Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Biden’s Ukraine Blunders

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

Max Blumenthal: Biden’s Ukraine BlundersSee 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 Thursday, February 1st, 2024. Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, always a pleasure. Thank you, my dear friend. I have a lot of questions to ask you about Israel, but first a few about Ukraine, which is in dire straits. The commander of whose military has been or is about to be fired, which desperately needs manpower, is now going to receive over the next four years some $54 billion from the EU in cash. Isn't this probably going to go down a rat hole like a lot of cash in Ukraine? Or what could they do with it? Well, isn't it earmarked for weapons? And what Victoria Nuland, the architect of this entire disaster when she was in the Obama administration, promised the people who've been profiting off this war. It's also aid to prop up Zelensky and to head off this war of the mandarins that's been brewing in Kiev over the past several months, in which we've seen a top deputy to Valery Zaluzhny, the chief of staff, be killed in a package bomb.

Who could have orchestrated that? We've seen intelligence chiefs vying for control. We've seen what may have been a kind of Hannibal directive style assassination of Ukrainian captive soldiers, POWs, being returned, with many of them identified with the Azov Battalion, which had, before this war erupted, been kind of a political enemy of Zelensky. So the aid package is absolutely necessary. It's sort of the financial feeding tube for the Zelensky zombie that still controls the future rump state of Western Ukraine. And it's also necessary that it comes from the EU because all this money is being held up in Congress over the border deal that the Republicans want. So Washington is obviously

guiding this. It's no coincidence this took place right as Victoria Nuland left Kiev. So Washington must have been involved in the EU threats to wreck the Hungarian economy and put pressure on President Viktor Orban to go along with this giveaway? No doubt, but Ursula von der Leyen would love to see Orban. Ursula von der Leyen's a completely crazed anti-Russian Cold War, new Cold War ideologue. So I don't know how much nudging she needs from Washington to want to get Hungary out of the picture. I mean, the problem for the EU has always been the need for everyone to vote, for a unanimous vote. And Orban stands there in the way.

So this is a destabilization campaign being continued. This is the continuation of a destabilization campaign that's being waged from Brussels, definitely with the Biden administration's support. Aaron Matei, your colleague, tells us that the Zelensky government or the Zaluzhny military, whatever you want to call it, depending upon whether Zelushny keeps his job, is in desperate straits for human beings, that they are snatching people off the street, that their training of them is minimal. This really can't go on much longer. 50 billion over four years is not going to produce the human beings that they require, not going to hire mercenaries with it. Well, I mean, it looks like this Russian flight that was downed

by an anti-aircraft battery, which was filled with Ukrainian prisoners of war, was downed with a NATO anti-aircraft battery, either a Patriot or a German anti-aircraft battery. And it takes a lot of training to operate those. The training takes months and it requires a lot of personnel to operate a Patriot battery. So it's possible that just a human error took place in which some fresh bodies were just shoveled into the field to operate sophisticated weaponry and they wound up killing over 70 Ukrainian soldiers. But then we're seeing all of these reports in mainstream media about the women of the Ukrainian military. And every single one of these reports features a photograph of two photogenic, attractive women carrying weapons, and we're supposed to admire them and maybe

fetishize them. It's slay queen. It's literally slay queen. They're feminist heroes. And what it really signals is something similar to the, what were they, the Uyghur Corps? At the end of the failed Nazi German military campaign against Russia and the allies, against the Soviet Union and the allies. They were forced to recruit teenagers, adolescent boys, and old men actually to conscript them. That's what we're seeing in Ukraine. There just aren't any men left. An entire generation has been thrown into the slaughterhouse in order to annoy and attack Russia. And it doesn't seem to have made much of a material difference to Russia's economy, to Russia's standing in the world. If anything, it's blown back

