Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Hamas Still Stands.

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Max Blumenthal: Hamas Still Stands.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you for watching. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 18th, 2024. Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, my dear friend, it's a pleasure. Thank you for coming back onto the show. Do you, from your sources, are you able to tell if the Israelis recognize or admit publicly that Hamas still stands and the overwhelming majority of the Israeli hostages are still confined? Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's why Netanyahu is pushing so hard

for this Rafah invasion. And there was just a report in Al Arabi Al Jadid, which is a Qatari publication, citing Egyptian officials on background, that the Biden administration has arranged some kind of trade-off with Israel in which it will be allowed a limited assault on Rafah in the Southern Gaza Strip in exchange for not directly attacking Iran. Now, I have no idea if that's true, that the Biden administration is trading Palestinian blood to avoid a all out or, you know, a further escalation between Israel and Iran, which would probably trigger something like 1500 Iranian ballistic missiles over the course of three days. I have no idea if that's true, but it speaks to the complete failure of the Israeli military in Gaza, where

Netanyahu is saying he can't finish the job and they can't march towards victory unless they take out four battalions, which are currently stationed in Rafah, belonging to Hamas alone. So Netanyahu admits that after six months of unrelenting genocide, they've failed and they need to go into Rafah where there are like still a million refugees holding out and it will be a complete bloodbath. A week ago, the Biden administration said they were against it, but the calculus may have changed. Here's what we were discussing before we came on air, Max. Matt Lee, the Associated Press reporter, uh max matt lee the associated press reporter trying to get a straight answer out of v dent patel and you have some other information about this guy's duplicity but here's mr lee patiently until the end going after patel can you clear up uh either to kill or keep alive, these persistent reports that you guys have told the Israelis that

you're okay with them going ahead with the Rafah operation as long as they don't attack Iran? MR HOOKSERMANN So we've been pretty clear, Matt, that any kind of operation into Rafah requires some pretty serious planning because of the three main components that you've heard me, Matt, the Secretary, outline pretty seriously before. Okay. That's an excellent answer to a question that I don't think I asked. I asked you whether or not the U.S. has told the Israelis that you're okay with a Rafah operation as long as they limit or don't attack Iran

in response to what happened over the weekend. So, Matt, I don't want to – the devil is in the details here. It would require what kind of operation into Rafah we're talking about. All right. So regardless of whether Israel does anything in response to the Iranian attack over the weekend, you still would oppose a RAFA operation unless what you just mentioned. So why can't you just say no, that it is not true that you have. It's not true. It's not true. But I'm speaking. You said that in the beginning instead of going on.

Because you're I thought the question was pretty clear. It wasn't that clear. I'm trying to be specific. This is what you go through on a daily basis when you're there? Well, Vedant doesn't give me follow-ups because I'm not in the bullpen with the AP and credentialed people. Was he being truthful? Do you know if there is this agreement? Has Joe Biden suddenly decided that it's okay for Bibi Netanyahu to slaughter a half a million women and God knows how many children in Rafah? Well, I mean, another question is,

does Netanyahu even care what Biden thinks? And is the dog wagging its own tail? Can Biden even control Netanyahu? What leverage is he willing to use? They're still shipping the weapons. They're still giving Netanyahu, like right now or in like an hour, they're going to destroy the Palestinian Authority's latest attempt for statehood at the UN. So they're still giving Israel total diplomatic cover. So what are they going to allow Israel to do or what will Netanyahu do? Actually, Netanyahu gave a statement in Hebrew only about 24 hours ago, stating that he would make decisions completely autonomously from the US.S. and that he would seek to return settlements to the Gaza Strip. He said that the Palestinians thought they would surround us. Well, now we're going to build settlements and we'll surround them. So obviously he doesn't care what

