Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh : Why Israel Can’t Be Trusted

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Matt Hoh : Why Israel Can’t Be TrustedSee 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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Limited time, new customer offer for the first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on the unlimited plan, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi! everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, October 21st, 2025. Matt Ho will be with us in just a moment on why Israel cannot be trusted. But first, this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now, 37 trillion in national debt. Stocks at record highs defying gravity. So what happens?

next. Groceries, gas, housing, everything's going up, and this dollar, it buys less every day. When the system breaks, your stocks won't save you and your dollars won't either. But one thing will, gold. I've set it on my show for years. Gold survives collapse. Central bankers know this and billionaires know it. That's why they're buying more. Is it too late to buy or is it just the right time. Call my friends at Lear Capital to find out. Ask questions. Get the free information. There's no pressure. And that's why I buy my gold and silver from Lear. And right now, you can get up to $20,000 in bonus medals with a qualified purchase. Call 800, 511, 4620 or go to Learjudgeonap.com today. Matt Ho, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us.

Yes, thanks for accommodating my schedule. Before we get to your observations and analysis about Israel and its trustworthiness or lack thereof to the breaking news this afternoon, which is the Russian cancellation of the Trump-Pooten conference that had been planned for Budapest, my understanding is that this happened after a phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in which Rubio must have said something. Sounds like he insisted on a ceasefire before serious peace negotiations, which I think is a no non-starter for the Russians. But how do you read this? Well, thanks for having me back on, Judge. Good to see you. Welcome back from your trip.

I'm sure people want to hear what you were told when you were there in Russia in the last week regarding all of this, but in particular the supposed talks, you know, I did see one quote from the Kremlin this afternoon that said, how do you cancel something that was never planned to begin with or propose something? You know, I mean, so maybe there was some, the vagueness of all this, right? And we're dealing with Donald Trump and this White House where nothing is ever certain. They're in their own reality. So was this meeting? Was this meeting? Was this summit ever a real actuality? But from what I can glean following the Trump, Rubio, I mean, it's going to be the Rubio-Lavrov talks, as well as from some of what I heard

Lavrov say in the last 24 hours, it seems as if there's no reason to have these talks because nothing's changed, that we're in the same position that we were in Alaska. The Americans, Europeans, Ukrainians keep insisting on a ceasefire. We don't want to ceasefire. The Russian say we want a peace deal, as well as in all the details involved in that of what's being offered, what's not being offered, and here we don't know the reality of it. You have the Financial Times reporting this weekend that Putin supposedly offered to Trump that in exchange for the rest of Donetsk Oblast or the Dombos will pull our troops out of parts of Hurson and Zabariza Oblos, you know, and you don't know if that's true or not.

Who said that? Did they get that from the Russians? Did they get that from the Americans? So we're just in a position where nothing has substantially changed. That's the one thing we know for sure. Things are not going well in terms of getting a deal in place to end the continual escalation of the war, let alone the war in general. And so I think we have to go forward watching this with a degree of skepticism that we also provide to anything that comes out of the American-Israeli decorations.

The Americans keep dangling, and did Larry Johnson and I spoke with Maria Zarakova, the chief spokesperson for the foreign ministry, who used to live in my neighbor. neighborhood in Manhattan. You know, the Russian diplomats, their level of training is so far superior than ours. Sergey Lavrov lived here for 10 years. They know much about America. This woman used to shop at the same supermarket at which I now shop. Anyway, they are concerned about Tomahawks and the crazy, conflicting, inconsistent signals they're getting over. Tomahawks. And my understanding from her, which is similar to what her boss, Sergey Lavrov said, is that it will not change anything in the battlefield, but it will change our relationships between the United States and Russia. I mean, if Tomahawks are there and used, we know for a fact they would

be used by American personnel. That is an act of war. We're probably in war with them already, because we have personnel using other equipment different than tomahongs right we're we're we're targeting uh their infrastructure in their country i mean we're the ones who aren't just providing the information on how to attack say russian oil refineries we're the ones who are actually choosing which refineries to uh attack and that was reported you know in a span of a couple days a week or two ago by both the wall street journal and the financial times so you can see a coordinated leak there by the American government, by the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, whoever, who wanted to make sure not just the Russians knew this, but the whole

