Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal : US sailors Defending Israeli Genocide

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Max Blumenthal : US sailors Defending Israeli GenocideSee 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 20th, 2024. Our dear friend Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, of course, you need no introduction to this audience, and thank you very much for your time. I have a lot to ask you about the latest in Israel, particularly the public spat between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the IDF. But first, to the relatively breaking news on the Russians. You probably weren't surprised by the summary rejection by the West of President Putin's peace offering almost literally before the ink was dry. I'd like your thoughts on it. I'd also like your thoughts on President Putin's trip to an agreement with North Korea. Well, the New York Times published new details of a peace deal that was on the table in April 2022, which was sabotaged by the West directly by Boris Johnson, then British Prime

Minister, in an attempt to extend the war that has benefited the five leading arms manufacturers so much, funders of Victoria Nuland's former think tank, and which, according to the New York Times, alarmed officials in the Biden administration. They didn't want to see peace because they didn't want Ukraine to go back to neutrality. They've offered so many phony reasons for opposing that peace deal which would have forbidden any of the signatories from attacking one another and would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and now ukraine is in shambles and lindsey graham says well we're we're going to get all their mineral wealth and it's going to be great and we'll just keep this war going. What they've done in trying to extend this war has brought us much closer to civilizational extinction than anything that the goofballs with orange paint at Stonehenge were

protesting. I'm talking about F-16s to the Ukrainian military to strike deep within Russia, something that Blinken and Sullivan lobbied for, as well as attack them as missiles. They're going to be striking civilian targets. They're going to be escalating with Moscow. And what Vladimir Putin said at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum is that if the U.S. is going to do that, and if NATO is going to give its partners the ability to strike inside Russia, then Russia will do the same with its own partners, which is why Russia has sent in a show of force ships to the harbor in Havana and Cuba, and why Russia has inked a mutual defense pact with the leadership of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-un agreed to something with Vladimir Putin that is very similar to what Nikita Khrushchev

agreed with, with Kim Jong-un's grandfather, Kim Il-sung back in 1961, which is that if the U.S. attacks one of us, we will defend one another. And that was at a time when North Korea was concerned that a CIA-backed military junta dictatorship in South Korea was going to attack it. So we're back to the period, the high stage of the Cold War. The nuclear clock is ticking, and it's completely due to the aggression and insanity of the neoconservative ideolog the Istanbul agreement and the details that it put in there? I didn't even know they were acknowledging its existence prior to their recent articles. Well, in some ways, I was grateful. It came much too late, the Ukrainian publication, newspaper Pravda, revealed the initial details and the initial existence of this peace treaty. And then Ukrainian nationalist media proceeded to attack it and claim this didn't happen.

They also revealed that Boris Johnson had visited Zelensky and promised him weapons and fame in exchange for voiding the agreement. And so now that it's essentially too late, the New York Times has published new details, explained why the Ukrainians backed out. What they forgot to add was that the West directly sabotaged this peace deal because it so badly wanted this war and it couldn't afford to lose Ukraine as the front line of the Western front of the new Cold War. Neutral Ukraine would be a nightmare for the war makers in Washington, the war might be great for Ukrainians because they wouldn't be killed anymore as well as Russians. Right. I mean, what is left of Ukraine? Zelensky isn't even the lawful head of the government. Who's there to negotiate with the Russians? The head of the parliament? The head of the military? They're not going to talk to Zelensky. They're just going to slowly keep moving westward, westward, grinding away with what remains of the Ukrainian military, no?

Yeah, I mean, and what is left of the Ukrainian state? Right. Very little. The Ukrainian state is selling off its public assets to finance this war. If you go to the Ukrainian embassy in Georgetown here in Washington, D.C., there's a giant sign on the front of the embassy that says Ukraine is open for business. And it's not a very mutually beneficial open for business. It's the kind of open for business that you might have used to have seen on the old 14th Street here in Washington, colloquially referred to as the host role. Ukraine is basically prostituting itself to the West. And it's pretty sad for the average Ukrainian male who either has to hide from military police to avoid being thrown in a van and sent to the meat grinder or go west and maybe be an Uber driver in Poland.

