Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh : Netanyahu’s War on the Press to Hide Genocide in Gaza

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Matt Hoh : Netanyahu’s War on the Press to Hide Genocide in GazaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Matt, my dear friend, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. So a group of thugs said in writing to a prosecutor, target our friend and we will target you. We will make sure you and your employees and your associates and your families never come to the United States. You have been warned. Right.

Now the mob, the mobsters would know not to put this in writing this is well this is 12 united states senators threatening an international prosecutor in writing on official government letterhead uh thanks for having me back on judge uh you know it's it's uh the criminality on display here, right? Again, the thuggishness, they're racketeers, they're gangsters. I mean, this is despicable behavior from anyone, let alone from the U.S. government. Although I guess many people, when I say that, are saying, come on, Matt, this is what the U.S. government is like. It has been, always has been. You can ask plenty of various

constituencies around the world what the United States government has done to them and how they behaved. But this letter of 12 GOP senators, including one of my senators from here in North Carolina, Ted Budd, is the gall of it. And I think it's what we'd expect, Judge. We've spoken about this before, about how last week when Benjamin Netanyahu brought up this idea or these rumors that the International Criminal Court may be filing arrest warrants against Netanyahu, the Israeli defense minister, the Israeli army chief of staff. You know, Netanyahu's response was predictable. He slammed it as an anti-Semitic hate act.

And in doing so in that talk, he put forward the commands for those who are under his thumb here in the U.S., both in the media and in the government and in the Congress, to do something about it. And so here we see that this was to be expected, although the chutzpah, if you will, of this letter is really, really breathtaking. But it is what's to be expected. And it is just one more piece of evidence that shows the decline of the American empire, how the American empire is destroying itself, how the rest of the world is doing everything it can, with the exception of you're getting down

to really a handful of European nations now, and maybe the Japanese, the Koreans, the Australians, but the rest of the world is really beginning to understand that we have to get away from this empire before it destroys us, just as it destroys itself. You put your finger right on it. We're no longer a republic, we're an empire. I don't know if you've seen this before, and if you have, forgive me, but it's appropriate now. This is Netanyahu bitterly and sarcastically addressing what the Israelis leaked to the international news media, and that is that indictments are being prepared, and he's one of the targets. You have to hear this to believe this. The International Criminal Court in The Hague is contemplating issuing arrest warrants

against senior Israeli government and military officials as war criminals. This would be an outrage of historic proportions. International bodies like the ICC arose in the wake of the Holocaust committed against the Jewish people. They were set up to prevent such horrors, to prevent future genocides. Yet now the International Court is trying to put Israel in the dock.

It's trying to put us in the dark as we defend ourselves against genocidal terrorists and regimes, Iran of course, that openly works to destroy the one and only Jewish state. I guess not to be surprised, you know, Israel is not a member of the International Criminal Court, neither is the United States, but this would seriously impair his ability to travel if he's indicted and there's an arrest warrant. There'd be 125 countries in which he could be arrested the minute his plane land in those countries, no matter what kind of security he had with them. as uncomfortable as that may be for him, it fits into his narrative and it fits into the narrative of those who are in favor of the Zionist project, greater Israel, fortress Israel, that they are a besieged people. And certainly if you see the rhetoric coming out of, say, our Capitol or on display on our corporate media here in the U.S., it is along those lines that we have to do everything we can to defend Israel against all of these outside forces,

these universal historic forces that are once again arrayed against them. And you see, though, how clearly he puts forward his marching orders and how quickly the Congress snaps to attention. Just as, Judge, we saw last week Netanyahu issue his condemnation of American free speech and demand that the United States do something about students who are peacefully assembling to demonstrate against a genocide. Netanyahu condemns it. And what do we see start happening? The destruction of those college encampments, the assault on the free speech, the assault on the right to assemble is doubled. It's tripled, right? And we even saw last night more at SUNY New Paltz, I think they arrested 130 students. I mean, so we see clearly here the hierarchy at play in the way that regardless of what polling says,

whether the American people on this, regardless of what international law says, regardless of federal law says, that the hierarchy here is that Netanyahu is in command of American media and political forces, and they will follow his lead. And the only thing that can countervail that, of course, is whether or not the White House determines that he has become a hindrance to them getting reelected. But that is something we haven't seen them make the determination of yet. Possibly they'll do it in the future if it gets so bad. But, you know, I'm not willing to bet any money on that. I don't think many people are. Do you think that Netanyahu's personal involvement in this, much like what we just saw, is the reason for the ferocity of this crackdown? I mean,

at Princeton University, and I'm ashamed since I'm an alumnus there, students were arrested for chanting at the wrong time of day and in the wrong place. The president of the university set aside, you can make all the noise you want at 830 at night in this particular place. If it's not 830 and you're somewhere else, we're going to arrest you. Arrest you? Now, these charges that accompany the arrests, I mean, the vast majority of them will be thrown out. Judges are just not going to get involved in this political nonsense. But my question is the ferocity of these crackdowns from the police in New York City dressed like Marines charging a hill to the police in L.A., dressed the same way. Why so ferocious? Is it because of Netanyahu's personal involvement? I don't think it's his personal involvement. He's the man. And of course, Netanyahu has a special place in all of this. He has been among the right in Israel at the vanguard for decades now. And so I don't want to diminish his role or

his prominence. But if this was Benny Gantz, if this was Yad Lapid, this is really any other Israeli leader, you would see the same type of allegiance. You would see the same type of haste in following their direction. And that is because that role, Prime Minister of Israel, is a leadership role. It is a figurehead role. It is a lodestar. So he's not just speaking, say, to the 12 cretins and thugs that signed that letter to the ICC from the U.S. Senate. He's also speaking to the media, but he's also speaking to the Zionists within the United States, including many who are major donors to universities who are then calling the university and saying, if you do not get if you do not shut this down, if you do not shut these kids up, I'm not giving you five million dollars next year. I'm not giving you ten million dollars next year. I'm not giving you $20 million, whatever it is that they give.

So, you know, it is a position that just by the weight of that office, the role of that office as the leader of Israel, as the head of the Zionist project, well, that commands that attention, that commands that respect, and that commands that deference. Here's what Netanyahu did yesterday in Israel, kicking out Al Jazeera and confiscating their equipment. Watch this. After discussion in the political security cabinet and following my guidance, the government will today discuss the closure of Al Jazeera broadcasts in Israel. Al Jazeera reporters harmed Israeli security and incited against IDF soldiers. It's time to remove the Hamas from our country. And I thank communications minister Shlomo Kari for his action on the matter. The government has now ordered the closure of the incitement mouthpiece of Hamas in Israel to the channel of Jezira the turtles. They were just signed. We are putting them into practice. A mouthpiece of

Hamas, anyone who infers against the state of Israel, anyone who harms the security of Israel, and the soldiers and fighters of the IDF will no longer be broadcast here from Israel, and his equipment will be confiscated. Wow. Anyone who infers against the state of Israel will have their equipment confiscated. They don't even make a pretense at having the freedom of speech, do they? No, they do not. I will say this, they're doing this because, of course, they feel threatened. They viewed Al Jazeera as a nuisance, as an annoyance, but they've been able to tolerate it. But now they feel threatened.

And, you know, this is hard to say as we stare and we continue to watch. You know, today, Israel ordered the evacuation of Rafah. I caught some of the Israeli army spokesperson, Amir Hogari's statements today. He talked about how Israel had carried out 50 airstrikes already in Rafah today. So as we're watching this, as we're watching this genocide, the death of upwards of 20,000 children, it's hard to say this, but we are winning. We are winning this. And when they resort to things like banning Al Jazeera,

when they resort to things like banning TikTok, when they become desperate and when they flail and when they send out ridiculous letters. Yes, in the short term, in the short term, this looks bleak. But why are they acting this way? Why are they so out of control? Why are they panicking? Because they know they are losing. And this is why we all need to stay steady and focused on this, stay steadfast, smooth as the Palestinians stay, and continue on in solidarity, supporting the Palestinians, but also supporting all of the rights that the Palestinians are aspiring to, because that's where you can see this connection, what are the Palestinians fighting for? They're fighting for their own rights. They're fighting for all the rights that we enjoy here. They're fighting for their sovereignty, both as individuals, as families, as communities, as a nation. And that is what we are watching be ripped away from us as our government continues to support Israel and

Israel's attempt to deny the Palestinians their freedom, their rights, their sovereignty. So we can see that as they continue to make these moves, banning this thing, banning that thing, shutting down this, arresting 19 year olds because they have the gall to wear a keffiyeh and say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. You know, we see in that their reasons are that they are scared because they know they are losing and they cannot keep up. They cannot keep this going. And so that's why we have to keep up with the pressure. Is there anything that they could do that the U.S. government would not stand by them for? At this point, I don't know, Judge. I think we spoke about this a couple weeks

ago. I feel like they could drop a nuclear weapon. They could detonate a nuclear weapon and destroy all of Rafa, all of southern Gaza, and the United States Congress would cheer. Those 12 men and women from the U.S. Senate who wrote that letter to the ICC, don't you think they'd write the same letter congratulating Netanyahu for using a nuclear weapon, defending Netanyahu and Israel? I shouldn't say Netanyahu because it's Israel, Israel for using a nuclear weapon. So I can't see everything we have seen, whether it's the mass executions, the deliberate starvation, the destruction of 75, 80% of the homes, the destruction of the agricultural land. I mean, on and on and on. We could spend the whole episode, Judge, just

reciting what Israel has done to deliberately and systematically destroy the Palestinian people to commit this genocide. So I don't know what they could do that they would not receive U.S. support for. Here's one senator who certainly would not sign that letter. You may argue this is too little too late, but it is a powerful and that unique voice of his defense of the First Amendment. They are out there not because they are pro-Khomas. They are out there because they are outraged by what the Israeli government is now doing in Gaza, which is bringing unbelievable harm, not just to the terrorist organization of Khomas, but to the entire Palestinian people. And that's why these anti-war demonstrators are out there.

They do not want to see a situation continue where 110,000 Palestinians out of, you know, 5 percent of the population have been killed or wounded, where children now face starvation. Hundreds of thousands of children face starvation because Israel is refusing to allow humanitarian aid to get to where it has to go. Demonstrations is what, and the right to dissent, the right to protest, that is what the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States is all about. That's what, in fact, makes you a free country. Being a free country means that somebody goes out and demonstrates, you don't have to agree with them, they have the right.

That's the difference between autocracy and dictatorship in a free country. But for anybody to suggest that we cannot be critical of the government of Israel or the government of Italy or the government of Ireland, for whatever reason, is not what democracy is about. So I happen to believe, not everybody agrees with me, that the war policies of the Netanyahu government are a disaster. They are causing unprecedented harm. They are in violation

of international law and absolutely in violation of American law, by the way. But I think people who are critical, the idea that people who are critical of what Netanyahu is doing are anti-Semitic, that is nonsense. And that is a very, very dangerous line to cross in terms of freedom of expression in this country. I am thinking back, and other people are making this reference, that this may be Biden's Vietnam. Paul Jay

Bravo, Bernie. I wish you had said it six months ago, but whatever, he finally had had enough. And to his credit, Matt, no one in the Congress has spoken quite that forcefully and articulately that I'm aware of up to this point. Right. And I'm reminded today, Sam Husseini had a post out today where he talked about George Washington's warnings of exactly this. Washington said, a passionate attachment of one nation to another produces a variety of evil, and then goes on at great lengths to describe that. And that's what we're seeing here. We're seeing a variety of evil in the sense of the harms that are coming to us, the United States, because of this passionate attachment, as George Washington would describe it, to Israel by the U.S.

We're also seeing this dichotomy emerge in our country of those who support the flag versus those who support the constitution. You know, and I see in that, right, this desire to support a symbol, a piece of cloth, something that doesn't have substance to it. It is only an image. So it's a narrative. It's a political statement. But there's no, there certainly is no order to it. There's no law to it, as opposed to, say, the Constitution. Right. Which is what we put. We both but judge both you and I made oaths to. I made oaths to the Constitution as a Marine Corps officer. I made oaths to the Constitution, not to a flag. But we see in this country this dichotomy, this split between those who are foaming at the mouth over the flag while disregarding the Constitution. And, you know, I think this is one of the harms that Washington spoke of, one of the evils, was this. Yeah. So Anya Parampo just pointed out an hour or so ago, the same crowd wanting these student protesters on college campuses to be arrested, not wanting to hear the speech that they hate,

defend to the skies the demonstrators on January 6th. Right. How could you possibly have those two opposite views in your brain at the same time? It's the speech I like that I'll defend rather than the speech I hate. The whole reason for the First Amendment is to protect the speech you hate. The speech you like doesn't need protection because you like it. Right. And for people watching and listening who haven't listened to the judge's talk last Friday, I guess it was, Judge, where you gave a bit of a lecture on the First Amendment. You put your professor hat back on. Really excellent. Really excellent. Because I think we lose sight of what it actually means, particularly this idea that free speech comes not from what the government's giving to us, but it is a right bestowed to us, whether it's from the creator or from our own humanity, as you explained so well. But also too, then the dissonance that exists among people who swear to their patriotism, who swear by their allegiance to the flag, but then dismiss what those symbols actually mean

and what they're supposed to represent. And they put more stock in the representation, in the imagery, in the metaphor, if you will, than they do in the actual subject, in the actual substance. But this hypocrisy, but again, we are a nation ruled by hypocrites and liars. So why would we expect anything different that from the mobs that show up to choke off our rights, the attack dogs that are unleashed by our politicians, by our corporate media, who themselves are unleashed by, say, the Israeli government, by Netanyahu. So you see a flow in all this, an order in all this. And that's why I want to go back to this idea of that, why we're winning, because we can understand the order, we can

understand how they work, and we can attack it. It may have to be asymmetric, but it is something that we are seceding at. And I want to encourage people not to lose hope. As you see these college students getting arrested, go out and join the ones that are showing back up again. Find ways to fight this in any way you can. Stand in solidarity, not with just our college students, of course, but with the Palestinian people of Gaza who are enduring this genocide. You know, Senator Sanders made a very, very interesting prediction at the end of the clip we just ran. It was a long clip. Chris edited it down. And that is that this Gaza may become

Joe Biden's Vietnam. Well, Vietnam cost the Democrats the White House in 1968. Do you think that these demonstrators politically actually help Donald Trump? That's the last thing they want, but do you think that they do? I think they, well, yeah, unintentionally, of course, it is the last thing that they want, I think, but what they want more so is justice for the Palestinian people, recognition of what is occurring. I think most of us on the left who are not going to vote for Joe Biden, knowing that that might mean a Trump presidency, say, well, how could anyone provide such support to those who are carrying out genocide? So there's no way that anyone could vote for Joe Biden without themselves then being fully complicit in the genocide by endorsing it with their vote. And so by you know, and this is when we get into a whole other conversation, Judge, of course, on why we need a multi-party democracy, you know, et cetera, ranked choice voting, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, certainly where this is heading to, I think Bernie's point is well taken. You've said this,

Judge, lots of folks have talked about this. We are heading right towards the convention in Chicago in August, just as the convention, the Democratic Convention in Chicago occurred in August of 1968, we are heading right there. That is where we are barreling towards. And unless Joe Biden, so I said earlier, the only thing that can be the counterweight to Netanyahu is for Joe Biden to realize that he has no re-election chance whatsoever, other than standing up to Israel, other than standing up to Netanyahu and ending this genocide. That is his only reelection chance. Otherwise, he is going to lose four, five, six, seven million voters. There's a poll out a week or so ago that showed only about 15% of the electorate was going to vote on this as an issue or was in their top three

considerations in terms of voting. But that's still 15 percent. You're talking about about 12 million voters for Joe Biden, maybe more. You know, he loses those 12 million voters or 10 million voters or eight million voters. He doesn't beat Donald Trump. I mean, it's that simple. And so these men and women, as we've talked about again before, George, these are people who only value the seats they're in. Right. Power is everything to them. And this is the only way we can't you can't argue with these people. We can't be rational with Joe Biden or Tony Blinken or Matt Miller, any of those or any of those men and women. We can't be. And so the only thing you can do is challenge their power. Only thing you do is threaten their power. And this is what's threatening his power. And that's why you got to

keep it every campaign stop that Joe Biden goes to, that Kamala Harris goes to, they need to be met by hundreds of people who are going to disrupt their campaign. So it shows up on the local news, right? I mean, it has to become the signature feature of the Biden Harris campaign is a disruption caused by those who are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people. You do that, you keep this up through Chicago. And while maybe it doesn't end the genocide, but it ends the Biden presidency. And perhaps at some point that makes the Democratic Party realize that its commitment to Israel is destructive to itself. Before we go, switching to the other hotspot, Lord David Cameron, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain and now Foreign Minister, said Ukraine has the right to use British weapons on Russia. And the Russian Foreign Ministry responded and said, we will destroy those weapons and perhaps the places from which they came.

Why would Cameron be so idiotic as to make a statement like that, almost literally poking the bear? This is the establishment that he represents. And that's what they want to hear. They want someone who's going to double down. The empire wants men like David Cameron to speak confidently and brashly, to speak with the gall of American senators who threaten the international criminal court. This is what they want. This is how you, while you prove your worth to the empire. How do you think Cameron got back into this job? He was out of power. You know, he talked to my British friends.

He's not the most popular guy there in Britain, but somehow he became their foreign minister again. Well, because he's reliable, because they knew exactly this would be the man who would keep on task. He would keep on this purpose. He will persevere. And so now you've reached the point

where you have these threats going back and forth. France, of course, is saying they're going to send troops to Ukraine, possibly. And the response from the Russians is that if you do so, you will see escalation. You know, the Ukrainians and NATO are threatening to destroy the Kerch Bridge. Russia's response will be we will destroy many more things in Ukraine many times over. The response will be overwhelming, just as we've seen happen over and over again in this war. Destroy Nord Stream pipeline, attack Ukrainian oil, attack Russian oil facilities, and Russia destroys Ukraine's energy infrastructure. I mean, it's a tit for tat, but now we've gotten to the point where you are starting to reach, as you climb the escalation

ladder, you're starting to reach the top of it. And what we've seen now are these threats of, yes, use British weapons to attack targets deep inside Russia. We've already sent the ATAKOMS missiles here from the United States. Next thing I guarantee, or I would imagine they're going to ask for the ground launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, right? I mean, so you could see this continual tit for tat. And today, the tat for the tit from Russia was that the Russians are launching major nuclear weapons exercises, which again, we are now on this, we have been on this escalatory trajectory, Judge, that nobody should consider an acceptable risk.

And as this thing continues to march forward, led by fools and madmen like David Cameron, we are reaching, you know, as I've said before, an apocalyptic point of no return. Beautifully and brilliantly said, Matt. Thank you very much. Thank you, Josh. All the rest of the week because of my traveling. Thank you for coming on on Monday. Thank you for this time. It's a long marathon for us, but I know the viewers appreciate your work. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Okay. We'll see you next week, my friend.

Okay. We are almost finished with this day, but the day is a fascinating one. Coming up at three o'clock, Phil Giraldi, 4.30, Scott Ritter, 5.30, All Times Eastern, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Justin Politano for Judging Freedom. I'm