Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: British Black and Tan’s Bloody History

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Matt Hoh: British Black and Tan’s Bloody HistorySee 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 19th, 2024. Matt Ho joins us now. Matt, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us. We have a lot to talk about. The House of Representatives is holding a hearing on what went wrong in the evacuation of Afghanistan. I don't know if they're going to get to the bottom of anything or if it's just going to be sanitized. And we'll run a little clip from General Milley on that. But last weekend on St. Patrick's Day, I think it was, correct me if I have the day wrong, you gave a fascinating talk on the behavior of the British Army, including a notoriously reckless, murderous criminal gang known as the Black and Tan, in Ireland, where the British were defeated, and in Palestine, where eventually the British were

kicked out as well. And you drew a line from people's hearts, from the hearts of the Irish who yearned for freedom from the British rule to the hearts of Palestinians who lost their freedom. So I'll let you begin by telling that story. And then we have a little surprise for you, which is a clip of your comments. We have two of those clips. Well, thanks, Judge. And thanks for having me back on. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this, and I was grateful to be able to speak about my own family history, as well as why Irish Americans and the Irish at large support Palestine. And it's because, as the Irish prime minister himself said at the White House on St. Patrick's Day, that the Irish see their history in the Palestinian people's eyes today. And there is a connection here that goes just beyond occupation, war, and genocide. Iticate the Irish for seven or eight centuries. When that empire was defeated by the Irish in 1922, it immediately moved on to Palestine.

And that's just not in the sense of a larger geopolitical move, but the very men, the very men, the same units that had been terrorizing, murdering, torturing the Irish that had been burning their homes, that had been defiling their fields and slaughtering their livestock, those same very men moved immediately to Palestine and began the same practices. And that the British army didn't just do that themselves. They trained and armed others. And those who they trained and armed in their ways were the Zionist militias that became the IDF. And so for the last eight decades, the oppression, the occupation, the apartheid, and now the genocide of the Palestinians, you can trace, just as you said, Judge, a straight line back through the lineage, through the legacy of where that came from. And it goes to Ireland.

Chris, let's run one and two together, what we call Matt one and Matt two. These are two clips from the talk you gave last weekend. Now, where did Winston Churchill send the Black and Pans to? He sent them to Palestine. So the very same units, the very same men that terrorized, that murdered, that tortured my family, their neighbors and friends, the very same units and men that burnt their homes, defiled their fields, slaughtered their livestock, did the same to the Palestinians. What binds us forever, though, in addition to that, is just like my family,

the Palestinians fought back. But the print army didn't just stop murder, terrorism, torture, the burning, filing, the slaughtering. They passed that on. They passed on what were called the black and pan traditions to the Zionist militias. And those Zionist militias became the IDF. And for eight decades, the IDF has carried out the black and tan traditions against the Palestinian people. And those Zionist militias

became the IDF. How I wish the American public could understand and appreciate that brief, accurate, and emotional history lesson that you just gave. I don't know. Just extrapolating this to the present day, the statement that Senator Schumer made the other day, whatever you think of him, I think he said what a lot of American Jews believe, but didn't have the courage to say out loud. Well, I think there's a danger with Schumer's comments, but not about Netanyahu directly, is that the scapegoating is occurring. That if somehow it was anyone other than Netanyahu, this genocide wouldn't be occurring. Well, we know that that's not the case. They must have learned that when Benny Gantz was here

three weeks ago. Exactly. And there was a poll from this past weekend that found almost 70% of Israeli Jews do not want humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza. They want to continue to see the immiseration and deliberate starvation of the Palestinian people, almost 70% in that poll. But this idea of, we talk a lot about empire, and it's appropriate because we have to understand the context of all this, the construct of all this. And so when the British empire fades away, it's replaced by the American empire. And the American empire, of course, takes over and has a need to continue whatever processes, whatever circumstances, whatever realities the 1930s and the British general, the British governor general, the military leader for the British in Jerusalem at that time, he says that the purpose of the British mandate, the purpose of the British colony in Palestine is to create a loyal Jewish ulster in a potentially hostile sea of Arabs. And you see that policy still in place today with the American empire.

So it's important to understand, you know, not just the history, but the construct today in which things, in which things operate. And so that's why Schumer's comments, which, yeah, and I agree, I'm glad he said those things, but we have to be careful that, you know, is this just a scapegoating? Is this just, right, an attempt to say, you know what, it was all Netanyahu. And if it wasn't for Netanyahu, this wouldn't have occurred that way. That is not true at all. And if Schumer thinks, if Senator Schumer thinks that people believe that he's sadly mistaken. I mean, they must have known what General Gantz was going to say before he came here.

He's basically Netanyahu with a smiling face and a more amiable personality. But in terms of the slaughter, it would be the same or worse. Look at the slaughter that he inflicted on the Palestinians about 15 years ago when he was commanding general of the- You know, Judge, I'm afraid that our people in Washington, D.C., not just the Schumers, but those who surround Schumer, those who work for him in all their ilk, they're so arrogant. They're so wooden-headed, as our friend Larry Wilkerson likes to describe them, that they don't understand what else is occurring. They don't care what else is occurring. All they care about is their political message. All they care about is sticking to the narrative.

All they care about is their media plan. And if that's the plan that the United States is going to operate under, that we're going to get through this genocide and we're going to blame it all on Netanyahu and people will associate it all with Netanyahu and we won't be covered with any of the guilt of all this blood. I think that's the way most, most of Washington, D.C. operates. there are these rumors that, and they're just rumors, but there's nothing to disprove them. Maybe that's not a good reason to believe the rumor, but I'll tell you what it is, that Schumer ran this talk past the APEC people. Now, they're very, very generous to him and to Democrats that he wants to see reelected. If APEC, the American Israeli Political Action Committee, the strongest arm of the donor class that has the vice grip on the Congress and even on this White House, approved of that statement. If that is true, that's pretty telling, don't you think?

I think so. But it also gets to your point, Judge, right? That nothing fundamentally changes. Correct. Right? Nothing fundamentally changes. Joe Biden's great line from 2020 that, you know, people like me on the progressive left got all upset about, right?

I mean, but this idea that nothing fundamentally changes. So, yes, blame Netanyahu. Replace him. Gans can come in. He's much more acceptable. He does. He's not tainted this way, even though he has his own slaughter of Palestinians on his hand, as you described, as you referenced. As we're speaking, our friend and colleague, Professor Sachs, sent me an email, which is an article from Haaretz of 10 minutes ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday, quote, we all need to stand united against the United States, which claims that we should not go into Rafah. I don't know. Is this a serious breach? Because, Chris, I'm going to need the clip, and I'm going to try and find the number for you

so we're talking about the same one. Because Sullivan was asked yesterday in a press conference about his conversation with President Biden's conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he was asked whether or not the president said, we're going to stop funding the war. I'll let you hear the question and hear the answer. Why did the president feel that this was an appropriate time for this delegation to come from Israel? And why did he feel that these conversations would succeed in ways that your outreach to the Israeli government have not previously? Look, this is the natural evolution of a discussion between partners, discussions at many different levels,

between our military, our intelligence, our diplomats, our humanitarian experts. But we have not yet had the opportunity to have an all-encompassing, comprehensive, integrated, strategic discussion about how to achieve two things. One, the ultimate defeat of Hamas, and two, the protection of civilians and the stabilization of Gaza in a way that will lead to the long-term security of Israel, as well as the protection of innocent human life that is in Gaza. During the call, did the President threaten at any point to withhold military aid to Israel if Israel moves into Rafah or a family doesn't sue in Gaza? The President didn't make threats. What the President said today was,

I want you to understand, Mr. Prime Minister, exactly where I am on this. I am for the defeat of Hamas. I believe that they are an evil terrorist group with not just Israeli, but American blood on their hands. Do you think that Senator Schumer started something? Do you think this is all political pap because Biden's terrified that he's going to lose Michigan and he can't win the election without Michigan or some state with the same number of electoral votes to substitute for it? I think it's all political theater.

