Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal : America Firsters Favor Genocide!

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Max Blumenthal : America Firsters Favor Genocide!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 11th, 2024. Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, thank you, my dear friend, for accommodating my schedule and coming here today and sharing your thoughts with us. Were you surprised at all by the revelations in the article by Yuval Abraham on the Israeli use of AI with programs, Lavender, Gospel, Where's My Daddy, intended to maximize destruction of innocents? Well, this is an article in the Israeli 972 mag, which exists in

the, I guess, to the far left in the Israeli spectrum by an author who is, I think, an Israeli veteran who had access to Israeli military intelligence officials who were speaking on background about these systems that they're using for targeting. And this was actually the second in the series. The first was about this system called the gospel, which formulated too many targets, so many targets so rapidly after October 7th that the Israeli military didn't even have time to vet them. And then we learned more in this lavender series that Israel uses a system called Where's Daddy in order to locate what they see as what this system determines to be terrorists at home, which makes them the most vulnerable.

They can guarantee that they'll get them. And when they're at home, it's at night when they're sleeping with their entire family, which is why we're seeing so many families wiped off the civil registry and just entire cities bombarded. But who does this AI system determine to be a terrorist? Anyone who could plausibly be affiliated with Hamas, which is like determining that anyone during the Biden administration is affiliated with the Democratic Party, a Democratic Party voter, someone who works for the municipality of Houston. These are plumbers, just common people, and they're being obliterated along with their entire family. So it's AI robotic genocide.

Basically, Israel has become Skynet. And as I said last week, we have to ask questions about whether companies like Amazon and Jeff Bezos are providing cloud space for all of this data. Do we know who's providing cloud space for the data? Do we know who's cooperating with these AI programs, Max? is that there are several Israeli companies spun out of the Unit 8200, the cyber warfare division of the Israeli military, which are participating in this program. The Israeli military has confirmed the existence of the program, but denied what they did is they said, well, but we still have a rigorous vetting mechanism to determine that the targets are indeed terrorists. But I mean, just look at your Twitter feed today to see your regular daily recommended serving of dead baby videos. And you'll see dead children all over the place in Rafah, Khan Yunus, Daryl Bala. And these are just random people who are being targeted with precision weaponry for death, along with, I mean, we have to mention this, the children and grandchildren credit for it and celebrated this in Israel, they targeted his grandchildren who are ages four, six, 10 little girls and celebrated that as well.

So, I mean, they're targeting the family members of the so-called terrorists. And I wonder how Yair Netanyahu, the son of Benjamin Netanyahu is currently based in Miami. I wonder how he feels about that and the kind of pretext it sets, precedent it sets. Right, as to who's fair game. Exactly. Professor Mearsheimer just called this, of course, mass murder. It's no surprise. It clearly is.

Are the Israeli people still accepting this mass murder, or is there any growing disenchantment with it? Not with Netanyahu as a person, not with Netanyahu as a leader, but with the policies of the government, which are intended to slaughter as many Palestinians as possible. Yeah, I mean, all you have to do if you're watching this now to see one of the most terrifying windows into Israeli society, other than the social media that Israeli soldiers put out

day after day from Gaza, is to look at the Israeli Democracy Index. This is a poll put out by the Israeli Democracy Institute, a mainstream polling and research organization in Tel Aviv. And it tells you about the attitudes of Jewish Israelis, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel. And the numbers for an Israeli invasion or assault on Rafah, where still the majority of Palestinians in Gaza are in a kind of conurbation where they're refugees, is like over 80%. The vast majority of Israelis would like to see this bloodbath take place. And Netanyahu keeps telling them, this is how we're going to finish the job. So it's all there.

All the numbers are there. And it's not some kind of coincidence that you have fanatics like Ben-Gvir or Smotrick in the coalition and that the coalition is still holding strong. They're speaking for the essence of Jewish-Israeli society, even if they're speaking in a way that upsets Israel's allies and partners. So yeah, I mean, there's every reason to believe that if Netanyahu wants to stay in power, he has to commit at least one more major bloodbath. And that would be Rafa. Haven't Smotrich and Ben-Gavir and their colleagues threatened to leave the coalition or break the government, whatever the terminology is, if he fails to invade Rafah. Yeah, I mean, two recent events really set the stage for an assault on Rafah. The first is what I mentioned before, the mass murder of Ismail Haniyeh's family. This was partially about disrupting the negotiations taking place in Doha between Mossad chief David Barnea, the U.S. administration, which is pushing harder on the Israelis than before, partly