world knew it. And so this issue with the Tomahawks, the way it's been so publicly spoken about the last few weeks, I mean, this was the headline a couple weeks ago when J.D. Vance was on the Sunday morning talk shows. And so this became a major, you know, how could you you not pay attention to this? And, yeah, whether or not the Tomahawk would have any effect on the course of the war, you know, in my opinion, it wouldn't. I think most people feel that way as well. We've got so few of these ground-based launchers. We're not going to give them any destroyers, we're not going to give the Ukrainians any destroyers or cruisers or submarines.

So it would have to come from the handful of ground-based launchers that we've only constructed in the last couple of years. But, you know, I mean, more to the point, I think, with the Tomahawks with regards to the Russian. It's not the tactical or operational aspects of it, but the bigger strategic picture of this, the larger national security interests that frame the war for the Russian side. If you go back a number of years going back into the Obama administration, into the tail end of the Bush administration, the concern of the Russians of the encroachment of American missile systems towards Russia, basically in circling of Russia, but also as well, a positioning of weapon systems that could be used in first strike attacks against Russian

command and control structures or Russian political authorities was becoming something that was was was was more and more concrete. And this culminates, of course, in the emplacement of U.S. missile batteries in Romania and in Poland that ostensibly are there to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles, right? if anyone believe that tail, you know, but have the capacity to fire missiles that could attack Russia. And so this whole issue of Tomahawk, it is part and parcel of the larger now security grievances that the Russians have been elucidating not just for the last three and a half years

of their invasion, but of the last 10, 15, 20 years. of this confrontation between NATO and Russia. Wow. You mentioned the vice president. Here he is on Sunday, claiming that the president has not yet made up his mind of Tomahawks. Chris cut number one. We're going to keep on walking down the pathway of peace,

whether it takes us another few months, another few weeks, or God forbid, longer than that. We're going to keep on working at it. How confident am I that this is going to get wrapped up? I feel optimistic, I would say that, but the timeline is anybody's guess. What was the U.S. give Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine? Well, I mean, the president right now is certainly hearing that request from the Ukrainians.

We know that it's something that they want. That's something the president's going to ultimately decide, but he has not yet made the decision to give Tomahawks to Ukraine. What was the calculation in not providing those tomahawks to Ukraine at this time? Well, look, the President of the United States is trying to ensure that America's security is taken care of first. And obviously, that means that we need to have the critical weapon systems for our own military, for our own troops. So that's what the president is focused on. And as with all the decisions that he's made related to Russia, Ukraine,

he's trying to bring peace because he thinks that's what's in America's best interest. If he thinks that it's in America's best interest to sell additional weapons to Europe, he will do that. But right now he hasn't made that decision with regards to Tom Ox. Sometimes I feel sorry for him. He's a very smart guy. All he does is try and make the president look good, no matter how irrational the president, the president might.

be? Right. You know, according to the telegraph, Chris just sent me this, the publication, the telegraph, preparations for the summit stalled when Moscow canceled, Moscow canceled, an in-person preparatory meeting between Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, because, according to what Mr. Lavrov told the press, the Americans wanted a commitment to a ceasefire first, and Russia said, we don't want it, never wanted it from the beginning, and it made that clear, and until they, I'm paraphrasing, until the Americans understand us, why should we travel to meet with them? Yeah, correct, correct. I think that's the case.

You know, when you have these high-level meetings, Judge, that's not where things are supposed to be hashed out. That's not where things are going to be debated and negotiated. when you have, whether it's your foreign ministers or your heads of state coming together, at that point, you should be at 90, 95%, 100%, if you will, of what you're seeking to achieve. You know, it's not for Lavrov and Rubio to be debating these things. It's supposed to be worked out before it gets to that point where they are meeting. And, you know, I mean, this issue with the Tomahawks, this issue with more weapons, I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that we see.

