Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: [Live from Israel]:

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Matt Hoh: [Live from Israel]: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, November 19th, 2024. Matt Ho joins us now live from Jerusalem. Matt, it's a pleasure. I know it's late in the day or well into the evening where you are. Thank you very much for joining us. What brought you to Jerusalem and how close did you get to Gaza? So thanks for having me on, Judge. Thanks for making this work. I came to Palestine with a delegation. We're here to be in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation movement and to learn from them.

And so we are going around Palestine, speaking to people throughout Palestinian society, as well as engaging with Israelis where we can, because you have to understand that side as well if you're ever going to overcome it. But yesterday, we went down to Gaza. We met with rabbis. We met with a survivor of the October 7th attacks. And then we went to the Gaza border itself, and we were able to look into Gaza and see the genocide in front of us. What did you see? What impressed you when you looked from Israel into Gaza? Well, first, the drive down, you would not know the country is at war, but you would know the country is in an apartheid state. So we were on because we were part of essentially a tour group, if you will. We had an Israeli charter bus and we had Palestinian guides and a driver and everything. But we were able to use the Israel only roads because we're foreigners.

The Palestinians are not allowed to use the roads in their own land, but foreigners can. Right. So we drove through Israel that is devoid of Palestinians. And as you approach Gaza, you see no signs of the war. It actually was a very placid, peaceful, tranquil hour ride from Jerusalem to Gaza. We didn't hit any checkpoints. The only thing you knew that was occurring was you'd see the yellow flags, the yellow balloons. When you go through a roundabout, you'd see yellow chairs with the faces of the hostages in them. And that's the only way you knew something was going on. When even because even when we got close to Gaza, I was looking at the sky.

I didn't see drones. I didn't see warplanes. A lot of that has shifted north. And actually, just as an aside, what you hear from talking to the people here, including the Israelis, is that the focus of the country is on Lebanon. The focus of the media is on Lebanon. Talking about Gaza has been moved to the side for a number of reasons we discuss all the time, primarily because it's politically hard and difficult and inconvenient for Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition because the hostages are still there. And that's all the Israeli society really cares about. You don't see or hear anything about ending the war. You hear either about total victory, whatever that means to these people, or you hear about getting the hostages

home. You hear maybe something about disengagement, which is how they talk about Gaza, disengagement, but you don't hear about ending the war. But when we got to the Gaza border, and we were about 600 meters from the fence line, and then there's another 2,000 meters past that to where the built-up area of northern Gaza was. Of course, as everyone knows, northern Gaza is where the genocide within a genocide is taking place. So we were a mile and a half or so from 300,000 people who were being forcibly starved to death by the Israelis. What is grotesque and absurd and obscene that I was not expecting was where we went to to look at Gaza. I was expecting we would go to a hillside or there'd be a field that we could look across or something. We went to an observation

platform, Judge. We went to an observation deck, just like you have overlooking Niagara Falls, including with the big binoculars where you put the coins in so you could see. And this is an observation platform that looks into Gaza, an observation platform that observes the genocide. And as we were there looking at Gaza, which is the experience itself, because you feel like a voyeur, you feel like a tourist,

you find yourself disgusted with yourself that you're standing here watching this. But you're also so far removed. You're so far, you're so separate from it that it's septic. It's sanitary. You don't see anything that's actually occurring there. You don't hear the screams. You don't hear the dying.

You don't see the wrecked bodies. You can't even really make out the damaged buildings. But from this observation platform, it's very picturesque. It's as if you're watching a movie, essentially. But what was really, and I'm still trying to come to terms with this, I'm trying to find the right words to describe this, was the fact that as we were there trying to understand how we were relating to this genocide occurring in front of us, an Israeli school field trip showed up. And these children, these teenagers, they came from two hours away to come and watch the genocide.

And the first Russia boys to the top of the hill to that observation platform, when they caught sight of Gaza, when they caught sight of the genocide, they pumped their fists and they gave the middle finger to it and they were very, very excited. And so the idea that there weren't just, it was really citizens who were looking at this, gawking at it, but school children having brought on a field trip from two hours away to come and watch the genocide is just an aspect of what's occurring here that my visceral reaction to it is one that I'm really troubled by and having a hard time to process because it's that aspect of genocide that I observed directly

where the population sees it as entertainment, where you have this complete dismissal of the Palestinians as human beings, but as some form of other, that observing their mass murder is something that's just not acceptable among the population, but as part of their school curriculum. So that is, you know, sitting here a day after, as you can tell, I'm still trying to figure out what the hell I saw yesterday. is, you know, sitting here a day after, as you can tell, I'm still trying to figure out what the hell I saw yesterday. And, you know, I wrote a piece about this, it's on my sub stack. And the subtitle was, the horror I experienced was not what I expected. So, you know, but the whole idea of what's occurring there, and where it fits into society and the absence of it from Israeli

discourse, even as they are continuing to drop heavy, heavy amounts of munitions, continue to do mass amounts of controlled demolitions. While we were there, I didn't see any airstrikes. I didn't see artillery rounds impacting. I didn't see any controlled demolitions, but I saw a heck of a lot of dust clouds and dust clouds that were coming from armored bulldozers and heavy equipment that were physically destroying Gaza, preparing it for eventual settlement. yesterday, the woman who, I'm blanking on her name, the woman who runs the Israeli settlement program was in Gaza. She went into the Netzerim corridor, which is the east-west axis that the Israelis have built across Gaza, separating the north from the south, and she brought with her 40 trailers or 40 caravans. And she said that within the year we will be living in Gaza. Did you have any encounters with the IDF?

Today I did. I mean, you see them, but again, heading towards Gaza, you saw none of that. It was so picturesque, our drive to Gaza. It was very surreal. It was Kafkaesque. Today, I was in Hebron, which people are familiar with. Hebron is the largest Palestinian city. It's also the only Palestinian city besides Jerusalem that has a settler presence within it and a heavy IDF presence to protect, I want to say protect, to enable the settlers. I think there's about 4,000 IDF soldiers stationed in and around Hebron.

And today going through Hebron with Palestinian activists and seeing what's occurring there, including the economic strangulation of the population, came across an Israeli soldier, a kid. He was six months out of high school, standing post. So I was able to talk to him for a while. The tragedy of all this, this kid carrying this rifle, he was probably 115 pounds. If that, this young man who has talked to him, and we couldn't talk to him for too long because a settler showed up and made his presence known. And I'm sure that that kid got his ass chewed after he left. But he was very happy to be in Hebron. He didn't want to be in Gaza.

You know, so you're here and you're witnessing this, this genocide, you're witnessing this occupation, the constant humiliation that occurs to the Palestinians every day. Just one example from today. So one of the Palestinians we're working with, we're going through this occupied part of Hebron and a couple of members of our delegation go to use the bathroom. The Israeli soldiers would not let the Palestinian who was with us use the bathroom. It's that type of humiliation that occurs every hour, every day. So you see that, but then you also come across this kid with a rifle who's 18 years old, who, why is this happening to him? So you can have that compassion for that side as well. I also was very close to Ben-Gabir's house today and also walking through, see the settlers.

I met a man, I spoke to a Palestinian man whose home is surrounded by the settlers and surrounded by the Israeli army and talking to others who live there. Judge, they have no hope. The one man whose home is surrounded by the settlers, he says, since I was born, my life has been a continual nightmare. Activists we work with, including one I've known for seven years, who have been jailed. They've been beaten.

They were both, the two I spoke with today, were both sexually assaulted by the IDF. When you talk to them about what's coming, they don't see a future. They see a future where they will be expelled from Hebron. These are people who are desperate, who are being strangled, who are being humiliated every day. And now, as we know, as I'm sure you've been talking about on this program, you had last week Bezalel Smotris, the finance minister, who's also essentially the governor of the West Bank, saying, you know, the plans are in place. We will annex the West Bank in the next year. But you come across other things, too, Judge.

And this is one thing I want to make sure I spoke to you about is I spoke with a Palestinian woman two nights ago. And she talked about radical acts of hope. And so I said, what does that mean? What are radical acts of hope? And this is incredibly heartbreaking. But what she finds hope in is in the farmers in Gaza who are going out into the fields trying to grow food to feed their people who are being murdered by the IDF, the fishermen who are trying to get out to fish and being murdered by the IDF, the municipal workers who are going out trying to turn the water on, trying to get the electricity

on, trying to keep the sewage lines from overflowing who are being murdered every day by the IDF, the teachers who are teaching the children in Gaza who are being murdered every day by the AF, the teachers who are teaching the children in Gaza who are being murdered by the AF. That's what she described as radical acts of hope. And so you see within these people here, these Palestinians who have been under, have had a war waged against them, a war of ethnic cleansing for over 100 years, you see this generational steadfastness, what they call Samud, but it's fraying because the pressure on them, the way this is heading, in particular with Trump's election, the despair here is very great. But also as well, these are people who have borne this out, who have made steadfast,

but there's also the reality of the bulldozer. There's a rally of the rifle round, right? The bullet. There's a rally of the drones. And, you know, where maybe that wasn't possible for the IDF to be as brutal and as forceful and complete in their efforts to ethnically cleanse before, they have done that in Gaza. They're in the process of doing that in Gaza. We've seen what they've done in Lebanon. And, of course, now with Trump coming into office and this ruling government here, they feel they have to go ahead

and carry that out in the West Bank. Did you have your passport taken? It wasn't taken, but I was stopped today by the Israeli police, and they asked me who I was, what I was doing there, whether I was Muslim or Jewish. I said Christian, and they kind of took a step back at that. But, yeah, they did take your passport.

But, you know, this last time I was here, Judge, I was with the Veterans for Peace delegation. We talked about that one time and we we caused a lot of good trouble when I was here and have my passport taken a number of times. And that was much more serious here. I think it was more just a curiosity that who's this, you know, Western, who's this tall guy, Western guy walking down the street with a Palestinian man and a blonde woman. And I think the sight of us was just a curiosity or an irony, but it's also part of what they do. So they constantly, other members of my delegation today were held up by the IDF for a while. Again, the way the IDF and the Israeli police do these acts of humiliation, of showing who's in charge, who controls.

Those efforts are done to intimidate. They're done to cause despair. What they did today, I think maybe for myself and for my colleagues, you know, taking my passport was try and put the fear into me of like, okay, if you're going to come here and you're going to walk with a Palestinian down our street, even though this is Hebron, this is a Palestinian city, they feel it's their street. This was only a block or so from the Abraham mosque. You know, maybe the thought was that we're going to hassle this guy and he'll think twice next time about walking down this street with a Palestinian or coming here to Hebron or coming here to, you know, as they call it, Judea and Samaria. So they call the West Bank or coming

here to Israel. You know, so you see that constant efforts of occupation to humiliate, to control, to beat down. And for someone like me, Judge, right, who took part in the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's like holding a mirror up to my face, because I see the actions of the IDF, what we did in Iraq and what we did in Afghanistan. And this is why, even I was just talking about the loss of hope, the despair, how, you know, you're going up against a drone and a bulldozer and the rifle, you know, what hope do these people have? You have the other side of that, where as long as they continue to do that, there will be resistance. And the more they oppress, the more they humiliate, the more they debase the population here, the resistance will only get stronger, just as we encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So there is almost a futility to what the IDF and what the Israelis are doing here that necessitates them taking a harder approach. Essentially, the only way they can be successful is if they fully ethnically cleanse the population. And unfortunately, that's just not what the of the population is in favor of, but it's also, Netanyahu, whose troubles only continue to grow with the arrest and continued detention of his former spokesperson, with the allegations of his being involved in the release of a classified document, and with his now being ordered to give testimony against himself and his own criminal prosecution now back on track next month. Yeah, that seems to be what's dominating the media here. And I had it pointed out by two people to be careful of not confusing the Hebrew language media and the English language media.

And so I know yourself, myself, those who come on this program, those who are watching, we rely on Haaretz quite a bit, you know, translated copies of Ynet, things like that. And that's different than what the Israeli population consumes. The story about the story that this scandal with Netanyahu and his staff and these forged documents, this manipulated intelligence is the biggest story here right now, as far as I can tell. Lebanon is after that, and then the West Bank and then Gaza. The popularity of Netanyahu, I get the feeling from the people I speak with is that it's what we appreciate it as. It's very mixed that if an election was to be held today, there are some polls that say he would remain in power, other polls that say he would not remain in power.

So I've asked that question a couple of times times and I don't get a straight answer. You know, the things that are really concerning the Israelis, it seems to me, are, of course, the hostages, this fascination with the war in Lebanon, as well as then, too, I think some more day-to-day issues, more kitchen table issues, if you will, because the economy is bleeding out. Not as bad as the Palestinians are being affected by it, but the Israeli economy is struggling. So there's a lot of being here and being so close. Again, I was 600 meters from the genocide, or I guess more appropriately, 2,500 meters

where the people live who are enduring that extermination campaign. And now I'm an hour's drive from it. And you wouldn't know. You wouldn't know. You wouldn't know this country's at war. Were you allowed to enter Gaza, to take photos, to talk to any of these poor people?

No, you couldn't get any closer than we got. I don't think it's possible for anyone to get any closer. You might be able to get closer to the crossing point. However, that was off limit to us. That's where we were originally going to go to was the crossing point. But then for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, we had to move to this observation deck. So no, you can't get close to it. You can't get in there. As far as I know, there's only been one international journalist who has gotten into Gaza in the last 13 months. And she was only there for half a day, I believe, a CNN reporter. Excuse me. So nobody

gets in. And as well, you're seeing reports that it's become very, very difficult for medical personnel, for healthcare workers to get into Gaza, that they've tightened everything. As people know, the number of trucks that have gotten into Gaza are low double digits, right? And that's all part of this, you know, the general's plan to surrender or starve plan to ethnically cleanse the North. And, you know, again, that was the part we were closest to. And so it was right there, you could see it, but you, again, you couldn't see the details of it. So it was very clean, if you will. We were very removed from it. And so the whole thing was so incredibly surreal, but it was also horrific, particularly when we were confronted with these school kids who were coming to watch this on a school field trip, as well as the rest of the society. We met with Israelis in the town of

Sederot, which is about seven kilometers from the border. Hamas militants, Hamas fighters had gotten in there. They took over a police station. The police station was burned down. And they will say sensible things, but then you get to the point where they say things that they will not acknowledge as a genocide. They will pretend as if not much is happening there, or they're not aware what's happening there, when they are only seven kilometers. And it annoyed me to the point that I asked them that question, can you hear the airstrikes? Because the way they were speaking was as if they didn't know this genocide was occurring or they couldn't, they didn't have enough information to tell what was going on there, you know? So within the public, there is

either those who hate, who are in full favor of the ethnic cleansing, or those who are pretending it's not happening because it is a very difficult and taboo subject to talk about. And it all comes back to, I think, Americans be familiar with this, this idea of security, where post, you know, Judge, you were great about this stuff, right? After 9-11, though, you couldn't talk about doing anything rational. You couldn't talk about following the Constitution because of security. And that's the same type of cover, a blanket that is thrown over any type of discussion. And again, there is no discussion about ending the war in Gaza. It's either about getting the hostages back or finishing the job, total military victory. Again, whatever that means to the Israelis. Very sad story, Matt. And you're very, very, very courageous to go there and make those observations. When will you be back to the U.S.? I get back the day before Thanksgiving. I fly into JFK at 8 a.m. the day before Thanksgiving.

So folks out there, light a candle, say a prayer. All right. You're always in a.m. the day before Thanksgiving. So folks out there, yeah, light a candle, say a prayer. All right. You're always good. It would be nice. Next week's a short week for all of us. It would be nice if we could have you on again before you leave, but I'll leave that to Chris and to your schedule. Thank you for joining us, Matt.

God bless you. Thank you, Josh. Go in peace. Travel safely. And the one thing I will make a pitch for is that the Palestinians need people to come here. One of the things that is so heavy for me, I'm trying to figure out the right word to say, is the fact that they are so sincere in thanking us for being here. When we were in Hebron, when we were in Bethlehem, in the old city here in Jerusalem, the fact that we were here

with them means everything to them. And for us, it might be hard to understand that. I still find it hard to understand, but they do. And so if people are interested, there are organizations and you can get in touch with me, go through my sub stack, matthewho.substack or whatever it is, contact me on Twitter or whatnot. And I'll put you in touch with some organizations because they need people to come here and to be in solidarity with them because one, it shows a determination of the world to stand with the Palestinian people, but it's also what they need to maintain their own steadfastness. Thank you, Matt. All the best. God bless you. All right. Thanks, Judge.

Of course. Coming up, remaining today at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on all of these topics, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. you