Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: Israel vs Iran.

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Matt Hoh: Israel vs Iran.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 16th, 2024. Matt Ho joins us now. Matt, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. Before we get into Iran and Israel and the latest in Ukraine, what is the status with the flotilla on its way or about to be on its way to bring aid to the Gazans that the Israelis have heretofore blocked from getting through? Thanks for asking, Judge. So the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which is made up of 12 nations and which will have several hundred participants in it, is getting ready to sail. It will sail at

the end of the month. It's not being said where it's going to sail from or what dates on, obviously, for security reasons. But it will be carrying more than 5,000 tons of cargo, food and medicine, you know, the same things that are being denied to the Palestinian people in Gaza. This flotilla will bring to Gaza in an attempt to address the famine, do something about the genocide, but also in a larger context, as has been done since 2008 with Fleece Flotillas, to attempt to break this illegal Israeli blockade and siege of the Palestinian people in Gaza. And do they expect that the Israeli military will let them through? I mean, they're going to have to land somewhere. Right. So what, well, let me go back a little bit.

What is the path of the flotilla? Well, it's a direct path from the ports right to Gaza, right? And then the idea being plans are, plans are in place to ensure that the flotilla reaches Gaza, that cargo can be offloaded. So getting the stuff from the ship to the shore, to the people, there's a plan in place for that. The question is, as you said, how will the Israelis react to this? And we know how the Israelis have reacted in the past. So the first time in 2008, when this was attempted, the ships actually got in. But every time since, the Israelis block them. Often in international waters, they aggressively take over the ships. They'll ram the ships. They essentially hijack these ships because they're in international waters. And then they abduct the crew and the participants and bring them back to Israel and throw them in jail in Israel for a week and then deport them. And in 2010, they actually murdered 10 of these people, including an American. So the danger there is the risk is there. But the folks who are taking part in this, they're so compelled by what they see occurring.

They're so compelled by Israel's genocide that they have to act. And so this action is twofold, right? One, attempt to get this necessary food and medicine to the people of Gaza. And to give you an idea, 5,000 tons of food and medicine. Well, the World Central Kitchen barge that brought supplies into Gaza, that was only 200 tons. So to give you an idea of how big this is and how much an impact it would have. It must be more than one ship. So yeah, multiple ships, multiple ships. For security reasons, they don't want to talk about how many ships there are. But at that point though, even though this is a large cargo of food and medicine, still it gets to the point of the overall blockade of the siege of this illegal act by Israel that has been going on for

17 years now and is most highlighted, especially because of the genocide and how that blockade, that siege is being used to deliberately starve and immiserate and disease the people of Gaza. So, you know, the importance of this is one, get that aid but also two, it's the statement that's being made. It's this attempt to do something about Israel's blockade, about Israel's action. Who's going to stand up and do something about Israel's illegal siege, their destruction, their genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza? Well, there are several hundred people who are going to get on a boat and they're going to try and do something about it. What is the realistic probability of getting through? Is it realistic that the IDF will turn the ship around or even these ships around or even sink them?

No, I mean, certainly the odds or the chances of the IDF committing violence are certainly not nil. Anyone watching this knows that the Israelis just don't care. They couldn't care less about international violence or international law. They couldn't care less about public opinion. They see anything that threatens their narrative, their beliefs, their reality as a threat that must be attacked with violence. So the danger of the Israelis doing something that would harm or kill members of this mission is quite real. And that's why the flotilla has been adamant in calling upon the international community to protect this flotilla and then to hold Israel responsible and to hold Israel accountable for however it conducts itself. The flotilla demands that Israel allow these boats to enter Gaza to deliver its aid. But it also demands that the international community, including the U.S., and there will be dozens of American citizens part of this mission. representatives in Congress hold to their obligations of office and do everything necessary

and required to protect the safety and security of these men and women who are participating in a humanitarian aid mission that is justified by international law, by moral or natural law, but also to judge by the decisions, by the orders of the International Court of Justice, as put forward in January and in March, for everything to be done to end this humanitarian disaster that's occurring in Gaza. All right, last question on this. How significant is it that recently Samantha Power, I don't know what her title is, you know, she's an official of the U.S. government ahead of something with Biden, the Biden administration, publicly acknowledged, she may have even been under oath when she said it,

famine attacking children in northern Gaza. It's undeniable. It's undoubtable. You've had other American officials such as David Satterfield, who is involved with Middle Eastern affairs for the U.S. government, admit that this is what's occurring. There is a deliberate starvation. There is famine. People are starving to death. Most recent numbers I saw were more than 30 children have starved to death. Now, that is something when you say, yeah, but 30,000 people, more than 35,000 people have been killed by Israeli bombs and machine gun bullets and artillery shells. But this is one component of the genocide, of the ethnic cleansing that's occurring, that is expanding the reach of Israel's genocide, right?

