Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Congress and Genocide

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Max Blumenthal: Congress and GenocideSee 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 Friday, August 2nd, 2024. My dear friend Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. So much has happened since last we spoke, but I want to start with big picture. Before we get to the assassinations and before we get to the torture and before we get to the Knesset trying to immunize the torturers and before we get to the radicals breaking into the jail to jailbreak the torturers, big picture. What path is the United States and Israel putting the West on? We could be looking at a series of incidents that might have the same impact on the history we're about to live through as the shooting of Franz Ferdinand. The United States is putting the world on a path to world war.

Whether it's with its regime change policy toward Venezuela or its regime change policy toward Gaza, a tiny slice of the planet that is one of the most densely populated and oppressed places on earth. The United States, with its refusal to exercise leverage and addiction to hegemony and empire, is putting the world on a path to global war, which may begin with the outbreak of regional war at any moment, including while this conversation takes place? Before he authorized and caused the murders of a Hamas and Hezbollah leader in Tehran and in Beirut, Prime Minister Netanyahu was addressing the Congress of the United States and he was greeted, as Jeff Sachs said so beautifully, rapturously. It turned my stomach. I didn't watch it live, as you know, I was away, but I did watch

a clip of it, and it turned my stomach again. I think he may have had you in mind when he complained about the protesters. How serious were these protests? What was the NYPD doing there, and did the media cover you? Well, the protests were just an outpouring of righteous indignation at genocide. The presence of police was all encompassing and was designed to kind of kettle the protesters and keep them as far away from Netanyahu as possible. Whereas what I witnessed on January 6th, the absence of police was designed to draw in protesters in order to accuse them of insurrection. And a few, a gang of violent idiots played that role. There was also a small band of idiots at this protest

who played into the hands of Netanyahu. But what Netanyahu was doing, you know, I was a little bit startled, not startled, but stunned to hear him dedicate 20 minutes to the protesters and to attacking American civil society, a foreign leader, and be cheered on by American supposed representatives and lawmakers attacking Americans. What Netanyahu was doing was playing off of the divisions in America and specifically the divisions within the Democratic Party to weaken Kamala Harris because he is banking on Netanyahu winning. Banking on Trump winning.

Sorry, yeah. I get them all confused. It's easy to confuse them because that speech he gave was like a state of the union. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he was greeted as the real leader and kind of correctly so. But, you know, at the end of the protest, I went out to Union Station right across from the Capitol and someone had written like Hamas is coming on the Christopher Columbus statue in front, which is normally occupied by urinating homeless people. It's not exactly like a well-maintained statue, but this became kind of a focal point for indignation by the neocons and the pro-Netanyahu crowd. And so basically by focusing

so much on the protesters, so much of his resentment, Netanyahu was forcing Kamala to make a statement. Do you stand with them, the young people, the progressive base of the Democratic Party, or do you stand with Israel? Because if you don't stand with Israel, the donations are going to stop coming in and you will not be a viable candidate. And the first statement Kamala made, and she was on the road in Wisconsin, was to denounce the protests immediately after Netanyahu's speech, and it almost read like an AIPAC official wrote that statement by her. So Netanyahu is continuing with these assassinations. Everything he's doing to destabilize the Middle East also aims to

destabilize the Democratic Party in support of Trump, although that might not be his primary objective. It's a ricochet effect. Chris, play the Netanyahu clip where he condemns the protesters. For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building. Not that many, but they're there and throughout the city. Well, I have a message for these protesters. When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising, promoting, and funding you, you have officially become Iran's useful idiots. I think you got under his skin. I mean, as far as you know, were protesters

paid for by the Iran government? What would they pay for? For all we know, I mean, he just slanders them. For all we know. But what he's doing, he was playing off of a similarly baseless accusation by a director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, against the protesters that they may be funded by Iran. And they refused to put forward their evidence as well. But this played into Netanyahu's fascistic dog and pony show at the Capitol, basically the Biden administration giving him all the ammunition he needs. One Republican, Thomas Massey, was not there. Kamala Harris was not there. She eventually met with him and said what she said. A hundred Democrats were not there, Kamala Harris was not there. She eventually met with him and said what she said.

