Judging Freedom - Kyle Anzalone: Should Netanyahu Be Indicted?

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Kyle Anzalone: Should Netanyahu Be Indicted?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, April 30th, 2024. Kyle Anzalone from antiwar.com joins us. Kyle, a pleasure, my dear friend. Do you think that Benjamin Netanyahu should be indicted and charged by the International Criminal Court for war crimes? Absolutely, Judge. And thank you for having me back on the show today. But this is certainly something that needs to happen. I doubt it will. I think Ray McGovern did a pretty good job on your show yesterday explaining that not only do the wheels of justice move slow in these kinds of incidents as far as charging somebody at the ICJ, but also Israel often raises alarm about these things long before they actually are going to

happen. So even if there were some rumors of it, I could see Israel making a big deal out of it. That way they get the Americans to set a standard saying that we are going to protect the Israeli leaders from this. You think that the Israelis themselves, the Israeli government, I should say, fomented these rumors in order to get the Americans to gang up on the court. I mean, members of Congress, notably Republicans, have threatened the court. I don't know what they could threaten it with. Maybe with a holding of funds, Joe Biden wouldn't sign it, but whatever. They've threatened the court. Maybe that's the publicity that the Netanyahu government wanted. Yeah. Well, don't forget, we've seen in the past that the American government has been able to move the ICJ. During the Trump administration, we sanctioned the ICJ in exchange past that the American government has been able to move the ICJ. During the Trump

administration, we sanctioned the ICJ. And then in exchange for lifting the sanctions during the Biden administration, we did lift the sanctions on the ICJ, but they agreed to deprioritize cases against American alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. And so the U.S. could do something like this, really pressure the ICJ and basically get them to admit that, hey, we're going to change the way we look at this and we're not going to really look at the Israelis or we'll make them our lower priority. You know, it's an odd court because the treaty that established the court was not signed by the United States or Israel or China or Russia or North Korea, an interesting gaggle that we're with. But of course, the Americans were afraid that

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be indicted. They since have been indicted in the EU, but not by this court. Yeah. And it has limited the travel of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. And so there is some shame associated with it. And even if this doesn't move forward too far, any kind of way we can, you know, smear Netanyahu's name for what he has done in Gaza is welcome in any way we could limit his travel and the ability for him to like outreach diplomatically to other countries because, you know, his diplomacy and what he's done in the United States to build up support is largely why he is able to cling to power in Israel. Is this the court that indicted Russian President Putin and some administrator in his government when they were perceived as kidnapping children.

Putin says they were saving the children from destruction in their homes. The court says they were taking the children from their parents. Putin said we took the children after the parents were dead. Whatever. Is this the same court? It is the same court. And Judge, you have interesting dynamics here because while the U.S. is not a signatory to the ICJ, and we have even threatened and have passed a law that is nicknamed the Hague Invasion Act because we maintain the right to invade the Hague

if they arrest any American allies or U.S. troops. So, you know, there's that lingering. But we did aid the investigation into Vladimir Putin, because if you remember in 2022, the U.S. government was basically finding any way it can to try to smear Russia or punish Russians for everything and anything they could. Ah, so the court will, the Americans will participate with the court when they hate

the defendant or think the defendant is guilty, but resist the court when they like the defendant or think the defendant is not guilty or approve of the defendant's policies. Yeah, absolutely. And this is 100% consistent with American foreign policy. If you look, we often will sanction a country like Iran or North Korea, alleging that those countries commit human rights violations and they're bad to their own people and they don't give their people rights. And at the same time, normally we give about $4 billion in military aid every year to Israel.

But this year, it's going to exceed at least $10 billion in military aid to Israel. And that is an apartheid state as determined by major human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. An apartheid state that engages in genocide, according to the International Court of Justice. The court we're talking about is the ICC that might indict Netanyahu. That's the International Criminal Court. The other court, we all watched that one, the International Court of Justice, that's the one that decided already that there is more than ample evidence of Israeli genocide, correct?

