Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: The Kurds and the New Syria.

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Larry Johnson: The Kurds and the New Syria.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 Monday, January 20th, 2025. Larry Johnson will be here with us in just a moment. But first this. We're taught to work hard for 35 to 40 years. Save your money, then live off your savings. Unfortunately, there are too many threats undermining the value of our hard-earned dollars. The Fed's massive money printing machine is shrinking your dollar's value.

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consider shifting some of your dollars into gold and silver as your bedrock financial asset. Call my friends at Lear Capital, the leader in precious metals, investing for over 27 years. They help me diversify into gold and silver. They can help you too. Call Lear today at 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com. Larry Johnson, good morning, my friend. Welcome here. I want to talk to you about the Kurds in Syria because you wrote about it recently. but more recently, you have written about the Israelis and Hamas and who are the true terrorists. What is the core, the core of the violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis? I like to deal with facts, Judge, not perceptions, not opinions. Let's just look at the raw numbers.

Since 2000 and going through 2022, just take that 22-year time frame. If you're going to define terrorism as acts of violence against civilians for political purposes. You have to say, well, how many Israelis have been killed over that period of time, that 22-year period by the Palestinians and particularly Hamas? The number is fewer than 1500. When you turn the question around and say, how many Palestinians were killed?

The number is almost 11 times that. So in other words, for every single Israeli that ever died in a terrorist attack, 11 Palestinians died in a terrorist attack by Israel. Similarly, when you say, how many hostages did Hamas take over that time frame? 19 in that 22-year period. Well, and then you asked the correct question in a note to me yesterday about what's the difference between a hostage and a prisoner. And it's just like whoever gets to write the history books, they get to define who's who. Because during that period, that same period of 19 Israelis being taken hostage,

almost 28,000 Palestinians were grabbed off the street, taken to prison, locked up, not provided due process, not presented with charges, and not going to court. So they were hostages as well. It was official hostage-taking. So again, just by those numbers. And then once we go to October 7th and move forward, instead of 11 Palestiniansestinians dying for every israeli that number jumps to 50 60 palestinians died for every israelis that died so just on numbers alone the palestinians are the victims they're not the perpetrators as they are often portrayed in the West. And I know people can get upset.

And I had a dear Jewish friend write me. He said, well, you know, what about, how about if it's unprovoked? Well, let's start with unprovoked. There was no justification in Israel. Let's just assume that, you know, you had these, I think the number of 652 total terrorist attacks between 2000 and 2022. And so 652 terrorist attacks. So let's say that there were two perpetrators for each of those attacks, that'd be 1200 people. Why do you risk, why do you grab 28,000 folks, put them in prison, torture them, deprive them of their rights with no due process? So that's, as I said, this is just completely out of whack.

It's unprovoked. And really the thing that's driving this is religious extremism. And it's often presented that it's Muslim religious extremism driving it. But in this case, it's those who believe that the Jews are entitled to take all of the land of Israel from the Nile River to the Euphrates River. And that anyone, any Arab, any Druze, any Kurd, any Turk who's in there, they are Amalek, they are evil, they are to be destroyed because this all belongs to Israel. That belief is driving this entire madness. That belief and acting upon it is the core of the dispute between the Palestinians and Israelis, the Israeli belief that God the Father gave this land to them and their descendants, and whoever has lived there in the interim has to go or be killed. Yeah.

Well, in fact, you know, you go back and reconstruct it. You know, initially the promises were made to the 12 tribes of Israel. Well, 10 of those tribes disappeared after they were conquered basically through I I think it was the Syrians the Assyrians that took them out back in the day so you know you wound up with just two of the remaining tribes and but again they insist that this is this is a covenant that God made with them. And, you know, it's not just Jews who believe that. You've got a lot of Christians, evangelical Christians in particular,

who subscribe to that. Yes. And therefore justify Israel committing all these Zionists. I don't want to necessarily label it as Israeli, but it is Zionists committing all sorts of atrocities and genocide against Palestinians. nationalism, which believes that Israel was given by God the Father to the present-day Israelis and presumably to all of their successors. Why did Hamas take hostages on October 7th? Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning with courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates. You can earn your degree on your schedule.

You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at WGU.edu. For the same reason they've been taking hostages over the last 25 years, to secure the release of the thousands of Palestinians. They've been pretty effective. They'll give up one hostage for a hundred other prisoners. But it speaks to the fact that there are so many Palestinians rotting away inside Israeli prisons. And they're not being held in humane conditions. And there is valid, credible evidence that these Zionist prison guards

have been raping the Palestinian prisoners. So, you know, the Hamas in particular, they're trying not to forget and leave people behind. They're trying to say, you know, we have your back and we will get you out. So that's why they take hostages. I'm not advocating the taking of hostages because, you know, oftentimes it doesn't, it really hasn't panned out. But, you know, I worked the whole Beirut, Lebanon, American hostage crisis back in, you know, when I was a state from 1989 until they came out in 1992. And, you know, so this is, this has been a tradition over there of taking hostages in order to try to arrest concessions from the people who are in political power, often the United States or Israel.

