Judging Freedom - Lt. COL Karen Kwiatkowski : Hunger As a Weapon of War.

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Lt. COL Karen Kwiatkowski : Hunger As a Weapon of War.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025. Colonel Karen Koukowski joins us now. Colonel, you have a great piece at Judge Knapp.com, Lou Rockwell.com, and elsewhere called, Are We Hungry Yet?

and that is basically about the use of hunger and the regulation of food as a weapon of war. I want to talk to you about that at some length. You and I are both farmers. We both produce food. You raise cattle. I raise, no surprise, garlic. And we both understand the joys of producing the fruits of the earth and the problems of dealing with government regulation. But before we get to that, there seem to be publicly some meaningful objections in Israel from significant people, the head of the military, the head of Shinbet, the spying agency, the head of Netanyahu's own security council, the foreign minister himself, to this invasion and occupation of Gaza.

Do you view the domestic political objections to what Netanyahu wants to do as substantive or just performative? I think probably they are substantive because the people who, even the Zionists, who love Israel, this is their home that they've built. You know, this is their military. This is their intelligence agency. they want it to be powerful, and it can't be powerful if the country's economy is gutted. It can't be powerful if nobody in the world will work with Shinbet, if no one will work with Mossad, if no one will trade with the Israelis, if no one will buy Israeli products. If none of that happens, and the Red Sea is, you know, they've already, the port of Elat has already gone bankrupt, it's closed. So without a functioning country in Israel, these intelligence agencies and these war-mongering agencies in Israel cannot function.

So I think it is substantive. They are looking at the reality, which is not what Americans see on the media. It's not what Western media reports. They know what the reality is, very harshly, I'm sure. And it's a dead end. It's a dead end for Israel as a country. I think they recognize that. Scott Ritter and some of your other colleagues, Larry Johnson, have a find that the Israelis cannot succeed, that they'll never defeat Hamas, that Hamas is continually being rearmed, digging new tunnels, acquiring new recruits.

And though the West doesn't report this because there are no Western reporters there to report it, killing large numbers of Israeli soldiers. Are Israeli reservists failing to show up? Well, we know that they are. We know I think 10 or 15% of reservists are not responding to their call-ups. And there's a number, I don't know what the number is. It's another percentage like around 10 or 15% of people who have served in Gaza or the West Bank in this accelerated destruction of the West Bank. they are not coming for their second, you know, they're not responding. I'm not going back,

basically. That's their message. And it's, in some ways, it's, it reminds us a little of, you know, of Vietnam. We had a draft then, so people had to go. Of course, in Vietnam, we weren't fighting for anything that benefited the country. And it was a clear case that what we were doing in Vietnam was not benefiting the homeland of the United States. And so that was a clear argument. But I think maybe a lot of the guys in the IMF and gals who are seeing things that make them come to that same conclusion, that Israel is not benefiting, that their safety of their country is not benefiting from what they are doing in Gaza. Why does there appear to be, and I realize that you're a farmer with a career in military and not a psychiatrist, but why does there appear to be such

indifference on the part of the Israeli public to the egregious, over-the-top, gut-wrenching suffering of the Palestinian people caused by the Netanyahu regime. Well, they don't see Palestinians as people. You know, I have to set out rat traps in the barn, right? And I don't have any sympathy for the rats that I catch in my trap. They don't have the tiniest bit of sympathy for them. And I don't feel guilt, okay? Because these guys are my enemy and they are stealing from me and they add no value.

So I kill them. And I don't feel anything about it. And I think we have to recognize that Israeli society from the very beginning, from the beginning of Zionism, when they decided to go to Palestine, they knew there were people there. But these people didn't matter. They did not matter. They do not matter. and they're taught really through schools, through university, through the society, through many of their own synagogues. They are taught that Palestinians are not people. Arabs are not people. They are subhuman. They are vermin.

And this is, you know, it echoes the way that we talked about the enemy in World War II, not just how Germany or how Hitler spoke of Jews and others that, you know, he very much bad language. I'm talking about the way the war propaganda went and the early parts of World War I and World War II. The enemy was there to be destroyed. And the whole of Israeli society, unfortunately, the most of it, 90% of it, 88% of it, as they pull, feel that this is a war against a subhuman enemy, and he must be exterminated, much as you would exterminate termites in your house. You don't feel a bit of problem in doing that. And this is very, of course, anti-Judaism. It is very much a harm to the faith of Judaism.

