Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: The PR War and Free Speech

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Matt Hoh: The PR War and Free SpeechSee 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, January 23rd, 2024. Matt Ho joins us now. Matt, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for your time. You and I recently discussed an instance in which the Prime Minister Netanyahu's allies in the United States attempted to stifle free speech in the United States, critical of the Netanyahu regime. I get it that they do that over there, but does Israel really think it can affect the PR war and free speech here in the U.S.? Oh, it does, and it's been trying to do so for literally decades. What you're referring to, Judge, I think, as the Supreme Court decision this week dismissing or not, I guess, not taking up a lower court's ruling on a suit brought against Palestinian rights group by an Israeli lobby organization, alleging that the Palestinian rights group should not be allowed the basic First Amendment protections afforded to, you know, U.S. and U.S. entities because it was sponsoring terrorism. It was a terrorist mouthpiece. And, you know, this has been going on since 2019, this particular lawsuit. You know, federal court, district court ruled against the Israeli lobby on this, said, of course, the Palestinians have the right to speak as anyone does. That was appealed. It went

to federal appeals court where, again, that appeal was dismissed. And then because of the way it works, particularly if you have the money behind you, they were able to go to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court, rightly, of course, I think most people recognize that you cannot cancel, you cannot shut down somebody's right to free speech, regardless of how you feel about them. This is exactly what this Israeli lobby and other allies within the American political establishment, media establishment, wanted to see. Supreme Court rejected this, of course. But the thing that concerned me, Judge, it was a five to four decision. This should have been like nine zero. And I don't understand. I mean, the way it was, the Supreme Court response to this didn't provide details. It didn't provide that level of information as to why the justices voted the way they did. But it's concerning because they came

close to affirming this right to shut down Palestinian groups. And of course, everyone understands the danger in that, right? The slippery slope of that, where what would it take then to then push that on to Black Lives Matter or to an anti-tax organization or whichever group or ideology is out of favor with those who have power, particularly, again, the money and the resources to launch these types of multi-year lawsuits. Which very few people can afford to resist. That's part of it, Judge.

So whether or not they were successful, what are the coffers, what are the bank accounts for these Palestinian rights groups looking like right now? Having to defend themselves for five years in federal courts gets very expensive. And so that's part of the strategy as well. The Israeli group, these are Americans, I guess it's AIPAC or a group like that, said that what the Palestinian group was doing with its speech was aiding terrorism. Now, that, of course, is a hot potato. But you remember in the days and weeks and months following 9-11, when the Bush administration and the Congress were going crazy, writing new laws in an effort to cover their backsides for being asleep at the switch on 9-11 and expanding

the definition of aid to terrorism. Even that law enacted in the fear and mania of the Patriot Act and all those awful things they did to human freedom right after 9-11, even that statute has an exception in it for speech and for First Amendment activities. So if somebody stands on a public street corner outside of Fox News on 6th Avenue and 47th Street and makes a statement derogatory towards the IDF and supportive of Hamas, that statement is protected. It is just speech. Even though people in Gaza may take comfort in seeing that, it is just speech. I'm sure the Bush administration reluctantly accepted that exception in the statute, but they wouldn't have passed it without it. Can we say that Israel continues to lose the PR war? And when it does things like this, like what we're talking about, go to court in America to silence somebody in America

being critical of Netanyahu in Israel, they lose the PR war even more? You know, this is a tough question, I think, because on the face of it, absolutely, yes, they're losing the PR world. They are isolated, you know, in a recent vote in the United Nations, I think it was last week in the UN General Assembly, or I'm sorry, it was at the end of December, that affirmed the right for the Palestinians

to have self-determination, to have their own state. You know, all but three nations voted, you know, voted against Israel on that. Israel, United States and two Pacific Island nations, one of which is bound by international treaty, by compact, to always vote with the United States in the UN. Right. I mean, so but, you know, I mean, so how isolated they are. The public opinion in the United States, say, the sentiment, the way we've seen attitudes towards Israel and Palestine shift in the last decade, two decades in the United States, particularly among younger Americans,

to how they perceive what's occurring in there. What they know is occurring over there. But, you know, so that's the face view of it, right? The face value of it, Judge, what we see. But I think we have to remember what are the goals of Israel? And their goals are to speak to those they already have in their camp. They view themselves both in their ideology and I think in their strategy as embracing a fortress Israel. And as long as we have the United States

backing us, as long as we have particularly have that world's reserve currency backing us, we can take on whoever we want. We can do whatever we want. Now is the time to advance, to achieve the greater Israel that we have been trying to achieve for decades, for 100 years, basically. So I think with their PR, while again, on the face of it, it's a joke, it's embarrassing, it's humiliating. They keep saying things over and over again that are untrue. And, you know, to the point of where it's almost like a silent live parody. But the thing is, they're not speaking to you and I, Judge. They're speaking to those in their camp. They're speaking to their benefactors. They're speaking to the elites in the U.S. whose support they need. So they couldn't care less what you and I say. They only care what the hosts on Fox and MSNBC are saying, because that's what senators

