Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal : Defending Grayzone Against WaPo Slander

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Max Blumenthal : Defending Grayzone Against WaPo SlanderSee 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, June 6th, 2024. Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, a pleasure as always. Max, I was aware a couple of days ago of the hit piece on you and Aaron and your colleague in the gray zone written by some journalist I never heard of, Joseph Mann, at the Washington Post. And I do want to address what he said about you, and I want you to set the record straight. But I didn't know, and I'm kicking myself for not knowing, because you and Aaron and Anya have a special place in my heart and my head.

And I wish I had known about this at the time that there also was a hit piece back in January. And in researching the hit piece that was recent, I came across the one in January where you and Aaron called up the journalist. Before we run a short clip from that call, which is didactic because it's a terrific cross-examination, but it's also hilarious. Who is she and what did she say about you, Aaron, and the gray zone? This is the hit piece in January. Well, both, I mean, first of all, the Washington Post is collapsing. Its CEO resigned suddenly like two days ago, and the publisher addressed the staff last Monday and said,

no one is reading our stuff anymore. Our audience is down by 50%. And this is why. They've run two massive hit pieces on us at the gray zone because we have embarrassed the Israelis. We have exposed effectively Israeli propaganda that was deployed after October 7th to manufacture consent for genocide in Gaza. And so they're coming after us. The first hit piece by Liza Dwoskin, who we got on the phone live on our live stream, and who refused to address whether she was a Zionist or not, and kind of speaks to her motives. Her research relied completely on this Israeli intelligence cutout called the National Contagion Research Institute, which was spun out by a former ADL director, Anti-Defamation League director named Joel Finkelstein, but which has been advised by an Israeli intelligence officer named Sima Vaknin Gil, whose job was to infiltrate the United States and target American students and activists who were pushing a boycott of Israel. So that's the Washington Post source on that story. And then on this current

story, the same motives are there. We embarrassed the Israelis and they're accusing us of spreading misinformation. But this time, the demonstrably mendacious author, Joseph Men, has accused us implicitly of being funded by Iran and Russia, but especially Iran, in order to, it seems like he's trying to like rustle up some kind of federal criminal investigation of us. And if you read the article, none of that is substantiated by anything in the article. What did Eliza Dwoskin accuse you and Aaron and the gray zone of? Did she say that you were somehow October 7th deniers? Yeah. October 7th denialism is becoming a trend and they went after us, Electronic Intifada, other independent outlets that had shown, for example, that Israel deployed the Hannibal Directive, which is a now public known order to attack Israeli citizens if they're held captive by Palestinian militants, especially Israeli soldiers. And that's what happened in spades on October 7th.

Israeli media has corroborated all our reporting. Yediot Aronot, Ynet, reported 70 cars were hit by Israeli Apache helicopters, including cars with Israeli civilians in the cars. That dozens of Israelis, maybe more, were killed on October 7th. Even Haaretz, which has published something like six or seven attacks on us this year, the Israeli publication Haaretz has reported that one of Israel's top generals, General Barak Hiram, ordered an Israeli tank to shell a home in Kibbutz Beri, killing 13 Israelis who he knew were inside because they were held hostage by Hamas militants. And they do this deliberately because, as you can see, the hostage issue is paralyzing and destabilizing Israeli society, and it's given Hamas political leverage that it didn't have before.

So we were one of the first outlets out of the gate in English to report on this. We were accused of misinformation, attacked, smeared in the Washington Post, relying on bogus research from an Israeli intelligence cutout operating in the United States. And now they're back for us because I guess we humiliated their author. And every source in this second smear piece about us, every single source either works with the U.S. government or is funded by it. Let's go to the humiliation of the author of the first hit piece. It is instructive because it shows your brilliance, your persistence. And I might tell you, I know you're not a lawyer, your terrific cross-examination skills. It also shows some

hilarious looks on Aaron's face as this happening. Now, the clip is eight minutes long. We've edited it down to just a little bit under two. Let's watch it together. Here we go. Hello? Yeah, hi. Is this Elizabeth Davoskin? May I ask who's calling? Yeah, hi. It's Max Blumenthal from the Gray Zone, and I'm here with my colleague, Aaron Maté. Oh, okay. Thank you so much for calling.