Which is not likely to be a long-term career. Switching gears, what is the status of the IDF versus Hamas out of the mouth of the IDF spokesman? Yeah, the Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari has said, and this is I think the highest level Israeli official to state the obvious, that Hamas cannot be defeated, that Hamas is an idea. It's essentially the idea of resistance, which any occupied population would support, and that therefore Benjamin Netanyahu is wrong. And Netanyahu has come out and attacked Hagari and the Israeli military and declared that he will push towards a complete victory or a final solution, we could say, which has proven elusive for almost nine months. The Israeli military is at loggerheads with the Israeli political leadership.

Netanyahu is himself a prisoner of the most extreme members of his coalition. Benny Gantz, the former Israeli army chief of staff, has pulled out of the Israeli war cabinet and declared that Netanyahu has no plan. The Israeli military chieftains are declaring that Netanyahu refuses to say whether the Palestinian Authority will take over after Hamas is supposedly defeated, at least in a tactical sense, or whether Israel will directly militarily occupy Gaza. And Netanyahu has created a scenario in which Israel can no longer say, as it did after 2005, that we don't control Gaza. That's for whatever the militia controls Gaza to take care of. And yet they can still maintain and control Gaza

through the sky and through its periphery. They've lost that luxury. So Netanyahu went in front of a camera in his own office, you've probably seen this, and berated Joe Biden personally for slow walking arms. One shipment of arms of 2,000 bombs a couple of weeks ago has been slow walked. Everything else still arrives. It didn't seem to go over very well with the IDF or with international public opinion. Then the IDF says Hamas has an idea. We can't defeat it. And then Netanyahu says this. He didn't say it in front of a camera, but he issued a statement. Chris, here it is. The security cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defined the destruction of Hamas' military and government capabilities as one of the goals of the war. The IDF, of course, is committed to this. Whereupon the IDF responded by saying, in his words, the IDF spokesman referred to the destruction of Hamas as an ideology and an idea, and he said it in a clear and explicit manner. Any other claim is taking things out of context.

Could you imagine the President of the United States having a public spat with the Pentagon? Now, I know their relationship is different. Maybe you can explain it to us. I don't think that Netanyahu, according to Scott Ritter, is the commander-in-chief of the IDF, the way Joe Biden, whatever his mental state is, is the commander-in-chief of the United States military. But have you seen this kind of a public spat between them before while their country's at war? I can't remember any public spat like this, even when the Pentagon brass seemed to be at loggerheads with the Bush era neocons, it wasn't like this. Israel's a completely different country, if you can even call it a country. Israel is essentially an army with a state.

And so the Israeli military has much more power and credibility among the public than the prime minister. Netanyahu is powerful. He has a strong constituency. You could kind of compare it to MAGA, maybe a little more narrow. His coalition has a lot of power among the settlers, and he keeps giving them more and more power, as well as among the police. But the Israeli military is the predominant force. And Netanyahu, this clash really represents a much deeper destabilization of Israeli society that preceded October 7th when we saw the attempted judicial overhaul bring Israeli reservists out into the streets in protest of Netanyahu, particularly those who come from the kind of Ashkenazi elite who are the pilots in the Air Force refusing to go to training. This nearly brought down the Netanyahu government.

The problem is those forces do not have any single figure that can replace Netanyahu in a political sense who has the same base. And so what you would have if you had Benny Gantz taking over as prime minister is an administration maybe with some of the backing of the military chiefs, but really, which would rely on the US for its backing, and it would be a democratic president. And this would increase tensions to the point of a near civil war inside Israel. So Israel's really on the precipice of political destabilization right now. And the longer this war goes on, the closer it gets to going over the edge. What is the status of the IDF with respect to its morale and its numbers? Tom Friedman in this morning's New York Times said the elite officer corps is seriously degraded, meaning killed or so injured they can't go back to work. Yeah, I mean, you take a look at the casualties in Gaza.

A majority of them are officers, but that's because it's much easier to become an officer in the Israeli army. You have almost 9000 Israeli men who have been disabled since October 7th as a result of this war. That doesn't count just the overall injuries that didn't lead to permanent disabilities. And you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of deaths. These are the primary breadwinners of families. These are reservists. Some of them run businesses. So it's been a powerful blow to Israeli society. But then you have the overall economic blow to Israeli society, which depends heavily on tech investment. And by December, over 50% of foreign investment for the Israeli tech sector had pulled out. There's one firm called, I think, Basimer.