Biden thinks anyway. But what would it mean for a kind of Israeli incursion in Tarafa? What does Israel want to do? They actually not only want to destroy four Hamas battalions in an area that is currently the most densely populated area on earth. There are just tents everywhere. People who have nowhere else to go have filled up this area and they'll have nowhere to hide. But they also want to create a buffer zone in what they call the Philadelphia Corridor, which is between Rafah and the Egyptian Sinai Desert and the Egyptian side of Rafah. And Israel started this whole propaganda blitz, which you'll see in Israeli media, about how Egypt has failed to destroy

the smuggling tunnels into Gaza. And this is why October 7th happened. They're starting to point the finger at Egypt. And Egypt's saying, you can't do that because it violates all of our security agreements under the rubric of Camp David. And Camp David is really the linchpin of American hegemony in that region of the Middle East. It removed Egypt as the real base of Arab nationalism and Arab resistance. And now Egypt is threatening to shred that security agreement if Israel comes in, starts massacring Palestinians, creates a buffer zone basically on or in its own territory, and then Palestinians start flooding into Egypt as refugees. So the Biden administration has so badly mismanaged this crisis that they are threatening to undermine one of the central

foundations of American control in the Middle East. And we haven't even talked about Iran yet. Right. We will get to Iran. Just briefly, what is the Philadelphia corridor? Is that in Egypt or is that in Israel? It's in the southern Gaza Strip and it's the area where there have been tunnels. Israel has always run bulldozers through there and sought to control it to seal off Gaza Strip from the Arab world. I don't know if you remember Rachel Corey, for example, being run over by an Israeli bulldozer. I do remember that. Is that where it happened? Yeah. She was trying to stand in the way of a family's home. She had been close to the patriarch of that family, who was a local physician and a bulldozer. And the bulldozer

was trying to destroy all these homes in the Philadelphia corridor. So this would be the most severe Israeli assault on that area. And when they create a buffer zone, they're just going to bring in tons of explosives and blow up civilian neighborhoods and then occupy the area. And they're going to be right on the Egyptian border, which is unacceptable to Egypt. There it is. Thank you, Chris. Are Gazans returning to, I want to get back to this theme that you articulated the other day, I think on the Gray Zone, or it may have been on one of your posts, that Haaretz and even the Wall Street Journal have recognized that Israel has failed to defeat Hamas. And I think one of

the things you said was Gazans are returning to northern Gaza, and some businesses, particularly food businesses, notably bakeries, are back and operating. Is that true? Oh, absolutely. And so this speaks to the failure of Israel, not just militarily, but Israel had wanted to create this giant buffer zone around northern Gaza to make it uninhabitable, to thin out the population. But Palestinians over the course of 75 years of ethnic cleansing have adopted this cultural ethos that they call sumud or steadfastness. It's a word every Palestinian knows. And it basically means that if we hold our ground, remain as resilient as possible in the face of Israeli attacks, our society will

prove stronger than theirs because they're settler colonists and we are the people of the land. So all we have to do is hold fast. And it was something I saw when I first came into the Gaza Strip in 2014. I went to this area Israel had destroyed east of Gaza City during that 51-day assault that year called Shajah. And I was seeing families just sitting in their living rooms, but their living room was just an assembly of chairs in a destroyed building. And they said, this is where we live. I worked my whole life to build this house and I'm going to stay here. And they said, this is where we live. I worked my whole life to build this house and I'm going to stay here. And so now Palestinians are coming back from Rafah

to Northern Gaza because the Israeli military has been forced to withdraw from there. And they're going to the ruins of their homes and they're just going to sit there, put plastic sheets over their homes and say, this is our land and you can't just move us. This is a major defeat and bakeries are beginning to get flour again. I think the problem for the local population there is while there is some food there, now no one has any money. There's no economy. And Israel is going to do everything it can to keep it that way. That's why Israel has been assaulting al-Shifa hospital too, is it sustains life there. That's why they've blown up all the schools and the universities. They don't want