From the facts and the numbers alone, not from the emotion or the politics, is there any question about which group is the greater perpetrator of terrorism, the Israelis or the Palestinians? No, it's Israel hands down. I mean, just the numbers. One of the numbers collected that I was just stunned is that since 1967, 800,000 Palestinians have been picked up and put in Israeli prisons. Eight hundred thousand. Wow. As a percentage of total Palestinian population, you know, that's getting somewhere up around 45 percent. I mean, it's an astonishing number.

And then when you add to that the number of palestinians that have been killed you know it's one thing if an israeli soldier is out confronting a hamas fighter and you know both are wearing uniforms and they're blazing away but that's not what's happened uh israel has been dropping bombs indiscriminately and they always use the excuse oh oh, well, you know, that Hamas is using human shields. But, you know, think about this. If Hamas had no regard for civilian lives, how is it that these hostages are still alive. You know, they've taken pains in the face of horrific attacks to protect and preserve the lives of these Israeli hostages. And, you know, again, I'm not

saying that they were right in doing so, but I understand why they did it, because they saw getting for every Israeli hostage that they could take they might get a hundred two hundred of their uh brothers and sisters that have been illegally detained and put into Israeli prisons so I mean the you know nobody's hands on this are clean on either side does Hamas uh use civilians as human shields? No. No, I think that's an Israeli excuse.

But you can't, when you're a guerrilla force in the midst of a population, by definition, they're, quote, human shields. They're fighting within that population. But they're really doing no different than what my ancestors did in fighting the British in the colonies. In Virginia, principally in South Carolina,

that they fought against the Brits and they were militia people. They were part of the population. They were fighting to defend their land. And that's what we in the West continue to neglect or to ignore. We like to pretend that these people have no history there, have no claim there. No, it's just the opposite.

The ones coming in to try to create a history are these, you know, the Jews who survived the Holocaust coming out of Ukraine, Poland, other parts of Europe. In some of the Western press this morning and in Haaretz, there is articulated this fear that Netanyahu will sabotage the ceasefire. Is that a legitimate fear? Yep. The sun's going to come up in the east tomorrow, too. Exactly. That's the history of this, Judge. You know, you go back, the second intifada, which went from roughly 2000 to 2005, was settled by an agreement,

Sharm el-Sheikh agreement, I believe it was, signed between Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon. Well, how'd that last? Well, it didn't. And I think Netanyahu is going to be looking for any pretext possible to return to the fight. But, you know, again, can we at least objectively step back and look at how did Israel do by having the most powerful military in the Middle East, supposedly, and fighting against a force that didn't have any kind of heavy armament, no tanks, no artillery, no air cover, no air defense systems. And yet after 15 months, Israel was not able to vanquish them.

Not at all. In fact, that was one of the really interesting things when you saw the release of these three women yesterday who had been held hostage since October 7th. They were surrounded by Hamas fighters who are fully decked out in their military gear carrying weapons. You know, they're still alive. They're still fighting.

And in fact, some of the reports, even the CIA was indicating that Hamas has increased its strength over the course of the last 15 months. Why? Because people have had mother, father, brother, sister killed, and they seek revenge. That is a powerful, powerful motive. Talk to me about the Kurds, the Turks, and Syria. Boy. We only have a few minutes i know yeah yeah give me an hour here um

you know the turks and kurds have been going at it for you know uh let's see we're now the 21st about 10 centuries so uh there's been uh the kurds are a problem because they are a distinct ethnic group. They are primarily Sunni Muslim, but they inhabit parts of Turkey, parts of Syria and parts of Iran. They're in all these different countries, and yet they share a common ethnicity, a common heritage, a common language. Now, this also puts to lie this thing about the Muslims or this monolith that they're going to take over the world. Because here you have the Turks who are Sunni Muslims, the Kurds who are Sunni Muslims. You think, hey, brothers of the faith, they get along. Well, you know, they get along about as well as the Ukrainians and the Russians,

who the Ukrainians at least come out of an Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, as do the Russians. So it's just to show that even though there's some shared religion, it doesn't necessarily translate into the culture. So when when Turkey engineered with the West, and cooperating with these Islamic extremist groups like Hayat Tahrir al Sham, which is a Sunni extremist group. The goal was to get control, you know, if you can, a rebirth of the Ottoman Empire under Erdogan's vision. But that left them with how do we deal with these Kurds? The Kurds have