I mean, if you're a Jew and this is what you believe, you have a conflict. If you are a true practicing Jew that thinks about what Judaism teaches, the good stuff that it teaches, and you are embracing this kind of hate and contempt for other people and murder and actions of terrible acts against these people, then you have lost your religion. Well, one of the things that Judaism teaches and occasionally is referred to as Judeo-Christian is the right to life that every human being has intrinsic value and an immortal soul and the right to live and the obligation to keep that soul free of soul. Now, the thought of crushing a people because of their nationality because you want to steal

their land is 180 degrees opposed to that very basic teaching. Am I right? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And this is a big, this is a, you know, they see this war, this thing they're doing in Gaza, the West Bank, this greater Israel. They see it as existential. Well, in terms of for their souls, what they are doing is existential. And they are losing that existential battle by supporting the Netanyahu government, by supporting things that clearly are wrong and immoral and criminal. They're going to have to pull themselves out of this big hole that they've dug for themselves. And also, you mentioned, you know, they can't get rid of Hamas. It wouldn't matter if they got rid of every single Hamas and they burned every Hamas uniform.

Okay. It will, the resistance to what has been done to Palestinians and Arabs by the Israeli government and others, the resistance cannot be stopped. It cannot be stopped unless, of course, they could kill every single one. But that is not possible. It is not possible. And especially when the whole rest of the world stands with free, free Palestine. You know, the rest of the world is saying, you know, we are ashamed by what you are doing. So the storyline, the narrative of Palestinian rights is winning, even though the Palestinian and people, particularly in Gaza, are dying. But Colonel Quatkowski, according to Senator Ted Cruz, you know what's coming, Karen,

and according to Ambassador Mike Huckabee, God the Father says you have to support the policies of present-day Israel, meaning the government of Benjamin, that's, you know, the two of them have actually said that. Yeah. Yeah, well, for Christians, of course, you know, Jesus was the first anti-government guy, as far as I could tell, at least for Christians, he set the example of ridiculing stupid government practices and rules and elevating what God wants us to do much higher than what governments might want us to do. And that's certainly a Christian thing. I'm not sure about other main religions of the world, but, you know, you think about some of the, you know, Confucianism, various things outside i've got my dog here oh how adorable yeah but you know the i think most major

religions put god above government um in fact i think and i know this from years of experience attending public events you know when we pray we pray for the government to be guided by by god that's what we pray for because we put god higher than government now i don't know what Ted Cruz and Huckabee, where they put, apparently they put the Israeli government above all. And I think we're, you know, we see a lot of that in Washington, you know, that we're the greatest, we're the second greatest country in the world. You know, I think one of Trump's appointees said that, just crazy stuff. But yeah, we need to get back to basics about what's right and wrong. And when you, when you boil it down to right and wrong, it's very clear what's right

and what's wrong. Well, how are the Israelis using not just hunger, but food, the adulteration of food, the restriction of food as weapons? And you know that I'm eventually going to ask you how the American government controls us by its regulation of food, but we'll start with the Israelis. Yeah, yeah. Well, for years in the administration of the occupied territories of Gaza, what Israel, the IDF and the Israeli government have done, of course, is limit all items. And that includes food and water even that go in and trade items that come out of these occupied territories. And particularly with Gaza, you know, they've had a number of wars in every several years. There's some sort of. thing and there was a blockade and during that blockade it was in the news and that's when i became aware of it that they actually monitor and ration per capita calories so they are doing calculations

of every 50 pound bag of flour of rice of cooking oil whatever that comes in and they calculated down what is the calories here and divide it by the number of people they've counted that are going to get this and then they say once we've reached the target of something like i think 1900 or 1850 calories which you can lose weight on that diet actually so it's it's obviously not it's a bare minimum maintenance uh caloric intake and they limit that now they you know we also know they limit concrete building materials and things like that but they actually limit calories going into um into Gaza and then of course under this current situation we've seen lots of video and commentary relating to Israelis, settlers, not so much the IDF,

but the IDF stands by and does nothing while Israelis, average Israelis, see trucks going into Gaza with food, and then they attack those trucks, steal the food, and destroy it. Throw it on the ground, you know, anything to starve Gazans. This is kind of supported by the government. But the government itself has set the standard. So the government in a real war where one country has declared war on another can attack the supply lines, including the food supplies, going to the military. But it cannot do the same with respect to civilian supply lines and food going to civilians without committing a war crime.

Well, the Israelis obviously don't give a damn about that. They've been committing war crimes since 1948. That's right. Now, historically, you know, that's the modern sense of what a war crime is, which we have evolved since World War II and maybe a little with the influence of World War I. But we have evolved into this idea that these things are war crimes, that food for civilians and civilian housing and health care are not to be targeted. That is a modern thing.