It's a venture firm, venture capital firm, foreign, which had pulled out 20% of all of its investments by then. And even before then, before October 7th, these foreign investors were pulling out because of the civil strife over the judicial overhaul. Now you've seen last week, Intel, which runs a major plant in Haifa, pulled out a $15 billion chip plant in the Israeli city of Kiryat Gat. So the Israeli economy is suffering enormously. You hear, I've heard about towns in Cyprus, which is right

close to Israel in the Mediterranean, having to put up new Hebrew signs around their towns because so many people are moving away from Israel to Cyprus since October 7th. Again, I mean, Israel is facing an existential crisis and Netanyahu refuses to provide an exit ramp. And then you have Joe Biden and the Biden administration who are so overwhelmed by the influence of the Israel lobby and by their own delusions and idiocy that they are refusing to impose an end to this. So in many ways, I mean, this is why Tom Friedman wrote this column is that he wants the Biden administration and the Democrats, he's one of them, to save Israel from itself, but they can't do it because they themselves are basically controlled by Israel.

I want to play what the IDF spokesman said, and then I'm going to ask you, who would have written this? Who would have authorized it? What kind of a meeting of the minds, obviously without Netanyahu, would have come together for him to say this? Cut number 17, Chris. Hamas is an ideology. Hamas is rooted in the hearts of the people of Gaza. To eliminate it, to replace those who run the public services, those who distribute food or steal it, there must be an alternative that can emerge. It's a decision that has to be taken politically, and the army will implement it. Until it is, Hamas will continue to exist.

Hamas will not disappear from Gaza. It will not disappear. Who or what would avoid? I think his rank is admiral, but you say it's easier to become an officer in the Israeli army. American admirals are usually older than this fellow appears to be, but be that as it may, who would had to have authorized this thumbing the nose at Benjamin Netanyahu by the chief spokesperson for the IDF? Well, these are the gatekeepers. They're the security chiefs. That was the title of an Oscar-winning documentary about the former chiefs of the Shin Bet and Mossad, who were essentially opposing Netanyahu and the settlers and the Likud dominance of Israel because

they were placing their own political priorities over the strategic imperatives of Israel's settler colonial state. They're the wiser stewards of settler colonialism and occupation, we should say. And they're disturbed. They're concerned about Israeli losses in Gaza. An M113 was blown up, or should I say, it was actually a Namur Israeli troop carrier, very advanced vehicle was blown up by should I say it was actually a Namer Israeli troop carrier, a very advanced vehicle was blown up by Hamas. Eight soldiers were roasted while they were sleeping in the carrier. There's

video of an M113 carrier that has been left abandoned in Rafah. Netanyahu's goals are completely convoluted there. More soldiers will definitely die. But then you have the northern front where Israel suffered, I would say, its worst defeat since October 7th without any casualties because Hezbollah penetrated deep into Israeli territory with a Hupo drone and published nine minutes of surveillance footage showing sensitive Israeli sites which have never been exposed before, including deep in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. This is where, according to General Secretary of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, Israel maintains major ammonia plants, which if hit by a targeted Hezbollah missile would have the same effect

as a nuclear weapon going off. He said, we don't need nuclear weapons. They have those plants there. This was the worst intelligence failure for Israel since October 7th to allow that drone to get back. Nasrallah says they have hours more of footage. And this is not just a military war. It's an awareness war. So I think Hagari senses that this war is going on too long. They need to get humanitarian aid into Gaza because the genocide, the images of genocide are discrediting Israel on the national stage. And Netanyahu refuses to end it because as Thomas

Friedman says, something we've been saying on your show, Judge, for months and months and months, Netanyahu doesn't want to end the war because he's afraid he'll go to prison. Right, right. Do the Israeli people see this or does he still enjoy huge support because of the fury that was generated by the perception of events on October 7th? figure capable of pulling together a coalition as narrow as it is for this long and there's a reason that he is the longest serving Prime Minister. Israel is essentially a Likud state so it's unclear who would replace him or how long they would last. I should also mention an Israeli army investigation of October 7th was published yesterday, about 24 hours ago, corroborating everything we've been writing at the Gray Zone about Israel's use of the Hannibal Directive to target its own citizens on October 7th when they were taken captive. Netanyahu greatly fears an Israeli state report on October 7th. What's an Israeli state report? The Knesset or Netanyahu's own government?