on the West, on Western economy. So this has been a disaster. It's a matter of time before Ukrainians, even in Western Ukraine, start to accept it as such and turn on their leadership. Yeah. The president, Zelensky, is even having trouble firing Zelensky because of his extraordinary popularity among the troops. So I think we can conclude before we move on to Israel that Ukraine is almost literally on its last legs. And this EU orchestrated pot of cash is not enough to save it. Yeah, well, I'd just say in closing, we can kind of look at Taiwan as a model for what Ukraine could be, or even Israel. The West, the collective West, will continue to funnel weapons and fork billions of dollars of aid over to Western Ukraine just to continue perpetually antagonizing Russia. I don't think that program will end, partly because it's been so profitable for the arms industry in the U.S., which is one of our few productive industries. Before we went on air, you expressed a view that there might be a

ceasefire in Gaza this weekend. Can you tell us what you know? Yeah, there was actually a celebratory gunfire in parts of Gaza yesterday, or like 12, maybe 12 to 24 hours ago, when the Qatari foreign minister minister during a talk at Johns Hopkins University announced that Hamas had accepted terms of ceasefire. Now, Hamas has come out and sort of not poured cold water on it, but said that that was premature and that they have not yet accepted the terms of a ceasefire. But what we're seeing now is serious. And Israel, by providing its terms to the Qatari mediators to pass over to Hamas signals its seriousness. The seriousness is being driven by figures in Israel's war cabinet who are opponents of Netanyahu, former Israeli Army Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, and Benny Gantz, also former Chief of Staff.

People who are known in Gaza as butchers. But Eizenkot has lost a son and a nephew in this war, and they have decided that it's time to make a deal. On the other hand... You're talking about a permanent deal or a ceasefire just long enough to exchange hostages? No, this would be longer than long enough to exchange hostages. Both sides would take, let's say, they could exchange... We saw them exchange as many as 100 hostages and prisoners, hostages in Gaza in about four days. This is going to be at least, I would expect this to be at least 35 days. And when it's that long, it stops the Israeli military's momentum such as it is to the extent

they have any in its tracks. And that may be part of the American calculus. According to the Wall Street Journal. The Biden administration can't really impose a ceasefire by actually withholding arms, which would have guaranteed one today. So what they can do is a humanitarian pause and make it as long as possible. And within 35 days, it could be extended more. And the idea is 35 hostages will come out of Gaza who are women, people who are sick or wounded, and the elderly. What Hamas appears to be demanding, though, is something that could be potentially earth-chattering for the political future of Palestine. Well, should we count on Israel stopping murdering people

during the 30 or 35 days? That's a good question. Here are the issues. We've talked about this before. One of the red lines for the Israeli security apparatus, the sort of securitocrats who control everything, is the release of major Palestinian security prisoners. Ahmed Sadat and the former commander of whatever military units Hamas may have been able to assemble on the West Bank. These are guys serving long, long prison terms. They command enormous authority. Marwan Barghouti is not Hamas. He is someone who could actually bring Hamas and Fatah together and lead a unity government. He's enormously

popular across Palestine. Ahmed Sadat, not Hamas, he comes from PFLP, which is actually a secular left-wing group that has a storied history, but is much weaker than it used to be, but he's a very popular figure as well. So it's clear what Hamas is trying to do is establish a national unity government where they kind of exist behind the scenes, but they're not actually leading. And other actually popular figures, unlike Mahmoud Abbas, are in control. And that's a major threat to Israel and what it seeks to achieve with the Palestinians. So it's unclear if they will accept those terms. And then you have with Netanyahu, his political cabinet, his governing coalition, which is razor thin and it hinges on total fanatics like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrek, who come from the Jewish power, Otzma Yehudit party. They don't have that many seats.

They represent the most extreme violent settler, ultra-nationalists in the occupied West Bank, and they will have none of the prisoner swap. So if Netanyahu goes ahead with this deal, it's likely that his coalition will collapse. And if his coalition collapses, he faces four possible corruption cases and going back to trial and he's no longer immune because he's not in government anymore. So he could go to jail. So it doesn't seem like it's in Netanyahu's interests. And we've seen Netanyahu use extreme language against Hamas and the Israeli Mossad actually attempt to antagonize Qatar, for example, to release compromising photos of the emir and so forth in an effort to sabotage this deal. So it's unclear to me, but I think all of the rejectionism is coming from the Israel.

