Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Israel’s Public Diplomacy.

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Max Blumenthal: Israel’s Public Diplomacy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, March 18th, 2025. Max Blumenthal will be here with us in just a moment on Israel's public diplomacy and the various quickly coming events around the world. But first this. Markets are at an all time high. Euphoria has set in. The economy seems unstoppable.

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But before we get there, just a couple of the recent hot events. It appears that the IDF has invaded Gaza today and has killed over 400 civilians. What is Netanyahu trying to accomplish? The deaths of the hostages? Well, he's achieved that. Two hostages are dead after last night reportedly. Two more hostages preventing the he has successfully obstructed the release of Eden Alexander who is a dual US Israeli citizen someone who was due to be released. He sabotaged the Trump's attempt to directly negotiate for the release of these hostages because the Trump administration tacitly acknowledged that Netanyahu did not want the hostages out.

Netanyahu saw the ceasefire deal as a recipe for disaster. It would have been a moral defeat for Israel, the Israeli military, many scenes of hundreds of Palestinian captives coming out of Israel's jails, as well as Hamas maintaining its ability to maintain military force in Gaza. And it would have spelled political doom for Netanyahu to go to phase two, pull the Israeli military out and move towards a permanent ceasefire. He would have just been kind of flying blind and heading into various corruption investigations. It would have

put enormous pressure on his coalition. So the only way out is to slaughter tons and tons of babies and that's what they did last night. Israel slaughtered about 80 children in less than an hour last night. It was a surprise attack on a besieged starving entity of people during Ramadan who have no air defense systems in order to supposedly take out Hamas operatives. They killed five mid-level Hamas political officials who are basically like working in the judiciary who have no operational role in the military. And they killed over 400 people and wounded close to 1,000 and the Trump administration took ownership of this savage assault on a defenseless population.

Caroline Levitt went out on Fox News and declared that Trump warned hell would break loose and now hell is breaking loose. Just confirming how owned this administration is, how cut they are by Netanyahu. And of course they sidelined the hostage negotiator Adam Bowler, who is himself a Jewish Zionist, because he declared in a contentious interview with CNN Zionist enforcer Jake Tapper that we're not an agent of Israel. Well on the contrary Adam You have to be sidelined and we have to slaughter babies to save Netanyahu's career on behalf of MAGA and MAGA stands for Miriam Adelson's goals achieved now Trump is declaring that this slaughterhouse in Gaza that he is unleashed on

The civilian population is a message to Iran along with the war that he has just initiated in Yemen. So we're heading straight towards war with Iran and a few MAGA figures, figures from the old MAGA, for Muri Maddelson took total control of it, Ann Coulter and Marjorie Taylor Greene have acknowledged on Twitter X that these wars are being waged by Donald Trump for a foreign country, the country that's won every US election since 1950, Israel. Wow. I was going to ask you if Netanyahu had consulted directly or through channels with Trump, but you've already answered the question.

This is no different from the Biden administration. When Marco Rubio justified bombing the Houthis because they're financed by Iran, it's hard to believe that he didn't recognize that the Ukraine is financed by Iran, it's hard to believe that he didn't recognize that the Ukraine is financed by us and the Israelis are financed by us and we have the same moral culpability as Netanyahu did when he slaughtered the babies. Resolve to earn your degree in the New Year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future.

Learn more at wgu.edu. Last night, Alistair Crook wrote a long piece over the weekend in which he argues that the division in Israeli society between the secular liberal Democrats, lowercase D, and the right-wing religious fanatics is deeper and wider than it's ever been and Netanyahu is making it worse. Do you accept that analysis? I haven't read Alistair's piece. Netanyahu just fired his Shin Bet chief Ronin Bar. And this is being referred to by the liberal secular class in Israel as a Weimar moment that Netanyahu is establishing a dictatorship by removing the gatekeepers who were not going from the security state, which is in itself a kind of fascist entity that

presides over a military dictatorship over Palestinians. By removing them, he's removing all checks on his control over the state. Then you have the families of the hostages who maintain enormous sympathy within the Jewish-Israeli population who are not very happy about what Netanyahu authorized last night with his defense minister who is another lackey. He removed his last defense minister because he wasn't complicit enough. complicit enough. I mean, he wasn't compliant enough. So Netanyahu is constructing a state of lackeys and stooges around himself in order to preserve his career. He's become the king of Israel and so the families of the hostages simply want a deal and they're now beseeching Donald Trump to once again go around Netanyahu and negotiate directly with Hamas. I mean, this is the message that's on, I mean, you can see headlines of hostage families beseeching Trump

to go around the process that Netanyahu has constructed in order to get their loved ones out. And what has Donald Trump done? He's signed on to Netanyahu's regional wars. So they have very little hope. I think their hopes are dashed after last night. What was gained by the US bombing the Houthis over the weekend? Well, nothing for the United States. Although maybe Pete Haigseeth can enjoy being in the Situation Room, it would be a lot different than being in the Fox Green Room. Maybe it's more exciting for him to attack one of the poorest countries on the planet. They're sending three aircraft carriers now to the Red Sea, and a tripwire has been established for war

with Iran. This is being done completely on behalf of Israel. The Yemeni movement of Ansarullah is the only force in the world right now taking up arms, waging an actual humanitarian intervention to try to force Israel to abide by the terms of the ceasefire. And they announced that they would reimpose their blockade of the Red Sea, which has been largely bloodless because Israel was not allowing food or electricity into the Gaza Strip. I mean, this is a textbook humanitarian intervention. And I've interviewed the spokesman, senior political officer for