Yeah, correct. And I may have misspoke before. The ICJ- I might have done so as well, so I'll Yeah, correct. And I may have misspoke before the ICJ. I might have done so as well. So I'll take the blame. And I'm the lawyer, I should know the difference. Yeah, the ICJ is or also known as the World Court, and that handles disputes between nations, where the ICC looks at individuals and would prosecute individuals and has imprisoned leaders of I think, various African or maybe Eastern Central European nations for alleged war crimes against their own people. Right. The ICC, the International Criminal Court, is the one to which Russia, China, Israel,

the United States, North Korea are not signatories. The ICJ is a court owned by the UN and every country that's in the UN, including Russia, China, Israel, and the United States. I don't know, was North Korea in the UN? I don't know the answer to that, are theoretically subject to that court. That's the court that made the finding at the application of South Africa, dispute between nations, South Africa and Israel, that the Israeli government was engaging in genocide. Yeah, correct, Judge. And North Korea is a member of the United Nations. And in fact, there is an American judge, a former Obama administration official,

that sits as a juror on the ICJ panel of 17 judges that oversaw the Israeli genocide case. Right, right. Okay. I want to play for you a clip from Prime Minister Netanyahu, the shorter version, Chris, complaining about, you ready for this? The freedom of speech in America. What's happening on America's college campuses is horrific. Anti-Semitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. The response of several university presidents was shameful. Now fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have responded differently,

but there has to be more. More has to be done. We see this exponential rise of anti-Semitism throughout America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists. And what is important now is for all of us, all of us who are interested and cherish our values and our civilization to stand up together and to say enough is enough. We have to stop anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is the canary in the coal mine. It always precedes larger conflagrations that engulf the entire world.

So I ask all of you, Jews and non-Jews alike, who are concerned with our common future and our common values, to do one thing. Stand up, speak up, be counted. Stop anti-Semitism now. So you have a foreign leader intruding on American domestic politics, even on American private property like Columbia University.

Not a peep from the president, not a peep from the secretary of state, not a peep from the national security advisor, not a peep from the State Department. Right. And Judge, I think this exposes one of the fundamental lies that Americans are told about Israel and one of the fundamental lies Americans believe about Israel. And that is Israel is an American-style democracy in the Middle East. It's a bastion of rights for all, including their minority citizens. When in 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly said that Israel is a state for its Jewish citizens. And he meant explicitly not for the minority,

not for the Bedouins, the Palestinians, the Druze that happen to live under Israeli occupation. The Christians. And Christians as well. And then in the West Bank, this extends to an apartheid state. And in Gaza, it extends to a genocidal system. And this is Israel.

And yet we're told that this is some bastion of freedom and democracy. They do not believe in our same free speech values that we have in the United States. Israel explicitly has laws against boycotting as fundamental to our ability to resist unliberal laws, right? Laws that violate our freedoms, like we saw during the civil rights movement in the South during the 1950s and 60s. And so the idea that Israel is going to outlaw boycotts and then say we shouldn't have free speech on American campuses is 100% in line with Israeli values. We're just sometimes surprised as Americans because we believe they're just like a little America in the Middle East. Would you permit me to say, well said, well said and articulately put. We are friends and colleagues, but I have to tell you what you said was just superb. Here's another

clip I want you to watch. It's a little long, but it's a journalist grilling this character, Patel, that is the spokesperson for the State Department, about this very clip from Netanyahu. I'm confused. Do you know whether or not the Israelis have remediated this unit? That is essentially what we are engaging with them on. I'm sorry, I missed Chris.

Number five, Saeed Erekat. But I'm asking you, there is a foreign leader who's saying that American law enforcement, including the National Guard, ought to crack down on Americans exercising their First Amendment right to free speech. I'm asking you on this particular issue, not on October 7, not on all this that happened. I'm asking you, do you find this to be appalling by a foreign leader in direct interference in the way Americans conduct themselves? A leader can call on whatever they'd like, Saeed, but no one is naive to the fact that

utilization of the National Guard is ultimately a decision up to individual governors. I understand. whatever they'd like, Said, but it's – no one is naïve to the fact that utilization of the National Guard is ultimately a decision up to individual governors. I understand. MR. And so beyond that, the prime minister is welcome to make whatever comments he'd like. No, no, hold it. Please, I'm not done.

I'm not done. I'm not done. Hey, I'm not done. Please. I'm not done. I'm not done. Hey, I'm not done. Please. I'm not done. I just want to ask – I understand. I understand the need to combat the despicable anti-Semitism and so on. I understand what the President is doing.

I'm asking you, do you reject the fact that a foreign leader is saying that the demonstrations ought to be put out – ought to be cracked down upon? That's what I'm asking you. Do you reject that? I mean, do you reject people? I mean, do you reject the U.S. government cracking down on peaceful demonstrators? Correct? Correct? You reject that? I mean, this is part of what America is all about. I'm asking you, do you reject the interference of a foreign leader calling for the crackdown on full American citizens exercising their basic rights, their First Amendment right to demonstrate? That's what I'm asking you.

