Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Iran/Israel: Who Provoked Whom?

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Max Blumenthal: Iran/Israel: Who Provoked Whom?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, October 4th, 2024. My dear friend Max Blumenthal joins us now on his way to Istanbul, but we'll talk about that in a few minutes. Max, welcome here, and thank you for your time. What is your understanding of the damage done by the Iranian missiles, which were aimed at Israel and which the Israeli government claims 99% were shot down and never made their way through? a complete lie. And it's a lie, not only belied by satellite evidence, showing the key Israeli

genocide hub in the Negev Desert, an Air Force base that was struck multiple times, where F-35s are housed, where Israel's Air Force intelligence planes do overflights over Gaza, but also by our own reporter on the ground. Jeremy Lefredo for the Gray Zone actually visited that base. And he also visited Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv and saw how craters were being concealed outside that base by Israeli police. And Israel was using scrambling mechanisms to cover up the GPS location of the Mossad headquarters. So when Jeremy looked at his Google Maps, it showed that he was at Queen Alia Airport in Amman, Jordan, when he was in fact in Tel Aviv. This is a huge embarrassment for Israel. And what it confirms is that Iran not only was able to break through two layers of the Iron Dome and Arrow anti-missile system,

but that it targeted specifically military targets and avoided killing civilians, which is the precise opposite of what Israel has been doing in Gaza and Lebanon. Isn't it also true that Iran gave notice to Moscow and Washington of its intentions two hours before it started? It did. And Israelis were well aware of when it was going to start. I actually spoke to a friend in Iran who saw the missiles on their way, and another friend in Jordan who saw the missiles on the way. So it wasn't as though Israelis didn't have the chance to go to their bunkers, something which no one in Gaza has. And Jeremy Lafredo, a reporter who was in the Negev Desert, spoke to a Bedouin from one of

the many quote quote unquote, unrecognized villages there. They're not recognized just because the so-called Jewish state refuses to recognize them because their inhabitants are not Jews. And they have no bunkers because they're not recognized. So many non-Jews who are Israeli citizens, who even served in the Israeli army, were unable to shelter. Yet there were no casualties, no civilian casualties. And it really says something about the Israelis when they try to say, well, this means that the strike failed. It shows that they see mass civilian casualties and injuries as a measure of success. What is your take on the TASS reports that Moscow warned Netanyahu against attacking Lebanon, that the Russian ambassador to Israel warned Russians in Israel to leave and that Putin declined to take a telephone call from Prime Minister Netanyahu which left him furious and anxious. Well there

are about 1.5 million Russians inside Israel who are Israeli citizens. Most of them came in the late stages of the Soviet Union and thereafter. And I think Putin looks after their safety and also uses them for soft power inside a country that is basically a tentacle of the collective West in the Middle East and specifically of the US. So you had Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister, sent in to negotiate between Ukraine and Russia. That's because of the large Russian population inside Israel. There have actually been demonstrations in support of Putin and the operation in Ukraine in Tel Aviv. So Putin is very careful not to directly antagonize Israel. And he wants to be seen as a peacemaker in the Middle East, and in many ways

has been. But Israel's pushing him. 48 hours ago, Israel struck a weapons storehouse in Latakia on the coast of Syria, directly next to the Russian airbase at Hmeimim, the largest Russian airbase in the Middle East, also near a Russian naval base in Tartus. But I mean, we're talking about directly adjacent to a Russian base, and Russian anti-aircraft missiles attempted to repel that attack. So Israel is really tempting fate. However, Russia does not want to get overextended. It has enough on its plate with Ukraine. So I think Putin's going to continue to try to play peacemaker as enraged as he might be by Netanyahu's brazen attacks and reckless behavior. How isolated is Israel now in the international community? Well, what is the international community? I mean, if we're talking about

the population of the world, then most people in the world are experiencing incandescent rage at what Israel's doing. But the international community has been monopolized by the collective West, which consists of basically European vassal states, IMF de facto colonies in Africa and Latin America, all run by the United States, whose own government seems to have been in a way colonized by the Zionist project. So the U.S. is obstructing every possible mechanism for ending the genocide in Gaza, where a ceasefire would put to rest the war in Lebanon and stop a regional war. And this is, if you listen carefully to the Friday prayers led by Ayatollah Khamenei today in Tehran, attended by hundreds of thousands of people along with almost the entire