Israel is fighting under war, they're, you know, they're exterminating Gaza under rules that are basically might makes right. If they can do it, they're going to do it because their objective is to, you know, to destroy. So they seem to think, whether it's the government or the people themselves, I'm not sure, but they seem to think that these 20th century concepts of war crimes don't, don't apply to them at all. I don't know if that is something that, you know, if your God's chosen people, then, you know, these don't apply to you. I don't know. But, I mean, it's obviously, it doesn't really work out logically.

So, yeah, they're committing war crimes, but they are also living in a very savage way in the sense of might makes right. And I will exterminate my enemy because, you know, we have all these ancient historical examples of where the people get killed in mass. the people are starved en masse. And actually, you know, we've, food is using food as a weapon. I mean, the Soviet Union alone, well, Cambodia under Pol Pot in Mao's China, you know, food as a weapon to control a civilian population, to weaken it, to manipulate it, very common. And food is, we don't like to think about that, but that's how governments view food. You are powerful.

You raise cattle on your farm. the cattle produce milk, you make cheese. Why is it that you can't sell me unpasteurized milk, as long as you tell me it's unpasteurized, if that's what I want to put in my body and I'm a willing buyer and you're a willing seller. You know that the feds would come down on you

like a ton of bricks if you did that. But how can the government do that? Well, you know, we've seen, You know how they treat the Amish, who are, you know, will often sell raw products or cheese made from raw milk, which is obviously how you have to kind of do it, really. And they, it's really states that do this, but they're all supported by the USDA, which, you know, we have, I think, eight or nine employees for every actual farmer in this country. So the USDA is a massive government agency. And then every state has its own agricultural department of some sort. They're called different things in different states.

But these guys, I can't even describe how they think. I met the guy that was in charge of the Virginia, the VDAC, which does agricultural policy. And I talked to him. I asked him a simple question. This was probably 12 years ago. So I'm at a state fair. and I asked them this question. And his answers, they are not, I'll just put it this way,

they are not in touch with the food freedom movement. They don't understand agriculture in any way except for corporate agriculture. And it makes sense because that's who largely supports them and lobbies these state and the federal agencies for policies. And again, you know, we see how corporations lobby for policies that will help them or be neutral for them, but will cause barriers for new competition to enter into that marketplace, whatever it is. I don't care if it's coal or if you're making steel or you're producing chips or you're making,

or, you know, big ag producing food that's very standardized and massive and very resource intensive. Those guys will lobby to make sure that nobody else threatens their market share. And that's really what I think why we see policies that are anti-food freedom. But the good thing about food freedom and that is that that is something that is accessible to everybody. You know, it's not the food's not accessible. But if you want to grow something, I don't care where you live, you can grow something. And if you want to sell that to your neighbors, you can do it in the black and gray market. If enough of us to do that, there's not enough of them to stop it.

But yeah, there's an arrogance there, a very much. typical state government arrogance that we can tell you what to do. But they do fear food is power, food is energy, food sustains a rebellion. The folks in the chat room are asking me to ask you, what is the dog's name? Oh, blue. The dog's name is blue. Blue. Well, the dog is a beautiful dog. I have Chris, not my producer. My producer is a wonderful, brilliant, gifted human being known to the chatters as producer, Chris. My little German Shepherd Beagle Mix, Chris, who is not with me at the moment, is also Chris.

And sometimes when I broadcast from my home in New Jersey, and he's with me, he jumps up just like your blue did. Karen, thank you very much for all this. Very, very dark times. I don't know how this is going to end. Trump is totally indifferent to this suffering, totally supportive of whatever Netanyahu wants to do. This is the worst Holocaust on the planet since that perpetrated by the Nazis in World War II.

And the United States taxpayer is funding it. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, it's hard to say how we're going to get out of this one. how it's going to end for Israel and also what it's going to do to us as Americans because a popular opinion in America is very much, I think, with what you're saying, you know, what I'm saying, whatever, so many of us are saying, you know, this is not something we want to be a part of. We want it to stop. And we elected a president to represent us in that regard. He told us he would end wars. And he's not only not stopping it, but some of his plans for

for Gaza and some of his plans, even for the West Bank and southern Lebanon, are coming right out of Tel Aviv with no question whatsoever. We're rubber stamping Tel Aviv's criminal acts. And it's not a good thing. Karekowski, a pleasure, my dear friend. I'm sure Blue gives you as much joy as you give him. And thank you very much for your time, Karen. Great stuff. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Absolutely. Thank you, Judge. Thank you. Coming up at 3 o'clock today, Phil Giraldi. And at 4 o'clock, Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.