and House representatives are watching and listening to. That's where they're getting their talking points from. That's where they're getting their instructions on what to say. That's where they're getting their, quote, truth, unquote. You've played that clip of Medea Benjamin and Code Pink asking American congressmen and women about the war in Gaza, and if they even deign to respond to Medea and the other members of Code Pink, what they just do is they regurgitate these Israeli talking points. While we may look at that and say, this is a joke, this is embarrassing, my God, how does this continue, does this farce continue to go on? The Israelis are saying, well, as long as the people that we care about are believing it, listening into it, using it,

however they're embracing this, as long as they're embracing it, it's working for us. Very interesting analysis there, Matt. Staying with Israel, but leaving the PR issue. Can Israel possibly achieve both of its goals of degrading and destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages? I don't see how they can do that, Judge, without redefining what words mean, right? I mean, I don't see how that's possible in the sense of eliminating the resistance, eliminating Palestinian resistance to occupation, which exists through a vessel like Hamas, Hamas, whose name means Islamic resistance. As long as there is occupation, there will be resistance. So as long as the Israelis try to subjugate the Palestinians, try to make them submit through particularly military violence,

through military occupation, there will be armed resistance. I mean, that's just the way we as humans work. That's just the reality of it. And the idea of somehow getting the hostages back by destroying neighborhood after neighborhood in Gaza. I think everybody, everybody who's sane, everyone who's got an ounce of compassion wants to see those people return to their families. And the way the Israelis are going about it by destroying everything they can in Gaza, and particularly with the fact that the only way hostages have been released was during a ceasefire, which falls in line with what history tells us about how

these things work. You get people back through negotiations. You get to peace through negotiations, not through war, not through destruction, particularly in cases like this, again, when you're talking about occupation. So this idea that somehow they are going to kill their way to freeing the hostages is just nonsensical. But again, I think we have to look at, well, who's directing this policy? What are they trying to achieve? And when you're talking about Netanyahu and his cabinet, when you're talking about the national security types that run the military, the intelligence and security services of the Israeli state. You talk about the far right zealots who make up the constituency for which this Israeli government represents. Their interest is not in those 120 people and their families who are still being held hostage. Their interest is in using those people as a means to an end.

And the means to that end, of course, is the continued ethnic cleansing. So as long as those people are being held hostage, and as long as you say that the way to get them back is to fight your way in and extract them, well, then we see the answer right there. Here's an example of some of the pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu. This is a Canadian news report showing thousands of people outside his official residence. Cut number three, Chris. This demonstration held near the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night. His spokesperson says Netanyahu met with some hostage families yesterday

after he rebuffed a Hamas hostage proposal over the weekend. Just hours after that meeting, the news outlet Axios reported the Israeli ceasefire offer. Now, that report says Israel's war cabinet approved the proposal 10 days ago. A CNN report today adds that Israel is offering senior Hamas leaders a chance to leave Gaza as part of the offer. Axios says Israel is waiting for a response from Hamas. There is no Israeli government comment on the reports officially. If the Netanyahu government has offered Hamas leaders free exit out of Gaza, I don't know what that means because they assassinated one of the Hamas leaders with whom they had been negotiating in Qatar when he went back to his home in Lebanon.

And if the Israelis have offered a two-month ceasefire. None of this is official. But if those two ifs are true, is there a starting, is this showing a crack in the solidarity behind let's kill everybody attitude that Netanyahu has been preaching? No, I think it's not. I mean, if you look at what Netanyahu has been saying, the word victory is in every third or fourth sentence he utters, this concept of victory. And of course, that's very nebulous, very ill-defined, and it's always problematic. Hey, Judge, you're talking to a guy who, when he was at the State Department in 2005, I worked on the national strategy for victory in Iraq. So that word victory is something that's seared into me in the sense of the folly of it, right? Of who is uttering these

words and what do they mean by it? What purpose does this have? Victory for Netanyahu means personal victory. It means staying in power. I think, you know, I mean, we can get into all this in terms of, I think Netanyahu does have ambitions greater than himself. I think he does believe in the greater Israel, the fulfillment of a Zionist, the Zionist experiment. You know, I think he wants that, unlike, say, our president or our secretary of state who see, you know, the means being the ends themselves, right? Who to them, there is nothing more than being Secretary of State. There's nothing more than being president. And the only thing that matters is staying in power. I think with Netanyahu, you at least have a person who does have greater ambitions than just his own post, although, of course, his own

political survival, as anyone who's filed Netanyahu over these decades will attest to, is, of course, his primary concern. But this idea that you'd have a two-month truce, of course, then what would happen after that? I mean, looking at this, you know, I want to say, you know, anything that stops the killing, anything that stops the genocide in two months would allow you to get so much medication and food. You know, the Gazans are starting to starve to death. They're starting, the diseases are starting to pop up. They're going through a cold and wet winter. I mean, so the idea of being able to provide support to them for at least two months. And of course, what could happen during that two month time?

You know, and God, Judge, imagine if we had a competent administration, not saying that this administration in the US would do the right thing because they won't, but imagine if they were competent and they could use a two month ceasefire to broker a longer term or a permanent ceasefire, as well as some type of political solution or resolution to all this. But that won't happen. The other thing, too, is you can get real cynical about this and say, well, OK, this two-month ceasefire for the Israelis, does that give them an opportunity to open up that war in Lebanon that so many in Israel seem to want? So I mean, there's all roads and pathways and ways we know, ways we can go

down this in the sense of like being very cynical. But I will say the thing to note is that they are at least talking. They are at least talking. Hamas put forward a ceasefire proposal. The Israelis dismissed it, said it would amount to surrender. Israel has put forward a ceasefire proposal. The Israelis dismissed it, said it would amount to surrender. Israel has put forward a ceasefire proposal. Qatar is involved. American envoys are in Cairo today talking about this. So there are negotiations going on. So at least there's that. And any degree of ceasefire at any point to stop the genocide is a good thing, right, is a good thing. But where it goes long term, I mean, I don't know anyone who trusts the Israelis or the Americans that this would go to a point that would bring some type of lasting ceasefire that would bring about a

permanent resolution, let alone anything that would be fair or just. Here's Brigadier General Jonathan Simpson, retired from the IDF, with a very, very interesting analysis that he refers to as the last stand mindset. Now I want to appeal to your years in the Marine Corps to tell me what you think of this general's analysis number four, Chris. To actually pursue this diplomatic path, we know from reports that it is willing or considering a longer pause for the release of hostages. The more we apply force, they will be in a last stand type of mindset.

And if they get into a last stand kind of mindset, they will probably kill all the hostages in the last stand. The other option is that they would be willing to seek a secure exit of some kind. And in that case, they would use the hostages. And the logic of that situation suggests that we should go for a deal as quickly as we can. And if it requires a diplomatic ceasefire, whatever it is, do it now, because the logic be the commander-in-chief of the military, who lost a son and a nephew in the past two months in the military, being critical of Netanyahu's decisions in public. And this general is just one of them.

Well, I think there's such a glaring stupidity behind Israeli policy, both not just the moral horror of it, but the strategic stupidity. I'm stuck on that word. I'm sorry. Of all this, where does this go for Israel? How does this make Israel more stable, more secure? How does it provide for Israeli security? How does this help Israeli democracy? You know, how does this resolve any of these decades of, from an Israeli perspective, violence directed against them by the Palestinians? How does this resolve that? It doesn't. And I mean, it's because it's glaring. That what is being done here is being done not out of strategic soundness, but out of ideological desire. It's emotional.

It's not, you know, this is thinking with the black heart of Netanyahu and those around him and not being driven by any type of, you know, intelligence. You know, this is emotion over wisdom. And so I think that so you have had so many, as you said, ex-generals saying, this is a mistake, we need to talk, further force, violence, occupation is only going to beget the same. And to your point about the military axioms and all this, the military understanding, there's a concept that if you're going to clear a building, you start from the clear building in terms of you've got bad guys holed up in there. You start from the top and you work your way down because you don't want, if you work your way up and you're pushing these

people to the roof, they have nowhere to go and they are trapped. And what do we know about people that are trapped or rats that are trapped and how they fight, right? I mean, that's the idea of all this. That's what I think the general's point was getting at with this last stand mentality. But that also too, you could flip that on its head and talk about Israel as well in the same perspective of last stand mentality,

this idea that they are a nation under siege, that they are fortress Israel. And that type of view, that type of identity pervades so much of the Israeli political and media elite as well. This identity, right? This narrative of, again, a nation under siege, fortress Israel, us against the world, you know, but that again, then that gets into the larger, more cosmic, metaphysical, religious aspects of the identity, the burden of God's chosen people, so to speak. We're going to run a clip now of an Associated Press reporter grilling a spokesperson for the American State Department. The clip begins with the controlled demolition of a building. The building is one of the few

freestanding buildings remaining on a university campus in Gaza. It had been used as barracks by the IDF after they took over the neighborhood, and then they used it a building with explosives, and then another explosion in the street caused the explosions that they were packing to explode, and their own explosions and the tumbling debris killed them. But before we get to that, I want you to watch this. This AP reporter is relentless, and the spokesperson for the State Department looks ridiculous. Based on Saeed's question about the demolition of the university, I don't know if you've seen the video.

It's pretty widely available. I have seen the video. But it certainly looks, I mean, it looks like a controlled demolition. It looks like what we do here in this country when we're taking down an old hotel or a stadium. And you have nothing to say? You have nothing to say about this? I mean, to do that kind of an explosion, you need to be in there.

You have to put the explosives down, and it takes a lot of planning and preparation to do. And if there was a threat from this particular facility, they wouldn't have been able to do it. So I have seen the video. I can tell you that it is something we are raising with the governor of Israel, as we do often do when we see to ask questions and find out what the underlying situation is,

as we often do when we see reports of this nature. But I'm not able to characterize the actual facts on the ground before hearing that response. But you saw the video. I didn't see the video. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know i don't know i don't know what was under that being imploded i don't know what was under that building i don't know what was uh inside inside it doesn't matter what was under the building because they obviously got in there to put the explosives down to

do it in a way that they did again i'm i i'm glad you have factual certainty about it. I just don't. All I have is what I saw in the video. I just don't. And I think you guys saw it too. We did see it, and I can say that we have raised it with the government of Israel. And it's not troubling to you? We are always troubled by any degradation of civilian infrastructure in Gaza,

but without knowing the actual underlying circumstances. I'm a little hesitant, I think, for reasons that should be understandable to pass definitive judgment on it from this podium. All right, a couple of questions. One, what conceivable military purposes served by destroying a university building at the same time destroying cemeteries? Two, when they lost either 21 or 27, there's two different counts, members of the IDF yesterday. This is a citizen army. Is that a lot of people in one day? Yeah, there's no military purpose in destroying those buildings. And again, and from a personal note, again, Judge, I'm able to comment on this because that's what we did in Iraq. I was

a Marine Corps, I was a combat engineer officer, I was in charge of the engineers for our regiment in Anbar province, and we destroyed buildings. And when you just did that, it was very deliberate. It was planned out. You weren't taking fire from those positions. There wasn't fire, you weren't taking fire from surrounding positions. And it was done more often than not as a statement to the population. In our case, if you continue to allow the insurgents to use this building, we are going to destroy it and you're going to pay for what the insurgents are doing. A war crime. I'm ashamed I took part in it. That's the reality of it. And that's what you're seeing happen here. There's no military purpose being served in the destruction of a university, just as there's no military purpose being served in the destruction of graveyards or in bakeries or in libraries or any other numerous and seemingly infinite pieces of society and infrastructure that the Israeli army is destroying in Gaza. What is being served is genocide. Genocide goes beyond just the killing, the slaughter of human beings. It goes to the very existence.

So what you're seeing here when you're destroying the universities, when you see the Israelis killing poets and professors, they're destroying a people. When they desecrate cemeteries and tear them up, when they tear down statues, you're destroying the memory of a people. That's all part of eradicating a society. That's all part of destroying the memory of a people. And that's evidence of genocidal intent. Right. Absolutely. So that's the only purpose of the judge. And the question about losing 25 or so, absolutely. In an army like the Israelis, a small nation like that, a war where you are supposed to be the Goliath, right? It's such be so lopsided. Casualties like this can express, it can cause doubts to arise.

And you're not seeing that within the Israeli public yet. They've had some small demonstrations against the war. You've had a couple of Israelis refuse to go into the IDF, refuse their draft notice, refuse their orders being called up in the reserves. But it's been relatively small, those occurrences. But over time, even what you would consider a small number of casualties builds up in these, quote, foreign, unquote, wars. And the same thing occurring can be seen as occurring, say, in Russia. You know, I mean, the longer that the war goes on in Ukraine, the more stress and burden that will be put on the Russian population, the greater the political cost. I mean, this is the reality of foreign wars. Even if those wars are just across your border, they come at a tremendous

political cost. And so losing 25 guys, I shouldn't say guys, men and women in a day, while that pales, that's nothing compared to what's happening to the, to the Palestinians. I mean, we've witnessed over the last 110 days or so, what about 115, 120 guys and children killed every day, but it's all your perspective. And so if you're the Israeli public and you've been assured that this is nothing more than kids that throw rocks at us, we've been beaten down on these people for decades. Now it's this generation's turn to do it. Takes us one step further to our promise being fulfilled here in Israel. But the costs start to mount up.

It starts to put some questions in people's head as to whether or not it's worth it. But also, too, are the people at top, are they competent? Matt Ho, thank you very much, my dear friend, for your time and for your analysis. We look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks, Judge. Coming up, 3 o'clock Eastern, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. And at 4 o'clock Eastern, Max Blumenthal's partner in Gray Zone, Aaron Maté. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.