Iranian leadership, a very confident display at a time when Israel's threatening assassinations of Iranian leadership, and a very rare display. It's very rare to see him lead Friday prayers. Hamenei, first of all, delivered part of his prayers and his address in Arabic, directing it at the Arabic world and expressing solidarity for Palestine, but declaring that the Palestinians have been left on their own, exposed to have their lives ruined, and that someone had to step in and impose some measure of justice. And so what he's framing, Iran's retaliation against Israel as a kind of responsibility to protect operation because the United States and the international community, the multilateral institutions, the UN have proven so useless in preventing genocide. Is there or was there a dispute in the hierarchy of Iran

between the Ayatollah and his people and the newly elected president of Iran, whom you and Anya met at the UN a couple of weeks ago, over the nature, timing, and severity of the Israeli response to the assassination of Nasserallah and the murders of Lebanese civilians? I don't think there's any dispute inside Iran, even among voices close to the clerical national security establishment, that Iran waited too long to retaliate and lost a major level of deterrence after Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas Politburo leader, was killed in Tehran following the inauguration of Iranian President Massoud Pazeshkian. So Pazeshkian came to New York on a sort of peace mission, beseeching his American audience of mainstream media hacks mostly, because the American government was not

interested in meeting him publicly, beseeching them to stop a regional war, to listen to Iran's pleas for peace, to put Israel back on the leash. And of course they ignored him, but he made a very revealing comment that did not go down well in Iran, which is that after Haniyeh's assassination, the Biden administration told him that they would impose a ceasefire within a week and Iran should wait to retaliate and let diplomacy do its work. And who honestly would trust the United States after almost a year of serving as Israel's lawyer in every negotiation. But the fact is, Pazeshkin did not have the power on his own, along with his vice president for strategic affairs, Javad Zarif, to stop, to prevent an Iranian retaliation. That decision is up to the Iranian National

Security Council. I think that has 14 members. The Supreme Leader also has a role there. And it was clear that Pazeshkin kind of had the blessing of the establishment in trying to send this message to the U.S. government. But there were protests outside his office hours before Iran retaliated with its missile strike against Israel. And that was the public venting its rage at Iran's failure to deter. And now I don't think they'll be making that same mistake again. Will Hezbollah be making the same mistakes it made again? How deeply have they been penetrated by the Mossad?

Time will tell. John, you can tell where I'm going by these two names. John Bolton and Lindsey Graham, stop right there, Judge, have called for the United States to attack Iranian oil refinery facilities and wherever it develops its nuclear facilities. What the hell would happen if the United States did that? Well, it's amazing that these people who, they just get up in the morning, eat some cereal and call for war with Iran.

That's what they do every day. That's all they do. It's amazing they're given a platform at all. Or Brett Stevens, who is a de facto Israel lobbyist working for the New York Times as a columnist. They've been wrong about everything. The result of the U.S. following their advice has been disastrous. And if the U.S. or Israel would attack Iranian oil facilities and Iranian tankers, the open seas, the global economy might not collapse, but severe damage would be exacted on the global economy because Iran's retaliation would be massive. And as the

IRGC has said today, Israel only has three offshore oil facilities and basically two ports at Eilat and Haifa. Iran has dozens and dozens of these facilities. And Iran has shown, it's showcased its ability to strike Israeli targets to a precise degree with its hypersonic missiles. It only fired 200. That's, I think, less than 10% of its arsenal. So it's pledged to utterly destroy Israel economically if it does this. But what we've seen with the Biden administration is a tolerance for wrecking the global economy. We saw that with their sanctions on Russia,

where they tried to turn the ruble to rubble and raised gas prices enormously on American consumers and drove inflation. Biden promised that he would destroy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline right before the pipelines were destroyed. It's said that the Ukrainians are responsible for that, but it's obvious that the investigation is being obstructed. So Biden has come out just now and said that he has advised Israel to do something other than attack inside Iran or attack its oil infrastructure. And now he's advising sanctions. But it's not as if Biden has demonstrated any ability or willingness to put a limit on what Israel does. I mean, just look at the last 11 months. What is the status of the Israeli incursions into Lebanon, the so-called Israeli or IDF commandos? How badly was either side beaten in these land confrontations? Well, it's gone exactly as anyone who watched what happened in 2006 in southern Lebanon could have predicted.

Israel's taken bodies. Its special forces unit known as EGAS, which is trained specifically to fight Hezbollah's Radwan Special Forces unit in southern Lebanon, was immediately ambushed when it entered the village of Odessia, which has come under attack continuously for months by Israel. It lost at least eight soldiers, including officers. And we're looking at over a dozen injuries, critical injuries. That's just one of many ambushes. Israel has not been able to entrench itself in southern Lebanon. And what it's been trying to show the public looks pathetic.