A hundred Democrats were not there, though most of those Democrats do vote in lockstep to give Israel its support, but at least they had the courage not to be there. He spoke for 55 minutes, was interrupted 58 times by standing ovations, one of which was longer than a minute. Stand up and clap your hands for a minute and see how unpleasant that is, unless you're really, really enthusiastic about something. What turned my stomach as much as the fact that a genocidal murderer was standing in the well of the Congress was that these members of Congress do not represent the American people. They represent the donor class that bought and paid for their campaigns.

Yeah, absolutely. That's why Kamala Harris is edging towards selecting Pennsylvania Governor Joshua Shapiro, the ultimate anti-Semitic false flagger who compared students protesting Israel's genocide at the University of Pennsylvania to the Ku Klux Klan, who has supported anti-BDS legislation, legislation to outlaw Americans' freedom of expression to boycott the state of Israel and preventing companies from engaging in the boycott, criminalizing American companies if they boycott Israel. This is someone who poses a direct threat to the First Amendment, who also is a boon to Kamala's fundraising efforts from the Zionist billionaire class, from figures like Haim Saban, from characters like Paul Singer who donate to pro-Israel stooges of both parties,

whether it's Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio in the Republican Party or Richie Torres in the Democratic Party. Kamala is courting them through the figure of Joshua Shapiro. I hope she doesn't choose Shapiro, but what do I care? It's Tweedledee and Tweedledum between Harris and Trump. I got a little angry over Israel's behavior in an interview I did with Professor John Mearsheimer, and it has a funny and happy ending. Watch this. Is there anything the Israeli government could do that would cause the American government to say enough is enough? Not that I can think of. I hope I'm wrong. Or would it take a President Max Blumenthal before something like that is going to happen.

Well, it would be very nice if Max was elected president and he could override Congress at every turn and then execute a more rational policy toward Israel. But as you and I both know, that's not going to happen anytime soon. You have the smartest man in America saying it would be very nice if Max Blumenthal were elected president. Yeah, I was wondering why I got an AI version of the Zapruder film with me in a convertible right after that interview showing up in my email. I hope you're jesting. Yeah, I'm jesting. And I might not be able to put the U.S. on the gold standard at any point during my presidency, too. So I'm not sure if you want to retract your endorsement.

I love you, man. And I love your courage. And I love your intellect. But if the professor's right, I could imagine a scenario in the U.S. There's, you know, I could imagine a scenario in the US 2048, President Malia Obama declaring Israel has the state of Judea, formerly the kingdom of Judea, formerly known as Israel, has the right to defend itself after it attacked New York, executing the Samson option. I could actually see that. Yeah, yeah. Sad and sick, but rational. So tell me, how can you expect to conduct serious negotiations, a big if, if you kill, if you murder the chief negotiator on the other side?

Well, going back to Netanyahu's speech, I mean, coming out of the speech with 58 standing ovations, including when he stated that Israel had only killed one innocent civilian in Gaza, 100 days of genocide, he decided that he had all the latitude that he needed to run rampant and escalate the situation in the region at a time when Israel was internally destabilized and was sitting on a domestic powder keg. So he goes and kills the lead negotiator for Hamas, who is a politician, probably the most prominent politician among Hamas's politburo after he had already authorized the assassination of Salah al-Rory, previously the lead negotiator for Hamas, in his office in Beirut. But this was such a greater provocation because Haniyeh was in Tehran. So you're directly provoking Iran. You're demanding that Iran enter the conflict directly along with Hezbollah at a time when military bases inside Israel, and I know we're going to get to this, are being overrun by fanatical supporters of your own governing coalition in insurrectionist riots, protesting the prosecution of soldiers for gang raping defenseless Palestinian male prisoners. I mean, Netanyahu knows that the situation is getting dire for Israel. And what he's seeking to do is buy himself time through escalation and to drag the U.S. deeper into what looks like an

increasing, increasingly looks like an endless war for Israel until Israel is dissolved. Here's the Algerian ambassador to the UN at the Security Council. As important as what he says is the physical reaction of the Israeli ambassador when he doesn't want to hear what's being said. It's a short clip. Watch this. We are on the precipice of a catastrophe. This morning, Israel committed an act of terror by assassinating Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, violating international law, violating the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Who's the guy that pulled the translator device off his ear? I mean, the Israeli UN representatives are making a mockery of Israel. Gilad Erdan, by wearing a Jewish star, a yellow star signaling Jewish persecution after October 7th was just the perfect symbol of the psychotic, narcissistic persecution complex of Israel. And now you have Israel's mad dog behavior crossing all red lines, which actually started with a missile strike on the town of Majdal Shams in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, where this mysterious missile strike takes place. Hezbollah is blamed for it. Hezbollah in 2006 took credit for an errant missile strike into this territory and apologized and offered to pay for the funerals of the victims. Here, they're denying all responsibility. Eyewitnesses are telling reporters, including Israeli rescuers, that it was an Israeli Iron Dome misfire. It leads to 11 kids being killed

on a soccer pitch. And this becomes the tripwire for Israel to carry out the assassination of Fouad Shukr, who is a close confidant of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah at his office in Beirut. This is a major crossing of a red line. Like Israel had been killing field commanders in Hezbollah, but they had never gone this far. And the U.S. clearly supported it for reasons I can go into later. Next, they fire some kind of projectile into Haniyeh's quarters at an apartment complex run by the IRGC in the heart of Tehran during hours after the inauguration of Iran's new reformist president to undermine and provoke him as well. And at the UN, there's really no point in discussing any of this because the UN has no means of enforcing any kind of sanction to put a leash on the mad dog of Israel. It seems like the only solution here for Iran to establish deterrence is a massive counterattack that teaches the Israelis that if they do this, there will be a response. And just beyond that,

Israel has made a huge mistake, I think, culturally, by killing a Sunni leader in Iran. They have inspired enormous amounts of Shia sympathy for and support for Hamas and a show of cross-sectarian solidarity in Tehran at the procession honoring Ismail Haniyeh. This is something that the U.S. and the Western powers do not want to see because they've played on sectarian divides across the Middle East for decades and decades, most disgustingly in Syria to foment the Syrian dirty war playing on divisions between the Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, and Shia in Syria. And that's all gone. The Muslim world is united now against the US and Israel because of these maniacal assassinations, this crossing of red lines, which the Biden administration has shown will never stop. It has no red line here. And so we are heading for direct

conflict that will be much larger than what we saw after Iran counterattacked Israel following the assault on its consulate in Damascus, killing its own embassy employees. So the same Assad that was able to plant a bomb in a guest house two months before he stayed there and know exactly what room he was staying in and exactly when to detonate it, didn't know that October 7th was coming? Well, I would caution against the Mossad's version that it put forward through Ronan Bergman, one of the Israeli intelligence. I didn't realize it was through him, but go ahead, please. Yeah. I mean, he was the New York Times reporter who got this out. He's one of their favorite stenographers. And it may be true, but the

reason the Mossad wants that story out there is because it allows them to continue to operate in the shadows and allows Israel to not officially take responsibility for Haniyeh's killing. The official Iranian story is that he was killed by a projectile, which is no less embarrassing to Iran's security services. Correct. This is put forward in Fars News, an official organ of the Iranian government. So I think we need to be careful about attribution and how he was killed. However, I mean, the effect is the same. I mean, this is a major, major escalation.

It's really shocking. The nine Israeli soldiers that sodomized the Palestinians with iron rods and with their own cell phones, this is repellent beyond imagining, and then were arrested. What happened? Did right-wing fanatics break in the jail and spring them? Yeah, this is, I mean, if I were to write Goliath 2, the sequel to my book Goliath, this would be the opening scene. This is just such a pivotal moment in the short history of Israel, where a political element that really represents the future of Israeli politics, which aims to transition the Jewish and democratic state, which was always an was home to military courts where a group of soldiers from a shadowy outfit called Force 100, which was tasked with maintaining the concentration camp called Ste Teman in the Negev Desert set up after October 7, which is basically a torture camp for men kidnapped from Gaza, were going to be put on

trial for sodomizing, gang raping Palestinian male prisoners. Now, this is hugely ironic because we at the Gray Zone have faced so many attacks for exposing and debunking the hoax that Hamas carried out, mass systematic rape on October 7th. The entire media, mainstream media fell for that. The New York Times had this on the front page. And then we knew for months and months that men were being sexually assaulted in this concentration camp by Israeli soldiers with the full consent of Israeli leadership. And now it's all out in the open. It's all out in the open. And you see this mob. That's not some January 6th mob. That's like mainstream.

The January 6th mob, they were held accountable by the FBI. Some of them had their civil rights heinously violated. Nobody's being prosecuted here. They're being supported by the Israeli justice minister. They're being supported by Netanyahu's own son tweeted support for them. Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, who's from the Labor Party, has said that they shouldn't be prosecuted. And the only reason they were ever going to be prosecuted was because of the ICC case against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galvant.

It was a legal ruse or a propaganda ruse to make it seem as though Israel was capable of punishing its own. Let me just interrupt you for a second, Max. Are we looking at this mob now entering the lobby of the jail? That's right. Well, they did enter the lobby of the jail. And where are the police? Well, the police are under the control of the hero of this mob, Idemar Ben-Gavir, who has the portfolio of the police as security minister of Israel. And to make this worse… So the police stood down to allow this to happen. And to make this worse, did not Ben-Gavir and his colleagues in the Likud-led coalition present an application in the Knesset

to give these nine soldiers immunity from the sodomizing and at the same time to authorize the summary execution of Palestinian prisoners, uncharged, unprosecuted, unconvicted, under the pretext that they need more bed space. That's something Ben-Gavir has been calling for since State Haman was set up. And what resulted from him putting forward this call for immunity for these soldiers was a debate, an open debate in Israel's Knesset on whether it is permissible to stick an electric rod in the rectum of Palestinian men. And with many members of Knesset, especially from the ruling Likud party, supporting that notion. The soldier who was accused of leading the gang rape of a defenseless Palestinian male, his wife was

interviewed about this heinous crime. And she said, what does a terrorist's ass matter to me? My husband is being subjected to political persecution. I mean, so basically your husband raped a man, a defenseless man. And that not only is a problem, it's not only not a problem in your marriage, but you think that he's some kind of martyr and you're kind of happy about what he did. What kind of society produces people like that who are now being portrayed as heroes in the Israeli media? I mean, we're looking at one of the sickest societies in human history, which is nuclearized and Biden is sending untold numbers of soldiers and warships to support it in a war that it is directly inciting, while Biden is even acknowledging

when asked by the press that these assassinations are, quote, not helpful. Who's in charge here? How high is the appetite of Netanyahu and company for risk? I mean, it would seem to me that they are just inviting the world around them to come down on them. They know that behind Hezbollah is Iran. They know that behind Iran, if things get rough for Iran, is Vladimir Putin. Well, Iran has become sort of an economic channel for Russia and China. And Russia and China understand, I think, that the longer this war goes on, the weaker the West becomes in the region. And they can gauge the West's weakness, the collective West, which is waging war on Russia via Ukraine through Israel.

Israel's not, I can't call Israel a proxy of the collective West or the United States like I can Ukraine because they aren't advancing American interests in the same, American imperial interests in the same way. But it's very, it's, we can see a clear degradation, not just in Western soft power and support for the rules-based order that Biden preaches, but in Western military power. Now within Israel, there are, you have Netanyahu who understands that he's in political hot water. I think he would correctly see that what took place at the Beit Lid military base, which was overrun by fanatical supporters of people who control his coalition. That's a microcosm of what will take place

if he has a ceasefire in Gaza and that he could be looking at civil war. And that if Netanyahu steps down or faces prosecution for his corruption trials or his failures on October 7th, there's no one to fill the void. Someone like Benny Gantz would be seen as a US-backed regime and the civil war would intensify. So Israel has no solution to this. And Netanyahu has introduced language about marketing the concept of permanent war to the

Israeli public, life on the sword. He's saying we need to live life on the sword. For Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, that's their agenda. That's what this need to live life on the sword. For Ben-Gavir and Smotrick, that's their agenda. That's what this is all about. For the Christian right in the United States, the evangelical Christian Zionists, this is a pathway accelerating tribulation and ultimately revelation, the return of Christ. So they're on board to see this, a large part of the Republican base. And the parts of the Republican base. And the parts of the Israeli public that would like a ceasefire, that want to negotiate, are politically isolated and marginalized. And they understand that while Israel's leadership wants to execute Palestinian prisoners in their dungeons in order to deny Hamas leverage, they also would like to see dead the Israeli

hostages in Gaza because they also give Hamas leverage. And then the war will simply continue endlessly. And there is a messianic element in Israel that is so strong and incipient right now and has lost all rational sense that they don't understand how weak they actually would be going up against the axis of resistance in a kind of endless war that has escalated above the threshold of the current status quo ante. Israel is a very weak society when compared with Iran, which is a, you know, part of the cradle of civilization, has 4,000 years of continuous habitation, sees history along those lines where Israel can't even plan for the following year. So I think Israel, whatever happens with this coming counterattack by Iran

and its allies, Israel's crisis is only going to deepen. So just to summarize your understanding and reporting on this, Netanyahu has succeeded in uniting Shia and Sunni. He has succeeded in dividing the Israeli public to the point where they're close to violence. He has destroyed the Israeli economy, and he has exhausted the IDF and his colleagues want to defend rape and torture. Fair summary? Fair summary. And he, you know, appears to be that this regional war he's inciting could crash the global economy.

Right. That's on him and his backers in Washington. I have to burst this most unpleasant bubble. Is it true that you asked the NYPD when you saw them in Washington how to get to the Chrysler building in the Empire State Building? Some of them actually found the humor in it, but the rest of them didn't. Did they reply, hey, buddy, you're in the wrong town, whereupon you said, what are you doing here? Don't tell me I'm in the wrong town.

You're in the wrong town. Exactly. I mean, the NYPD is itself kind of an army. It has a higher budget than most armies in the world, including large armies of mid-sized countries. And at least 200 NYPD officers with less lethal weapons and riot gear were sent to Washington to protect Netanyahu. I've never seen so much protection for a single foreign leader. And it happens to be the one who is committing genocide against the largely defenseless people. So what do we have but disillusionment and anger and rage,

especially among the younger generation that sees this, that opens up our social media and sees footage of, for example, the dozens of children who were slaughtered at a UN school just last night in Gaza? What hope do they have with this presidential election? They don't really have any. So I just, I think we can expect more anger in the streets as the Democratic Convention approaches. A lot of us, you know, didn't fall out of a coconut tree yesterday. Right. Max, you're terrific. God bless you. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for your intellect. Thank you for your time, my dear friend. Will you and Aaron and your colleagues be at the DNC in Chicago? We're looking into that. We definitely won't be there as nominees or candidates ever. So sorry to disappoint you and Mearsheimer.

But if we do manage to secure a venue and an event, we'll promote it here. And you're a VIP guest. You'll be an invited VIP guest. Thank you. Thank you, my man. Best to Aaron. Best to Anya, to your baby.

And all the best. We'll see you again next week. Thank you. Welcome back, Judge. All the best. Wow, what an unbelievable interview. I'm sorry we had to discuss such disgusting events, but you're not going to see this in the mainstream media,

and the world needs to know about it. 4 o'clock Eastern today, the Intelligence Community Roundtable. Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern on all of this and more. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.