The prime minister was commenting on something happening in this country. I will say over the course of this- I'm not asking the prime minister. I'm asking- It's obvious that he doesn't want to answer because the State Department doesn't have an answer of course, we believe in the right of all Americans to peacefully assemble in a protest of whatever cause they want. But he is unable to say that whatsoever, because the Biden administration doesn't believe that. They need to crack down on these campus protesters, not only as a favor to Netanyahu and the Israelis, who don't want their public image further degraded in the United States, but for Biden's reelection campaign. This is looking awful for the president. I mean, imagine if this was the year 2020, Judge, and in the wake of the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests, just like now you have pro-Palestinian protests and people chanting from the river to the sea. If Donald Trump had established task force

for these college campuses and labeled all the Black Lives Matter protests as anti-white protests, of course, every liberal in America would be up in arms about this. And here you have the people representing America's liberal government just endorsing this. And also you had to look at the dynamics here too, because if this was a leader, say like the Iranian leader saying that, oh, you shouldn't have anti-Iran protests in the U.S. or Putin or China saying that, you know, we shouldn't have this kind of free speech in America. Of course, they would, you know, label it and condemn it as, you know, an external meddling in America's internal political affairs. But they're never going to say that about Netanyahu because I guess they believe,

maybe because he speaks English so well, that Israeli policies are really American policies and it's not external meddling in American political affairs. Has the legal department, either officially or unofficially, either issued a ruling or done it just as a group of lawyers in the State Department.

And the Biden administration urged the president to cut off aid to Israel because of the genocide. Have lawyers actually made that argument directly or indirectly to the president? So there's going to be a group of 90 lawyers, 20 of whom actually work for the U.S. government from various departments, not just the Department of State. And they wrote a letter to the Attorney General Merrick Garland. And I believe they're actually going to get to sit down, at least some of them, and make their case to the Attorney General. I'm guessing they're not going to actually get to sit down with the president.

And they're going to argue that Israel is not only in violation of the Leahy laws, which are the laws set out to say that any country that receives U.S. military aid can also not be engaged-Proliferation Treaty, and also that Israel is in violation of the Geneva Conventions due to their treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. Antiwar.com also reported this morning that a noted Israeli Holocaust scholar says Israel is undoubtedly, that's the English translation of the word he used, that's not me, is committing genocide in Gaza. Can you tell us about this? Yeah. And Judge, I mean, who is surprised by this, that another person makes this determination, but this has happened time and time again, where Holocaust genocide scholars look at what Israel is doing and determine that they are committing a genocide.

And now that the numbers are finally coming out, 30,000 plus dead in Gaza, I mean, these are in line with other situations that different courts have determined have been genocides in recent years. And so this certainly seems to me to be a genocide, and there's a very good case to be made for it. Sounds like more genocide is coming, didn't the Israelis announce that if you're a female or a child under a certain age, you can leave Rafah before the onslaught, but if you're a male, they want to kill you, so don't even try and leave because they'll shoot you as you leave. I'm not making this up. This is what was reported this morning. Yes. So this was a report from Middle East Eye that Israel is planning to set up checkpoints around the city of Rafa,

and they will allow women and children to pass through those checkpoints. But anybody labeled a military age male, which they are going to claim is between the ages of 18 and 60, but they're probably going to count any male that's basically puberty, right? So 13 and older that looks like they could have a little muscle mass on them and round them all up. They'll strip them naked or at least down to their underwear, handcuff them, photograph them, put them in a prison camp, torture them, try to get them to confess that they're either members of Hamas or they're aware members of Hamas. And then they will maybe finally release them if they determine that they're not a threat. And we've seen in these prison camps, the conditions for the Palestinians are awful. They report being kept in diapers and

forced to soil on themselves. They're kept in restraints all day long, including plastic zip tie restraints that are causing infections that lead to amputations. We had a doctor saying at a facility he was working at, two prisoners a day were undergoing amputations because they're just kept in these restraints all day long. So we're talking about severe systematic abuse that is going to happen to any male that looks between the ages of 18 and 60 that tries to flee Rafah, where there may be 1.5 million Palestinians in total. So we're talking hundreds of thousands of people that are going to be subject to this treatment. Now, I wonder how this character from the State Department that can't answer a simple question would respond