simply don't have the industrial capacity. We say this as a nation that spends a trillion dollars a year on our Pentagon, but we simply don't have the ability to make missiles. We simply don't have the ability to make these weapons, and the same goes to Europeans. And that gets to the whole heart of the foolishness of this, that the Europeans and many Americans believe that we can maintain, we can sustain this proxy war for years to come, even though our industrial capacity shows us that we can't, this foolishness, this madness for a variety of reasons. I really don't understand the American reasoning behind it. I understand the deplorable and idiotic rationale by the European politicians who need

this war to try and stay in power maybe, you know, because of their own domestic problems. But, you know, I mean, the idea we're going to give tomahawks or these barracuda missiles or these Iran missiles or whatever, it's all limited by how many we can make. And we see continually that the West cannot provide the same level of munitions support to Ukraine that Russia is able to provide it to itself. Russia is starting to export weapons again. I mean, that's where they're at with their industrial capacities. They're in the midst of the largest conventional war since World War II, and they're exporting weapons. And yet we have people both here in the U.S. and in Europe who think that we can somehow win this war against Russia when it's, you know,

demonstrated for years now that we simply can't produce the material, the munitions, the weapons, the armaments, the supplies, whatever to prop up Ukraine, let alone, you know, we get in the whole other aspect of Ukraine's financial and economic situation and the danger of collapse there. I mean, Ukraine has got a $70 billion budget deficit that doesn't, you know, the way the Europeans plan on fixing that is to steal Russian assets, which would just mean that the Russians would steal the Western assets that they've got frozen. So this whole thing is madness. Transitioning over to whether or not Israel can be trusted,

this, I love you, but this clip will truly get under your skin. Chris number 14. Before the hostages actually come out, you decide to go to Gaza. And what did you see? It looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in the, that area. And then you see these people moving back. And I asked the idea, where are they going? Like, I'm looking around. These are all ruins. And they said, well, they're going back to the areas where they're destroyed home was onto their plot, and they're going to pitch a tent.

And it's very sad because you think to yourself, they really have nowhere else to go. Would you say now, having been there, that it was genocide? No. No. Absolutely not. No. Well, they're denying reality. Right. Yeah, they are. I mean, I mean, I'm not. And I think any time you see Kushner, Jared Kushner, we all should be reminded that his family, friends with Netanyahu. When Kushner was a boy, Netanyahu used to stay in their home. Jared Kushner used to have to give up his bed for the visiting Benjamin Netanyahu.

I mean, so the fact that we have this charade continuing where we act as if these are important. partial or objective or somehow men and women who are independent of their own agendas, of their own, you know, particularly their own biases and chauvinistic aspects, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. I mean, so asking Kushner if there's a genocide going on, is asking, you know, someone in Boston, who's the best baseball team of all time? You know, I mean, what, what response what you expect? Ray McGovern, our mutual, wonderful friend, and of course a regular on this program, and honestly a source for many, much of the information that we gather every day, heard,

I read, I didn't hear it, an IDF general saying, yeah, we pay militias, we pay gangs to start violence in Gaza. So the statement was made after, apparently after, there are many of these statements before. My understanding is the statement was made after the Whitkoff, Kushner, Trump, Gaza plan, so-called peace deal was signed in Cairo to kill each other, which will start violence, which will let us come back in. Now, I don't know if the implication is that the Israelis are paying thugs to kill IDF members to start to create a pretext for bringing the IDF.

IDF back into Gaza, but why is this stuff even being discussed? What is it about the Netanyahu government or the Zionist experience that they can't be trusted? I think, you know, just the reality of Israel, going back 80 years of the state, they have utilized false flag operations, they have lied, they have carried out you can generatively call preemptive wars, but say in 1967, which to this day, most in the West will describe as a preemptive war by Israel against Arab states that were going to attack them, when even pretty much every Israel you consult with now, except those who are still on the books as paid Hasbara propagandists, will say, no, that was a war conquest. The 67 war was launched by Israel in order to take the West Bank, in order to take the Golan Heights and the