They found a few rocket launchers and gotten into a few trenches, but they're not really able to establish this buffer zone. So what they're doing is resorting to their strength, which is the most cowardly kind of attack possible, dropping 5,000 and 2,000 pound bombs from tens of thousands of feet in the air away from any combatant over a country with no anti-aircraft batteries. They just attempted to kill Hisham Sefadin, who is said to be the successor to Hassan Nasrallah. He's said to be injured, but this was another massive attack in a densely populated area in southern Beirut,

in Dahia, where they've killed hundreds and hundreds of people in just the past several days. I think over 2,000 people since Israel started attacking Lebanon, which is more than were killed in all of 2006. What is the objective here? Israel has scored some tactical victories, but what is the strategy and what is the objective? Are they actually trying to get Hezbollah to be pushed north of the Latani River, where they're supposed to be according to a UN resolution from 2000? No, because they're issuing evacuation orders to Lebanese people as far as Saida, north of the Litani River. So Israel is just on this wild rampage in Lebanon, I think because

Netanyahu could never close the deal in Gaza, and he doesn't want a ceasefire there. So in the United States, in Washington, there's just a complete political void, just this abyss where no one is imposing any checks on Israel's reckless genocidal behavior. So this could easily turn into a war with Iran at any moment. And that is what Netanyahu seems to be driving at. It makes you wonder, what does Israel have to do by way of terror and genocide for the West to intervene? How much more horrific can this get? Well, they're issuing orders to paramedics and first responders in Beirut by text telling them, if you go to Dahia, this southern district of Beirut, we will kill you. We will bomb you. It's a nobody gets out alive order. They're not allowing wounded people to get out. They're not allowing first responders to get in. It's a textbook war crime.

It's happening right in front of our eyes. The receipts are all there. First responders are tweeting out the messages they're getting. And what are we hearing from the State Department that condemns Russia constantly for any infraction in Ukraine? Absolutely nothing. What's going on in Gaza while all of this is going on between Israel and Iran and Israel and Lebanon? Gaza is sort of a stalemate where much of the area is wrecked. Israel is attacking schools where people are sheltered every day, killing children. Three days ago, Israel killed over 100 civilians in Gaza, away from the gaze of the Western media, which is now focused on Lebanon and Iran. And the Al-Qassam Brigades and Sarai al-Quds, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad,

are still operating in the open. They're still scoring hits against Israeli armor, and they're demonstrating that they have not been defeated. So there's clearly no objective there, and Netanyahu has buried the hostages alive. Now the families of the hostages and the prisoners of war are in a very difficult political situation because the whole of Israel has cohered around Netanyahu and circled the wagons around the Likud party because Netanyahu's bloodthirsty assault on Lebanon is so popular that you even have supposedly left-wing figures in the Zionist spectrum, like the leader of the Meretz party, cheering on Israel's assault on Lebanon. So for the families who have members of their loved ones in Gaza, they're pretty much screwed right now. Here's a comment I'd like your thoughts on by a mutual friend and colleague of ours. In fact, I think you're going to be with him this weekend, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, at the tail end of an interview that I did with him here on Judging Freedom just the other day.

Chris? There will be no Jewish state in the Levant in the future. There might be a liberal democracy if they could affect that, and it'll be called Israel-Palestine or Palestine-Israel, whatever they want. And it will eventually, the Palestinian Arabs will outnumber the Jews, unless the Jews really start migrating. I certainly don't see that happening. And that's the only way it's going to continue to exist, is a liberal democracy.

If it stays a Jewish state, it will be an apartheid state, and the world's revulsion will kill it. The world's revulsion will kill it. Agree? Well, it's been an apartheid state all along, and the world sees it more clearly than ever before. Americans see it more clearly than ever before. In early December, a majority of Americans, this is 2023, a majority of Americans favored a ceasefire. Now, almost 50% of Democratic voters see Israel as guilty of genocide. This is according to an array of polls. Even Americans are seeing this.

