Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Stealing a Jet and Applauding a Psychopath

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Max Blumenthal: Stealing a Jet and Applauding a PsychopathSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you for joining us. Great to see you. with the U.S. government stealing a jet in the Dominican Republic and maybe the Israelis killing their own hostages. I don't know, but I like to pick your brain. A United States Army lieutenant colonel by the name of Joshua Kamara, K-A-M-A-R-A, was reported by the military to have died in Poland on the same day at the same time that two Russian ballistic missiles destroyed the military academy in Poltava. Now, we know that Polish and Swedish officers were instructing the cadets at Poltava and that Polish and Swedish officers were among the 100 killed along with many of the cadets at Poltava and that Polish and Swedish officers were among the 100 killed, along with many of the cadets. The United States Army insists that this Lieutenant Colonel died

under mysterious circumstances at a military base in Poland. I don't know, should we make this connection? And the implication is that he died in Poltava and they brought the body back to Poland and claimed that's where they found his dead body? Well, first of all, U.S. media is making the Poltava attack out to be some kind of massacre of civilians. And it appears to be a retaliation against all the attacks the Ukrainians have been waging in Belgorod, where they're just randomly firing rockets into civilian areas. I don't know if Joshua Kamara died for the reasons that are officially stated, which is that there's no foul play. That's according to Stars and stripes. I have no evidence to suggest otherwise. But to suspect that he had

been somehow advising Ukrainian troops at Poltava and then was transferred after being injured in the strike to cover this up to prevent, I don't know, some kind of political fallout that would lead to massive escalation. You know, U.S. soldier hit by Russian missiles would certainly lead to at least calls for escalation. That's not out of the, that wouldn't be something that would be unprecedented because we do have the precedent of the US during the Trump administration covering up the traumatic brain injuries suffered by hundreds of US

soldiers who were serving at the Al-Assad military base in Iraq, which was struck by Iranian ballistic missiles in retaliation against the US., the Trump administration's assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani. They said the number was much lower, that the base had been completely evacuated. Then all these guys turn up at Ramstein Air Base in Germany with serious, serious head injuries. I mean, some are still suffering the consequences today. We also have the precedent of the Yaroviv Air Base, or sorry, Yaroviv de facto NATO training base, which is on the Ukrainian side of the Polish border. And there is a heavy NATO presence there. There has been traditionally training Ukrainian troops, including members of the far right militias. And Russia struck that base, I believe, in March 2022. They killed scores of foreign mercenaries and volunteers who had come to volunteer with the so-called Georgian Legion, which is a bloodstained auxiliary force fighting with the Ukrainian military filled with American and European volunteers and various hooligans.

So this wouldn't be the first time a Westerner would be killed among the Ukrainians. Do you think, talking about killing, I mean, is there evidence that the Israelis themselves killed the six hostages whose bodies were found a week ago and whose funerals caused tremendous demonstrations against Prime Minister Netanyahu? I don't think that's the case. The Israelis have killed over 40 of their own hostages, probably more, through the Hannibal Directive or through simply just bombing, carpet bombing, the Gaza Strip. One of the most famous hostages who was released thanks to a special forces undercover operation by the Israeli military, Noah Arghamani, was actually nearly killed in an Israeli airstrike

and had shrapnel in her head and was treated and saved by her Al-Qassam guards from Hamas. She recounted that actually in a hostage video, and the two hostages who were with her at the time were killed by the Israelis. She confirmed this after being released. Now, it's key to understanding why the six hostages were recently killed. The key to understanding it is how Arghamani was released. She was released in the special forces operation where the Israelis disembarked from a humanitarian pier or onto the beach at Dera al-Bala in central Gaza, disguised as humanitarian aid workers, basically putting all NGOs and humanitarian workers under suspicion. They were found out and caught as they entered