So the Israelis can only kill with their bombs what they hit with their bombs. But this slow starvation, this deliberate starvation, kills in a manner that is thorough, right? It goes across the entire society there, the entire population there in Gaza. And Samantha Power, who is the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, so the top person in the U.S. Agency for International Development, so the top person in the U.S. government to address things like people in other parts of the world starving to death. Well, yes, Judge, she did admit in Congress that there was a famine in Gaza, that it was touching everybody there, again, part of this genocidal campaign. But, you know, when we watch

our friends from Code Pink, Medea Benjamin and her folks approach Samantha Power and say, well, who's responsible for this famine? Samantha Power just keeps her mouth shut and runs away. Is there anything she can do? Isn't it her job to prevent famine? That's exactly right. All the way up to President Biden. Judge, we've been saying this for six months. It's more than six months now. You know, this genocide in Gaza, to call the U.S. as complicit or that it's supporting it,

it's missing the point. The United States is a direct participant in this genocide. The United States can do it. Well, hey, as our friend Max says, right, President Biden can end this in one phone call. He picks up the phone. He tells Netanyahu it's over and this thing ends. And then someone like Samantha, the next phone call he makes is to Samantha Power and says, you know, hey, Director Power, you have all the authority to do whatever you need. You have the full weight of the office of the President of the United States behind you to end this famine. Go and do it. And it could be done, but they choose not to. They choose to let these people be eradicated. I want to transition to the argument about moral equivalence.

I think that's absurd. And I'll let you, of course, express your own view, between the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate in Damascus and the Iranian attack on Israeli military and intelligence facilities. But before we actually, see why I'm laughing in a minute, before we actually address this, I'm going to introduce it in somewhat of a humorous way with a person that you and I both admire except you rarely see him on the floor of the house of commons and you never except there see him without his hat on watch this the speaker I knew your father well for a very long time. He was a fine man, and I am sincerely sorry for your loss. There was not one single word

in the prime minister's statement of condemnation of the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which is the proximate reason for the event everyone is here in concert condemning. He was not even asked to do so by the front bench opposite. Kay Burley is the only person so far to demand that of a government minister. We have no treaty with Israel, at least not one that Parliament has been shown. And the Iranians are not likely to listen to him when Britain occupied Iran, looted its wealth and overthrew its one democratic socialist government in my own lifetime. a'i ddod o hyd i'r un Llywodraeth Socioleg, yn fy mhrofiad fy hun. Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth

Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth

Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth Y Llywodraeth It is absolutely no justification for launching more than 300 drones and missiles from one sovereign state towards Israel. It's as simple as that. And in the honourable gentleman's question, not once did he condemn that action or indeed the actions of Hamas in the region.

There is no equivalence between these things whatsoever. And to suggest otherwise is simply wrong. I'm not making fun of this. It's just that he's such a character. He's so articulate. He's so eloquent. He's so forceful. And you and I and most people watching us now are fans of his.

But you can see the sickness in the Western thought that there's somehow moral equivalence between this these two countries behaviors well it's just uh in that sickness and first of all you had god bless george galloway uh and uh that was like a scene from a movie judge it was it was it was like the final clue is like reminds me of uh al pacino and scent of a woman you know, but in the sense of, you know, that's the best. I tell you what, that's the best thing I've seen all week. Maybe this month was that. Thank you for showing it. You know, but then you see Ritchie Sunak come up there, the prime minister of Britain, and he won't even address. He won't even say he says whatever may have happened a few weeks ago. He won't even use words. He won't even, with any type of clarity or honesty, they just can't even do. And that encapsulation, we're doing that over here as well.