people to have anything to come back to, but they underestimate the Palestinian spirit. And I think that's what will contribute to the defeat that was proclaimed in Haaretz by this columnist, Haim Levinson, who has been a major supporter early on of Israel's military operation in Gaza. I mean, it's a liberal paper. They're against Netanyahu. But this guy isn't some dove. And he declared just last week, total defeat for Israel in the Gaza Strip, total defeat. The Wall Street Journal put it more softly. Israel is on the brink of defeat in Gaza. You know, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting piece. I thought of you when I was reading it. I believe it was yesterday's talking about the bitter rivalry between Galant, Netanyahu and Gantz that they don't even speak with each other except when they're in the group

of the of the war cabinet. Is this deleterious to is to Netanyahu's government? Is it the beginning of the end of Netanyahu's government, or is it just vanity? Well, I think this is par for the course, but it does speak to the instability of Israeli politics. It's an instability that the Americans are seeking to exploit. The protests leading up to October 7th had influence from the Biden administration. I don't think there's any question about that. Benny Gantz is the person the Biden administration would like to see in place of Netanyahu. They welcomed him to Washington, which infuriated Netanyahu. I mean, he did get a little dressing down, but they didn't do anything to him. And Netanyahu has made repeated decisions,

including decisions about negotiations in Doha over the objections of or without the approval of other members of his war cabinet, basically violating the rules. So Israeli politics are very unstable now. And this coalition that Netanyahu has, I mean, the fanatics, Ben-Gvir, the security minister who's from the most fanatical faction of the settler religious nationalist movement in the West Bank, Smotrich, they got Netanyahu by the shortened curlies, which is why Netanyahu is promising to build settlements in the Gaza Strip, which is just seems untenable and absolutely insane. It's sort of a sop to keep them from bolting from his coalition. I mean, they're also demanding a massive strike on Iran. And then you have people like Gabi Ashkenazi, the former chief of staff of the Israeli military who comes from

Netanyahu's left, immediately after Iran's counterattack, it was Ashkenazi who was pushing for a direct attack on Iran. This is something a lot of people don't recognize outside observers, is Netanyahu is not always the most hawkish and might even be more cautious than the militarists who are supposedly to his left, who are more favored by the Americans. It's a head-scratcher, Max. Didn't Iran, on Saturday night, penetrate Israel's most securely guarded and supported military base? Yeah, this is the Nevatim base in the Negev Desert. That was the target. Unlike Israel, which targets schools, family homes, and just entire neighborhoods, they were targeting a base in the Negev.

Consulates. base that houses or it's an air base it's where the f-35s are the most prized platform in israel's arsenal which is you know comes straight from the u.s and it's therefore heavily defended by billions of dollars of worth of anti-aircraft systems, David's sling, the arrow system, and of course the iron dome. And these cost a lot to replenish. So they managed to penetrate, they managed to hit the base. Israel has acknowledged some superficial damage, but it's really deep psychological damage to the Israeli psyche that Iran was able to do that supposedly without using hypersonic missiles or without using the kind of ballistic missiles that are the most advanced in its arsenal. Israel was jamming

its GPS in the days ahead of this planned attack. And the ballistic missiles turned out to not even rely on GPS to hit their targets. And today we saw in Ma'ariv, a mainstream Israeli newspaper, as well as the New York Times, that the discussions, the private discussions in the Israeli war cabinet during the Iranian attack grew so panicked that if the Israeli public had heard them, 4 million people would have immediately left the country. Wow. I think Iran succeeded in its goal, which was not to send an assault, but to send a message, a message that they can get through, a message that they can use drones as decoys, as pawns, to make the Israelis waste a billion three in 12 hours. I want to play you something that'll get a little bit under your skin, but it's so absurd, it's almost humorous.

David Cameron, the British foreign minister, former prime minister, answering some questions from a British television anchor. Chris, play both of them. What's the difference between the first question and his answer and the follow-up and his answer he didn't want to give. What about Iran's frustration at part of its sovereign territory being flattened? Well, I would argue there is a massive degree of difference between what Israel did in Damascus and, as I said, 301 weapons being launched by the state of Iran at the state of Israel. For the first time, a state-on-state attack. 101 ballistic missiles, 36 cruise missiles, 185 drones. That is a degree of difference.