to that evidence. And I wonder how his boss, Tony Blinken, would respond to an inquiry about, look at what the U.S. is funding. Why don't you stop it? Well, I've watched enough of these press conference briefings now to know that what they would say is, we'll bring this up with our Israeli partners and we'll talk to them about the invasion of Rafah. We understand that they have to invade Rafah. Israel has a right to defend itself. October 7th was awful. Hamas did really, really terrible things. There's members of Hamas in Rafah. So Israel does have to go in and we're going to make sure they do it in a way that's appropriate, which really means we're going to send them the weapons to do it. And we may ask

them some questions later about mass graves or things like that, but we're not going to push them or force them to investigate or tell us what actually happened after they carry out these human rights abuses. Has it suddenly become nearly impossible for the Gaza health ministry to count the number of dead? Yeah, and so this has been developing over time. In the early months of the war, there were enough functioning hospitals and morgues that when somebody died, their family would bring their body to the hospital or morgue. They would say, this is their person, this is their ID number. And that's the way the health ministry in Gaza was counting the dead.

And this is how I believe they counted about the first 20,000 dead. After that, there weren't enough functioning hospitals or morgues to receive the patients. And also there was nobody to report it to. And so they developed a new system where I think it's two or three witnesses need to sign off on a statement saying that this person died. This is their ID number, this is generally where they're buried and things like that. And then they'll count the dead and they've accounted about 10,000 dead that way as well. But now it's becoming even harder to do that just because it's so hard for people to communicate within Gaza. Now that 34,000 number that the health ministry currently has

is essentially confirmed by Israel. They say they've killed between 11 and 13,000 members of Hamas and about two thirds of the people they killed are civilians. And so if you do the math, that's, you know, between 30 and 40,000 that Israel admits that they've killed well in line with the health ministry numbers. In reality, that number is far higher because at least 11,000 people are dead and buried under the rubble as well. Is the number of Hamas killed or the number that Israel claims it has killed credible? I'm not sure. Professor Sachs says it's more like 3,000. I've heard those estimates. I've heard Hamas put out estimates between five and seven thousand. I don't think that the Hamas officials outside of Gaza really have a good idea of how

many members of Hamas have been killed. My guess is that Hamas operates somewhat decentralized. And so, you know, they may not even have a good count on the number that they've had killed. Of course, a lot of the members of Hamas that Israel have killed have been low-level junior members of Hamas. We've discussed on your program, the Lavender and Where's Daddy program, where they intentionally targeted low-level Hamas members as they returned home to their families, not only able to kill a member of Hamas, but up to 20 civilians at a time, mostly women and children. And so when you have a program like that, and you're killing low-level members of Hamas like that, it really doesn't matter how many

you kill, because I'm sure Hamas will be able to recruit them far faster than Israel would ever be able to kill them. Last question. While the IDF is preparing to invade Rafah, and while northern Gaza is effectively empty, although I understand there are some bakeries operating and some people finding places to live up there, are the Israelis building a fort or some sort of fortification for themselves inside northern Gaza? So, yes, they've built a road that stretches from Israel through Gaza to the Mediterranean Sea that bisets the Gaza Strip. And then they've cleared a kilometer on each side of this road. So they've cleared a massive what they call buffer zone. They've destroyed hospitals,

universities to establish this buffer zone. And then they've set up military encampments within that buffer zone. They don't allow the Palestinians to cross that line. And Palestinians who have attempted to return from Rafah, from Khan Yunis to Northern Gaza have been shelled and killed by the Israeli military. And also they're setting up military installations in Southern Israel, outside of Southern Gaza. And I believe, Judge, there's a plan to biset, I guess that would be triset, the Gaza Strip again, and sever Khan Yunus from Rafah and establish another military highway that would have another massive buffer zone on each side to prevent Palestinians from crossing between those two cities as well.

So this is really a plan to militarize Gaza for the Israelis and slowly weed out the Gaza population, isolate them, and then just slowly erode the population there until they could ethnically cleanse all of them. Indirect and utter violation of the Geneva Conventions. Kyle Anselone, thank you very much. Thanks for your courage and thank you for the clarity with which you've addressed these most unpleasant issues.

We'll see you again soon. Thank you, Judge. Of course. Coming up this afternoon at two o'clock, it's our regular Tuesday, Matt Ho and at three o'clock, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Altyazı M.K.