You know, our members of Congress, the members of the executive, the folks in the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, you know, that desire, that steadfastness in holding on to an unreality, right? That is destroying us. You have people who are creating policies, who are creating events, who are dictating how the United States, United Kingdom, NATO are going to respond to things that is entirely based upon the needs and the prerogatives of their political propaganda and narratives. And so what happens is, this is something that's so concerning, right? Is when you see Matt Miller at the State Department, or you see John Kirby at the National Security Council, and you see them just lie from behind that podium. And they say things like, we have reviewed it, and we have seen that Israel has not violated international law at all in Gaza.

And it's one thing for that lie. It's one thing for that propaganda to be spewed forth for an external audience. But the problem is, judges, you and I know when they turn around and they go back into that conference room and they make policy, they decide how the United States is going to act or how the United Kingdom is going to act, that propaganda, that narrative informs the policy. So the policy then becomes something that chases the narrative. It supports the narrative. We can only choose to do what is going to be in line with the statements we have already made. We can only choose a reality that is in line with our political benefit, with our political narrative, with our political structure, with our political reality. And so when Rishi Sunak denies that anything happening in Damascus that should be discussed, you have to believe that in his

meetings among his top people, that is not brought up. There is no discussion about Israel's attack on Iran's conflict at all. It's forbidden. And so this is how we get to this point where we have such destructive, disastrous foreign policies that are imperiling us, that are putting us on this escalatory trajectory that is of an insane risk that none of us should accept. And here we have now this situation where, once again, Judge, I've been coming down with you for a year. How many times do we have this conversation that we're at this point now where my God, it's so easy to see how this can go forward in a way that is ruinous and that is apocalyptic and not being hyperbole. And in this particular situation, let's all remember that the

embassy was attacked. That is, as George Galloway says, the proximate cause of these incidents. Both American and Russian troops are in that country or in Syria in contact or near contact with each other. So this idea that this could be World War III is not anything that we should be dismissive of or say, no, that that won't happen. You talk about Prime Minister Sunak and his top people. Here's his top person, Lord David Cameron, the former prime minister, now defense minister of Great Britain, in a television Q&A on Sunday, saying virtually the same thing that the prime minister just said. What about Iran's frustration at part of its sovereign territory being flattened? Well, I would argue there is a massive degree of difference between what Israel did in Damascus

and, as I said, 301 weapons being launched by the state of Iran at the state of Israel for the first time, a state-on-state attack. 101 ballistic missiles, 36 cruise missiles, 185 drones. That is a degree of difference. And I think a reckless and dangerous thing for Iran to have done. And I think the whole world can see all these countries that have somehow wondered, well, you know, what is the true nature of Iran? It's there in black and white. The whole world can see what a fool he is. Right. As if the moral equivalence is determined by the number of weapons used.

I don't know if you saw Alistair Crook on with us yesterday who pointed out, and Scott Ritter and Colonel McGregor agree, you probably agree as well, Israel spent about a billion dollars on Saturday night defending itself. in a chess match to find out exactly where the defensive fire was coming from. And everything, everything was aimed at military installations, not at slaughtering innocents and murdering diplomats. Right. You know, that's exactly right, Judge. And you've seen this celebration of Israel's great victory in the Western press, in Western governments, how 99% of Iran's missiles and drones were shot down. First of all, Iran gave three days notice. Right. I mean, that is just.

And then when they actually launched the attack, they gave notice again. I was driving in my car. My boss called me. He said, hey, Iran attacked Israel. It happened. And so I thought, oh, when I get home, I will watch this on the news. And when I got home, I had to wait a bunch of hours because the drones were still flying. I mean, so talk about unprecedented. It's unprecedented in the way Iran announced this, but that was the whole purpose. This was a cautionary gesture. And Iran is saying, look, if we're willing to sacrifice 300 drones, we're just willing to

throw these things away. That means we have a lot more that we can launch at you. And if you want to play this game, if you want to go down this route of us expending our inexpensive and easy to build drones and, you know, to a degree, their missiles against your expected expensive and time consuming and limited air defense munitions. We can go down this road. Ask the Ukrainians how well it's working out for them. Before we transition to Ukraine, what would David Cameron do if it was the British embassy that the Israelis had had bombed and destroyed? Oh, he would do, you know, I can't even imagine the righteous bloodlust that would occur if the roles were reversed. Right. I can't even imagine the vitriol, the rhetoric, as well as then the actions that would occur if the roles were reversed, right? I can't even imagine the vitriol, the rhetoric, as well as then the actions that would occur. So yeah, no, I mean, it is the hypocrisy here, when Cameron talks about how the whole world can see what's going on, he's right. I mean,

