Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Netanyahu’s Domestic Woes.

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

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

. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, August 2nd, 2025. Max Blumenthal is kind enough to join us now. Max, a pleasure, my dear friend. I do want to spend a little time with you on Prime Minister Netanyahu's domestic woes, but before we get there, do you have a handle on the unusual, and we'll play some of these clips in a minute, bizarre bellicosity of EU and NATO leaders towards Russia. To some extent, you could call it Ukraine syndrome. It's sort of as though they can acknowledge defeat, even while the entire Beltway culture has acknowledged defeat in the form of the 20,000-word New York Times front pager by Adam Entwist acknowledging

that the whole war has been run out of a U.S. military base in Germany, and every operation was directed by US generals. Europeans can't fight without the US, but the US is effectively throwing in the towel here by telling the liberal intelligentsia what we already knew and what guests on your show have been saying for two years or so. guests on your show have been saying for two years or so. So in steps, Keir Starmer, who has pledged to have boots on the ground and planes in the air in Ukraine,

he wants to deploy some kind of peacekeeping force. And at the same time, his military chiefs have openly said that London does not have the men or materiel to mount such a mission. There was a recent official review of the British Army that led the head of the Financial Times editorial board to declare, and I quote, their forces would struggle to fight a European war lasting more than a few weeks. The British army is a joke. And I'm not sure which other European force can step in to the breach left by the United States,

but it's also a power play for Ursula von der Leyen, who has sought to centralize the entire EU bureaucracy around herself through a series of crises from COVID spanning through the Ukraine proxy war. Kaja Kalas is a fanatic from Estonia who has been largely managed by neoconservative who has been largely managed by neoconservative elements, not just in Europe, but in Washington. And she's at the forefront of trying to sustain this war because of just the simple fear that acknowledging defeat will lead to the unraveling of NATO,

which is joined at the hip with the EU. I wonder if Donald Trump knows what was reported in the New York Times about the intricate involvement of American generals. Surely Vladimir Putin knows because surely Russian Intel knows. I wonder if American Intel told Joe Biden or told Donald Trump. So that is a prelude to, is the United States an honest broker when we've been waging war on Russia? Not just the missiles that Biden allowed Zelensky to deploy into Russia, but now what you've just described from that piece in the New York Times. Yes, the United States, an honest broker.

The United States is not a broker. The United States is the key belligerent here. That's what the New York Times confirmed for everyone or corroborated, which we've been saying all along. Right. Every time the Ukrainians would fail on the battlefield, they would come through various chiefs of staff, Zoluzhny or General Sierski, to the command center in Germany,

and with the US generals sort of out of the media, but running the entire show and tell them, we need not just high Mars systems to attack, I don't know, the bridge that Putin's bridge to Crimea linking Crimea to the Russian Federation. We now need attack them missiles to attack deep inside Russia. And the US generals would look at the situation on the battlefield and say, Well, this was a red line. Vladimir Putin personally set a red line of no weapons systems going to Ukraine that could attack further than, that could fire further than 185 kilometers, but we're going to give them

that to them and we're going to call Putin's bluff. And every time that Ukrainians would fail and push for more extreme measures, the US would agree and they crossed all of the red lines that they had set until they've reached the current impasse, which could mean crossing a nuclear red line at some point unless the war ends. For Trump is Putin's obviously winning on the battlefield. Trump doesn't know how to deal with someone who's powerful, who's kind of coming to the negotiating table as an equal, who's used to bullying weak NATO vassal states and allies, pause the war for a month, allow Ukraine to ramp up its mobilization efforts?

Why would Putin agree to that when he's winning? privilege to have that meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov after the cameras were off. This is when Marco Rubio had come up with some 30-day pause that supposedly President Zelensky agreed to. I mentioned it to Foreign Minister Lavrov and he said, why would we do that when we are held his fingers out like this, this close? he realizes how close they are to victory. You mentioned Ursula von der Leyen. Here she is at her absurd worst about the ability of Europe to replace the United States as the supplier of weaponry for Ukraine. Chris, cut number 22. We had a very good meeting of the Coalition of the Willing.

The Coalition of the Willing has gotten bigger, stronger, and very determined. I've basically three key takeaways. The first was a broad discussion on how to step up in the support for Ukraine in the short term financially and military-wise. The military needs that are there in Ukraine that have to be fulfilled but also the financial needs and here I can contribute that we will front load the EU part of the G7 loans for Ukraine. Second topic, keep up the pressure on Russia. It was very clear that the sanctions stay in place.