central Deir el-Bala near the market where Argamani was identified by Israeli intelligence. And then Qassam teams opened fire on them. Israel ordered six 2,000 pound bombs dropped on the market. A disgusting massacre ensued. Over 150 civilians killed, at least half of them children, all to release this one woman, a journalist, a prominent journalist in Gaza who was in an adjacent apartment was executed at point blank range along with his family by Israeli special forces, all to release this woman who was recently seen in her bikini dancing on the shoulders of her father at a beach rave. Jewish lives matter more. That's the lesson here because 150 had to be slaughtered to get her out. That's been Netanyahu's strategy. So the Al-Qassam Brigades, which is the military wing of Hamas, have enacted a new policy in response to that massacre, which is that if the Israeli military gets close and they're

homing in on the location of hostages, which they gather through their intelligence and their satellites, they execute the hostages to send the message to the Israelis not to put military pressure on them and that the only way that they can have these hostages back and prisoners of warades, Abu Obaidah, has said this, that they shot those hostages. They executed them because the Israeli soldiers were getting close and were going to try military action to release them. So this is on Netanyahu, explicitly refusing any deal for the release of the hostages until he can secure a permanent Israeli presence in at least two places in the Gaza Strip. The Netzerim Corridor, cutting off the north from the south, and the Philadelphia Corridor, cutting off Gaza from Egypt. And Tony Blinken is responsible too for lying to the world and referring to Netanyahu's rejectionism as generous offers and giving Netanyahu the cover he needed at a recent press conference to even push back on Biden who criticized his obstructionism and his obstinate attitude.

So they, by stymieing and sabotaging deals that would have gotten these hostages out, wound up getting these six killed. The blood is on Benjamin Netanyahu's hands. It's on Tony Blinken's hands. And all six of these hostages, including Hersh Goldberg-Poland, who is an American citizen who went to fight for Israel, all of them were put forward by Hamas for release in a deal in early July, which Netanyahu sabotaged. This is a brilliant analysis, Max, and this follow-up will raise your blood pressure. Chris, cut 15 followed immediately by cut 16. The real obstacle to making a deal is not Israel.

And it's not me. It's Hamas. It's Sinoir. On April 27th, I put forward a proposal by Israel, which Secretary Blinken called extremely generous. On May 31st, having met Blinken again, I said we agreed to the U.S.-backed proposal, and Hamas refused. I'm willing to make a deal. I made one already. One that brought back 150 hostages, 117 alive, and I'm committed to return the remaining 101. I'll do everything I can to get them in. But leaving Philadelphia does not advance the release of the hostages.

Who would believe him? Well, the U.S., even if it didn't believe them, it delivered the language that Netanyahu needed to continue this war and to continue rejecting ceasefire deals, sabotaging them. And the U.S.. And the Biden administration refuses to call him out directly. They just leak stories to the New York Times, but they won't call out Netanyahu and confront him directly because it interferes with their re-election plans, because they're afraid of what the Republicans will say, that they're weak on Israel. So Netanyahu has played so many past U.S. administrations,

going back to the Clinton administration, with this same tactic, claiming that he was making a generous offer. The U.S. consistently blames the Palestinians for rejecting things that would have been impossible to accept. And Netanyahu gets everything he wants. And now he's asking for a permanent presence on the Philadelphia corridor. He said that the Egyptian strongman, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is not doing enough. Egypt sent one of its top security officials to the border today to demonstrate that they are. And even Benny Gantz, former chief of staff of the Israeli military, who is Netanyahu's chief opponent, but is not exactly a liberal or left-wing figure, has said that if the Israelis maintain a permanent presence in the Philadelphia quarter,

they will be sitting ducks, sitting there in their guard towers, and will be easily taken out by Hamas. So Netanyahu is just stalling and stalling endlessly to keep this war going for what is obviously, I mean, even Thomas Friedman now admits it in the New York Times, it's obviously to preserve his own political future and to prevent the inevitable reckoning that he will face. And Tony Blinken, we should note, referred to Hirsch Goldenberg Pollan, the American-Israeli hostage who chose to fight for the Israeli military instead of the US military and wound up being killed. He referred to him as an American hero. This is the kind of absurd language. It's really sickening language we've been hearing from Tony Blinken since October 7th.