High number of American Jews, over 35%, I think, believe Israel's committing genocide in Gaza. So everyone's seeing it. But what are we seeing from the administration? Are we seeing any change? No, what this is doing, what Israel is doing is exposing how undemocratic our own government is, and specifically how undemocratic the Democratic Party is, because the Democratic base wants none of this. We just read in The Atlantic from Franklin Foer, a pro-Israel journalist writing for a pro-Israel publication, an inside account of how Tony Blinken lied to Congress and lied to America about Israel blocking US humanitarian aid to Gaza, which is a violation of US law. It would require that the US

block arms sales or prevent arms sales. And Blinken was meeting with Netanyahu at Hakirya, which is the main defense nerve center in Tel Aviv. And Netanyahu told him, look, I'm fine with the aid getting in, but members of my coalition don't want a single aspirin going into Gaza after October 7th. He's referring to the fanatical Kahanist fascists like Itamar Ben-Gavir. And so Blinken, in order to prop up Netanyahu, played Ben-Gavir's lawyer in Washington lying to Congress on behalf of Israel to allow Israel to continue this blockage of humanitarian aid and genocide. That's the administration we're dealing with. We're dealing with people like U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, a openly Zionist Orthodox Jew,

who said in order to justify the U.S. shipping weapons to Israel, including 2,000 pound bombs, that Israel's targeting mechanisms are more precise and specific than those of the U.S. military. I mean, this is so disgusting and false on its face. It's all coming out now through leaked memos from the State Department. Here's, you asked what's happening in Washington. Here's Joe Biden in a surprise visit to the press room in the West Wing just about an hour ago. Chris, Biden number two. At this point, you still haven't spoken to Netanyahu. Is it fair to say that you have little personal influence over what he decides to do? No. Look, our teams are in contact 12 hours a day. They're constantly in contact.

I've already had my presidential daily brief. We've already had an interface between our military or the diplomats. They are trying to figure out. This is high holidays as well. They're not going to make a decision immediately. And so we're going to wait to see when they want to talk. Does he even know what he's talking about? Well, the idea that he has no personal influence over Netanyahu is ridiculous.

Netanyahu couldn't, as an Israeli Air Force general has acknowledged, Netanyahu couldn't continue this war for five minutes without Biden and his air bridge to Israel of weapons going out in C-130s hour after hour from Dover Air Force Base. I mean, this is just one of the biggest lies that we keep getting told, which is that the Biden administration has run up against the harsh reality that it can't influence Netanyahu. He's basically got a feeding tube of munitions from the Biden administration allowing him to carry out these horrific strikes. And the U.S. isn't direct Israel. He just advises Israel. And he was asked what Israel is up to. They're involved in making the sausage with Israel. And he then revealed that the U.S. administration was discussing strikes on Iranian oil facilities. So this is a collaborative project. We don't know where

greater Israel begins or ends, but it's clearly enshrouded the Biden administration. And Biden has no idea who's making the decisions. They're also involved in a campaign where they are drunk off of donations from Zionist billionaires like Haim Saban. They're determined to rake in those donations. That's why Kamala did an event today with Liz Cheney, the daughter of the worst living war criminal

in America today, Dick Cheney, the daughter of the worst living war criminal in America today, Dick Cheney. And Kamala thanked Dick Cheney for his service. They're not appealing to any real constituency. They're not appealing to the grassroots voters out there. They're just trying to get defense industry donations and donations from wealthy, centrist, warmongering, neocon Republicans, as well as the Israel lobby. That's what this is about. And I've never heard a reporter ask Biden about the role of campaign finance in his decisions to allow Israel to act without any red lines. What are you doing this weekend? I think you're going to be in Istanbul.

Well, I'll hope to be at a conference on October 7th with Scott Ritter, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, some other, many other voices that, I think Pepe Escobar might be speaking there, many other people that your viewers know and mostly love. And it'll be focused on Palestine and the escalating regional situation. I'll hope to deliver some video and some interviews, but I will also plan to release my own documentary

on October 7th called Atrocity Incorporated. I'll be dropping a trailer soon, which details the lies spun out by Israel's international propaganda apparatus, which includes the US corporate media, in order to manufacture consent for the genocide that is still ongoing in the Gaza Strip. Beheaded babies, babies burned alive, baked in ovens, the mass sexual assault hoax that was conveyed by the New York Times. All of this is explored

in this 40-minute documentary. And I think it'll be an important teaching tool for anyone who wants to educate students and citizens about the dangers of propaganda. So please send us, first of all, safe travels. Thank you. Please send us the trailer. I hope you can come on from Istanbul.

And if you have somebody that you want to talk to directly while you're on this show, please let Chris know and we'll be happy to set that up as well. Absolutely. Finally, I'm jealous that I wasn't invited. Sort of half-injust. I'm exhausted like you are. But Godspeed. All the best.

We'll talk to you again soon. Thank you, Max. Well, you got a lot of fans out there. So next year in Istanbul. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Judge. a lot of fans out there. So next year in Istanbul. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Judge. All the best. Take care. Back with you next week with all of our regulars and maybe with Max from Istanbul. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll see you next time.