Sinai and Gaza, et cetera, you know, but we still have this fiction here, this, this mythology here that Israel is a country composed of men and women who are there with noble intent, that these are people who came to a land, you know, they were a people without a land going to a land without people, that fiction. And someone like Leslie Stahl, who we just saw interviewing Jared Kushner and Steve Wickoff, I mean, she embodies that, you know, this continual, you know, this continued recitation of the Israeli mythology by the West, you know, our political leaders, our media leaders, our people, many in entertainment, et cetera, those who shape the discourse, those who have us understand the world, they cling to this Israeli mythology. And so, you know, anyone who's a student

of this or not even a student, just someone who observes and reads and follows this knows that you can't trust the Israelis about anything. I mean, even something as simple as, say, soccer, judge, you have this issue in Britain right now where the British authority that's in charge of safety at soccer matches has said, you know, we're not going to sell tickets to Israeli fans of the Israeli team that's coming here to play one of our teams in Britain because it's too violence, too dangerous. And people remember last year when the Israeli soccer club was in Holland and they rioted. And that, of course, got depicted in the Western media as anti-Semitic pogroms occurring when really it was Israeli soccer hooligans running

a muck, often chasing down anyone who was brown-skinned who might seem to be Muslim. what you had in Israel just a couple of days ago was the Israelis themselves canceling a major soccer match because of the violence among their own fans. But, you know, you can't have that be the reason. So what you have in Britain now is you have British political leaders on both sides, Tory, you know, conservatives and labor, denouncing the move to not sell tickets to Irish soccer, excuse me, Israeli soccer fans because it's anti-Semitic. So you can't even have a rational evidence-based approach to safety at a soccer match. You know, after you're still on at this club,

their fans are incredibly violent, they're riotists, their hooligans, their goons. Even, right? You know, you're like, so you can't even in that sense, Judge, have a reasonable discussion based upon evidence or experience or reality because this mythology of Israel has been so permeated throughout our society,

throughout our culture, throughout our political and media ecosystems for decades now, that it's, you know, as real to many people as, you know, the sky is blue. One of the things that the general supposedly said is that the IDF was paying these gangs of thugs, these are now Palestinian thugs, to steal food from other Palestinians. Sure, and we know that these gangs were the ones who were primarily behind the looting of the very limited convoys that were getting into Gaza

over the last two years. And this is, this again, is nothing new. This, again, is not anything different than what the Israelis have demonstrated they will do over decades. Certainly you look at their actions in Lebanon. You look at their actions in Syria. You look at their actions in Palestine. Their goal has always been to create friction, dissension, chaos, so that there can be nothing united against them. So their policies in Lebanon and Syria have certainly played that out. They'd rather see Lebanon and Syria in civil war and chaos than have anything stable because then there might actually be some unity that would be presented against them.

And Palestine, the examples of this, are multiple. You know, is the Israeli government, multiple Israeli governments going back down? decades, most prominently Netanyahu's governments, but all of them have supported Hamas in one degree or another, going back to the 80s as a counterweight to Fatah, to the PLL, to the Palestinian Authority, right? I mean, except in Gaza itself, where Israel and the Americans in was 06 or so after Hamas won the elections there, pushed Fatah to carry out a coup against Hamas, which Hamas defeated. But that was an attempting Gaza by the Israelis and Americans to use one Palestinian faction to put down Hamas. But in other

cases, we've seen where they've used Hamas as either a counterweight against any type of unity among the Palestinians or to just make life harder for the Palestinian Authority or the PLO. And then as well, too, for their own purposes, you have that, you know, I can't quote it, but to paraphrase Benjamin Netanyahu, the best way to ensure that there's not a a Palestinian state is to keep a party like Hamas in power. The idea being that if you have, again, now you're getting into mythology, you're getting into the narrative of all this as depicted in the West, if you have these barbarians, if you have these savages,

these terrorists who behead baby and disembowl pregnant women, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, how can you negotiate with them? There's no way you, Palestinians, you have a state, if someone like Hamas is going to be in charge. So, you know, the utilization of these gangs in Gaza for Israeli and American purposes is clear, and it's understandable why they are doing it. And, you know, again, the evidence or the long history is there as well for the Israelis using this type of tactic to pursue their aims. Matt Ho, it's a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter what we talk about.

Thank you very much. Thanks for accommodating my schedule, and we'll look forward to seeing you next week. All right. Thank you, Judge. Thank you. Thank you so much. At 3 o'clock today, Colonel Karen Kwikowski, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.