Most of the rejectionism is coming from the Israel, most of the rejectionism is coming from the Israeli side. Is the Israeli acceptance or rejection of this, Max, solely up to Netanyahu? I wouldn't say so. I mean, there are other factors that can bring Netanyahu down. And he needs his war cabinet. He needs the protection of these figures in the war cabinet, like Eisenkant and especially Benny Gantz, because these were sort of the leaders of the protest movement that was threatening Netanyahu almost in an exist, well, I wouldn't say existentially, but threatening him heavily prior to October 7th. And right now he's managed

to keep that protest movement, which is completely about him out of the streets. However, a new protest movement has developed around releasing the hostages. They're escalating, they're stopping traffic, they're occupying space outside the prime minister's residence again. So there's pressure from other points besides just the far right flank of his governing coalition. Do you know anything of this recent Jerusalem Post report that Israel has killed 10,000 Hamas fighters and Hamas is asking for some sort of peace deal. I mean, is this Mossad nonsense or is this based in fact? I mean, even if it were true, I don't think it would make a difference on the ground. Israel has lost three officers in the last 48 hours. They're

continuing to take bodies in the Gaza Strip, taking many injuries, especially east of Khan Yunis. The fighting remains intense there. So that would be, what, one third of what is said to be the fighting force of Al-Qassam, which is the military wing of Hamas. There are other factions in the field, by the way. I can think of a tiny faction like the DFLP, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They have like 800 people in the field fighting. They're doing mortar launches. They have RPGs. And how hard is it to get a 15-year-old who lost his entire family to pick up an RPG and fire it at a tank after a light amount of training? So these people can be replaced. The weapons are locally made. I don't think it makes much of a difference. And obviously,

I think that's exaggerated. If you look at the casualty counts from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 40% of those killed out of just about 26,000 or 27,000. 40% are children, mostly small children. And then another close to 30% are women. So it just doesn't really add up. It doesn't make a difference. And if Israel's submitting its terms of a cessation of hostility directly to Hamas, they're pretty serious about ending this too. Is the Jerusalem Post trustworthy when it comes to these things, or is it a mouthpiece for Netanyahu and company? Jerusalem Post represents this sort of Anglo settler community around Jerusalem, and therefore has kind of a right-wing pro-settler, anti-Palestinian bent. Its editor, who was recently fired, Avi Mayer, he was a longtime Israeli propagandist who moved to Israel from

New Jersey. And he was fired for running an article which insisted that a Palestinian baby who had been killed in an Israeli airstrike was actually a plastic doll. So I think that speaks to the credibility of that paper, but sometimes they turn up some valuable insights into the thinking of Israeli political and security elite. This instance in which Israeli intelligence figures, or maybe they were soldiers, dressed as healthcare providers and invaded a hospital in the West Bank and murdered three Palestinian men in their hospital beds while they were being treated. Did that have any effect, or is there any appreciable or measurable effect on

the Israeli public? I mean, they say, you know, it's become kind of a common saying now that every Israeli accusation is a confession. And we heard Israel accuse the staff of Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, sort of the linchpin of the healthcare system in the major population center of Gaza City of being covert Hamas agents running a Hamas base beneath the hospital. The central command center for Hamas was beneath that hospital. And obviously what Israel just needed to do was to disable that hospital so that it could start to depopulate Northern Gaza and create a humanitarian crisis. And they did so with the total consent of the US government, the Biden administration, the US media. They never found the command and control center. They found a little tunnel that