Netanyahu's lawyer, as Professor Mearsham recalls him. But it really just shows the reflexive identification with Zionism in this administration. It's almost as though he doesn't see any daylight between Israel and the U.S. as countries, even though he knows that Netanyahu is undermining Biden's interests. Tony Blinken used no such language for Jacob Flickinger, who is a U.S. military veteran who is escorting World Central Kitchen aid workers through Gaza when they were killed by an Israeli drone in a deliberate assault. Jacob Flickinger was helping to feed people. He was actually doing something heroic. He's an

American citizen. He had a young child back in the US and a wife back in the US and the administration said almost nothing about him. So this tells you everything we need to know about their priorities. And even though Netanyahu is clearly trying to elect Trump on behalf of, and because Trump and Netanyahu are united through Trump's top donor, Miriam Adelson, even in spite of that, the Biden administration continues to play Netanyahu's lawyer. I want to ask you about Benny Gantz, but before I do, here he is. Yesterday, very strong language about Netanyahu,

but you tell me what kind of a prime minister he would make and if the policies would be different, the tone would, but cut number six. Yesterday, the prime minister spoke gravely about various issues and others were completely unacceptable and with no base. He will not really defend those hostages, that he will not bring the inhabitants of the north home and he will not, in fact, attack Iran because they have nuclear weapons. It was not a surprise for me

because when I sat in the war cabinet, he actually thwarted the reaching of an agreement. It does not surprise me because already at the beginning of the war, when I said we should continue wielding pressure on Hanunas and Rafa, he did not. Even when we wanted to check the corridor in the Morag southern side, without all those issues of the Philadelphia corridor, he refused. It does not surprise me that Netanyahu refused and is still refusing to bring the inhabitants of the North home with security.

Can you explain? Well, Gantz is clearly campaigning against Netanyahu. He's campaigning to be his replacement. political crisis Israel faces, which is that the north of the country is largely depopulated because Hezbollah is still active on the Lebanese border south of the Litani River, and Netanyahu has failed to provide a security blanket for them. So that's the main source of his criticism. Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who is his predecessor as army chief of staff, are Netanyahu's two leading opponents who come from within the military. They're both the preferred successors to Netanyahu of the Biden administration, but they don't

come from Likud. Actually, Eisenkot originally came out of labor. And Gantz ran under this blue and white coalition where he had to share power with Naftali Bennett, who comes out of Likud, is a religious nationalist, and is possibly more hardline than Netanyahu, certainly more aligned with the settlers. So there's no way that Benny Gantz could actually come in, replace Netanyahu, and usher in an immediate deal without major political instability sweeping the country. It would be seen as an American-controlled administration, especially if Kamala Harris wins. It would be a Kamala-controlled administration. They would face unbelievable amounts of opposition, not only from the settlers, but also from all of the institutions that the settlement and religious nationalist movement has infiltrated, which now includes the Israeli police. who stood down, the police who stood down when settler fanatics raided the Beit Lid military base

in which soldiers were being put on trial for sodomizing Palestinian prisoners. And now those soldiers are not facing any charges. The hooligans were allowed to rampage through the base and the justice ministry. And so that's the future of Israel under a Gantz administration, but on steroids. So I think no matter what happens here, we're looking at continued domestic instability and crisis for Israel indefinitely. And I don't see a ceasefire coming anytime in the future. I'm looking at the language from Tony Blinken and the Biden administration about how they're 90% there. They use sports metaphors. We're in the red zone.

