Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal : US Celebrates Israeli Bloodbath

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Max Blumenthal : US Celebrates Israeli BloodbathSee 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, June 13th, 2024. My dear friend Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, always a pleasure. Thank you so much. A lot to discuss, mainly Israel and Gaza. But I want to start with this piece that you and I spoke about last night. The New York Times featured a front page, top of the fold story this morning about a tenured Palestinian woman, a tenured professor at the Hebrew University who was arrested for free speech and is now being prosecuted. Can you tell us what's going on? Well, Nadia Shalhoub Kevorkian is an academic that the Israeli security services and the Israeli right-wing nationalists have wanted muzzled for a long time. After October 7th, things they have said, including on Facebook. People are getting arrested all across Israel for challenging the war, putting forth statistics that undercut Israeli propaganda.

They're getting hauled in. Some of them are dragged before Israeli state security, Shin Bet, quasi-tribunals where they confess in front of an Israeli flag to humiliate them. And Shalhoub Kevorkian was dragged in after making, first she signed a letter opposing Israel's assault on Gaza, which led to these calls for her to be fired. But then she was actually arrested in a police raid, like a military style raid of her home in which her home was searched after she made comments, not only challenging the war, but questioning Israel's propaganda about mass sexual assault by Palestinian militants on October 7th and said, you're basically cheapening sexual assault if you're lying about this and you're weaponizing the female body in order to justify land theft and mass murder, which is absolutely true. Well, you and Aaron and Anya have been saying that for eight months. We've been saying that for eight months. It's been less than eight months because Israel introduced this allegation in late November when their propaganda elsewhere began to fail.

And we talked last week about how the Washington Post smeared us over these issues. Well, a United Nations report appeared yesterday, an independent United Nations investigation, and the New York Times was forced to put into print that the UN investigation found no evidence to support any of Israel's claims around sexual assault on October 7th because Israel actually refused to cooperate with the investigation, could not produce any of the witnesses they had, and couldn't verify any of its testimonies. So the New York Times has basically debunked what the New York Times put forward in a full page article back in December, screams without words. So before we get back to Professor Kevorkian, did anybody apologize to you when this report came out?

Well, of course not. I mean, some people, you know, patted us on the back, but of course not. And, you know, it's up to The Washington Post and Haaretz to apologize to the public and The New York Times to apologize to the public, not only for attacking the truth tellers who busted the Israeli propaganda, but for spreading these lies, because all three of these publications have relentlessly attacked us over this on behalf of the Israeli state, which was deploying this lie, this titanic, cynical hoax in order to manufacture consent for genocide. So what happened to Professor Kevorkian? Is she now in custody? She's under investigation. Other people are in custody. I spoke by email to a former student at Hebrew University whose father is in prison for a Facebook post. And his father is 80 years old and his family, sorry, 78. And his family believes this is a death sentence because when you put a 78 year old man in prison

who is not in the best health, that could be the end for them. And this is what's happening all across the board. And the Jewish left, some of the Jewish leftists I know, anti-Zionists I know in Israel, for months were afraid to speak up because of the threat of vigilante violence, which has run rampant across Israel against anyone who speaks out against the war. I mean, there is so much pressure in Israel to support this genocidal war that eggs that have appeared in supermarkets have been printed with calls for social and political unity. There are signs everywhere in Israel

demanding that everyone unite around the military. This is not a democratic society. This is a society that has been inculcated with a siege mentality in which every single Jewish citizen has to participate in military service and they're indoctrinated as soon as they enter kindergarten or even before through an all-encompassing totalistic environment of Zionist brainwashing. And we can see it playing out through the behavior of the Israeli reservists who have been sent to Gaza as they burn homes, fire weapons into civilian homes where there are no targets at all, and then put the video out for everyone to see because they come from a society that celebrates this killing spree. Does Israel have the legal, moral, cultural, or considered sort of the liberal lion of

Israeli jurisprudence who served as the chief justice of the Supreme Court. And he ushered in a series of basic laws, which substituted for a constitution. Israel has no constitution, and for a very good reason. If they did, it would officially have to declare Israel an exclusivist Jewish state, which would mean it's an apartheid state. And so they're afraid to actually do that just as they're afraid to set actual borders for the state, because then it would mean this is the land we're taking and we're not going to continue expanding. So Barak's basic laws, on the one hand, provide some basis for rights, individual rights in Israel, but at the same time there is a basic law that declares essentially that Israel is a Jewish state, which subjugates the rights of those Palestinian citizens whose families' presence predated that of the 1948 Foundation of Israel,

like Professor Kevorkian. Is professor Kevorkian a citizen of the state of Israel who can own property and vote and enjoy civil liberties? Or is she in a subclass because she's of Palestinian origin? Well, she can vote. She can own property. She supposedly has rights. But as we can see, you cannot identify with the Palestinian collective cause, with the Palestinian nation in Israel without facing harsh social or legal consequences. And that's what she's done. She's been singled out for basically publicly identifying

with the Palestinian cause. Until the late 1980s, sorry, until the mid-1990s, it was illegal to wave a Palestinian flag inside Israel. And it's now illegal again. There are 100,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel or more who are considered internally displaced, meaning they cannot return to the homes that they lived in before 1948. And I actually met some of them whose homes had been in Northern Israel turned into art galleries and they lived in a garbage dump down the street. They can't return because they're not Jewish. And Israel passed specific laws granting Palestinian homes to Jews after 1948. So there are all these kinds of sophisticated laws on the book that make it very hard for Palestinian citizens of Israel to retain their land or to

return to homes that were taken. And new laws are being put on the books all the time. For example, the nation state law or the law of return, these kinds of laws that prevent Palestinian citizens of Israel from marrying Palestinians who have Palestinian authority passports because they don't want their numbers to increase. The assault last week that resulted in the extraction of four hostages and the deaths of about 260 Palestinian civilians, are we to believe that no other hostages were killed and that no soldiers were killed during this assault? That's what Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken want us to believe, that it was a great success. Right, but it can't be true. I mean, Lloyd Austin actually had a phone call with Yoav Galant, his counterpart in Israel, defense secretary and defense minister, and congratulated

him on a great mission. And in what world is it successful when in order to extract four captives, you kill hundreds and hundreds of people, blow up an entire market, destroy an entire civilian neighborhood, send children and body parts to hospitals, and possibly get three other hostages killed. How is that successful? The only reason I can see Sullivan, Blinken, and Austin congratulating the Israelis on this is because they played a direct role in greenlighting this operation, providing them with intelligence, and possibly something more on the ground that they don't want to reveal, which we have seen clues of and heard testimonies about. Tell me if this makes sense to you, Secretary Blinken saying Palestinians living in Gaza will be able to return to their neighborhoods. There's no neighborhoods to return to,

but we'll play the clip for you, number 11. what i can tell you from my conversations with prime minister netanyahu was a reaffirmation of israel's acceptance of the proposal that's on the table and what does that proposal have in it it says first of all that there'll be an immediate ceasefire immediate and in that during that immediate ceasefire um israel will pull its forces back from populated areas in Gaza, will surge more humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Palestinians living in Gaza will be able to return to their neighborhoods, their homes, if their homes are still intact, anywhere in Gaza. And during that initial phase, six weeks, both parties, Israel and Hamas, commit to negotiate toward a permanent ceasefire,

with the understanding that the initial ceasefire will continue as long as those negotiations are going on. And this is backed by the United States, it's backed by Qatar. It's backed by Egypt. This is the quickest, most effective path to a durable ceasefire. It begins by saying that Prime Minister Netanyahu has reaffirmed his commitment to that plan. That can't possibly be. Wouldn't he be out of office with the reaction of Ben-Gavir and Smotrich and their colleagues? Well, that's true. But the Frenchman Tony Blinken is lying. He's about Netanyahu's posture in order to paint Hamas as the rejectionists, as the Clinton administration that Tony Blinken served in did with Yasser Arafat, when Arafat walked away

from an offer of far less than a state which would have doomed the Palestinians to a series of walled-off cantons. This is what they're doing to Hamas. It's the same old trick. Tony Blinken acting as Netanyahu's lawyer, as Israel's lawyer, claiming Netanyahu wants a ceasefire, when Netanyahu is explicitly declared, and this is especially coming from Netanyahu's office, whereas other elements within the Israeli military and government are saying something different. Netanyahu's office is saying there will be no ceasefire until we achieve all our goals, which include militarily rescuing all the hostages and defeating Hamas entirely. We will not end the war. So there cannot be a permanent ceasefire as long as Netanyahu is in office, as long as Netanyahu is stating that. And then what Tony

Blinken and Sullivan constantly say is it's all on Hamas. But if you actually listen to what Hamas has been saying, and they're saying this publicly, they're saying it through the Egyptians, that they have only offered minor alterations. And the only thing that they demand is a permanent ceasefire. It reminds me so much of the negotiations after Oslo, in which they would never set a timetable in which Israel would have to set borders. And they would say, we'll just keep negotiating, but we're never going to permanently end Israel's settlement project, its expansion. And here they're saying, we're going to have six weeks and then we're going to negotiate a permanent ceasefire. Do you actually think based on Israel's history, does anyone

actually believe that they will honor that? There's no precedent for it. And Netanyahu is explicitly saying that he won't. Going back to the slaughter of 260 civilians in order to extricate the four hostages. Do your sources have any information on whether the Israelis killed other hostages and whether Hamas killed in defending? Any IDF in that escapade? Well, I don't have any sources in the Nusrat camp or in the Al-Qassam brigades. When I was in Gaza, trying to get sources in Al-Qassam was next to impossible. It's, you know, everything is considered top, you know, highly classified, anything relating to any security issue.

What I can tell you though, and this was publicized by the Al-Qassam brigades and it's been confirmed. No one believed it at the time. Pretty much everything Al-Qassam, which this is the military wing of Hamas, they hold most of the captives and hostages. Everything they've said about the hostages so far, or most everything has turned out to be true. Back in January, they published a video featuring Noah Arghamani, the young woman who was rescued in the Nusarat camp by Israeli special forces.

And she said that she was attacked by Israeli attack jets. She had shrapnel in her head. She was wounded. Al-Qassam, her guards protected her with mattresses. And while she was running, two other hostages she was with, Israeli hostages, were killed by Israeli fire. Over 40 hostages have been killed by Israeli fire. Now, Arghamani is out. And she has said that she actually faced that attack. She was telling the truth in that video. We also have the Bibas family. We see lots of pictures and video of this baby who was brought into Gaza because his entire family in Gaza. And he he's begging for a ceasefire deal so that he can come out and bury his family. So everybody coming out of Gaza has said that the greatest fear they had there was of Israeli shelling and Israeli airstrikes.

And they continue to kill the hostages as Netanyahu and his minions reject a ceasefire deal. If there had been a ceasefire deal, there would have been an exchange of hostages and hundreds of people wouldn't have been killed in the Nusrat camp. But for them and the Americans who assisted this botched fake Entebbe, 2.0 Entebbe, they don't care about Palestinian life. That's why they're congratulating the Israelis on this bloodbath. Right. What is happening as we speak in Al-Mawassi? Well, last night there was shelling of Al-Mawassi. And for those who don't know, this is an area Northwest of the Southern Gaza city of Rafah, on the coast of Gaza, practically on the beach, where Palestinians were told by the Israelis to shelter. They said, this is a safe zone.

And if you go there, we won't kill you. Well, about a week and a half ago, they killed them with American GBU bombs, burned their tents. And last night they shelled them again, and it caused an enormous amount of panic. The Israeli forces are inside Rafah. They were shelling Rafah heavily last night. There was a brief blackout on information because the shelling was so intense, and yet you have the Americans, Tony Blinken and his crew, declaring that there is no Israeli incursion in Rafah and that they haven't allowed that to take place yet. Well, for Palestinians there, the reality is quite different. And many people have had to flee al-Mawassi because they realize there is nowhere safe in Gaza. There is no safe zone. It looks like Blinken is sending the message through the Israelis that until Hamas basically gives in to Israel's demands, that they'll continue authorizing these slaughters of civilians. stop unless the resistance from other countries enters or Joe Biden has some radical

change of mind. Nothing's going to stop Netanyahu and nothing's going to stop Gallant and the IDF. They're just going to continue to slaughter. I don't know why Hamas would even expect them to comply with any agreement. Or they, I mean, Netanyahu has said, there was a CIA assessment that was discussed by CNN or revealed by CNN, which stated that Netanyahu has no plan at all for handing power over to any Palestinian faction or party after the war ends, after a ceasefire. Netanyahu has said, maybe it was just rhetoric, that he would allow new settlements in the Gaza Strip. The Israelis have constructed a new military road, a military axis that cuts straight through the Gaza Strip, separating the north from the center called the Netsarim Axis. Will they give that up? Tony Blinken in

his language said that Palestinians can return to populated areas, which means that the Israelis can continue to operate from within northern coastal areas of Gaza, like Sudania, which are depopulated. So the devil is in the details. And it looks like the Israelis are still setting the stage for some kind of reoccupation of Gaza. Meanwhile, we have to pay attention to what's happening in the north. It's intensifying. Hezbollah just wounded two Israeli soldiers. Israeli fields are on fire in the north.

More and more Israelis have fled the north. There is no possibility of any Israelis returning. It's completely depopulated. And at the same time, it doesn't appear that Israel is going to be able to actually dislodge Hezbollah from Lebanon. So that could be a decisive factor, actually, in twisting Israel's arm, along with the intensification of attacks by Ansar Allah and the Iraqi resistance factions who have been hitting everywhere from Eilat to Haifa with drones. General Brown, who's the new chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said just before we

went on air that Hezbollah fired 200 rockets yesterday and another 150 today. What does Israel do when that happens? Do they have troops and equipment up there or do they have to move them from Gaza over to there? Well, they're holding a significant reserve in supply for potential escalation with Hezbollah or a direct attack. They're also going to use their standoff capacity, a lot of air power, missiles. But the issue is that Israel doesn't know, while they claim to have this superior intelligence capacity, they don't know what Hezbollah has. And it appears they underestimated Hezbollah's anti-aircraft capacity, because numerous Israeli Hermes drones have been downed in the past several weeks. These are the most advanced, largest drones, weaponized drones in Israel's arsenal. And numerous drones have been taken down by Hezbollah. This has kind of

shocked the Israelis, and they don't know whether they could actually start taking down F-15s. We've also seen Hezbollah effectively trick the Iron Dome system by firing tow missiles, anti-tank wire guided missiles at very low levels, even hitting Iron Dome batteries. And then there's the Burkhan missile, which is a homemade missile that Hezbollah possesses with Iranian support that contain pretty powerful warheads, if those can reach a city like Haifa, this could be a situation that Israel has never faced, where its cities are going to have to be evacuated. I would think that this will be Israel's Achilles heel, given Hezbollah's relationship to Iran and given a relatively new Iran-Russia defense pact? Yeah, I don't know what role Russia would play here. Russia wants to keep Syria relatively stable. Iran will definitely support anything Hezbollah does, but Hezbollah really represents something that is indigenous to Lebanon and which is completely supportive of Palestinian resistance.

They lost a senior commander two days ago. And, you know, these losses are only hardening the will of Hezbollah to take the fight to Israel. And I mean, we can clearly see the reluctance of Israel to escalate to the point where it becomes all out war. And at the same time, there is enormous social and political pressure on the Israeli leadership to create a buffer zone for the population of the north to return. And I think a large percentage of that population that has left is sending the message that they're never going to return, which means de facto the borders of Israel have changed. Max Blumenthal, a pleasure, my dear friend. No matter what we talk about, your insight is extraordinary and your knowledge of the facts is second to none. Thanks very much for joining us.

I hope we can see you again next week. Thanks a lot, Judge. Of course. Coming up tomorrow, my friends, on judging freedom, I'm all thumbs here, is Colonel Larry Wilkerson at three o'clock and your favorite, the Intelligence Community Roundtable at four, both times Eastern as usual. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.