Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Netanyahu Sabotages Ceasefire.

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Max Blumenthal: Netanyahu Sabotages Ceasefire.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 Monday, March 3rd, 2025. Max Blumenthal is here with us on Netanyahu trying to sabotage the ceasefire. And what really happened in the Oval Office on Friday? 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,

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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 sent you. Max Blumenthal, welcome here, my dear friend. Much appreciated and thank you for accommodating my schedule.

I do want to explore your thoughts on the Trump-Vance-Zelensky escapade in the Oval Office. But before we get there, yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu went on national television in Israel and announced that he was stopping the introduction of food, water and medicine into Gaza. That, of course, is a war crime. And then just a little while ago, Haaretz announced that the Trump administration had pressured him and without any fanfare, he was backing down from that announcement. Can you shed some light on all of this? Sorry, backing down on which announcement? Backing down on the announcement that he was going to prevent the delivery of food, water, and medicine to Gaza. Yeah, I mean, I'm unclear on where that stands because I've read also reports that the White

House is backing Netanyahu up and Israel Katz's defense minister is under pressure from the right flank of Likud to actually attack humanitarian convoys. Dera al-Bala, the central Gaza city has seen its water desalination plants dry up as water is cut off from the outside. There've already been consequences. But what we heard throughout the Biden-Blinken administration for months and months and months, actually for 15 months, was that Israel was not obstructing humanitarian aid. And then only in October was a letter delivered under the names Blinken and Pentagon Secretary Lloyd Austin warning Israel that they had to abide by agreements to allow a certain amount of trucks and humanitarian aid in, or the U.S. would begin to cut off weapons to Israel

according to the Leahy Law, U.S. Arms Export Act, which forbid a foreign nation from obstructing U.S. aid while receiving U.S. weapons and aid. So, of course, that letter was timed to, you know, with a deadline after the U.S. election. And Israel continued to obstruct humanitarian aid supplied by the U.S., not letting it in. And Blinken, Austin and Biden didn't enforce their threat. So Israel felt no punishment, but they continued with the farce of plausible deniability to be able to say that we're allowing enough aid into Gaza. Kogat, which is the sort of ghetto master of Gaza under the auspices of the Israeli siege and occupation of Gaza's exterior. It's like the civilian arm of the occupation of Gaza would constantly pump out propaganda

claiming it was sending in 150 food trucks on one day while people in Gaza were celebrating the taking of Israeli hostages. Israel's so altruistic. Now the farce is over. Israel has just formally announced that it has a policy intact that it is using to pressure Hamas to give up its leverage in the form of the human collateral that it still holds in Gaza by holding the entire population hostage in their concentration camp and cutting off food and aid.

And I don't know if the Trump administration has pressured them to withdraw that policy, but certainly Israel hasn't been meeting its obligations according to phase one of the ceasefire deal. And we can talk about how it's abrogating or trying to prevent phase two from taking place. But under phase one, 500 or so food and aid trucks were supposed to be able to enter the Gaza Strip each day. And that has not happened at any point. And additionally, scores of people have been killed by the Israeli military, which is still setting up checkpoints all around the Gaza Strip, and hundreds have been injured.

So now the mask is off. And you see Israel's Osborne's Jackal Brigade actually celebrating the cutting off of humanitarian aid when under Biden, they were denying that it was taking place at all. Here's what Haaretz released at 1.30 this afternoon, Eastern Time. Israel is willing to extend the ceasefire in Gaza for a few days due to pressure from the Trump administration and mediators, senior Israeli officials told Haaretz. There's a lot more in this, but that's the news peg. Okay, I understand what you're referring to. Netanyahu under pressure from the right wing to resume violence. allowing the extension of the ceasefire is allowing Israel to abrogate the terms of the ceasefire, because we are now at the point where in order to continue releasing captives and hostages, including Matan Angrist, whose images have just been released from captivity, Matan

Angrist was an Israeli tank commander who was taken out of his tank on October 7th as he was enforcing the siege of Gaza and attacking people inside Gaza. In order to get them out, Israel must withdraw its troops in phase two, and it must release a certain amount of Palestinian prisoners, including higher level prisoners, what they call security prisoners. Israel doesn't want to go to phase two and it wants Hamas to give up its human collateral. There's actually been a campaign, a propaganda campaign inside Israel in Hebrew of billboards and signs around cities like Tel Aviv put out by the Hostage Families Forum, which has an image of hostages being liberated. And then next to that image, it says,

go back to war. So basically, they're trying to sell the Israelis on a strategy of, let's comply with this deal as much as we can and get as many of our people out as possible. And then we're going to continue to bombard Gaza once Hamas gives up its only piece of leverage, its ace cards. And Hamas is not going to do that. So Hamas is standing pat and is demanding that Israel immediately move to phase two, which is why we're in such a precarious position with the ceasefire and it could blow up at any minute. Here's Netanyahu's Sunday evening. It's in Hebrew, but there's a translator. Upon the conclusion of the first stage and in light of Hamas rejection of the

framework, we decided at last night's discussion that as of this morning, the entry of goods and supplies into Gaza will be prevented. It must be emphasized, Hamas currently controls all of the supplies and goods that are being sent to the Gaza Strip. It is abusing the Gazan population that is trying to receive the aid. It is shooting at them and is turning the humanitarian aid into a budget for terrorism directed against us. To this, we will not agree in any way. If Hamas continues to stick to its position and does not release our hostages, there will be additional consequences, which I will not detail here. As of today, we have returned 196 hostages, and I remind you that at the start of the war, there were those who doubted our ability to return even one hostage.

Again, we demand the release of all our hostages, the living and the deceased. We are committed to this. I am committed to this. And with God's help, we will neither stop nor be silent until we achieve it. Is there any truth to, as far as you understand, to what he's saying about Hamas is preventing ordinary Gazans from getting the food? The truth is, as I understand it, he's preventing the food from arriving or he's reduced the number, the amount radically. Well, that's one of the first lies that Netanyahu told. I mean, there are so many lies to unpack that we probably won't have time, but it's been well documented that because of Israel's deliberate attacks on Hamas-affiliated police and assassinations of so many police officials across Gaza who were trying to protect the aid convoys from bandits who were

selling it on the black market that Israel created, basically created a massive black market for aid across Gaza by design, placing it in the hands of criminal gangs. And it armed criminal gangs who were showing up with U.S.-issued rifles inside Gaza, which were being handed to them by the Israeli military in order to destabilize the structure and security apparatus that existed prior to October 7th. It was part of the campaign to weaken Hamas from within. This is well-documented. Israel's attacks on humanitarian convoys using the presence of Hamas police as justification, placed the aid and the control of criminal gangs. And Hamas has been battling criminal gangster families like the Dagmash family ever since

it took control in the Gaza Strip in 2006. And Israel has been working with them, propping them up, even attempting to place drug traffickers who were trafficking drugs through the Sinai in charge in Gaza. So that's lie number one. backing up is that Hamas has broken the ceasefire when Netanyahu is doing what he did ever since there was a deal on the table, which is to move the goalposts and refuse to abide by the terms claiming Hamas is at fault. And then the US under Biden and mainly through Blinken would back him up more covertly. But now the Trump administration through the National Security Council is openly backing Netanyahu and declaring that Hamas is at fault for not accepting the new terms. The new terms are different from those that were agreed to to get the ceasefire done in the first place. As I said, this is the time for phase two, but Israel does not want to withdraw

its forces from Gaza and move towards a permanent ceasefire. So it's introducing new terms. If this is true, if this report is accurate, I should say, if the Trump administration is backing up what we just saw from the clip from Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Trump administration is complicit in war crimes. Their lawyers know, Mike Waltz knows, the use of food, it's the National Security Advisor, the use of food as a weapon against the civilian population is a war crime. And as people die, it's a form of genocide. Indeed, they're involved in a war crime of...

God, I was going to ask you, this was going to be my next question. Might the manner in which, and I guess the answer to this is sadly no, might the manner in which Trump and Vance dealt with Zelensky on Friday would be a lesson for Netanyahu. Well, just first to the issue of the war crime, Marco Rubio, who was approved 99 to nothing by the U.S. Senate, by his colleagues in the Senate, including Bernie Sanders, who is actually seeking to withhold U.S. weapons to Israel until it abides by human rights laws. Marco Rubio announced an emergency package of $4 billion in weapons, including 2,000-pound

bunker buster bombs, or what I call baby buster bombs, to Israel. I don't know what the emergency is other than that Zionism is in trouble. Oh, this is the same act of perjury lying under oath on an official document submitted to the government, in this case to the Congress, that Blinken committed. Exact same act. Well, they're doing it while they're openly acknowledging that Israel is violating the Leahy Act by obstructing U.S. supplied aid while the U.S. is providing emergency shipments of weapons. So the Trump administration is in violation of U.S. law, as the Biden administration was. It's just more naked now. They just they're flouting this law. Now, to your question about whether Netanyahu could be dealt a dressing down by a president in the Oval Office, we know Barack Obama personally hated Netanyahu. Bill Clinton

hated Netanyahu. He stormed out of a meeting declaring, who is the effing superpower in Netanyahu's first term when Netanyahu tried to dictate terms to him. I don't think Trump actually likes him. There have been reports that he doesn't like him. Trump doesn't like being one-upped by any other man who is a leader of a small nation propped up by the US with a small population. But the power of Zionism over U.S. government and society is too comprehensive and too intense for any U.S. president to do anything. And privately, they fear being assassinated for dealing Netanyahu the kind of blow that Zelensky suffered, which would be existential. To be sure, it would be existential for Netanyahu the kind of blow that Zelensky suffered, which would be existential. To be sure, it would be existential for Netanyahu and the whole project, the ethno-supremacist

project of Israel. If a U.S. president said, if you don't accept our terms and make peace with the Palestinians and give them, I don't know, a state along 1967 lines or even less, and you don't make peace with your neighbors, then we are going to refuse the arms shipments. It would create an internal combustion in an Israeli society that would lead to the collapse of the Zionist project. I'm sure of that at this point, especially given the state of Israeli politics under Netanyahu. The reason they don't do it is their fear for their own personal safety, fear for the demolition of their career because they depend so much on the Zionist billionaire class for funding. where the winds of change finally descend on apartheid Israel, will be a military defeat

of Israel at the hands of a powerful nation like Iran, something that may not also be on the horizon. It's only because Zelensky is being defeated on the battlefield that Trump can come out and say that the U.S. is making a bad investment and that he's killing his own population for nothing. But Israel right now is claiming some kind of at least tactical military victory and that they're going to continue this seven front campaign, which has delighted people very close to Donald Trump, like his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who wants to keep the regional war going. Before we move on to Zelensky, Colonel McGregor is of the view that the Arab League meeting tomorrow will stiffen the resistance and likely result in violence against Israel. And he says it's most likely to come from Egypt first. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Well, the Arab League is a completely pathetic and toothless organization, especially since the members of the Arab League who stood up against U.S. imperialism were murdered in the so-called Arab Spring, Muammar Gaddafi, even Saddam Hussein before him, who was at one time a U.S. proxy like Vladimir Zelensky. So the Arab League is completely toothless. It's laughed at by the entire population of Gaza and most Palestinians. However, they have an important meeting coming up because the Trump administration is demanding too much of them, and particularly of Egypt and Jordan. In order to fulfill Donald Trump's AI Dubai Gaza Riviera fantasy,

which requires a whole lot of ethnic cleansing. Egypt must take possibly millions of Palestinians first into the Sinai Desert, and Jordan will have to unload some of Israel's heavy demographic burden by taking these non-Jewish intermention as well. And neither of them are inclined to do it. King Abdullah came to Washington and was very careful and very well advised to not behave like Vladimir Zelensky, like a petulant child. He understood what cards he had to play. And he suffered Donald Trump's abuse, but he also said that we are going to wait for Egypt to introduce its presentation. Egypt has introduced a rebuilding plan. It's going to

announce that it will not take in masses of Palestinian refugees at the Arab League summit. And that will probably be the end of this fantasy that Donald Trump is putting forward. I don't think that population is going anywhere. Who owns the Philadelphia corridor? Is that owned by Egypt or Israel? Well, Egypt, there was a, the Philadelphia corridor divides the Palestinian side of Rafah from the Egyptian side of Rafah. And there were smuggling networks, which provided essential goods to Gaza for quite a long time

there. When Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his Western-backed military junta came into power, they basically blew up homes all along the Egyptian side of the Rafah, of the Philadelphia corridor, brutally abused residents there, tortured them in order to force them out. And it did this at the behest of Israel and the West behind them. So the Philadelphia Corridor is effectively occupied by the West via its local enforcer in Egypt. The Egyptian military wouldn't exist without Western aid in its current neocolonial form. But it really does belong to the Palestinian people.