he gets the second half of that wrong, but he's right in that initial statement. The whole world can see. They can see the West's hypocrisy. They can see the West's hypocrisy. They can see the West's foolishness. They can see the West's suicidal devotion to its own narrative that has linked them in this suicide car going off the cliff with Israel. And the whole world can see that. And I was on with another commentator and he had just this great point he made. Look, two years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine, no one expected the world to line up behind Russia like it did. The usual suspects, right? The vassal states of the American empire, of course, saluted and stood behind the United States. But for the most part, the rest of the world said,

we're not going along with it. This is not the storyline you're pretending it's going to be. And that's, I think, what we're seeing here. The world knows what's happening. They understand the American empire. They understand Israel's aggression, and they are not going to go along with it. Before we leave, Colonel McGregor argues that while everybody's paying attention, at least via the media, on their arms, supposedly the fiercest and most dedicated fighters Ukraine has, have been reported to be deserting to the Russians. Do you have any knowledge of this? I haven't seen those reports, but I've certainly seen the reports coming out of increased concerns among the Ukrainian general staff, some public statements from the most senior Ukrainian general, uh, Siersky, uh, as well as other indications that, um, look, there's been public opinion polls that have come out recently judged from Ukraine, uh, that show the Ukrainian public

is divided on the war, uh, roughly the same amount of Ukrainians, actually, actually more 46 to 45% of Ukrainians prefer to negotiate an end to this war than to fight to the end. And more than half of Ukrainians, I think it was 54 percent in this poll, said they understood why Ukrainian men were avoiding the draft. Basically, what that implies is that more than half of Ukrainians believe that this war is not worth dying for. So what you're seeing is you're seeing this continuation, is this promulgation, right, of one day after another of an unwinnable war having its effect on the population. The Russians continue to put pressure on this front line. We've talked about this before. We don't think that Russia is going to break through and race all the way to Poland's

border and have some World War II style victory. But the weight of the day-to-day accumulation of waging an unwinnable war is becoming more and more apparent. And that, of course, also means that there's a greater and greater risk of a collapse someplace, whether it is an economic collapse, whether it is a governmental collapse, because this is a house of cards, as I always say, as we always say, or a collapse somewhere on the front lines. But yeah, this unwinnable war for Ukraine, it's becoming much, you know, even those who you would not expect to say these war are starting to express doubts, then you really have to say, my God, why can we not end this thing before it gets worse or before there are catastrophic consequences that we can't unwind from? And Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, as we speak, attempting to engineer the passage of the $61 billion support package for Ukraine.

Right. And I saw that Tom Massey said he was going to support a motion to remove, actually. One more Republican supporting that motion. And unless the Democrats vote for Johnson, he's out of a job. Which is, I think we're going to see, Judge. So we're going to see the Democrats line up to support the Republican Speaker of the House in order to send $60 billion, which as we always talk about, right, two thirds of what goes to the American arms companies, but still $60 billion to Ukraine, to this unwinnable war. They're going to support and keep in power the Republican Speaker of the House because of that. Mad times, right? Mad times. I have a lot of friends in the Congress, but Thomas Mass is at the top of the list.

Here he is earlier today. Why are you supporting the motion to oust Mike Johnson? Well, there's only one person right now who can stop us from going into what happened last fall, and that's Mike Johnson. He's cleaning the barn. That's obvious. He had three things to do.

He wanted to do an omnibus that broke all the spending records. He wanted to do FISA without warrants. Now he wants to do Ukraine. Those are the three things. There are people riding him like a horse here. They don't care when the horse collapses. I do, because it's going to throw our conference into turmoil. If he would do what John Boehner did, when John Boehner had at least announced that he was cleaning the barn

and said, I'm leaving, whatever it was, eight weeks hence, or when you find somebody to replace me. I mean, if the country likes Chuck Schumer, then they should like what Speaker Johnson's accomplished in the House. Who would be their successor here? Hey, there's no shortage of people in that room. Yeah, but we went through this last fall. It took us 22 days. It was chaotic. And then we ended up with some guy nobody in america ever heard of the george galloway of the house of representatives speaking uh speaking his mind look mike johnson

engineered a budget that spent and borrowed more money than mrs pelosi fives it without warrants with a greater degree of spying and scrutiny than before? I don't know if the Senate's going to pass it. And now 61 billion to Ukraine. What was accomplished by ousting Kevin McCarthy and replacing him with this fellow? Nothing. And I see the Democrats error in this too, right? The Democrats could have supported McCarthy, kept this all from happening, and Ukraine would have had its money six months ago. Right. I mean, so the, the, it's just not the Republicans that are at fault here in terms of their errors, but also the Democrats as well, in terms of their inability to think more than one step ahead, you know, to think more than the next day's headlines. And of course, but that's

who Chuck Schumer is, Tom Massey referenced him, you know, I mean, that's who that is. The epitome of the Democratic Party Senate, this type of stupidity, for lack of a better term, that creates a situation where it's just not like we've had before, where we've had a House and a Senate that can't pass a budget that meets the needs of the American people without destroying long-term the American economy. We're going to have this intransigence and this dysfunction that doesn't allow them to even do the daily required tasks of the governing body, right, of our legislature. I mean, but this shows for all those folks out there who sometimes feel that there isn't this great overlap between Democrats and Republicans that you need to be concerned about, this shows exactly where it's at. Because the FISA, I'm sorry, the Surveillance Act that was just extended, I mean, that had

huge bipartisan support, right? It also had huge bipartisan disagreement. But where you see that overlap is in the war state, the war party, those who want to expand the war machine, whether it's abroad or here at home. offered an amendment which would have not stopped the intelligence community from spying on foreign persons in America, but would have required warrants for them to spy on all Americans, even Americans that communicate with foreigners. The vote was 2-12 in favor to 2-12 against. Mike Johnson left the Speaker's chair to come down to the floor to vote against. Right. That's how close it was. Before we go, another great Kentuckian, Senator Rand Paul, expressing his views on Mike Johnson. Senator Paul is going to be on the show later this week. Here's what he told my friend and former colleague Maria Bartiromo the other day. What I would say to Speaker Johnson is hold your ground, show some cojones, show some

industrial fortitude, for goodness sakes. You've already passed aid to Israel. Tell Chuck Schumer when he's ready to take it up, take it up and it's going to be paid for. You know, there is the element of Speaker Johnson. Well, just the abandonment of principle. And anyone who knows me knows that I'm not I'm not I'm not I would never be a speaker johnson guy anyway i'm so far politically from him but you know in a sense of like even i am aghast at how much he has moved himself from what principles he might have had you know it shows the pressure that is put on him by the nasa security state those people who go

into his office and brief him on all the great things. Yeah. And then there's the pressures of the lobbies, right? So now that you're speaker, you have a lot more access to lobby money. So whereas before, because of his roles in the Congress, what committees he was on, he was limited in terms of what industrial support he had. Now that he's a speaker, he's got Boeing and Raytheon and all these others lining up to just give him whatever he wants. But then there's also, too, he is, for some reason, he is scared. And maybe this is because he's a politician in Congress and this is who they are, right? They are most concerned about keeping their power and they're afraid of anything that

might threaten it or tarnish that. But he is so scared to death of being labeled as the person who stabbed Ukraine in the back. And they've already been saying this for months now. Oh, the Ukraine war, we would have won that if Speaker Johnson had given us that $60 billion. It's all Speaker Johnson's fault because he didn't give us that money. If we had that money, we'd have won this war, which is complete nonsense. It's complete BS. But he's scared to death that he's going to have to carry that label, even though history is going to show, even though anyone with any sense, anyone with any type of intellectual decency is going to know that this war was unwinnable. And it didn't matter if that $61 billion was appropriated back in October, whether they're appropriated now or it's never appropriated. Plus there's just the whole folly

of this, the whole, you know, what you're entering into is, okay, so you approved that $61 billion now, how many more months until you have to not start proving another $61 billion? I mean, so it doesn't matter if you give them that money or not, because you're basically just keeping a drowning man submerged in that bathtub. Matt, great analysis, my dear friend, on a variety of topics, starting with George Galloway and ending with Speaker Johnson. Thanks for your time. Thanks so much. I hope you'll come back again with us next week. Absolutely. Thanks, Judge. Of course. Eight o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski at four o'clock, Anya Parampil, and at five o'clock, Professor Jeff Sachs, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!