What we want is a just and lasting peace agreement. That is the goal. And the third key takeaway was on the long-term support for Ukraine and our own European defense posture. Here, of course, the Readiness 2030 Plan is crucial. It provides up to 800 billion euros of defense investment possibilities for the member states.

And this means, for example example joint procurement with Ukraine, joint procurement with Ukraine in the European Union but also in the Ukrainian defense industry. It's strengthening the defense industrial base of Ukraine and of course we need also a credible deterrence and defense posture in the European Union and thus we have to develop our own defense industrial base. As I submit entirely consistent with what you said earlier this woman wants to be the princess of Europe. Yeah, yeah I mean this is just another example of her centralizing power around herself and centralizing the bureaucracy around herself through war, through a continuous process of maintaining Ukraine as an anti-Russian

porcupine in the region. 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. The EU politically is internally crumbling as a result of this policy, as at least an indirect result. the popular right wing populist pro-peace candidate, Gheorghescu has been prevented from even participating

in an election in which he was clearly going to emerge victorious. First, it was said that the Russian government, Russian intelligence ran a deceptive TikTok campaign on his behalf. That was blown out of the water as false misinformation. And then Romanian authorities just simply canceled

the election. And now what we see happening in France with Marine Le Pen, someone, I have not much agreement with her. I mean, I'm not in her camp in any way, but it seems to me that someone like Le Pen, who is not possibly going to be sent to jail, it's not allowed to participate in an election, which she may have won over a technicality of mishandling something like 2 million euros when the head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, was found guilty of forking over $400 million

in public money to an oligarch, and she's still at the Central Bank, it's pretty clear what's going on. Le Pen's national rally is Eurosceptic. They are opposed to von der Leyen's agenda, as is Gheorghe's. So we see a casino, through this military buildup, a casino democracy is coming into view where if the house run by Vonderleyen doesn't like the results, they just completely cancel the game. Since you and I spoke last on air, the IDF has systematically executed one by one by one, up to 15 of these by ones, UN aid workers in Gaza. No outrage. Is the world now accepting of the Israeli genocide?

Yeah, I mean, the New York Times backpaged it and said they couldn't find any evidence of the executions yet, or it was unverified. This is the same New York Times that ran a front-page story based on unverified and now discredited allegations by Israelis claiming that Hamas conducted a campaign of systemic, systematic sexual assault on October 7th. The whole thing has been discredited, but they didn't look for any verification there. There was no forensic evidence. They had no survivor testimony. So one of the most horrific incidents, war crimes, of this genocide that's just taken place and it's being shrugged at by Western media, if not sort of denied, 15 medics were killed, some of them executed at point blank range, one by one as you said, one was beheaded or decapitated, then the

Israeli soldiers called in bulldozers to bury the ambulances. I mean, this is something that should shock the conscience of the world and in many ways it has for anyone who's paying attention, they're disgusted and shocked. But those who have any power to do anything about so-called international community is Just treating this as humdrum and that's what Israel has done They've normalized some of the most hideous war crimes that have ever been committed While we're talking about the New York Times, so this is going to take us back to Ukraine Do you have any evidence from your sources about

how long the times sat on the story about American generals directing virtually all of the Ukrainian attacks from their perch in Germany? Yeah, great question. Why this story has been in the works for quite a long time. Right, they're not gonna bring it out while Joe was in the White House. Right, exactly. So they waited till Trump was in the White House and in some ways it represents a throwing in the towel.

But also there are various somber nostalgic reflections by figures like former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and another key European commander who was a former Special Forces officer for the US, whose name I'm forgetting right now, about parting with their Ukraine partners and sobbing openly about the collapse of this beautiful relationship. And so we as the readers are supposed to sob with them and cry about and lament what the end of something that could have been so beautiful. We could have waged this war together.

It could have been the beginning of a beautiful world war with Russia if we had just gone further and been willing to give the Ukrainians just a little bit more. But Trump is in office. So obviously they didn't wanna tell this story about the US running the whole show from a base

in a place like the New York Times when there seemed to be some, I don't know, chance of a major counteroffensive, maybe victory, they didn't want to blow the whistle. That wouldn't be something a real reporter or journalist would do. I don't want to sound petty or snarky or personal, but one wonders if Joe Biden even knew this or if it was just established by Lloyd Austin, Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken? I mean, it's also, that's a great question.

I'm sure that they knew. And the other, well, two points. There should be a 20,000 word piece or longer about how Joe Biden ran the whole project Ukraine from 2013 on, even before, and how the U.S. presided over the Maidan coup and how the U.S. presided over the NATO-ization of Ukraine and set the stage for this war. But this article begins by claiming that Donald Trump falsely claimed that it was Ukraine which provoked the war. No, that wasn't a false claim. You can prove it through the same sources, but they've never told that story in the New York Times. was Ukraine which provoked the war. No, that wasn't a false claim. You can prove it through the same sources.

