put a rapid deployment naval port to get medical and water and food to to the people in Gaza that are that are starving to death and being shot at, you know,

all day long. So it occurred to me, if we want to bring food and water and medicine to the people in Gaza, why don't we just bring it in with airplanes that land on airstrips or helicopters, ferry it in from helicopter off of a ship, drive it in, any of the number of roads that are there. Is Netanyahu's army, is the IDF going to shoot American airplanes down with our own weapons? Are they going to shoot our trucks on the ground with weapons we gave them? Are they really going to do that? And if they aren't going to do that, then this is what we should be doing. Now, if they are going to shoot us, if we go in there, you know, forcing us, we have this idea, oh, we can't bring it in. We have to bring up, we have to have a special port built that'll take six to eight weeks to happen. But if they're going

to shoot us with their own weapons, why are we giving them weapons? What kind of foreign policy is this? I mean, we would never, no country in the world would have a foreign policy like this, with an ally, with a so-called ally. And because of the insanity of this and the fear that we have, we are afraid. We are afraid our ally Israel will shoot us, our trucks and our airplanes, delivering food, water, medicine on the ground. What did we do? What did we do when they attacked the USS Liberty? That's right. 34 soldiers dead, 100 injured. And LBJ said, don't worry about it. Well, first off, you know, we did nothing, but we actually consciously aided the government at

that time. We called back the aid that was on its way. We stopped that aid, hoping the ship would sink, I assume, like the Israelis were hoping, allowed them to strafe us for hours and hours. And then afterwards, of course, we pushed it under the rug. The evaluation was, oh, it was mistaken identity. Well, clearly from the survivors of that very long period of time that they were being shot at, strafed, people in the water were being shot by Israelis, marked Israelis. American flags are waving, you know, they're radioing. It's very clear what was happening. We covered that up. So I think this is why many people believe that AIPAC and Israel, in some ways, Israel politicians, Israel sympathizers,

and AIPAC, of course, which actively lobbies to elect pro-Israel congressmen of both parties, and has done so for many years. I think this is why people believe that they run our foreign policy when it comes to that. But, you know, times are getting a little bit harder for Americans. You know, the world is changing, and I think this relationship is going to need to change also. The I mean, we're actually in many ways, the American government is being humiliated. It's one thing that they're conducting a genocide, which is a deadly, terrible state sin. But they're also humiliating the United States. I mean, it's not just Biden. Okay. Biden is an incompetent, senile person, and it's not clear what's in his head. But

our whole country that supports Israel is being humiliated by Israel's actions, by the way Israel runs our policy or seems to run our policy. And this has to change. And I think it will change. But of course, with that change will be many other negative changes. We are being yoked with Israel. The rest of the world sees it. And they will hate us as Americans. And we've always been, as Americans, we've been kind of favored. We've been a golden child. We travel. People like Americans. But we're going to be tainted with what we have done actively, knowingly, and without restraint, what we have done in Gaza. Colonel, always a pleasure. No matter what we talk about, you cut right through the fog that exists everywhere else on these difficult issues.

Thank you very much, Karen. Thanks for coming back your usual time and day. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Sure enough. Thank you, Judge. Okay. All the best, my dear friend. Bear with me a minute while I check my schedule here, just to remind you of what we have tomorrow. Ah, yes. Tomorrow, Phil Giraldi and aaron matei missed them both last week and look forward to both of them tomorrow judge napolitano for judging freedom Thanks for watching!