Judging Freedom - Connor Freeman: IDF Killing Children Everyday

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Connor Freeman: IDF Killing Children EverydaySee 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 Wednesday, March 20th, 2024. Connor Freeman from Antiwar.com is with us today. And he, like a lot of young journalists, monitors the killings in Gaza. And I will ask him right off the bat, how bad is the killing continuing there? But first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now today? stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided to buy physical gold and silver. And I suggest you should do the same and do it now. Why?

Because throughout times of economic uncertainty, gold and silver have rightly earned a reputation for stability. Owning precious metals has made me feel more stable and it can do the same for you. Reach out to my friends at Lear Capital and get their free wealth protection guides. You can reach them at 800-511-4620. Lear has earned an excellent reputation by helping thousands of customers just like you

move portions of their retirement savings into Lear gold and silver IRAs. It's easy to do and it's tax and penalty free. Don't be caught off guard. Experts predict the markets may tank again. You'll be happy if you have protection in place. So call Lear at 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Connor, welcome to the show, my dear friend. In your position as assistant editor at the Libertarian Institute, I know you follow all of these things. And I know that supposedly Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden and Antony Blinken and

Jake Sullivan are trying to talk the Prime Minister Netanyahu into dialing it back, but at the same time, they're providing him with all that he needs to continue his killing. How bad is the killing continuing as we speak in Gaza today? Well, Judge, the latest number, thank you, first of all, for having me on. The latest numbers that I've seen today, it looks like the death toll is about to reach 32,000. It's 31,900 and I want to say 34 or something like that. And of course, there's well over 70,000 injured, at least 8,000 people who are missing, presumed dead or under the rubble. And then if you want to talk about the West Bank, we've got about 435 people who have been killed.

But those estimates are a few days old. I believe the latest figures are from the 17th. Do we know how many people are crammed into the Rafah area? The IDF and the Israeli government have pushed them out of the northern and central parts of Gaza down into this already jam-packed southern city, and now they're planning to invade the city. I mean, the morality here, the absence of morality and decency and law is mind-boggling. But just putting that aside for a moment and just talking about the statistics on the ground, how many human beings are there that will be subject to this next wave

of Netanyahu-ordered slaughter? Yes, this blitzkrieg, which they've announced that's likely to occur this month. There's approximately one and a half million Palestinians who are in Rafah right now. And I believe Colonel Kwiatkowski said on your show yesterday that this is the final solution for Gaza, which I think is apt. And there's only 300,000 people remaining in northern Gaza where the famine is expected to break out uncont-war population in the city on the border with Egypt of about 275,000. Now we have 1.5 million people there sleeping in tents out in the rain outdoors with virtually no medicine or food. The Israelis have cut aid to such an extent that there used to be 500 trucks daily coming into the strip when Israel already was maintaining its air, land, and sea blockade on the strip for, well, almost 20 years now, about 17 years. But the Israelis have cut that to, I believe the UN figures say that an average of about 30 or so trucks make it in. So more than 80% of the aid has been cut. And the Americans go, well, we don't want to see a ground invasion.

There would be mass civilian casualties. We'd have a more limited operation. But of course, Netanyahu brazenly just defies anything that Biden says because there's no backbone behind any of these claims. I mean, even when Biden stated that he had a red line regarding Rafa on that MSNBC interview two weeks ago or so, he immediately turned around and said, actually, no, that's not really a red line. There's nothing they could do that I would stop arming them for things like the Iron Dome, as if we have to protect Israel forever with the Iron Dome from the Gazan population who were penned up in this open air concentration camp where Netanyahu is committing this genocide. So the Israelis have destroyed, cut off electricity, destroyed water, bombed universities,

bombed mosques, bombed hospitals, destroyed roads, blown up bridges, destroyed schools. And now they're radically limiting the aid that come in. When we're talking about aid, we're talking about basics like water, flour, antibiotics, anesthetic for emergency surgeries. What will this be like when the IDF invades? Will there be massive resistance by Hamas fighters, or will it be a slaughter like it was in the northern parts of Gaza? I think it'll be largely a slaughter of the civilian population. I think it's very clear that the goal is to ethnically cleanse Gaza. We just saw Jared Kushner speaking at Harvard about how there's some very valuable beachfront property that could be taken by the Israelis here. And we've got to find something to do with

these civilians, the ones that are still alive. Maybe we can bulldoze some area in the Negev Desert and put them there for a while or send them to Egypt and lean on Cairo to accept as many refugees as they can. But the clear goal is to go into Rafah, where, as you say, most of the Palestinian population has been forced to because not only have their homes and their offices and their schools and their shelters and their refugee camps have been destroyed. And we've seen, you know, the Guardian was reporting that as of January, there was a satellite imagery analysis that showed that somewhere around 62% of all buildings have been damaged or destroyed in Gaza. And so I believe the Israelis are just going to go in there and murder as many civilians as they can get away with and force them to basically just give up and go into Egypt if Cairo will open up the border crossing.

It's just absolutely unacceptable and disgusting. But this is what the American government is okay with. As Aaron Bushnell said, this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. And of course they're attacking right now. They killed 50 people yesterday just at Al-Shifa and arrested. Where is Al-Shifa? This is the largest hospital in Gaza. It's in North Gaza. Okay. I was on air the other day with Professor Jeffrey Sachs,

who, by the way, described the five levels of famine and that in Northern Gaza, they're at the fifth level, which means they are less than a week from massive starvation. When I got a text from a former student of mine, I was a professor of law for a number of years. He's now a practicing lawyer in New Jersey. He's an Egyptian-American. His first cousin at 35 years old, the head of pediatrics at the hospital in Gaza City, slaughtered by machine gun fire while tending to two babies, not tending to a Hamas killer, but tending to two babies. How is it that the Israelis are able to get away with this? No other government on the planet could get away with this kind of slaughter. Yeah, well, it reminds me of the war in Yemen,

where the US backed the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates with intelligence and logistics and training and weapons and warplanes and bombs. And they killed something like 400,000 people, mostly with the blockade, the full blockade that they had imposed on Yemen. And they had leveled all the civilian infrastructure that would sustain life. And I mean, most of the people that were killed were children under five years old and infants. And the thing was, with the war in Yemen, the mainstream media just basically didn't pay attention to it. You would have to be like one of us and be interested in foreign policy and following this war day in and with you because it's live streamed into every American household. We see these graphic videos and foot and images of men, women, and children, babies being torn apart by American bombs and children having their limbs blown off. And this is why, uh, the latest data for progress poll shows that two thirds of all Americans

want to cease fire and oppose this war, including 56% of Republicans. To your question about how Israel gets away with it, I think it's because our Congress is so completely bought and paid for. We can see that it's flaunted in our face every single day. I mean, last night, AIPAC was celebrating how many of their endorsed candidates won their primaries. And what other kind of foreign government could get away with a lobbying operation like that going, we own your congressmen. And now and they're doing well. You know, it's horribly upsetting and insulting to the American people. Sonia, I don't think it's on the sheet, but I know we have it.

Senator Schumer's comments, that 45 second version of it. I want to play it. You've probably seen this, Connor, but I want your thoughts on this and whether this is a game changer or just political pap. Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take the precedence over the best interests of Israel. He has put himself in coalition with far-right extremists like Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, and as a result, he has been too willing to tolerate

the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah. As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7th. Some of what he said, I suggest to you, is true and accurate. The Netanyahu coalition is drawn to the hard right by religious fanatics. We know who they are. We also know that without them and their party in the coalition,iah nation. Okay. But is what Chuck Schumer said going to change American policy fundamentally or even marginally? I don't believe so. I mean, first of all, as we said earlier, there's been no, we have not used any of our leverage yet in order to rein in civilian casualties, to allow more aid into the

Strip, to end the war, to push Israel to negotiate a ceasefire. I mean, the Biden administration has approved over 100 arms deals since October 7th for arms sales to Israel to continue this genocide. And they've been doing it in the most deceptive way by making sure that the value for each sale is just below the threshold of when they would have to actually notify Congress about it. And I mean, in the case of Netanyahu, this really upset me because Schumer could have said this in the beginning of last year or in the middle of last year when he could have said it in May when Israel was bombing Gaza last May and bombing Lebanon as well.

They killed over 30 people in that bombing campaign in Gaza. But that was that was not a genocide. That was a smaller bombing campaign in Gaza. So it didn't warrant Schumer's speech. But, you know, the truth is Netanyahu has been aligned with these ultra orthodox and ultra right ultra nationalist parties and figures like Smotrich and Ben Gevier, uh, since he came back to power in December of 22. And since he's, he was before October 7th, he was setting records for how many Palestinians were being killed in the West bank and East Jerusalem as well over 200 before October 7th, they were setting records for the number of settlement construction, the amount of

settlement construction that they were approving. They were carrying out drone strikes and other attacks inside Iran. They had doubled the airstrikes in Syria, which previous prime ministers were bombing at a rate of roughly once a week. And as I said, they had bombed Lebanon and they were now carrying out for the first time in, I believe, 15 or so years, they were carrying out airstrikes during raids in the West Bank. And one particular horrible raid on the Jenin refugee camp in July of last year, they sent in bulldozers to tear up their electricity and waterworks and their roads. And they sent in like a thousand troops and helicopters and drones. these are things that if Chuck Schumer was sincere that he didn't want