for domestic political reasons, and Hamas. And they want to, basically what they want to do is force Hamas to step away, force Hamas to step away in anger and to harden its position. And if you look at Haniyeh's reaction when he learned the news, I don't think that's going to happen. They have a very clear calculus on what they'd like to have happen. The second event is the withdrawal of the 98th Division of the Israeli military, which was the largest division in Gaza at the time from Khan Yunis in southeastern Gaza. That allows people who were refugees in Gaza whose homes had been destroyed in Khan Yunis

to go back to the ruins of their homes. And it clears the way for Israel to invade Rafah, at least for them to market the invasion by saying, look, a lot of the refugees are gone. We can go in there and get the remaining brigades of Hamas. Problem for Israel is Netanyahu and the war cabinet are just lying about what they've been able to achieve in Gaza. They said that they eliminated all the brigades of Hamas and Khan Yunus hours after the Israeli

military took a series of punishing casualties in a very well-executed ambush by the Al-Qassam Brigades. And then hours after they left, literally hours after, in a message to Israelis about the failure of their government and military, the Al-Qassam Brigades fired rockets from the Khan Yunis area into the Eshkol township of southern Israel, demonstrating that their presence is still there. They're still in northern Gaza. And all Israel now has in the Gaza Strip is the Nahal Brigade, which is holding this Netzarim corridor, which aims to split the north from the rest of Gaza. And today they were engaged in fierce combat in the central area of Dera al-Bala with Palestinian insurgents. So the insurgency is still raging in Gaza. Six months in, Israel's completely failed,

and they've pulled their largest division out. So Netanyahu is now under increasing pressure from the right wing in his coalition and from his own base to carry out another bloodbath. Does the Israeli public know what you just told us or stated differently? Do they know that Hamas has not been defeated? Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning with courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think

by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. There's a frustration there, for sure. And you can see it in, you can read Haaretz, the voice of the enlightened public in Israel, which supported assaulting Gaza after October 7th. But all of their columnists are pronouncing this

a complete military failure. One of their columnists, Enshel Pfeffer, who's, you know, he's anti-Netanyahu, but I see him kind of as a militarist. He said that the entire operation failed on a strategic level and that Israel should not have gone in for regime change and should have actually just thrown maybe just like one division in there quickly, done some damage and pulled out. But now they're sort of trapped there indefinitely fighting an insurgency that is prepared for years. At the Gray Zone yesterday, we interviewed Mohamed Morandi, who's a professor in Tehran, who has very good sources within the Iranian leadership. And he made the point that

Iran has been helping its allies in Gaza prepare for 20 years, precisely for what they're facing now. And they prepared them for a several years long war. So I think Israel has underestimated what it's facing. And the public increasingly knows that their leadership's not telling them the truth about their military achievements. Did this gentleman who you interviewed, who has the sources in Iran, indicate the likely response of the Iranian government to the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria? Well, I don't think anyone can predict that. What we know is Iran is engaged right now, engaging in a very successful psychological war. A SIOP, I mean, and when I say SIOP,

I don't mean that they're lying or deceiving anyone, but they have forced the closure of Israeli embassies, particularly in the global south and places like Mumbai. There are signs going up around Tehran because they know the Israelis are paying attention, showing Israelis hiding in bomb shelters and warning them to stock up on water and other supplies because the response is coming. And so they're sort of enjoying this moment where Israel has awoken a sleeping giant. We don't know how they'll respond, but Professor Morandi believes that the response will be direct and it will hit Israel directly. The real question I think we should be asking is, does Iran want to try to create daylight between the U.S. and Israel? A relationship that Biden restated today was ironclad by not attacking U.S. targets in the

region and expecting the U.S. to stand back and let Israel fend for itself. I think that's the big question. Does the murder of the grandchildren of the former prime minister of Gaza destroy any chances for negotiations or are they back at the negotiation table? No, I mean, negotiations are ongoing. It's that Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Galant, want to keep the war going. They both have their own reasons to do so. You never heard of killing the grandchildren of the people you're negotiating with and expecting him to keep negotiating. Well, we talked about this on the show before. The first major assassination Israel carried out

was Salah al-Rory, who was the Hamas leader in Beirut, operating pretty much in the open, whose name was on all of the negotiation agreements. They basically killed the lead negotiator. This is the way Israel's always operated. It's very likely they killed Yasser Arafat in order to kill off Oslo once and for all. They killed everyone, every leader of the PLO in order to get to Arafat and then to get to Mahmoud Abbas. So this is their strategy is negotiation through assassination in order to make a rejectionist position inevitable. And for political reasons that are obvious now, we've been talking about this for months, Judge. Now the New York Times is saying it, Netanyahu needs to keep this war going on to politically survive. And so what they're trying to do is force Hamas to accept impossible terms. The U.S. continues to act as Israel's lawyer and is demanding a six-week humanitarian pause, which actually means a vacation for Israel's reservists from genocide so they can come back later. And Hamas is holding firm to its position of total ceasefire, release of high-level security

prisoners, including Marwan Barghouti, to establish a unity government. And they're forcing onto the table Palestinian statehood, Palestinian autonomy along 67 lines. So I think what the assassination of Haniya's children has done is kind of strengthened Hamas's hands among the Palestinian public. And it shows that the leadership, even those in Doha who are said to be living in luxury, are still suffering alongside the Palestinian people. And so it causes the people who are suffering to hold fast to the same negotiating terms that Hamas is pushing. Has Netanyahu articulated any realistic political settlement once the killing is over? Absolutely not. And that's Netanyahu's entire sort of, that's sort of the defining characteristic of Netanyahu's political career is to always survive politically, ensure the relationship with the US is ironclad while doing absolutely nothing to cater to any aspect of the peace process or provide anything to the Palestinians and to continue pushing the boundaries of what's possible,

whether it's stealing land, committing war crimes, or just warehousing Gaza indefinitely. And so Netanyahu thinks he can keep going that route, but I think the paradigm has changed. Every nation except the US and Germany is now enacting some form of license controls or voting against Israel at the United Nations. When I say license controls on arms, Netherlands has had a major court case forbidding it from exporting aircraft parts to Israel. The entire world has moved away from this except for Germany and the US. And the political calculus and dynamics inside the US are shifting. Now only 18% of registered Democrats approve of what Israel's doing in Gaza. Republican approvals

dropped 10 points. Donald Trump has taken the Ben Shapiro position against Biden, that Biden is basically one hand with Hamas, which is ridiculous. But you can see cracks within the conservative fortress of Israel support with Tucker Carlson interviewing a pastor from Bethlehem, Munter Izak, about the apartheid system that Palestinians are facing. So I think Netanyahu, even if he manages to extend this war, will not be able to enjoy the same level of impunity he did before October 7th. Don't the so-called America firsters, the MAGA Republicans, so enthusiastic about Donald Trump support the genocide? Well, now we see with this kind of, this rift, how do the British pronounce it? Row? It's a row inside the right. And Tucker Carlson really brought it out, but it was already rearing its head with Candace

Owens being fired from the Daily Wire, which a lot of America first conservative influencers are beginning to call the Israeli Wire. We can see kind of who's backed by pro-Israel interests in that movement and who is truly independent and therefore actually America first. All of the masks are off. And those who are siding with Ben Shapiro, they tend to have had their careers astroturfed by pro-Israel interests, whether it's Christopher Ruffo at the Manhattan Institute or Coleman Hughes at the Manhattan Institute, this neoconservative institute, which just cranks out right-wing mouthpieces or Ben Shapiro, or you have rebel news in Canada, they're all attacking Tucker. They're completely supported by pro-Israel money.

Breitbart, that whole operation was actually founded in Jerusalem after a meeting between the dead founder of Breitbart, Andrew Breitbart, and Benjamin Netanyahu in Netanyahu's office. Steve Bannon has said that Breitbart is the most pro-Israel outlet in the US, and yet they want to push an America first agenda that requires Americans not only to fund this genocide, but to just provide $4 billion a year to Israel without knowing where any of it's going because the State Department won't tell us.

And to incite war with Iran, to force boys from Spokane to Pittsburgh to go fight and die for Israel. And they don't want that. Most Americans don't want that. So the sort of mainstream right, which has this fake alternative ethos, is exposed now in a way like never before for all their hypocrisy, whether it's the hypocrisy on America first, when they're clearly Israel first, or their hypocrisy on free speech and opposing woke cancel culture, when anyone within their ranks who expresses disgust, as Candace Owens did, with the degenerate behavior of the Israeli military in Gaza gets canceled immediately for offending the fragile ethno-religious identity of the boss,

Ben Shapiro. Right, right. All right, it's time to raise Max Blumenthal's blood pressure. Here are two of your least favorite people on the planet, Senator Tom Cotton and Secretary Lloyd Austin, in which Cotton asks Austin, is Israel committing genocide? Cut number 14. I want to address what the protesters raised earlier. Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? Senator Cotton, we don't have any evidence of genocide being created. So that's a no. Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. We don't have evidence of that, to my knowledge.

You stand accused by those protesters of green-lighting genocide. Would you like to respond to that accusation? What I would say, Senator Cotton, from the very beginning is that we committed to help assist Israel in defending its territory and its people by providing security assistance. And I would remind everybody that, you know, what happened on October 7th was absolutely horrible. And, you know, numbers of Israeli citizens killed and then a couple of hundred Israeli citizens taken hostage. American citizens as well? American citizens as well. So you deny the accusation that you greenlit genocide? I absolutely deny.

He doesn't know fantasy from reality. Neither of them does. Well, I mean, it's remarkable to see, first of all, Tom Cotton giving someone who's supposed to be his political enemy, and this is Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas, whose entire career, by the way, has been sponsored by pro-Israel billionaires like Paul Singer. He's giving Lloyd Austin a chance to respond to his critics potential prosecution for the commission or facilitation of genocide at the International Court of Justice. And it really shows how one of the most dangerous things we could possibly witness in Washington is not polarization, but when both sides get along, because usually when they do, it's to make a giant war. In this case, it's to make war on the Palestinian people. Lloyd Austin was not expected to be answering questions like this. So we owe a huge gratitude to Code Pink and to Medea Benjamin for forcing that question out there by protesting him. Lloyd Austin is a former board member of Raytheon, which is making a literal killing, not just in Gaza, but in Ukraine. So he's keeping his seat on that board warm by denying the existence of genocide. But again, he's also protecting himself

legally. He cannot say this is a genocide taking place because look at what's happening to the German government. Nicaragua is taking them because look at what's happening to the German government. Nicaragua is taking them to the International Court of Justice for the commission of genocide because Germany is the second largest supplier of military aid to Israel. The U.S. officials are facing the threat of prosecution from South African lawyers after the ICJ validated South Africa's case against Israel. So he should be very concerned about his future ability to travel to the extent that any of this can be enforced. And Lloyd Austin has been signing off on 2,000 pound bombs, which are not used by any other military in the world in densely populated urban areas except

Israel's. We saw Matthew Miller at the State Department defend delivering 2,000 pound bombs to Israel. And he said, well, it's because they need to use them against Hezbollah or Iran. Like, great. That's very reassuring. Now, almost at precisely the same time, Lloyd Austin delivered this testimony. Another member of the Biden administration, it was actually the following day, Samantha Power, USAID director, testified before the House. And under questioning from Representative Joaquin Castro, Samantha Power confessed that there was credible evidence of mass starvation in Gaza, of famine. So she actually undercut what Lloyd Austin said, that there is no evidence of genocide.

Because when the defense minister of Israel, Yoav Galant, says these are human animals who will not receive water, gas, fuel, or food, that is a statement of intent to genocide. And then six months later, after he says that, when they're facing starvation and a key figure in the Biden administration finds evidence of that, that is evidence of genocide. So Lloyd Austin lied. No, no surprise at that at all. Do you think that Russia would come to Iran's aid if that becomes a full fledged war in the US gets involved? Iran, Israel, US on the side of Israel with the naval ships and jets? Will Russia come to Iran's aid? I don't think it will come to that. What I think will immediately happen if Iran is attacked, or if, yeah, if Iran is attacked, is gas prices will explode and Biden's reelection chances will be, and the global economy will just collapse. Of course, the trade of Hormuz, they could do that tomorrow. Yeah. So I don't think they're going to need Russian military assistance. Biden will realize that his reelection chances are nil and they're doing everything. I think they would not want to see that happen. However, military cooperation between Russia and Iran might not

take place the way we think. Russia could tell Israel, we're no longer going to engage in these kind of deconfliction measures with you around Syria. And we're going to allow the Syrian government to start shooting your planes down. And we're going to allow the IRGC and Hezbollah to operate more freely than they have before in Syria. I know from having been to Syria that supporters of the resistance axis were furious at Russia for suppressing Hezbollah and Iran activity at the behest of Israel. So Russia has a lot of cards that can play in the region for a European country. And we should also look at the cooperation between Iran and North Korea. North Korea happens to be one of the most sophisticated producers of domestic ballistic missiles, and it helped Iran acquire that capacity. And then Iran passed on that know-how

to these local militias in Gaza, who happen to not be Shia, not part of Iran's, not in the same ideological line as Iran, but they all want to resist this global hegemon. So they've all been working together for all these years. And what we're seeing is the culmination of a lot of that kind of intelligence and technical sharing. And eventually Iran will reach a point where Israel is not the dominant military power in the region. And then there will be nothing for Israel to do except to unravel and run away. And that's, I think that that should be frightening to anyone who supports Israel, that they're leaving open that possibility rather and sabotaging all of the attempts by the U.S. to either prop up a reformist leadership in Iran or negotiate with it. Max, thank you very much, my dear friend, for your, as usual, spot on and courageous analysis. All the best to you. Thanks a lot, Judge. Of course. Coming up at

five o'clock Eastern, the boys, the Intelligence Community Roundtable, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. We'll see you then. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.