Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: IIsrael targeting of journalists

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Illuminating the stark realities of war, we invite you to join our riveting conversation with Matt, as we delve into the heart-wrenching Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically focusing on the dire scenario in Gaza. We unpack the controversial statement made by Admiral Kirby about 'safe zones' and a unique 'sense of safety,' raising questions about the sincerity of the entities involved. As we navigate the complexities of this conflict, we shine a light on the plight of the displaced civilians, the pressing humanitarian hurdles, and the criticisms of governmental and non-governmental bodies.Matt courageously delves into a profound dialogue on the term 'evil,' recounting his personal journey and sharing his evolved perspective on using it to describe the horrors of war. We grapple with the challenging narrative that encircles the staggering visuals of destruction we confront daily, and the deceit hidden within. Matt's in-depth understanding of war provides an impactful discourse on the tragedy and inhumanity we see today. As we wrap up, we underscore the importance of awareness and the need for honest conversation in the face of these immense crises.#Israel #Gaza #ceasefire #hostages #Ukraine #zelenskyy #Biden #china #IsraelPalestine #MiddleEastConflict #PeaceInTheMiddleEast #GazaUnderAttack #Ceasefire #Jerusalem #prayforpeace #hostages 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, December 5th, 2023. Matt Ho is our guest today. But first, a few clips of Matt from the part of the world we're about to discuss about six years ago. Third time we went back out, we made it all the way down to the police line. We were able to say, hey, look, we just want to talk to you all. And we did. We talked to him for a while. You know, look, we were once like you all. We're not here against you. We're here against the policies. You know, we want you to think about what you're doing, about what you're representing, about what you're supporting.

You know, look, these people are just trying to walk down their street. They're just trying to live their lives. You're the ones who are bringing the violence. You're the ones who are supporting an oppressive, racist state. But it took us three attempts to get up to talk to them. The first two times we were beaten back with tear gas. Many of those canisters shot directly level at us. And so just the culture of violence, the culture of hostility, the culture of anger,

you know, it's a cycle that someone has to put an end to. And until that cycle is stopped, it's just unfortunately going to continue. But I think the Palestinians are trying to do that by just walking. And that's what we're trying to get across to the Israeli soldiers, to release the exact look. This is all they're trying to do is they're just trying to walk down the street here. It makes sense though, right? If the goal is to chase the Palestinians out, if the goal is to push the Palestinians out,

if the goal is to turn this into Israel, if the goal is a Zionist project, if the goal is to make this into one big settlement, then that's the way to do it. Put the pressure on these people so they can't live here. I'm sure you recognize yourself. So where were you and what was that all about? That was a trip I was a part of, a delegation I was a part of from the organization called

Veterans for Peace. Actually, our mutual friend and colleague, Ray McGovern, was on that trip with us. And if you could zoom in, the photo on my wall next to the portrait of Julian Assange is from Hebron, So the first location where I was being filmed, where we were hit with tear gas quite heavily, including Ray was hit in the arm with a tear gas canister. The Israeli border police will actually shoot those things level at people and they kill Palestinians every year doing that. They hit them in the face, they hit them in the head. And we met with families who had family members killed that way. The idea, of course, was that if our country gives almost $4 billion a year to Israel to ensure it can conduct an occupation in violation of international

law, in violation of natural law, in violation of all moral norms, then we as veterans of the country should go and stand in solidarity with those who are resisting the occupation. And so that was the primary goal of going, Judge. But the other aspect alluded to in the first conversation I'm having there was that as veterans who had taken part in the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, we also felt it a duty to go there and speak to the Israeli soldiers, speak to the Israeli border police, speak to those young men and women who are carrying out an occupation, just as we had in Iraq and Afghanistan, and try and let them know that the doubts, the misgivings, the pangs of conscience, they were undoubtedly feeling. And certainly there were some within the Israeli occupation forces that don't feel that way, but very many do.