And the Israeli military seeks to occupy it. And Netanyahu is using it once again, declaring that there must be a permanent Israeli military presence there in order to blow up the ceasefire deal and prevent the implementation of phase two, which requires Israel to totally leave Gaza, at least the Israeli military to physically leave Gaza. Before we go, and as promised, what's your perception of the fallout from what happened in the Oval Office on Friday? And do you think it was spontaneous or staged?

I mean, Trump and Vance may have been holding these cards up their sleeve, but the anger and fury, the righteous and justified anger and fury of Trump and Vance was spontaneous. It was only in the 40th minute when Zelensky began to protest the mere mention of diplomacy by J.D. Vance, something that he's been hostile to since 2019, since he went to Paris and went to meet with Putin and discuss making good on the Minsk Accords. That's when it blew up. Zelensky addressed J.D. Vance by his first name rather than calling him Mr. Vice President. He was extremely disrespectful. His body language was that of a petulant child. And he began to angrily protest the possibility of the U.S. making peace with Russia. He even

compared Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, which naturally infuriated Trump after the Russiagate hoax. So Zelensky was poorly advised going into the meeting. His advisors should have known that he was making a mockery out of himself as a four-time draft dodger by going in with a G.I. Joe pajamas on to the White House and that it would open him up to mockery from Trump's team. They should have advised him to learn from King Abdullah's behavior and understand that while he's losing this war, and he's totally dependent on the U.S. for howitzers and artillery, and that the U.S. can't even make enough to satisfy the needs of the Ukrainian artillery corps, that he doesn't have any cards. But he was poorly advised. He was entitled by

the Biden administration like a spoiled brat. And now he's crashed against the hard rocks of reality. And I said right away after that meeting that he would come back to the table whimpering, apologize to Trump, and have to accept the terms. Otherwise, Zelensky will either be neighbors with Yair Netanyahu at a luxury condo in Miami, or he will be dragged from the back of a truck decorated with neo-Nazi Azov battalion insignia through the streets of Kiev. Ritter and McGregor agree with you on the latter. If he seriously discusses a ceasefire, he's a dead man. Well, we'll see where it goes. That picture that Chris just posted is either the Ukrainian ambassador or the Ukrainian foreign minister just beside herself at the 40th minute of that 48-minute meeting.

Yeah, that's- Go ahead, please. Ambassador Oksana Markarova. Right. Ambassador to Washington. And I pass that embassy a lot. It's on M Street in Georgetown in Washington. There's a big sign there and it says,

we are open for business. And that really tells you what her role was. Her role was basically to sign away Ukraine's critical assets to Black Rock, which is going to get a former executive as chancellor of Germany in the form of Friedrich Merz, and to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at Washington Nationals games, to loud cheers from Beltway contractors and D.C. liberals, and to do photo ops. She is at fault for that meeting. It was up to her to understand the lay of the land, to read the Trump administration, and then to advise Vladimir Zelensky on what he was walking into. And she failed to do so. And we saw the real Zelensky that has been such an irritant behind the scenes and who

has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in his country by refusing so many opportunities to negotiate and end this conflict, most notably April 2022 at Istanbul, when his own advisor, Alexei Arastovich, said what we had there, the deal we had, was very good. And in refusing to accept it, hundreds of thousands have died. So she has no one to blame but herself there. And it's also worth noting that Zelensky has been surrounded by American advisors who have been leading him to doom, including those who advised his 2019 presidential campaign. This is really what we're seeing now is the demise or the denouement in the career of a neo-colonial Western puppet who never really was a servant of the people as the show that brought

him to fame is called. Max Blumenthal at your articulate best. Thank you very much. Thanks for your insight, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule today. I hope we see you again soon. Looking forward to it. Thanks as always, Judge. Thank you.

Coming up tomorrow, a long and full day for you. At eight in the morning, charles freeman at nine professor gilbert doctorow at ten professor jeffrey sachs at eleven colonel larry wilkerson at noon pepe escobar at one professor glenn deason at three our dear friend aaron mate at four professor john meersheimer judge napolitano for judging freedom Thank you.