Israel to be a pariah state, then he would actually use his power and influence to insist that they give the Palestinians their statehood. But he doesn't believe in that. And Israel, for all intents and purposes, for much of the world, has already been a pariah state before October 7th. The rest, they've just taken the mask off since then. But this is the world's most notorious apartheid state and synonymous with, you know, torture and violence and dispossession and murder of indigenous people, Muslims and Christians, Palestinians. They've been doing this.

I mean, since Netanyahu came back to power, the attacks on Christian sites had escalated significantly. I know that Netanyahu himself is not personally popular. I don't know if it's his personality or the criminal allegations against him. He was in the middle of a trial. Trials are not conducted like they are here from beginning to end without stopping. The judges in Israel stop and try other cases in the middle of the one that they had already started. The trial was going on. However, are his policies of annihilation, slaughter, and genocide still popular with the majority of the Israeli people? Well, the polling indicates that. And I know from Gideon Levy, who's a staunch critic of the Israeli people. Well, the polling indicates that. And I know from Gideon Levy, who's a staunch critic of the occupation, a writer for Haaretz who lives in Israel,

he has called this war the unanimous war. And he says that it's unlike previous conflicts Israel is engaged in because the entire population supports this war. They have no qualms about what's going on in Gaza. In fact, you can see it when you watch them set up their so-called protests, blocking aid shipments from reaching the Palestinians in Gaza and dancing to electronic dance music and setting up cotton candy stands and bouncy houses. I mean, their society is deranged, quite frankly, or worse. And they absolutely support it. So Netanyahu was in very hot water, as you say, in his corruption trial before October 7th and was using his expansion of settlements in the West Bank and his attacks on neighboring

countries as a way, I perceived perceived to stay in power and to potentially start a war. I thought it might be more with Iran. I mean, that could still happen. It's not unclear to me yet that Israel isn't going to use that as a last ditch effort to drag the United States in a much more full-throated way into this conflict in the broader region. But certainly, he seized upon this war and will continue it in order to stay in power and to avoid accountability for allowing the October 7th attack to happen and the rest of his criminality. And the war in Lebanon is the one that's the next shoe to drop. We have U.S. officials saying in various reports that he will use a war with Hezbollah to stay in power as a matter of political survival.

He may destroy Israel if he attacks Hezbollah. Hezbollah is not Hamas, and Iran would never allow Hezbollah to come close to being destroyed. And the last time one of his predecessors went after Hezbollah, they went running home with their tails between their legs. I noticed you used a phrase, and Anya Parampol, also a young journalist of about your age, used the same phrase the other day, mask off when referring to the Israelis. What did you mean by that? Well, this is the kind of regime that has occupation forces that would shoot a two-year-old in the head and make excuses for it, which is what they did last year in the West Bank. They regularly kill children. They're demolishing the homes of civilians in East Jerusalem and

forcing Palestinians, who they make homeless, them and their children and their grandchildren. Then they force them to pay the salaries of the police officers carrying out the eviction and for the costs of the demolition project. And so you imagine having your home taken because you're destroyed, because you're not Jewish, and then being charged $20,000 or $30,000 for that. I mean, it's just the idea that we share any kind of values with Israel, certainly what maybe America does now in its modern iteration. And if you just look at our Congress, the most immoral and evil people in our society. But certainly the American people don't see themselves that way. I think I've said before that I think that the last vestiges of American exceptionalism in many ways burned up with Aaron Bushnell outside the Israeli embassy in D.C. this year. But I mean, the American people did not know, generally speaking, what Israel was

capable of. And I think the October 7th attack basically took that mask off and allowed Israel to basically reveal itself, especially to the West and to the United States. And the American people, I don't think, we've killed four and a half million people in these last 20 years of the war on terror, indirectly and directly. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed directly by our armed forces. But the indirect consequences have killed about four and a half million people. But that's a statistic that I don't think most Americans are aware of. And we certainly don't have footage of all those deaths. Whereas if you go on Twitter, and this has been true since October 7th,

people can scroll through their feeds or on TikTok, which is one of the reasons why there's the attempt to ban it right now. And you have young people and people from all walks of life in this country who are seeing what Biden and Netanyahu and the Israeli occupation forces are doing in Gaza and in the West Bank. And it's, I mean, it's a relevatory. For me personally, I was not really, I couldn't even fathom exactly what was going on in the West Bank until I saw videos from people living under the occupation years ago coming over social media. So I think it's very helpful for people to see on video what's going on. And that has revealed, we've also seen the genocidal rhetoric, of course, in the case of South Africa presented to the International Court of Justice and all the

rhetoric that we've just seen on our televisions from Israelis and their surrogates in the media. And it's repulsive to the American people. You mentioned the number of killings and how until this war we haven't seen them. Oh, but some of those killings were shown, and the person who showed them is in a subterranean solitary confinement cell in the basement of a medieval prison outside of London. His name is Julian Assange. That's what can happen to you when you think you're protected by an opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, but you dare expose the American military, and in this case, the Bush administration, for the murderous rampage that it engaged in. I just want to switch gears for a

minute. I know I've had you for a while. Do you have any idea, I'm going over to Ukraine now, why there's no diplomacy going on, why we're not talking to the Russians? I know Joe Biden wants everybody to hate Vladimir Putin, but even in the worst of times, even in the Vietnam War, there was diplomacy going on while it was being fought. Do you know if any diplomacy is going on? And if not, why not? Well, I mean, my partner, Kyle Anzalone at the Libertarian Institute just wrote up a piece the other day about how there were overtures made by Vladimir Putin to intermediaries to try and reach some sort of ceasefire arrangement, a diplomatic settlement with the Americans, because obviously they're in charge here, at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. And it was rejected. It was rejected by Sullivan and his men and the Biden administration. They've been,

as you discuss almost every week, Judge, they have sabotaged every attempt to end this war, including the Istanbul talks, which actually culminated in a draft peace treaty, which would have seen Russia pull back to lines they held before the invasion on the 24th of 2022 in February. And so I think it's largely politics, domestic politics. I mean, that's one of the reasons why they've insisted on this $61 billion in military aid to keep the war going at least through November. Because that way, they think that they can stave off any major Russian advances and any clear collapse. I mean, I believe the Ukrainian army, the military is on the brink of collapse, but they think that maybe they can prevent that or hold it off until after the

election. There's also a mentality, as we can see with Macron, this, uh, and president Emmanuel Macron of France, this attitude that if, if Russia is allowed to win, that it's a, it's a loss for NATO and a loss for Europe. And if necessary, we should send in troops to go and get the job and get the implication is to get the job done. And I don't know if that is some kind of negotiating tactic to sort of, you know, say, look, we will send troops, but if we, unless we have talks, but they're not saying that yet. And it's been weeks of this rhetoric and we have, you know, the Luftwaffe on that leaked tape, the head of the German air force talking about getting tourist missiles and using them to blow up the Kerch bridge, which is only going to result in more bombing of civilian

infrastructure in Ukraine. I mean, they've already killed half a million people in this proxy war. Half a million Ukrainians have been killed or so gravely injured they can't return to the battlefield. The environment is destroyed. The depleted uranium is going to be giving people birth defects and cancer for generations,

not to even mention the cluster bombs. It's the most heavily mined country on the planet. They've lost 20% of their territory. They're only going to lose more. And now Macron is saying they need to take Crimea. He sounds like Victoria Nuland. It's amazing how we can lose Victoria Nuland, but the policy just gets worse. The refusal for diplomacy is the same reason for the refusal to be diplomatic or to use leverage with Netanyahu. Unfortunately, foreign policy is domestic politics in the United States. And war is what sells because the American people are against these two wars.

70% of the American people want a diplomatic settlement in Ukraine. And Joe Biden wants to run for re-election as a wartime president. Yeah. He opened the State of the Union by saying Putin's Hitler. He's on the march. It's 1941. Trump is Hitler. And we crushed people at the January 6th protesters.

It's just he's so divisive and that he cares much more about what the Israel lobby thinks and what the military industrial complex wants than what the American people are saying. And that's going to destroy him in the election. Nicely put, as is everything you just said. Thank you, Connor. It's a pleasure to have you here and I hope you'll come back. Absolutely. Be happy to. Thank you so much, Jed. Thank you. Of course. All the best. A very bright and very articulate young man for whose thoughts and words I am deeply grateful. Coming up at three o'clock this afternoon, Phil Giraldi. Just want to make sure I have the times right.

And at four o'clock, Aaron Matei. Judge Napolitano. Oh, and at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, Eastern, getting him up early. My team is always up early. Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.