And I think a reckless and dangerous thing for Iran to have done. And I think the whole world can see all these countries that have somehow wondered, well, you know, what is the true nature of Iran? It's there in black and white. What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates? Well, we would take, you know, we would take the very strong action. And Iran would say that that's what they did? Well, what they did, as I said, was a massive attack.

So they were right to respond, but they overreacted, is that what you're saying? What I'm saying is that the attack they carried out was on a very large scale, much bigger than people accepted. But did they have a right to respond? Well, countries have a right to respond. This is just propaganda poorly manifested, ludicrously manifested yeah i mean in credit to the interviewer um david cameron said we would respond massively right however iran can't respond massively they're they're they're it was too massive right even though they actually didn't kill anyone um but maybe maybe they could have and he down downplays what Israel did. What Israel did was unprecedented. I mean, directly striking another country's sovereign territory. He claimed that what Iran

did was for the first time a nation to nation attack. No, what Israel did was strike the sovereign diplomatic territory of Iran and made this attack inevitable. And Britain could have played a role in preventing the Iranian counterattack or reducing its severity by going to the UN and condemning what Israel did. But instead, as the Iranian UN ambassador pointed out the day after Iran's counterattack, France, the US, and Britain and Britain went to the U.N. and blocked the has with Iran, where it toppled the Iranian government of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and paved way for this entire crisis that we're witnessing now. David Cameron cannot get out of that colonial mindset. And what is he doing as foreign secretary after the disaster that he caused in Libya, where the parliamentary commission in London found that David Cameron completely lied to the public in order to justify

this attack that destabilized an entire region. He's back there. What a meritocracy. I mean, they just reward the ultimate failures there. Here's another clip of another member of the British Parliament, decidedly different. I'm not even going to tell you who it is. You'll know in a heartbeat. Speaker, I knew your father well for a very long time. He was a fine man, and I am sincerely sorry for your loss. There was not one single word in the Prime Minister's statement of condemnation of the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which is the proximate reason for the event everyone is here in concert condemning. He was not even asked to do so by the front bench opposite. Kay Burley is the only person so far to demand that of a government minister. We have no treaty with

Israel, at least not one that Parliament has been shown. And the Iranians are not likely wedi cael ei ddangos. Nid yw'r Iranwyr yn debygol o gwrando arno pan oedd Brifysgolion yn cymryd Iran, yn llwthio ei gwerth a'i gwrthdroi i'w un cyllid ddemocraith, cymdeithasol, yn fy mhrofiad. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr, ond mae'n dda i'r cyngor. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr.

Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr.

Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. Rwy'n dweud yn fawr. towards Israel. It's as simple as that. And in the Honorable Gentleman's question, not once did he condemn that action or indeed the actions of Hamas in the region. There is no equivalence

between these things whatsoever. And to suggest otherwise is simply wrong. Well, at least they're debating and challenging each other, unlike on the floor, unlike in the American government, where Tony Blinken just signs a document and the stuff goes over to Israel. But it's interesting. I thought that Rishi Sunak was mouthing the same talking points that David Cameron was. Can you imagine Joe Biden surviving question hour? Oh, I mean.

Let Thomas Massey at him. I mean, I can't think of any, I honestly, and I'm not saying this because I'm pro Trump. I think Trump is one of the only presidents in recent times, maybe going back to Bill Clinton, Trump and Bill Clinton might be the only presidents who could have survived question hour. I mean, Obama without his teleprompters, it would have been a disaster. So it's refreshing to see that George Galloway with his newly founded Workers' Party is really the voice of opposition to this reckless transatlantic regime. He's seated there in the back bench next to Jeremy Corbyn, whose bid for the prime minister was destroyed by the Israel lobby in the UK. And Galloway is just exposing the contradictions of a government that made this attack,