Sure, yeah. You wanted to talk about our factual journalism? I did. I wanted to interview for my piece. Yeah, I got an email from you accusing us of minimizing the atrocities on October 7th. I am confused. It seems like you're planning to attack the investigative journalists who have helped expose a major scandal, us and Ali Abunimah, Bunima, which has been confirmed even by Israeli media and by Israeli military officials like Colonel Golan Vach, in which Israel killed Israeli civilians on October 7th. There were friendly fire orders. You're attacking us instead of doing the investigation yourself on this scandal. And I'm really confused about why that is.

So I definitely want to talk through everything. I don't want you to feel attacked. I want to talk you through the points in the story. I'm, of course, aware that there was, that there were deaths due to friendly fire.

We didn't contact you. You contacted us. So we want to hear from you. What is your issue with us? How are we minimizing what happened on October 7th? If you believe that since you wrote it,

it should be easy to explain. So let's hear it. Are you a Zionist? Excuse me, I feel like you're interrogating me and my other call is starting. You deserve to be interrogated. It's highly inappropriate that someone who seems to have such deep affection for an apartheid state committing genocide would be assigned to this story and is attacking independent journalists who produced factual journalism on a major scandal instead of holding to account the state and military responsible for that scandal. Because I'm running late to another call, so I'll send a follow-up email to your email with suggestions sometimes. Does that work? Do you still believe that the people of Palestine were just desert Bedouins before Israel?

Okay. Liza Davoskin of the Washington Post has hung up on us. Is this typical of mainstream media today? Well, they never get confronted like that. No, I'm sorry. I don't mean the confrontation. I mean her attitude, her flippancy, and her lack of concern about the of her sources? The complete contempt for independent media, for people who are actually holding power to account, is absolutely typical and characteristic of the kind of figures who populate corporate media newsrooms like the Washington Post. And Liza Dvaskin, when she was a student at Columbia University, wrote in the Columbia Spectator that Palestinians, when the Zionists

arrived and began to colonize Palestine, were nothing but desert Bedouins who had no national identity. So we asked her about that. And it's a relevant question when she's going after us for exposing a gigantic scandal relating to October 7th. I would assume the other Washington Post correspondent, Joseph Mann, is sympathetic to the US foreign policy establishment. Here's someone, Joseph Mann, who was exposed in WikiLeaks files, in the HB Gary files, for inviting the private spies from HB Gary to his book party. What obviously- What is HB Gary? It's a private spying firm that was exposed in a spying scandal in China. But this is someone who, when he turns to sources for expertise, every single source in his article, every single one

is sponsored by the US government, or like the Atlantic Council has also taken over $250,000 from Burisma at a time when Joe Biden's top Ukraine handler was a fellow at the Atlantic Council. And they're falsely accusing our editor, Wyatt Reed, of deep ties to Iranian media because of four years before he ever joined the gray zone, he freelanced for press TV. He did like a few appearances on press TV when he was starting out his journalism career. That's all they have. That's literally all this article was based on. And it occupies a full page in the print edition of the Washington post. It's, it's just wild. But their real target is you Aaron and gray zone. Yeah. Uh, because of the investigative journalism that you do. As soon as I saw this and then learned about the previous one involving Liza Dwoskin, I immediately thought, maybe I'm naive, we all know the Washington Post is a mouthpiece for the CIA. Is American

intelligence behind these pieces on you? Yes, absolutely. Former and current intelligence officers are even cited in the piece. A lawyer is cited in the piece who represents a Iranian regime change activist who's sponsored by the U.S. government and has called for Israeli strikes on her former country. The Atlantic Council is a U.S. intelligence cutout. And then the Australian Strategic and Policy Institute is funded by the U.S. State Department and arms manufacturers like Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems that are making a killing on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Those are the sources that helped shape this article, along with a bizarre online troll named Neil Rawhouser, who's claimed credit for it, and who is named in