basically established an independent state out in northeastern Syria. Well, the Turks aren't going to stand for that. But the United States is backing and funding the Kurdish element there. And this one sort of spinoff of the Kurds, it's the Kurdish Workers Party. They're a Marxist-Leninist group. That's been sort of their, that was their founding. So they're not devoutly religious, yet they make up a core of this movement that is fighting to control northeastern Syria. All right, so the United States and Turkey are in NATO. The United States and the Kurds are allies, and the Kurds and Turkey are mortal and the Turks are mortal enemies. You figure that out. Yeah, well, and let's not forget that in the early days with

the PKK, the Kurdish Workers, Kurdistan Workers Party, they were receiving funding and support from Greece. Remember, Greece and Turkey were also their partners in uh in nato but uh greece was actively working had you know i had a significant covert action program to support the kurds and using it to attack and weaken the turks so what what the turks now face as the united states faces is uh are they going to go to war with uh with the kurds and risk a war with the United States? And is the United States even willing to risk that war? Are we going to back the Kurds no matter what? You know, as long as it takes? Or are we going to say, oh, never mind, you're not that important to us?

So it's just one more little issue that Donald Trump's going to be dealing with after he is sworn in here in about the next 30 minutes. Last subject matter can trump pressure putin to end end the special military operation in ukraine uh he's got one one way to do that uh he announces ukraine will not be part of nat NATO never will be he withdraws cuts off all funding to Ukraine immediately and withdraws U.S military presence from Ukraine including CIA uh personnel well that that would be almost too good to be true, Larry. Well, that would give him leverage with Putin because he said, okay. It's essentially saying, I put my gun down. I'm throwing away my ammunition.

Let's talk. At that point, Putin couldn't say, okay, we're still facing a threat. He'd go, okay. And I actually think that would work. Right. But as you correctly know, that's not going to go over too well in Washington there'll be heads exploding all over the city certainly with his uh with his buddies in the military industrial complex his rich billionaire buddies who are making a fortune off of the war

yeah and that's you know war war has been big business in the United States, unfortunately. And it'd be one thing if it was just making the money, but boy, the lives that are cost and the people that have suffered. We're not just talking financial loss, but we're talking the loss of loved ones. The death toll for the Ukrainians right now is probably in excess of a million. Well, in excess of a million. Wow. You can't even contemplate that. How much longer do you think it can go on?

I mean, I guess the answer to that is it depends on what Trump does. I don't know if Trump on his own will continue to fund the Ukrainians. He can't do it without an act of Congress. Well, just to draw lessons from the end of world war ii with respect to the soviet uh defeat of the nazis um once you know in in by august of 1944 strategically germany was. They did not have the ability to stop the Soviet Army, which was moving all across the front from north to south. Yet that war went on, and the final battle that took place in April in Berlin was very, very brutal. But again, at that point, there was no way that the Germans could win that. But they still fought to the bitter end.

And, you know, tens of thousands of them died in that, as did the Soviet military personnel. And do you think the same thing will happen in Ukraine? Let's say Trump cuts off all aid tomorrow zielinski can last how long a couple of months with what he has no a week two weeks wow they'd be they'd be done you know once once that word comes through because you know the Europe keeps making this noise like they're going to step up to the plate and provide aid. Europe is a joke, a malevolent, malicious joke, but a joke none the same. Nonetheless, they don't have any kind of unity.

They don't have any kind of industrial base. Look at Germany right now, which is shedding uh key key industrial sectors you know it used to be a powerhouse in the production of luxury automobiles whether you're talking mercedes bmws audis now they're you know they're closing factories laying workers off and and within that you don't see a majority of the germans rising up said hey, wait a second, we're not going to take this. At least we're fortunate here in the United States with this last election. Again, whether you love Donald Trump, hate Donald Trump, whatever, the reality is a majority, a significant, undeniable majority of Americans voted for Trump and his vision. And it's now going to push the United States in a different direction. You don't have anyone in Europe which has that kind of mandate, that kind of support.

You know, I'd hate to be Keir Starmer because, you know, here's a guy put all of his, he bet all of his chips on Kamala Harris. And I guarantee you, he's not going to be getting any invites to the White House anytime soon. I think you're probably right. as prime minister because of some domestic disputes now bubbling up over his failure to prosecute people when he was the head of public prosecutions. Another issue for another time. Thank you very much, Larry. All the best, my dear friend. We'll see you Friday with Ray McGovern at the round table. I'll be there. Thanks, John. Okay. Thank you. Coming up after the inauguration of Donald Trump,

if you're watching this live, at 2 o'clock this afternoon, the one and only Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for Judging Free. We'll be you next time.