Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Israel’s Wider War

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

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

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, January 18th, 2024. Our dear friend, Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, always a pleasure, my friend. Thank you for coming back to the show. I have a lot to ask you about, but I want to start right off the bat with the latest from Prime Minister Netanyahu. Here's what he had to say yesterday. Excuse me, here's what he had to say earlier today with an English translation, and I'd like you to unpack it for us. For 30 years, I am very consistent, and I'm saying something very simple. This conflict is not on the lack of a state of Palestinian, but the existence of a state, the Jewish state. Every area that we evacuate, we receive terrible terror against that.

It happened in South Lebanon, in Gaza, and also Judea and Samaria, which we did it. And therefore, I clarify that in any other arrangement, in the future, the State of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea. This is what happens when you have sovereignty. This truth I say to our American friends. And I also stopped the attempt to impose on us a reality that will jeopardize us. A prime minister in Israel has to be able to say no, even to the best of friends, to say no when you need to and to say yes when you can. When I first saw this, I thought, he's listening to Max. He knows that you have to be able to say no. Joe Biden could say no to him.

He can say no to Joe Biden, but Joe Biden can't say no to him. Well, we have the benefit of live translation there. The actual phrase Netanyahu used is from the west of the Jordan River. Basically, Israel has to control everything from the Mediterranean to the west of the Jordan River. So essentially it is from the river to the sea. That's where the exclusively Jewish state of Israel will be, where Israel will have total security control security subcontractor like the Palestinian Authority, a kind of Vichy Authority. But essentially, one state, which is the reality right now, is what Netanyahu is openly advancing and always has. A few weeks ago, he boasted that he had helped foil the two-state solution. There's video leaked from a meeting he had with settlers in 2002, where he boasted that he'd destroyed the two-state solution

and tricked the Americans that he knows how to move the Americans. This is Netanyahu's appeal to the Jewish-Israeli public, where there is no constituency at all for the two-state solution that Tony Blinken is so disingenuously pushing in place of an actual ceasefire and a cessation of this devastating conflict, which constantly expands during his 10-country anti-diplomacy tour. So here's the reality of what the Americans are dealing with, and they refuse to accept it. And meanwhile, back at home here in the U.S., the presidents of Harvard and University of Pennsylvania were sacked because they refused to ban student groups that declare from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. In other words, Palestinians will not be governed by a military dictatorship from the river to the sea. So there's just this whole speech by Netanyahu is suffused with irony. And if there's time, I want to make one more quick point. He said, anytime Israel retreats from territory,

it controls militarily, it's faced with terror. And he pointed to Southern Lebanon, which is where Hezbollah currently operates. Israel created Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. When it invaded in the 1980s, there was no Hezbollah. It was the Shia population that Israel thought it could actually use as a proxy of its own, and which it abused, and which formed into Hezbollah to resist the brutality and repression of Israel's occupation of Lebanon. So Israel's constantly creating these so-called terror threats in areas it occupies. Then when it withdraws, it uses their presence as justification to wage further warfare. This is number 11, Chris. Here's Tony Blinken at his hand-wringing

worst at Davos being questioned by Tom Friedman from The New York Times. One of the things you hear so often from people, given the high civilian casualties in Gaza, is does the United States, do Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian and Muslim lives, Palestinian Christian lives, given the incredible asymmetry in casualties? And I've been asked that. I want to give you a chance to respond to that. No. Period. For me, I think for so many of us, what we're seeing every single day in Gaza is gut-wrenching. And the suffering we're seeing among innocent men, women, and children breaks my heart. The question is, what is to be done? We've made judgments about how we thought we could be most effective in trying to shape this in ways to get more

humanitarian assistance to people, to get better protections and minimize civilian casualties. And at every step along the way, not only have we impressed upon Israelis' responsibilities on Israel's responsibilities to do that. We've seen some progress in areas where absent our engagement, I don't believe it would have happened. Who could believe that, Max? Well, it's like he has nothing to do with this, nothing to do with those harrowing images. It's like OJ Simpson saying, you know, it's horrible what happened to Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. I mean, they were just all those images of them lying dead.

There was horrible. And, you know, I've tried to do something to help their families. He's just dispensing of all responsibility is the ultimate psychotic abuser mentality being displayed by Tony Blinken and the Biden administration, which could end this horror yesterday. So Tony Blinken's strategy is with one hand to provide humanitarian aid, which is not being allowed in by the Israelis. They're not allowing in anesthesia. And so you have over a thousand children, according to UNICEF, who've lost limbs and had operations performed without anesthesia anyone you can go on twitter right now and you know this won't be allowed on youtube uh go see the video of a father who's a doctor in gaza amputating his daughter's leg without

anesthesia it's there for everyone to see this is tony blinken's legacy and with so with one hand he's giving them some bags of flour. And then with the other hand, he's giving Israel tank shells to use against a population that has no army. There are no Gaza tank brigades. And on January 11th, north of Gaza City on Nasser Saladin Road, when hundreds of people lined up in northern Gaza to wait for the rare aid truck bringing flour, they were massacred by tank shells. One after another of the 14,000 tank shells that Tony Blinken personally authorized, bypassing Congress on a fast track sale to Israel, and 50 people were left dead. According to multiple

eyewitnesses, this was reported in Middle East Eye by local reporters. And this is happening again and again. So that's Tony Blinken's legacy right there. He seems really nebbishy and like the shy retiring character, but he is deeply implicated in this genocide and is seeking to shirk responsibility before the most softball interviewer possible in Tom Friedman. Yeah. Those authorizations that you mentioned, I have argued, were felonies. They were acts of perjury because he had to swear. In order to bypass Congress, he had to swear under oath, A, that it was an emergency, and B, that it was vital to American national security interests, which he just signed emergency, and B, that it was vital to American national security

interests, which he just signed away. And of course, it's absurd because the Congress would give them that money anyway, give them that equipment anyway. But this is Lincoln's legacy. You're right. You look at what Congress did, what the Senate did two days ago. Bernie Sanders introduced a resolution simply to call for a human rights report from the State Department on what Israel's doing. 71 senators voted against it. 71 senators voted to not know. Right, right. One Republican, Rand Paul, voted on Bernie's side. We're trying to get Bernie on here. You know, I've been with Bernie a lot in my Fox days. And this was very courageous of him, but the Senate is despicable. Too little, too late. I mean,

not to interrupt, but Bernie rejected a ceasefire for weeks and weeks and weeks. So here we are. That's what I want to pound him on. And that's probably why he doesn't want to come on. Whatever. You recently spoke to a group that believes profoundly that only Congress can declare war and initiate military activity and authorize any kind of military activity. Of course, we haven't had a president who believes that in the post-World War II era. But you are very eloquent. I believe this is the tail end of your speech. So number 18, Chris. This is the first time in my life, one of the first times I've seen a moral military intervention. Because in my country, all the military interventions which have been waged by the liberal humanitarian interventionist R2P crowd inspired by the writings of Samantha Power, the people who are in the Biden White House have caused nothing but destruction and instability. And so this is what the Biden administration has created.

This is the cycle the Biden administration has created with its refusal to call for a ceasefire. It can end all of this cycle of escalation by just doing a ceasefire, but they can't do it. So they're bombing Yemen to stop the one movement which controls most of this country from intervening to stop a genocide. The bombing of Yemen is designed to prolong and preserve the worst, most obvious genocide that I have ever witnessed. Who will stop them before they kill again? People in the region are going to take up arms to stop Israel before they kill again.

That's what's happening, and we have been rendered voiceless here. So the reason we're here tonight is to get our act together and figure out what we're going to do this year to stop this and to get in the way of the inexorable march of neoconservatism. Thank you. It was great, Max. Whom did you have in mind when you said people in the region will take up arms to stop this? Well, that's what Ansar Allah, known as the Houthis, popularly in the U.S., are doing. And I called it the most moral military intervention in my lifetime. I would say the last truly moral military intervention was by Cuba in Angola to end the apartheid regime in South Africa. And what Ansar Allah is doing is largely bloodless to this point. They're basically

disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, shipping related to Israel. Now they've expanded to US and UK ships because the US and UK are attacking them. And they've been attacking them for years through their Saudi proxy. Now they're attacking them directly. And they've been attacking them for years through their Saudi proxy. Now they're attacking them directly. What they're seeking to do is apply economic pressure on Israel to get it to stop this genocidal assault. And the US, when attacking Libya, or attempting to attack Syria, or attacking Yugoslaviaavia or going into Iraq. They've always argued that it was legitimate under international law to stop genocide. And they lied. They invented these phony lies about Gaddafi marching on Benghazi, which we now know isn't true. David Cameron

pushed this lie. His own parliament called him out on it. Now he's been reappointed as a foreign secretary showing what a true meritocracy the UK is. And they destroyed an entire region of Africa, brought ISIS and slavery to Libya and caused a complete destabilization and spread of jihadism all the way across the Sahel. So we saw the military interventions of the U.S. use that phony justification. Here, a movement, a popular movement that controls most of Yemen is using the same justification to stop an actual genocide. And the Biden administration is bypassing Congress and unconstitutionally declaring war and attacking that country to prolong and preserve this hideous genocide in Gaza. All they need to do, as Democratic Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia pointed out, is just initiate a ceasefire, then shipping returns to normal in the Red Sea. Hezbollah, which is also intervening in its own way, will go back north of the Litani River. Iran will stop attacking targets in its region. And that's all they have to do, but they refuse

to do it. Biden should be impeached for violating the constitution in order to declare war on Yemen. And he should be implicated in an international court for the crime of genocide alongside Tony Blinken. That was my argument before the Committee for the Republic. And the Committee for the Republic is dedicated to one thing and one thing only. This is the group that hosted me and Mikko Pele. The Constitution. They're obsessed with the Constitution. And that's what they care about. They're not partisan. They're not taking a side here. They're just in favor of the Constitution. And this is what Biden and Blinken are shredding right now before our eyes.

One of our writers, you know, the people that comment to us, you know, I don't know who this person is. And a lot of them use handles, as you know. Chris, if you have that, MLK3, this person, I don't know if it stands for Martin Luther King, a team led by South African lawyers are preparing lawsuit against the governments of the U.S. and U.K. over alleged complicity in the Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. Again, I don't know who MLK3 is, and I don't know if this is true, but it is clear that it is justified to bring that kind of an action against the U.S. and the U.K. as well. I'm sure you agree. Yeah, it is true.

Some 100 international legal specialists in South Africa are preparing action to include the U.S. and U.K. as defendants in this case. And by the way, the South African case at the ICJ is not necessarily aiming to find Israel guilty of genocide. It's aiming to prove that the potential for genocide requires an emergency intervention in which this court calls for Israel to cease military operations. And this is something that the US and the Biden administration specifically has denounced as unfounded while they simultaneously accuse countries like China of genocide for their treatment of the Uyghurs without even accusing China of any systematic killing or any killing at all. So the whole standard for accusing countries of genocide has been exposed here. It's obvious. The US accused

Russia of genocide too in Ukraine. They only accused their official enemies of genocide when they want regime change. That's it. Getting back to your speech, do you expect that any state actors would get involved if Netanyahu doesn't stop and Biden doesn't stop? Well, that's the thing here. I interviewed, and our interview should be out shortly, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, who is the spokesman for Ansarullah, the movement that effectively controls Yemen's government. They control the largest city, Sana'a, and obviously they control the military. They defeated the Saudi UAE Gulf proxy coalition and the southern Yemeni forces in order to win this revolutionary victory, where they really truly, according to Abu Khaiti, can represent the spirit and the aspirations of Arab people across the Middle East, whereas 80 to 90 million Arab people in Egypt have been left completely hopeless and have no way of intervening or doing

anything to stop the genocide of their brothers and sisters right there on the other side of this militarized fencing in Gaza. There's nothing they can do. So when a movement like Ansar Allah comes in and intervenes this way, they become the heroes of the entire Arab world. And they've actually managed to unite the tribes and various parties all across Yemen that the West has spent decades trying to divide. So it's not opportunistic. What they're doing is they're doing this out of morality and out of religious dedication, but they're gaining, along with Hezbollah and Hamas, the popularity of the entire Arab world. And again, this is the blowback that the U.S. gets for refusing to initiate a ceasefire is that these movements that can't be controlled, like the various dictators

and kings across the Middle East by the U.S. and the West are becoming heroes to Arabs and also to people across the West who want to stop this genocide. What is the status of the Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas? Well, it's terrible. Their future is very, very bleak. Haaretz today quoted a source inside the war cabinet who participates in these daily meetings with Netanyahu over the war and says that Netanyahu spends almost no time discussing the captives, doesn't want them out, likes to have their families protesting in the street because it prevents the wider public from protesting for the downfall of his entire government, and that the longer the war goes on, the longer his career goes on,

and that he would like it to go on for the rest of the year, as he's openly said, because as soon as it ends, his career ends and he goes back to court for corruption. So the fate of the hostages is bleak. There are also millions of Jewish Israelis who see correctly, correctly see that ending military operations in Gaza, which is the only way to get the hostages out, contravenes their goal of destroying Gaza, getting revenge on Palestinians for October 7th and ending Hamas. And so the captives must be sacrificed. And that's why you're seeing actually Israeli parents, like the parents of Ron Sherman, who apparently was poisoned to death by Israeli troops who had gassed a tunnel in Gaza. He was an Israeli soldier who was taken captive.

His mother said, my son was killed like the Jews in Auschwitz by our own army that abandoned him and that they are deliberately killing captives. Yagiel Levi, who's an Israeli military expert and sociologist, wrote in Haaretz that what Israel is doing in Gaza is deliberately targeting the hostages as an extension of the Hannibal procedure to deny Hamas political leverage. In other words, to prevent another political, another prisoner swap, which is deeply unpopular in Israel. So I really fear for the fate of these captives because there's no political constituency in Israel strong enough, including the parents and their families, to force the deal that would get them out. And the only way they're coming out is through a ceasefire.

The Biden administration could get them out. Tony Blinken could get them out, but they don't want to because they refuse to force a ceasefire. Have you detected any appreciable emigration out of Israel by Israeli Jews fed up with life there, either due to the war and the economy or both? Well, it's hard to quantify. There's definitely been no great wave of Jews going to make aliyah through the Jewish agency. There's this organization called Nefesh Bet Nefesh, or like soul to soul. And they do these big PR extravaganzas anytime a plane load of Jews comes to emigrate to Israel. And you've seen none of those since

October 7th. You have seen footage of cruise boats taking older American Israeli Jews out who say they're done. It's not a very good place for them to be. And why not go to Florida or New York? So they are leaving, but right now you have 200,000 Israelis who are internally displaced and their homes are in the North and the South, which are the poor areas in Israel. People in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem call that the periphery. It's where the Jews of Arab origin and Russian origin live. They have no country to go back to. And so they're basically living in hotels, the Israeli taxpayer, and by extension, the American taxpayers paying for their hotels. It's draining the Israeli economy. It's causing inflation. And Netanyahu is openly saying there's no way that they can go home until we finish the

job, until we enact the final solution, which doesn't seem to be succeeding. Just one more point coming out of these war cabinet meetings is that the Israeli former generals, military personnel, military leadership is saying that Hamas's armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, is actually coming back in northern Gaza. The Israelis have taken a division out, but Hamas is beginning to reconstitute itself. And so all of their objectives have failed. And I don't know where this goes other than a ceasefire in which Israel has to take some serious political losses. Otherwise, they're just going to continue to lose in the field. How bad is the economy in Israel, given the war, the absence of Arab workers, the extraction of young men from the workforce to fight in the military and the, you know and the natural effects of all of that?

Well, it's really like investment is one of the key issues. Israel relies heavily on foreign investment in tech. Investment has dried up because the situation is so unstable. Real estate is also incredibly unstable in Israel, in places like Tel Aviv. No one's buying real estate, which is a major industry. And the failure of the Israeli intelligence apparatus on October 7th has meant that it's harder for Israel to export its spy tech and various weapons to other countries because they so clearly failed. The salesmanship no longer has that peerless ring to it of field-tested technology. Israel's lost its military aura. So I think in the long run, there's no way that Israel will return to the status quo ante of economic vibrancy that it enjoyed. And honestly, I don't see

stability returning in 2024 for Israel, and neither does the Israeli military leadership. They're pretty clearly saying that they're going to take the fight to the north, to Hezbollah, in the next few months. I think Prime Minister Netanyahu said in the last 48 hours, the war will go on into 2025. Of course, if it's up to him, there'll be no end to the war. One other reason for that, Judge, is he would like to see Biden defeated. If the war is still going on through November, that's going to be devastating for Biden. And Netanyahu does not want the Biden administration in there. Right, right.

We have a clip of your friend Mikko's father. Have you seen this? From 1992, the general speaking in San Francisco to a group of academics. This is dynamite, the comments that he made 40 years ago. This is the situation we have to live with, and I have no doubt that the direct consequence of the occupation. Anyone who said occupation corrupts was absolutely right, and we are occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for the last 25 years and this is corrupting us.

Maybe even more than the American aid. Well, I would like this to be eliminated altogether. I think that we should pay for our arms out of our own money. But in any case, this is one of the most damaging gifts that we get from the united states right right on uh right on the mark uh max thank you very much my dear friend always a pleasure your your courage i admire it and and keep up everything you're doing, and thank you for coming back here. Aaron Mate is going to be on with us next week.

Great, great. I'm looking forward to it. Looking forward to that. Thanks as always, Judge. All the best. Same to you. Of course. Well, thank you for watching our very busy day. All of our regulars will be back with us next week.

Tomorrow at 4 o'clock Eastern, the way we like to end the day, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. We'll be right back.