emails as a confidential FBI informant. So it's pretty obvious what's going on here. The sort of disinformation industry, the censorship industrial complex has tried to stop us and failed because what we do is factual. It's above board. And so they're turning towards McCarthyite slander and innuendo in order to try to whip up some kind of FISA investigation of us. I don't know what they're trying to get going today in the Israeli publication I-24, which is close to the Israeli state. There are calls for us to be investigated. This is Israeli meddling in U.S. politics. And it seems like that's what their agenda is. The sort of mask is lifting on liberal democracy in the U.S. And we're being targeted not because we went after any Americans. It's

because we're going after Israel. But Zionism is the ideology of the American ruling class that's trying to bring down the hammer on us. I guess Prime Minister Netanyahu won't be giving you an interview when he addresses the joint session of Congress in a couple of weeks. Not unless I can catch him outside. That would be great. Please make sure a camera is there. Tell me about the latest in Israel and in Gaza. Here are my questions, Max. President Biden claims that a ceasefire proposal was Israeli in origin.

The Netanyahu government seems to be hemming and hawing, and Hamas seems to be interested. What do you know about it? Well, it's amazing. I mean, you mentioned Benjamin Netanyahu coming to Washington to address, in the midst of, after 240 days of continuous live stream genocide, he's been invited by leaders of both parties who've both been paid off by Israel's cutouts in the United States. And he's going to be celebrated at the US Capitol. And what has he just done? He has just spit in the face of Joe Biden, who publicly called for a ceasefire. Now, what Biden is doing is insidious, and we can see it through the words of State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, who said all that needs to happen is for Hamas to accept these terms. But it's Netanyahu who has rejected every ceasefire offer for the past two months, which Hamas has tacitly accepted. In each case, whenever these are put on the table in Doha, or Egyptian mediators put them forward to Hamas. The Hamas leadership

says, we look upon these favorably. We accept them. And then the Israelis walk away. Now you have Benny Gantz, who's someone who's in the opposition to Netanyahu, but in the war cabinet with Netanyahu and Israel declaring the only way we will negotiate with Hamas is from the point of a gun. Netanyahu's crazies were running around Jerusalem yesterday, assaulting Palestinian journalists at the Jerusalem Day Parade, chanting death to Arabs, walking, storming through the Muslim quarter in the annual Jerusalem Day Parade. And they're all wearing blue hats inspired by the Trump MAGA hats. But these blue hats in Hebrew say total victory. And what they mean is no negotiations, no accepting the American terms, no listening to the Americans. We're just going to keep this genocide going until we get whatever it is that we want, even though it's impossible. And the North of Israel is on fire because Israel can't

seem to suppress Hamas missile and rocket fire. Sorry, Hezbollah rocket fire. Right. We're going to play two short clips. First is President Biden saying Hamas needs to take the deal. And second is, I know he has no credibility, Admiral Kirby, who says three times in two sentences, this is an Israeli proposal, and it's an Israeli proposal, it's an Israeli proposal. First the president and then the admiral.

Israel's made their proposal. Hamas says it wants to cease fire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it. Hamas needs to take the deal. That proposal, an Israeli proposal, has been given to Hamas. It was done on Thursday night, our time. We're waiting for an official response from Hamas. We would note that publicly Hamas officials came out and welcomed this proposal. This was an Israeli proposal. We have every expectations that if Hamas agrees to the

proposal, as was transmitted to them, an Israeli proposal, that Israel would say yes. Reminds me of the character in Shakespeare of whom Shakespeare said he protested too much. How many times does he have to say it was an Israeli proposal? Was it an Israeli proposal? And if it was, why is Netanyahu rejecting it? Well, there was a former peace processor supposedly acting as a mediator, Aaron David Miller, throughout the 90s and the 2000s, the glory days of the so-called peace process, who came out and declared that the U.S. was actually acting all along as Israel's lawyer. And here you see the U.S. behaving as Israel's lawyer. It's an Israeli proposal and the U.S. is going to try to shepherd

through an Israeli proposal. But at the same time, Biden is calling for a ceasefire. Biden's under political pressure at home from his base. They're freaking out about the Democratic Convention and protests. And he's marketing what he's pushing as a ceasefire. But if you look at the Israeli proposal, the Israeli proposal is for a six-week pause in which it will then, it absolutely will then resume attacking Gaza. So it's not a ceasefire. It's not something that anyone on the other side would accept. And what Hamas is demanding is a ceasefire. And it has apparently accepted a proposal to release not only hostages, but prisoners of war, male soldiers who were captured on October 7th.

But Israel seems content to let them die. Four hostages who were just reported dead have been confirmed killed by Israeli shelling by Israeli media. Before I forget, one member of Congress, I'm sure you know who this is, and I'll say his name in a second, and only one has said he's not coming to Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech because he's a war criminal. And that's Senator Bernie Sanders, who is, of course, himself Jewish. We have invited Senator Sanders to come on the show. I hope he'll come. I had many happy encounters with him,

believe it or not. My bosses didn't know about this when I was at Fox. Somewhere there's a picture of Senator Sanders kissing me because I said something that he agreed with that he never thought would come out of the mouth of somebody employed by Fox at the time. What is Netanyahu's dilemma? Are Smotrich and Ben-Gabir serious about leaving the government at a time like this if Netanyahu shows an inclination towards some sort of a peaceful resolution, even if it's temporary? Well, they'll absolutely bring the government down. Then the question is, can Netanyahu actually assemble enough, like cobble together enough members of enough parties to maintain a coalition? And I'm not sure. So they have,

they still have Netanyahu by the short and curlies. And if Netanyahu keeps the war going, well, we see his reaction to the ICC. Israel is becoming isolated on the world stage. The latest Israeli freakout is not only over the gray zone embarrassing them, it's over the little country of Maldives refusing to honor Israeli passports. And this looks like the beginning, actually, of a trend, particularly in the global south. The government of the leftist government of Colombia, led by Gustavo Petro, has kicked out the Israeli ambassador. Israel is being run off the world stage. It's losing its sheen as the Middle East's only democracy.

It's lost it. And again the Middle East's only democracy. It's lost it. And again, the North is on fire. Top Israeli generals are saying they don't have the manpower to actually defeat Hezbollah, which has honeycombed its military assets throughout Lebanon. So they're in a difficult position, a more difficult position than they have probably ever been in at any time since 1948. Does the Israeli public believe that the IDF has defeated or can defeat Hamas? I mean, everybody on this show, military intelligence journalist, has said, we don't know what they believe, but it is impossible for the IDF to defeat Hamas. I mean, it's impossible for me to understand what the Israeli military's plan in Gaza is. There are only theories.

One theory, which was put forward by a British officer, I think his name is Andrew Fox in a pro-Israel magazine, is that Israel actually isn't trying to defeat Hamas. This seems kind of like a cope. They're not actually trying to take out all their tunnels. What they're trying to do is pulverize Gaza to the point where another October 7th becomes impossible, which is why they're blowing up so many of the frontier border areas between Gaza and Israel, the neighborhoods, to prevent them from ever reaching Israel again. There may be some truth to that, but it seems like a cope because Israel has failed to really degrade Hamas's capacity. We've seen Hamas even in recent weeks hit Tel Aviv with rockets. This was over seven months into the

assault. I don't think anyone in Washington, in the delusional lanyard think tank circles or foreign policy establishment expected this, but I'm not surprised at all. So what is the objective here? If it's to defeat Hamas completely and prevent them from ever participating in Palestinian politics again, they're going to basically have to kill everyone and ethnically cleanse them. If it's to release the hostages, they're going to have to actually negotiate with Hamas. And if it's to simply fail and then declare victory at some point, that might be more likely. And that might be what we'll actually see Netanyahu do. The question is, does Biden just simply keep rearming Netanyahu as he spits in

his face and rejects every proposal? And that's what's happening right now. Biden could end this all with one phone call. Two days ago, the Israelis destroyed a school in which 39 children and their guardians had been seeking shelter. That's what remains of the school. The Israelis don't deny it. They say, well, there was Hamas hiding in there and we had to do it. That's what remains of the school. The Israelis don't deny it. They say, well, there was Hamas hiding in there. We had to do it. I haven't heard a word. I know Joe Biden is in France for D-Day celebrations. I haven't heard a peep from Kirby, Biden, Sullivan, or Blinken about this. Have you? Well, after the last massacre, horrific, tense massacre in which people were burned alive, clearly by US weapons, I believe it was GBU-38 bombs, Tony Blinken was asked,

were US weapons used? And he said, well, he couldn't, I can't tell. I have no way of knowing. But even CNN had used open sources to determine US weapons provided by Tony Blinken's State Department were responsible for that. I mean, a good way of investigating might be, I don't know, to send the neocons who sign Israeli munitions to strap them to those munitions and see what they find when they hit the ground. But I don't think they're going to do that. So they're going to ignore this latest massacre. The New York Times, if you read their headlines about it, states that this was an ex-school, that Israel isn't attacking schools, they're attacking ex-schools.

And that is used to undergird the Israeli excuse, which was that they found two top Hamas operatives in the school who participated in October 7th. And the photographic evidence they've provided proves nothing. So they are just slaughtering people for the sake of slaughtering people. And why are they doing this? Here's the real reason. They attacked those tents, that refugee camp in Rafah, where they told people to go and said it was a safe zone to force them to leave. And satellite photos show that they have left because Israel wants to send its troops deeper and deeper into Rafah. And the reason they're attacking this school is for the same reason and to tell Hamas, we're killing your families, we're killing your people, so negotiate

with us and accept this terrible deal. And I think the U.S. is kind of on board with that. The picture we're showing is of one of the leading candidates to be the Republican vice presidential nominee alongside Donald Trump. And there she is, Nikki Haley. And she writes on a couple of artillery shells, finish them. America loves Israel, always Nikki Haley. This is truly, truly repellent. Do you think that there's been so much slaughter, so much torment, so much death that it seeks to shock? That Israel seeks to shock. Excuse me, that it no longer ceases to shock. That's what we're seeing, I think, from the general public.

The general public and the rest of the media, especially after the Trump verdict, is kind of tuning out while every day Israel commits a horrific massacre. Last Sunday, Israel killed 100 people across the Gaza Strip, mostly in the north. I mean, that was just a blip on the radar screen in US media. It's just not even registering. And if you follow the Twitter accounts in English of young people in Gaza, they are basically describing the most horrific situation yet. So what won't happen is this movement that is mobilized against this Biden-backed genocide is not going to go away. And the Democrats are sweating. They're nervous about what will happen

in Chicago. There's talk of doing it remotely. Biden may be nominated remotely. There's speculation that Biden had a diaper accident in Normandy today. He babbled through a Time Magazine interview in which he threatened to fight the interviewer when asked about his age, confused Xi with Putin, confused Finland with Sweden, and so on. So the Democrats are in a, I think, unprecedented situation. And today, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a piece citing, quote unquote, experts, more US intelligence cutouts, claiming that Russian propaganda and the Russian intelligence is going to try to wreak havoc at the convention. That tells you how desperate Biden and the Democrats are. And the real problem is they won't force

Israel to cease fire. And that could happen with one phone call. Just stop sending those tank shells that neocon Nikki is signing and it's over. Max Blumenthal, thank you very much. Thanks for letting us run that clip of you and Aaron. We're going to post it because so many people found it fascinating and humorous and demonstrative of your sharpest attack intellect. All the best, my friend. I hope you'll come back next week. Thanks a lot, Judge. Stay safe. Of course. Of course. Hey, one thing, by the way, I'll be in New Jersey tomorrow at the Icarus Festival in Rutherford, New Jersey. So anyone who wants to come out, including yourself, you would be an honored guest and I'll put you on the list.

Wow. I will email you or text you so you can give me some information. I'll be driving right past Rutherford, New Jersey on my way into and out of the city tomorrow. So maybe I can say a few words on that podium about my dear friend, Max. Absolutely. I would love to see you and anyone else watching who wants to come. I'd love to see you. And anyone else watching who wants to come, I'd love to see you there.

Thank you, my man. The Williams Center, Rutherford, New Jersey, tomorrow. Got it. Peace. And to you. And by the way, one of the best pizza places in New Jersey is right near the Williams Center in Rutherford called Song Anopoly.

They're going to love that I said that. Everybody there is Neapolitan. At four o'clock, not a Neapolitan, Aaron Matei, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!