led to nowhere, then they blew it up before anyone could actually get down there and look at it on an independent basis. And now they're running up in a hospital in Jenin, dressed as doctors, an actual death squad known as the Mistar Avim. These are Jewish Israelis of Arab origin who come from Arab countries who can look like Palestinians. And they often will dress up as protesters at Palestinian protests and try to make the protest either more violent, or they'll just whip out guns in the middle of it and start arresting people. They assassinate people on streets undercover. And here they are in a hospital. They assassinate three young men who are said to be fighters. One of them was in a coma, and they shot him in the head. And this is being praised at the highest level in Israel and in Israeli media, like it's

some badass scene out of Fauda. Matthew Miller, the spokesman, or should I say the kind of inadvertent, unintentional comedian at the best comedy club in town, which is at Foggy Bottom in the State Department. It's a real dark comedy, some real gallows humor. Matthew Miller defended this. They have this talking point now at the State Department in the White House, and you'll hear this from John Kirby as well at the White House, that Israel has the right to defend itself in accordance with international law. So they're asked about this heinous scene where they send a death squad dressed as doctors and nurses into a hospital to execute a comatose teenager, shooting him in the face, taking all the doctors hostage temporarily. And he says that. He says that. So there's no breaks on what Israel can do at this

point. There's no abatement to the slaughter in light of the determination by the International Court of Justice that there's plausible evidence to believe that there was genocidal intent and plausible evidence to believe that there's genocidal behavior. That did not temper, correct me if I'm wrong, Max, the prime minister, Smotrich, Ben-Gavir, or the IDF? Yeah, I mean, especially the IDF, if you can call them a defense force. One of the key foundations of the South African case against Israel was incitement to genocide or the intent to commit genocide expressed at the highest levels of Israeli leadership and among the rank and file of the reservists in the so-called IDF who have invaded Gaza. And since the ICJ decision, we haven't seen any commanders in the Israeli military

impose a no social media rule where soldiers can't boast of burning homes or blowing up schools. We recently saw, and when I say recently, I think this video came out 72 hours ago. It's all over social media. A group of Israeli reservists went up into Islamic University to the, I think the wing of the medical school, whipped out Torahs, Torah scrolls, like the one I read from at my bar mitzvah, and began dancing with them and parading around with them with Israeli flags. They proudly posted that on social media, and then they blew up the whole building. So this is how afraid they are of anyone actually enforcing the ICJ decision. And they have no fear because of Washington, because of Tony Blinken. By the way, right now outside Tony Blinken's house, there is an encampment that's growing of protesters outside his mansion in the Arlington McLean area, one of the wealthiest areas in the D.C. area. People are lining the streets and they're sleeping there in tents and they're protesting him. And so the

pressure is growing for a ceasefire. But at the same time, there isn't enough pressure to enforce enforce the ICJ decision. President Biden today on his way to Michigan campaigning announced some sort of sanctions against Israeli settlers in the West Bank. So before we get to Netanyahu's response, how could he possibly enforce such sanctions? This isn't even window dressing. It's an empty gesture and it's directed at Ben-Gavir and Smotrich and Netanyahu's coalition partners. And they're furious about it. They're easily agitated and triggered. But it might not matter to violent settlers because they may not want to travel to the United States or have U.S. bank accounts or really care about much beyond their own messianic duty to terrorize Palestinians and replace the Al-Aqsa Mosque with the Third Temple, what would really matter, what would actually carry concrete consequences for this movement, this messianic terrorist settler movement, would be if the treasury department would revoke the tax exempt

status of nonprofits, which are right now involved in raising money for settlements in the Gaza strip and which also raise money for these very violent settler terrorists that they're sanctioning sanctioned for people so far revoke the 501 C three status of the Hebron Fund, for example, and all of these other settler nonprofits, and then you might start seeing some results, but they won't do it. Oh, and by the way, you could just stop sending Israel spare parts for its F-16s and the war will end tomorrow. Yeah, that is unlikely to happen. Here's what Prime Minister Netanyahu said in response to these sanctions. Israel's acts against all those who break the law everywhere. And can you scroll up, please, Chris?