Ansar Allah al-Dahouti, Mohamed Abu Khayti, who emphasizes they are doing this out of an ideological commitment to their conception of justice, and they want to establish a world order in which the most oppressed have a voice. So this is like an actual R2P intervention. The US has stepped in on behalf of Israel because the blockade was going to only target Israeli shipping. It was not going to target US shipping and has sent the USS Eisenhower and all of these US soldiers into harm's way to attack Yemen, to attack Sana'a. And the next stage is to attack Iran. As Donald Trump said, this is a message to Iran. And what is the message?

Last night was a supposed surprise attack. Now the US has nuclear armed submarines in the Red Sea within striking distance of Tehran. And what the US is saying and has been saying is that if Iran does not accept another bogus deal with the United States, which the US broke, the Trump administration broke the JCPOA, that they will destroy Iran and they will do it without warning. It's gunboat diplomacy. And, uh, this will be the legacy of Donald Trump.

Just remember judge when Joe Biden bare hugged Netanyahu, he pretty much signed the end of his political career. The bottom dropped out of his base in the democratic party. And it helped doom Kamala Harris. out of his base in the Democratic Party and it helped doom Kamala Harris. Donald Trump is tightening that embrace of Israel and he's swallowing the same poison pill. Just within two months of being in office, he may have already destroyed his America First agenda. Well, it's really Israel first. Here's Mike Waltz on Sunday. This will aggravate you, but I'd like you to respond to it. I think it's on one of the talk shows and it's about Iran backing the Houthis. Chris, cut number four.

Iran needs to hear him loud and clear. It is completely unacceptable and it will be stopped. The level of support that they've been providing the Houthis, just like they have Hezbollah, just like they have the militias in Iraq, Hamas and others, the difference here is the Houthis have incredibly sophisticated air defenses and they also have anti-shipping cruise missiles, drones, sea skimming types of attack drones and other ballistic missiles even. They've launched dozens of attacks on multiple warships, dozens of attacks over 175 on global commerce, sank multiple ships.

I just think the American people need to understand what has happened here. The previous administration had a series of feckless responses. President Trump is coming in with overwhelming force. We will take, we will hold not only the Houthis accountable, but we're going to hold Iran their backers accountable as well. And if that means their targeting ships that they have put in to help their Iranian trainers, IRGC and others, that intelligence, other things that they have put in to help the Houthis attack the global economy, those targets will be on the table too. Right Max, these guys do want war with Iran. There's no question about it. The man of peace

who says he wants the Nobel Peace Prize, Mike Waltz's boss, is unleashing the dogs of war. As Mike Waltz was always going to do, Mike Waltz is a pure product of the Israel lobby, has received hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of support from Israel lobby groups like APAC and NORPAC. That was what helped him get to the top of the House Foreign Relations Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee. Marco Rubio, same thing, has received over a million dollars from the Israel lobby. He was a poster child of the neoconservative movement and these figures are taking charge of Donald Trump's foreign policy. Well, Donald Trump seems mostly interested in deportation PR stunts for his base because they're not getting enough deportations. Where will this lead?

Well, so far they have killed IRGC members inside Yemen. They're lying to the American public about why shipping is being blockaded, whose shipping it is. It's not US shipping, it's being blockaded because the US has green lit Israel's ceasefire violations. It's literal blowing up of the ceasefire and when the ceasefire was being abided by in phase one there was no blockade. So if they would just pressure Israel to abide by

the ceasefire we wouldn't be on the way to a war with Iran but Mike Waltz has an ulterior agenda which is the agenda of Israel. The agenda is to destroy all regional challengers to Israel. They've already destroyed Syria. They have a Sunni supremacist Turkish NATO run junta in power there, which spent the last several days attacking Shia tribes in the Bikha Valley in Lebanon, rather than actually confronting Israel, which just attacked the Syrian city of Daraa. They want to destroy Yemen because Yemen is acting independently. The Houthis are the most independent member of the Axis of Resistance. They're not seeking a sign off from Iran. Most of their weapons are indigenous and they are the biggest threat and they're the most ideologically motivated

to take on Israel. And that will be a test run for an assault on Iran, attacking Iran's nuclear sites. And how can Iran retaliate? Well, as Mike Waltz intimated, Iran can tank the global economy. It can attack oil installations across the Persian Gulf. It can hit U.S. bases in Iraq. It can attack in ways that we don't even understand yet. And it can also hit Israel, which would escalate into an atrocious war. And this would be Trump's legacy with just three months in. It's all because his administration and its most meaningful moves so far have been directed by Tel Aviv and not by the the Trumpist base. The MAGA base has no say in the matter, which and if they had not, if they hadn't wanted this war, it wouldn't matter.