I think the Biden administration knows that when the Israelis go on Arafa, it won't take more than three or four weeks. So let's just play, let's just perform the theater, make it seem as if we're trying to do something. We'll continue with our slogan that words matter while we send C-17s and cargo ships full of bombs, missiles, and rockets to Israel. You know, and I think what is so shocking to many people in those clips, what angers me the most is if I heard him right, Jake Sullivan says that since October 7th, the United States and Israel have not had, as he described it, integrated holistic meeting to discuss how this is going to go forward, right? So in almost six

months time, you're telling me that there was no serious discussion between the Israelis and the Americans on the strategy of this as we send them billions of weapons as they commit their genocide. If I heard that correctly, I think that's the most telling thing to me. I think you did hear it correctly. Sullivan would probably say, well, we have military advisors there, but doesn't the president know what's going on? Did the president of the United States authorize genocide? Exactly, Judge. And that's the whole thing. So you just have had five and a half months of now I think they're shaping the plausible deniability narrative that we didn't know.

We weren't informed what the Israelis were doing. We tried to talk to them, but they wouldn't listen. Hey, it wasn't until March that they actually came here and talked to us. Again, as we said, three C-17s a day full of weapons and ammunition to Israel as a cargo ship arrives every third or fourth day in Israeli ports full of our weapons and ammunition. You know, I mean, so I think it is, this just goes to show that the strategy, the idea of actually defeating Hamas, right, in Sullivan's words, has never been a concern for these people. The concern has been the political narrative. The concern has been the political effects. And now after these primaries where we saw what happened in Michigan and Minnesota, here in North Carolina, where we had 13% of the Democratic vote in the primary go uncommitted or no preference as we call it here, now they are worried. But getting back to

the point, which makes this complicated, is if those rumors are true, that AIPAC endorsed what Schumer said about Netanyahu, that makes this a bit more complicated. But perhaps the Israeli governing, those in power right now, perhaps they think Biden's on his way out and they have no problem playing this game of chicken with Biden. And they think that Trump will win in November and then they'll have everything they want. But Schumer's words are empty if they're not backed up by any action or any behavior. I mean, is Senator Schumer going to go to the White House and say, stop sending the transport planes every three days? That's the only way Netanyahu will listen. Mr. President, the prime minister just blasted you before the Knesset on Tuesday, the article

from Haaretz that Jeff Sachs sent that I just read a clip of. What are you going to do about it? Well, I think as we know about Chuck Schumer, what was the line line in I heard in D.C. If I heard it once, I heard a hundred times. Where is the most dangerous place to be in Washington, D.C.? Right. Between a camera and Chuck Schumer. So the idea that this is anything but a political effort, this is anything other than a political ploy, a public relations or marketing thing for the Democratic Party is certainly that because Chuck Schumer is the majority leader of the

United States Senate. He could put a lot of weight behind his words. I don't think we're going to see that. I think, again, we're going to see all these words. We're going to have the White House, as it's been for the last couple of months since the end of last year, has just been sweating out this, hey, let's get this over with, let's get through it, and then we can put it behind us. We can blame it on Netanyahu, whatever strategy they're going to take in that sense in terms of scapegoating, plausible deniability whatever strategy they're going to take in that sense in terms of scapegoating, plausible deniability, however they're going to try and message it. But certainly they could end this today if they had the integrity and the courage and the moral decency to do so. They hadn't spoken in a month before Schumer's talk. Yesterday when we were on air, I got a text from a former student of mine when I was teaching at Brooklyn Law School, who's now a lawyer in New Jersey, who's Egyptian.

His cousin was the head of pediatrics at the hospital in Gaza City, gunned down by a machine gun while attending to children in a hospital room. Attending to children in a hospital room by the IDF. You think Biden would mention that to be on the phone? There is no conceivable, conceivable, imaginable defense morally or legally to that behavior. None. They've killed 13,000 children, Judge. And how there is just not a revulsion, just a great sickening over that is amazing. And I think, though, you have to remember that some of this is they don't know the information. I think that's a lot of members of Congress. They just don't know this information. You know, maybe at best they hear something about it when they're watching MSNBC or Fox, but then it's immediately, you know, immediately covered over by whatever flack for APAC is going to be on that channel next. But then it's also too, so many of these