Okay, I thought I wasn't reading from the top. You're correct. Israel acts against all those who break the law everywhere, and therefore there is no room for exceptional measures in this regard. The absolute majority of the settlers in Judea and Samaria are law-abiding citizens, many of whom are currently fighting in the regular and reserve army for the defense of Israel. Well, the whole settlement is illegal. No one's going to believe a statement like that from him.

Right, right. Well, I mean, there are people in Hebron right now who have killed Americans and who are American citizens. And the FBI has not demanded their extradition who killed Alex Odeh, who was the West Coast regional director for the anti-discrimination committee, the Arab anti-discrimination committee. I believe it was in 1984, they bombed his office.

They fled to Hebron and they're still there. My colleague and friend friend David Sheen, who's an Israeli journalist, has investigated and identified them. And there are so many other figures who've been responsible for documented acts of terrorism against Palestinians, killing, stabbing them, bombing mayors. They're freely operating within Israeli politics, within the rabbinate, and within even Israeli media. And you have a campaign right now to free the killer of the Dawabsheh family, which was from the town of Douma in the northern West Bank. Their home was firebombed by settlers,

and much of the family died in agony as they were burned alive, including small children. Idamar Ben-Gvir, the security minister in Netanyahu's cabinet, has a picture of Goldstein on his wall, the settler killer of 29 Palestinians worshiping at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. And I mean, that's who these people are. They're in the government. So the idea that Netanyahu can be trusted to enforce the law is so laughable that it shouldn't even be taken into consideration. I don't want to subject you to something you've already seen. Did we show you last week Ben Gavir and Smotrich at a rally shouting at and demanding behavior from Netanyahu who wasn't there? Yeah. Okay. And then we don't need it.

No, we didn't actually. So if you want to address that. This is in Hebrew, but there are translations. So here we go cut number mr prime minister benjamin netanyahu i'm addressing you from this stage it's a shame to wait another 19 years to understand that gush katith and northern samaria must be returned the responsibility of brave leadership is to make courageous decisions. We are settling our land from width to length, controlling it and fighting terror always and

bringing with God's help security to all of Israel. You know what the answer is. Without settlement, there is no security. These are the two guys that may bring down his government if he has a prolonged ceasefire. Yeah, and at least four out of 10 Israelis polled last week support them in resettling the Gaza Strip. One of the Israeli government ministers, checking his name. Yeah, no, it was there was an Israeli member of Knesset, who appeared at that conference, named Amihai Chikli. And he explicitly called for resettling Gaza and expelling its population ethnic cleansing. And he was invited to the you mentioned the Jerusalem Post earlier, He was invited to a Jerusalem Post conference being held in Berlin, Germany, to be held with Die Welt, which is the major tab be at the conference with Stephen Erlanger, who is a top New York Times correspondent, along with the German foreign minister. That's how the West is treating these fanatics.

It's not just treating them with kid gloves. You hit something with kid gloves, you're still hitting them. It's being welcomed on a red carpet in Germany. This is insane. It is insane. All right, Max. We've had enough. Every week we do this. You are so knowledgeable, so filled with facts, so insightful in your analysis, so courageous in your choice of words, so articulate.

And every week it seems to be getting worse. Thank you. Well, you know, we may have a ceasefire and we'll see people, we'll hopefully see Palestinians and Israelis freed and maybe there'll be something to celebrate after all this. And then we can move on to some new election year PSYOP or something like that. I have a feeling this is going to go on for a while because Bibi knows what's coming when it ends. Thank you, Max. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, Judge.

It's been a pleasure. Look forward to next week. No matter how bad it is, we'll look forward to next week. Absolutely. We'll still be alive. Yes. Wow. Another brilliant, courageous analysis from one of the smartest people I know.

Tomorrow, Professor Sachs and Colonel Wilkerson and the Intelligence Community Roundtable, Friday afternoon. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. and Colonel Wilkerson and the Intelligence Community Roundtable, Friday afternoon. Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.