But fortunately for Trump, they've demonstrated themselves to be just a bunch of boot lickers George W. Bush's base was after 9-11. I wanna talk to you about the Israeli influence in American domestic law enforcement. I wanna talk to you about the summary deportation and violation of an express order from a federal judge,

of a physician who was a professor of medicine at Brown University, and about the arrest and transport to Louisiana of a Columbia grad student. But before I do, Professor John Mearsheimer on the root cause of all of this. When Secretary Rubio rescinds the green card of a person he probably never heard of because of statements the person made on the Columbia University campus last April. This of course is a big deal here in New York. It should be a big deal everywhere because it's an attack on freedom of speech like we haven't seen in this country in many generations. But I suspect it is the Trump Department of Homeland Security

and DOJ doing a favor for the president's Zionist backers? The truth is, Judge, that the single greatest threat to freedom of speech in the United States at this point in time is Israel and its supporters here in the United States. Agree or disagree? Well, I've been saying that for over a decade. What we're seeing isn't new.

Israel's been seeking to pass laws at the state level to abrogate the First Amendment and control American speech, to ban companies from exercising their ability to boycott Israel. And now it's all coming to a head. I don't know if this is the culmination, but it's, it's, it's, I'm sure it's not the culmination. What we're witnessing as we see sort of a demise or anxiety within global capitalism, which is integrated into Zionism or integrated with Zionism is rising authoritarianism in the West. In the UK, there are new laws like the National Security Act, which have resulted in the jailing of dissidents, activists, journalists,

simply because they have praised, for example, the Houthis for attempting to stop Israel's siege of Gaza. Richard Medhurst, who's a journalist, was just raided in Vienna. He's being accused of, and he's a British journalist, he's being accused of being a member of Hamas. I mean, we're witnessing an out-of-control escalation across Europe. In the U.S., there still is a First Amendment to contend with. So the Trump administration is trying to declare a kind of state of emergency in order to arrest green card holders, permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil, without any pretext. They've accused him of being a terror sympathizer, of being a terrorist. They produce no evidence.

They've accused him of being a terror sympathizer, of being a terrorist. They've produced no evidence. They've accused him of no crime. And now they're invoking McCarthy era laws to try to justify his detention, stripping him of his green card and kicking him out of the country, all because he protested the mass slaughter of babies as a Palestinian at Columbia University and this is all being done under orders from Miriam Adelson who's been hailed by the Jerusalem Post in the past month as a modern-day Roth child Who is using her money to dictate the Trump administration's policy? I mean they said it directly right there It's like a wet dream for anti-semites to look at this Next will come

citizens being arrested. I'm sure of it. It's already happening in Europe. And Judge, we talked in our last interview about my interrogation or questioning at Dulles International Airport. I wasn't exactly sure what it was about. I was trying to be conservative in my assessment. But now it's clear to me. I was presented with a list of names of Palestine solidarity activists. It was 3 a.m. It was hard for me to remember. I remembered one name as Muhammad Khan. They're handwritten. That name very well could have been Mahmoud Khalil. But it was very clear that I was being given names that were furnished to the Trump administration, to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE by a fascistic Zionist group, BATAR, which is collecting lists. I mean, it's been credited by the Guardian and other news outlets with collecting the

list that the Trump administration is relying on for arrest and deportation solely based on political activity. What is their argument? That there is no due process and no freedom of speech for permanent residents or visa holders? Well, once they erode that right, then the First Amendment is completely eroded and they'll move in on the rest of us. They already moved in on me to some degree by holding me and questioning me to collect intelligence on their immediate, more immediate targets. So yes, and they're doing this on behalf of Israel. It's never been more obvious. We are living under a kind of Zionist occupation and our most cherished freedoms are being taken away. It reminds me distinctly of the post 9

11 era where there were mass arrests of Muslim activists for supporting Palestine. They were thrown in jail. I'm thinking about the Holy Land Foundation directors, Samuel Arion, so many others, and a blitz of pro-war propaganda on outlets like Fox News. Turn on Fox News now. They've removed Tucker. It's a pro-war extravaganza. And you have an entire base of bootlicking cultists who will support anything the president does. The one thing that's missing, it also kind of reminds me of the COVID era a little bit. The one thing that's missing is a, what Paul Wolfowitz called weeks before 9-11,

a catastrophic and catalyzing event which would give the president a free hand to impose a state of emergency. That is what Donald Trump seeks and they can make that happen. That's Gary Note. We'll end Max. I had other things I wanted to talk to you about but we'll end. Sorry I went long. No, you're terrific and my voice is scratchy and people are

tired of listening to it but thank you Max. Thank you for your courage and thank you for your for your analysis. These are very very perilous times. You and Aaron and Anya and the people that come on this show and the people at the Grey's Zone let's continue to speak out otherwise we're all cooked. Well thanks for letting me get that off my chest. And I feel better. Thanks, Max. All the best. Talk to you soon.

Thank you. See you next week. I'm coming up later today, live from Eastern Ukraine or Western Russia. Patrick Lancaster at two o'clock and three o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC