Judging Freedom - MAX Blumenthal: IDF Murders on October 7th.

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

MAX Blumenthal: IDF Murders on October 7th.See 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 Tuesday, January 28, 2025. Max Blumenthal will be here with us in just a moment on Donald Trump and Gaza. And what did Netanyahu know on October 7th? But first this. Markets are at an all-time high. Euphoria has set in. The economy seems unstoppable. But the last administration has buried us so deep in debt and deficits, it's going to take a lot of digging to get us out of this hole. Are you prepared? Lear Capital specializes in helping people like me

and you grow and protect our wealth with gold. Did you know that during Trump's last presidency, gold rose 54% to a record high? If that happens again, that puts gold at $4,200 an ounce in his next term. Don't wait. Do what I did. Call Lear at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com for your free gold ownership kit and special report, $4,200 gold ahead. When you call, ask how you can also get up to $15,000 in bonus gold with a qualifying purchase. Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them the judge set you. Max, welcome here, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. No matter what we're talking about,

does Donald Trump, as far as you can tell, share Joe Biden's contempt for the freedom of the Palestinians? Sorry, you broke up for a second. Can you repeat that? In your view, from what you've observed in the past week while he's been president, does Donald Trump share Joe Biden's contempt for the freedom of the Palestinians? Well, Donald Trump is surrounded by Israeli assets. know, we talk about it constantly on your show, especially Miriam Adelson, but many of the people around him, like his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who's involved with an investment firm that is eyeing great waterfront Mediterranean property in the Gaza Strip. But Joe Biden and Tony Blinken and those around him, as was the case with Barack Obama before, did more material damage to Palestinians, to their homes and to their lives, and authorized more Israeli disproportionate force against besieged and occupied Palestinians than Donald

Trump did. I mean, this was the case from the Obama administration through the first Trump term and through the Biden administration. And now we hear Donald Trump barking out some very harsh anti-Palestinian invective, as he did on the campaign trail when he used the word Palestinian as a pejorative. He's called for Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed and removed to anywhere from Indonesia to, I think there's another country that he's proposing, which just seems kind of- Well, Egypt and Jordan. Well, Egypt and Jordan, of course. And in that case, Donald Trump is much louder than Tony Blinken when Tony Blinken initially in, I believe, November of 2023 proposed a humanitarian corridor to Egypt, which would have allowed Israel to push

Palestinians out permanently. But Blinken never got the heat that Donald Trump is getting. Donald Trump has also authorized the Department of Homeland Security to deport visa holders in the United States who protest Israel. But a lot of this is just rhetorical, more bark than bite so far. What Donald Trump has done materially to Palestinians is he's removed sanctions on a handful of violent, fanatical Israeli settlers who were involved in terror attacks on Palestinians. This was one of the only sanctions that the Biden administration and Tony Blinken placed on Israel during its 15-month-long savage assault on Gaza. And this sent a message to the Israeli settler movement that they could get away with more terror attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. They're doing that currently and Israel is staging a major operation to effectively gauze-ify

the Northern West Bank. That's part of the agenda between Netanyahu and Trump. All right, here is Trump on Air Force One on January 26th. Chris, play version number two of cut four. I said to him, I'd love you to take on war, because I'm looking at the whole Gaza strip right now, and it's a mess. It's a real mess. He'd like Jordan to house people from Gaza.

I'd like him to take people. I'd like Egypt to take people. I'm talking to General El-Sisi tomorrow, sometime I believe. And I'd like Egypt to take people and I'd like Jordan to take people. I mean, you're talking about probably a million and a half people. And we just clean out that whole thing. And I don't know, something has to happen, but it's literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything's demolished and people are dying there. So I'd rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace. Temporarily or would they?

It could be either. It could be temporarily. It could be long term. We ran the clips of the Palestinians joyfully returning to Gaza because the White House released only the audio of what Trump said and a still photo of him on Air Force One. But by what right, moral or legal, would the United States government have to displace a million and a half people and then do what? Sell the land to his son-in-law? Well, Trump doesn't care about morality or rights. It's purely transactional. And in this case, I don't think that he will be able to

make good on this rhetoric. And I think Trump actually knows that. And this might be a kind of clever misdirection by Donald Trump. The Palestinians, the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip have demonstrated that they cannot be displaced without their consent. They can't just be moved out of the Gaza Strip. That video showed them marching home to North Gaza, which the Israeli military, its commanders on the ground were determined to ethnically cleanse. Many of those were religious nationalist commanders who wanted settlements built there. Jared Kushner would have happily built waterfront property, but that's not happening now. It's not happening because of the deal that was put into place. Israeli soldiers have been videotaped, recorded crying, leaving the Netzerim corridor, their de facto military base, cutting off northern

Gaza from the rest of the Gaza Strip. Bezalel Smotrik, who is the finance minister in Israel, who is the most extreme figure left in the Israeli government, who has used the finance ministry to channel millions and millions of shekels into the settlement enterprise, who really wanted to annex the northern Gaza Strip, held a faction meeting this week to discuss putting Donald Trump's words into action and pushing Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan so they could get a piece of the Gaza pie. Sisi, who Trump hilariously refers to as General Sisi, revealing him to be like kind of a military dictator that he is, has rejected any acceptance of Palestinians in Egypt, doing so on anti-Palestinian grounds that Palestinians are troublemakers. King Abdullah in Jordan, his government would be destabilized by taking in more Palestinians. His country is already a neocolonial warehouse for Palestinians.

But then you have another party that is extremely powerful, who has enacted the plan with Jordan and Egypt called Qatar. And Qatar has the closest relations to Hamas's political leadership of any country. They have been responsible for overseeing all ceasefire negotiations. They got this deal. They're going to pay for the reconstruction of Gaza. They're going to pay to attempt to domesticate Hamas or pay for whatever leadership comes in, in the Gaza Strip. And you know who else they're paying? They're paying people around Donald Trump. They've been paying them since the first Trump administration. Remember when Saudi Arabia first besieged Qatar and threatened to topple its government,

the Al-Thani family in Doha? Well, Qatar rushed to the Trump administration and began paying every pro-Trump influencer they could, including pro-Trump figures. And then Donald Trump cut a deal with them where it appears that Trump demanded that they pump over $100 million into the U.S. economy in exchange for Donald Trump pushing Mohammed bin Salman and Saudi Arabia away from Qatar's borders and ending that dispute. And it happened. It worked. We saw it here in Washington, like Washington Capitol's hockey playoff game. After a game, the DC Metro ran late and the late hours were funded by the kingdom of Qatar. I mean, you're just seeing it everywhere. They bought up downtown DC. And you know who else they were paying? Pam Bondi, the attorney general for Donald Trump, incoming attorney general, was a lobbyist for Qatar. So Qatar has all the chips

here. Bezalel Smotrich doesn't seem to have as much power to advance his plan. So for now, the Palestinians will remain where they are, and they have demonstrated enormous courage and steadfastness in resisting this displacement plan. Trump has authorized the return shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to the Netanyahu regime. What are they going to do with those besides engage in genocide? You know, that's true that they can use those bombs to destroy. Each bomb can kill at least 30 people. That's what they're designed to do. So they are what I call baby buster bombs.

They're genocide bombs for sure. But they had all the bombs they needed leading up to this point to carry out genocide and to assassinate key figures like Hassan Nasrallah. Israel took down seven apartment blocks in order to penetrate the bunker buried deep below them in which Nasrallah was meeting with his inner circle. Those were heavy bombs. So it looks just cosmetic that Biden and Blinken, that gang, suspended shipments of those bombs. So it looks just cosmetic that Biden and Blinken, that gang, suspended shipments of those bombs. They kept a massive air bridge, delivered more military aid to Israel than almost any country in history other than Ukraine in the past 15 months. This is again more rhetoric from Donald Trump. I want to play a clip for you from Daniel Levy.

You may know him. I'm sure you know of him. The former Israeli negotiator who is hardly complementary to the Netanyahu government. Chris, cut number one. One cannot underestimate the impact on the Israeli public psyche of of the release the initial three who were released and of course everyone therefore saw those images they've been told al-qassam defeated they've been told the public has turned against them they've been told so many things and then they saw those images an occupying army armed and aided by the most powerful military in the world the u.s a nuclear armed state

israel in a struggle between that and a resistance movement, we saw a very powerful display. And Israelis saw that. We're being told by Israeli analysts, talking heads, political leaders, and their backers in the West, that the next phase has to be to move forward. We have to have the demilitarization of. The reality is the most significant force in Gaza by a long stretch is Hamas. Al-Qassam

emerges from this with a very strong narrative. Israel's narrative doesn't look so good at all. What are your thoughts? Well, that's an interesting figure, Daniel Levy, the son of Lord Michael Levy in the UK, who's a staunchly pro-Israel figure. He was involved in the so-called peace process and saw it for what it was, as the sham it was, and now is a major critic of Israel. And his criticism is piercing there of the delusions that Israel advanced after October 7th, that it could totally eradicate Hamas. But these delusions were also advanced by the Biden administration, which admitted at the end of its term, Tony Blinken and Joe Biden

both stated that Hamas had actually gained forces since October 7th and that it had reinforced its ranks and had at least 23,000 fighters in the field when it was said to have been obliterated by Netanyahu. So Israel clearly failed in that major objective of eradicating Hamas. It was also clear to me when you saw Yahya Sinwar killed in the field with his men, having not eaten for three days, that Hamas had decided after the Al-Aqsa flood operation that it no longer wanted to govern Gaza with a bunch of technocrats and that it was going to prioritize resistance and using its military might to exert control while someone else might stand in the breach and

try to govern under occupation. Finally, the images of the four female hostages who are actually not hostages, prisoners of war, being released was a major psychological blow to the Israelis for two reasons. Number one, they were escorted by members of Hamas's Nuhba force, which led the October 7th Al-Aqsa flood, Tufan Al-Aqsa operation, and were carrying Tavor rifles, the standard issue rifle that Israeli soldiers brought into the Gaza Strip, which they took from them after killing them. And the hostages, the prisoners of war, who are appropriately dressed in the battle dress uniform that they were wearing on base when they were taken as active duty combatants, were very healthy and appeared to be happy and appeared to have some kind of rapport with some of the Hamas fighters, like a friendly rapport. They'd gotten to know them. They were actually speaking fairly passable, if not fluent Arabic by the time they were let out. This was another blow to the Israeli government, Jewish-Israeli public, and Israel's propaganda apparatus, because one of those female prisoners of war, Nama Levi,

when she was taken into Gaza, a photograph of her was used, which showed either blood or mud on the back of her pants, and was used as Exhibit A to advance the hoax that Hamas had carried out mass systematic sexual assault on October 7th. Now, why would they make her one of the first prisoners of war to be returned in this batch? Why was she seeming to be so content upon her release and transfer to the Red Cross? If Hamas had so viciously sexually assaulted her, they could have just killed her right away, taking her into Gaza and then said, oh, Israel killed her in an airstrike or we just lost her. They wouldn't want her to go back and testify to Israeli media about what took place, which she is currently doing. So that just puts another nail in the coffin of that whole hoax.

And I really will look forward to the interviews that these female prisoners of war will give. Remember in December 2023, when many of the former hostages and captives came out to Israel, they weren't even allowed to speak to the media because the Israeli government was afraid of what they might actually say. Chris, I'm going to ask Max about Netanyahu. Can you play his bad day yesterday? So how unstable is Netanyahu's premiership and how unstable is his personal liberty? Here he is walking into, using a fingerprint machine to gain access, a place he really doesn't want to be which is a criminal court in which he's the criminal defendant what kind of

shape is he in politically well physically he's not in very good shape as you can see he's reluctant to even to sit down and you can see he's gaunt he looks a little bit under the weather that's because he's undergone surgery i think he underwent surgery last month for a prostate condition. And it was sort of unspecified. We were told it was a urinary tract infection, but he appears to have had his entire prostate removed. Not what happens when you have a urinary tract infection. That's what happens when you have prostate cancer. So you hear what condition Netanyahu is actually in. And then he has to have these long meetings, which he considers tedious. They are tedious, where he's asked about all of these corruption

charges, and it's wearing him down. There is this documentary we discussed, The Trials of Benjamin Netanyahu, I think it's called, which shows hidden camera footage or CCTV footage from some of the initial investigatory hearings that Netanyahu and his wife, Sarah, underwent. And you can see that they just feel very annoyed, that they feel like this is an exercise in condescension, that they deserve nothing but praise. And they're being asked questions about, picayune details about their relationship with their donors and friends, about receiving cigars and wine. I mean, the corruption in the United States seems, first of all, much more legalized and institutionalized, but also on a much grander scale.

So I can even understand why he'd be annoyed there, but this is clearly wearing Netanyahu down. It's taking him away from the drama that he's best at around the ceasefire. And we have to ask questions about his physical condition. As long as he's involved now in the various phases of the ceasefire, his coalition is fairly secure. That's because he has the support not only of formerly couped competitors like Gideon Saar but also opposition figures like Yair Lapid. Where things could get testy is in phases two and three when Israeli troops have to be removed from the Gaza Strip. And we'll

then see more pressure on his coalition. Did he know about October 7th before it happened? I do not know. I don't validate the theories about October 7th having been allowed to happen, given what I know about how Hamas planned that operation and how Israel had always underestimated Hamas and how Israel's military intelligence apparatus itself is overestimated. And for the first time, we got details from the perspective of the commanders, the Hamas al-Qassam Brigades commanders who operate an underground, largely anonymous force on the record in an Al Jazeera documentary, Al Jazeera Arabic documentary that just appeared. It also includes testimony from Qassam fighters who were in Kibbutz Beri who witnessed Israel's Hannibal directive operation in which they killed on a large scale their own citizens. And they describe how they surveilled the border with Israel with their own surveillance system and carefully planned an above ground

operation when Israel was planning for a tunnel attack and was preparing for an underground operation. And they surprised Israel on multiple levels. If you also look at the Gaza division and the condition that its soldiers were in, how they were slumbering when they were attacked, how they were not even in uniform, just how shoddy the whole operation of surveilling Gaza was. The Israeli military is very overestimated. And we even saw it after October 7th, in direct clashes without massive air support, the Israeli military, its infantry was exposed, particularly in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah's Redwan forces, who are much better armed. They were losing large numbers of men.

Israel's whole military is based on cyber and air power. And the Gaza division was essentially wasted on October 7th. But the question is, what was Netanyahu's real relationship with Hamas? I think this is sort of the scandal, one of the scandals in Israel. And his relationship with Hamas was that he was trying to domesticate them through Qatar and just kick the can down the road so he would never have to make a deal. And he thought that Hamas would agree to exist under siege forever as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority had agreed to basically exist under a kind of five-star gilded occupation in Ramallah. And he was wrong. He misjudged Yahya Senwar and Yahya Senwar outsmarted him at every turn.

Last question. I know you have to go. Did the United States succeed in putting as the new Chief Justice of the International Court of Justice, an ardent fanatic Zionist? This is a great question. I mean, this is a massive scandal that mainstream media hasn't picked up on. Doesn't seem like they're going to pick up on it. But the new president of the International Court of Justice, who is a Ugandan judge named Julia Sabutinde, is not only a fanatical Christian Zionist who has based her opinions on key issues like the status of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories on biblical passages and on her own end times theology. Like at least the tonic. Yeah, sure. But she's also been exposed as a plagiarist who has plagiarized large sections of her dissenting opinion, which was considered, her opinions are so bizarre that the foreign ministry of Uganda has had to come out and denounce her and say she has nothing to do with them. But she's plagiarized them from such noted enlightened sources as neoconoperative Douglas Fyfe, the Jewish virtual

library, and PragerU. This is, I mean, you know, if Harvard University's president is going to be ousted over plagiarism charges, I don't know how this person, Julia Sabutinde, can remain in place as the president of the International Court of Justice. And I exposed at the Gray Zone how she's a member of a Christian Zionist church, which believes that Israel is the future landing pad for the Messiah and therefore must remain an exclusively Jewish state. She said that she's learned everything from her true inspiration, her pastor in Uganda, who espouses that extremist theology. This should also be disqualifying. And it's why she voted no on all the resolutions of the South African genocide case against Israel. But now she has two votes as president. So she has a tie-breaking vote. And then, Judge, you raised another question. Did the U.S. engineer this? And that is a salient question because the U.S. had been pushing for Lebanon to elect a new president to weaken Hezbollah.

And the outgoing ICJ president, Noam Salam, has just been not president. Prime minister has just been elected prime minister of Lebanon to clear space for this plagiarizing Christian Zionist fanatic, Julius Sabutini. So what role did the U.S. play there? They certainly benefit. Probably one of Blinken and Sullivan's last cabals. Max, thanks very much. Thank you for your time, as always. All the best. We'll see you again soon. Thanks a lot, Judge. Of course. A truly brilliant and gifted, gifted analyst of that part of the world. He's smart about everything. Coming up later today at two o'clock on the same subjects, Matt Ho and at three o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!