It would be like a Knesset commission. Israel's had these reports before. They had a commission, for example, after the Sabran Shatila massacre, which found that Ariel Sharon was indirectly responsible for presiding over that massacre in a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. So these can be very damaging for an Israeli prime minister. Netanyahu is trying to prevent that. And I think that might be the final blow, but it hasn't arrived yet. How can Netanyahu in his right mind want to pick a fight with Hezbollah in light of everything you have just said? There are tremendous losses in Gaza, the acknowledgement and recognition that Gaza can't be defeated, the public spats with the IDF, what this drone revealed. How can it possibly talk about picking a fight with Hezbollah?

It can't. It cannot, especially given what I think is a fairly legitimate assessment of Israeli society by Hassan Nasrallah which is that is it is a spider web society meaning a society where people take for granted that they can live a first world western lifestyle in the middle of a hostile uh third world area where people are much more as we see in gaza steadfast and able to take more casualties. So the CEO of a major Israeli electrical company stated in a press conference yesterday that Israel's electricity grid would not withstand a Hezbollah attack. And the Israeli Energy Ministry, which is part of Israel's political coalition, countered these comments for obvious political

reasons. They're trying to prevent the exodus of more Israelis for fear of a Hezbollah attack. Hezbollah has 100 times the capacity of what Hamas does. They're not operating under siege. What Israel has been able to demonstrate, that it can assassinate high-level Hezbollah commanders. It claims that it could get to Nasrallah and kill him, which would be a powerful moral blow to the morale of Hezbollah. And they're threatening to destroy Beirut. And they have destroyed large parts of Beirut. But that will not be enough to dislodge Hezbollah from Lebanon or to defeat them. And if they fight, if they go toe-to-toe with Hezbollah, it will draw other forces into the war that may be too powerful for Israel to withstand. And they'll have to call on their direct line to the Gentile authorities in Washington to save the self-proclaimed Jewish state. Have those Gentile authorities in Washington employed the United States Navy

in such a way as to enhance the genocide? I thought I read something that you either tweeted or said. I know you've been doing some funny stuff lately, but I don't think you were doing, you meant this in a funny way. No, I didn't. I think it was October 10th, the Biden administration dispatched, well, the Biden Pentagon dispatched the USS Eisenhower and a carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean as a show of force against Hezbollah and its allies in Tehran. And they've been there in that area ever since. They're now guarding the Red Sea.

And according to ABC News, this is the most intense and sustained deployment of any strike group since World War II. They've been there for like eight months or so. There are 7,000 sailors involved in this deployment and they're becoming exhausted. They're not getting a break. They're posting, according to ABC News, dark memes complaining about why they're there. And ABC News frames this as a deployment to protect vital shipping in the Red Sea. Well, ostensibly on the surface, that's true. This is really about defending Israel's quote unquote right to commit genocide in Gaza. Because as soon as the ceasefire takes place, which could be imposed with a phone call from Washington to Tel Aviv, then the Red Sea opens up and Yemen's Ansarallah Houthi party will stop and its legitimate responsibility to protect operation against shipping, which is designed to pressure the West and Israel into ending its genocide and enacting a ceasefire. So they're there. U.S. soldiers are being exhausted, fatigued, and put in harm's way, parrying missile attacks all the time to defend a foreign,

tiny little ethno state whose prime minister is basically running de facto campaign ads against the sitting U.S. president because he won't give them enough weapons, even though he's given them more weapons than we've ever seen shipped to another country in history. Who's in charge here? Who's giving the orders to send American troops halfway around the earth? It doesn't feel like it's a sovereign American government. Certainly, the donor class, as you know, as well as anybody, has extraordinary influence. Do you think the degradation, degrading of Israel diplomatically by what Netanyahu has done is so deep and severe

that it could ever get out of a hole it's dug itself and returned to the community of nations it once was a part of on October 6th? Well, I mentioned earlier that Israel's electrical grid is not secure during a war with Hezbollah. Well, Israel's electrical grid depends heavily on coal. You can go see, if you're in Gaza, you'll see this plant in Ashdod pumping toxic coal fumes into the air all the time. In a little noticed move, the leftist government of Gustavo Petro in Colombia suspended coal shipments to Israel. Colombia was a top supplier of coal to Israel. Colombia was a top supplier of coal to Israel. And this was directly intended to pressure Israel to end its Gaza genocide. So this is happening all around the world. And you just had the UN Human Rights Commission find Israel guilty of extermination, as well as gender-based violence and sexual torture. You have the ICC put out an issue, a possible warrant for Netanyahu, the International Court of Justice, ordering Israel to cease genocide.

What's missing here is any enforcement mechanism to enforce these kinds of rulings. And so Israel still feels confident enough that it can continue. But the day is coming when these rulings will either be enforced or something else will be imposed on Israel in the form of, I don't know, Burkhan missiles by Hezbollah or something worse. Will Netanyahu still be in office on July 24, when he's supposed to be feted by the members of Congress who have already said publicly that they're going to break their own record of 55 standing ovations for a 40-minute speech the last time he was here, Will he even come? Well, I don't know if I can answer the first question about whether he'll still be in office. Israeli politics are so unstable. I expect this invitation will go through just because how much influence the Likud lobby has over the House GOP leadership. Netanyahu has previously visited Washington to directly insult the president of the United States, Barack Obama, and portray him

as a kind of crypto-Nazi for refusing to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, waving a map of Auschwitz from World War II and claiming that FDR refused to bomb the railways to Auschwitz, likening that to Obama's refusal to attack Iran. That happened because House GOP leadership invited Netanyahu. Here you have House Democratic leadership, Hakeem Jeffries, a minority leader, also extending an invitation to genocide leader Netanyahu. Hakeem Jeffries, a minority leader, also extending an invitation to genocide leader Netanyahu. Hakeem Jeffries, who is one of the largest recipients of AIPAC money in history. Will the Democratic Party leadership at least rescind its invitation after Netanyahu directly attacked the Biden administration? So far, they haven't, which again raises the question of who's actually in charge in this country. Here's Congressman Thomas Massey speaking with my friend and former colleague, Tucker Carlson, talking about something else the Republican leadership has done with respect to every Republican member of Congress, except for him.

By the way, everybody but me has an AIPAC person. What does that mean, an AIPAC person? It's like your babysitter, your AIPAC babysitter, who is always talking to you for AIPAC. They're probably a constituent in your district, but they are firmly embedded in AIPAC. Every member has something like this? I don't know how it works on the Democrat side, but that's how it works on the Republican side. Surprise you or no? No, that's absolutely true.

And they meet you at your district office. They say they're local constituents, but they're APAC lobbyists and And, you know, even Bernie Sanders had to meet with them in Vermont. formerly went on AIPAC speaking tours before he moved away from the Israel lobby line, revealed about Netanyahu's 2012 speech in Washington when he was invited by then House GOP Speaker John Boehner, which is that every member of Congress is given a VIP ticket where they can bring a guest, and every member of Congress brought their top AIPAC donor to go with them to see the speech with Netanyahu. Wow. Well, we'll see what happens on July 24th. Ryan Dawson, who was on the show two days ago, says expect the demonstrations to be huge.

Expect all those students from UCLA and Columbia and everywhere else to be in DC the day Netanyahu is there. We'll see what mainstream media even covers it, Max. Well, they'll cover it. They will cover it if the protests manage to actually surround the Capitol. But the real question is what happens a month later at the Democratic National Convention on August 19th. And I think the question is, will they have a presence inside as the anti-Vietnam War protesters did at the 1968 convention? And the Democratic Party is going to do everything to prevent that from taking place. Well, we'll be watching. I'm sure you will as well. You'll probably be in Chicago, won't you? I'll be there. And I don't know, maybe we'll do a gray zone event and we'll invite you. We'll be cheering you on. You know that. Maybe we'll hand you the mic.

Yep. Anytime you want to come on, especially if you're on the floor. Max, thank you very much, my dear friend. All the best. I hope you can come back again next week. Thanks a lot, Judge. Sure. All right, my dear friends, a great interview. He's so courageous and so right on the mark. Let me just check tomorrow for you. A very interesting Friday.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. At 3.30, his former colleague, Colonel Douglas McGregor. And at 4.15, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern at the Intelligence Roundtable. A happy way to end this very busy week. Thank you for watching. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.