people are committed Zionists. Joe Biden, he's the biggest Zionist in Washington, DC. If you can, you can, we can measure that quantitatively because no one's received more money from the Israel lobby than Joe Biden has over the course of his lifetime. Right. So part of it is just that this gets to, you know, judge, this gets to Francis Bacon's idols of the tribe. Right. And this idea that we have and I hope I'm remembering this right. So someone in the comments, if I don't get Bacon's four Idols right, please correct me. But this idea that we have these preconceived notions that what we have been taught by books, what we've been taught by our elders, by our culture is often false, is often wrong. apply it to new circumstances without evidence. And that when those preconceptions, such as Israel is the only democratic nation in the Middle East, Israel is a bastion of freedom and equality and liberty in the Middle East, all these tropes, all these untrue myths, when they are countered and

exposed, it's not accepted. It's rejected. And you could see that in someone like Joe Biden, who probably doesn't want to hear at all that Israel is slaughtering hundreds and hundreds of children every week. I mean, 13,000 dead children, machine gunned, burned, asphyxiated, crushed. And now we've had dozens of children, dozens of children who have starved to death in Gaza. Aren't there rabbis who are arguing publicly or preaching publicly that the Torah or Israeli law compels this, not permits it, but compels it? Certainly. I had a professor in college. He taught biblical literature. And first thing he said in class, Professor Fixler, God rest his soul,

the only man, the only person who survived the Holocaust in his family. He's Polish. And Professor Fixler, the first thing I ever heard that man said was that if you are crazy enough or committed enough, you can find anything you want in the Bible. And certainly there are prescriptions. And we've heard Benjamin Netanyahu himself offer these. Offer these prescriptions for genocide, for eradicating your enemies, for smiting those and having the divine authority to do so. And so certainly this genocide that we're seeing play out, it has many, many roots. There are many, many layers of foundation to this genocide, but one of them is a religious and theocratical explanation for it that many in Israel and the United States, you see tens of millions.

There's more evangelical Christians in the United States who believe in the idea, the need, the purpose of Israel in a theocratic sense than there are actually Israelis. So there is with this and the whole, the tragedy judge, of course, one of the many tragedies is that this conflict isn't about religion. This conflict is about land theft. Yes, there may be some of it, maybe because there are people who believe a magical real estate agent in the sky has given them the right to take this land and to kill those who are already on it. But this ultimately comes down to an issue of land theft, one side taking the land of another. And it brings back to my family's role in Ireland. And when they were part of the IRA, when they fought back, a lot of it had to do with the same principles, this idea of fighting back against oppression, fighting back against occupation, fighting back against genocide.

And so it's a right for people. It's enshrined both in international law, and I think you'd judge in natural law as well, that there is a right to armed resistance against occupation, against involvement in and departure from Afghanistan. I should be eternally grateful to all the veterans of Afghanistan. Hold your heads high. And I know there are several in the room today. Know that you did your duty. Each of you did what your country asked of you under extreme circumstances. Many of you, like Congressman Mass, lost limbs and were grievously wounded. And you did it selflessly with professionalism, courage, compassion, and with great sacrifice.

We did it in a war that was unwinnable and had no bearing on American national security interests. And what we did was we occupied a country and after the 9-11 attacks and 9-11 attacks that were carried out by not one Afghan, but just by a collection of Al Qaeda that had been based in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda at that point was, according to the FBI and the CIA and journalists, all of 200 to 400 people worldwide in September of 2001. And our war, our occupation, the things that we took part in, we made Al Qaeda into a force of tens and tens of thousands of people worldwide. They took land. They controlled large parts of countries. They controlled large cities like Mosul at some point, Al Qaeda in its offshoots. That's what we did.

You know, and Mark Milley, and for people who are interested, I recommend, I think, Judge, I had sent this to you. Ken Klippenstein at The Intercept had a good piece in the last week about what Mark Milley has been up to since he retired back in the fall. And spoiler alert, he's making money at a bank and getting paid a lot of money for making- He's going to fund the bond that Trump needs of half a billion. He's making so much money. Right, right, right. I shouldn't jest. That's another tragedy. But thank you for your comments on Afghanistan as somebody who saw it from the inside but

saw through the government's falsehoods. Thank you for your gifted drawing of that line from Ireland to Palestine. Thank you for your courage, Matt. It's always a pleasure. All right. Thank you, Judge. Sure. We'll see you next week, my dear friend. You bet. Okay. Coming up at three o'clock Eastern, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski and at 4.30 Eastern, Professor Jeff Sachs. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.