We just need to run the ball into the end zone again and again and again. And it reminds me exactly of the kind of language that we heard during the phony, concocted Oslo peace process era when all the U.S. was doing besides playing Israel's lawyer was buying Israel time to put more facts on the ground so that they didn't have to actually face their inevitable reckoning. A reckoning where if there was ever a Palestinian state, the civil war would have erupted much sooner inside Israel's pressure cooker of a society. I've asked you this before, but events keep happening very quickly. Is Israel on the verge of collapse? I don't think it's on the verge of collapse as a cohesive Jewish state as long as the U.S. is dumping billions of dollars of weapons into it, providing joint training. I mean, Israel has a blue water navy.

It does have nuclear weapons. And it will, as we can see with Gaza, it will do whatever it thinks is necessary, including commit genocide, in order to preserve its demographic supremacy and its political supremacy over the indigenous population. But that doesn't mean that the kind of dream of Herzl, of Israel as a bulwark of civilization against barbarism, basically a European implant in the colonized Middle East, the post-colonial Middle East, where countries are ravaged and poor, but Israel enjoys all of these tech investments. Tel Aviv feels like a European city, and it faces Berlin.

Israelis enjoy the summer in Europe and can come back. That Israel is fading, and it's becoming a more Spartan Israel where it's going to be increasingly unpleasant for the more liberal population that we see protesting in the streets for a kind of hostage. Is it becoming the Israel that Smotrich and Ben-Gabir envision, which is fanatical nationalism, Zionism? Well, let's look at a poll that just came out from the Institute for National Security Studies. How do Israelis feel about prosecuting the 12 or so soldiers from Force 100 who are the prison guards at the State Timon torture camp in the Negev Desert, who are put on trial for gang raping Palestinian prisoners on camera. 65% of Israelis do not believe they should be prosecuted. That's a full two thirds of

the Israeli electorate. Only 23% believe they should be prosecuted. There's no moral law there. There's no moral underpinning to the law if that were to happen, if they were to get immunity. Correct. And that's a pretty good barometer of how fascist Israel has become and how isolated those who actually believe in the rule of law are, even if they don't see Palestinians as equal. So the public, whether they personally like a thug, like just a completely unhinged hooligan like Ben-Gvir, who drives around with his motorcade, running over pedestrians and engages in riots and vandalism in the West Bank, whether they like them or not, they're with them. That's the future of Israel. A really

telling moment occurred on one of the most mainstream Israeli podcasts, one of the most popular ones. It's called Two Nice Jewish Boys. And one of the hosts said, you know, when I go into a private moment, like I'm hiding in the dark in the closet, if I could push a button and blow up the entire West Bank and Gaza and kill everyone there, I would do it. And every single Israeli agrees with me. Everybody would push the button right now. That's where the soul of Israel is at. And he said this in perfect English. He's someone who's gone on tours of synagogues in the US, done events with Netanyahu. And so it induced horror because it went viral online because he was saying in English what so many Israeli leaders and what you hear in the street in Israel all the time in Hebrew.

And I think that's an indication of where things are going. It's why the supporters of Ben-Gavir, the more fascistic settlers, the theocrats, they're the happiest people in Israel. They're the happy people. The people in Tel Aviv, you know, the intellectuals, the liberals, the musicians who love to hear Leonard go to Leonard Cohen concerts. They're, they're very, they're sad. They're, they're mourning. They're in constant mourning for their society. But they feel like they're going to stick it out as long as possible. And I went to three Leonard Cohen concerts and loved him and still do love his music. You brought such a smile to my face. I just want to switch gears before we end. I know this is

Anya's field that's Latin America, but what conceivable moral legal justification is there for five U.S. Marshals and 10 Department of Homeland Security agents for stealing a jet belonging to the Venezuelan government in Maduro's misgovernance. They kind of made up a word there. But I mean, if we're going to steal planes due to misgovernance, I think every Air Force One in my lifetime should have been seized. They're referring to Nicolas Maduro allegedly rigging the election against the U.S. puppet, Edmundo Gonzalez, who is actually controlled by another U.S. puppet, Maria Karina Machado, who is disqualified. So this is retaliation for supposedly rigging an election.

Well, our elections in the U.S. are completely clean and everyone trusts in them. So it makes perfect sense that the U.S. should be able to engage in piracy, literally hijacking a foreign leader's airplane because we occupy the moral high ground in the U.S. And what they've done by stealing Maduro's plane under the most bogus justification that he violated sanctions because the plane was bought in the US. What they're doing was of a part with what the US has been doing to Venezuela for years and years and years. The US has essentially stolen Venezuela's most profitable foreign asset, which is Citgo, the oil company. They stole the state oil company through Juan Guaido by appointing a fake president and putting it under his control. The U.S. has stolen numerous oil tankers belonging to Venezuela. The U.S. has brought down Venezuela's electric grid on multiple occasions with electromagnetic pulse attacks. It has staged two military coups in Venezuela, and it's sanctioned the economy to

death. Even the Washington Post has acknowledged that those sanctions are directly driving Venezuelan migration to the U.S. by torpedoing their economy. So this is just one part of a wider scope of piracy that the U.S. gangster government is conducting all across the world. They've stolen Iranian tankers as well. They just take the Iranian tankers and tow them and they steal the oil and sell it on the open market. Just pure piracy. And this is all taking place while Tony Blinken runs around the world preaching about the rules-based order. Here's another example. I know I said I was going to finish after the theft of the jet, but I want to raise this with you. Another example of the violation of the rules-based order and another example of theft. This theft is theft of the freedom of speech. Chris, cut number nine, immediately followed by cut number 10. The company never disclosed to the influencers or to their millions of followers its ties to RT and the Russian government. Instead, the defendants in the company claimed that the company was sponsored by a private investor.

But that private investor was a fictitious persona. The charges instilled this morning do not represent the end of the investigation. It remains active and ongoing. What a disgrace from a former federal judge who took the same oath I did to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment. Well, I don't know what the rules are. Biden in April signed a Republican-offered legislation opposed by a few Democratic progressives and Republican libertarians, but overwhelmingly enacted by Congress that makes it a crime knowingly to help a foreign government spread misinformation. Basically, the government of the United States evaluating the content of speech, which is the very thing the First Amendment was written to prohibit. Right. This is Merrick Garland referring to a recent indictment of two Russian nationals who supposedly paid something like,

what, $10 million through a series of shells to a company in Tennessee. I mean, just tell me if I'm getting the facts right. You got the facts right so far. Run by Lauren Chen, who is sort of like a far-right influencer, kind of came out of nowhere. I only recently heard about her a few months ago. And the company is called Tenant Media. And they're making these massive payments like $400,000 to other influence right wing influencers and commentators for very little content. And I don't think any of those commentators knew where the money was coming from. And when they would ask Chen, supposedly, I think according to this indictment, wasn't telling the truth. So, I mean, it's shady behavior. It's like you're setting yourself up when you're doing that and

it's not going out under the RT brand. I see a lot of people in the right wing Twitter commentariat wondering if RT had somehow been penetrated by u.s intelligence or there's some kind of conspiracy there to set people up for embarrassment just getting these massive payments for very little content seems like a strange and not very strategic investment on the part of the russians uh you know and it's been pretty good for the probably good for the u.s economy i mean maybe the state department should want it but i'm joking it's been pretty good for the probably good for the US economy. I mean, maybe the State Department should want it, but I'm joking. Let me just say, it wouldn't surprise me if this was some kind of a setup, but either way, the question is, does it violate FARA?

I think there are considerations here apart from the First Amendment. All right, my friend. Thank you very much. We covered the gamut from theft of speech to theft of jets to theft of human life. But thank you very much for your time as always. We'll look forward to being with you next week, Max. All right. Thanks a lot, Judge. Of course. Of course. Coming up tomorrow, Friday, at the end of the day, at the end of the week, at three o'clock, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. And then at four o'clock, a special Judging Freedom. Scott Ritter and yours truly on whatever happened to the freedom of speech.

Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.