And we have colleagues in the organization Breaking the Silence, as well as Combatants for Peace, which are Israeli veteran peace organizations that attest to this. And so that was the purpose of going there. And we spent three weeks in the occupied West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem, as I said, standing in solidarity with the nonviolent resistance to the occupation, as well as trying to communicate with, get some kind of dialogue going with those who were actually conducting the occupation. What do you think would be the case if you were there today and able to talk to Israeli soldiers, many of whom were civilians two months ago, about the crimes that they're committing? I think very often when you're in that type of combat, when you're conducting those types of operations, you are just so busy, to put it

simply, that you don't have time to process what you're doing. You also tend to push those types of bigger or higher level thoughts, thoughts that are above your pay grade, so to speak, away from you so you can just concentrate at what's at hand. And so there isn't much time to contemplate the morality, the ethics, the legality of what you're taking part in, as well as even, does this strategy make sense? Isn't this counterproductive? Aren't we just throwing fuel on a fire, further strengthening the resistance to this occupation by killing these people like this, let alone what's it doing to our souls? And this is something that we saw over and over again in Veterans for Peace. This is something we work on. So in Iraq or Afghanistan, we very rarely had

these conversations. And you very rarely have those kinds of conversations when you're still in your unit back home. But when you're out and you're out of the bubble, so to speak, that's when those thoughts come to you. That's when that contemplation comes. That's when this type of musing is required by your psyche, by your soul, by your spiritual beliefs, right? Your convictions as to whether what you did was not just worthwhile, but was it right? And so I think very many of the Israeli soldiers who are taking part in the campaign, this ethnic cleansing campaign, are doing so. Some of them believe that what they're doing is justified, that this will work. Others undoubtedly have misgivings. But the thing is, when this is done and they go home,

that's when this type of moral injury occurs. That would be the place where we'd like to meet them at. The moral inquiry has to occur before the killing. Otherwise, it's useless except for as a pang of conscience. You remember this rule. It is unlawful to obey an unlawful order. So if the order is just kill everybody there, you can't do it unless you have no conscience whatsoever and you know you're not going to be prosecuted. Right. And you have these laws that all professional militaries file a code of, of, of professional, of being a professional warrior. And they are almost always jettisoned when you're in combat. They're, they're jettisoned because they, it's easy to do so. There's all these excuses that allow you to do so. There's also

the emotion. There's the anger, the bloodlust. I'll tell you that there are surveys out there. And then also too, that the deliberate manipulation of what these young men and women believe. So I guarantee you, even though as we sit here and know the headlines, the idea that Hamas had 40 babies, as was trumpeted by both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Biden, are untrue. That's war propaganda. There are many Israeli soldiers who probably do not know that and believe it. And the connection I make to that is there's a poll that was done by Zogby in 2006, so three years after the invasion of Iraq and four and a half years after the 9-11 attacks, where over two thirds of Marines who were in Iraq believed that they were in Iraq because Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government were connected to 9-11. So three years after the invasion began, two-thirds of the Marines who were in Iraq still believed, were under the misconception, were brainwashed by the lie, right, that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were connected to 9-11. So the power of that is-

Let me ask you about the IDF. Does IDF senior military officials control what the street fighters hear? You know, if you're an enlisted guy in the IDF who's a reservist and you were a school teacher three months ago or an accountant and you were listening to whatever, Judging Freedom, Fox News, MSNBC. Can you listen to that now in the military, or do you hear only what the government wants you to hear? Well, they certainly, these young men and women have their cell phones and their tablets and their computers, and they're able to connect. I don't know if you were in the midst of fighting in Khan Yunus if the Israeli army has blocked all electronic signals. So maybe while you're right there, you may not be able to read what's on your phone, to look on YouTube or look on Twitter. But certainly when you're back out of that battle

zone, when you're back in the rear, if you will, you're back home, you can see that. So they do have access to that. But you also have a culture in Israel that is so dominated with the Zionist narrative, right, with this idea of Israel as a nation under siege, Israel against all others, this idea. And we've seen this too, even with some of the propaganda, some of the rhetoric, as well as the videos we've seen just over the last couple of months, where Israeli pop singers, Israeli rock stars singing genocidal songs, Israeli school children singing genocidal songs. And certainly we can go back, and there's been a lot of documentation over the years, the way Israeli children are taught about the Palestinians. In Israeli school books, the Palestinians are shown as all terrorists,

as barbarians, and there's, of course, a racist overtone over all of it all. So I think there's a conditioning, if not a brainwashing, that most of the young men and women going into the Israeli military, the Israeli police forces, undergoing. And we saw this when we were there in Palestine and we'd have the opportunity to go up and speak to some of the Israeli soldiers. Some of them wouldn't want to talk to us. Others would be angry at us or confrontation or hostile, but very many of them said, I know what you're saying. I hear it. This is not what I was expecting. I think the best example of this is the activist Mikko Pallad, whose father was the chief of staff of the Israeli army during the 1967 war.

And Mikko himself went into the Israeli army, was a medic within their commando corps. And he had a niece who was killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing. So this was someone who believed the rhetoric, believed the need for this type of iron wall between Israel and Palestine and for the need to suppress the Palestinians, to subjugate them. And then he had a number of things go through in his life that caused him to have to reframe that

and ask a lot of questions. But Mika will talk about how he grew up, you know, just miles away from Palestinian villages, and of course, had never seen them, and was always under the impression that if you go there, they will kill you. And of course, that's simply not the case, right? So that's a type of kind of conditioning and brainwashing that so many of the young men and women who go into the Israeli military undergo. And what happens is when they then go to the, for their occupation duties, say in the parts of the West bank, and they see exactly what's going on there. Like so many of us went to Iraq and Afghanistan and saw these people are not our enemies. These people are no

threat. They just want to be left alone, just as we would want to be left alone. And of course we would oppose occupation. You know, I mean, they have that type of experience and that type of conversion. We're going to take a break for a commercial announcement. When we come back, I want to talk to you about the chances of the Republican House of Representatives voting to give 68 billion to Ukraine. But before we do that, I want to talk to you about how many journalists has the IDF killed? Right after this. Judge Napolitano here. The world is falling apart and the government wants to spend money to try and save it. The Israelis are defending themselves from the greatest onslaught in their history.

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What do you think the chances are, Matt, of the Congress voting to give Joe Biden the 68 billion he wants for Ukraine when someone as bellicose as Senator Lindsey Graham, who you and I like to taunt, said over the weekend he's not in favor of it until old Joe agrees to build a border wall. I realize the border wall is entirely different from foreign aid, but it doesn't appear Joe is going to do that. And will that stop Graham and other bloodthirsty types from supporting aid to Ukraine? I mean, I think the White House and the Democrats in Congress have known but themselves to blame

for this. We talked about this a couple months ago when Speaker McCarthy was removed, the short-sightedness of the Democrats in terms of trading the devil they know for a devil they don't know. And now putting themselves in the circumstance where the Republicans certainly have this ability to use the Ukraine aid, which the Ukrainians are desperate for. The Ukrainians are running out of everything and all the money with the exception of maybe a billion or two billion dollars of the 113 billion that was allocated by the U.S. Congress since February 2022, has been used up. And so, I mean, the reports are getting more dire and more, you know, and dire and dire. Right. As as we understand the situation in Ukraine, this money they are desperate for. So the amount of leverage the

Republicans have here makes it so that it does seem that, whereas I think they probably could have, the Democrats two months ago with Speaker McCarthy, have had the votes to get Ukrainian funding through. Now, because of the Republicans' ability to tie this to the border, particularly to try and get concessions from Democrats, not just on spending on the border, because the Democrats said, yeah, we'll give you another $14 billion for a border wall. But now the Republicans want concessions on, say, on actual policy, particularly for amnesty. And the Democrats are very reluctant to give. So they've really got the Democrats in quite a corner. And I think the Democrats have been holding out to tie the Ukraine aid to the Israeli aid. But we already saw over a month ago, I think now, beginning of November, maybe even earlier, that the House had voted to pass $14 billion in aid for Israel.

And of course, they had conditioned that on cuts to the IRS. So, I mean, the Republicans are really showing a political acumen here and a political strategy, an ability to maneuver the Democrats into a position where they can extract concessions for them in order to get Ukraine funding. I think eventually the Ukraine funding will go through, but it will come much later than Democrats want. And it will come out at a very high cost that, again, the Democrats have only themselves to blame. But to see this type of unanimity among Republicans, particularly Lindsey Graham, of all people, saying on Sunday that I'm not voting for

Ukraine aid until we get a border policy changes and money for the border. Well, of all people, saying on Sunday that I'm not voting for Ukraine aid until we get a border policy changes and money for the border. Well, if all people to say that they're not going to give away money to a war, Lindsey Graham, I mean, that was a data marker. That's why I raised it to you. If Lindsey Graham is saying this, it's fashionable to say it. And if it's fashionable to say it, that's because others agree his desire for war. So to see this type of limitation on that really shows a Republican party, a Republican Congress that is getting its act together. Let's go back to Israel and Gaza. How many journalists has the Israeli Defense Force killed in Gaza? So according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of today, 63 journalists and

media workers. So you're talking camera people, producers, et cetera. How can it be that we don't know this? You know, I mean, particularly, I think the affront of that, right? And this goes, I mean, this all ties together, right? This ties into Julian Assange's captivity, right? And the persecution against him and just the trashing of the First Amendment. This ties into the killings of the Americans, Jamal Khashoggi and Sharif Abu Akhla by American allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel. And, you know, I mean, this idea that the American press is watching this happen, watching the destruction of the First Amendment and the deliberate targeting of journalists, whether how vacuous it is or how vapid it is

or how just empty it is or so tied to its advertisers, on and on and on, so tied to access journalism, not wanting to not be invited, not have your name on the Christmas card list, that kind of thing. But this, we see a corruption that is incredibly deep, incredibly ruinous because they're not even protecting their own. They're not even speaking out on behalf of their own. So these 63 journalists and media workers who've been killed, not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and in Lebanon by Israel over the last two months, they have been, many of them killed, of course, because it's dangerous, right? And you're going to have those types of losses but many of them have been killed

deliberately they have been targeted and not just them but there are journalist families in god are any of them americans in terms not not that i'm aware of in terms of of whether or not any of them were american citizens or not i don't believe so but again jamal khashoggi was who the saudis are that we know chopped up right and shereashoggi was, who the Saudis chopped up, right? And Shireen Abulakar, who the Israelis executed and brought daylight in the street, American citizens. And our government has done nothing about either of those. And so you tie that into Julian Assange, and then you look at the fact that, say, the Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gerskovich, has been in prison in Russia for 250 days.

Where does the U.S. have any type of moral authority, legal authority, any leg to stand on about Gerskovich's situation when the U.S. has been leading this? And I think there's one other aspect, too. It's just not the hard aspect of this, the killing and the imprisonment of journalists. But it's also where we see, you know, Matt Taibbi has been very good on this. Glenn Greenwald has been very good on this. The censorship by the U.S. government, whether directly by the U.S. government, the FBI telling Twitter what they can and cannot post or what they should or should not delete, or in the case of these government-corporate hybrid partnerships, such as this organization NewsGuard, which our friends Consortium News

have a lawsuit against, because they are an organization that is very prominent. They take money from the Department of Defense, and then they rate various journalism and media sites on their own criteria. And this has an outside effect. They are, again, because of who they are, who they travel with in terms of who's on their board of directors and how much money they have. They are very prominent. So organizations that judge you and I rely upon and also contribute to like antiwar.com that are not in the narrative, that don't follow a narrative that the Pentagon wants. Well, the Pentagon gives money to these organizations like NewsGuard to give them an F rating, so to speak. And this way they are then not seen as reliable, not seen as trustworthy. You can't cite these organizations. So it's a form of censorship

that I think are very, very dangerous. And that's all packaged together into this overall assault on press freedom because control of the narrative, the propaganda, the media messaging. If the governments don't have that, they can't wage these wars. They can't have this militarized foreign policy. You can't have this militarized foreign policy. You can't have this military industrial complex. Chris, let's play the cut of the Vice President Harris complaining that too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. I want your thoughts on this, Matt. President Biden and I have also been clear with the Israeli government

in public and in private many times. As Israel defends itself, it matters how. The United States is unequivocal. International humanitarian law must be respected. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Well, how many are too many? International law must be respected. Let's see. We've given them 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells. We are the enablers of this genocide. And she's saying international law must be respected. Who would believe what she just said. You know, there is another another Israeli personality, a retired Israeli general just said the other day again, like we can't be doing what we're doing without the help of the U.S. So there's no way they could have dropped, you know, all those thousands of thousands of bombs, fired all those artillery shells without the U.S. giving those munitions to the Israelis.

And the Israelis knew it. They counted upon it. And they're counting upon it to continue this ethnic cleansing campaign. They're counting on it to do whatever they plan on doing in the West Bank next, whatever they plan in the future to do against Hezbollah or Syria. They rely upon the United States to be that support for them. And the fact that you have, whether it's the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, you just had the spokesperson at the state department make these just absolutely ridiculous statements about how we don't believe the Israelis are

deliberately targeting civilians as they drop 2,000 pound bombs over and over again on refugee camps, places that have no military significance, you know, the whole, whole farce of the Israeli claims about targeting Hamas. And they're in these tunnels underneath hospitals and schools with no evidence shown. And they just, you know, these are all political people in Washington, DC, all these people, the president, vice president, secretary of state, the spokespeople at the state department, they're all politicians. So all they want to do is get the right soundbite out, just kind of just delay, just deny, just make it so that hopefully the next crisis comes up and this is put behind them, just make it so we can get to the next election cycle without any of this blowing back on us. You know, I mean, so like it's just not their moral.

It's just not the disgusting nature of their morality here. But it's the very venal and vain and cynical use of it to advance their own interests. Here's their favorite Baghdad Bob, Admiral Kirby. It's a little long, but I want you to listen at the end to a bizarre phrase he uses, not that the Palestinians should be safe, but that they should have a sense of safety. Listen to this. Let's talk about this map that you have referenced, the fact that Israel has said these specific places are safe zones. Obviously, civilians were already told to evacuate from the north. There's a sense that these civilians don't have a place to go.

A UNICEF spokesperson tells The Washington Post, quote, there is nowhere to move to. Nowhere is safe in Gaza. What is your response to him and others? Well, we understand the anxiety and the fear there. I mean, not only are there still a lot of civilians in southern Gaza, there are more civilians in southern Gaza because the Israelis accounted for humanitarian corridors to get hundreds of thousands. So we're estimating more than about a million. So that's roughly half the population of Gaza before the war is now internally displaced. That's a lot of people.

And so we understand the concerns by the U.N. and by other nongovernmental humanitarian organizations in there. That's why, again, we're working with our Israeli counterparts to do everything they can to provide these areas where people can go and feel a sense of safety. And, again, they did put some information out in the last 24, 48 hours to articulate those kinds of areas. That's a step in the right direction. A sense of safety. So we'll chase you to a certain area. You'll go to that area and then we'll kill you in that area. Right. It's, you know, Judge, up until these last couple of months, I always resisted the use of the term evil because it's such a subjective term. And I knew here over and over again, and I'm personally kind of scarred by the fact that 15 years or so ago, almost 20 years ago in Washington, D.C., you couldn't go through an office in the Pentagon over at the old executive building at the State Department, wherever, without seeing these plaques all over the place.

Evil prospers when good men do nothing. I mean, it was just a mantra that just enabled this righteousness within the US government that allowed for, say, the evasion and occupation and destruction of Iraq. So I've always been hesitant to use that term to describe something that's evil and in the last two months i i have reversed myself on that the the the gross inhumanity shown by admiral kirby there the willingness to lie the smugness in which it's all contained as tens of thousands of people have been killed buried under rubble uh uh just the destruction all these videos we see every day that we are witnessing with, I guess, our lying eyes, according to Kirby and others, things we wish we had never seen and wish we never see again. And we will see tomorrow as they drop more American-supplied bombs onto southern Gaza, right? These places that were supposedly safe. so all the lies, all the half-truths, the disingenuous nature of it,

tucked into this killing, I don't know how to describe it as anything other than evil. And so I found it to be very profound. And this, I mean, I've done this my whole life, this study of war, and I have never seen anything like we are witnessing right now. And I've seen a lot of terrible things, obviously, right? Very, very articulate and very profound what you just said. Matt, thank you for your time. Thanks for your thoughts. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again next week. All right. Thanks, Judge. Sure. More coming up. Karen Kwiatkowski, Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowski at three Eastern and Scott Ritter at four Eastern. During this show, we broke the threshold of two hundred and forty five thousand subscribers. My profound gratitude to all of you, especially the last few of you that pushed us over that level.

We have five thousand to go for our goal of a quarter of a million by Christmastime. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.