this counterattack by Iran inevitable, and which just refuses to pull the plug on this disastrous Israeli assault. And it speaks to the wider mentality that is being shattered right now, that has prevailed in Washington, London, and Brussels, which is that they can continuously sanction, sabotage, and even attack all of the official designated enemy nations, whether it's Venezuela, Iran, or Russia, and that those nations have to be the adults in the room and just sit there and take it, even though no one's doing anything to stop the ferocity of these assaults in these multilateral institutions. And when Russia was surrounded by NATO and the US was piling military materiel on the border of Russia and Ukraine, reality came crashing through on February 23rd, 2022, when the Russian military invaded Ukraine and said, no, you can't move NATO

to our borders. It's not happening. We're not going to be the adults in the room anymore. We're actually going to take care of our own national security as you would have if we had put tons of artillery units on the US-Mexico border. October 7th, Hamas did the same thing. You have been besieging us for 20 years. The US is trying to go over our heads and put us in the icebox of history by normalizing, pushing normalization between the Arab powers and Israel. And we're not going to let that happen. Reality came in Iraq. And now reality is crashing through in an even bigger way with Iran pumping tons and tons of metal into Israel to tell them, you just can't play by the same old rules. So the whole calculus has changed because the geopolitical power balance has changed. And this is the dawn of the multipolar world order.

I want to talk to you before we finish, Max, about threats to the freedom of speech in the United States. Yesterday, the president of Columbia University was grilled by one of the House committees. Today, she had police, I don't know if they're New York City police or if they're Columbia University police, arresting protesters that silently pitched pup tents on the main lawn in front of the library. And yesterday, I never heard of this gentleman before, Representative Anthony Desposito, a Republican from New York, actually introduced legislation condemning certain words. Listen to this. My resolution condemns the slogan from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free because it is blatantly anti-Semitic. Madam Speaker, I remind my colleagues that this slogan was used by Iranian leaders responsible for the recent attacks on Israel.

This slogan communicates one thing and one thing only. It is not human rights. It is certainly not peace. It is the violent destruction of the state of Israel and the Jewish people that live within it. To employ this slogan is to perpetuate the cause of hate and regional instability. Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea sits Israel, a free, diverse nation, a safe haven for Jewish people formed in the wake of the mass murder of European Jews. When the world witnessed the tragedies of the Holocaust, we said never again. Now is our chance to mean it and to reject anti-Semitic hate in all of its forms, whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head. I guess he forgot his oath to preserve,

protect, and defend the constitution, which includes of course the first amendment. I'll let you take it from there. Well, who, I mean, who is this guy? He's a some, he's a former cop who's found his way into Congress and AIPAC wrote that speech for him. AIPAC wrote the legislation and he just being put up as the mouthpiece. And he's going to get legal bribery as a reward. They're just going to pump more money into his next campaign. That's how Congress functions. So what we're witnessing, whether it's there in Congress, where members of Congress, like

Tom Cotton, who said we should bounce the rubble on Gaza, other members of Congress who said all Palestinians should be killed. None of them are being censored like Rashida Tlaib was. There's no legislation opposing the slogans calling for the genocide of Palestinians. The hypocrisy is just off the charts, whether it's there or Columbia University, where three students were just suspended for protesting after Columbia University's president was hauled before Congress and forced to basically pander to them and condemn her own faculty, especially Palestinian professors like Joseph Mossad. Three students were just suspended for protesting.

It's unheard of. There have been much more ferocious protests where nothing happened. One of them happens to be Ilhan Omar's daughter, by the way. You have professors at CUNY like Danny Shaw, who's a friend of the gray zone. He was fired after a decision to not fire him for his views opposing the genocide in Palestine. Jody Dean at Smith College just suspended or if not fired for a column she wrote on the Verso webpage, basically for speech crimes. And then you have this valedictorian at USC who is a student focused on human rights and opposing genocide, who's Muslim, who's being

blocked from speaking at her school's commencement ceremony because they know what she's going to say. She's going to condemn the genocide in Gaza. So what we have right here, they're using the arguments actually of the left. These mostly right-wing and pro-Israel elements are using the arguments and rhetorical techniques of the left. They're saying that these professors and these students, including this valedictorian, threaten the safety of Jewish students. They're using woke politics as a smokescreen for the reality that the Zionist millionaire and billionaire class that is footing the bills for a lot of these colleges who these presidents rely on is seeking to shred the First Amendment on behalf of a foreign

apartheid state carrying out a genocide in real time. And it really doesn't matter what you think about Israel on this point, or what you think about Israel on this point or what you think about Palestine or whether you are annoyed by the protesters blocking traffic. This is about the First Amendment. This is about the thing that makes America special. Should people be allowed, be criminalized for saying things that you find hateful or disagreeable. And if you think that, you really don't believe in the concept of democracy. And I want to say that I think I've been pretty consistent in defending people who I find disagreeable's right to say things, including online. The right claims that they oppose the online censorship machine. They claim they oppose cancel culture, but when

it comes to Ben Shapiro's feelings and his ethno-religious, fragile ethno-religious identity, what turns out, the First Amendment and the facts don't matter. So we need to say, forget about Israel-Palestine. This is about the First Amendment, and the money for Ukraine, they're going to add a section to this legislation requiring TikTok to be sold. More assaults on the First Amendment. These people just don't care about the constitution. No. And they make everyone feel voiceless. I mean, TikTok is where so many Gen Zers are finding a voice. And that's why they're out there protesting. They're so angry and why they're not supporting the two party system anymore. They see Palestinians as sort of a symbol of powerlessness, statelessness, voicelessness,

a symbol of their own sense of political disenfranchisement in this country. And those protests are only going to grow in ferocity. And I think Republicans and people who are part of America First are beginning to see the hypocrisy and contradictions too in the leadership of the Republican Party, especially Mike Johnson. I mean, here's a guy who kind of comes from nowhere and comes from Kentucky. And Jake Sullivan, the national security chief of the Biden administration, takes him into a private meeting on February 15th. Jake Sullivan from Yale, who ran Hillary Clinton's campaign, who has every credential in the book in his 40s. And he impresses Mike Johnson and makes him feel

important in Washington. And then he warns him, he literally warns him that Russia is creating a dangerous space laser program. He's told Mike Johnson about Russian space lasers and says, you know, they have a space weapon, a secret space weapon. And you're one of the only lawmakers to get this top secret briefing, Mike Johnson. Are you going to be Chamberlain or are you going to be Churchill? And Johnson comes out of that meeting and he's, so he feels like history rests on his shoulders suddenly. And he's now saying it. He says, I want to be like Churchill. I am a war legislator. Yep. He said, I am a wartime speaker. Here's a guy when he was just a congressman, voted against the extensions of FISA. But when progressives and libertarians

offered an amendment to section 702 that permits the warrantless spying on foreigners and the Americans with whom they speak, the amendment would just have required a search warrant. What a novel idea, a search warrant. The vote in the House was 212 in favor to 212 against. Johnson was presiding. He left the Speaker's chair to come down into the well of the House to vote against it. Well, this is freedom. Freedom isn't free, I guess. And neither is the $8 billion that we, thanks to Mike Johnson, in coalition with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the $8 billion that the American taxpayer will be paying as part of this supplemental to Ukrainian public workers and paying for Ukrainian pensions and to keep the Zelensky regime afloat as he sends younger and younger Ukrainian men

to die in a fruitless and hopeless war. That's what we're paying for. Yes. Max, thank you very much, my dear friend. Great, great analysis on both of these unfortunate fronts. But I hope you'll come back and visit us again next week. Looking forward to it. Thanks as always.

Thank you. Tomorrow, of course, we have our usual Friday afternoon for you. And by the way, let me thank Max again for his just, courageous, and I've used this word before, but only on very few people, encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the events that he's talking about. At two o'clock

Friday afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and at three o'clock, the boys, the roundtable, the intelligence roundtable, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, to finish our week with you. Thank you for watching, my dear friends. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.