But they've never told that story in The New York Times. One of our regular chatters who comments regularly during these programs referred to it as the remote-controlled war. Very clever. Very clever. Let me ask you about, before we go, Max, about Netanyahu. It appears that he was testifying in his own trial in which he is a defendant. This is a bribery case. When the

police entered the courtroom with a warrant commanding him to stop the testimony and come to a Jerusalem police station at which they interrogated him about one of his chief aides who was just arrested on some influence peddling scandal involving Qatar. Can you tell us what this is about and if this type of tawdry behavior resonates with Israeli voters? Well, it's a huge scandal in Israel

that's led to one of the biggest political shakeups we've seen under Netanyahu. Two of his top advisors, Yonatan O'Rick and Elie Feldstein were basically employed by Qatar to run a propaganda campaign on behalf of Doha through an American shell company in which they were basically paid to feed stories to Israeli journalists about how wonderful Qatar was as a negotiator and how moderate the country was and its great role and as a regional broker. Troll farms were set up in Hebrew to promote Qatar. It was a very vast operation.

And the way Qatar is regarded in Jewish Israeli society is as the main sponsor of Hamas. So this is scandalous. It has emboldened Netanyahu's opponents who remain still sort of politically weak. But what it's led to is Netanyahu firing the Shin Bet chief, Ronan Barr, and replacing him with a loyalist, Elie Sharvit, who is problematic for Netanyahu in that Sharvit actually has publicly attacked Donald Trump.

And Trump's people don't like him very much. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, there are layers of controversy and scandal here, but for prime minister to fire the Shin bet chief is considered unprecedented. How could Netanyahu himself not have known about this cash coming in through his two very trusted aides in order to advance propaganda for Qatar? How could he not have known that? How could he not know that Qatar is the funder of Hamas? Of course, he's the creator of Hamas,

but that's another story for another time. Well, it seems like the Shin Bet chief, Ronan Varr, was investigating that question, and that's why he was fired, along with him recognizing that Netanyahu did not want to negotiate for the final remaining hostages and prisoners of war in Gaza. So Netanyahu fired him and it's absolutely scandalous. It demonstrates authoritarian behavior on Netanyahu's part. And he's covering up what appears to be a crime of foreign influence. I mean, these guys are on trial now. So a new trial has been added to Netanyahu's many trials

which raises the stakes for Netanyahu on this war. He has to keep it going. The war keeps going, the longer he stays in office and keeps his coalition there, and he doesn't face serious punishment for his various corruption trials. The head of the group representing the families of the hostages has accused Israel Katz, I think that's the defense minister, of sacrificing hostages for land. Do Mr. Katz and Prime Minister Netanyahu even care about such allegations? Do they even care about the hostages anymore? They would like to see the hostages gone. I think they want them

all dead. And it's not just me saying that Noah Dan, who is the niece of one of the hostages who actually made it out over Calderon in one of the more recent negotiations, openly stated on Israeli, on an Israeli news broadcast that she believed the Israeli army was employing the Hannibal directive against the hostages because once you kill them all Hamas has no leverage. They have nothing left to negotiate with and Then you can just carry out the master plan this truly satanic master plan that Netanyahu has openly Broadcast on his Twitter account, which is what he calls voluntary migration, but which means the depopulation of the Gaza Strip

so that the settlers can take and annex Northern Gaza. And those settlers, the religious nationalist camp have fought very hard in this war and made a lot of sacrifices and they're demanding as their reward that they get land. Israel Cats is also establishing a second Philadelphia corridor in the south, further entrenching the Israeli presence. Israeli tanks are heavily shelling and making deep incursions into central Gaza. The humanitarian situation is at catastrophic levels, we're getting close to famine based on what I hear from my contacts in Gaza.

And this is all, you know, there is a clear objective here and in order to reach that objective, the issue of the hostages and the negotiations with Hamas have to be somehow taken off the table. Israel's already killed over 40 of its own people in the Gaza Strip through airstrikes. How is starving the entire Gaza Strip depriving them of electricity and then bombing so intensely, how will that affect the remaining Israelis who are there? They too will die. Max Blumenthal, thank you. It's always a pleasure to chat with you, no matter how gloomy the news may be. I know you're traveling. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for accommodating

my schedule and safe travels, my friend. Thanks a lot, Judge. Great seeing you. All the best. Coming up tomorrow at eight in the morning from Brussels, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at two in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at three in the morning from Brussels, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at two in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at three in the afternoon, the always worth waiting for Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC